Under the Eye of God (13 page)

“You know, Dad. He’s in a book—a prince who leaves a trail of corpses. His sweetheart drowns herself because of him, his own little mama gets poisoned, and he stabs his stepfather in the heart on account of hearsay from a ghost.”

“Hamlet,” Isaac muttered.

“That’s the guy. Hamlet is living in the Ansonia right now. And he still can’t make up his mind about you.”

“Then why are we going to Houston?”

“To meet with Mr. Death.”

H
E PLUCKED OFF HIS FALSE
nose once he got to the Warwick and registered as Isaac Sidel. This dinosaur of a hotel had once been the watering hole of rich cattlemen, when they rode off the plains and could watch boys wrestle with the crocodiles in the bayous. Isaac had never seen a crocodile in Houston, but the cockroaches were as big as a man’s finger and the flies as fat as a strawberry. From his windows on the seventh floor, he could survey the ribbed streets and brown grassland of Rice University, and the various beltways that looked like the bluish veins on Isaac’s own arm.

“Jesus,” Isaac said, “couldn’t we go to the Galleria? I want to have some fun.”

“Dad, Dad, your life’s in danger. We have to wait for Trevor Welles.”

They ordered a light dinner. But Isaac couldn’t eat his lamb chop. He had some crackers and goat cheese, drank a glass of Medoc. And Trevor Welles arrived without a knock on the door. He wasn’t dressed as a colonel this time. He wore a sweat suit, like some harebrained college coach. But he had the same startling white hair. Even in his clownish costume, he was Mr. Death.

They all sat on a sofa near the Warwick’s picture windows, with Houston’s beltways below them, those bluish arteries jumping across the plains. Isaac could have been looking down onto a futuristic Bronx, with all the badlands swept away.

“I apologize, Mr. President,” said Trevor Welles. “But there was a rotten turn of events. And we never realized how close you were to your son-in-law. We had bad intel.”

“That’s grand,” Isaac said. “Now tell me what the fuck is going on before I strangle both of you.”

“Sir, you might catch me. But not Vietnam Joe. The gooks shit a brick whenever Joe was in Indian country.”

“I thought he never left Saigon,” Isaac said.

“Unless he was with the Crusaders. He had more kills than my very best man.”

Isaac began to sulk in front of the two assassins. “Then you lied to me, Joey. It was like a cover story. Barbarossa of Saigon, who dealt dope next door to the American ambassador. . . . I trusted you, let you have Marilyn.”

“But lying saved your life, sir. If he hadn’t married your daughter, you wouldn’t be here.”

Isaac was still in that rabbit hole, more confused then ever. But he was drawn to the crazed chivalry of assassins.

“Who hired you, Mr. Welles?”

“Ah,” said Trevor, “that’s a complicated tale. In the long run, I work for Calder Cottonwood. The presidency has impoverished him. But when he returns to Texas, he’ll be one of the richest men on the planet.”

“Are you telling me that he wanted to lose the election?”

“
Want
, sir, is too weak a word. But he was still playing the percentages. It’s called Texas poker. There’s no united front among the bankers and oilmen. A good number of them gave millions to Mr. Storm’s campaign. They despise the president-elect, but they’d sell one of their own kidneys for you.”

Now the Big Guy was really groaning. “Then all they wanted was a shitstorm.”

“That’s right. They were betting on a constitutional crisis. But they misjudged you, sir. They thought they could get you to lie down. But you’re like a West Texas badman. The more people you kill, the more you’re loved.”

“Come on,” Isaac said, “you’re talking with cotton candy in your mouth. Who hired you to hit me inside the cattleman’s bar?”

“Mr. David Pearl. Oh, he didn’t want you dead, just permanently disabled. But his own fat bitch got in the way, little Amanda. We would have finished the story, and then Joey stepped into the frame. We can’t afford to have him on our blind side.”

“What happens now?” Isaac had to ask. He’d drawn another madman into the fold.

“The Crusaders will protect your life for three weeks . . . until the Electoral College votes and Congress certifies that vote in January. Then we’re done. Both you and Mr. Storm can piss in the bucket after that. But until then, God knows who will be gunning for you.”

“And what about that fucking fort in the Bronx, with David Pearl leasing land to the Pentagon?”

“Mr. President, I can’t protect you on every front.”

“Stop it,” Isaac said. “What kind of commission will you get if that fort is built?”

“More than you’ll ever make if you lived in the White House for a hundred years.”

Isaac got up from the sofa and began to pace across his grandiose sitting room at the Warwick.

