3
They went in to dinner.
It was not Italian; it was English: mushroom soup, crown roast of lamb with mint jelly, strawberry fool, a small Stilton. Jerome carved the lamb. “I believe in the right of the individual to better himself,” he said. “The Bolsheviks want to share the misery equally. That’s not the American way.”
“How would you define the American way?” Luis asked.
“Let me give you an example.” Jerome tasted the claret and nodded. The elderly servant poured. “Major construction projects. The lifeblood of the economy. Years ago, each union was demanding bigger kickbacks than the next union. Chaos. New York was getting a very bad name constructionwise. For the sake of the city, we had to step in. Today, in return for a small, fixed percentage of the budget, we guarantee that every union will perform as promised, and harmony reigns. Harmony expands opportunity. That’s freedom to build. I’m a libertarian, always have been.”
“And take fish,” Sammy said. “That Fulton Street Fish Market was a disgrace until we knocked a few heads together. Now you can eat the best sea bass in the country. Clams, too.”
“Any plans for expansion?” Julie asked. She sounded like NBC talking to General Motors.
“The banks are letting the city down,” Jerome said. “They open late and shut early and treat customers like cattle. The place that really cries out for reform, however, is City Hall.”
“You ever tried to renew your driver’s license?” Sammy asked her. “Better take sandwiches. Take a sleeping bag. Take three days off, for Pete’s sake. It’s worse’n the Kremlin down there.”
“You’ve got a point,” Julie said.
“I’m concerned about extortion by the City’s building inspectors,” Jerome said. “In Manhattan, for the simple restoration of the gas supply to an apartment, I’m told they demand thirty dollars.”
“Forty, I paid,” Julie said.
“If we put our guys in City Hall we could get it down to fifteen,” Sammy said.
“It’s a matter of resisting the arbitrary restraint of trade,” Jerome said.
For coffee, they returned to the room with the sofas and the roses. Rain had begun to patter on the windows.
“This is all very civilized,” Luis said. “Would it be indelicate of me to recall our first meeting, when you seized me warmly by the throat?”
Jerome sighed, not entirely with regret. “Sometimes we act, not as we wish, but as we must. This afternoon my associates expected strong words and prompt action from me. You see, I’m obliged to play a dual role: sometimes Hamlet, sometimes Henry the Fifth.”
“Sometimes Ivan the Terrible,” Luis suggested
“Well, you pushed your luck,” Julie told him.
“You want I should get the Yellow pages?” Sammy asked helpfully. They wanted. He came back with a directory three inches thick. “This is merely a party trick,” Jerome said. He flexed his fingers and slowly ripped the book in half.
“Crikey,” Luis said. “Did you learn that at Princeton?”
For the first time, Jerome smiled. “I majored in music. I still play the piano for three hours every day.” He looked at his hands. “Bach deserves all the credit.”
When it was time to leave, thunder was grumbling around the horizon and rain was punishing the driveway.
“Your little convertible will drown in this,” Jerome said. “Sammy, fetch one of the Buick sedans.”
They waited in the hall. The boxers, eternally good-mannered, came to see them off.
“You needn’t answer this,” Luis said, “but exactly how did you know I worked for British Intelligence?”
“I didn’t know. I took a chance, and guessed.” The Buick swished up to the front door, and they all shook hands. “It’s almost flattering to be a victim of Red infiltration, isn’t it?” Jerome said. “They target the vital organs—the State Department, the Atom Bomb, the Army, Hollywood, and now my operation. Almost flattering.”
*
The storm had sucked up a large part of the Caribbean and it still had a lot left to dump on New Jersey. Luis was glad to be driving the Buick. It felt big and safe and rich. The interior smelled of the hides of rare animals, lightly smoked over a fire of ten-dollar bills. Luis felt pleased with himself, and grateful for Jerome’s generosity. “The man may be a thug but he’s a prince,” he said. He turned the wipers to maximum. They flung the rain back into the night.
“I was right about good food,” Julie said. “Everything else, I’m not so sure.”
“We bamboozled him. Eldorado strikes again. Bullshit baffles brains.”
