Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  26

  Barbarossa would meet Marilyn Daggers on Indian Road, where he could also watch Isaac’s little brother Leo. He was some kind of sheriff and minstrel who couldn’t sing. He would have gone to Tunnel Exit Street with Marilyn and rolled around with her on Roz’s bed, but he’d promised Isaac to look after Leo. And Joey, who’d been a wild man without an address, would dream of settling in with Mrs. Daggers.

  “Jesus,” Marilyn said from Leo’s divan. “I almost forgot. I keep confusing husbands. I was never legally married to Mark. I was his squaw … I don’t have to run to Reno for a quickie divorce. We can get married. Any time. Any place.”

  “Tell it to your dad.”

  Marilyn began to flail at him, while Barbarossa held her in his arms. “Damn you. He can’t negotiate my life.”

  “I’ll marry you, Mrs. Daggers. But not behind the boss’s back.”

  “I already told you. I’m not Mrs. Daggers. And we can have a shotgun wedding,” Marilyn said. “I’ll hold the shotgun on dear daddy Isaac.”

  Barbarossa almost laughed. He saw a black man from the window, downstairs on Indian Road, with the Hudson’s waters behind him. It was Wig, chief of the mayor’s detail, spying on Marilyn and Joe.

  “I’ll be right back,” Barbarossa said. He put on a light lumber jacket and went downstairs with a twitch in his jaw that was like the prelude to a kill. Wig shouldn’t have haunted him. Not on Indian Road.

  Barbarossa crossed the street and approached Wig, who stood near a fence with that spectacular look of the Purple Gang: brown leather and a gold medallion hanging from his neck. No one could ever find the Purples. They were cool aristocrats of mayhem, renting themselves out on some mythical basis.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Wig. Persecuting me and my woman.”

  “Aw,” Wig said, fondling the medallion. “I wouldn’t mess with Marilyn the Wild.”

  “She’s Mrs. Daggers. Show her some fucking respect.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head.”

  “But you came to Indian Road. That’s criminal.”

  “Couldn’t find you, kid. I looked everywhere. Sherwood Forest. Chinatown. I visited your pingpong table. All I got was a load of crap.”

  “I go where I want,” Barbarossa said. “I’m Isaac’s driver.”

  “But the great man is out of town. He’s with them Sicilian mothers, and I had to see you.”

  “Wig, if I catch you on Indian Road again, or anyplace near Mrs. Daggers and her Uncle Leo, I’ll kill you, Wig.”

  “That’s okay. But Mario wants to meet with you.”

  “He can pick up a phone.”

  “He’s not too fond of telephones. He sent me.”

  “Yeah,” Barbarossa said. “His packager.”

  They stood by the fence, the two most decorated cops in New York, with scars on their faces, little wounds. They’d both lived with the tiger, toyed with its teeth. They fell off roofs, they’d both been glocked. They were reckless warriors who robbed drug dealers and were captains of their own ambiguous country.

  “I can drive you, Joey.”

  “I have my own bus,” Barbarossa said.

  “Then you drive me. We’re expected at the mansion in twenty minutes.”

  Barbarossa went back upstairs. He hugged Marilyn and Leo. “Lock the door,” he said.

  “What’s the matter, Joe?”

  “Ah, it’s some stupid business. But don’t you answer to anybody. No one gets in here but me.”

  “That’s glorious,” Marilyn said. “We’re under house arrest.”

  “Listen to him,” Leo said, feeling the urgency in Barbarossa’s scarred mouth.

  “If something happens, you sit here, you call Sweets. He’ll come with his cadre.”

  “You’re scaring us,” Marilyn said.

  “Baby,” Barbarossa said. “It’s the best I can do.”

  He rode down to Gracie Mansion with Wig beside him in Isaac’s black Dodge. Wig wouldn’t shoot him in the car. Joe would have to kill Wig one day and suffer the consequences.

  He drove through the gate at Rebecca’s mansion. He saw the other members of her detail in long leather coats, like Isaac’s marksmen and musketeers. They sat on the front porch, whittling pieces of wood. The porch was littered with their shavings. One or two of them had shotguns at their feet. The mayor was in her rocking chair. Mrs. Dove, Rebecca’s chief of staff, was feeding her lentil soup with a large spoon. The giantess seemed to frown at Joe from the roots of her red hair. But it was Wig who scolded those other policemen.

