Under the Eye of God (22 page)

They knew how vindictive Bull Latham could be; the Bull was a bigger ball-breaker than Sidel.

David sat under the low ceilings in his slippers and tattered sweater. His apartment looked like an endless dollhouse. He wouldn’t even acknowledge Bull.

“Kiddo,” he said to Sidel. “I knew you would come for me. I’m sorry about your loss. I was fond of that bitch.”

“Shut up,” Isaac said, “before I bite your fucking head off.”

“Isaac, Isaac,” David said, wagging his own head of white hair. “How long do you think you can hold me? I’ll have a whole battery of lawyers at the MCC before we get there.”

The wizard was much too notorious to be stashed away in an underground dungeon with that gunsel of his, the Waco Kid. David Pearl had too many “gonnegtions.” But he should have realized that Bull Latham was also a wizard.

“Sweetheart, we’re not going to the MCC.”

The wizard’s face froze with panic. “I can’t sit in the dark. I’ll die. . . . Isaac, I’ve bribed Bull Latham. I’ve given him pocket money.”

“So what?” Isaac said. “Nobody’s perfect. All that matters is where you are right now.”

* * *

Isaac never even asked the Bull about their destination. Their little wagon train rode right into the Bronx. At first, Isaac thought they were going to bury David somewhere in the dunes. Under Robert Moses’ highway. That would have been a just reward. The wizard could have had the whole Reservation for himself, all the bitter ground, with every mote of dust from the buildings he had ruined. But their wagon train went right over the badlands and bumped onto Fort Schuyler Road. They’d come to the edge of the world, according to the Bronx. It was land’s end, with its own lighthouse and little fort at Throgs Point, which jutted into Long Island Sound.

Isaac loved the fury of the sea. He would have swum to China, if he hadn’t been preoccupied with the wizard. He had to sing his mourner’s song out on the road. The lighthouse was under repair, and its roving yellow eye had been plucked right out of its skull. It stood like some Samson Agonistes in the mist. The fort had been built after the War of 1812, in the hope of expelling the British or any other invader. Its guns would forever protect the Bronx from any naval attack. It held five hundred Confederate prisoners during the Civil War and deserters from the Union army. It became defunct as a fort around 1910 and was soon converted into a maritime college. But the old fort was also in disrepair; many of its stones had fallen into the sea; its gun turrets were like ragged, useless sockets; its roofs leaked. It was under six feet of water half the year. The maritime college had moved momentarily across the creek to Locust Point. And the fort was turned into a secret brig.

Isaac didn’t like the whole fucking setup. It smelled of fascism, of military maneuvers in his own town. Someone should have told him that this old fort had a new landlord—Bull Latham’s Bureau. But he didn’t argue. The wind blew against Isaac’s beleaguered bones as he stepped out of Latham’s van with the wizard. David Pearl was shivering in his tattered clothes; one of his slippers had come off. The wizard had no socks. Isaac saw a naked foot, as bleached and dry as an old skeleton. He had to prosecute such a pathetic case. But then he recalled Inez’s body in the Bull’s makeshift morgue.

They entered this abandoned fort, which had its own skeleton crew; agents on the verge of retirement, Isaac figured.

“Jesus, Bull, we haven’t even booked the old guy.”

“There’s plenty of time for that. We’ll bounce him from place to place. When I’m finished with Pearl, he’ll be public enemy number one.”

“Just like the old days,” Isaac said, “with J. Edgar Hoover.”

They went under a crumbling arch and right through the main gate; Isaac could hear the water rip. He could imagine Confederate prisoners with chains on their legs in this cruel courtyard. They traveled down a flight of crooked steps, with Isaac holding David by his pants. The Big Guy’s blood was freezing. That’s how cold it was. They locked the wizard in a narrow cell without windows, gave him a couple of blankets and a dirty pillowcase.

“Let him cool off for a couple of days,” the Bull said.

Isaac didn’t even have the heart to say good-bye. He returned to Bull’s wagon train, sat between Joey and Rondo in the back of the van. All he could think about were the Crusaders in Nam. The Crusaders had been as willful as the Vietcong. That’s why they were such successful scalp hunters. They were the only ones who could fight Charlie on his own turf. The Crusaders didn’t give a fuck about winning over hearts and minds. They had no heart. They were methodical, merciless plunderers. They treated the Vietcong like one more bag of tricks.