“You reckon? All that stuff about saving the construction industry? And straightening out City Hall? Who was bullshitting who?”
“Wasn’t it all true?”
“Yeah, sure, City Hall stinks. And nobody lays a brick in New York without the Mob skims a percentage off the budget. It’s a racket, everyone knows that. It’s his racket, and there he was, giving us this civics lesson.”
“Well… maybe he was relaxing. Maybe he has a wry sense of humor.”
She grunted. “Mafia jokes usually turn out to be as funny as a boil on the backside. And I’ll tell you another bad joke. You just missed the turning for Montclair.”
“I don’t want to go to Montclair. I want Richfield, then Rutherford—”
“Luis, whatever you want, you’re on Interstate 80 heading west. Keep it up, and you’ll hit Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Okay?”
“That’s no damn good. I want Route 46, south. Where’s 46? You’ve got the map.”
They argued about it. He had to drive a long way before he found an exit that let him get off Interstate 80 westbound and onto Interstate 80 eastbound. “Don’t do anything clever,” she said. “Just stay on this and we’ll hit the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.”
“I don’t want the bloody bridge. I want the bloody tunnel. It’s not raining in the bloody tunnel.” They began arguing again.
4
Jerome Fantoni smoked a long cigar and played backgammon with Sammy. They always played for a dollar a point. Money was the only thing that made his nephew shut up and concentrate on the game; and Jerome liked backgammon because it let him think clearly about other matters.
He won twenty dollars and they stopped.
“Flattery,” he said. “I find it depressing how much flattery most people can take. Look how Cabrillo leaped at my suggestion that he was a British Intelligence agent.”
“The guy’s a phony?”
“Sammy, a real intelligence agent would have a cover story ready to hand, a legit reason for being in America, a job, whatever. Instead, Cabrillo tried to bullshit me with that flim-flam about codenames. That was not smart.”
“That was stupid,” Sammy agreed.
Jerome studied the stub of his cigar. “Stupid is dangerous. Cabrillo blunders into something which is not his business and then believes that his bullshit will erase his blunder. Instead he has doubled it.”
“That was real stupid.”
“You know where he lives? Yes, of course you do. Take his Studebaker, go there now and delete him from the records. Not the girl, unless you have to. Lose the Studebaker, I don’t want to be associated with it. Bring back the Buick. Dump the body in Connecticut.”
“Long Island’s nearer.”
“No. Connecticut went Republican. I don’t like Connecticut.” Jerome walked with Sammy to the door. “I should have known better when I saw them arrive. What sort of clown drives a Studebaker?” All around, thunder was still grunting and growling. “Drive carefully, Sammy. The roads are full of homicidal maniacs.”
5
Spence Mallaby thought that Manhattan was at its best in the rain. Everything wet looked clean. That was one of the first things he’d learned in the military: when an inspection takes place, if it’s wet, it’s clean. Later, his career in the military became more hazardous; now he was grateful to be alive. The world looked good, especially at night, when he was on t
he penthouse terrace, enjoying the rain, watching headlights that had lost their glare and tail-lights that were deeply and softly reflected by the soaking pavement. It was the only time when traffic was a pleasure to see.
He waited a long time, over two hours, but that was nothing; there had been occasions in the military when he had waited motionless, all day and night, until small animals came up and sniffed him and decided he was dead. Now he watched the traffic and thought about the quadriceps extensor muscle, the biggest muscle in the leg. From the pelvis to the knee there was nothing but muscle and perhaps fat and only one bone, the femur. The thigh made a large, clean target, unlike the lower leg, which was guarded by much bone; or the abdomen, packed with gastrointestinal plumbing. He had studied these things.
A cream-and-brown Studebaker convertible appeared and parked down below. A man got out and entered the building. No woman. Well, Mallaby was glad of that. Simplified the job. He left the terrace and opened the penthouse door. There was a light outside but the penthouse was dark. After a minute or so the whine of the elevator ceased and he heard its door slide open. Soon, Sammy appeared, silhouetted, and Spence Mallaby shot him in the left thigh. The sound was softer than a popped balloon. Sammy made more noise falling on his rump.
