Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “He’s a son of a bitch. But you’re my Family now.”

  “Let’s do a little arithmetic,” Isaac said. “How many dolls have been recaptured? How many are in the collectors’ hands?”

  “Forty, so far.”

  “That leaves Giuseppina and nine missing dolls. And you want the fucking Police Department to find those dolls.”

  “Not the Department. The Black Stocking Twins.”

  “Grand,” Isaac said. “Joey and I join the hunt. Do we run off to Cairo?”

  “Not Cairo,” Sal said.

  “Where then?”

  “Manhattan … maybe Palermo, maybe Brooklyn, maybe the Bronx. Isaac, the maestros were secretive men. They hid the dolls in cellars. A cellar is very deep.”

  “So you offer me a pretty bundle. My heart’s desire, huh? You’ll finance the whole Police Athletic League. You’ll build another St. Patrick’s Cathedral. All we have to do is bag the missing dolls.”

  “Correct.”

  Isaac dropped Giuseppina into Sal’s arms.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  He stared at Margaret Tolstoy. She must have been privy to the hunt for Peppinninu’s dolls. Was she Sal’s silent partner? Isaac saw blood. There was betrayal behind every doll. He didn’t believe in puppet makers without a past. Peppinninu was a profitable fairy tale. The whole story stank. He’d have heard about these dolls from the melamed. But could Isaac be sure? The melamed had used him again and again.

  Margaret accompanied Isaac and Joe to the elevator. She kissed the Pink Commish, her tongue focusing brutally in his mouth, like a brigandess. She wouldn’t say a word about the dolls. He climbed into the elevator with Barbarossa.

  The door closed, and Isaac saw the last pinch of her orange hair.

  7

  He couldn’t stop dreaming of Margaret Tolstoy. She was Anastasia the brigandess when she arrived at Isaac’s school.

  It was 1944, and there was a shortage of sugar on every shelf. Isaac was standing under the Williamsburg Bridge with a small nation of thieves. He planned to retire from school. He was fourteen. Little Leo was with him. Leo carried Isaac’s ration stamps.

  The thieves barked at Isaac. “Sidel, Sidel.”

  “What?” he said, clutching bags of sugar in the different pockets of his coat.

  “I have mousetraps. I have beebee guns. I have prophylactics. Lambskin, Isaac, the best in the world. Made for a king.”

  “I’ll sit on my sugar,” he said.

  “We’ll kidnap Lana Turner. We’ll lend her to you, Isaac.”

  “Keep your Lana Turners.”

  “We have you six to one,” the thieves said. “We could take your sugar, Sidel. And your little brother.”

  Leo started to cry. Pee trickled from his pants.

  Isaac pulled a hammer out of one pocket.

  The thieves disappeared from their trading post under the bridge. Isaac had to station Leo near an open steam pipe until the pants dried. Then he marched back to school with little Leo. He’d signed up for French because it was the language of philosophers, and Isaac wanted to learn from all the little fathers of the French Revolution. But he couldn’t get past the heartache of grammar.

  He was preparing to fall asleep when a girl walked into his French class. She had large, almond-colored eyes. Her body had a fullness, a texture, that had nothing to do with growing pains or the ripeness that was natural to daughters of the Lower East Side.

  She was thirteen and she spoke in rapid-fire French.

  Anastasia was a refugee. She’d been to Hiker’s Paris. She’d studied the ballet. She’d starved in Odessa. Now she was a foster child who lived with a collection of aunts.

  He’d walk her home from school, his pockets bulging and Leo right behind him in pissy pants. He had to beat up all his rivals, who would have also liked to walk her home.

  She kept watching him. “Why you wear coat in class?”

  “I’m a businessman. I move sugar. I steal it, buy it, collect it.”

  “And him?” she said, pointing to little Leo.

  “He’s also a businessman. He carries my ration stamps.”

  She invited Isaac and Leo to meet her aunts. They were stingy women who sat over a samovar. They bullied Anastasia and scowled at the two businessmen until Isaac cracked open a sugar bag, poured some sugar into a big jar, and gave that jar to the aunts.

  They were much kinder to Anastasia with Isaac around, these ersatz aunts.

