“You notice,” said Motta and got up, “that I just lit this cigar, and if you know anything about cigar smokers who care about the product they smoke, you’ll have noticed they don’t like to walk around with the cigar in their mouth. Cipolla, find me the cane with the bone handle, huh?”
Cipolla left the room to look for Motta’s cane.
“I was saying,” and Motta smoothed his vest down in front, holding the cigar in his mouth, dead center. “Now, I’m the kind of cigar man I’ve been describing to you, Quinn, but here you see me walking out with more than half of the Havana still good.”
“Yes,” said Quinn, a little bored with the gentle small-talk.
“I do this,” said Motta, “in fact I do this every day this time of evening, because of the humidity.”
Cipolla came back with Motta’s hat, which was big-brimmed and light colored and had a black band-this hat, thought Quinn, no doubt goes on the head dead center-and also brought the cane with the bone handle. It was a beautiful, shiny handle, and there was a little silver band where the bone joined the wood. Maybe he’ll have forgotten about the cigar talk by now The hat went on the head dead center and the cane went in the left hand, because the right hand was for the cigar. Motta looked like somebody happily retired, modestly happy and entirely done with the rat race. They walked out to the street through somebody else’s apartment, the same way Quinn had come. Outside it was dark now and miserably damp.
“This dampness,” Motta said, “slows the smoke, cools the coal, and brings out tobacco flavors like you don’t get in any other way. That’s why I do this.”
Then they walked. Every time they passed a corner there was a street lamp sticking out from a wall and around the light there was always a milky halo of dampness.
“Very important for our operations,” said Cipolla, who had been suffering from not saying anything. “This fog every night is like part of the business set-up.”
“Now, some would say,” Motta went on, “that a cigar, damp like this, gets to be like rotten leaves or the comer of a basement or something like that.”
“Of course,” said Quinn. “And nonetheless, they keep cigars in a humidor.”
Motta ignored that. “But I say, and I think there’s something to this, Quinn, I say, don’t you eat cheese and like it, and that’s rotten? Don’t you grow mushrooms in a basement, and that’s delicious?”
Quinn got the impression again that Motta had rehearsed this. It did not sound like his usual kind of talk, and of course it did not fit the Santa Claus thing any more. Santa Claus, Quinn thought, would not talk about cigars like this. Somebody who collects butterflies might talk this way, or someone who collects recipes from Greenland and Ceylon, or maybe instructions on how to grow mandrake roots without benefit of gallows and moonlight.
The cafe had an outdoor part and an indoor part. In spite of the weather there were few people inside. Most of them were at the little round tables which stood by the sidewalk. The men were wrapped in their overcoats and the table tops were damp from the evening fog, but to sit inside would mean not to be able to see anything. They sat with their hands in their pockets and stared at the street, at the leaves dripping on the potted tree, at each other.
“Tell me something,” said Quinn, “you use any local people in your organization?”
“Christ, no,” said Motta, and then he crossed himself.
They walked to the inside of the cafe where two waiters started to scurry as soon as Motta showed in the door. They pushed tables, they jabbered, and they bowed like two pigeons doing a mating dance.
Motta was affable about all of this; he nodded his head, he nodded his stick, and when he took off his hat and one waiter lunged for it Motta smiled at the man and said something in Sicilian.
They took a table which had been pushed to the fireplace, where Motta could warm his back and look at the rest of the room which was almost empty. The usual bare bulb hung from the ceiling, a velour curtain with grease on it covered the kitchen entrance, and the tables were the same as those outdoors-warped wood tops and rusty legs. On Motta’s table was a white tablecloth.
The waiter brought wine without being asked. He poured from the same bottle for Quinn and Cipolla, and all this, Quinn felt, was the usual routine, a nice evening, a nice fire, and a cold fog outside. Maybe, thought Quinn, I shouldn’t have anything to drink.
Chapter 20
Motta held the wine in his mouth and then he swallowed it. While doing this he dipped the end of his cigar into the wineglass, just the tip of it ever so gently, and when he swallowed the wine he immediately put the cigar into his mouth. And now, Quinn thought to himself, something else about new taste sensation.
“So tell me, Quinn,” and Motta took the cigar out again. “Our set-up on the other side, what’s it look like to you?”
“Lousy.”
“It’s making a lot of money for us, Quinn.”
“If I can shake it up…”
“Did you?” said Motta.
“Well,” said Quinn, “just a little tilt. Enough for you to sit here with me and talk about it.”
“That’s true,” said Motta. “That’s true.”
“I’m not here to shake anything up for you,” Quinn said very slowly. My own Santa Claus voice, he thought. Listen to the kindly rumble. “But I am here, Motta, to tell you that the other end of your operation can slide right out from under you, make less money, you know, instead of more.”
“You think it can?”
“Make more?”
“Slide out from under me.”
“Motta, look. I was over there for a few days and saw enough and did enough to start up a take-over, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Motta sighed, stretched, and stroked his vest as if he were stroking a baby. Then he patted it some.
“What I’m asking, Quinn, do you think we can do a job together?”
“I don’t know,” said Quinn. “I can’t answer that because I don’t know enough about your operation.”
“ Right answer!” said Motta. “Very good, boy. Very good.”
Cipolla spat on the floor next to his chair and stepped on it. Quinn lit a cigarette.
“Now I,” said Motta, “got naturally an idea of the set-up, me having made the set-up, but before we go into that, and before you make suggestions-you got suggestions about the other side, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Before any of that, Quinn, let me ask you a question.”
“Go right ahead,” said Quinn, feeling hopped up from all the delay.
“This is about how well you covered your tracks. You got dumped by an independent tramper, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“That’s what I was told. You know the name of that captain?”
“No. I was…”
“Name of the tub?”
“Why do you ask? I don’t know the name, but why do you ask?”
“Simple reason. By rights, that captain has to report what happened, back home.”
Quinn sighed and then he said yes, he had thought about that too. He didn’t think the matter important. He wanted to start talking business. He wanted that more than anything in the world so as to be done with waiting, and doubting.
“And what did you do about it?”
“Not much. Just some questions. Upshot was, I didn’t think it very likely that the captain would report back the whole irregularity, just for his own sake.”
“Makes sense,” said Motta. “That makes sense.” He nodded his head and sipped a little wine. This time he did not keep it in his mouth but started to talk again right away. “Reason I bring this up, Quinn-what if you start operating out of Okar and then your friends from way back move in on you, not the operation, I mean, but on you?”
“Should that happen,” said Quinn, “I expect to be set up by then in such a way-there are ways-that no outsider can do very much to rock my boat. Speaking of the set-up on the African side, what I’d like to discuss…”
“Later,” said Motta.
Then he waved at the waiter and ordered a meal. Quinn had no idea what was being ordered and did not care. He sat smoking and looking around while Motta went through a long ritual, as if this dump, Quinn thought, was Maxim’s or Antoine’s, unless Antoine’s is a hairdresser’s and I got the names mixed up.