by Ed McBain
“What would you like to know?”
“When?”
“Tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”
“Where?”
“Celia Mescolata’s.”
“Blackjack?”
“Poker.”
“The stakes?”
“Very high.”
“How many players?”
“Six.”
“Mmmm,” Bozzaris said.
Somewhere on Capri, there was music.
They had taken an after-dinner stroll along the Via Quisisana, and then had stopped for a granita in the Piazzetta. Now, with the windows of their bedroom open to the soft night air, Stella tried to sleep while somewhere someone strummed a guitar and sang, she supposed, of unrequited love. It did not help that Carmine was snoring.
“Carmine?” she said.
“Mrmh.”
“Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Carmine?”
“Mrmh.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“I’m asleep, I told you.”
“Carmine, I have a feeling that something terrible has happened to Lewis.”
“Nothing has happened to Lewis, go to sleep.”
“How do you know nothing has happened to him?”
“Nanny knows exactly where we are. If anything was wrong, she’d call. That’s how I know.”
“Still.”
“Go to sleep, Stella.”
“All right, Carmine. Good night, Carmine.”
“Good night, Stella.”
Stella listened to the guitar. She wished she understood Italian. Thirty years ago, when Carmine asked her to marry him, she had answered, “But I don’t understand Italian, Carmine.”
“What’s that got to do with love?” he said.
“Suppose we were out with some of your friends, and they began talking Italian?”
“I would tell them to talk English,” Carmine said.
“Yes, but would they do it?”
“They would do it,” he said, and gave a short emphatic nod that convinced her immediately. Carmine, who had been twenty years her senior even then, was true to his word. Whenever any of his friends began talking Italian in her presence, he would say, “Talk English.” As a result, Stella still didn’t understand Italian. Not that she minded, except on a night like this when she was so homesick, and a guitar player was singing songs she couldn’t translate.
“Carmine?” she said.
“Mrmh.”
“Carmine, I’m homesick.”
“We’ll be going home at the end of the month, go to sleep.”
“Carmine, aren’t you homesick?”
“No.”
“Don’t you miss Lewis?”
“Yes, but I’m not homesick.”
“Don’t you miss the house?”
“Only the darkroom,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
Mario Azzecca lived on Sutton Place South in an apartment building that had two doormen. The doormen were there so that none of the tenants would be burglarized in their sleep or mugged in the elevator. A third man ran the elevator, which meant that the bastions were well guarded against criminal assault at every hour of the day or night. Paulie Secondo, carrying fifty thousand dollars in cash and a round-trip airline ticket to Naples-via-Rome, arrived at Azzecca’s building at twenty minutes past eight. He was announced by the doorman and promptly asked to go right up, sir, elevator on the left, seventh floor, apartment 7G as in George.
Mario Azzecca was sitting in his living room waiting for the Delacorte fountain to go on. It went on every night at eight-thirty sharp, shooting a spray of water some hundred feet into the air, and was not turned off again until ten. From Azzecca’s living room, he could see clear across the East River to the southerly tip of Welfare Island, where Delacorte had erected the fountain for an estimated cost of three hundred thousand dollars. It was rumored that the fountain cost twenty-five thousand dollars a year to operate, and that it had been constructed for the amusement and amazement of United Nations delegates, but Mario Azzecca firmly believed it had been placed there for his pleasure alone. For hours on end, he would watch the display with unflagging interest. It was even better than watching the traffic on the Queensboro Bridge, which was also fascinating. He was, in truth, a trifle annoyed that Paulie Secondo arrived just a few minutes before the fountain was scheduled to erupt against the nighttime sky.
“Have you got the money?” he asked, somewhat brusquely.
“I have got the money,” Paulie said. Paulie spoke with a distinct Italian accent that was sometimes embarrassing. Being Italian himself, Azzecca did not mind dealing with other Italians, but he drew the line at outright greaseballs—unless they happened to be very high up in the organization, which Paulie Secondo happened to be. Reflecting on the hierarchy (while nonetheless keeping one eye on the southern exposure), Azzecca decided it might be judicious to adopt a more cheerful manner.
“I’m sorry we had to put you through all this trouble, Paulie,” he said. “But Ganooch needs the money right away.”
“No trouble,” Paulie said. “He told you why?”
“No.”
Paulie shrugged. “No matter. He wants the money, he gets the money.”
“There it goes,” Azzecca said, and looked at his watch.
“What?” Paulie said.
“The fountain.”
“Oh,” Paulie said, and peered through the window. “Nice,” he said, and turned away without interest. He reached into his jacket pocket and threw a bulging envelope onto the glass-topped coffee table. “Fifty thousand,” he said. “In hundred-dollar bills, okay?”
“Fine,” Azzecca said.
Paulie threw an airlines folder onto the table beside the envelope. “One ticket New York-Rome, Rome-Naples,” he said. “And return.”
“What airline?” Azzecca asked.
Paulie raised his eyebrows. “What airline you think?” he said.
“Who do you want us to send?” Azzecca asked.
“It’s done,” Paulie said.
“What do you mean?”
