Secret Isaac (5 page)

O'Toole walked off, taking Martin by the hand.

7

I
SAAC
went to brood in his hotel. You needed some Celtic harp to unwind an Irishman's words. Fucking O'Toole. Proper stamps? Retirement? Dermott had to be out of the country. And Martin was doing his trade for him, with O'Toole serving as the muscle. The Italian lads wouldn't soil their fingers with black whores in the street. But not even O'Toole could fight off every nigger gang; there were plenty of “blues” that would have been willing to strangle pimps for nickels and dimes. They were all getting pieces of the pot. That was Dermott's magic. Then why was he in such a shroud?

The bum didn't come out of his room. Knocks on the door couldn't get him off his unmade bed. The worm itched at him and forced him to recognize a face. He had a visitor. Jenny Pears. She wasn't sure it was Isaac until he put on another shirt. He began arranging pillows. She laughed at his pathetic urge to clean up four weeks of filth. She liked Isaac's room.

He tried to explain. “Have to live this way … on a heavy case.”

“Why are you so skinny,” she said.

“Jennifer, I was a fat man until a year ago. Had the thickest neck in Manhattan. But I was trying to hook a gang of thieves. The Guzmanns. I lived with them six months. Had to make them think I'd broken with the cops. But that was a smart family. I did their chores and they put a worm in my belly. And the worm's been feeding off me ever since.”

“Isaac, there are hospitals, you know. Laboratories that can shrink your worm, dissolve it, kill it, prevent it from growing new tails.”

“I've had my fill of hospitals. Used to run up to Presbyterian like a religious man. They fluoroscoped me, gave me pills to eat. Nothing happened. And I've been growing fond of my worm.”

Isaac begged her to let him wash up. Jennifer refused. Her body gave him the chills. She didn't have a flaw on her back. Her thighs had a strange burnish in Isaac's room. He loved the circles her nipples made, pinkish mounds. What was Melvin's wife doing in his room? Why wasn't Pears with her, his head resting in her groin? Her low, mother's breasts didn't bother him at all. It was amazing to Isaac. He moved in her with a gentleness, a slow, soft rhythm that he'd never had in his possession before. Was the worm bridling him, holding him back? Was it that creature who was making Jennifer Pears, not him? With its own smooth motion, its worm's rocking parts? Do worms have pricks and tongues? Isaac wanted her out of his room.

“Late,” he said. “An appointment with the Mayor. Christ, we have to be at this synagogue by six.” It was no lie. The little Irish Mayor had to crawl to the Hebrews for votes, run to obscure shuls in the far boroughs. He'd already lost the Irish vote. The Irish loved Rebecca. She was a former beauty queen, and she had a loud voice, wit, humor, and pishogue. She was five feet eight and could tell you a good story. His Honor was nearly a dwarf. Five feet one without his shoes. He was a Party loyalist, a bureaucrat who could barely put two sentences together. He'd had his great rise three and a half years ago. He was chairman of the Potholes Complaint Board, a member of the Landmarks Commission, and an unpaid governor of the Manhattan Shelter for Women. Sam had never finished high school. He seemed perfect for the Mayor's job. The pols liked his mumness, his devotion to their cause. The other candidates, six growling men, were chewing at each other's throat. The Dems turned to Sam. They rewarded him for fifty years of labor. He'd carried milk pails for Party bosses, lit the fires in Democratic clubrooms, slept on his knees in City Hall. But he arrived at Gracie Mansion in the wrong year. “Hizzoner” had a corpse in his arms. The City died on Sammy Dunne. It was fighting bankruptcy and a terrible loss of jobs.

“Hizzoner” wouldn't step out in his own car. He was afraid people would jeer at him. So Isaac sent a limousine to collect the Mayor at Gracie Mansion. Jennifer watched the First Dep get into his synagogue clothes. She had more affection for Isaac the bum. She kissed him goodbye and left him to struggle with his cuffs. The limousine was waiting for Isaac outside the hotel. Mayor Sam was hiding in the back seat. He didn't question Isaac's choice of hotels. He might bully Handsome John Rathgar, the Police Commissioner, but he had absolute faith in Sheeny Isaac.

