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

richest men in the world. They’re real estate moguls. They live in Manhattan.”
    “Isaac,” she said, “these realtors of yours, they’re only pretenders to the throne.”
    And she led Isaac into a very dark room that didn’t have the same garish blue light. There were five men and a woman who stood in a tiny circle, chatting among themselves. The woman had a raucous laugh. She was wearing a backless blue dress; Isaac could see the lovely nodules of her spine, even in that unreliable light. She had a helmet of silver hair, and when she turned to face Isaac, the Big Guy’s knees began to wobble. She had a beauty that was beyond Isaac’s comprehension. Her face didn’t have one classic feature. Her nose was a little too long, her forehead a little too high, her brown eyes a little too far apart. But when she smiled, all the features fell into line, and her face was on fire.
    Amanda introduced him to the five men, reclusive billionaires from the Old World; one was an Italian aristocrat who lived off his family’s accumulations; another was a French financier who had something to do with cement; the third was a Russian oil bandit who had a monopoly on railroad cars; the fourth was a chocolate magnate from Belgium; the fifth was a German publisher who owned companies everywhere. They were all polite to the Big Guy but had never heard of the vice president–elect. Mayor Sidel hadn’t even entered their mythology. He couldn’t remember their names. Claudio? Ivan? Igor?
    But the woman’s face was still on fire. She must have been thirty or thirty-five. Isaac began to stutter.
    “Your n-n-n-name?”
    “Inez.”
    And suddenly, Isaac felt murderous, as if he were part of some random kindergarten class and had been tricked and pummeled by his own teacher. Inez . Arnold Rothstein was alive and well . . . and living in the Ansonia.
    He didn’t bother to chat her up. He bowed to all the billionaires and left Cassandra’s Wall without Amanda Wilde.

8
    H E CLIMBED UPSTAIRS TO DAVID Pearl’s own retreat on the seventeenth floor. He had to wonder why the ex–boy banker would live in a labyrinth with low ceilings when he could have had a lavish piece of the castle all to himself. The Big Guy didn’t even knock. David was sitting on his window seat in a worn sweater. He wasn’t surprised to see Isaac.
    “Dennis hadn’t come to the Ansonia to kill you, David. He was your very own gunsel.”
    David smiled his wizard’s smile. “Indeed. Frank Costello lent him to me—the most loyal kid I ever had.”
    “Jesus, Dennis was a grandpa. He was growing senile. He would have had to wear diapers all over again. Why did you send him after me?”
    David whistled under his breath. “He would have nicked your arm, that’s all.”
    “He was aiming for Martin Boyle’s heart.”
    “I don’t have a moratorium on Secret Service men. They’re Calder’s peons.”
    Isaac saw blue spots in front of his eyes. He wanted to strangle David, crack him open on his window seat. His own mentor, David Pearl, his muse, had been stringing him along.
    “And Billy Bob Archer, did you hire him, too?”
    “Sort of,” David said. “He was put there to shake you up, not kill you.”
    “I suppose I’m your indispensable man.”
    David laughed with that childish face of his. He hadn’t aged much in his castle. He had that same devilish enthusiasm he’d had when Isaac first met him. “You’re dear to me—part of my little family.”
    “And is Amanda Wilde part of your family, too?”
    “You could say that. She was my private secretary, still is.”
    “But hasn’t she wandered rather far afield?”
    “No, I catapulted her right into the election process . . . let her become the president’s astrologer—and mistress.”
    “And is the president your own personal peon?”
    Isaac was mortified. Had he been one of David’s peons from the moment his father had introduced them, almost fifty years ago?
    “Isaac, you give me a little too