“Dad, Dad,” Joey said, “will ya listen to Trev? The clock is ticking while we talk.”

“All right, what do I have to do?”

“Stay in Texas. You’ll go out on the road again. We’ll ask the Dems for their yellow bus. We’ll avoid the big cities.”

“And what do I tell the American people?”

“That the vice president–elect is on a special mission to introduce himself to the real America—not the bankers, not the fat cats, but the hardscrabble farmers, the fishermen along the bayous, the dirt poor . . . ”

“In the woods and the wetlands, the back roads of Texas.”

“Where else, Mr. President, where else?”

* * *

He wouldn’t bother with Tim Seligman. He went right into the lion’s mouth, called Ramona Dazzle at Rifkin, Rifkin & White.

“Ramona dear, you’ll have to airlift the yellow bus. I’m going on a pilgrimage. . . . Yes, darling. And I’ll need Michael. We can’t leave him alone. He’ll cave at the Waldorf. I’d prefer him with me. We’ll reach out, Ramona, shake hands with Texas pioneers. Reporters will have a field day. The elitist president-elect working in the fields of West Texas . . . I’ll need Marianna, too. You’ll airlift her and Michael with the bus. . . . No, Clarice stays where she is. And no arguments, Ramona, or I’ll jump ship and you’ll have Michael on your hands.”

Isaac had to close his entire shop. He couldn’t have easy targets lying around while he was on the road. Marilyn would have to join him and Joey in Texas. But he was worried about Margaret Tolstoy. David Pearl might wreak vengeance on Isaac’s loved ones if he lost all his bets and couldn’t convert his acreage in the Bronx into hard cash. But Isaac couldn’t airlift Margaret from her sanitarium near the Cloisters. He got Bull Latham on the horn.

“Bull, we have to talk.”

“What about right now?”

“We can’t yatter on the horn, you dummy.”

“Meet me downstairs. I’m at the Brazos Barn. It’s an enchilada joint five minutes from the Warwick.”

“You followed me to Houston?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a Bureau, Mr. President, if we couldn’t anticipate your moves.”

Trevor Welles didn’t want Isaac to leave the room. “I can’t protect, sir, out there in Indian country.”

“I won’t fall on any buffalo bricks. I’m five minutes away.”

And Isaac lit out of the Warwick, into a sea of hot wind that smelled like a late autumn sirocco.

T
HE BIG GUY SWELLED WITH
anger. He was prodded and fucked at every side, as if he were some mechanical cow, or the toy of Bull Latham at the FBI. The Bull and his men must have been right behind Isaac at the airport, with schnozzolas of their own. But the Bull didn’t have to wear a schnoz. He had his own fortress, a phalanx of men, with their blue field jackets and fiberglass vests. They were as hairy as his old football team and could overwhelm an airport, a rodeo, or half the towns in Texas.

Isaac wasn’t worried. He sailed right into the sirocco and found the Brazos Barn. It served tacos and white wine and was twice as expensive as the Bull’s own haunt at the Waldorf. It was Tex-Mex with a Houston twist, a converted barn with a zinc bar as long as a runway. The Bull seemed happy there. Nobody gave a damn that he ran the FBI. People recognized him from his days with the Cowboys. And they also recognized the Big Guy. But they left him and the Bull alone. Isaac didn’t see one of Bull Latham’s lads in their fucking field jackets and whiter than white shirts that could burn a hole in your head.

The Bull was smiling like a little boy. “Thanks, Mr. President . . . for picking me as your running mate.”

Isaac was appalled. “You bugged General MacArthur’s rooms, listened to my talk with the DNC? I could have you thrown in jail.”

The Bull was still smiling. “Isaac, we listen to everybody and everything.”

“But it was just a ploy,” Isaac said. “I wanted to hit Ramona Dazzle where it hurts.”

“It’s the sentiment that counts, Mr. President.”

“Don’t you bet against Michael. He’ll be living at the White House, not me.”

“It no longer matters. He’s damaged beyond repair. The more you prop him up, the harder he’ll fall. . . . What can I do for you, Mr. President?”

“I want Margaret Tolstoy to have protection around the clock.”

“It’s already been done. Nobody gets to see her, nobody. But I’d be careful, Mr. President. I wouldn’t trust Trevor Welles. He switches friends faster than a Tijuana whore.”

The Big Guy must have been going out of his mind. He could picture a Tijuana whore with Inez’s helmet of silver hair. And he had to hide the erection in his pocket. And this was the lad who was going to swerve around a constitutional crisis—Isaac Sidel of Manhattan and the Bronx.

“But Joey swears by Trevor Welles. I have to trust my own son-in-law.”

