back.”
“You needn’t rush,” Marianna said, wiggling out of Amanda’s embrace. “I’ll have some whiskey with Clarice.”
“Don’t you dare,” the star clerk said, and began to giggle on the elevator. But she stopped giggling when she saw Martin Boyle in Isaac’s sedan.
“You can’t take him with us to Cassandra’s Wall. The Secret Service isn’t allowed inside.”
“Mr. President,” Boyle said, ruffling his Oklahoman’s nose. “What is Cassandra’s Wall? It isn’t on our itinerary. I’ll have to search the premises.”
“Boyle,” Isaac said. “I’m on a caper. You’ll spoil my fun. . . . I’ll wear my button mike. You can knock the door down if I’m in trouble.”
* * *
Isaac grew bitter when he discovered the home of Cassandra’s Wall. It was right in the basement of the Ansonia, where Plato’s Retreat had once been, and before that the Continental Baths. Isaac had crusaded against the porno mills and sex clubs, and had shut down Plato’s Retreat, the most extravagant of all the clubs, a bathhouse and bordello where most of the “whores” were dentists’ wives from New Jersey.
The Big Guy was outraged. “The bathhouse reopens and no one bothers to tell me? I’ll murder all my building inspectors.”
But Isaac remembered the Ansonia’s basement before it housed the Continental Baths or Plato’s Retreat. It was a swimming hole for retirees when Isaac had visited David Pearl as a woolly boy from the Lower East Side. Part of the basement had also been a Ping-Pong club, when Ping-Pong was a sport to be reckoned with, and there were tournaments in every town across America. Manhattan had its own young champions, Marty Reisman and Dick Miles, who dominated the sport and played epic three-hour matches in Madison Square Garden, held Ping-Pong aficionados in their thrall. And David would accompany Isaac into the bowels of the Ansonia, where Isaac could watch distinguished old men paddle around in bathrobes at their private Polar Bear Club, then turn left, into a ragged Ping-Pong parlor, right under the Ansonia’s steam pipes. David himself would commandeer Reisman, demand a twenty-point spot in a game of twenty-one points, hurl a hundred dollars under the table, clutch his racquet with the stubbornness of a demented man, and lose all the time, while Reisman stood in a red gypsy shirt, with very wide sleeves, and flicked the ball back at David. He was like some half-blind avatar in thick eyeglasses, but Marty Reisman didn’t even have to look at the table. He could attack David’s shots with his eyes closed, hit the ball from some perch behind his back, and still spot David twenty points.
“My kid,” David said, even though he wasn’t that much older than Marty Reisman. Years later, when Isaac studied the life of that other half-blind avatar, James Joyce, at Columbia College, he always thought of Reisman. Both of them had a sense of purity about their craft, both of them flourished with their fragile eyes.
But Isaac wasn’t in much of a mood to be nostalgic. He realized now why Cassandra’s Wall wasn’t in the city’s books. It wasn’t even registered as a club. It had no real address. It was part of David’s Beaux-Arts colossus, the Ansonia. He went into the bowels of the building with Amanda Wilde. No one frisked him at the door; no one bothered about his Glock. That was the mystique of Cassandra’s Wall. It only existed for its patrons. David hadn’t even supplied it with much of a lock.
There were no refreshments, and there wasn’t even a side bar. Its cavernous halls still had the debris of Plato’s Retreat, a mattress room where all the swingers congregated, where all the wives were swapped. It had the blue light of a bordello.
“Amanda, what’s going down here, huh? Is this the devil’s monastery?”
“Shh,” she said. “Cassandra’s Wall is where the richest men in the world come to gamble.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Isaac said. “I know all the
“You needn’t rush,” Marianna said, wiggling out of Amanda’s embrace. “I’ll have some whiskey with Clarice.”
“Don’t you dare,” the star clerk said, and began to giggle on the elevator. But she stopped giggling when she saw Martin Boyle in Isaac’s sedan.
“You can’t take him with us to Cassandra’s Wall. The Secret Service isn’t allowed inside.”
“Mr. President,” Boyle said, ruffling his Oklahoman’s nose. “What is Cassandra’s Wall? It isn’t on our itinerary. I’ll have to search the premises.”
“Boyle,” Isaac said. “I’m on a caper. You’ll spoil my fun. . . . I’ll wear my button mike. You can knock the door down if I’m in trouble.”
* * *
Isaac grew bitter when he discovered the home of Cassandra’s Wall. It was right in the basement of the Ansonia, where Plato’s Retreat had once been, and before that the Continental Baths. Isaac had crusaded against the porno mills and sex clubs, and had shut down Plato’s Retreat, the most extravagant of all the clubs, a bathhouse and bordello where most of the “whores” were dentists’ wives from New Jersey.
The Big Guy was outraged. “The bathhouse reopens and no one bothers to tell me? I’ll murder all my building inspectors.”
But Isaac remembered the Ansonia’s basement before it housed the Continental Baths or Plato’s Retreat. It was a swimming hole for retirees when Isaac had visited David Pearl as a woolly boy from the Lower East Side. Part of the basement had also been a Ping-Pong club, when Ping-Pong was a sport to be reckoned with, and there were tournaments in every town across America. Manhattan had its own young champions, Marty Reisman and Dick Miles, who dominated the sport and played epic three-hour matches in Madison Square Garden, held Ping-Pong aficionados in their thrall. And David would accompany Isaac into the bowels of the Ansonia, where Isaac could watch distinguished old men paddle around in bathrobes at their private Polar Bear Club, then turn left, into a ragged Ping-Pong parlor, right under the Ansonia’s steam pipes. David himself would commandeer Reisman, demand a twenty-point spot in a game of twenty-one points, hurl a hundred dollars under the table, clutch his racquet with the stubbornness of a demented man, and lose all the time, while Reisman stood in a red gypsy shirt, with very wide sleeves, and flicked the ball back at David. He was like some half-blind avatar in thick eyeglasses, but Marty Reisman didn’t even have to look at the table. He could attack David’s shots with his eyes closed, hit the ball from some perch behind his back, and still spot David twenty points.
“My kid,” David said, even though he wasn’t that much older than Marty Reisman. Years later, when Isaac studied the life of that other half-blind avatar, James Joyce, at Columbia College, he always thought of Reisman. Both of them had a sense of purity about their craft, both of them flourished with their fragile eyes.
But Isaac wasn’t in much of a mood to be nostalgic. He realized now why Cassandra’s Wall wasn’t in the city’s books. It wasn’t even registered as a club. It had no real address. It was part of David’s Beaux-Arts colossus, the Ansonia. He went into the bowels of the building with Amanda Wilde. No one frisked him at the door; no one bothered about his Glock. That was the mystique of Cassandra’s Wall. It only existed for its patrons. David hadn’t even supplied it with much of a lock.
There were no refreshments, and there wasn’t even a side bar. Its cavernous halls still had the debris of Plato’s Retreat, a mattress room where all the swingers congregated, where all the wives were swapped. It had the blue light of a bordello.
“Amanda, what’s going down here, huh? Is this the devil’s monastery?”
“Shh,” she said. “Cassandra’s Wall is where the richest men in the world come to gamble.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Isaac said. “I know all the
Similar Books
