Secret Isaac (9 page)

“Hizzoner” was recuperating inside Gracie Mansion. He'd been asking for Isaac. “Where's the lad?” The First Dep had to rush uptown. It was a madhouse near the old Mayor. The deputies who had deserted Sam months ago crowded the master bedroom. They would have gotten into bed with Sam, under the big chandelier. “Hizzoner” had to drive them away. He was much less senile after the primaries. “Isaac, they laugh at us in Chicago. We deserve a better Commissioner of Police. I'm making you the new PC.”

A year ago you couldn't have separated Tiger John and Sam. “Hizzoner” wanted a PC that he could wrap around his thumb. But John had become a hindrance to him. John was an unpopular “Commish.” John might lose City Hall for Mayor Sam.

“Your Honor, I won't sit at Headquarters like a loyal mole. Thank you, I'll stay where I am.”

“Isaac, you're not a baby anymore. You can't keep wandering around in old suits.”

Isaac would avoid Gracie Mansion until winter came. “Hizzoner” had a habit of forgetfulness. The First Dep would creep out of Sam's head in a day or two. Let those rebels who had gone over to Becky find a new Commissioner for Mayor Sam.

Isaac was coming out of his Dublin sloth. He went to Roosevelt Hospital to see Annie Powell. Annie wasn't on the hospital's lists. “What the hell do you mean?” Isaac growled. “She was here two weeks ago with a broken face.” The residents, the nurses, and the guards couldn't keep Isaac from going through the hospital. Annie wasn't in the wards. She wasn't in a private bed. “Christ, do sick girls vanish from these fucking rooms?”

A doctor located her discharge slip. “Annie Powell walked out of here.”

“When?”

“Last week … she got her skirt from the closet and disappeared.”

“I suppose that happens all the time,” Isaac said. “Losing a girl like that. You didn't have anybody to stop her?”

“We don't run a prison, Commissioner Sidel … we can't lock people to their beds.”

She was at her whore's station on Forty-third Street, mad-eyed, bruised, with Dermott's mark annihilated from her, that “D” covered over with crisscrossing welts and blue lines. She didn't recognize Isaac without his bum's pants. “Mister, what are you staring at?… if you don't like the goods, you can crawl up or down a few more blocks.”

“Annie,” he said, “I'm Father Isaac.”

Those mad eyes whirled in her head. “Keep away from me … I don't know any Father Isaac.”

“Annie …”

Her shoulders began to heave with a terrifying rhythm. Isaac had set her off. She was leering at him with froth in her mouth. “The champagne boy … wanna buy some pussy?” She pulled her skirt up to her belly. Annie had forgotten her underpants. Tourists and dudes were blinking at her. A plainclothesman ran over from an Irish bar. Isaac kept him from Annie. “Go back to your whiskey house … I'm Isaac Sidel. I'll handle the girl.”

Annie lowered her skirt the minute Isaac walked away. She muttered to herself. Anybody could have heard the clacking of her teeth. God knows where she would find any johns. Isaac phoned his office from a booth on Ninth Avenue. “Annie Powell,” he said. “She's doing the shimmy on Forty-third. I want two kids to watch her day and night … hold her hand if they have to … she could hurt herself.”

He couldn't put on his stinking pants. He wasn't in the mood to be Isaac the bum, with black shit on his face. Would Annie show her crotch to the universe every time he came near her corner? Isaac went looking for the king's muscleman, Jamey O'Toole.

O'Toole had stepped on Annie, and somebody had to pay. It wasn't Dublin, where Isaac had to sneak around with a hairbrush as his only weapon. He brought six detectives with him to Jamey's apartment house. O'Toole lived in Chelsea with a thick metal plate on his door to discourage burglars, thieves, and cops like Isaac. It was two in the morning. Isaac hadn't come unprepared. His men had shotguns, crowbars, and a sledgehammer.

He didn't knock on Jamey's door. The crowbars bit under the metal plate. The sledgehammer demolished every hinge. The door gave with a scream that nearly sounded human. Isaac wouldn't murder Jamey in his own house, God forbid. But if O'Toole was dumb enough to throw himself at six detectives, Isaac couldn't swear what would happen. A shotgun might go off. And Isaac would have a lot of paperwork. He'd build a good story. Rogue cop, Jamey O'Toole, dies resisting arrest.

