Mere gibberish.
“That is correct,” McReady said, “you have it all, Signor Ladro. Please be patient, won’t you? You will receive the coffin as soon as we can correct the problems on this end. We understand that’s the family’s wish, and we are doing everything possible to comply. Well, thank you. Thank you, Signor Ladro. Thank you, I appreciate that. It was good hearing from you, too, Signor Ladro. Thank you. Please give my regards to Bianca. Ciao.”
McReady hung up, and then took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. Mullaney, standing outside the window, was thinking furiously. McReady had reeled off a string of numbers, eight, and three, and nine, and eleven, he could barely remember them all, were they some sort of code? He had also said “At five to six,” was that a time? Was he referring to a specific time, and was it New York time or Roman time? Ten, that was another one of the numbers, what did any of them have to do with the jacket or with the paper scraps Gouda had substituted for...
Wait a minute. Didn’t McReady say the accident had occurred two nights ago? In that case, he couldn’t have been referring to the highway accident involving Gouda and the others because that had happened only yesterday afternoon, no, he had been referring to something else, something that was still very very warm, if I recall his words correctly, something that was still a delicate matter, here in New York at least, something that...
We had them drilled, McReady had said.
Each one.
Had he been referring to the three men who’d been shot on the highway? But no, how could he have been? It was Kruger’s fellows who’d caused the accident, Kruger’s fellows who’d done the shooting. Had there been another shooting as well, a gangland killing perhaps, a swap of assassinations, we kill somebody here in New York, you kill somebody there in Rome, even steven? But then why the need for a casual corpse picked up on Fourteenth Street, why not send the genuine item? Or items? There would have been more than one corpse because McReady had said “them,” he had very clearly and distinctly said “We had them drilled,” plural, them, not singular, him, her, or it. But why would anyone want to paint the victims of a shooting?
Black, he thought. McReady had said, “Black, of course.”
Melanie is from the Greek, it means black.
Black.
The jacket was black, the lining was black, the buttons were black, the coffin was...
Oh my God, Mullaney thought, eight and three!
Oh my sweet loving merciful mother of God, oh you smart son of a bitch, Mullaney, eight at five to six, oh you genius Mullaney, you are once again sitting on a fortune, you have cracked the code, you have pierced the plan, you have tipped to what these fellows have done and are planning to do, you are a bloody blue-nosed genius!
Exuberantly, he rose from his crouching position outside the window.
The tiling to do now, he thought, is get back to Brooklyn as fast as I possibly can and locate the girl who has my Judy Bond shopping bag. I don’t need you any more, gentlemen — not you, Purcell, and not you, K, thank you very much indeed.
Need them or not, they appeared at the mouth of McReady’s driveway just then, arriving in the same black Cadillac that had picked him up on Fourteenth Street the day before, and looking none the worse for wear after their bout with Solomon and his fellows.
He thought, I’m too close now to be stopped. I have doubled my bets and then retreated, doubled them again, and retreated further still, but this time I’m going all the way, straight to Jakarta where I will bet on cockroach races and sampan regattas, Mullaney’s system, I am ready for the big kill, gentlemen, and you cannot stop me.
He ran for the taxicab waiting alongside the curb.
K and Purcell had already seen him and were backing the Cadillac out of the driveway as he threw open the door of the cab and hurled himself onto the seat.
“Those men in the Cadillac are thieves,” he said to the driver. “Get me out of here! Fast!”
The driver reacted by putting the cab into gear and gunning it away from the curb, obviously delighted by this most recent of developments, and thinking how lucky he was to have found a diversion that took his mind off his three miserable sons.
“What did they steal?” he asked.
“They stole something worth half a million dollars in a certain foreign nation, Italy for example.”
“That is a lot of cabbage,” the driver said.
“That is a whole hell of a lot of cabbage,” Mullaney said. “My friend,” he said, “if you can get me where I’m going safely, without those fellows in the Cadillac catching me and killing me, I will give you a reward of five thousand dollars, which is exactly one percent of the total, and which is the biggest tip you’re ever going to get in your life.”
“It’s a deal,” the driver said.
“Share the wealth,” Mullaney said, “what the hell. Have you ever been to Jakarta?”
“I have never even been to Pittsburgh.”
“Jakarta is better.”
“I am sure,” the driver said. “Where is Jakarta?”
“Jakarta is in Indonesia, and is sometimes spelled with a D-j,” Mullaney said, recalling volume J-JO, See Djakarta, volume D-DR. “It is, Din fact, the capital of Indonesia, which is the base of a triangle whose apex is the Philippines, pointing north to Japan. They have marvelous cockroach races in Jakarta.”
“I have marvelous cockroach races in my own kitchen every night,” the driver said.
“My friend, they are gaining on us,” Mullaney said, glancing through the rear window.
“Have no fear,” the driver said, and rammed the accelerator to the floor.
This is a fine exciting chase, Mullaney thought, if I don’t get killed. It is almost as exciting as the finest most exciting chase I ever experienced, but that was a long time ago, and neither my life nor half a million dollars was at stake that time. The only thing at stake then was Irene. Irene was the pursued and I was the pursuer, and that was a fine exhilarating chase beginning on West End Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, exactly where Irene lived, and ending in the Cloisters.
The chase started much as this chase had started, with the unexpected arrival of, coincidentally, two men. The two men who arrived that day at Irene’s apartment were neither K nor Purcell, but a pair of U. C. L. A. philosophy professors whom she had met the month before on her yearly summer visit to her aunt in Brentwood, Los Angeles 49. This was July, I can remember the exact date, it was a Saturday, and it was July twentieth, and Irene had reason thereafter to remember the date, too, because we both made certain irrevocable commitments (we thought at the time) which later turned out to be as easily canceled as any peace treaty. But I did not know that, I only knew what was happening then, happening to Andrew Mullaney who was twenty-nine years old and still single, still living the carefree life of a bachelor. I had just started working for the Educational Encyclopedia Company, Incorporated, I remember, after having served two years in the United States Army, and then having completed my education (ha!) at City College, and having held a series of unrelated jobs in the intervening months since graduation. I had met Irene at a dance given by the Sons of Erin on Fordham Road, and had taken her out perhaps three or four times since that April night, had even escorted her to what was then called Idlewild Airport to put her on an airplane for her yearly visit to Auntie Brentwood (as we referred to her), little knowing she would meet these two very nice philosophy professors from U. C. L. A. Certainly never suspecting they would come to New York in July and naturally think of looking up the vivacious redhead whom they had tried to teach to surfboard at the Santa Monica beach one Saturday afternoon when Auntie Brentwood was out marketing in her gold lame slacks and high-heeled slippers.