“On the ticket. It was necessary to give a name.”
“Who?”
“Someone of little importance. Something goes wrong, we want no connection, capisce?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Get the ticket and the money to him, tell him to be on the Alitalia plane tomorrow night at ten o’clock. He will be met in Naples on Saturday at two.” Paulie looked through the window again. “How long does that thing shoot water?” he asked.
“Until ten.”
“Looks like somebody laying on his back and taking a piss in the air,” Paulie said.
Azzecca picked up the airlines folder, pulled out the ticket, and looked at the passenger’s name.
“Ah yes,” he said, “Benny Napkins.”
10: The Jackass
Carmine Ganucci could not fall asleep again.
The more he thought about the deal Truffatore and Ladruncolo had proposed, the more it stunk. To begin with, despite his fancy maneuvering, the profit was still very low. On an investment of fifty thousand dollars, he would earn a profit of thirty thousand dollars when the gold medallions were delivered to New York. If the medallions were delivered. And if they were really gold. Because if they weren’t, he’d lose the whole fifty grand outright and besides have cleanup work to do in Naples, which meant hiring people you didn’t know and trusting your business to strangers. But even if the medallions were really silver-plated gold, and even if they were delivered to New York, he would have all the trouble of melting them down and then getting rid of the gold, which seemed like an operation for a jeweler and not a respectable businessman. If he loan-sharked that same amount of money, the interest would be twenty per cent
a week. At the end of four weeks, he could realize a profit of forty thousand dollars, ten thousand more than the Naples deal would bring. And it was more convenient to be dealing with people in New York, where if they didn’t pay back the money, or if something else went wrong, you could always break their heads. And also, suppose those two Neapolitan morons got busted for bringing dope into Italy inside pearls, and suppose it got traced back to Carmine Ganucci, that he was responsible for the whole transaction, having provided the fifty G’s that made the deal viable, so then he would be connected to an international dope smuggling operation, wonderful. And also, was it a sin to melt down medallions of the Virgin Mary?
The whole thing stunk.
“Carmine?” Stella said.
“What?”
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Thinking?” Stella said.
“Yes. I have to send another cable in the morning. Jesus,” he said, “this is going to cost me a fortune.”
“What kind of a cable?” Stella asked.
“To my lawyers. To tell them to never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“Never mind what,” Ganucci said. “Also, we have to get in touch with a travel agent.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m sick of this place and I want to go home and develop some of these pictures I’ve been taking.”
Stella held her breath for just an instant and then, in a very small voice, asked, “When, Carmine?”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
The night had turned hot and muggy.
All up and down the street, bare-armed women sat on front stoops and discussed the possibility of rain, while in the pizza parlor near the corner, men in shirt sleeves threw fingers at each other, deciding by the number showing on an outflung hand who would be Boss and who would be Under-Boss, who could drink beer and who could not.
Above the pizzeria, in Celia Mescolata’s kitchen, Benny Napkins was winning a fortune and wishing that The Jackass would get hit by a bus. The very thought of winning from such expert gamblers as Celia and the men in her kitchen was dizzying. Even though it had been necessary to find a last-minute replacement for Willie, who had never shown up (and this was a definite loss since Willie was reputed to be a very shrewd gambler, the originator in fact of the Hong Kong Cut), these four men and Celia were as classy a collection of poker players as Benny had ever seen assembled. Each of them appreciated the solemn, almost religious nature of the game and each was willing to lose or win enormous sums of money with all the dignity of a priest at the poor box.
Even Celia, who had been reluctant to organize the game, and who was now losing as heavily as the men at the table, seemed to be enjoying the electric excitement with which bets were made and called, hands bluffed, pots escalated. Celia’s game was blackjack, and she had told Benny flat out that afternoon that, as far as she was concerned, poker was always a losing proposition. The way she figured it (and she had spent a great deal of time figuring it, even though she could never master algebra at Julia Richman High School, which she had attended as a girl), the odds in blackjack were always in favor of the house because the dealer collected from players who went bust the moment they went bust, regardless of whether the dealer went bust later. Celia had painstakingly calculated that the odds (even after paying off for natural 21-counts, and adjusting for ties and standoffs) were almost six per cent in the dealer’s favor. That was better than a person could get from most savings banks. That was why she liked blackjack. On the few occasions when poker had been played in her kitchen, she had cut the pot for ten per cent each hand, which to the casual onlooker might have seemed like a better percentage than six per cent. But Celia had estimated that she could deal six blackjack hands in the time it took to play one poker hand. When she multiplied her six per cent by six, it came to thirty-six as against ten per cent for cutting the poker pot, or so she calculated. She preferred blackjack.
But Benny Napkins had convinced her that this was to be no penny-ante, Cheap Charlie affair. In addition to himself, he wanted her to come up with five players who were willing to invest ten thousand dollars each in a freewheeling, old-fashioned, table-stakes poker game. It did not take Celia long to reckon that six times ten thousand was sixty thousand, and that the house cut on the total sum invested would be six thousand dollars. Even if she decided to play herself (which she had) and even if she lost her entire stake (which she did not plan to do), her total investment would be no more than four thousand dollars as against the possibility of winning fifty thousand dollars. That came to odds of at least twelve-and-a-half-to-one in her favor which were not as good as the thirty-six-percent blackjack take, but which were certainly better than the normal ten-per-cent poker take. Or so Celia reasoned.
