Ransom

by Jon Cleary

  “Lies, I guess. You see, releasing those guys isn’t just up to me. The District Attorney is the key man - and like me, he’s got people behind him leaning on him. He’s got political ambitions - next time around he’d like to run for Governor. But he’s the one who’ll have to effect the release. He’ll come to some arrangement with the judge who’s going to preside on the bomb conspiracy case and have a motion made to dismiss it. He’s not a callous son-of-a-bitch, but he’s even more hard-nosed than I am about law and order. And he knows those anarchists better than I do. He figures if we let them go free, go to Cuba, they’ll be back in the United States within six months. They’re fanatics and they’re not going to give up their fight. You want something else to eat ?”

  “Just some of this fruit.” Malone took an apple from the bowl on the table.

  “Fruit for dessert is an old Italian custom. My mother never believed in apple pie or angelfood cake or all those things Americans are supposed to fight wars for.”

  “Were your parents born in Italy?”

  “Only my mother. Her name was Verrazano. My father claims she is a direct descendant of Giovanni da Verrazano, who was the first European to sail into New York Bay - we have a bridge named after him.”

  “That must have been a help when you first ran for Mayor.”

  “It was when I first ran for Congress too.”

  “Does your wife mind you being in politics?” Malone suddenly realized he was talking about an absolute stranger, a woman he had never even seen.

  “No. Does yours mind you being a cop?”

  Malone chewed on the slice of apple in his mouth. He could not taste it, but the peeling and slicing of the fruit gave him something to do with his hands. Any minute diversion was a relief from the agony that filled his mind each time he thought of Lisa. “I don’t think she understands the -the politics of it, if you like. When it comes to law and order she tends to think of everything in black and white. Most people do, I guess.”

  “You’re looking at our present situation in straight black and white.”

  “I think you are too - when you forget you’re the Mayor.”

  “Maybe. But nobody lets me forget I am the Mayor.”

  Then the two Forte children arrived, brought home from their respective schools. Roger, red-haired, sixteen and already taller than his father, shook hands with Malone. “Glad to meet you, sir.”

  “It would be better in other circumstances,” said Malone, and the boy, after a moment’s puzzled blink, then nodded.

  Pier Forte freed herself from her father’s embrace. She was as dark as her father, already a beauty at fourteen, and Malone had the immediate feeling that she was going to cope with this situation better than either her father or her brother. She is not only Michael Forte’s daughter, he thought, she is very much Sam Forte’s granddaughter.

  “I am sorry for you, Inspector. But I am sure my mother will do her best to see that the kidnappers don’t hurt your

  wife.” The speech sounded almost rehearsed, yet Malone knew the young girl had had no expectation of meeting him, had not known that he would be here.

  He glanced at Forte, then back at the young, composed face. “I’m sure they’ll both be all right.”

  “When are you releasing the anarchists, Dad?” Roger had picked up a banana from the table and was peeling it; without being greedy he looked like a boy who would always be eating, never able to fill the frame that was too big for him. “There’s a guy at school who’s one.”

  “One what?” his father said.

  “An anarchist, for Pete’s sake - “

  “They’re everywhere,” said Forte drily to Malone; but his humour did not reach his eyes. “Roger goes to Portsmouth Priory, it’s supposed to be one of the top Catholic schools in the country. When I was there we were only interested in two things - dodging prayers and catching girls.”

  “Some of the Catholic girls at St Tim’s are saying prayers for Mother,” said Pier; then added, and Malone did not know whether she was being truthful or just gracious: “And for Mrs Malone too, Inspector.”

  The mention of prayers reminded Malone of his own mother; he tried to remember the time gap between New York and Sydney, wondered if she and his father and Lisa’s parents down in Melbourne had yet heard the news. Christ, he thought, I’m so bloody concerned with myself. “Mr Forte, I wonder if I could make a couple of phone calls to Australia?”

