Every Little Crook and Nanny

7: Garbugli

By eleven-thirty that morning, Snitch had all but forgotten his meeting with Nanny. There were more important matters on his mind. The more important matters were, in order: his former wife Roxanne (the little bitch); a man from Amarillo, Texas (who was now a Broadway Pokerino barker); and the alimony payments Roxanne kept demanding (even though she was currently living with the man from Texas, who rolled his own goddamn cigarettes).

“Is that fair?” Snitch wanted to know. “Mr. Garbugli? That I should have to keep paying her when she’s sharing another man’s bed and board?”

“It’s not fair, but it’s the law,” Vito Garbugli said. He was a very busy man and would not have given Snitch the right time of day (no one did) had it not been for a call from a police lieutenant named Alexander Bozzaris, who had done a favor in the past and who now wanted a favor done (as he put it) “for one of the squad’s trusted advisers.” Garbugli had gone next door to his partner Azzecca’s office and asked if he knew of anyone named Frank Delatore, and Azzecca had said, “That’s probably Snitch Delatore. Why?” Garbugli had then told him about the phone call from Bozzaris, and Azzecca had said, “Delatore’s a rat. You should have said no.” Whereupon Garbugli reminded his partner that a policy banker named Joe Dirigere had once donated seven thousand four hundred dollars to Bozzaris’ favorite charity, for which the lieutenant had been willing to return to the fellows a full day’s ribbons impounded in a raid, which work amounted to a lot of cold hard cash. Azzecca maintained that nobody had done anybody no favors, the transaction having been a simple act of commerce. But he allowed as how Snitch, though a rat, was not a particularly dangerous rat, so long as Garbugli told him nothing that could in any way be useful to the police. Garbugli shrugged and said, “He’s only coming here to talk about his wife, Counselor.”

Which Snitch had been doing for perhaps ten minutes now, complaining bitterly about her flagrant carryings-on with the Pokerino barker and continually asking, “Is it fair? Mr. Garbugli?”

“As long as she remains unmarried,” Garbugli said, “she’s entitled to the alimony payments awarded to her.”

“But she’s living with this big Texan,” Snitch protested.

“It wouldn’t matter if she was living with the Seven Dwarfs,” Garbugli said. “You’d still have to pay her.”

“I won’t pay,” Snitch said.

“In which case you’ll go to jail. And while you’re in jail, she’ll continue her arrangement with this here Pokerino barker. You want my advice? Pay.”

“It’s not fair,” Snitch said.

“My good friend,” Garbugli said, “there is much on this road of life that is unfair, but we must all carry our share of the goddamn burden.”

“Mr. Garbugli?” Snitch said.

“Yes?”

The telephone buzzed. “Excuse me,” Garbugli said, and lifted the receiver. “Vito Garbugli speaking,” he said. “What? Oh, certainly, I’ll be right in, Mario.” He rose swiftly and walked around his desk. “My partner. I’ll just be a moment,” he said, and went to the door separating his office from Azzecca’s. The door closed behind him. Snitch sat in the leather armchair thinking about how unfair it was. He sat that way for perhaps five minutes. He was beginning to think Garbugli would not return; that wasn’t fair either. The door to the outer office opened, and a long-legged, pretty redhead wearing a short beige skirt and a green blouse entered, walked quickly to Garbugli’s desk, put a yellow sheet of paper on it, swiveled, smiled at Snitch, walked to the door again, and went out. The office was silent. Snitch got up and walked to the windows. On the street below, decent men like himself were going their merry way without having to worry about paying alimony to a bitch who was living with a big Texan who rolled his own cigarettes. Seven Dwarfs, some sense of humor the counselor had. Snitch glanced at the yellow sheet of paper the girl had put on Garbugli’s desk. It looked very much like a telegram or something. Merely out of curiosity, Snitch began to read it:

Sure, Snitch thought, Ganooch sends telegrams all the way from Italy, and guys in the street go their merry way, while I have to pay alimony to somebody I hardly even met — I was only married to her, for Christ’s sake, for sixteen lousy months! He sat in the leather chair again. At the window, the air conditioner hummed serenely. In a little while, he fell asleep.

When Garbugli came back into the office, he found his client snoring. He also found the cable from Carmine Ganucci. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket, shook Snitch by the shoulder, and asked him if there was anything else he wished to discuss. Snitch had difficulty coming awake and for one terrifying moment relived a time in Chicago when he had been shaken from sleep in the middle of a February night and asked why he had such a big mouth. He had answered, “Who has a big mouth?” and someone in the dark had said, “You have a big mouth,” and Snitch had said, “Aw, come on, I do not.” He established his surroundings now, assured Garbugli he had nothing more to ask (but that he wasn’t ready to pay any alimony to no whore, neither), thanked the lawyer for his time, and left. At the desk outside, he bummed a cigarette from the redhead who had brought the cable in, and then went down to the street.

It was going to be a hot day.

