Under the Eye of God (18 page)

Isaac grieved. He wouldn’t let Bull Latham onto the Cross Bronx. “I’ll become a dynamiter, Bull, I swear. I’ll blow it all up.”

“Why bother? They’ll build another one.”

“I don’t care, as long as Robert Moses writhes in his grave.”

The ride started to rankle Isaac, as they went through neighborhoods that Moses had ripped right from the ground. They were in the middle of a wasteland, with rubble, rude grass, and concrete storage bins, where the Bronx had once had its Strivers’ Row—East Tremont, enclave of the lower middle class. The Big Guy had been in love with a Tremont beauty. He rode the Third Avenue El half the night to see his Rosalind. But her father didn’t trust a boy with woolly ears. Isaac had to sneak her into the Loew’s Paradise. That was his only boudoir. They kissed for three hours under the Paradise’s “atmospheric” sky—a constellation of clouds and brutal, blinking stars. But she’d sworn herself to a midshipman in the navy and wouldn’t let Isaac near her bloomers. That must have been around ’47, when Isaac was still a young gallant from the Lower East Side. She sent him a fan letter a few years ago, swore she had never forgotten their trysts under the stars. She was now a widow of fifty-five, as handsome as ever. But Isaac didn’t have the heart to see her. It would have ruined his memory of Rosalind. . . .

They passed block after block of burnt brick carcasses.

“This is where the Pentagon will build its Reservation, isn’t it, Bull?”

“Mr. President, it’s a soldier’s paradise. The military will survive most administrations. The White House has a bunch of screaming children. But the generals don’t have to scream. I’d be a liar if I told you I wasn’t betting on them.”

“But the mayor of New York watches over real estate. It’s his barn. I could have shut down Yankee Stadium even after the strike was over. And it’s too bad that the Giants disappeared before my watch. I would have sued the shit out of them. They’d never have gotten past the Harlem River.”

“Or else they could have learned to swim. But it doesn’t matter, Mr. President. Your town will soon have another mayor.”

Isaac closed his eyes as they bumped onto the New England Thruway. He couldn’t say why, but he dreaded meeting Trudy Winckleman in Connecticut. Perhaps he could only love her as a museum piece. He was a great big romantic bear. But it wasn’t in the realm of romance. Something else bothered the Big Guy. His intuition had abandoned him beyond the borders of the Bronx. He was headed for heartbreak.

S
HE LIVED IN A MODEST
ranch house in the woods near Waterbury. It looked as if it had been built out of tarpaper and tack and might not survive the next hurricane. He didn’t ask the Bull to come inside with him. But he cursed himself. He should have brought her flowers or some book, like
Anna Karenina
. His biggest sorcerers at City Hall had told him there would be no books in another ten thousand years. Paper would turn to dust, with all the bricks, glass, and concrete. The Ansonia itself would disappear. Isaac didn’t give a damn. But he would have been lonely without his favorite characters.

He’d only had one semester at Columbia College. He still wept over Anna and that rascal, Richard III. He, too, would have given his kingdom for a horse. And if he’d ever had Richard’s gifts, he might have wooed his silver-haired lady with nothing but words. His mind was broken, and he couldn’t remember how many children Karenina had—one with her snake of a husband and another with her weak-willed adorer, Count Vronsky? And how would Isaac deal with Inez’s own kids? Was he as weak as that adorer? Or would he ride into the plains with Inez, renounce his own vice presidency?

He knocked on her door. There were no hobbyhorses on the lawn, no jungle gyms, not a single sign of Inez’s brats. She still had that silver helmet of hers. But her eyes had gone dead at the first sight of Sidel. He wanted to leap into the woods and live with all the wild deer.

“Come inside,” she said. He had to follow her like a wayward pilgrim. They landed in the kitchen. A man was sitting at the table. He wore a holster without a gun. He could have been a lost troubadour, or a defeated wolf, with stubble on his chin and a listless, cruel look. He was much younger than Isaac. That’s what hurt. She introduced him as her husband, Arno. He nursed the same green bottle as the Bull, drinking Jameson whiskey in the middle of the afternoon.

“Trudy,” Isaac said, “I didn’t mean . . . ”

And now her eyes lit with a touch of fever, like those stars in the ceiling of the Loew’s Paradise.

“Darling, I’m still Inez,” she told him. “And Arno can’t stay. He has chores to do.”

