Secret Isaac (28 page)

The “Commish” had done a bit of homework before he got on the plane to meet Dermott in an Irish park. His blue-eyed boys tore the Chief Inspector's files apart until they unearthed an address for Coote. The Fisherman's place was next to Screeb in County Galway. Screeb was where Isaac had the mind to go. The man from the agency lent him a map. Isaac bumped down Constitution Hill into the lower regions of Church Street. He was driving a little French car. The “Commish” was used to having his body chauffeured around. He had trouble with the steering column. It wasn't where it ought to be. It had moved from the left side to the right. Damn the French and the little cars they brought into Ireland. Didn't the Irish have their own make of wagon? A Phoenix Spark? A Donnybrook? A Cromwell Cadet? A Grand Drummartin? Holy Mother! He was on the wrong half of the road. The Irish were a mad people. They invented their own traffic laws to confound a man and tire him to death. Left is right, me boy, and right is left. The “Commish” had to reeducate himself on King Street North.
Isaac, stay left, left, left
.

He had a baby's crawl. He crossed the Liffey by mistake and got stranded in Dolphin's Barn. It took him three hours to break out of Dublin and find the road to Mullingar.

He drove thirty miles, then it grew dark on him. He stayed in a cottage that night, with an ironmonger's widow and her seven kids, near the town of Kinnegad. The children's whining came through the walls. It was a relief to Isaac. It kept him occupied. He didn't dare fall asleep. Coote's old men might be at the window. He had his bed and breakfast and crept back on the road early in the morning.

He wasn't dispirited on his second day in the Irish countryside. Teaching himself how to maneuver a wicked car on a wicked road had done remarkable things to Isaac. Pushed like a heavy thumb through the matting in his brain. Dermott didn't belong in an eight-piece cap. The king had to die before Isaac could remember him as a boy. Isaac's chief, First Deputy O'Roarke, had sent him out to tame a wild gang, the Devils of Clay Avenue. He traveled to the Bronx, a young inspector growing bald behind the ears. He couldn't understand where the gang got its reputation from. The Devils were a bunch of shivering boys. These were the lads who had conquered a borough? Their single property was a shack in Claremont Park. Who was it that led those raids into every corner of the Bronx? Not their president, Arthur Greer. Sweet Arthur always stayed at home. Isaac had to poke behind their idiotic grins. Only one other boy appealed to him. Little Dermott McBride. Short and dark he was. A cop's intuition told him
this
was the leader of the raids. He had a sadness around the eyes that reminded Isaac of his “angel,” Manfred Coen, whom he'd pulled right out of the Police Academy. Isaac happened to need a sad-looking boy to infiltrate a gang of Polish thieves that was causing mayhem in the garment district. Coen was on special assignment to him. Isaac wouldn't give him back to the Academy. He liked having Blue Eyes around.

Twenty miles out of Kinnegad it struck Isaac that Coen and Little Dermott began to mix in his head. Isaac's batteries had crossed somewhere. It was his sorrow over Manfred, his own fucking guilt, and not that worm in his gut, that had eaten into Isaac's memory. He must have had a wish at the time that Manfred could enter into Dermott and steal away some of Dermott's intelligence. Then Isaac would have had an “angel” who was more than beautiful and dumb. It would have meant a reshuffling of brains, a lessening of the king to puff out Manfred Coen. But Isaac wasn't a ghoul. He wouldn't harm one boy to glorify another, just because they had the same sad eyes …

He got to Screeb. It was nothing but a fork in a road. He'd been traveling a good eight hours. He got lost in Galway City until a baker's boy led him out of that trapping of streets. He went along the coast. Isaac had the Atlantic under him. He had to stop for cows and sheep. He left the car and began to walk. Stones and trees weren't a proper landmark. You could have blindfolded him outside Centre Street and dropped him anywhere in Manhattan. Isaac would have felt his way. He had the gift. He could nose out the contours of a neighborhood.
Boys, I'm in the Heights. Around Audubon Avenue, I'd say. West of Highbridge
.

