Every Little Crook and Nanny

4: The Corsican Brothers

It was almost three P.M. before Benny got downtown to Forty-second Street.

He had left Many Maples at noon, and then had driven to Harlem to pick up the work, which had taken longer than he’d expected because a man insisted he had put fifty cents on number 311 yesterday and that was the number that had come in, whereas Benny had the word of the collector himself that the number played was 307, not 311, a common enough mistake, seven-eleven being the ritual chant of dice players and gamblers everywhere.

The number, of course, had only been written down a half-hour after the bet was placed, it being the habit of policemen (suspicious by nature) to assume automatically that if a man had several dozen policy slips in his pocket, he was engaged in the policy or numbers racket. The bet had been placed by Walter Anziano, a nice enough old man in his seventies, who had been playing the numbers since he first arrived in America from Palermo fifty-three years ago, fifty cents a day every day of the week, and who had hit only once in all that time, for the amazing sum of three hundred dollars.

Benny did not like to lose a steady customer like Walter Anziano. So he told the old man that there had apparently been some mixup, but that a check of yesterday’s work had revealed a slip of paper in the collector’s handwriting with the numerals 307-50 on it, meaning that Anziano had bet fifty cents on 307, not 311. The collector claimed he had written down the number as soon as he’d got off the street, and that he was certain Anziano had said 307, so it was now a matter of the collector’s word against Anziano’s. In any event, Benny informed the old man that they could not pay off. However, Benny was willing to give Anziano a free fifty-cent ride every day for the next week, if only to show the good will of himself and his fellows, an offer the old man grudgingly accepted only after having been plied with four shots of Four Roses in a local bar. It had been the entertainment of Walter Anziano that had occupied most of the afternoon, while little Lewis was in the hands of some cheap hoods who were undoubtedly maniacs or worse. Benny could not think of anyone but maniacs kidnaping the son of Carmine Ganucci.

He had agreed with Nanny that the matter should not come to Ganooch’s attention in any way, manner, or form, because whereas it was nice weather for swimming, it would be difficult indeed to effect a splendid crawl while wearing cement blocks. The best way to keep the matter from Ganooch was to make certain that none of the fellows higher up found out about it. And the best way to make certain of that was to pay those crazy maniacs the fifty grand at once. Which was why Benny was so anxious to talk to the Corsican Brothers.

Vinny and Alfred were just beginning their famous amazing dancing doll act when Benny finally caught up with them. Alfred, the younger of the twins by fourteen hours, winked at him as he approached, and then launched into his monologue, the prelude to a choreographic masterpiece.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I know you are all hurrying home to your loved ones after a hard day’s work, but if you’ll grant me just a minute of your time, I think I can show you something wonderful to bring home to the wife or kiddies. I have here in this carton you see here at my feet, a limited amount of amazing dancing dolls which cost only fifty cents each and which when you see them perform I am sure you will agree are worth ten times that amount. There are no mechanical parts on these dolls, they are easily folded for carrying in pocket or purse, and they will continue to delight your loved ones, friends, neighbors, and all and sundry who witness their remarkable performance. If I can have one moment more of your valuable time, I am going to take one of these amazing dancing dolls out of the box here and show you what it can do.”

The stage upon which the Corsican Brothers worked was a stretch of sidewalk some four feet long and three feet wide, their backdrop a brick wall darkened by the soot of centuries. An audience composed of summer out-of-town visitors, shoppers, and cinema buffs (who had wandered over from the twenty-five-cent peepshow displays slightly farther west), some two dozen people in all, watched as Alfred reached into the box. Benny stood to the left of the crowd, also watching. To the right of the crowd, standing almost against the brick wall, his hands in his pockets, stood Vinny, the star performer in the amazing dancing doll act, but a performer who sought neither applause nor recognition, a performer whose role necessitated that he remain absolutely silent, anonymous, and practically invisible. Standing directly opposite Alfred and the cardboard box that contained the amazing dancing dolls, Vinny watched like any other curious member of the audience, his hands in his pockets.