  He went under the bridge with little Leo and returned with a pair of silk stockings and a gold ring. He had to give up most of his ration stamps, because silk was scarce. All the silk in America went into producing life preservers and parachutes.

  Anastasia’s eyes exploded when she saw the silk.

  She kissed him suddenly in the street. Isaac’s knees began to knock. Her mouth was moist. Her tongue was like a salamander’s tail. It flicked and then it was gone.

  She entered her aunts’ building with Isaac and Leo, brought them into an alcove under the stairs, and put on the silk stockings over her tattered white socks.

  “I know a couple of whiskey priests,” Isaac said. “They’d marry anyone for a bag of sugar … but we’ll have to keep it a secret until I’m seventeen.”

  He walked home with little Leo.

  “Isaac, can I marry her too?”

  “Keep quiet,” Isaac said. But Anastasia vanished from the Lower East Side. He visited her aunts with his crop of sugar. They already had another niece, a cross-eyed girl who polished the samovar.

  “Where’s my fiancée?”

  “The government has her. Men in big hats.”

  He used whatever influence he had to find Anastasia. He paid a retired policeman who’d joined the black market of sugar dealers.

  “It wasn’t the immigration dicks. I searched the records. No one named Anastasia entered the port of New York. She could have been an illegal alien. But I doubt it. It’s some hanky-panky, Sidel. A child-labor scam.”

  “But she was in Odessa last year.”

  “Odessa? Did she hopscotch across half of Europe?”

  “But she knows French. She lived in Paris.”

  “During the Occupation? Is she Goering’s mistress?”

  “She’s thirteen.”

  “I hear Goering wouldn’t touch a girl over twelve.”

  Isaac punched the policeman, who landed on his ass, then coughed into a handkerchief. “You have courage, kid. I could crack your skull. I’ve done it before. I’ve hurt people real bad for less than you’re paying me. Forget about her.”

  But he couldn’t. The kiss had marked Sidel. He was still like that boy with bags of sugar in his pockets. Only the sugar had turned to dust, and instead of a tapeworm he had that constant image of Leo trundling behind him in short pants.

  His lawyer, Marlon Fitzhugh, arrived at Police Plaza. Deputy commissioners shuddered at the sight of his dreadlocks. But Sidel liked to have a Rasta in the house. He would have hired Fitzhugh as the Department’s own chief counsel, but Marlon preferred to stay on the far side of the police. Most of his clients were militant churchmen, tax dodgers, and roustabouts who plunged into the depths of Brooklyn and rarely came out. Isaac was his only white client. Fitzhugh adored that essential anarchy of Isaac.

  “I may have to go back to Riker’s, Marlon. I was up in Belmont with Joe Barbarossa.”

  “As the PC and his chauffeur or the Black Stocking Twins?”

  “We hit one of Jerry’s clubs, and three of his soldiers got killed. We didn’t glock them, Marlon, I swear. It was another guy. Frannie Meyers and his moon children.”

  “The badass who sells drugs to black kids. It’s lucky he keeps to the Bronx. He’s been sentenced to death in Brooklyn.”

  “But that won’t save me with my own First Dep. Sweets knows all about the Twins. He’s put me on notice.”

  “You could fire the man.”

  “I couldn’t fire Sweets. He’s the best First Dep I ever had.”
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  “He can’t touch you, Isaac.”

  “But he could go to Internal Affairs, or sit with the Bronx D. A. It’s Riker’s, Marlon, I’m telling you. The Black Stocking Twins. Three dead soldiers in the Bronx.”

  “Isaac, you’re paying me by the minute, so listen, please. The man can’t touch you. The Twins can glock all the soldiers they want.”

  “Who says?”

  “LeComte.”

  “Frederic got to Sweets?”

  “He doesn’t have to get to Sweets. Your budget is tight. LeComte pays for all the frills. You couldn’t even have a crime lab without the FBIs.”

  Fitzhugh pressed a button on the time clock he carried with him to all his clients. The clock had once belonged to Bobby Fischer, chess champion of the world, who fled into his own obscurity without the clock. Isaac didn’t like this closing down of the timer. It meant that Fitzhugh was no longer charging him. The Rasta wanted something from Isaac.