In the meantime, Benny Napkins was winning. It was five minutes to ten, and he was winning. This was table-stakes poker and each player, at the start of the game, had placed in front of him a ten-thousand-dollar bundle. (No one had actually counted the bills in each bundle, but Benny presumed the other players were at least slightly more honest than he and had brought into the game the price of admission as announced by Celia Mescolata.) He glanced around the table now as Ricco Locare, who was Willie’s replacement, dealt the cards. Benny’s quick estimate was that he had at least thirty thousand dollars in bills of various denominations sitting in front of him, whereas the other players’ piles had diminished respectively and noticeably.
It was now three minutes to ten, and Ricco was telling Celia to bet her ace.
Oh, please, Benny thought, if there is a God in heaven, please let The Jackass break his leg.
“Hundred for the ace,” Celia said.
“I’ll see you,” Morrie Goldstein said.
“Benny?”
“Raise it a hundred,” Benny said.
“What’ve you got there, a lousy pair of jacks?” Celia said, looking over at the open jack of diamonds.
“Be three of them on the next card,” Benny said, and grinned.
It was two minutes to ten.
“Two hundred to you, Angie,” Ricco said.
“Call.”
“I’ll take a chance too,” Ricco said, and anted, and then turned to the player on his left. “What do you say, Ralph?”
“What the hell,” Ralph said, and put his two hundred in the pot.
“Here we go,” Ricco said, and began dealing.
He gave Benny his third jack just as the hands on Celia’s kitchen clock reached the hour. Benny closed his eyes, and opened them again in the next instant, when the kitchen door was kicked in. A tall skinny man with a nylon stocking pulled over his face (always a goddamn nylon stocking, Benny thought, and sighed) and a stupid white hat pulled low on his forehead and a forty-five automatic pistol in his fist, barged into the room and said, “Don’t nobody move,” the automatic covering the table like a cannon over the Strait of Gibraltar. Nobody moved. Everybody knew better than to move because, with the possible exception of Celia, each of the players in the game had occasionally been on the other end of a cannon pointing at somebody, and they knew it was prudent not to move in such circumstances. So the tall skinny man with the stocking over his head moved swiftly around the table and scooped up all of the money there—exactly fifty-two thousand dollars, since at least some of the players were just as dishonest as Benny and had brought into the game less than the required admission stake. The man with the stocking over his head put all of the money into a large A & P shopping bag, and then backed toward the door, still waving the automatic.
He slammed the door behind him.
Benny Napkins wanted to weep.
Detective Lieutenant Alexander Bozzaris was heading up the street for Celia Mescolata’s apartment—where he intended to bust the card game unless the players took
up a collection in his honor—when he saw a tall skinny guy running in his direction. The guy had a nylon stocking pulled over his head and a shopping bag in his hands. It looked as if dollar bills were spilling out of the shopping bag. Bozzaris right away figured something was up.
“Stop!” he yelled. “Police!”
11: Dominick the Guru
Dominick was wearing a plaid shirt, blue jeans, brown cotton gloves, and black track shoes, his usual working uniform. In his right hand he carried a black leather bag containing the tools of his trade, namely: a hand drill and bits of various sizes, a jimmy, a complete set of picklocks, several punches and skeleton keys, a pair of nippers, a hacksaw, and a crowbar designed so that it could be taken apart and carried in three sections. Slung over his left shoulder was a laundry bag full of various items he had collected that night. The combined weight of the two bags made it somewhat difficult to negotiate the iron rungs of the fire escapes running up the rear wall of the building. But then, every occupation has its hazards.
Dominick had cased the building for three weeks running, and had decided that tonight, Thursday, would be a good time for a hit. Thursday night was maid’s night off, which meant that a lot of the tenants went out to eat, which further meant that their apartments would be empty for long stretches at a time. Dominick was a careful worker and did not like to be interrupted unexpectedly. It was now a little past ten-thirty, and he had worked three apartments already and was thinking that perhaps he ought to head for home. But he was still feeling energetic and, in fact, invigorated (it was funny the way breaking and entry could buoy up a man’s sagging spirits), and so he decided to rip off one more place before retiring for the night. The apartment he chose was on the tenth floor rear, with the fire escape just outside a darkened window. The room was not air-conditioned; the window was wide open. Dominick could only assume that the tenants were out-of-towners who had just moved to New York.
He crouched on the fire escape for a long time, peering into the room. The door leading to the rest of the apartment was closed, and so it was impossible to tell whether or not anyone was in one of the other rooms. But he could hear no sounds, could see no telltale sliver of light showing in the crack at the bottom of the closed door. He eased himself into the room and padded across it in his track shoes. He put his ear against the door and listened. He could still hear nothing. Satisfied, he took a small flashlight from his pocket and looked around.