But a country road mystified him. Isaac walked with his teeth near the ground. God knows why he was traveling with a curl in his spine, like a hunchback? Was it to make himself less of a target for Coote's men? He looked up once and saw the corrugated roof of a house. He'd stumbled upon a castle in Screeb.
Castledermott
. That's what Annie Powell had said.

The castle had a yellow lake. Isaac heard a plop in the water. A man was fishing the lake, a small man with boots up to his arse. He would stare into that yellowness and grunt. “Come on up, me beauties.” He was a fisherman without a fishing rod. He worked with a net and a plain billy club. He smacked at the water from time to time. But the net wouldn't fill. It was a senseless occupation. The man hadn't struggled with one lousy fish.

He stood near the rim of the lake. He was deaf, deaf to anything that didn't come from the water. Isaac could have plucked hairs off the man's head.

“Afternoon to you, McNeill.”

An eyebrow knit for a moment. Then the face relaxed. “Ah, sonny, I was expecting you …”

“Am I talking too loud? I wouldn't want to disturb the fish.”

“But that's the point,” Coote said, swinging his billy club. “I'd like to disturb them with this.” He had a look of total menace as he bit into his jaw.

“Are you murdering salmon these days, Mr. Coote McNeill?”

The Fisherman eyed Isaac with disgust. “Not the salmon … I'm going after carp. They destroy a lake, sucking in the mud. Vermin is what they are, filthy animal fish. They can grow fat and live to fifty. So I club them in the head.”

“You've been banging at the water, but I don't see many carp in your net.”

“That's because they're tricky bastards. They keep to the bottom. They dirty the lake and drive out all my valuable fish.”

“Why don't you hire Tim Snell to club the water with you?… you might get a few more hits.”

“Sonny, I don't need Tim to clear a lake. He has other business.”

“I know,” Isaac said. “He had to write a telegram and wire up the king …”

The Fisherman continued to slap water with the billy club. The lake turned brown near his boots; no fifty-year-old carp came up from the mud.

“Was Tim going to wire me up too?”

“You're daft,” the Fisherman said. “Sonny, I could have had you killed ages ago.”

“What about those shotguns you delivered to Centre Street?”

“That was nothin' but a tease … you're too precious to put underground. Jesus, the chances I had to get at you … the great Isaac roosting in Times Square with charcoal on his face. It's Mangen that kept you alive. Dennis' baby is what you are … and don't you get bright ideas about catching me alone in the water. I have lads in the house. If I whistle to them, sonny boy, they'll shovel out a grave for you … you'll rest with all the carp.”

“Why did you summon me to Ireland, Coote?”

“To talk … Mangen was up on his haunches, so I had to get out.”

“You didn't even have time to pack your fishing rods. It's a pity, but I had your office boys pick the rods off the wall. Have they arrived?”

“Not yet. You owe me something, sonny. Don't get comical with me.” He thumped his chest with the billy club. “This old man made you Police Commissioner.”

“Sure, you and Sammy fucked Tiger John and pinned his badge on me. It was a good cover for all of you. I come in and you ass off to your castle in Screeb and rid your lake of carp. A charming life. You gambled that I had enough affection for an old Mayor not to harm him. I couldn't prosecute Sammy if I wanted to. He's made his pact with Dennis. He won't starve when the money runs out. Rebecca will provide for him. That leaves you. Now what is it you need from me? You have your yellow lake …”

“I don't want my picture in the newspapers. I'm in seclusion here. I'll have me an angler's club. I'll start up a bit of a hotel. Lease my salmon rights to worthy fishermen … Isaac, the whore shit is dead. Why rake it up? Mangen has Tiger John. He's satisfied.”

“Oh, I wouldn't disturb you, Chief. You're safe. You butchered everyone around that could do you harm. You were like a pope in New York City. The Mayor kissed your hand. And you took every boy from my office and farmed them out. They had to ride the ferry to work. You were smart. You left me a boy or two until the very end, so Isaac wouldn't know.”

