Citizen Sidel (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 12

  And he plucked Alyosha off the stairs. Isaac lunged at Bart, but Bernardo barreled into him. “Boss,” he whispered, “they’d love to wallop you.” And he abandoned Isaac, left with Clarice, Bart, the two kids, and Bull Latham.

  The mansion was like a morgue. Isaac would ramble around, wondering if his maid, Miranda, had poisoned his food. Should he fire his whole fucking staff, camp out at Grade like Robinson Crusoe? He could feel a red harpoon dig into his side. The mayor had lost his marbles.

  He had to beg Raskolnikov to climb back into the shoe-box. Took him an hour to coax the rat. Then he ran to the badlands with the box, returned to Rivington Street. He went to his old apartment, figuring he could chew the fat with Captain Knight. Where else did a renegade have to hide? But Isaac had picked the wrong captain. It was Captain Bart who waited for him on Isaac’s sofa, Bart and two of his men with pump guns that could have dropped a bear. Isaac almost smiled. His dreams hadn’t betrayed him. The red harpoon was there. And Isaac could identify this false Sinbad.

  “Well,” Bart said, “if it isn’t our own little dear? I’m out of breath, love. Should the lads tell you how I raced to Rivington Street? Were you looking for Captain Knight? We just missed him or we would have blown his brains out. The nerve of that man. Trying to massacre our president. And you’re the little hero, aren’t you, love? Stepped between Calder and the bullet. But you had an advantage over us. You knew that Captain Knight was coming to the Waldorf. Made us look like imbeciles … Isaac, can you recollect a couple of prayers? You’ll need them. Because Calder gave us the green light. Now he never said, ‘Kill Isaac.’ But he intimated that your health wasn’t a concern of his. That you could disappear from the planet, and he wouldn’t cry his eyes out … do you have anything to say? I’m interested in your last words.”

  “You shouldn’t have swiped those catchers’ masks.”

  Bart winked at his men. “He’s practically dead and he thinks of stupid shit. What catchers’ masks?”

  “The ones you handed to the Latin Jokers.”

  “Indeed. I stole the idea from you and your Delancey Giants.”

  “Did I ever harm you, Bart, when I was the Commish?”

  “Not at all. But we were in the same class at the Academy. And I watched you rise and rise like a great big ball of fire, while all the Irish chiefs fed your flame.”

  “You weren’t in my class. I would have remembered.”

  “That’s just it. I didn’t stick out. I had to grub my way. I had to fight in the dark. And someone’s got to suffer. Why not you?”

  He leaned forward with all his bulk and cracked Isaac. Blood spurted onto the ceiling. Isaac had a split lip, but he still clutched the shoebox. One of Barton’s boys attacked Isaac’s legs with the long nose of his pump gun. Isaac tripped, banged into a lamp; the bulb shattered under the shade.

  “What’s he holdin’ on to, Bart? Is he a miser? Does he have money in that box?”

  Bart whacked him again. Blind figures appeared in front of Isaac’s eyes, like so many Sinbads. But they weren’t carrying spears. They were stumbling, like Sidel. They could have been the bits and pieces of his personality. “Mothers,” he cried, “I don’t know who I am.”

  Barton nudged his boys, laughed. “He’s going out like a winner, isn’t he, lads?”

  “Where should we dump him, Bart?”

  “Right here. Let him bleed to death in a dry tub. The coroner will call it suicide.”

  “That’s brilliant, Bart.”

  Isaac opened the shoebox. Raskolnikov swirled into the air, scratched Barton’s eyes, bit off half his nose, while his two accomplices stood like stone men. Isaac kicked the pump guns out of their hands, socked them into a little alley behind the sofa. He could feel Raskolnikov near his neck. Barton sat on the floor, clutching the remains of his nose.

  “Next time, Bart, don’t brag so much when you want to kill a man.”

  Isaac called an ambulance, but he didn’t wait. Bart could attend to himself, explain what he was doing in Isaac’s apartment with a pair of pump guns and half a nose …

  Isaac had a guest when he got to the mansion gate. The Butcher of Bucharest with all his belongings. Shopping bags, books, a little valise.

  “Ah,” Isaac said, “did you use up Alexandria, Uncle Ferdinand? Margaret’s missing, and Calder took his revenge, locked you out of that fancy nursing home the Bureau has for senile double agents.”

