Under the Eye of God (10 page)

But he was getting ahead of his own story. David looked into Arnold Rothstein’s lonely eyes.

“What would you like from me, little man?” Arnold asked again.

“A job,” David said.

Arnold didn’t laugh at a nine-year-old boy. He listened to every proposal, and he had more than a thousand proposals a day.

“What can you do?”

“Protect your life.”

And now Arnold did have to laugh, but not out of disrespect. He liked the little boy’s pluck.

“But I already have Legs Diamond as my own little man.”

David knew all about Legs. Gangsters had become as popular as baseball players. Legs was always in the news, dodging bullets like some ballet dancer.

“AR, I wasn’t thinking of any gunsel. Legs is crazy, and I’m not. But Legs can’t keep a secret, and I can. He’s always showing off to his girlfriends.”

“And what kind of secret could you hold for me? I’m here at Lindy’s every afternoon, prompt as a church bell.”

“The secret of your accounts,” said the boy. “If money has to be moved, I’m the man to move it. And how could I ever hope to trick you, AR? Legs would kidnap my dad, for God’s sake, or do worse.”

AR hired him on the spot. Of course, David’s dad never knew a word of their deal. David would come to the delicatessen after school, sit at Arnold’s table like a little scholar. And he wouldn’t accept a dime.

“I’m your apprentice,” David said. “And apprentices should never be paid.”

“Why not?”

“It makes them greedy—and disloyal. David Pearl can’t be bought.”

He was soon invaluable to AR; he could walk into a police station and deliver gratuities to some lieutenant without a moment of suspicion falling upon him. He could look after Inez, whenever she had one of her tantrums. That’s how he first wended his way to the Ansonia. He would buy her a little gift out of his own pocket—a trinket, or a paper flower, and she wore that flower in her hair. Even while his heart beat like a mad drum, he wasn’t disloyal to AR. But Inez’s perfume did intoxicate the boy.

And when she got too crazy in her loneliness, he would warn AR.

“Arnold, you might consider making a trip to the Ansonia. Otherwise you’ll have open warfare. And I can’t predict the consequences.”

“Little man, are you my brain, or not? Bring her here.”

And that’s what David loved the most—when he squired Inez into the delicatessen. The usual hubbub died at the first sight of her. She was regal with her long legs. That’s what David thought. She couldn’t have broken every man’s heart had she not been a dancer. And there were very few women at Lindy’s—except for showgirls, like Inez.

How could he ever describe her walk? She wouldn’t wiggle her derriere. It was like the stroll of a delicious panther. She’d found a particular shape for her wildness, even when she screamed at AR. And she either screamed or purred at him, in front of the whole delicatessen. And Arnold didn’t shiver, didn’t react. He sat with his sad eyes until Inez started to laugh. Because she couldn’t stay angry at him.

David loved the nights when Inez was there. She’d sit without her shoes, twist one toe around his ankle, not to provoke him, but to reveal her bond with David. He was the little king next to the king and his paramour, his second
wife
. No one could get to AR without a nod from David. He could open or close a deal while he whispered into Arnold’s ear. But the boy couldn’t partake in the delicatessen’s full electrical storm. AR sent him home before midnight.

“I can’t risk losing you, kid. You might turn into a pumpkin.”

By this time, David was managing all of Arnold’s accounts. He pocketed nothing for himself, but he still had access to Arnold’s money. He signed Arnold’s markers, and David’s signature was good as gold. He took all the blame for Arnold’s death. It had nothing to do with that midnight curfew. He had to run an errand for his dad, and by the time he got to Lindy’s, Arnold had met his own fate at the Park Central. David would never have allowed him to keep that rendezvous with a shill from the bankers who wanted his blood.

The boy didn’t panic. He sat at Arnold’s table, even after the funeral. He revealed none of his grief. He had most of Arnold’s gunsels behind him. Markers were called in. Debts were paid. He had the capital to keep Inez at the Ansonia. He was loyal to her until the day she died. But David’s rise was unprecedented in Manhattan’s own mythology of crime. He ruled the Rothstein mob at fifteen, though it wasn’t a real mob, just a ragtag collection of button men. Arnold had liked it this way. Nothing could ever be blamed on him.