Isaac didn't crouch in back of his men. He was the first to climb over Jamey's door.

“O'Toole, come on out … it's only Isaac.”

Someone was crying in there. It wasn't O'Toole. Isaac and his men trampled into all the rooms. The sobbing didn't go away. They searched the closets next. Isaac found an old woman sitting behind a pile of brooms. They began to mock her, Isaac's men. “Look at that. Jamey's hiding one of his aunts.”

“Shut up,” Isaac said.

The men who'd watched that fucking house for Isaac didn't, even know Jamey had a mother. Isaac brought her out of the closet. He sat her in the kitchen with a glass of water. He let her drink before he questioned her. He cursed himself for the shotguns and the big hammer. All he'd accomplished was to frighten an old woman. “Mrs. O'Toole, could you help us, please? Where's that son of yours?”

She couldn't say. “He told me the cops was after him.”

“Which cops?”

Mrs. O'Toole shrugged at Isaac.

“How long's he been gone?”

She counted on her fingers. “Thirteen days.”

What cops could be after Jamey? Isaac's own men hadn't been chasing the big dunce. O'Toole ran from home while Isaac was in Dublin with the king. Why? Irishmen don't abandon their mothers. What kind of trouble was the lad in? It's hard to scare a donkey who's six feet seven.

Isaac left the kitchen. His men got in place behind him. They began to sicken Isaac. O'Toole's neighbors peeked out of cracks of light in their doors. The detectives looked ridiculous lugging shotguns and crowbars in shopping bags. But they had their badges pinned to their chests. “Police,” they muttered, “police,” and the neighbors closed their doors. It was Isaac who should have calmed the neighbors, if only to cover himself. But those shopping bags tore at Isaac's guts. The creature was stirring again. Isaac's personal “angel,” Manfred Coen, used to carry his shotgun inside a shopping bag. He was a blue-eyed detective from the Bronx. Isaac appreciated a sad, beautiful, inarticulate boy around him. Blue Eyes. He was loyal to Isaac, and Isaac got him killed. The First Dep pushed Coen into his war with the Guzmanns. Coen didn't have the cleverness to stay alive. Isaac destroyed the Guzmanns, but his trophies were pretty irregular: a live, live worm and a dead Coen.

16

H
IS
mind must have gone to rot. He didn't understand the street anymore. He lived among pimps and dudes, but couldn't get a word out of them. The “players” had been organizing in the past two years. They weren't so vulnerable to the pussy patrol that Tiger John sent down on them. None of the “brides” would inform on her man. But the “players” were careful not to beat up on a girl. They'd come under the tutelage of Arthur Greer. Sweet Arthur didn't belong to the brotherhood of pimps. He had no need for a wide-brimmed hat. He acted as a kind of magistrate for most Manhattan dudes. If a quarrel developed between pimps, they took it to Arthur. Arthur decided who was right and who was wrong. He was better than a bail bondsman. He always gave you walking money for any “bride” who got into trouble.

What was his real profession? He owned boutiques, nightclubs, massage parlors, grocery stores, and a cab company. Arthur could afford to snub the Taxi Commission. He gave out his own “medallions” to all his gypsy cabs. They had meters and windows in their roofs. The “players” wouldn't ride in any other cabs.

The cops knew all about Sweet Arthur. They decided to leave him alone. Arthur held tight to his various enterprises and policed them by himself. He was something of a loanshark, but he wouldn't touch any shit. No one bought dope in Arthur's cabs. He warned the pimps to clean their stables of contaminated girls. Junkie whores were cast out of Arthur's zones. They had to operate in the pigsties of Brooklyn.

Arthur had a few comrades under him. It was a family of sorts, a loose confederacy. Killers, bondsmen, pornographers, loansharks, and head pimps. Such were the “blues” of Sugar Hill. But there wasn't much of a Sugar Hill anymore. It was only a name, a manner of describing a certain sweetness among rich black thieves. They lived in co-ops throughout Manhattan and Queens. Arthur had a penthouse near Lincoln Center, whose windows took in half the cliffs of Jersey. Assemblymen showed up for dinner. Judges talked to Arthur at his penthouse. Actresses walked into his boutiques. So it wasn't much of an honor when the First Deputy came to his door.