“Now this may look to you like just an ordinary doll made of cardboard and flimsy paper,” Alfred said to the crowd. “In fact, as you can see, the head here is made of cardboard, as are the hands and the feet, and the arms and legs are just this flimsy accordion-pleated paper, practically tissue paper, you may wonder how this doll can do what it is about to do. That is the amazing thing about this doll. This doll, which is only sixteen inches tall from the top of its head to the tips of its toes, is going to dance. I can make it dance, you can make it dance, and it will continue to dance for hours and hours without ever needing recharging or replacement of parts because there are no batteries in this amazing dancing doll (how could there be when the whole thing is made out of paper and cardboard) and there are no mechanical parts to wear out or break. It is paper and cardboard, that is all, but the paper is specially treated so that it gathers electric ions from the very air you and I, all of us, are breathing all around us. And once those ions are gathered and stored in these flimsy little legs, why the amazing dancing doll can hardly stand still with excitement, it just begins dancing all over the place for hours on end. I’m going to show you in a minute how this little doll dances, but I want to explain first that the reason we can offer it at the low price of fifty cents is that the doll is made out of just this flimsy paper and cardboard, as you can see, and that’s practically what it costs to manufacture and ship, with a very small markup for profit. The electric ions in the air are free and, as you all know, it is the power source that causes most prices to soar and become a burden on the consumer. Not so with this amazing dancing doll. Now let me show you.”

Alfred, holding the doll by the top of its cardboard head, bent over so that the dangling cardboard feet on their accordion-pleated paper legs were almost touching the sidewalk. He shook the doll vigorously. He shook it again, even more vigorously.

“I am gathering in the electric ions,” he said.

He shook the doll again.

“One, two, three shakes, sometimes a few more depending on weather conditions,” he said, “that is all it takes to store the energy and set the thing in motion. Now watch.”

He released the top of the doll’s head. The doll began to bounce. Unsupported by Alfred, who backed away from it, the doll began to jiggle and jump on its flimsy paper legs, up and down, up and down, as though dancing for joy now that it had been infused with all those marvelous life-giving electric ions, free in the air for all to breathe. What the crowd did not see (because the brick wall backdrop was so filthy with soot) was the slender black thread stretching tight from the rim of the carton to where Vinny stood across the sidewalk, silently watching the performance albeit a performer himself. The taut black thread went directly into Vinny’s pocket, where it was wrapped around the forefinger of his right hand. As Vinny jiggled his forefinger, the black thread simultaneously jiggled, and as the thread jiggled, so did the doll because what Alfred had really been doing (while earlier shaking out the doll to gather in all those electric ions) was hanging it onto the thread from a tiny hook on the back of the cardboard head. As the crowd watched goggle-eyed now, Alfred picked up the doll and said, “Who’ll buy the first one, ladies and gentlemen? They’re only fifty cents each, who’ll buy the first one, there is only a limited supply.”

A sucker in the audience (there are suckers in every audience, Benny mused silently) asked the anticipated sucker question.

“How do we know all the dolls can dance and not just that one doll there?”

“They can all dance,” Alfred answered, “because they have all been specially treated with the ion-attracting matter. Would one of you people here just reach into the box and hand me any doll that’s in there. There’s nothing special about this particular doll, believe me. They are all of them exactly alike, they are all amazing. Madam, would you please do us the favor?” he said, turning to an old woman who looked like a minister’s wife, but who may very well have been a retired prostitute. It made no matter; Alfred truly did not know her, and his claim that all of the dolls were exactly alike was a valid, honest, and legitimate one. The old lady gingerly picked a doll from the box at random.

“Now please shake it out for me, madam, just as you saw me do with the other doll,” Alfred said.

The old lady shook out the doll.