The car took them to Hollis, Queens. Sam and Isaac had to engage a shul full of retirees, pensioners and their wives who were worried about their own shrinking revenues, crime in their housing projects, and the worth of a Mayor who wouldn't come out of his mansion. They were for Rebecca of the Rockaways. They were indulging Isaac and Sam out of boredom, anger, and frustration. The Mayor had nothing to say. His tongue lolled in his mouth while he whispered to Isaac on the podium. “Jesus God, will you save us now?” Isaac saw the bitterness of their plight. An Irish Mayor and an apostate in a house full of Jews. Isaac had never prayed in a synagogue. But he and Sam had to wear skullcaps over their brains. Isaac became the good policeman for Mayor Sam, but question after question was beginning to break his hump. He had pity for these old men and women. They were stroked at election time, and then forgotten. That was the law of politics. Functionaries ran the City, men and women in gray buildings, who didn't even know there was a synagogue in Hollis, and wouldn't have cared. Rebecca would scream about more golden age clubs, but the same functionaries would rule whether she got in or not. Still, Isaac had to lapse into petty lies. He invented master plans for Mayor Sam Dunne: more cops to walk old women to the bank, patrols to discourage baby thieves, police sergeants to talk about better burglar alarms. The worm was biting him fierce. It had little tolerance for Isaac's shit.

Then the auditorium mellowed. It had no idea of Isaac's apostasy. The synagogue figured it was talking Jew to Jew. One old woman mentioned
their
Nobel laureate. What did Isaac think of Moses Herzog and Saul Bellow? All Isaac could remember about cuckold Moses was that he liked to fornicate belly to belly, face to face. Thoughts of Jennifer Pears crept into him. He had a sudden desire to ravage every inch of her, to lose that gentleness the worm had thrust on him, and eat her out like a crazy Chinaman. His Honor, who was incapable of reading any book, nudged Isaac. “We have them now. Tell them about Herzog's Bellow.”

Isaac mouthed some blather about Herzog and the modern Jew, and he and Sam were permitted to go. The worm dug at Isaac in a miserable fashion. He had to keep wrenching from side to side in the limousine. But Sam was happy. “You got them,” he said, “you got them with Herzog's Bellow.”

Something was drilling in Isaac's skull. “Your Honor, you must know every Irish society in New York … does any of them carry a member named Dermott Bride? A rich man, a man who might make contributions here and there.”

Sam wasn't listening. He kept singing, “Herzog's Bellow, Herzog's Bellow,” and Isaac thought, he'll lose the primary mumbling that song. And Molly would probably get a kiss from Mr. Bellow and throw Isaac to the dogs.

8

H
E
wasn't wrong about Jenny. She didn't come to his hotel again. Ah, she's found another primitive guy. Jesus, with a body like that? And those green eyes. He looked for her at John Jay College. There was no green-eyed lady taking down his words. His lectures fell to shit. He stopped caring if the Mayor won or lost. He had only Dermott Bride to consider. His deputies rang him at the hotel. They had no news of Dermott, but Melvin Pears had invited him to a party, a party for Rebecca, at her campaign headquarters in an abandoned Dodge showroom on West Fifty-third. Isaac thought, pish on Becky Karp. He wasn't going to lend himself as a whipping boy to her campaign, appear as the curiosity cop, so Rebecca and her people could get at Mayor Sam through him. But Jennifer might be at the party. Jenny of the flawless back. Isaac arrived at the Dodge showroom in dungarees.

The showroom was packed. All the movie stars had come out for Ms. Rebecca. Streisand; Dustin Hoffman and his wife. The First Dep went unrecognized until Rebecca grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled on him. “Isaac,” she said, “Isaac.” Even the worm could feel one of Becky's shoulder grips. Isaac was squeezed into her like a bunny rabbit. It was a calculated move on Rebecca's part. She wanted him near enough so she could whisper into his throat. “Cocksucker,” she said. This was the Rebecca Isaac enjoyed. “I'll stick your balls in a jar of honey and give them to the rats for a lick … Fuckface, why did you marry yourself to a sinking man? You're not supposed to be a fool.”

Isaac wiggled out of Rebecca's bear hug and kissed her on the mouth. “Senile he is. There are days Sam can't remember his name …”

“Then come over to us,” she said.

Isaac smiled, but his lips were narrow, and Rebecca realized she'd just been given a Judas kiss.

“Cunt, he's a better Mayor than you'll ever be.”

He would have gone out, tunneled under Streisand's kinky hair on his way to the door, but he discovered Jennifer standing with one of Rebecca's aides, a boy with red eyebrows. They were smiling, talking under their breath. What hotel did
he
live at? Did the boy have red hair on his chest? Would he like to borrow Isaac's worm? Would she fuck him in a doorway? Isaac bullied through a crowd of campaigners, and snatched Jennifer away from the boy. “My savior,” she said. “With the iron grip … what synagogue do you have on your agenda today?… Isaac, my husband's about three feet behind us.
Mel
. Do you remember him?”

