Under the Eye of God by Jerome Charyn Read Free Book Online Page A

went deep into the wilds of the Bronx and purchased parcels of land with a rickety enterprise called Sidereal Ventures. He wanted his own empire near Yankee Stadium after he rescued baseball from a crippling war. But Sidereal was rife with illegal land grabs. On paper, it owned a quarter of the Bronx, but no one had been able to figure who ran Sidereal, certainly not its principal officers, Michael and Clarice.
    J. had almost been indicted in Miami for another one of his deals. And prosecutors all over the country wanted to bring down the president-elect. It was Calder who kept him alive, Calder who had Justice hide J. Michael within its own muzzle. Tim Seligman was blackmailing the Prez. The Dems had pictures of Calder with his prick out in the Rose Garden. And Tim wouldn’t even discuss whatever else he had on the Prez. But Justice could no longer protect Michael. Prosecutors had begun to bark for his blood.
    Sidereal was on the front page of the Times . The New York Post called J. Michael the emperor of the Bronx. There were rumblings in the Milwaukee Sentinel and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , talk of a constitutional crisis. If J. Michael was indicted, what would happen­ to the presidential process? The Electoral College could vote for Mickey Mouse.
    Still, Michael soldiered on at the Waldorf, behaved like the president-elect, while Tim Seligman fumed and tore at his own scalp. Isaac himself was banned from the Waldorf. Party chiefs didn’t want the Big Guy to show his face. He could provoke the crisis. How could he replace Michael before the Electoral College met? Suddenly, the election itself was a wisp in the wind. And so Party theoreticians scribbled for a week, and Michael held a press conference in the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf, with Clarice and the Little First Lady at his side. No one bothered about Clarice, but reporters shivered at Marianna’s poise and the green of her eyes. They were electrified before Michael spoke a word.
    “I may have gone too far,” he said, “but I wanted to rebuild the Bronx. And so I had to play the emperor, as some reporters have said. But I didn’t make a dime from Sidereal—in fact, it ate up whatever cash I had. But I’d wander half a mile from Yankee Stadium and see a wasteland that left me numb. Torched buildings and mounds of rubble on both sides of the Cross Bronx, a borough ruined by a mad highway right down the middle of its spine. For the Bronx and its residents, it will always be a highway to nowhere. And so I was rash, ladies and gentlemen. I pushed too hard, and my accounting wasn’t always correct. But I had to push, or nothing would ever have been done.”
    The reporters and Democrats in the ballroom were delighted with Michael’s little war cry. But they kept asking about the Big Guy while they purred at Marianna.
    “Mr. President, why isn’t the mayor here with you?”
    Michael smiled and spun closer to the Little First Lady. “Don’t jinx me. I’m only president-elect. And I didn’t want to intrude upon the mayor’s time. He has to run this town and prepare for the vice presidency. And Isaac has a will of his own. That’s why we love him.”
    “But didn’t he rescue you once, sir, while you were a student radical at Columbia?”
    Michael leaned toward the gallery of reporters like some coconspirator. “He didn’t rescue me. He saved my life. I wouldn’t be here with you if he hadn’t knocked some sense into me. That’s why I had to have him on the ticket. If I’m rash again, he’ll knock some sense into me for the next eight years.”
    The reporters clapped, but they wouldn’t let him off the podium without questioning the Little First Lady.
    “Miss Storm, is it true that you have a swain of your own, a little bandit from the Bronx?”
    There was blood in Marianna’s eyes, but she didn’t want to ruin her father’s press conference, so she held back her rage.
    “Angel Carpenteros isn’t a bandit. He’s an artist and a Merliner,