  “Hey, you’re marking up the mayor’s floor.”

  The policemen crouched on the porch in their leather coats and picked up the shavings while Wig went into the mansion with Barbarossa. Mario was in his tiny office near the pantry. He had a photograph of Fiorello LaGuardia, the first mayor to occupy the mansion. The Little Flower was a frenetic man who would often serve as a magistrate or fire chief or commander of the harbor patrol. Isaac always talked about the Little Flower, who was his hero as a child. He’d made war on slot machines, he read the funny papers on the radio to the children of New York. Isaac discovered Dick Tracy through the voice of Fiorello LaGuardia. Barbarossa was a bit resentful that he didn’t have his own Little Flower. Isaac was the lucky one. All Barbarossa had was Chief Joseph, a noncombatant warrior who died in his own tent.

  Mario Klein was wearing a velvet jacket, a silk tie, and a pair of slippers that seemed to complement his white mustache. He looked like a naval explorer who’d been driven off the sea, a doomed admiral exiled to a closet. Joe had been his dealer. He understood Mario’s Napoleonic moods.

  “Joey,” Mario said, “you’ll have to make up your mind. Either you sink with Isaac or survive with us … Wig, explain him the facts of life.”

  “Joe, Isaac is one fucking lonely cop.”

  “He’s a voice in the wilderness,” Mario said.

  Wig rolled his eyes. “Mario, will you let me finish?”

  “You don’t have to finish,” Barbarossa said. “Mario wants his dolls back.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you’d like me to steal them from Isaacs office.”

  “You’re the only one with enough leverage. His sergeants are scared of you. You could walk in and walk out.”

  “Wiggy,” Barbarossa said. “I’m disappointed. I mean, I’ll have to off you or vice versa. We always knew that. But why would I betray my own chief for some little Napoleon who thinks he’s Rebecca Karp?”

  “I don’t think I’m Rebecca,” Mario said. “And you’re standing on a cliff. You’ve been dealing, you’ve killed people. The FBI can end your career, and Isaac can’t help. He likes to cry about schoolchildren. He can’t save you, Joe.”

  “And you can.”

  “Yes. I can make you captain of Sherwood Forest, get you a disability pension. You have a sister to support.”

  “Mario, please don’t mention my sister.”

  “I won’t,” Mario said. “I won’t. But it’s a point of honor. I can’t have Gracie violated like that. It’s supposed to be impregnable. It’s the mayor’s house. I was holding the dolls for a client. Isaac destroys one, and steals the other two. I’m under a cloud, Joey. I can’t have that.”

  “But you have the resources, Mario. Tell young Robert to replace the Peppinninus. He’s the doll builder.”

  “It’s complicated, Joey. He can’t just build a doll on command. He’s a little cracked in the head, or he wouldn’t have murdered his own meal ticket … the dolls that Isaac has are crucial to me.”

  “Tough,” Barbarossa said.

  “Aw,” Wig said, “be kind to the man. He’s trying to spare you some grief.”

  “Like what, Wiggy?”

  “You’ve been leading a double life, kid. It could catch up with you.”

  “And what about your double life?”

  “Me, kid? I’ve been reborn. I’m becoming a priest.”

  “Yeah. The spiritual advisor
to the Purple Gang.”

  “Quit the backbiting,” Mario said. “We don’t have the time. Look around you, Joe. Rebecca is in permanent retreat. Every little putz on the City Council has to kiss my ass. I’m the kingmaker. I can fuck anyone out of his career. And Sidel is no exception. I sit with all the federal attorneys. You and Isaac had your little romance as the Black Stocking Twins. Isaacs baby brother is a shoplifter, a common thief, and his daughter, Mrs. Daggers, is a bigamist. That girl has peculiar ideas about marriage.”

  “She’s not a girl,” Barbarossa said.

  “Joey, wake up. Join our team.”

  “I have my team,” Barbarossa said and walked out of Gracie Mansion. There were no more whittling policemen on the porch. Rebecca’s detail was gone. She sat in her rocking chair, all alone, watching some inner turbulent sea. But she looked up at Joe. Her hair hadn’t been combed. Her mouth was wet.

  “Barbarossa, is that you?”

  “Yes, Madam Mayor.”

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” said Barbarossa, like Becky’s own child.

  “You’ve been tricked. Run on back to Indian Road.”

