Under the Eye of God by Jerome Charyn

ever had. Like Lyndon, Cottonwood was a very tall man. He’d come roaring out of the Senate with Lyndon’s own panache. He’d grab you by the lapels, the way Lyndon would, and lift you right up to his nose. It didn’t matter to him that Lyndon was a Democrat and a damn New Dealer. He could spit at you like a snake. And Texas had always been his buffer. It was another country, where men and boys carried guns and would ride two hundred miles for a steak. It had its own music, its own literature, its own profound civility. It was no accident that the official residence of Calder and J. Michael was Houston. It had become America’s new center of gravity.
    Calder couldn’t even stand in his own castle. He was nearly eight feet tall in his Stetson, and he would have been inches from the roof of Marine One . His boots were hand-carved, a gift from Lady Bird Johnson. He felt like a stranger on Pennsylvania Avenue, in a town that couldn’t even make a decent po’boy or a quesadilla. He’d had to fire half a dozen chefs. He insisted that Isaac drink a root beer with him.
    “Mr. President, what the fuck is going on? You could have crucified J., and you’re letting him waltz right into the White House.”
    “J. is nothing. You’re the man I feared.”
    “Come on,” Isaac said, trying not to belch from the root beer. “The Bull could have hammered me into oblivion. I’ve killed people, I’ve been in bed with the Maf.”
    “But folks love that. It’s the Wild West. Besides, you’re a poor man. I had the Treasury boys check your bank account. Isaac, you’ll have to feed on ham sandwiches for the rest of your life. You give your money away to beggars and children in baseball caps.”
    “Then how come you tried to have me whacked?”
    Calder wasn’t even embarrassed. He’d sent half a dozen hitters after Isaac during the campaign, and all of them failed.
    “Son, I was jealous, filled with bile—Isaac, if you’re wearing a wire, I’ll kill you right in this tent.”
    “Jesus,” Isaac said, “your own desperados patted me down and took my Glock. I’m naked without it.”
    Calder began to cry. “I had the Bull put Margaret in that nursing home. Did she recognize you? I visited with her this afternoon. That’s why I’m here. I choppered right down on the roof of her sanitarium. I held her hand. She looked in my eyes and called me Mr. Death. What kind of name is that?”
    “I won’t discuss Margaret with you,” Isaac said.
    “Then what else do we have to discuss?”
    “Billy Bob Archer and Dennis Cohen.”
    The Prez seemed hurt by Isaac’s remark. “I didn’t hire those shooters. Lord, the election is over and done.”
    “But Amanda Wilde says that Dennis Cohen once worked for you?”
    “And you believed that whore? . . . I did have him on the payroll. But that was a while ago. Besides, I enjoy jousting with you. J.’s a sissy, a lawyer in knee pants who represents millionaire baseball players.”
    “Did Dennis work for Sidereal?”
    Calder barked like a seal, but it didn’t sound like the laugh of a sane man. “We all work for Sidereal.”
    “Yeah,” Isaac said, “and I suppose we’re all star clerks. But Sidereal isn’t in the stars. It’s eating up the Bronx, block by block.”
    “That’s J.’s business, not mine.”
    “J. doesn’t know shit. He and Clarice are a couple of clerks.”
    Something was bothering the Prez, or he wouldn’t have bothered to whirl out of the sky and sit on Isaac’s lawn at Carl Schurz Park. The visit itself was a smokescreen. Calder was frightened of a Bronx corporation that had never even earned a dime. Sidereal. Was Houston money behind the whole plot? Was there some sun god hovering over the Houston Ship Channel with a morbid interest in the Bronx? And had that sun god himself dispatched Calder Cottonwood? The Prez had visited the badlands of the Bronx three times this year. And it couldn’t have been part of his strategy to lure the Latino vote. The