Ransom

by Jon Cleary

  They drove back to Manhattan through the almost deserted streets; the storm seemed to have worsened. It was almost a relief to get inside the detention building; at least the storm gathering in here had not yet broken. But in the hard light reflected from the yellow walls none of the guards looked relaxed. Malone noticed, as he had this afternoon, the tension under the casual, gum-chewing attitude of the officers; this hurricane they policed might not blow itself out for years, not till the whole prison system was changed. Jefferson signed himself and Malone in, checked his gun

  with the guard in the duty cubicle, then led Malone into the Warden’s office.

  The Assistant Warden, a black about Jefferson’s age, was on duty. “I can’t let you see them this time of night, John. What authority have you got?”

  “I’ll sign a DD24, if you want it.”

  Davidson, the Assistant Warden, pondered a moment, then nodded. “Okay, just to keep my own nose clean. Parker ? I dunno he’ll come down to see you.”

  “Just tell him Don Auguste Giuffre sent us.”

  Davidson’s eyebrows went up. He had prematurely grey hair and eyebrows; Malone thought he looked like a negative of a white man, but he knew he would never voice the description. He had noticed that Davidson had barely glanced at him since he had entered the room.

  “The Mafia? Are they in this?”

  “What’s the Mafia?” Jefferson made an Italian gesture with his hands; both blacks smiled at each other. “Just do me the favour, Phil. We’re trying every angle we can to get Inspector Malone’s wife back. And the Mayor’s.”

  Davidson looked at Malone seemingly for the first time. Then he nodded. “Okay. But if Parker won’t see you, I’m not gonna press him. We got enough to worry about here without worrying about what’s going on outside.”

  That’s it, Malone thought. He doesn’t care one way or the other about me, whether I’m white, brindle or striped. I’m just an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong to his world, The Tombs. He and all the other guards are the long-term prisoners here.

  Malone and Jefferson went out to one of the interview rooms, sat there for ten minutes before the door finally opened and a grey-haired man, his face still cobwebbed with sleep, came in with a young black guard.

  “Curiosity got the better of me, Captain.” Fred Parker sat down at the table, lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke. Malone tried to guess his age, but it was impossible: too many years had been crossed out on the lined calendar of

  his face. Once he might have been heavily built, but passion and God knew what else had worn all the flesh off him; the fingers that held the cigarette were the thinnest Malone had ever seen on a man, no more than claws of bone. Yet there was an air of tired tranquillity about Parker, as if the tightly wound spring of the years had finally rusted and fallen apart. “Who the hell is Don Auguste Giuffre? Is that the name you sent up?”

  Jefferson considered the other man for a moment, then said, “I do believe you honestly don’t know. You live in a world all your own, you anarchists, don’t you?”

  “Everyone needs his escape, Captain. But don’t quote me.” He looked over his shoulder at the young guard behind him. “Especially to my young friends upstairs.”

  “Giuffre is a Mafia don, one of the top three in the New York area.”

  “Ah, then that’s why I wouldn’t have heard of him.” He glanced at Malone and smiled; several of his teeth were missing, yet it was still a not unattractive smile. “We anarchists, Mr Malone, are the only political party in America who have no connection with the Mafia.”

  “You should try campaigning on it,” said Malone. He had had no experience of anarchists. Somehow Australians, among the world’s most conservative rebels, had bred very few; Australians had always had very little tolerance for eccentrics, especially for political rat-bags. “But Giuffre said he knew a lot about you. More than Captain Jefferson and his mates know.”

  “Captain Jefferson and his - mates have a file on me they tell me is that thick-” He held his hands apart. “I think Don Auguste Giuffre has been putting you on, Inspector.”

  “He said to mention San Francisco and a Pasquale Parioli.”

  Parker drew on his cigarette, but Malone did not miss the slight tremor in the bone-like fingers. “What else did he say?”