  As soon as he uttered the words they sounded ridiculous in his own ears: on the rare occasions back home when he had made a trunk call to Lisa’s parents in Melbourne, he had counted the pips as if they were gongs of doom. But Forte was a man accustomed to his overnight guests asking if they could make international phone calls: “Ask Nathan to place the calls for you. He’ll get you priority, if it’s needed.”

  As Malone went out of the room he heard Forte say to his children, “You’re to go down to Grandma Veerkamp’s - “

  “We want to stay here!”

  Malone heard no more as, out in the hall, he found Nathan the butler, who led him into a small study, got the Melbourne number first and handed the phone over to Malone. “I hope it is a good line, sir.”

  The line was almost too clear: Malone heard Lisa’s mother gasp as he spoke to her. It was ten o’clock in the morning in Melbourne and the news of the kidnapping had been on the early morning radio news. It’s already tomorrow out there, he thought; her parents and mine are probably out of their heads trying to work out the actual time of the deadline. It had always confused him that Australians and Americans had two different dates for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, almost as if history were echoing itself on successive days. He tried to sound reassuring to Lisa’s mother and to her father, who soon took over the phone from his wife; but distance and Malone’s own despair exposed his words for the sham they were. He wanted to hang up, but that -ould be too brutal. He did not know Lisa’s parents well and he had no measure of their capacity for pain.

  Then he realized that Jan Pretorious was comforting him. “Scobie, all we can do is trust in God. I wish we could be there with you. If the worst - ” his voice faltered for a moment: ten thousand miles of painful silence separated the two men ” - if the worst happens, we’ll fly over at once. Will you call us again?”

  “As soon as I have something definite.”

  While he waited for the call to Sydney to go through he looked at the books on the shelves in front of him. They seemed to be all political biographies: Presidents stood in ranks at eye-level before him: some books looked as if they had been handled more than others, some Presidents taken down and scrutinized to see what example they offered. On the desk on which the phone stood was a brand-new book, but Malone had to look twice to make sure he had

  not mistaken the title: Baedeker’s United States, i8gj. He leafed through it, the phone still held to his ear. In that year one could stay at the Waldorf-Astoria for four dollars, including meals; Los Angeles was still trying to drag itself together as a city; Las Vegas sold wool and nothing else. He wondered who in this house had bought the book, who was so tired of the present and afraid of the future that they wanted to retreat so far into the good old days. He could guess who it was; and he understood. He wondered what Australia had been like in 1893, felt his own desire to escape into nostalgia.

  The line to Sydney was, inexplicably, a bad one. Only Brigid Malone was at home and she keened as if at a wake. He could see her in his mind’s eye, holding the phone almost at arm’s length, shouting into it as if she were on a direct line to Hell: “Wait till I get me glasses - I can’t see you for weeping!”

  “Mum!” He found he was yelling too, chasing her down the thousands of miles as she went looking for her glasses. Then he realized what he was doing, where he was, and he began to laugh almost uncontrollably. He was still laughing when she came back on the phone.

  “Is it good news you have, then? Is the poor girl safe?”

  “No, Mum.” The keening started again, made wor
se by static; it was time to hang up. “Mum, I have to go. I’ll call you again tomorrow - “

  “What?” she shouted across the world, unable to believe he was so far away from her when he needed her so much. “I’m having a Mass said for the poor girl - “

  She’s already buried Lisa, he thought: the Irish dig graves while other people dig gardens. He shouted goodbye to her again and hung up, knowing she would still be there yelling comfort to him into the dead phone for minutes after he had gone. When he went out of the study Nathan was in the hall.

  “How do I pay for the calls, Nathan?”

  “I think the City of New York can afford them, sir,” said the butler with a slow sympathetic smile.

  Malone grinned. “I wonder if the City of New York could afford me a drink?”

  “Another beer, sir?”

  Malone shook his head: he needed something stronger than American beer to get him over what he had just been through. “A Scotch and water.”

  Forte was waiting for him in the living-room. Rain had begun to pelt against the windows and outside the wind was finding the weak branches in the trees. “I have to go out - I have to take the kids down to their grandparents, then I have to go to my campaign headquarters down at the Biltmore. Do you mind being left alone or would you like to come with me?”

