Under the Eye of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

catastrophe. Maurice, the concierge, told him that David Pearl had been snatched from his eagle’s lair in handcuffs, charged with tax evasion, and that Isaac had better leave the premises or Maurice would have him arrested for vagrancy.
    “I’m not a bum,” Isaac said, but he went downtown where he had more grief. His dad slapped him and clutched his scalp. “Treasury men were here. They wanted to know how much money I was hiding for David Pearl. They’d already been to the shop, frightened my employees. And they were looking for you, my little Arnold Rothstein. I had to learn from them that you were running up to the Ansonia on the sly, sitting at David’s feet. Did he stuff your pockets with cash?”
    Joel had clumps of Isaac’s hair in his hand. But Sophie Sidel arrived with a cigarette in her mouth. Isaac’s mom looked adorable. She slapped at Joel with a broom.
    “He’s a criminal,” Joel said.
    “But he’s our criminal,” Sophie answered, the cigarette dancing with each stroke of the broom.
    “I’ll divorce you,” Joel shouted.
    “Be my guest.”
    And the battle ended right there. No Treasury agents arrived to question Isaac. David Pearl, Rothstein’s heir apparent, was in all the newspapers. The mob’s personal banker. The venture capitalist of crime. David was indicted, but he didn’t have to sit very long in jail. His lawyer called him a philanthropist, the secret benefactor of a hundred hospitals and settlement houses. It was David Pearl who found a roof for every orphan whose home had been torn down by realtors like Dodge Stokes, David Pearl who sent kids from Harlem to a summer camp in the Catskills. No jury would convict him. The government’s case was feeble compared to Pearl’s largesse. He began receiving marriage proposals through the mail. He looked like Tyrone Power in his photographs. Manhattan’s magnificent son. But he didn’t return to the Ansonia. All the publicity had unsettled David. He vanished from Broadway. . . .
    Joel didn’t survive so well without his silent partner. He lost his government contract. Goons destroyed his shop. He lingered through the war, battling with Sophie. Then he also disappeared. Isaac and his younger brother, Leo, grew up without their dad. Leo became a kleptomaniac, and Isaac became a cop, so successful that he would soon be vice president.

4
    I SAAC CAMPED OUT AT GRACIE Mansion and kept a small apartment on Rivington Street, but the building had burnt down while he was campaigning. And Seligman decided that Citizen Sidel had to have his own headquarters and residence outside Gracie Mansion.
    “It’s a hornet’s nest, Isaac. People will think you’ve living off the city’s dime. Can’t have Michael’s VP eating up city resources. We’ll rent a suite at Trump Tower where you and your team can entertain and do whatever you like.”
    Isaac groaned. He didn’t have a team. He hated all the glass towers that had gone up after the war and had turned Manhattan into a monolithic forest. He’d have dynamited half the town if he’d been a dictator like Stalin.
    “Then where would you like to live, sonny boy?”
    And Isaac had a sudden mirage of a white castle rising out of the mist.
    “The Ansonia,” he said.
    Tim grabbed the telephone, whispered for five minutes, winked at Isaac, and said, “It’s a deal. I got you a sublet on the fifteenth floor.”
    “Timmy, I’m the mayor. I own New York. And you hop on the horn and get me into the Ansonia. Just like that.”
    “That old whore,” he said. “The building’s dilapidated. I wouldn’t even put an enemy into the Ansonia, but you’re our bohemian prince. The country loves you, Isaac.”
    Isaac wasn’t listening. He had to defend the Ansonia, the one single landmark of his childhood. “Caruso lived there. And so did the Babe. Arnold Rothstein dreamt up his biggest gambling coups on the Ansonia’s stairs.”
    “Ancient history,” said Tim. “Rothstein’s a dinosaur.”
    “He