Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn Page B

Isaac wasn’t supposed to ask about Dermott anymore. Why? How often could the First Dep trot to Stephen’s Green? Dublin wasn’t behind the Jersey cliffs. You couldn’t reach the Shelbourne by rowboat. The king was jittery about having Isaac in New York.
    â€œMorton, be a good boy. Give Arthur a hug for me. Tell him Isaac doesn’t like mysteries. The king can have his exile. But I intend to open him up.”
    He shoved the captain uptown. He would have liked to pitch him over the roofs of Houston Street, up to Lincoln Center and Arthur Greer. That would have been a sensational kite. No matter. The captain would be in disgrace. He couldn’t hold on to Isaac the Pure. Captain Mort should have been out looking for catfish in Eastchester Bay. What was he doing with a gun in his pants? Was there a society of old captains for sale? It didn’t make sense. Who was organizing the other Captain Morts? Not Arthur Greer. Arthur didn’t have the claws to dig that deep into the Department. Isaac would have known. He had his spies in the Commissioner’s office. The First Dep could have broken up any ring of ex-captains that was lending itself out to pimps and crooks. Isaac wasn’t asleep. He began to dial his office from a telephone booth. He’d put a fix on Morton Schapiro, find out what the old captain’s been doing in the last year or so.
    Isaac could have sworn he was in Dublin again. A drunken man and woman were having a mean little fight outside his telephone booth. Their slaps seemed pathetic to Isaac. They maintained a slow dance of arms and legs. Then the man got vicious. He had the woman by her hair. He shook her and shook her as Isaac came out of the booth. It was one of those freak encounters. He recognized the woman beneath the roots of her hair. The drunk was assaulting Marshall’s wife. Had Sylvia found a second husband in the streets? Isaac tore the man’s fingers out of her hair, dragged him into the booth, and closed the door on him.
    â€œYou have terrific friends, Mrs. Berkowitz.”
    Isaac was pissed at himself. Where was his squad of “angels” that was supposed to prowl for Sylvia? Why should he have stumbled upon her after leading Morton Schapiro on a little chase through Soho? Was some miserable tinkering god giving out gifts to Isaac? Or maybe a worm can navigate with its hooks. That punk in his belly had steered him to Sylvia.
    He took her into an artists’ saloon, treated her to black coffee and cigarettes. The artists at the tables seemed to feel a kinship with Isaac. They must have taken his sunken cheeks as a sign of poverty and powerful, suffering thought. The First Dep had traveled far from Centre Street in his days and nights as a bum. He’d moved beyond some kind of maddening pale. Isaac was less and less a cop.
    â€œYour husband’s been bawling for you,” he said.
    Doses of coffee and cigarettes had revived Sylvia Ber kowitz. “Isaac, don’t be his mama. Marsh will pick up a new survival kit … a Barnard student to scrub his underwear.”
    â€œGot any cash on you?”
    â€œNo, but I’ll sing carols outside a restaurant.”
    â€œSylvia, you’re in the wrong season. It isn’t Christmas yet. You’ll starve. Who was that clown you were with?”
    â€œNobody special. I met him in a candy store two hours ago.”
    â€œDo you have a place … a home?”
    She didn’t have to answer him. Marshall’s wife was living among the garbage cans. If she had that much of a need to break away from Marsh, Isaac wasn’t going to twist her head around. “Come with me.”
    The First Dep had a small apartment on Rivington Street. That’s where he kept most of his suits. He gave the apartment to Sylvia.
    â€œIsaac, will you stay with me?”
    He could remove her filthy blouse, wash her back, and bring her over to his mattress. Who would be the worse for it? Not