This troubadour left the kitchen without a word. And then Inez started to weep. Her shoulders shook. She turned away from Isaac. “Don’t look at me. I’m a witch whenever I cry. My face puffs out . . . and my hair starts to sizzle. Can you imagine that? A mama whose own head is a fire hazard.”

He didn’t know what do. He was another lost troubadour. He wanted to hold her in his arms, swallow up whatever fears she had, like arrows in the chest.

“You weren’t supposed to come here,” she said. “That was the deal. David said you would never find me.”

“But I did find you.”

Suddenly she started to cackle. And she could have been the witch of Connecticut. And then her face softened again. She almost smiled.

“My poor little darling, how dumb can you be? You weren’t supposed to find your Inez. David closed every resource, locked you out of my life.”

She was wearing a sweater, as old and worn as David’s. And then he realized that it was one of David’s relics.
Another museum piece
. And the Big Guy was brutally jealous. Part of the sleeve had begun to unravel, and Isaac touched the threads.

“That old man doesn’t own the world,” Isaac muttered.

“But he owns me. . . . Darling, don’t you get it? I’m his captive. He has my little son and my daughter.”

“But you said they were at boarding school—in Connecticut.”

“And who boards them?
David Pearl
. They live in his house, with his housekeeper, his bodyguards. I have to beg each time I want to see them. . . . Isaac, I’m scared. Sometimes I blank out, forget their faces, their names.”

“But you have a husband.”

Her hands trembled, and her whole body began to heave, until her silver helmet whipped about in its own wind. And then it all stopped.

“
Husband
, that’s what I call him. Arno is one of David’s gunmen. He watches over me.”

“A gunman without a gun.”

“Arno doesn’t need a gun,” she insisted. “The holster is just for show. The whole place is surrounded. Why, why did you come here?”

“I love you,” Isaac said without the least hesitation.

“Damn you, I’m just a trick. David hired me to worm my way into your heart. And he knew I’d fall for an adorable idiot like you. That’s why he kept his insurance—my kids.”

“But I’ll rescue them,” Isaac said.

“Keep away. You’ll get them killed. . . . Darling, you can’t even rescue yourself.”

Isaac looked deep into the puzzle of her eyes. “But I have Bull Latham outside. And he has the full firepower of the FBI.”

And now the witch of Connecticut looked like a sad little waif.

“Isaac, he’s the one who led you into this trap. He’s David Pearl’s best bounty hunter.”

“Come on,” Isaac said. “Not even David can bribe the whole Bureau.”

“David doesn’t have to do a thing when he has the president on his side.”

“But how can Cottonwood help him?”

She put her hands over her eyes and started to shake again. “Stop talking,” she said. “I’m the only one who can get you out of here alive—not your Glock, not Bull Latham. . . . What is it you want? To sleep with Inez one last time? Isaac, I’m nothing but a dream inside your head, a ghost who walked out of a museum.”

The Big Guy was terribly aroused. He couldn’t help himself—pain had become his aphrodisiac, pain woke him out of his slumber, pain and his own hunger for Inez. She shucked off her sweater and her skirt. Her lovely arms were dappled with goose bumps. He didn’t have to reconnoiter in the bedroom. Isaac wouldn’t have known where it was.

He made love to Inez on the flat of the table. And for the first time in his life, Isaac felt safe, wondrously safe, while he could hold onto her dappled flesh.

He couldn’t even say what pleasure he had given Inez. His spittle mingled with hers while they were on that tabletop. Her goose bumps disappeared. She got dressed.

And then she called for Arno. That demented wolf returned with his cruel mouth. He was smiling at Isaac. He took a pouch of Bugler’s from his pocket and rolled a cigarette for himself and Inez. He couldn’t have been a local hood. Bugler wasn’t cultivated in Manhattan or the Bronx. Arno must have come from West Texas or the Alamo. Isaac wondered if he’d ever seen this killer in the cattlemen’s bar at Menger’s. Meanwhile, Inez signaled with the palm of her hand that he should stay where he was and not interfere in her business.

“Arno,” she said with the Bugler in her mouth. “You’ll take him home—in one piece.”

“And ef I don’t?” he said in a West Texas drawl.

“Then Isaac is gonna move in with me.”

“Fat chance, Miz Inez. He might not breathe another ten minutes. You’ll be the widuh lady before you’re a bride.”

And he started to titter. Inez slapped his face. He was flooded with anger, but he wouldn’t hit her back.