  “Let’s just take that for starters. Who is Pasquale Parioli?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No,” admitted Malone. All the years of questioning had developed a sixth sense in him: he knew this man was on the verge of talking. “But we can go back to Giuffre, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

  Parker said nothing, staring down at the smoke curling up from between his fingers. Somewhere outside a steel door clanged and he lifted his head, not quickly but like an old dog recognizing a familiar sound, a door that had been opened and shut many times. He was dressed in a cheap blue suit that could have been twenty years old and a tie-less white shirt that was in need of laundering; Malone didn’t know how the other anarchists, except McBean, dressed, but he guessed Parker must be the square amongst them. He looked like the crumpled newspaper picture of some clerk in the Fifties who had been arrested on a charge of petty embezzlement. Except for his face: there was too much agony, too much exhausted idealism there for a man caught only with his hand in the cash-box.

  “Jesus, they never let you go!” His hand quivered and he took another drag on the cigarette, coughing on the smoke this time. When he had recovered he looked at Jefferson. “There’s a prologue to that file on me, Captain. You want to hear it?”

  “If you want to tell it.” Both Jefferson and Malone were quietly casual: they were dealing here with a man who was not going to spend the night waving polemics at them. Fred Parker, they were beginning to realize, had grown tired of carrying banners and shouting slogans.

  “None of this gets to the kids upstairs, okay? I’m not gonna split on them, but I’d just sooner keep a piece of myself to myself, you know what I mean?” Jefferson and Malone nodded, waiting patiently; this was not the time to be counting minutes, because what they might learn might save them hours. Parker lit another cigarette, sat back in his chair. “Pasquale Parioli was my old man. He was the top lieutenant for the capo of one of the Families in ‘Frisco. That was back in the Twenties and Thirties - I was seven-

  teen years old before I found out how he made his dough, and I only found that out because someone chopped him down, with a Thompson gun, right outside our front door. That was in- 1932. Yeah, 1932.” He closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the present, trying to look back at the years he had tried to forget. “My old lady knew what my father did - I dunno whether she condoned it, but she never made any excuses for him. They were both from Sicily and maybe she believed in the Mafia and the way it went about things. I dunno - I never stopped to ask her. I ran away from home the day they buried my old man and I never went back, never saw my mother or my sisters again.” He had been talking with his eyes downcast, as if memory were something he had laid out on the table in front of him; but now he looked up. “You’re not taking any of this down?”

  “Not unless you want us to,” said Jefferson. “That file doesn’t really concern Inspector Malone and me. Not tonight, anyway.”

  Parker nodded. “Maybe it’s all only what they call extenuating circumstances and I don’t think the powers-that-be want any of that. They’ve already made up their minds about me.” There was no bitterness in his voice nor in his thin smile. “What they’d never believe is that I became an anarchist because I didn’t believe in a society that had room for characters like my old man. I’m a very moral man - I even believe in God. I’ve read ‘em all and preached ‘em all - Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta. But I believe in God and - maybe I should’ve been a priest - I think Christ preached a better brand of propaganda than any of them. But don’t tell that to my friends upstairs - they’d think I was a Jesus freak and I sure as hell ain’t that.”

  Malone, without lifting his ar
m from the table, stole a glance at his wrist-watch. “What happened after you ran away from home?”

  “America, that’s what happened. All of it.” Parker put his head back and for a moment his eyes were those of a

  young man. “Jesus, it was a country then! Lots wrong with it - but still it had something. If we could have taken it over then - ” He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray filled with the butts of the day’s visitors, the brown and white ends of other people’s nerves. “But I’m tired now - “

  “Keep going, Fred,” said Jefferson, his impatience showing for the first time. “You can’t stop now.”

  Parker smiled again. “You misunderstand me, Captain. I mean I’m tired of what I’ve been doing all these years. The kids today are different - I don’t even speak their language. I had nothing to do with that bombing we’re in here for. Okay, okay - ” He held up a hand. “I know. You’re not the one I’m supposed to plead before. But if they offer me a ticket to Cuba tomorrow, I’m gonna take it. Do you think the Mafia operates there?”