  27

  He drove to the northern edge of Manhattan with his sirens drowning the City’s noise. He should never have trusted Wig. He was a rotten negotiator. While he’d talked about the dolls, Rebecca’s detail snuck out of Gracie Mansion, and Joe was left with his prick in his pocket. Now he’d have to waste the whole detail and Mario Klein.

  There were tears in his eyes, and he wasn’t a crier like his boss. He was something of a stoic, like that lost Indian chief who went into battle backwards, with his ass facing his enemies. Joe parked the car. He couldn’t see any signs of malice near Leo’s apartment house. He looked up at the windows. He found nothing but vacant glass. He didn’t use the elevator. He climbed the stairs, took the six flights in great galloping strides. He was clutching his Glock, and he couldn’t even remember having unholstered it. In his own mind, he was already in the middle of a firefight.

  Leo’s front door was open.

  He could see the skirts of long leather coats. Barbarossa rushed in. “Freeze,” he said, the gun in his white glove. And he fell upon the Pink Commish, surrounded by his musketeers, grim men who could have been the doubles of Rebecca’s detail.

  “Boss, I figured it was a trap. I …”

  “Where were you, Joey?”

  “With Wig and Mario. It was Rebecca who warned me from her rocking chair.”

  “From her rocking chair,” Isaac said. “That’s grand. I come to Leo’s, I find seven of Wig’s soldiers picking their teeth in front of my daughter. This time I’ll fuck them out of their pensions with or without Malik. Seven soldiers.”

  “They’re cops, boss, they’re your soldiers too.”

  “They’re animals,” Isaac said. He was also wearing a leather jacket. Palermo must have changed him. He had the Devil’s own darkness under his eyes.

  “Where’s Marilyn … and Leo?”

  “I sent them out for a little R and R. Leo likes to shop at Alexander’s. I’ll cripple him if he lifts anything. Marilyn didn’t want to move. ‘I have to wait for Joe,’ she said. I have to wait for Joe.’”

  “I told her to call Sweets if—”

  “I’m not blaming you, Joey. I blame myself. I ought to resign. There I am, worrying about young Robert. LeComte endorses my trip to Palermo. He lends me Margaret. He’s my rabbi all of a sudden. He was moving merchandise, Joey. He wanted me out of the way. And Margaret is his little angel. That’s what hurts. She’s stringing me along, pretending to be my guide. It was a stall.”

  “Boss, did you get to use your mask?”

  “No, I didn’t have the occasion. But I should have, Joey.”

  He walked into Leo’s bedroom with Barbarossa and shut the door so Isaac’s musketeers couldn’t listen. It was like the bedroom of a little boy. Leo had maps on the wall of Marco Polo’s route to China. He had a photograph of Isaac and himself as children in a cave that Barbarossa instantly recognized. It was that touch of Sheriff Street under the Williamsburg Bridge. Leo’s desk and bed were gorgeous pieces of maplewood. The desk was much too little for a man. But Isaac hardly noticed. The furniture must have been as familiar as the corns on his feet.

  “Boss, is that Leo’s school desk?”

  “Yeah, he inherited it from me. But I didn’t bring you in here to talk about desks. I have regards,” Isaac said, “from a cadaver.”

  His boss was the Devil, that much Barbarossa knew. Only the Devil could have come out of Sicily with those darkened eyes. “Which cadaver, boss? I know a bunch of them.”

  “Montezuma, the cavalier of cavaliers.”

  “Boss, he was buried in a box … out in Queens. I went to the funeral.”

  “And Montezuma was laughing his ass off inside the hearse. It was an FBI caper, Joe. LeComte was behind it.”

  “Boss, I don’t mean to brag. But when I kill a man, he stays killed.”

  “He was wearing plastic putty. The FBI dressed him to take the kill. He had a bag of blood under his coat. All you ever saw was the bag break.”

  “I saw him dead.”

  “Joey, he runs a jewelry shop in Palermo. I met with him. I have witnesses. It was a brilliant stroke. The little kings of Palermo can’t touch him, because they’re supersitious bastards, and meanwhile LeComte has you hooked for life.”

  “I’m going to Palermo,” Barbarossa said. “I sock a man, and he starts selling jewelry. I have to sock him again.”

  “Are you blotto? It’s a blessing. You’re off LeComte’s list. You’re free.”

  “Free, huh? Free to live under a pingpong table, free to drive you around, but am I free to marry Mrs. Daggers?”