“Again, please, a little harder. Thank you. And here, sir,” he said to the man who had raised the question, “you give it a few shakes, too. Madam, may I, please?” He took the doll from the old lady, and handed it to the man. The man studied the doll with the scrutiny of Geppetto, gave it two vigorous shakes, and handed it back to Alfred, who immediately bent low, smiled at the crowd, and said, “Few more shakes for good measure,” as he swiftly hooked it onto the black thread that ran arrow-straight into his brother Vinny’s pocket. Alfred released the doll, and lo and behold, the cunning little darling began jiggling and bouncing and dancing its little heart out! Any skeptic in the crowd was immediately convinced. Common sense stridently warned that a paper and cardboard doll could not defy the laws of gravity in such a manner, even if it were specially treated with monosodium glutamate or aluminum chloral hydrate. But an old lady and a disbeliever, both as honest as the day was long, had each shaken the doll and passed it back to Alfred, who did nothing more than shake it again and set it on its feet — and now look at the damn thing dancing! Dollar bills appeared in anxious fists. Alfred busily began making change and dispensing dolls from the carton as Vinny’s forefinger twitched and the doll on the unseen black thread danced its way to fame and glory. In less than five minutes, Alfred had sold fourteen of the dolls, for an almost pure profit of seven dollars. He might have gone on to sell another dozen to the growing crowd had not Vinny emitted a low whistle at that point, the signal that the cop on the beat was approaching. Alfred snatched up the amazing dancing doll in the middle of one of its more complicated entrechats, tossed it into the carton, said, “Good night, folks, thank you,” and bolted off after his brother, who hastily left behind him on the sidewalk a broken cotton thread, his only invisible means of support.

“You fellows are getting better all the time,” Benny told them some ten minutes later, in a cafeteria on Forty-sixth Street and Eighth Avenue. “That was a truly remarkable performance.”

“Well, thank you,” Alfred said shyly, and ducked his head.

“Thank you,” Vinny repeated.

“Remarkable,” Benny said. “And what’s even more remarkable is that you get away with it.”

“How do you mean?” Alfred asked.

“That the people watching you don’t realize you’re in some way related to each other.”

“How do you mean?” Vinny asked.

“In that you look so much alike.”

“Oh,” Alfred said.

“Being twins, I mean.”

“Oh,” Vinny said.

“Identical twins,” Benny said.

“Well,” Alfred said, “we don’t think of ourselves as twins, you see.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” Vinny said. “We were born fourteen hours apart.”

“That’s hardly twins,” Alfred said.

“That’s a medical phenomenon,” Vinny said, “but it’s not twins.”

“I thought it was twins,” Benny said.

“Millie the Midwife didn’t think so,” Vinny said. “In fact, she thought her work was done. My mother thought so too. Millie went to a movie after she delivered me. That was at seven o’clock at night. She went to see Where the Sidewalk Ends, with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney.”

“That was a very good picture,” Benny said.

“Yes, I myself saw it on television only last week,” Vinny said.

“Jeanette Kay watched it too.”

“How is Jeanette Kay?” Vinny asked.

“She’s fine, thank you.”

“Anyway, the next morning my mother called Millie and said she was feeling very strange. ‘Very strange how?’ Millie wanted to know. My mother said she felt as if there was still somebody inside her kicking around. Millie rushed right over and they did the malocchio. Do you know what the malocchio is?”

“Yes, it’s the Evil Eye,” Benny said.

“Correct,” Vinny said. “What Millie the Midwife done was put a few drops of oil in a dish of water. If the oil separated into drops close together, like eyes, that meant somebody had put the malocchio on my mother. Which could have accounted for why she was still feeling somebody kicking around inside there when I was already born.”

“But it wasn’t the malocchio,” Alfred said.

“Correct. The oil just lay there in the dish like a big gold coin. No eyes, nothing. So Millie said to my mother, ‘Well, let’s take another look, Fanny.’ So they took another look, and it was Alfred.”

“Me,” Alfred said.

“A medical phenomenon,” Vinny said.

“But not twins,” Alfred said.

“How can you be sure you’re not twins, though?” Benny asked.

“If we were twins, would they call us the Corsican Brothers? They’d call us the Corsican Twins, correct?”

“But the Corsican Brothers were twins.”