“He won't notice,” Isaac said. The First Dep was in a burly mood. “He's fixing strategies for Rebecca.”

So they walked down to Isaac's hotel. He was into her body before she could get her panties off. It was a kind of friendly rape. He licked her armpits, filled her navel with spit, and sucked between her legs with a brutal energy. He left marks on her thighs, souvenirs for Melvin to look at.

“Isaac, why are you so angry at me?”

“Who knows?”

Was he getting even with the worm, showing it the authentic Isaac, who could take any woman into his bed. He began to eat her nipples like a goddamn baby. She stroked his head, held it there, and the worm had screwed him again. The lust was gone. “Stay with me,” he said. “Tonight.”

“Isaac, how can I?… I have a four-year-old at home … and Mel.”

“Telephone the kid. Tell him Dick Tracy will play with him tomorrow if he goes to sleep. Mel can take care of himself.”

Her green eyes were throwing off that beautiful gray dust again. He put her in a cab. She kissed him thickly, with her fingers in his ear. It wasn't a joke. He was losing his guts to Jennifer Pears. He'd better find himself a bimbo fast, a girl who would let him concentrate on Dermott while he rolled her over and fucked her from behind. He blackened his face with charcoal and got into his bum's clothes. The First Dep was dying for a fight. He'd roam the streets like a crazed animal, slapping pimps, cops, or tourists. You'd have a hard time arresting Isaac, no matter what outfit he wore. The worm could tear at him. Isaac wasn't going to be ruled by a little snake in his belly.

He had the customer he wanted. A man was chatting with Annie Powell, a timid john from the look of him. Was she settling on a price? Isaac could rip the scalp off his ears, give him a beauty treatment he wouldn't forget. But Annie didn't go with the john. Something had scared him off. It wasn't Isaac. His mania couldn't have been obvious from a block away. It was someone else. A horse of a man. Tiny Jim O'Toole. Jamey was bending over her now. Isaac drew close. That horse wasn't making her smile. He had his huge knuckles in the waistband of her whore's shirt.

“O'Toole,” Isaac said. “Jamey. You ought to be nicer to King Dermott's bride. If you don't put your hand away, I'll have to chew it off.”

It was a ridiculous bluff. O'Toole could have sat Isaac on top of the lamppost and left him there for the fire trucks to bring him down on a ladder. But he took his knuckles out of Annie's shirt.

“Isaac, be kind to the Irish. Don't meddle. Annie, she belongs to another man. Ask her yourself.”

Jamey whistled with his knuckles in his pockets, winked at Annie, and stepped into the gutter. Cars stopped for him. No one could be sure how his bumpers would fare against a lad who was six feet seven.

Annie was growling at Isaac. “Who are you?… Jesus, can't you play on the next block? And why do you have that black shit on your face? You're comical, you know that … with your questions and your little bottles of champagne.”

She was sobbing now. “Don't I have enough without a pest like you?… you're trouble to me …”

“Annie, I could help … if you'd tell me what it was O'Toole wants.”

“Wants?… he has regards to me from somebody I know.”

“Dermott?”

But she wouldn't talk to him. And Isaac had to gather up his bum's pants at the waist (he was growing skinnier by the hour), and skunk off to his hotel.

9

W
AS
it a code name?
Dermott Bride
. Was Dermott the secret hero of Londonderry? Using his whores' profits to collect money for the “rebels” of Northern Ireland, with Annie the deposed queen of the Provisional IRA? Isaac had his men infiltrate the tough Irish bars around Marble Hill. There was no Dermott Bride or Annie Powell attached to the Irish Republican Army. But Isaac was a stubborn man. He had his agents burrow everywhere. They went into the First Dep's own files. They came up with a memorandum from Ned O'Roarke, the old First Deputy Commissioner, whose death had put Isaac into office. It took them a week to ferret out that pink slip with one sentence written on it eighteen years ago. “
Get Isaac to help little Dermott.
” Isaac was horrified. He couldn't mistake the scrawling hand of Ned O'Roarke. O'Roarke had been Isaac's rabbi. He'd sponsored him, brought him into the First Dep's territories, built him up. What did Ned have to do with “little Dermott”? The worm was erasing Isaac's memory, that's it.