Secret Isaac Read Online Free PDF

“The knockout? Sidel, lay off of her. She’s Dermott’s bride.”
    And he began to titter. Isaac wouldn’t smile.
    â€œWho’s Dermott?”
    â€œDermott? Dermott’s the king.”
    He was mum after that. Lazar had to attend to his shop. Isaac was sharp enough not to pull at him. Lazar had told him as much as Lazar cared to tell. Dermott’s the king. Now Isaac was beginning to understand why there was peace on Whores’ Row. This Dermott had to be the overlord of all the pimping traffic. Uncle Martin was his bagman, the old boy who settled Dermott’s accounts. But why didn’t some gang of mavericks slit Martin’s throat? Was Dermott that much of a king? And how could he hold his little empire together if you couldn’t catch sight of him? It all didn’t fit. Isaac Sidel shouldn’t have been ignorant of the emperor of Times Square.
    He had no more time to ruminate in a pornography shop. He was expected at John Jay. Isaac gave lectures twice a week at the School of Criminal Justice. He walked to his hotel, shaved, put on a pair of fresh dungarees. That was Isaac’s teaching clothes.
    The worm itched when he arrived at John Jay. It was a bad sign for Isaac. The worm was hardly ever wrong. He had a new pupil in his class. Melvin Pears’ green-eyed wife. She sat at the back of the room with a notebook in her hands. That notebook inhibited Isaac. He forgot to prance around the classroom. He stood near the window and talked about the futility of criminal justice. “The Bronx is dying,” he said to the young firemen and cops in his class. “Street by street. We can’t send in artillery. The kids would only burn all our tanks. Soon the edges of Manhattan will go … then you’ll have towers on the East Side with machine-gunners in the lobby … you’ll need armed guards to get you in and out of the supermarkets.”
    One of the firemen raised his hand. “First Deputy Sidel, what can we do about it?”
    â€œGo into the Bronx,” Isaac said. “Build over all the rubble. Why can’t we have shopping plazas in Crotona Park?”
    The cops giggled to themselves. The areas around Crotona Park looked as if they’d been napalmed. There were more arsonists in the Bronx than grocers. These cops would have figured Isaac for a bolshevik if he wasn’t the First Dep. They enjoyed jeremiads from a deputy police commissioner. You could light up in class. Isaac didn’t care what kind of junk you smoked. But that green-eyed lady worried him. Was she going to use Isaac’s words against old Sam in Becky Karp’s bid for Mayor? He could watch her scribbling between her legs. That’s no place to keep a notebook.
    She was there, in the same seat, at his next class. The worm nearly hobbled him. He had to lean against the wall. “Sure,” he muttered to himself. “It’s not too hard to recognize a traitor. Especially when she has green eyes.” But he wouldn’t coddle to her, sweeten his own talk. He mentioned Stalinist solutions. “Mobilize. The cops can’t do it themselves. Have a goddamn citizens’ army. Fight the shits who won’t cooperate. Bring back Joe DiMaggio. Get Willie Mays to build a new Polo Grounds … behind the Grand Concourse. Where’s Durocher now? Take ten percent off everybody’s salary … a tithe for the Bronx … no, make it twenty percent.”
    The cops laughed, but that green-eyed wife of Pears clutched her notebook. Isaac grew sad. I’m burying Mayor Sam. He ended the class twenty minutes before the bell. He tried to skirt away from Mrs. Pears. She trapped him at the exit. He would have had to crawl under her bubs to get around her. She put a slip of paper in his hand. The specks in her eyes were incredible. They flashed shiny gray dust like small planets about to break apart. He was jealous of Melvin Pears. Isaac also had a wife.