“If you hurt him, Arno, you know what will happen next.”

“Yes’um. Mr. David’s gonna give me a big fat reward.”

“And after that? I’ll crawl into your bedroom while you’re fast asleep, and I’ll cut your prick off with the sharpest knife I can find.”

Arno’s eyes began to dart inside his skull. Then he laughed. “Miz Inez, you shouldn’t give your plans away. I’m liable to hurt ya real bad.”

“And what will Mr. David think when he discovers your own paw prints on my arm? You’ll escort Mr. Isaac home, and God help you if anything happens to him.”

She wouldn’t even let Isaac say good-bye in front of Arno. She shoved him out the door with just a little bit of a caress. Inez didn’t even wait there. She went back inside and shut the door. The sound broke into the night like a melancholy whisper. Isaac couldn’t see much. But he knew that Bull Latham wasn’t out there. Bull had abandoned him.

David’s lieutenants, wild little men, wearing medieval vests they must have swiped or borrowed from the NYPD, drove him out of Connecticut in some crazy vintage car with armored windows and maroon-colored seats. With all his gloom, it took him a whole hour to realize that it was David’s Pierce-Arrow, inherited from AR himself. He could imagine the first Inez, the real one, on these cushions with David . . . and AR. But even that memory couldn’t melt his gloom. His melancholy grew as they arrived at the front gate of Gracie Mansion.

The guards were curious, but they let him through. He climbed out of the Pierce-Arrow and trudged across the gravel. Marianna was waiting for him at the front door, like the mayor’s own little wife. She must have grown an inch in the last couple of days. Her shoulders seemed to burst. She had as much vitality as a mountain lion.

“Uncle Isaac, where have you been? We were worried to death.”

The Big Guy wove around Marianna and went inside.

S
HE’D GROWN UP IN A
bagnio, the best in New Orleans. Her favorite “aunt” was a whore with a head of silver hair. Auntie looked after her, made sure none of the customers sniffed her underpants. Some of the other girls had been cruel. But Auntie protected her in this constant tug-of-war. And after a while, Auntie became manager of the Blond Moon, its very own madam, and she managed other bagnios for the mob. She sent her little orphan to school, but it was a waste of time. Trudy had become the bagnio’s bookkeeper. She could toss off figures on her fingertips, add magnificent sums in her head. She never cheated the girls who had been unkind to her. And she always prepared the correct “cut” for mobsters and members of the Orleans Parish police—there wasn’t much of a difference between them.

She fell in love with a crooked cop, as handsome as a blue-eyed sailor. But he had one wife in the Garden District and another in Algiers. Trudy didn’t care. She fed off his blue eyes. She had two kids with this cop. She raised her kids right in the bagnio, where her lovely cop could sleep when he wasn’t with his other wives. He gave Trudy a silver ring and told her not to wear it. The other girls called him Jew Boy, because he didn’t like hard liquor and he never beat any of his wives. But he must have been part of the wrong patrol. He was shot in the head by another member of the Parish police. The cops called it the result of a drunken brawl, but her Jew Boy never drank.

No one was ever prosecuted. Other cops knocked on her door, said they wanted her to become their little mama. She’d cackle at them and wield a kitchen knife. They called her a fruitcake and found new mamas for themselves, ones who were a bit more docile and wouldn’t mind the protection they could offer. But she managed to survive under Auntie’s wing. It was Auntie who had pulled her right out of the public orphanage with the help of mobsters who ran the Parish. Auntie had seen “Little Miss Sad Eyes” washing clothes and decided that she would fit into the landscape of the Blond Moon. It was like picking a puppy she didn’t have to pay for.

The girl had been saddled with a preposterous name—Marissa Dawn. No one could find her birth certificate, but that’s what she was called at the orphanage. Auntie didn’t dare use it at the Blond Moon. It was a whore’s moniker. And it might give her customers ideas. They were always looking to pierce some child’s cherry. And so Auntie shielded her with her own name. And this orphan with the big brown eyes would become Little Trudy Winckleman. . . .

She worked like a dog, and was the bookkeeper of Auntie’s bagnios by the time she was fifteen. She was a mother before she was twenty. She was twenty-six when Auntie died. Now she herself had to manage the bagnios. And now she had a scalp of silver hair. The children went to private schools and lived with her in the Quarter. Daniel and Darl. All the new mamas at the Blond Moon would turn up their noses and tell her that
Darl
wasn’t much of a name.