  “Will there be reporters down at your headquarters?”

  “Dozens of them, I’d say.”

  “I’ll stay here.” Then the cop in him said, “What about your kids? I mean, in case someone tries to snatch themV

  Forte looked grateful for his concern. “That’s been taken care of. There’ll be a police guard staked outside my in-laws’ apartment. But thanks for thinking of it.”

  Malone nodded, feeling a slowly growing rapport with the other man. There would never be time for them to become friends, but Malone’s life was milestoned by friends he had never made, men whom he understood and who understood him but whom he had never had time to stay with; friendship was a continual siren call in a policeman’s life, always desired but always suspect or inconvenient. He would be gone from here in a day or two, with or without Lisa, and Forte would be another one of those he had liked but would never really know.

  Then the butler came to the door. “Mr Frank Padua wishes to see you, sir.”

  “Padua? Frank Padua?” Forte’s brow came down in puzzlement, then he shook his head. “Tell him I can’t see him.”

  “I think he anticipated that, sir. He said to tell you it was to do with Mrs Forte.”

  Malone looked sharply at Forte. The latter said, “Tell Mr Padua to wait a moment,” and the butler went out. Forte lowered his voice. “I don’t know what the hell this is all about.”

  “Who’s this Padua?”

  “A wheeler-dealer, he’s in everything in this town that will make a buck - and he’s made a lot. But as far as I know he’s respectable. I’d better see him alone.”

  “If he has any news of your wife, then he’d know something about mine. You can’t expect me to step outside - “

  When the butler brought Padua into the room Malone recognized his type at once. He could have been an old-fashioned banker, a gentleman whose larceny would be gentlemanly and courteous. Yet Malone sensed this was a man whose money was not as old as the man himself, who was not quite sure of the power of money and would therefore, when the pinch came, rely too much on it. Sydney, like New York and affluent cities everywhere, was full of them, the robber barons who wanted to be accepted at court.

  “I wanted to see you alone, Mr Mayor.” Padua, like Sam Forte, had worked hard on his voice; but he was twenty years behind Sam and the rough times in New Jersey were still there in the voice that was hardly more than a whisper. “Perhaps Inspector Malone will excuse us?”

  Malone shook his head and Forte said, “I understand you wanted to see me about my wife. Inspector Malone’s wife is with her - he and I are in the same terrible situation.”

  “As you wish. May I sit down? I have had a very busy afternoon - ever since I heard of this dreadful business.” He sat down, carefully arranging the creases in his trousers. He pulled down his shirt cuffs and Malone caught the glint of gold; he had the feeling that Padua had dressed specially for this call. Forte sat down opposite Padua, but Malone, suddenly on edge, wondering what the news of Lisa and Sylvia Forte might be, remained standing. “As you know, Mr Mayor, I have a lot of connections in our city - “

  “So I’ve heard. I have some myself- they go with the job.”

  The irony was not lost on Padua; he smiled appreciatively. “True, true. But from your demeanour I assume your connections have not been as helpful as mine have been - “

  “Padua, for Christ’s sake get to the point!” Forte’s voice did not rise, but Malone saw his body stiffen.

  “Mr Mayor, I believe I may be in a position to effect the return of your good ladies.” He looked up at Malone, acknowledging him at last. His prim posture in the chair, his over-formal way of speech, brought on another image in Malone’s mind: the bishop from the wrong side of the tracks, the priest who knew all the cardinal’s sins. There were no such bishops in Sydney, or if there were the Criminal Investigation Bureau hadn’t yet been called in; but Italy and the older Catholic countries, he had been told, were full of them. And Padua was an Italian, a different sort from Michael Forte: all his expensive conservatism could not hide his inborn talent for intrigue. “That is why I have been so busy this afternoon. My connections - “

  “What connections?”

  “Ah, I am not at liberty to say, much as I should like to take you into my confidence. However - “

  “Padua, have you come here with any definite information on my wife and Mrs Malone? Or are you just flying a kite?”