  “Leave my daughter out of it,” Isaac said. “She’s a fucking victim of marriages.”

  “I want your blessing, Isaac.”

  “Joey, we have work to do. LeComte is the master of disinformation. He goes into business with Montezuma. He’s partners with Sal and Jerry D., and they’re blind to the whole schtick. He uses their soldiers, he uses me … and you. He sets up the biggest drug cartel in creation and runs it like a little king. He controls all the traffic. He makes millions, and when he’s ready to pounce, he’ll pounce. Montezuma is registered to him. LeComte is clean. He can’t get hurt. But he’s behind the times. He doesn’t understand chaos. He doesn’t appreciate nonlinear twists.”

  “Boss, what’s a nonlinear twist?”

  “Turbulence,” Isaac said. “Everything in nature leads to turbulence. It’s at the heart of every form. Singularity. That’s what baseball is about. Singularities inside a field of order. Nine men. Nine positions. A pitched ball.”

  “Boss,” Barbarossa said, “I can’t talk baseball right now. Please. I have a headache. I was with Rebecca on her porch. I had to go eyeball to eyeball with Wig. I was worried about Marilyn. And you tell me Montezuma walked away from his own burial. Do we go to our masks? What’s the plan?”

  “Turbulence,” Isaac said. “We destabilize LeComte and his cartel.”

  “Yeah,” Barbarossa said. “With a shitstorm of singularities.”

  And they walked out of Leo’s bedroom together, the Black Stocking Twins. Barbarossa’s hand tingled under the white glove. He owed LeComte a lesson in turbulence. It annoyed him that Montezuma was alive.

  28

  The Pink Commish had to practice his own art of Zen. He meditated in front of the dolls in his office, the two Giuseppinas. He begged them to forgive his vanity, his self-righteousness, his overreaching nature. He was the prince of nothing. He wasn’t worthy of being their very own knight. He locked himself in with the dolls for two days. He wouldn’t accept any nourishment. He sipped a glass of water. He had no hunger pains. He sought a koan that would deliver him from the world of police chiefs. But he couldn’t discover any surge of enlightenment. He was Isaac, son of Joel, brother of Leo, father of Marilyn, estranged husband of Kathleen, ambiguous swee
theart of Anastasia, lapsed comrade of Jerry D. and Isadore Wasser the melamed, former beneficiary of Frederic LeComte, boss and spiritual twin of Joe Barbarossa, enemy of Montezuma, mourner of Manfred Coen …

  He woke from a turbulent dream, kissed both dolls, left his office, had Moros y Cristianos at his Newyorican café, and began calling in whatever cards he had as Commish. He went into the chambers of judges who still admired him, he met with Alejo Tomás, the schools chancellor, he met with Cardinal Jim, he courted the district attorneys of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, told them about the cartel, he sat with Democratic and Republican Party chiefs, talked like a mayor, barked like a mayor. It was mostly bluff. He schemed with Becky’s other commissioners, promised whatever he could. He drove a wedge between them and Mario Klein.

  “There’s a rumor running around that the lad will be indicted,” Isaac said in his best policeman’s brogue. “He’s been warehousing drugs in Rebecca’s basement. Wouldn’t count much on Mario if I were you. But I can’t say more. I’ll prejudice our case.”

  He didn’t have a case. He had cries and whispers, nothing at all.

  He chatted up certain art patrons, friends of the Police Athletic League who frequented Manhattan galleries. “Dolls,” he said. “Masterpieces of the Sicilian puppet theater. Knights and warrior ladies in skirts. You couldn’t miss them. They’d haunt your memory. They’re three feet tall … ah, the Lucifer Gallery on Madison and Fifty-seventh. Near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Neighbors of Cardinal Jim.”

  He arrived at the Lucifer with a fire marshal who owed him favors. And Barbarossa. Isaac was carrying documents with fabricated violations. He’d woven a little tale around the Lucifer. He could have simplified his life with a search warrant. But he loved to maneuver in the dark. Isaac the enchanter, with stories to tell.

  And he had to smile, because his own diseased logic had paid off. The girl minding the gallery was Monica Bradstreet, whom he’d met at the Green Hut with her dollish face, the specialist on puppet theater who pretended to work at the Museum of Natural History. She was one of LeComte’s creations, borrowed from the FBI.

  “Hello, Dr. Bradstreet,” he said.