  “I ran away … with Margaret’s help.”

  “Margaret’s in Manhattan?”

  “More or less. She promised you would take me in.”

  “I ought to drown you.”

  “It’s been tried. But I grow gills when I’m under the water. How else could I have survived the Black Sea?”

  Isaac had no answer. He led Ferdinand into Gracie with the shopping bags and the little valise.

  They were like a couple of bears. They watched television, played chess. Isaac wouldn’t fall asleep around Ferdinand. He should have locked the Butcher inside one of the bedrooms, but he couldn’t be brutal to a houseguest. He slept with Raskolnikov on his blanket. The rat was enough of an alarm.

  And after Ferdinand’s fifth night in the mansion, Isaac relaxed a bit. He shared a big pot of chocolate sorbet from Bloomingdale’s. Isaac whistled in his sleep, woke with his arms and legs strapped to an antique chair in his own bedroom. Raskolnikov wasn’t on the bed.

  Ferdinand stood near the fireplace. The room was full of smoke. That son of a bitch was building a fire on a hot September day.

  “How did you break in? There’s a combination lock on the door … it’s impregnable. No burglar could have mastered that lock.”

  “But I’m not a burglar, Monsieur. And your little lock was child’s play.”

  “Where’s Raskolnikov? You shouldn’t be alive.”

  “I was a familiar face. You let me near your rat. I bagged him. He’s in his shoebox in the master closet.”

  “You spiked the sorbet.”

  “With a little sleeping powder. After all, I had to eat from the same batch. It was delicious.”

  He turned toward Isaac with a poker in his hand. It was red hot.

  “Margaret didn’t send you. You’re the President’s own package.”

  “Something like that,” Ferdinand said. “I’m a torturer. You never lose the habit. What else can I do?”

  “And you’re going to burn my eyes out.”

  “Eventually,” Ferdinand said. “But I’m an artist, Monsieur. I wouldn’t go right for the eyes.”

  “You’re not even looking for information.”

  “Information? You have nothing to give.”

  “Then you’ll poke my eyes out for the fun of it, eh Ferdinand?”

  Isaac should have wet his pants. His teeth should have chattered inside his head. But he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t afraid.

  “Are you ready, Sinbad?”

  The poker grazed Isaac’s chin. The heat was horrible. He heard a rustling noise. The poker flew into the air. Ferdinand yelped and screamed. Margaret Tolstoy had arrived in the long yellow hair of a mermaid. She knocked him silly with a single punch.

  “You’ll injure him,” Isaac said. “He’s an old man.”

  “Darling, I almost didn’t get here in time.”

  “He’s one more geek who wants to murder me. Calder is sending out assassins.”

  “Calder didn’t send him. Ferdinand’s freelancing. He broke out of Riverrun, figured he’d do a little mischief … I’m the assassin Calder sent.”

  She put out Ferdinand’s fire. Then she straddled Isaac, kissed him while his hands were tied. And now he began to shake, because he’d never understood Margaret Tolstoy. Killing him or kissing him might come to the same thing. Perfect, endless rapture that only a man like Sinbad or Isaac Sidel could ever realize. Would she strangle him? She managed to lower his pants; she made love to him like an executioner, rode Isaac with her head pulled back, the mermaid’s yellow hair in his eyes. Am I
dead, he wondered? Good. I won’t have to face the Democrats or the Republicans. But he’d miss Raskolnikov and Alyosha and Marianna Storm.

  Margaret untied him.

  “You’re his only weakness,” she said. “Can’t you understand? Michael is nothing.”

  “Nothing in November?”

  “Now or November. Nothing. Calder can’t control himself. He’s jealous of you. And he has no limits, darling. He’s the President. He can bomb the Chrysler Building if he wants.”

  “But J. Michael is killing him in the polls.”

  “Not really, not without you as his running mate … but it isn’t all political. He can’t bear that we were childhood sweethearts. That our past is much deeper than his and mine.”

  “It’s your fault,” Isaac said. “You shouldn’t have played Scheherazade with him, told him a fairy tale.”

  “Idiot. It’s the only thing that kept you alive. Calder loved the details. And he has you licked. I promise.”

