Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn Read Free Book Online Page A

there, and the worm had screwed him again. The lust was gone. “Stay with me,” he said. “Tonight.”
    â€œIsaac, how can I?… I have a four-year-old at home … and Mel.”
    â€œTelephone the kid. Tell him Dick Tracy will play with him tomorrow if he goes to sleep. Mel can take care of himself.”
    Her green eyes were throwing off that beautiful gray dust again. He put her in a cab. She kissed him thickly, with her fingers in his ear. It wasn’t a joke. He was losing his guts to Jennifer Pears. He’d better find himself a bimbo fast, a girl who would let him concentrate on Dermott while he rolled her over and fucked her from behind. He blackened his face with charcoal and got into his bum’s clothes. The First Dep was dying for a fight. He’d roam the streets like a crazed animal, slapping pimps, cops, or tourists. You’d have a hard time arresting Isaac, no matter what outfit he wore. The worm could tear at him. Isaac wasn’t going to be ruled by a little snake in his belly.
    He had the customer he wanted. A man was chatting with Annie Powell, a timid john from the look of him. Was she settling on a price? Isaac could rip the scalp off his ears, give him a beauty treatment he wouldn’t forget. But Annie didn’t go with the john. Something had scared him off. It wasn’t Isaac. His mania couldn’t have been obvious from a block away. It was someone else. A horse of a man. Tiny Jim O’Toole. Jamey was bending over her now. Isaac drew close. That horse wasn’t making her smile. He had his huge knuckles in the waistband of her whore’s shirt.
    â€œO’Toole,” Isaac said. “Jamey. You ought to be nicer to King Dermott’s bride. If you don’t put your hand away, I’ll have to chew it off.”
    It was a ridiculous bluff. O’Toole could have sat Isaac on top of the lamppost and left him there for the fire trucks to bring him down on a ladder. But he took his knuckles out of Annie’s shirt.
    â€œIsaac, be kind to the Irish. Don’t meddle. Annie, she belongs to another man. Ask her yourself.”
    Jamey whistled with his knuckles in his pockets, winked at Annie, and stepped into the gutter. Cars stopped for him. No one could be sure how his bumpers would fare against a lad who was six feet seven.
    Annie was growling at Isaac. “Who are you?… Jesus, can’t you play on the next block? And why do you have that black shit on your face? You’re comical, you know that … with your questions and your little bottles of champagne.”
    She was sobbing now. “Don’t I have enough without a pest like you?… you’re trouble to me …”
    â€œAnnie, I could help … if you’d tell me what it was O’Toole wants.”
    â€œWants?… he has regards to me from somebody I know.”
    â€œDermott?”
    But she wouldn’t talk to him. And Isaac had to gather up his bum’s pants at the waist (he was growing skinnier by the hour), and skunk off to his hotel.

9
    W AS it a code name? Dermott Bride . Was Dermott the secret hero of Londonderry? Using his whores’ profits to collect money for the “rebels” of Northern Ireland, with Annie the deposed queen of the Provisional IRA? Isaac had his men infiltrate the tough Irish bars around Marble Hill. There was no Dermott Bride or Annie Powell attached to the Irish Republican Army. But Isaac was a stubborn man. He had his agents burrow everywhere. They went into the First Dep’s own files. They came up with a memorandum from Ned O’Roarke, the old First Deputy Commissioner, whose death had put Isaac into office. It took them a week to ferret out that pink slip with one sentence written on it eighteen years ago. “ Get Isaac to help little Dermott. ” Isaac was horrified. He couldn’t mistake the scrawling hand of Ned O’Roarke. O’Roarke had been Isaac’s rabbi.