Isaac had no one else. Whatever black Mafia there was began with Arthur Greer. The pimps hadn't given any of their secrets to Isaac the bum. Black and white hookers shuttled in and out of jail. Money was collected. The king sat in his Dublin hotel. Isaac couldn't put a dent into the traffic on Whores' Row.

Who were the lords of New York City? It was hard to tell. Sam won his primary. But mayors went cheap this year. His own clerks copied his signature behind the Mayor's back. Tiger John Rathgar, Commissioner of Police, prowled the fourteenth floor at Headquarters and bullied cops who got in his way. He could demote you, give you some graveyard for a beat. He terrorized the whole Department, Tiger John. But he couldn't have told you where any of his squads were placed. He didn't have a cop's sense of New York. Arthur Greer probably had more information about Tiger's squads than Tiger did.

“How's my man?” he said to Isaac. Sweet Arthur had a sensitive face. He'd come out of the Bronx, the leader of a notorious gang, the Clay Avenue Devils. You could see the scars along his lips. Who knows how many times he fought with a knife? But he wouldn't take on Isaac, scowl for scowl.

“I hear you've been on the stroll, Mr. Isaac. Wearing funny pants and living at a pimp's hotel. Why'd you wait so long to come to me? I can give you clues about the business. Would you like your own stable of girls? Then you can tell your class at the Police Academy all about the grubby life of a pimp.”

“Arthur, your spies are sleeping on you. I teach at John Jay.”

“One school's good as another,” Arthur said, and he smiled.

“What happened to Jamey O'Toole? His mother says he's hiding from the cops. But I can't figure that one. Jamey doesn't have the smarts to hide from me.”

“You can't always believe what a mother says, Mr. Isaac. Maybe he got disgusted swiping pennies from whores and pimps, and he disappeared with a money bag under his arm.”

“Not Jamey. He's a loyal son of a bitch.”

“Maybe he eloped with Annie Powell.”

A rage was gathering in Isaac. He wanted to send Arthur out into the Jersey cliffs.

“What's Annie to you?”

“Nothing. She's out there with all the other dogs. Don't look so sad. I'm tickling you, baby. Everybody knows you're sweet on that girl.”

“We were talking about O'Toole.”

“That's it, Mr. Isaac. Jamey's sweet on her too.”

“Then why did he bang her in the face?”

Arthur laughed. “You ever meet an Irishman who wasn't a little crazy?”

“And Dermott? Would you call Dermott crazy?”

“Man, he's the craziest of them all.”

“Is the king a friend of yours?”

Arthur shook his head in disgust. “No wonder you got stuck in that pig hotel. You must be on the slide. Me and Dermott ran together. We were in the same gang.”

Once upon a time Isaac was familiar with every boys' gang in the Bronx. He was the cop who kept the peace. He didn't have to work with the youth patrol. Isaac would walk into any cellar to settle a dispute. The Devils of Clay Avenue owned huge chunks of the Bronx. Their territories took them from Castle Hill to Claremont Park. They were successful because they wouldn't fight along racial lines. Sweet Arthur welcomed Negroes, Italians, Irishers, and Jews into his gang.

“Shit,” Isaac said. “You mean Dermott was one of yours?”

“The best I had. My minister of war.”

“Then why can't I remember him?”

“Dermott, he didn't like to stick out. He was smart, man. I got most of the glory and the cuts in my cheek. Dermott moved away from us. He went to college without a mark on him.”

“Who made Dermott such a king?”

“I did.”

“But you said he didn't fight. Dermott doesn't have the scars …”

“But he talks like a king. You ever listen to Dermott? He could swipe your beard with five words.”

“I don't have a beard,” Isaac said.

“So what. He'd make you believe you had one, and then he'd cop it from you. That's why he was minister of war. We battled it out with those other gangs right at the table. They didn't have any crooners on their side. We had Dermott. The king would trade them blind. Maybe I'd back him up with my knife … and maybe not. It depended on how much Dermott could steal with his tongue.”