  “No. Michael will wake up.”

  “Darling, Michael’s in the middle of a nightmare.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since Bull Latham had a talk with him and Clarice. Two days after the Democratic Convention. If he wins or not, he’ll never be sworn in. You know all about his phony land deals, but there’s much, much more. He embezzled money from his own firm in Florida, or he and Clarice couldn’t have stayed afloat. Marianna would have had to give up her private school … The hero of our time. The man who saved baseball. Isaac, he’s in the Prez’s pocket. He’s going to throw the first debate.”

  “Michael’s not a quitter.”

  “Darling, have you looked into his eyes lately?”

  “He won’t let me near him. He stole Marianna.”

  “To isolate you even further, make you the ghost of Gracie Mansion.”

  “And what about Dougy’s ghost? Is it haunting Pennsylvania Avenue?”

  “I buried Doug in the rose garden … at Riverrun.”

  “He’s lying in Alexandria, among all the spooks?”

  “Can you think of a better camouflage? No one will ever bother about Dougy’s grave. Darling, it was the best I could do.”

  Isaac stared at the door of his closet. “God, I forgot.”

  He opened the closet door, let Raskolnikov out of the shoebox. The rat jumped onto his shoulder, looked at Margaret, but he wouldn’t deliver his metallic squeal of love. This was only a mermaid, not Marianna Storm.

  Part Five

  18

  Isaac had to get technical. It was the only way. He didn’t have the firepower to declare war on the United States. He went downtown to the Microbe, his electronics maven. The Microbe had a shop on Liberty Street. He was choosy about his clientele. He was the best wiretapper in the business. Alfred Smart. That was the name on his birth certificate. He’d had his own lab before his managers at Westinghouse realized that he was freelancing for the Mafia … and maverick mayors like Isaac Sidel.

  He never left his shop. He was like a pint-sized Tom Edison, a surly, pathological shrimp. But he adored Isaac. His window blinds were down. Isaac had to knock and knock. “Microbe, it’s me.”

  Isaac stood there while iron bars began to screech. The Microbe had barricaded himself. The door opened. Isaac rushed in, and the Microbe, a decrepit young man still in his twenties, with the darkest circles around his eyes that Isaac had ever seen, slid the iron bars back into place.

  “Alfred,” Isaac said. “I need.”

  “Yeah. You’re like a wild chicken in a shooting gallery.”

  “I need,” Isaac muttered.

  “Death is sitting on your shoulder. I can taste his stink. How can I help?”

  “A bug,” Isaac said, “a wire so magnificent, the Bureau couldn’t shake it out of me.”

  “You want a bug that no one can find? … then keep away from wires. We go with a digital device. But I have to warn you. The sound isn’t great. How near will you be to the target?”

  “Nose to nose.”

  “Perfect. My baby has a range of two feet. And it only works indoors. The slightest breeze could kill it.”

  “Indoors, Alfred. A restaurant.”

  “With waiters hovering around?”

  “I’ll get the waiters to disappear. I’ll do my werewolf number, snarl at them.”

  “Too much noise and baby starts to whistle.”

  “I don’t need a Stradivarius, only a bug that’s a little too clever for Bull Latham.”

  The Microbe stood up, poked through the debris behind him, and plucked out an alligator belt. He dangled the belt in front of Isaac. “Put it on.”

  Isaac removed his own belt, and put on Microbe’s little baby. “That’s genius. The device is right inside the buckle.”

  “Don’t mock me, Isaac. Only a moron would use a buckle. My baby’s sewn inside the skin.”

  “How do I trigger it?”

  “Baby triggers herself. And if you wanna play back the conversation, you touch the metal tongue, and baby starts to purr.”

  “I’m worried. If Bull knows I’ve been here, will he start persecuting you?”

  “Probably. But I have another shop around the corner. And he can’t persecute me for too long. I supply the mutt with his best devices. His own shop stinks.”

  Isaac wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. Alfred tried to console him. “What’s the matter?”

  “You should be a billionaire, like Bill Gates. And you’re stuck in a toilet on Liberty Street.”

  “Bill Gates, Bill Gates. Who could live in Seattle? It rains all the time.”