But no faraway tale could soothe the Big Guy. When their wagon train arrived in the badlands, and Isaac saw ruin after ruin, he could no longer block out the old man.

Public enemy number one
, with a missing sock.

“Bull,” he shouted, “we have to turn around. I can’t leave David in that lousy dungeon. He’ll die of double pneumonia.”

T
HE BULL WOULDN’T ARGUE WITH
his own commander in chief. He hadn’t been reckless. He was only marking time. The moment Isaac was inaugurated, the Bull intended to pluck a signed order out of him that would have landed David behind the moon and kept him there, permanently out of sight. But Isaac was
another
bull—a Taurus, and a Taurus couldn’t be swayed. The Bull would have to factor in President Sidel’s stubbornness from now on. He’d shut his secret prison before Isaac had the chance to intervene. He didn’t care who the next director was. Bull Latham meant to run the Bureau from his new digs at the Naval Observatory. And so he shuttled Isaac and David Pearl back to the Ansonia.

Isaac rode the elevator up to the seventeenth floor with David in his arms. It was like clutching some prehistoric bird, or a rumpled dinosaur egg. He could hear David’s heart beat. He sat him down in a chair under that impossible ceiling, where Isaac had to keep ducking his head. He wrapped David’s toes in a heated towel.

“Kiddo, this ain’t gonna buy you credit with me.”

“Who cares for your credit?”

“Don’t you think I miss her, too? She was my Abishag. I would come down to the thirteenth floor in the middle of the night and lie next to her for half an hour. No hanky-panky.”

“Shut up,” Isaac said. “You shouldn’t have had her killed.”

“She was the only weapon I had against you. I was losing blood by the minute. The dams kept breaking in the Bronx—all on account of you.”

“I hope you lose a hundred million,” Isaac said.

“Chicken feed. Didn’t I swear months ago that I was betting on you to be the next president? And by staging all those assassination attempts, I was only upping the ante. Yeah, sometimes I did want you killed. But who else remembers AR and Inez? I had that museum built for you.”

“No more stories,” Isaac said. But he was still addicted. His voice was getting shaky. He kept dreaming of Lindy’s oblong look. His own table at Ratner’s wasn’t much of a shrine. He would have given the fingers of one hand to have sat with David at Arnold’s table for half an hour.

“Jesus, tell me what happened when Inez walked into that delicatessen?”

The wizard was in his element again. He could curl up in his chair—tell his tale.

“Even the mice were mesmerized,” David said. “No one could resist that blond storm. Every miserable eye was on Inez, except for Arnold. He was the last to look up. The Brain was always in his own deep thoughts. But he could feel the rush, that explosion of air, as Inez danced into the delicatessen with her long legs. I watched his brow furrow for an instant. He knew the mayhem that Inez could bring. But she also brought AR her own delight. And that thinker at the table would come out of his dark mood and smile. Arnold never smiled like that for me. . . . ”

Isaac knew that Arnold’s table would haunt him into eternity. The White House was also a museum. But presidents couldn’t trouble Isaac, not the way Rothstein could. He’d have to convince his chief of staff to let the Little First Lady live with him. He couldn’t weave any fabric into his life without Marianna Storm. Let them shout
Lolita
. He wouldn’t give up Marianna or his Glock.

“Her brats,” David said, “I adopted them. Both were born out of wedlock. They’d hardly had a real father.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Winckleman’s kids. They’re legally mine. That’s how Bull punishes me. He hides them.”

“They’re in New Orleans with Trudy’s mom. Bull told me himself.”

“She never had a mom,” David said. “She grew up in an orphanage. One of her own nurses had silver hair . . . ah, I’m being polite. It was a bordello near Basin Street. She survived on beignets from the French Market in the Vieux Carré. . . . The kids aren’t in New Orleans. Bull wants them near him, so he can eat my heart out. They’re at a row house beside the Ohio Canal, in Georgetown. They have nurses around the clock.”

“And I suppose you’d like them back, you miserable prick.”

“No, the kids are better off where they are. . . . Soon they’ll have an uncle in the White House.”

“Shut up.”