He wondered if it was this hot in Italy. Probably not. He also wondered why it was ESSENTIAL AND URGENT that Carmine Ganucci RAISE FIFTY. Fifty what? Not measly dollars, that was for sure. Ganooch probably carried around ten times that amount just in case he had to tip a cabbie. Could it be fifty thousand? Was it essential and urgent that Ganooch raise fifty thousand by Saturday? That was a lot of money. People did not trip across fifty thousand dollars in the gutter every day. Nor did Ganooch’s trusted governess come around every day asking about various and sundry felonies perpetrated on a Tuesday night.

Something was in the wind.

Snitch sensed this with the same rising excitement he had known in Chicago on February 14, 1929. He could barely refrain from dancing a little buck and wing right there on Forty-fifth Street. Something was in the wind, all right, something really big. And Snitch knew just the party who would love to hear all about it.

If he hadn’t been temporarily broke, he’d have taken a taxi uptown.

In the office upstairs, Mario Azzecca and Vito Garbugli were conducting an intense examination. Or rather, Azzecca was conducting the examination; Garbugli mostly listened. Azzecca’s witness was Marie Pupattola, the long-legged, redheaded secretary who had brought the cable into his partner’s office and put it on his desk. Marie was a bit frightened by the intensity of Azzecca’s questions. Also, she had just got her period yesterday.

“Was he asleep when you came in here?” Azzecca asked.

“Gee, I don’t remember,” Marie said.

“Try to remember!” he said. “Was he asleep in that chair when you brought the cable in?”

“Now, now, Counselor,” Garbugli said.

“I don’t remember,” Marie said, knowing full well that Snitch had not been asleep because she had very definitely smiled at him, and she was not in the habit of smiling at people who were asleep.

“Were his eyes closed?”

“They could have been.”

“Were they closed, or were they open?”

“Sometimes,” Marie said, “when a person’s eyes are closed, they could also look open.”

“Did his look open or closed?”

“They looked closed,” she said, which was a lie because they had looked very open, especially when she’d smiled at him.

“Then do you think he was asleep?”

“He could have been asleep,” she said, “but gee, I don’t remember.”

“Do you think he saw this cable, Marie?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Marie said. “Why would he have seen it?”

“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:

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.

If there was anything more difficult than composing a cable to Italy at twenty-six and a half cents a word, neither Azzecca nor Garbugli could imagine what. Just the address alone took up five words.

“How many words is that?” Garbugli asked Azzecca, who had wheeled over the typing cart and who was sitting behind the machine with his hands resting on the keys.

“Five,” Azzecca said.

“Twenty-six and a half cents a word, that’s highway robbery,” Garbugli said.

“We better keep it very short,” Azzecca warned. “If Ganooch really did send that cable, he’s not going to like us squandering money to confirm that he sent it.”

“Right, Counselor,” Garbugli said.

“How does this sound?” Azzecca said. “DID YOU SEND A CABLE? AZZECCA-GARBUGLI.”

“That’s a little impersonal, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s brief.”

“Also, Counselor, it don’t indicate that we received a cable. Ganooch may have sent a cable to his sister, for example, in which case he would reply CERTAINLY I SENT A CABLE, and we still wouldn’t know whether it was this here cable he sent.”

“I see what you mean,” Azzecca said. “How about DID YOU SEND THIS HERE CABLE WE RECEIVED?”

“How about just DID YOU SEND US THIS HERE CABLE?”

“That’s shorter,” Azzecca agreed, “but how about IS THIS HERE CABLE YOURS? That’s even shorter.”

“Yes, but it don’t necessarily mean that this here cable is this here cable here.”

“Hold it a minute,” Azzecca said. “I think I’ve got it.” He began typing. Garbugli opened his jacket and allowed the sunshine to strike the Phi Beta Kappa key he had earned at City College. Once, in this very office, Carmine Ganucci had said to him, “What the hell is that thing?” and he had proudly answered, “Why, that’s my Phi Bete key, Ganooch.”

“Yeah?” Ganooch had said.

“Why, yes.”

“What does he mean?” Ganooch asked Azzecca.

“Phi Beta Kappa.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“An honor society.”

“Italian?” Ganooch had asked.

That had been a long time ago, of course, long before Nanny had begun bringing culture to the big old house in Larchmont. Ganooch now knew what a Phi Beta Kappa key was. He had only recently, in fact, asked Garbugli where he’d stolen it, as he admired it greatly and desired one of his own. His fingers laced across his expansive middle, Garbugli looked down at the key now and luxuriated in the afternoon sunshine that streamed through the window. Azzecca typed furiously and swiftly for perhaps thirty seconds, stopped abruptly, shouted, “There!” and pulled the sheet from the machine.

“Let’s see it, Counselor,” Garbugli said, and his partner handed him the typewritten sheet:

“I put our names together like one name,” Azzecca said. “Save twenty-six and a half cents that way.” He paused. Garbugli was studying the message intently. “What do you think?” Azzecca asked.

“I think we should call him on the telephone,” Garbugli answered.