“Not if he was ever a Crusader. They’re killers, Mr. President, killers sworn to themselves, with their own mad loyalty oaths. And I can’t lay a finger on them. They’re all tied to some government agency, with clearance all way up to God and the White House—what should I do about Clarice?”

“Nothing,” Isaac said. “The country doesn’t care about her. She can’t compromise J. Michael, whatever she does. She wouldn’t have much currency with a kidnapper.”

“And what about your wife?”

“Ah,” Isaac said, “the Countess Kathleen.” She was an Irish beauty from Marble Hill. Isaac had married her when he was nineteen. She had smoothed his way with the Irish chieftains at the NYPD, or Isaac would never have risen so fast. He couldn’t have maneuvered without Kathleen. But she abandoned him and Marilyn, moved to Florida and bought up real estate in Miami and Key West. He could still remember the taste of her wild red hair. When he first met Kathleen, it seemed as if her scalp was like a forest fire. He’d always been dazzled by those wondrous maidens of Marble Hill, redheads who could devour whole bushels of men, swallow them with their Guinness. He might have been faithful to Kathleen all his life, or was it another one of Isaac’s big lies? She ran from him as he rose in the ranks, left him her bank account. Had she cuckolded Isaac, been in love with another man all the years they were together? But perhaps his own memory had gone south, and he’d humiliated Kathleen, shoved her away. No reporters could get to Kathleen. She wouldn’t give any interviews about that bearish husband of hers. She’d withdrawn into her Miami mansion, a millionairess many times over. She hadn’t even come to Marilyn’s wedding at Gracie Mansion, hadn’t seen her own daughter marry Vietnam Joe. But Marilyn had had nine or ten other husbands. The Big Guy could no longer keep count.

“Bull, I don’t think you have to worry about Kathleen. There are enough retired cops in Miami to fight off whatever mavericks might want to hurt me.”

“Isaac, I’ll still be her guardian angel and she’ll never know. But watch your back when you’re in alligator country with Trevor Welles.”

Isaac stared across the zinc bar. “Are there a whole lot of alligators between here and El Paso?”

“Miles and miles of them,” said the Bull. “And some gator could come out of the bayou and bite your ass off.”

“That would humble a man. I’d have to attend Michael’s coronation in a wheelchair.”

And he ran out of the Brazos Barn before the Bull could say another word. He was always running now, but he couldn’t recall his destination from one moment to the next.

* * *

The Bull just sat there. Even if he had the manpower, he wouldn’t arrest half the planet to safeguard one reckless man. Sidel loved to tilt against windmills as Manhattan’s Don Quixote. And the Bull wasn’t going to play his Sancho Panza. He himself had to tilt between President Cottonwood and the Pentagon. He also had to stroke David Pearl—the president was nothing more than David’s little man. And the president-elect was even more beholden to David. Cottonwood was a devious cocksucker, but Michael was a crook. Michael had sold himself to whatever whore was around. The Bull had a file on him that couldn’t even fit into a vault. Michael would never even get past his honeymoon period. There would be no honeymoon for J. Michael Storm.

The phone rang at the Brazos Barn. It was the Bull’s secure line. He had ten or twenty lines like that around the country, lines that couldn’t be traced, since their signals were scrambled by his own technicians at the Bureau.

He could hear the purring of David Pearl. But the old man seemed agitated.

“Latham, I could have Cottonwood pull you right out of your seat.”

The Bull smiled as he copied from Mr. Ansonia and purred into the phone. “And why would you do that, David?”

“Because Sidel is out of control.”

“But that’s your fault. The minute he’s about to land on his ass, you prop him up.”

“I can’t help it,” David rasped. “He’s my protégé. But I’d rather he never leaves Texas—alive or dead.”

“Sir,” the Bull said, “I pity the man who does Isaac in. You’ll haunt him into the grave with your own wrath. I’m not prepared to pay that price.”

“Go on. Be his altar boy. But don’t you interfere with the plans I have for Isaac.”

And the Bull’s secure line went dead. He grabbed a few salted almonds from a bowl. He was in no hurry. Until Isaac climbed aboard his yellow wagon train, Bull had nowhere else to go.

I
T WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT.
Isaac was in the lobby of the Warwick, mooning over a glass of milk. He sat behind a potted plant, where no one could intrude upon his privacy. And she wandered into his field of vision wearing that same backless blue dress she’d enticed him with at Cassandra’s Wall. It was another bit of make-believe. The woman he adored was all decoration.
I love you
, she’d written.
Leave me alone
. And he did.