  “But it’s beautiful, Alfred. I’ve been there. The coffee’s terrific. You have mountains, seven hills, the sea. It’s like living on top of the world.”

  “Me? I never travel.”

  Isaac returned to Gracie, called the FBI. “Sidel here. I’d like to speak to the Director.”

  “He isn’t available at the moment, sir. Can I take a message?”

  “Tell the Bull I love him. Good-bye.”

  Isaac whistled in his armchair, picked up a copy of Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tales, and read about Benya Krik, king of the Maldavanka, who marries off his sister, Deborah, a forty-year-old virgin with a goiter problem, an enlarged gland that gave her a permanently swollen neck. The king invites every beggar in town to his sister’s wedding. The police are about to raid the wedding party, capture Benya Krik, humiliate him in front of all the petty gangsters of the Maldavanka, congregating in their orange pants on Hospital Street. But the police never arrive. The king’s henchmen set fire to their barracks, and they have to hurry home to put out the blaze. There was only one king of Odessa, Benya Krik …

  The telephone rang. Isaac, absorbed in the story of gangsters on the Black Sea, and in his own Maldavanka near the Williamsburg Bridge, let the phone ring. Finally he growled into the receiver, “Sidel here.”

  “That was some message, Isaac. I’m the talk of the town. Telling my switchboard that you love me.”

  “Ah, it was only a little valentine, Bull. Among killers and friends.”

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Meet me at the Bull and Bear in an hour.”

  “That’s the Prez’s watering hole. I can’t invade his territory.”

  “The Bull and Bear.”

  “I’m in D.C., for Christ’s sake.”

  “Baloney. You’re in Manhattan. You’ve been assigned to me, Bull. I’m the cross you have to bear. Don’t be late.”

  The Bull was already seated at a corner table when Isaac entered the restaurant from the Waldorf’s lobby. He was signing autographs. No one seemed to forget his days on the Dallas Cowboys.

  Isaac sat down. He was like a runt next to Bull Latham.

  “You’re wired, aren’t you?” Bull said.

  “You can frisk me. I’m not shy.”

  “It’s hopeless. You’ve been to Alfred Smart. He could have shoved a device inside your belly button. I’d have to carve out half your gut … by
the way, I’m gonna arrest your rodent. That rat of yours chewed Bart Grossvogel’s face.”

  “It’s Dougy’s rat, not mine. I had to adopt him. You shouldn’t have killed young Doug.”

  “Speak a little louder, Sidel. Alfred’s mikes are sensational, but they lack a certain mellowness of tone.”

  “You can dance with Tim Seligman, steal Marianna for Clarice, but it’s a big act. You’re the President’s man.”

  “I’m neutral,” Bull said with a smile.

  “You’re the President’s man, and Tim’s a fool. He can’t even figure out that J. Michael’s ready to hand the election to Calder. Did you scare the shit out of J.? Did you talk penitentiary to him and Clarice? They’re a couple of children. But Sinbad’s right behind them. And I’ll run in Michael’s slot if I have to.”

  “I’ll bet you would.”

  “How much of a file do you have on me, Bull? Big as a telephone book?”

  “Bigger. You’ve cohorted with the Maf, you’ve murdered people.”

  “But I never took a dime. America likes desperadoes. They’ll call me Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp. I’ll knock Calder into the ground … I’m a little crazy, Bull. You know that. I want you to get rid of Bart Grossvogel, shove his ass into the wind.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t distance yourself from him, you’re gonna take a fall.”

  “Are you threatening me, Mr. Mayor?”

  “Yes, Bull … did your microphones pick that up? I’ll link you and him to Dougy’s death.”

  “Captain Knight killed young Doug. Weren’t you at the funeral?”

  “You’re an assassin, Bull.”

  “Are you going to complain about me to your police commissioner? I kind of like Sweets. I’ve worked with him on a few task forces.”

  Carlton Montgomery III, aka Sweets, had been a college basketball player, like Calder Cottonwood. His pa was a dentist, a black millionaire. He was the one man in America that Isaac was afraid of, his own PC.

  “Barton’s a crook,” Isaac said.

  “Sweets will never arrest him, kid. Calder couldn’t have an anti-crime commission without Barton Grossvogel. And you’re asking your PC to buck the President of the United States. Sweets isn’t as suicidal as yourself.”