  “I have a message from some of my people. They want you to run for mayor.”

  “Marlon, the Rastas never vote.”

  “They’d vote for you. I’m offering myself as your precinct captain in Crown Heights. And the time I give, Isaac, all of it, is off the clock.”

  “I’d have to go up against the Democratic machine.”

  “We are the machine.”

  “Becky Karp isn’t going to lie down for us. She’s the mayor, Marlon. She owns City Hall.”

  “The woman can’t even step into Brooklyn. You’ll whip her ass in the primary. She’s a lost soul.”

  “But I’d have to behave myself. I couldn’t wear a mask.”

  “You can hit Jerry DiAngelis’ clubs for the rest of your life.”

  “Marlon, I can’t declare myself right now. My daughter is missing. And …”

  “Decide, Isaac. Brooklyn can’t wait too long. The borough’s lying in a mountain of shit.” Fitzhugh raised the button on his timer. “Commissioner, you’re back on the clock. What else can I do for you?”

  “Did you ever hear about a bunch of Sicilian dolls made by a guy called Peppinninu?”

  “Isaac, all the voodoo dolls I know never got to Sicily.”

  “But they’re worth millions.”

  “So am I. Or I would be if I had more paying clients like yourself.”

  Fitzhugh retrieved his clock and walked out on Isaac, who sat brooding behind his desk. He was the police commissioner and former Hamilton Fellow. He had a whole city of experts at his disposal. He could get curators and librarians and professors of Italian history on the phone. But none of them knew about the pupi palermitiani. He did uncover one source, an assistant curator at the Museum of Natural History who had a passion for puppet theater. Isaac made an appointment with her at a café across from the museum.

  Barbarossa brought him uptown. Isaac was already discouraged.

  “It’s a lot of crap. Million-dollar dolls with green hair. Sal’s trying to bend my whistle. It’s an FBI caper. LeComte’s the puppet master. He pulls all the strings.”

  “The Bureau is collecting dolls?”

  “It’s pocket money. LeComte likes to turn a profit … do we have a man at Port Authority, Joe?”

  “I put him there myself.”

  “Does he have Marilyn’s photograph?”

  “Boss, I wouldn’t let him go in blind.”

  “What about that computer jockey at One PP?”

  “Nelson Chan? He isn’t at Police Plaza. He’s with the property clerk.”

  “I hope he’s a terrific thief. I want him to tap into VISA and American Express. If Marilyn’s been using her plastic, we might be able to track her down.”

  “Boss, forgive me, but your daughter has nine or ten married names.”

  “Tell him I want a printout on every single Marilyn there is.”

  “Nelson’s not that much of a genius. It could take him a year. And the FBIs will arrest him long before that.”

  “He has diplomatic immunity when he works for the Commish.”

  Isaac stepped out of the car and entered the Green Hut Café. The curator recognized him and called Isaac to her table. Her name was Monica Bradstreet. She was half Isaac’s age.

  “Thank you, Dr. Bradstreet, for taking the time. Aren’t you a little young to have an interest in the dolls of Sicily? I mean, it’s not like Pinocchio. It’s esoteric stuff.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Commissioner Sidel.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But have you been to any of the puppet theaters in Palermo?”

  “They’re all tourist traps. The greatest pupari have disappeared. They’re dead.”

  She had a doll’s face, Monica Bradstreet, with lips that were as red as Giuseppina’s. And she had a greenish tint to her hair.

  “And you haven’t been to a single performance?”

  “No.”

  “Not even in New York? How can you help me?”

  “Commissioner, there are nine journals devoted to puppet theater. I’ve read every single article written on your Sicilian dolls. So please don’t test my seriousness. What is it you’d like to know?”

  “Background. Anything. I don’t have the least little handle.”