“Sonny, it aint my fault you didn't come to Headquarters. I couldn't have done a thing with John if you'd been there. But we could count on you. If you weren't sleeping with the Guzmanns, you'd be in some other filthy pile. You could never sit on your ass. And don't accuse me of butchering people. You butchered when you had to … like the rest of us. You killed your own boy, Blue Eyes, because that daughter of yours was crazy about him, and you couldn't stand the idea.”

“The Guzmanns killed Coen,” Isaac muttered into the lake.

“Indeed. Nasty souls they were … they made chocolate bars in the Bronx … and you had to declare war on them, Papa Guzmann and his five idiot boys.”

“Papa gave me a worm.”

“You deserved it,” McNeill said. “Don't play Isaac the Pure with me.”

Isaac watched the billy club slap water again. The net dropped down and rose up empty.

“There aint that much difference between us,” the Fisherman said. “I took for myself, and you used the Department for your own imbecile cause. You killed, you maimed, you gouged out eyes, sonny boy.”

“But I didn't wire a man to a bench, just to show off.”

“I had to dispose of him, and one way's as good as another. He was getting to be a nuisance, you know. He falls in love with a shopgirl and we have to suffer for it. What kind of king is that? He was a gutter boy before I picked him up. The Department put him through college.”

“I got him into Columbia … not you, or the Department.”

“Piss on your brains,” the Fisherman said. “You were always a little slow behind all that cleverness. Dermott belonged to me and Ned O'Roarke.”

Isaac stood an inch out of the water, his toes collecting mud. He'd inherited his job from O'Roarke, the old First Deputy Commissioner. He was Ned's protégé, an apostate Jew among the Irish. Did O'Roarke hide Dermott under one knee without telling Isaac?

Coote grinned at that slump in Isaac's shoulders. “Ned made a Yalie out of him. It was a bit too close having him in town. So we groomed the lad in New Haven. A little gentleman he was. We let him steal. We let him have his books. We let him run the nigger whores with Arthur Greer.”

“And when O'Roarke died, you stuck your hand in the pot … and pulled out a pretty penny.”

“Would you have me chewing gumballs for the rest of my life? The king was my creation. Tell me why I shouldn't benefit from it? Him and the nigger got to be millionaires. Boys of thirty carrying hundreds of thousands in their pockets. Then he gets shopgirl Annie for a mistress and a wife. I sit him in Dublin because Mangen is coming on to us, and he neglects our business over Annie Powell. Imagine, going itchy for a stupid cunt that's nothin' but a whore, when he can have any woman on this earth. Him with education, money, and a gypsy's eye.”

“
Annie
,” Isaac said, “what did you do about Annie Powell?”

“Jesus, the girl saw my face … I couldn't let her whore in the street with Mangen's shooflies running everywhere. I paid a boy in a taxi cab to climb up on her back …”

Isaac's toes fell into the water. Coote wasn't an idiot. He could sense the rage that was coming over Isaac. The “Commish”'s forehead swelled out like a diseased melon with tiny bumps on it. “Mother Mary,” the Fisherman said, “you didn't go and fall in love with that whore, did you now?”

He raised his billy club. It was a warning to Isaac.
Keep out of me lake
. But Isaac rushed at him. The billy club landed at the base of Isaac's neck. He felt a crunching in his scapula. His head tumbled down. But he shook off that motherfucking blow. The billy club whistled behind Isaac's ear. The old man had been too eager. He missed his chance to brain the “Commish.” Isaac slapped the billy club away. He grabbed the old man by the roots of his scalp and shoved that head into the yellow lake. He kept it there without a touch of mercy, using his elbow as a fulcrum to dig between Coote's shoulder blades. Bubbles rose around Isaac's fist. Coote's arms jerked under the water. Then the old man went still. Isaac gave Coote's body to the salmon and the carp. He didn't see any signs of movement from the house. The chimneys revealed one lousy tail of smoke.

Isaac stepped out of the water. His shoulder humped up on him. Coote's old men could have ripped the nose off his face. But nobody ran after Isaac. He beat the ground with his shoes until he arrived at his little French car. He mumbled a benediction to the Irish.
God bless all little cars with the steering wheels on the right
. Then he drove out of Screeb.