“Because you put it on the desk there, and he was right here in this room alone with it for Christ knows how many minutes.”
“Now, now, Counselor,” Garbugli said.
“Would he have looked at it?” Marie said. “I mean, if he was asleep?”
“Was he asleep?”
“He was very definitely asleep,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“I know a man when he’s asleep or not, don’t I?” she asked.
“Thank you, Marie,” Garbugli said.
“Not at all,” Marie said, and smiled at him the same way she had smiled at Snitch, and then went out to her desk.
“What do you think?” Garbugli said.
“I think she’s a lying little twat, and that Snitch was awake with both eyes open, and that he read every word of that cable,” Azzecca said.
“So do I,” Garbugli said. “I think we had maybe better call Nonaka and ask him to look up our friend Snitch Delatore.”
“Nonaka gives me the shivers,” Azzecca said. “Besides, first things first. What do we do about this money Ganooch wants?”
“Send it,” Garbugli said.
“Why do you suppose he needs that kind of money by Saturday?”
“I don’t know,” Garbugli said. “But if he cabled all the way from Capri, then it must be pretty...”
“If it was him who sent the cable,” Azzecca said shrewdly.
“It’s signed Carmine Ganucci, Counselor.”
“That’s not a signature,” Azzecca said. “That’s just a cable with the words ‘Carmine Ganucci’ on it. It could have been twelve different people who sent that cable. It could even be the police who sent that cable.”
“The Naples police, do you mean?”
“Why not?”
“The Naples police can hardly write Italian, no less English.”
“What I’m trying to say, Vito, is that perhaps this is a trap.”
“What kind of trap?”
“I don’t know. If I knew what kind of trap, I’d positively avoid it.”
Garbugli shrugged. “Maybe Ganooch merely wishes to buy a little bauble for Stella.”
“For Stella?” Azzecca said.
“Don’t underestimate Stella,” Garbugli said. “She has very lovely boobs.”
“They’re nice boobs, true,” Azzecca said, “but they’re not worth twenty-five thousand dollars apiece.”
“I think we’re safe in any respect,” Garbugli said. “Let’s say we send the cash, we’re covered by his cable. We have the cable right here, requesting the money.”
“But suppose he didn’t send the cable?”
“We’re still in the clear, Counselor.”
“I think we should check it out first.”
“We haven’t got time. This is Thursday, and he wants the money by Saturday. If we send him a return cable, he first has to receive it. Then he has to cable back his okay. Then we have to raise the money...”
“There’s more than that in petty cash alone. In the safety deposit box downtown.”
“We’d have to clear it first with Paulie Secondo.”
“We’d have to do that in any case.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest we cable Ganooch at the Quisisana to get his nod. If he really sent this cable, he’ll tell us so. If he didn’t send it, he’ll want to know what the hell we’re talking about.”
“Let’s compose the message, Counselor,” Garbugli said.
Crosstown and uptown, Luther Patterson was about to compose a message of his own.
On the telephone yesterday, he had told the Ganucci governess (who had sounded like a very pleasant though bewildered lady indeed) that he would contact her at five o’clock this afternoon with instructions about the ransom money. Now, seated behind his typewriter at his desk in one corner of the book-lined living room, he inserted a blank sheet into the machine and began thinking. If there was one person he could count on at times like this, it was John Simon. If there was another person, it was Martin Levin. Between those two persons, a person didn’t need any other persons. Luther Patterson believed this with all his heart. When he found himself in a prosodic jam, either or both of them was (were, John?) ready to stand up and be counted.
Luther looked at the digital clock on his desk. He was delighted that the Japanese had begun manufacturing digital clocks in such astonishing volume because, to tell the truth, he had never been very good at telling time. He attributed this to the fact that his sister had been such a whiz at it. When they were both kids together, he would sometimes deliberately confuse the hour with the minute hand out of pure spite, reporting the time as a quarter to five, for example, when it was really twenty-five past nine (ha!) hoping to mix up his smart-ass little brat of a sister, who never did get mixed up and who would announce the correct time each time from the face of her Mickey Mouse watch. He no longer hated his sister. Neither could he tell time too well. Which was why he was grateful for the digital clock, and the clear bold numbers that read...
Luther put on his eyeglasses because he couldn’t see too well, either.
The time was...
1:56.
“John,” he said aloud, “Martin — we’ve got some important writing to do here.”
He did not yet know how he would deliver his note once he had composed it. He supposed that the Ganucci estate would be swarming with policemen by this time, even though the governess had assured him she had not told them of the kidnaping. He found this difficult to believe, and yet there had been no newspaper stories about it, no radio or television reports. It was his guess that he had actually succeeded in scaring the retired soft drinks magnate witless; Ganucci had undoubtedly requested complete silence until the boy was safely returned.
He wondered why the governess had told him Ganucci was in Italy. Had that been the truth, or merely a stall? It didn’t matter, either way. Luther knew without question that if he’d had a son of his own, and if that son had been kidnaped, he’d have returned home immediately from wherever he happened to be vacationing — Montauk Point, Block Island, places even more distant, anywhere. So he was fairly confident that, even if Ganucci had been abroad, he was undoubtedly home by now, scurrying around to sell securities and raise the cash he needed to ransom the boy. The thought of all that frantic activity on the part of the retired millionaire amused Luther. But it was tinged with a touch of sadness as well. He had been married to Ida for fourteen years now; they had been childless all that time, except for a Pekingese dog they’d had in 1969. Ida doted on the Ganucci boy now as if he were her very own, leaving a night light on for him last night, making blueberry pancakes for him this morning (Luther had found the pancakes inedible, but the boy had eaten them ravenously), and constantly carrying snacks and milk to the back bedroom in which he was locked. Their inability to produce children called to mind one of Luther’s favorite John Simon passages. He went to the Collected Works now, took the volume from the shelf, opened it to a page finger-smudged through constant reference, and silently read it over again:
A story or poem, unable to bask in length, must operate in depth, height, thickness. It must set up inner relationships, echoes, implications, suggestions; utilize the space between the lines; curl up on itself to achieve pregnancy.
Luther brushed a tear from his cheek.
There was work to be done. The first draft of any literary endeavor was always the most difficult, for it was this draft that embodied the initial creative thrust. John Simon undoubtedly knew and understood that basic tenet. Inspired by what he had just read, knowing he could never equal its power but determined to try nonetheless, Luther replaced the scrapbook on its shelf, sat down at the typewriter again and, unable to bask in length, was beginning to create his second ransom note when a brilliant idea struck him. He rushed to the bookcase again, gathered both Simon and Levin into his arms and, clutching them gratefully to his chest, rushed to his desk, his scissors, and his pastepot.