  “What has the Mafia got on you?” Malone asked.

  “Nothing.” Parker opened his hands in the gesture Malone had seen several times that night. “I don’t even know what they know about me. But they must have kept tabs on me all this time. How, Christ knows. I changed my name three times after leaving ‘Frisco - it was 1936, ‘37, before I became Fred Parker. When the file started -” He grinned at Jefferson.

  “Parker,” said Malone carefully, “something is going to happen to my wife and the Mayor’s wife if we don’t release you from here and fly you to Cuba - “

  “I know that, Inspector. It’s not a deal I would’ve planned myself- I’ve never traded lives, women’s or men’s. That would only reduce me to my old man’s level.”

  “We don’t even know if their lives haven’t already - been finished.” Malone shut his eyes for just a moment: for Christ’s sake, Malone, don’t lose hope! When he opened them he saw the look of sympathy on the face of the young black guard behind Parker and he nodded gratefully. “We could sit still, release you and just wait for the women to be delivered. But we have no guarantee that that is what is going to happen. You say you’re a moral man. If you get

  away to Cuba and my wife and Mrs Forte are never returned, are - killed, are you going to come back and help us put the finger on the muderers?”

  Parker took his time about replying; then he lit another cigarette, said through the smoke, “I’d do that if I knew who they were, Inspector. But I don’t know who they are. I’m as much in the dark as you are. I’m sure the Mafiosi could help you more than I can.”

  Malone shook his head. “They wouldn’t have sent us to you. If they knew anything definite, they’d have put a price on it.”

  “You’re learning, Inspector. Do you have the Mafia in Australia?”

  “They may be there, but so far they’ve been no trouble.” Malone looked up, feeling sick now with disappointment; he had learned nothing, except that the Mafia never lost track of even the distant members of its family. “Thanks for coming down to see us, Parker.”

  “Just a minute.” Parker stubbed out his cigarette, stood up. He looked at the young guard. “Would you do me a favour, Mr Irving, and leave us alone for two minutes?”

  The guard looked at Jefferson. “I’m not supposed to - “

  “I’ll take the responsibility. Do me and Inspector Malone a favour too.”

  The guard looked at Malone, indecision mixed with sympathy on his young bony face, then he nodded, stepped outside the door and pulled it closed behind him.

  “How big are the files on the other guys?” Parker asked Jefferson.

  “I looked at them this afternoon. The ones on Ratelli and Latrobe started the day they were picked up. We don’t know anything about them other than their names.”

  “I know Ratelli. It’s not his real name - I’m not gonna tell you what is - but I know a little about him. But Latrobe - he’s a blank page. Try him.”

  “Fred,” said Jefferson slowly, “you haven’t got it in for the kid, have you? We’re trying to save a coupla women’s

  lives. We don’t have time to help you revenge yourself on some kid who’s rubbed you the wrong way.”

  “Have more faith, Captain. That’s what anarchy is, you know, having faith in people. No, the kid’s okay as far as I’m concerned. I don’t even know if he can help, but I can tell you - he’s the only one amongst us who could have someone on the outside working for him. The rest of us - ” He shook his head. “McBean, Fishman, Ratelli, they all come from families so uptight they don’t even let off firecrackers the Fourth of July. Me? You think the Mafia would want me out?”

  “Why have they kept tabs on you so long then?” said Malone.

  “They’re another bureaucracy. They just never want to let you go.” He held out the claw of his hand to Malone. “Good luck, Inspector. In a proper society there would be no need for kidnapping.”

  “I’d like to think so,” said Malone. “You just have more faith in human nature than I have, whatever the society.”

  “Faith,” said Parker, forty years on the road to his New World and now knowing he had been standing still all the time, “it’s the only banner I got left. They just won’t let me wave it in a place like this.”

  He went out, the door clanging shut behind him, and Malone looked at Jefferson. “Do you sometimes feel sorry for the so-called enemies of society, feel you may even be on their side?”

  “Too often for my own comfort,” said Jefferson. “Well, let’s see if this kid Latrobe will talk to us.”