* * *

It didn’t matter what his chief of staff said. She could supervise all the public business of a president, ponder over his cabinet as if she were playing pickup sticks, talk to his policy advisers about East Berlin, tell Isaac whom to shun, but she couldn’t prevent him from going to DC with Marianna a day before his coronation. They rode in a limousine with Rondo Raines. He didn’t have any of the president’s markings on the limo, and he wouldn’t have wanted any.

“Jesus,” Isaac said to Marianna. “What should I tell them? That I loved their mama, and I’m one of the reasons she got killed?”

“Uncle Isaac, do you
always
have to complicate things?”

“But I’m a perfect stranger. What if they don’t like me?”

“That’s the chance you’ll have to take.”

He wanted to wear his schnozzola, but she said it was undignified, and might scare the kids. He’d have to risk his own skin, come to them as Isaac Sidel. . . .

They parked on Olive Street. Marianna got out of the car. She was wearing a plain winter coat. Children and adults began to collect around her. “The Little First Lady!” Isaac wasn’t chagrined. He’d much rather have melted into the background. How had she gathered so much poise with two dysfunctional parents—a murderous mom and dad!

But perhaps she was drawn to murderous men, or she wouldn’t have baked butternut cookies for Isaac and lived at Gracie Mansion as mistress of the house. And Isaac was much more homicidal than Michael or Clarice would ever be. But he wasn’t twisted by their cruelty and greed. He had a very different kind of barometer. He’d never put out someone’s lights just to gain a little loot.

It was Marianna who ended this autograph party with her fans. “Goodness,” she said. “We have so much to do.” She took Isaac by the hand and led him down the hill to the C & O Canal. This must have been the point of the rendezvous. Marianna had arranged it. They were near a sluice, and the sound of running water calmed Sidel.

The two children arrived with their nurse. Isaac’s knees buckled. Both of them had Inez’s big eyes and her marvelous frown. The boy was nine or ten. His name was Daniel. The girl was Marianna’s age, and had she ever worn a silver helmet, she would have been Inez. She brooded and smiled, and her mouth was puckered, like her mother’s. Her name was Darl.

Isaac had a terrible case of vertigo on the C & O Canal. He thought he would spill into the water and drown, even if it wasn’t possible to drown in the C & O. Marianna had to prop him up. She pinched his arm and spat into his ear, “Uncle Isaac, you’re embarrassing us. What will Daniel and Darl think of the next White House?”

But he couldn’t stop crying. It was like standing with little replicas of Inez. He could feel her presence in these children. He’d been thrust into the middle of a ghost story and he’d never recover from it. He wanted to run howling from Georgetown and hide in some lost dune. It was Darl who understood his agony, Darl who was so quick.

“You knew my mother, didn’t you, Mr. President?”

“Please,” he said, glued to the melody of her voice. “Call me Isaac.”

He stared at the little houses on the canal, wanted to live there with these children and Marianna. Let his chief of staff occupy the Oval Office. Isaac would stay on this side of Rock Creek.

“I loved your mother,” he said. “She was dear to me. But I didn’t know how to keep her. I was selfish and arrogant.”

“That’s how most men are,” she said with a little pout.

She took Isaac’s hand. Daniel joined them. Isaac noticed for the first time that Daniel was clutching a stuffed bear; both its button eyes were missing; it had bald patches on its pelt of hair. It was the casualty of some war.

“What’s the bear’s name?” he asked.

“Isaac,” Darl said before her baby brother could open his mouth.

Isaac smiled like a madman and did his own tiny jig on the canal.

The four of them were holding hands. Marianna stood near Daniel. She was almost as tall as Sidel, and could have been the benevolent mama of her own little brood. Or perhaps a big sister, since she knew that Darl would soon become her own blood and her best friend in DC.

It could have been a family picnic on the canal. There wasn’t a Secret Service man in sight. Only Rondo Raines, with hammered silver down the sides of his boots. He was smoking a Bugler, and he didn’t look much like a bodyguard. He could have been a pathfinder on the C & O. And Isaac could have been the papa bear.

The January sun beat down upon his pate. He bit into the wind that swept off the canal. He could finish up his seven days of mourning right now. He clung to Daniel and Darl, clung to Marianna, and he knew what would please him most in the president’s palace—the waft of butternut cookies from the White House kitchen, with both of Inez’s babies beside him.

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