“Correct,” Vinny said. “But we’re not. In fact, we’re not even from Corsica. None of our family’s from Corsica, neither. The whole thing’s an entire mystery.”

“The way I figure it,” Alfred said, “my mother conceived twice.”

“Probably with my father both times,” Vinny said.

“But fourteen hours apart,” Alfred said.

“That would explain it, all right,” Benny said.

“That’s very definitely what probably happened,” Alfred said.

“So you see there’s nothing remarkable about our act in that respect. People accept us for what we are. After all, superficial similarities don’t mean nothing when there’s two distinct and definite personalities involved. We’re very different people, Ben.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Though very much alike in many respects as well.”

“But different,” Alfred said.

“Different but the same,” Vinny said.

“Of course the same, but different,” Alfred said.

“For example,” Vinny said, “whereas I’ve been doing a lot of talking here, I’m very shy when it comes to performing. It’s Alfred who gives the spiel, you may have noticed.”

“Yes, I did notice that,” Benny said.

“Whereas, on the other hand,” Vinny said, “I can’t even draw a straight line, whereas Alfred is very talented artistically.”

“Which is exactly why I came to see you.”

“Why’s that?” Alfred asked.

“I need fifty thousand dollars in phony bills.”

“I have given up that career,” Alfred said.

“You have?” Benny asked. “Why?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Alfred said. “The first batch I done was ten-dollar bills. But the fellows who went out to pass them got caught right off the bat and are now serving ten years each and respectively at Sing Sing.”

“That’s a shame,” Benny said. “What happened?”

“I made a mistake,” Alfred said. “I was working on two batches at the same time, a five-dollar batch and a ten-dollar batch. I accidentally put Lincoln’s picture on the ten-dollar bills.”

“We all make mistakes,” Benny said.

“That’s what the fellows said when I went up to visit them.”

“But I’m sorry to hear this. I was hoping you could help me.”

“I don’t even have my equipment no more,” Alfred said. “I sold the press and everything a long time ago.”

“To who?”

“To Cockeye Di Strabismo.”

“Why don’t you try him?” Vinny suggested. “I’ll bet he can help you.”

“Yes, maybe,” Benny said. “In the meantime, if you hear of any loose money that’s around for sale cheap, will you get in touch with me?”

“May I ask why you need this kind of cash?” Vinny said. “Or is that too personal?”

“There has been a child snatched,” Benny said.

“Which child?”

“Ganooch’s son.”

“Who would do a crazy thing like that?” Alfred asked.

“Listen to me,” the voice on the telephone said.

“Yes?” Nanny said.

“Do you know who this is?”

“No, who is this?”

“This is the kidnaper. Who is this?”

“This is Nanny. The child’s governess.”

“Madam, let me talk to Mr. Ganucci at once.”

“Mr. Ganucci isn’t in right now.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s out of town,” Nanny said.

“Oh, the old out-of-town trick, eh?” the voice said. “Where out of town?”

“In Italy.”

“Dove in Italia?” the voice asked. “I speak seven languages fluently, don’t try any more tricks.”

“He’s on the Isle of Capri.”

“Nonsense! Put him on right this minute or we’ll dispose of the child!”

“No, please,” Nanny said, “I swear he’s...”

“I’ve got a vicious Doberman pinscher poised to spring at that boy’s throat if I give the signal. All I have to do is yell, ‘Töte ihn!’ Now stop playing games and put Mr. Ganucci on the phone.”

“I told you, he’s in Italy.”

“Madam...”

“Please, we’re trying to get the money now. All we need is a little time.”

“Who’s we?” the voice asked. “Have you told the police about this?”

“No,” Nanny said in alarm. “Have you?”

“Have I what? Told the police? Are you crazy, madam?”

“Forgive me, I...”

“Listen and listen hard,” the voice said. “I’m giving you until tomorrow afternoon at five o’clock to raise the money. I’ll contact you at that time and tell you where and when and how I want delivery made. Would you like some advice, madam?”

“Please,” Nanny said.

“I suggest you cable Mr. Ganucci on the Isle of Capri and tell him to come home fast!”