David had to quit high school. He had no time for books. He moved into the Ansonia before he was sixteen. He was much too young to sign a lease, but the Ansonia let him in. And God forgive him, but he was disloyal to Arnold’s ghost. He made love to Inez. He could waft her perfume from a mile away. He slept inside her armpit, and he wanted no other goddess. Now her tantrums fell on him. He adored every moment.

“Davey,” she’d coo, “didn’t Arnold’s little man promise to take me to France?”

“Inez, if I left town for five minutes, I’d be dead.”

“You never even go to Lindy’s anymore. You sit in this damn tomb.”

“But I’m alive as long as I sit.”

Both of them couldn’t stop mourning AR. And he wouldn’t allow her to change one picture in her apartment. They were accomplices when they made love, in spite of their passion. He was devoted to her. When she grew ill, he took care of Inez, sat with her, read to her from one of the books he loved. He’d always been a reader. That was his one diversion, his one device, other than gambling. He’d gamble his shirt away and get it back, while he read to her about a woman named Emma Bovary who was devoured by the silliness of her own desire. . . .

They saw themselves in Emma, who might have survived had she ever had her own AR. And even with all his wiles, and his kisses, he couldn’t console Inez. She grew weaker and weaker. He offered to take her to France, wearing his velvet slippers, since he never wore shoes anymore. But it was too late. Inez seemed ravaged with remorse. She slipped away, died in her sleep.

None of his associates could bring this prince of the Ansonia out of his melancholy. He sat in his lair, buying up more and more of Manhattan. No one knew how rich he was, not even David. He had his own private bank; he was its first and last customer and client. He prospered through recessions, through bull and bear markets. He missed Inez, wouldn’t rent out her apartment on the thirteenth floor. Wandering through that apartment in his slippers was David’s only solace.

The years passed. He never invited call girls up to his lair. He wasn’t looking for some replica of Inez. There was no such girl. His teeth began to crumble. David didn’t care. And then his manager told him about a bimbo who couldn’t pay her rent. Trudy Winckleman, lately of New Orleans. She had no claims on the apartment. Some “gentleman” had paid for her upkeep. But there were complications. The bimbo had two kids—and the city didn’t like throwing single mothers out onto the street, not while the Big Guy was mayor.

David had her brought up to his labyrinth without her two brats. He meant to give her a check, sign her right out of the building, so that she would no longer be a nuisance.

And then he saw the bimbo with her silver hair. She didn’t grovel; she didn’t beg. His hand shivered as he scratched out the sums and figures on the check. He couldn’t believe it. The bimbo had Inez’s own insolence, the same pinched smile that could eat your heart out. She was no replica, no rehearsed reincarnation. She was just
another
Inez, even if her legs weren’t so long and she wasn’t blessed with Inez’s blondness. He didn’t stall. He made her a proposition.

She smiled. “And I suppose I’ll have to warm up your old bones. King David and his Abishag.”

“Girlie,” he said like a gunsel, “I could have you killed. . . . You’d never leave this floor. They’d stuff you right into the attic.”

“Good,” she said. “Then I wouldn’t have to leave the Ansonia.”

She’d dismantled whatever power he had over her. He had to beg her to stay, but he still was stubborn: she’d have to live in Inez’s apartment and promise not to change a stick of furniture.

“That’s marvelous,” she said. “A bordello at the Ansonia. How many of your business partners will I have to sleep with?”

“David Pearl isn’t a pimp,” he said. “But you can’t live there with your kids. They might jump around and ruin all the relics.”

Now he used all his sway. He had her brats installed at the best private school in Connecticut. She could visit them as often as she liked, but they couldn’t come to the Ansonia. And she was the one who began calling herself Inez.

“King David, I’m living in a mausoleum. I might as well be one of its members.”

She’d solved the riddle of his loneliness. He’d come downstairs in the middle of the night, lie down next to her, and she’d hold him in her arms, as if he were made of glass—Inez’s little glass man. He’d moan softly as she rubbed his forehead. He dozed for five minutes; David lived without sleep. And then he’d return to his lair.

She began doing favors for him, was soon his “social secretary.” She entertained the rare visitors that David had, sat with them, served wine. But no one dared touch Inez. And then he started to panic. The Big Guy was too embroiled in the Bronx. And David maneuvered to kick him upstairs, to have him sink into the darkness of a vice president’s domain. But Sidel was a stubborn son of a bitch. David had to find a secret weapon. His little protégé had been enthralled with tales of Rothstein and Inez. So David lured him into the Ansonia, let him feast upon his social secretary.