“There’s a message,” Mallaby said. “Go back to Venezuela.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sammy wheezed. “What the shit you do that for? That goddam hurt.” He felt his leg, and groaned. “I never been to fuckin’ Venezuela, pal.”
“Uh-huh. I have to leave now.”
“You do that an’ you’re a dead man. I got blood pourin’ out of me. I’m Sammy Fantoni, you asshole. Get me to a doctor, fast. Otherwise my family’s gonna blow your fuckin’ brains out. Christ Almighty, look what you did!”
Mallaby turned the lights on. He recognized Sammy, and he saw blood spreading rapidly outward from his thigh. “Maybe I clipped an artery,” he said. “Your femoral runs through there.” He took out a knife and slit Sammy’s pants. Blood was throbbing over the leg. “Where did I hit you?” Sammy’s fingers groped for the hole. “Press hard on that,” Mallaby said. He went away and came back with a kitchen spoon and a handful of neckties. “You like the blue or the green?” he asked.
“I feel like shit,” Sammy said.
“Nobody’s wearing shit this year.” Already a necktie was around the thigh, and knotted. Mallaby made a pad from a handkerchief, slid it under the knot, and tightened the tourniquet with the kitchen spoon. Blood still pulsed through Sammy’s fingers. Mallaby shifted the tourniquet, forcing his thumbs into the inside of the thigh, hunting for the spot where the artery could be jammed against the bone. He found it, moved the tourniquet, used another tie to lash the spoon in place. The flow stopped.
“You got your knee in my balls,” Sammy said weakly.
Mallaby dragged him into the apartment, searched him, found a short-barreled automatic in his hip pocket. “You here on business?” he asked. Sammy nodded. “Well, business is closed for the day. Remember when you said you felt like shit?” Sammy nodded again. “You’ve gone downhill fast since then,” Mallaby said. He shoved the gun back in the pocket.
His training in the military took over. First priority: get the casualty treated. Problem: moving Sammy out of the building. Solution: create a diversion. He called the Fire Department. Then he made a heap of newspapers, magazines and books on a table near the balcony, put a match to it and waited until it was burning hard. He picked up Sammy by the armpits and carried him to the elevator, put him inside, leaned him against a corner. Two floors down, the elevator stopped and a young couple got on. “Just a fainting fit,” Mallaby told them. “It happens.” He smiled, so they smiled too. Smile and the world smiles with you. Hitler had a nice smile.
There was a couch in the lobby. He and Sammy sat there for a short while, until he heard the fire siren whooping joyously. He slid his right arm under Sammy’s coat and got a good grip around his ribcage and half-carried him out of the building. Everyone was looking at the firemen, or pointing up. There were cops, but they were busy keeping the traffic moving. And the rain helped. Mallaby got Sammy into the Studebaker, found the keys in his pocket, drove away. Stage one completed.
*
Luis was drifting along, searching for a parking slot, when Julie saw the flames. “That’s us!” she said. “The penthouse is on fire!” He swung the Buick into a space reserved for buses and they watched a fire truck blare a hole through the traffic. “How extraordinary,” he said. “And look, all the lights are on. We didn’t leave the lights on.”
She had nothing to say about that. The whole experience was bizarre: sitting in comfort, watching her home burning through curtains of rain, while Nat King Cole sang Misty on the car radio. It was totally cock-eyed.
“And I think that’s my Studebaker.” He pointed to the opposite side of the street. She nearly said it was impossible, the car was in Jersey. But what were the odds against a different cream-and-brown Studebaker convertible being parked on this block? It wasn’t a car you saw every day. Or every week. As they looked, it drove away. “Fantoni keeps the Studebaker, which turns up here just as our apartment burns. This is not a healthy place,” he said. “We are not wanted.” He pulled out and joined the traffic. She felt sad; she had begun to like the penthouse. There were books of hers, and records, up there … Now what?
“I timed that nicely, didn’t I?” Luis said. “Spot-on.”
“You didn’t time anything, you schmuck. It was luck.”
“Ten minutes earlier, you’d have got your eyebrows singed.”