  But Latrobe wouldn’t talk to them, refused to come down to them from his cell up on the seventh floor. Jefferson and Malone went back to the Warden’s office. Davidson, his feet up on the desk, sat up as they came in, put down the paperback book he had been reading.

  “‘TheFemale Eunuch. I think I’d rather handle what we got in here than a bunch of Women’s Lib.”

  “Has your wife read the book?” Jefferson asked.

  “You kidding? I let her read that, I wouldn’t bother to go home. This would be Sunnybrook Farm compared to home.”

  “I don’t read any of it. Come Liberation Day for women, I’m gonna let them walk right over me - it’ll be easier. Phil, we want to go up and take a look at young Latrobe. Okay?”

  “Just a look? Okay, but don’t make too much fuss up there, John. We got some mean bastards on that floor, just waiting for an excuse to start something.” He picked up his phone, gave instructions to someone on the other end. As he put it down he said, “They say everything is quiet up there now. For Ghrissake, don’t disturb ‘em.”

  “Are Parker and the others on that floor?”

  “No, we got ‘em spread around, so’s they can’t communicate with each other.” He picked up the book again, settled back in his chair. “Female eunuchs. I’ve met one or two women I thought should’ve had the balls cut outa them.”

  A guard took them up in the elevator, waited with them until another guard had unlocked the barred gate on to the bridge, the central area that joined the two tiers of cells arranged on either side of it. The door was closed quietly behind them and the guard, another young black, said softly, “Most of ‘em are sleeping. I’ve woked Latrobe, but he ain’t said anything, ain’t even got off his bed.”

  He led them down to a cell at the far end of the bridge. In the cells they passed, open-barred cubicles that offered no privacy, Malone was aware of figures stirring, slowly rising from their beds like disturbed animals. He saw the eyes watching him and he thought, I’m in a zoo: those are cages and that’s a menagerie of killers behind those bars.

  “Dig Whitey.” He barely heard the whisper, but it seemed to grow on its own echoes in the bare-walled chamber; it was taken up by other voices, finally rising to a scream: “Kill Whitey! Kill! Kill!”

  Malone kept walking, waiting for some reaction from

  Jefferson and the guard. They came to the end cell an
d only-then did the guard say, “You and Latrobe are the only white men on this floor, Inspector. Maybe it would have been better if you’d let Captain Jefferson come up by himself.”

  “It’s too late now,” said Jefferson. He had to raise his voice above the din; the prisoners were yelling and chanting and banging on the bars of their cells. “What’s the score on this floor?”

  “Every cell’s full, Captain, two to a cell. We got all sorts -half a dozen rapists, coupla sodomists, six on murder raps, some dope pushers, half a dozen crazies - you name it, we got ‘em up here.”

  All the inmates were awake now, all standing at the bars to their cells, some standing quietly like men waiting to be let out, but most of them screaming, yelling, sobbing, kicking at the bars with the heels of their shoes. It sounded like pandemonium; then Malone noticed there was a rhythm to the bedlam. There was the occasional off-beat scream or thumping on the bars, but Malone guessed that came from one or two of the psychopaths. But the very steadiness of the rhythm invoked its own feeling of fear in Malone. This was controlled hatred, the intelligent use of anarchy against those like himself, the whites who ran the society they hated. No wonder Fred Parker, the out-of-date anarchist, was exhausted and finished.

  The guard switched on a nearby light, looked at his watch. “I gotta call downstairs, Captain. Every ten minutes we gotta report in by phone to the control room.”

  As the guard walked back to the entrance gate the inmates chanted Kill, Kill, Kill at him, but he took no notice of them; the shouting was a gesture, like the chanting of campus demonstrators, and they had no real hatred of him. He wore the wrong uniform but he had the right colour, there was still some hope for him.

  “Every ten minutes right around the clock they report in,” said Jefferson. “You never know when the psychos are

  gonna go crazy and start trying to kill themselves or the guy in with them. Looks like we got one here.”