And now he had to undo all of Isaac’s damage. He had to take drastic measures—leave his lair at the Ansonia for a whole afternoon and meet with the Texas barons, nabobs and military men who couldn’t be seen at the Ansonia and were his secret partners in Sidereal. The barons had arrived from Houston, Dallas, and San Antone and descended upon a motel in New Jersey, with all their bodyguards from some remote enclave within military intelligence. They were all in mufti, even the generals, and had blocked off an entire wing of the motel, which looked out upon a modern-day castle where medieval jousts were held.

The generals had sent their own driver in a sleek sedan. David still wore his slippers and the same corroded sweater with patches on the sleeves, while Inez was dressed to kill. She stepped into the sedan in a skin-tight sheath and silver sandals. David groaned while they sat under the blinking lights of the Lincoln Tunnel. Inez had to hold his hand once they crossed the Jersey flatlands. The stench was unbearable to David, who was giddy by the time they got to the motel.

The bodyguards were in awe of him and had been told not to stare at his slippers. But they couldn’t keep their eyes off Inez. “The maestro has landed,” they whispered into their button mikes. They had to frisk Inez. They used one of their battery-charged machines, and the perfume from her armpits made them delirious. She could have shot out their eyes.

“I’m hungry,” David muttered. The motel was attached to a delicatessen, and that’s where David met the barons. But it wasn’t Lindy’s, even though this dump advertised itself as a “Lindy’s-style delicatessen.” It irked David. Lindy’s meant nothing without AR. It had become one more logo, one more brand name with mediocre pastrami.

They had a corner table, far from this delicatessen’s usual traffic. The bodyguards had scanned the area for hidden microphones. They weren’t worried about the Secret Service or Bull Latham’s Bureau. They had to be careful of their own competitors, industrial spies from Houston.

They didn’t introduce themselves. They had code names: Mr. Dallas, Mr. Houston, Mr. Abilene. . . . David was Mr. Manhattan, and Inez, whom they had never met, was Mrs. Cassandra. They had a complete dossier on her, but they didn’t trust their own files. She could have been a plant from some super-secret agency. But none of them had realized how beautiful she was. Among themselves, they called her the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

David wouldn’t touch the pastrami. He had a side order of half-sour pickles. He demanded a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie. That was Rothstein’s favorite snack. Milk and cookies.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “You have your warriors, I have mine. I don’t want Sidel touched.”

“Mr. Manhattan, he’s hampering us. He won’t go away. And we’re betting that the president-elect will crash. Isaac is the real contender.”

“Contend, contend,” David said. “Once he leaves the mayor’s office, he’s harmless. He’ll have less teeth in his mouth than I have.”

“We can’t take a chance,” said Mr. Abilene, who was worth half a billion and had a scar under his mouth.

“Then I walk away from this deal,” David said. “And you’ll have bubkes in the Bronx.”

“Don’t get so hairy,” said Mr. Houston, an oil magnate who was a graduate of Rice. “You want to leave this table with your own two feet, don’t you, son?”

David began to cackle. “Kiddos, I had a similar thought. Look around you. Every fucking customer in this little cafeteria belongs to me. You can call yourselves my prisoners.”

“He’s bluffing,” said Mr. Abilene, a general at Brooks Air Force Base. “Let’s show Mr. Manhattan our firepower.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Inez, with a neutral smile. “Just ask for our waitress.”

The waitress appeared. She looked like an aging flower child.

“Miss Inez, should I tell these big bad men what they can expect if they don’t behave?”

“Yes, darling.”

“There’s a little tub of plastique molded right into the table. It’s enough to blow up half of New Jersey. . . . Can I take your orders, gentlemen?”

The barons had lost their appetite. They spread out a map of the Bronx across the table. Mr. Abilene was their spokesman.

“Sir, can you promise us an unrestricted path from Webster Avenue downward, across Tremont and Morrisania, including Crotona Park? Of course, the streets themselves will disappear.”

“And the housing projects?” asked Mr. San Antone.

“We’ll relocate the projects,” said David. “We won’t leave a living soul without a much better apartment, on the far side of the Bronx River.”