“Pure luck! Jesus Christ, Luis, you got lost three times, just getting here.”
“I was one hundred percent right about the tunnel. It’s definitely faster than the bridge, isn’t it? If we’d taken the bridge, we’d never have seen the Studebaker.”
“And if I hadn’t turned you round, we’d be in Ohio, you moron.”
“Perfect timing,” he said. “It’s an instinct we Spanish have.”
“My American instinct tells me we have nowhere to sleep. Think you can find a hotel?”
“I’ll find you six hotels, sweetheart, all different colors. Which d’you like?” Luis was feeling buoyant. He was glad to be out of the penthouse. Too many people knew about it.
*
The dealer had sold the Studebaker cheap because he knew it was a lemon. The previous owner had spent zero on servicing, and now, at the worst possible time and place, in the rain, halfway between the apartment building and the hospital, the car died of neglect.
Spence Mallaby was driving one-handed, using the other to hold Sammy upright. He was heading uptown on Broadway, aiming for Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, talking to Sammy, asking how he felt and was there any blood running down his leg, and getting mumbled answers, and not seeing the red light glowing on the dash. Up ahead, someone changed lanes without looking, a truck-trailer slammed on its brakes, the trailer fishtailed, a bus swerved and sideswiped a couple of cars and in a few seconds, uptown Broadway was jammed. Heavy rain, heavy traffic, it happens.
The Studebaker wasn’t hit, but the road was blocked, Mallaby couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. The red slight still glowed. Clogged oil filter. The engine was being starved of lubricant, the pistons were hotter than hell. Soon, the Studebaker died. By then, Sammy wasn’t even mumbling. Mallaby had a flashlight. He meant to check on the tourniquet but the flashlight showed a spreading pool of blood at Sammy’s feet. His heart had been young and strong and it had pumped him dry. Well, deep potholes, poor suspension, thumps and shakes, what else can you expect? No tourniquet lasts forever. This one must have slipped.
Mallaby wiped his prints off everything he might have touched, got out and ran through the pelting rain to the nearest subway station.
Win some, lose some.
CATCH THE WIND OR YOU CRASH
1
The day after the fire, they left New York as soon as Luis could get to the bank and empty his safe-d
eposit box. He had about fifteen hundred dollars. The Times, the Trib and the News ran short reports on the finding of Sammy Fantoni’s bloodless body in an abandoned Studebaker. No mention of a double slaying on 10th Street, but the Trib carried an interview with Stevie Biaggi. Asked when she last saw her husband Vincent, she said their different careers kept them apart. Clearly the Trib had been tipped off.
“No tunnels, no bridges,” Luis decided. “I don’t like toll gates. Too easy for the FBI to watch.”
“The FBI doesn’t know we’ve got the Buick.”
“Jerome Fantoni could have reported it stolen.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Why would somebody kill his nephew?”
Silence, while Luis studied a road map.
“I don’t know,” Julie said. “Sammy wasn’t smart but he wasn’t a total schmuck. He deserved better.” She still couldn’t believe he was dead.
“We take Broadway to Route 9,” Luis announced. “Same way we went to lunch at Tarrytown, remember? But we keep going, alongside the Hudson, north, past Ossining, Croton, Peekskill …” The map ran out. “Until we find a bridge over the river without a toll. Then we’ll think again.”
They drove 150 miles to Albany, ate lunch, bought suitcases, pajamas, toilet kit, changes of clothing, and more maps.
North led to Canada. They turned southwest into the mountains and cow pastures of New York State. Julie drove. “Now that we’re not in Manhattan,” she said, “where the hell are we going?”
Luis was studying a map of the East Coast states. “It seems to me that all the roads lead to Washington, DC.”
“That’s so decent people can get away from it.”
“I smell power. Greed. Vanity. Lust. All that man needs to make life a thing of simple joy and staggering wealth.”
“Uh-huh.” She tried to think of a better place to go. Philly? Baltimore? Pittsburgh? She had an aunt in Roanoke, Virginia. Not necessarily still alive, though. She gave up. “I guess DC is as good as anywhere,” she said.
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