  “It was popular theater, theater for the poor. It flourished at the end of the last century. The pupari would hire a barn or a cellar or a tiny stall in the back alleys of Palermo. They had an inventory of dolls, wooden skeletons they would dress in armor and colored skirts. But it wasn’t their variety that interested the poor. It was the narratives, Commissioner, tales about Moorish kings and Christian knights, about brigands and clowns. They were always stories of rebellion, with blood and blindness. The tales would expand into enormous narrative cycles, sometimes for a year and a half, until the population got bored. The best pupari would assume all the voices, men’s, women’s, children’s. They would stand behind the curtain, above the stage, and manipulate the dolls with strings and iron rods. It was the rods that made the dolls spectacular, because their movements were violent and unpredictable. A sword fight could last for twenty minutes. Both contestants might lose an arm, a leg, even an ear.”

  “The dolls didn’t have much of a future then.”

  “They weren’t made to have a future. The puparo was often an outlaw, with the carabinieri at his heels. He hid behind the puppet screens and told the most incendiary tales. He incited rebellion in his own way, rebellion against the mainland, against the king and his tax collectors.”

  “Each puparo had a code, huh?”

  “More than a code. He sang out some collective will.”

  “The will to destroy, like the dolls were destroyed … but I’m interested in one particular master, Peppinninu.”

  Monica laughed. “Peppinninu was the name of a clown in the puppet theater. He had huge testicles. His knight would beat him all the time. So a puparo could wear that name like a mask. I told you. He belonged to a society of outlaws.”

  “But in all those articles you read, did you hear about fifty dolls that were put aside and never used?”

  “Commissioner, no puparo could afford that kind of luxury. Even the most successful ones were a week or two from starvation. It would have been idiotic. They had to use up their inventory, before they themselves were used up.”

  “But there could have been one crazy dreamer.”

  “Perhaps. But outlaws are very pragmatic people. Where would they store these mercurial dolls? In their own britches?”

  “But if the fifty dolls did exist, how much would they be worth?”

  “More than I could pay. But I’ve never seen them advertised. It’s a hoax, Commissioner Sidel.”

  “Ah, but I held one in my hands. Giuseppina the Brigandess.”

  “And you think she’s part of some fabulous collection. Shame on you, Commissioner, looking for the Maltese Falcon, like Sam Spade. Well, there were falcons in the puppet theater. With snakes and devils on a string. Mermaids and flying fish.”

  “I’m not Spade,” Isaac said
. “I’m only the PC.” He wasn’t involved with mythical birds and flying fish. He wanted Peppinninu.

  He got up and shook hands with Monica. She searched his eyes with her doll’s face. “Call me again if you have any other questions.”

  Isaac strode out into the street. Someone had gotten to the lady. She protested a little too much. He climbed into the car, wrapped himself in his blanket.

  “What now?” Barbarossa asked.

  “We’re going to the masks.”

  8

  They rode out to the middle of Mafia country, Brooklyn’s Bath Beach. The Commish was fond of suicide patrols. Bath Beach had a crime rate of zero. It was the one community that always policed itself. The Families allowed no internal wars. Opposing dons lived side by side with their mistresses, their wives, their cats, their dogs. And Isaac intended to introduce the Black Stocking Twins into the fucking normal, easy flow of Bath Beach.

  Barbarossa parked the car on Bath Avenue, next to a precinct that could have been a Sicilian dollhouse made of bricks. The Commish had no shame. He and Joey went to their masks. But they didn’t seek out a social club. They ran up the steps of a private house and knocked on a door near the roof. A blond beauty opened the door. Joey recognized the bitch. It was Alicia, the love of Jerry DiAngelis’ life. She was his comare, which was as much of a sweetheart as any man could have when he already had a wife.

  “Don’t be scared,” Isaac said under his mask and thrust himself through the door. “I came for Raoul.”

  The blond beauty began to cry.

  “Alicia, I won’t hurt him. I’m renting him for a while.”

  Barbarossa could see that little boy behind the beauty. Raoul, who must have been eleven. He didn’t have those killer eyes of Frannie’s coca babies. Raoul was like a startled young deer, Bambi of Bath Beach.

  “Please,” Alicia said, brushing up against Isaac. “Don’t take him. I’ll give you money, anything.”

  “No bribes, Alicia. Raoul will be all right.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The Black Stocking Twins.”

  “You must be crazy. Do you know whose child this is? He belongs to Jerry DiAngelis …”

  “Mama,” the boy said, “listen to the man.”