  Padua spread his hands palms upwards, the Italian answer that was no answer. “That depends. Are you interested in kite-flying?”

  Forte sensed rather than saw Malone’s angry, impatient movement; without looking at Malone he waved a restraining hand. “All right, Padua. Keep talking.”

  “I shall be honest with you - I do not wish to raise your hopes unduly. I do not like to see suffering any more than I care to endure it myself.” He took a gold watch from the fob pocket of his waistcoat. “I should need probably seven or eight hours - can you give me that much time?”

  “First, I want to know who your connections are. Are they

  political connections? I just don’t believe Tom Kirkbride would try to make capital out of something like this.”

  “Mr Kirkbride has nothing to do with this, I assure you.”

  “Then who are they?”

  “Just connections.”

  There was a loud crack from outside, the gunshot sound of a branch being snapped off by the wind. Forte looked up at Malone, then back at Padua. “Are your connections the Mafia?”

  “What is the Mafia?” There was no surprise at the question on Padua’s smooth thin face; it was as bland as an over-exposed photograph. “Mr Mayor, you are Italian like me. You know we don’t admit any more that there is such a thing as the Mafia. It offends our patrial sensitivities.”

  “I didn’t know I had any till I came into politics. But it is the Mafia we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Connections, that’s all I have. But I think they can be very helpful.”

  “For a price?”

  Padua spread his hands again. “I haven’t talked about such a thing with them. My desire to help you is just that of a citizen who thinks such things as this dreadful kidnapping should not happen in our city.”

  I’m going to king-hit the oily bastard in a moment, thought Malone. But he restrained himself and said, “Mr Padua, you’re not being helpful at all. I don’t know what Mr Forte thinks of your offer to help, but I think you ought to be kicked up the arse for coming here giving us false hopes and then trying to make some sort of deal. If you came into a police station and tried that same sort of caper, I’d lock you up.”

  Padua stared
coldly at Malone for a moment, then he stood up. “I can help you, Mr Forte. Here is my card. Call me at home if you think I’m honest in my offer and that Inspector Malone is wrong in his opinion of me. Goodnight. I’d just warn you - you don’t have too much time.”

  He went out, walking with practised dignity. Malone took

  a step after him, but Forte stood up and grabbed his arm.

  “Let me bring him back! Christ, he’s the only lead we’ve had so far - “

  “Nothing doing.” He waited till Malone relaxed, then he let sfo of the Australian’s arm. He looked at the card in his hand, then dropped it on a small side table. “If he was here sounding out the chances of a deal with the Mafia, I wouldn’t want to listen to him. I’ve never connected Padua with them before, but it’s no surprise.”

  “Have you had any trouble from the Mafia before? Padua said you were Italian like him - “

  Forte’s mouth stiffened. “Never. There are quite a few Italians who’ll have nothing to do with them. Most of them are Sicilians and my old man, like a lot from northern Italy, has no time for them.”

  “If Padua came up with some proof that he knows where Lisa and your wife are - would you do a deal with him?” Malone was still chafing with anger at being held back: he had wanted to grab Padua by the throat and force the man to tell them if he knew anything.

  “Jesus, how do I know what I’d do!” Forte whirled round, working off his own sudden anger; then he regained control of himself, turned back. “Look, these guys have their price for everything. That explorer I mentioned, Verrazano, he went on down to Brazil and the Carib Indians ate him as a main course. If I made a deal with Padua, his connections would do the same with me. Except I’d be the hors d’ceuvres and they’d take the city as a main course. I can’t take the chance - not yet.”

  Malone sat down in a chair by the window. Outside, the wind and rain had risen now to a full storm: Hurricane Myrtle was making her presence felt. He could not comprehend the power of the Mafia; he had read of its strength here in America, and an Antipodean branch had tried its luck in Melbourne but without much success. Sydney was not without its corruption, but it was fragmented: politicians, aldermen, policemen, all looking for graft for their own ends: