Every Little Crook and Nanny

9: Azzecca

When the telephone rang at five-fifteen, Nanny was certain the kidnaper was calling at last with the instructions he had promised. Her delicate hand trembling, she lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“Nanny? This is Benny Napkins. Everything’s set for tonight. I’ll call you as soon as the game is over. I hope to have the money by then.”

“Good,” Nanny said.

“Have you heard from the kidnaper yet?”

“No.”

“He didn’t call?”

“No.”

“Did you look in the mailbox? Maybe he left the instructions there.”

“Nobody could be that stupid,” Nanny said.

“I would put nothing past this crazy maniac,” Benny said. “Go check the mailbox and call me back.”

“All right,” she said, and hung up.

The second note, as Benny had surmised, was waiting in the mailbox. Like the first note, it was fashioned of newspaper and magazine print clipped out and pasted to a sheet of blank white typing paper. Nanny had no way of knowing, of course, that the kidnaper had painstakingly scissored the words from reviews written by his two favorite critics. In the half-light of dusk, she stood by the mailbox and read the note out loud, the words echoing and floating away up the long driveway to Many Maples, airborne, inspired:

She went into the house and called Benny Napkins at once.

“I have another note from him,” she said.

“What does it say?” Benny asked.

“I don’t know,” Nanny answered.

At seven o’clock that evening, one of Bozzaris’ detectives picked up a man who looked suspicious for several reasons. One reason he looked suspicious was that he was a stranger to the precinct. Another reason was that he was straddling another man and pummeling him with both fists in the middle of the sidewalk outside a cafeteria not two blocks from the station house. He kept telling the detective who picked him up that he had only been acting in self-defense, but the detective knew a murderous stranger when he saw one. He brought the man up to the squadroom, whereupon it was promptly discovered that he was carrying on his person $10,000 in cash.

The man’s name was William Shakespeare.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Bozzaris asked.

“That’s my name,” the man answered in perfect English, which was suspicious in itself.

“Where do you live, Willie?”

“Downtown. On Mott Street.”

“Why?”

“I like Chinese girls.”

“Be that as it may,” Bozzaris said, “what were you doing up here in the confines of my precinct, aside from committing assault on that poor man who was taken to the hospital?”

“That poor man tried to hold me up,” Willie said. “I was protecting my life’s savings from him.”

“There are rarely daylight holdups in this precinct,” Bozzaris said.

“Well, there was almost one today,” Willie said. “Until I foiled it.”

“One theory of criminal investigation,” Bozzaris said, “is that the person who invites a criminal act is as guilty as the perpetrator of that act. That is an old Hebraic theory, if you are familiar with rabbinical law.”

“I am not,” Willie said.

“Be that as it may. A person who carries around ten thousand dollars in cash could be considered provocative, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I needed the money,” Willie said. “Which is why I came up here to draw it out of my savings account.”

“For what purpose did you need the money?” Bozarris asked.

“For a personal purpose.”

“Such as?”

A knock sounded discreetly on the lieutenant’s door. “Enter,” Bozzaris said, and a detective walked in and put a sheet of paper on the desk. “Thank you, Sam,” Bozzaris said, and picked up the sheet of paper. “What do you do for a living, Willie?” Bozzaris asked.

“I manufacture mah-jong tiles. I became interested in the game and also in Chinese girls when I was a resident of Hong Kong many years ago.”

“Willie,” Bozzaris said, looking up, “according to this sheet of paper here, you are a known gambler in the Fifth and also the Ninth Precinct. What do you have to say about that?”

“I sometimes play cards, yes.”

“You have also sometimes been arrested for Bookmaking, and Keeping a Gaming and Betting Establishment, and also Cheating at Gambling.”

“Yes, sometimes,” Willie admitted.

“Many times, it says here, and for the same offense a few times, in fact. An Assault charge added to this illustrious record might prove very troublesome,” Bozzaris said, “in terms of the amount of time you might have to spend incarcerated.”

“That man was attempting to hold me up,” Willie said. “He probably saw my roll when I was paying my check in the cafeteria, and decided to follow me. It’s no crime to protect yourself.”

“Be that as it may,” Bozzaris said. “It’s also no crime for the District Attorney’s office to automatically assume that a known gambler with a previous and lengthy record might be at fault in an Assault case where the arresting officer had to pull him off a man lying flat on his back on the sidewalk. The penalty for Assault in the Second Degree, which is probably what the charge would be, is five years. That’s even if you did not have a previous record. I see here that you are a three-time loser, Willie, and I do not have to tell you what a fourth felony conviction could mean in terms of interminable incarceration.”

“This is ridiculous,” Willie said. “The man really was trying to steal my goddamn money!”

“Why were you carrying around so much money to begin with?”

“My sister needs it.”

“For what?”

“My sister, whose name is Mary Shakespeare, and who lives on...”

“We are not interested in your family geniality here,” Bozzaris said.

“My sister is going out to San Francisco to organize a protest there.”

“Against what?”

“Conditions,” Willie said, “which as you know are bad all over. It costs a lot of money to organize a protest, and I agreed to lend her my meager life’s savings.”

“That is pure and simple bullshit,” Bozzaris said. “Pardon the French.”

“It is the God’s honest truth.”

“Be that as it may, why did you really withdraw ten thousand dollars from your bank?”

“It has nothing whatsoever to do with the card game,” Willie said.

“What card game?” Bozzaris asked.

“Do we forget all about the possible Assault charge, which is a bum rap anyway since I was the victim of an intended holdup?”

“I am not in a position to make promises of any nature,” Bozzaris said.

“In that case, I am not in a position to reveal anything about the card game.”

“What card game?” Bozzaris asked.

“What card game?” Willie answered.

“The card game which,” Bozzaris said, “if your information about it is valuable to me, which I doubt that it will be, I might be willing to forget that you were pounding a man into the sidewalk, provided the man doesn’t drop dead in the hospital, in which case we will have, of course, a homicide on our hands.”

“Do I walk out of here meanwhile?” Willie asked.

“Tell me about the card game,” Bozzaris said.

“What would you like to know?”

“When?”

“Tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”

“Where?”

“Celia Mescolata’s.”

“Blackjack?”

“Poker.”

“The stakes?”

“Very high.”

“How many players?”

“Six.”

“Mmmm,” Bozzaris said.

Somewhere on Capri, there was music.

They had taken an after-dinner stroll along the Via Quisisana, and then had stopped for a granita in the Piazzetta. Now, with the windows of their bedroom open to the soft night air, Stella tried to sleep while somewhere someone strummed a guitar and sang, she supposed, of unrequited love. It did not help that Carmine was snoring.

“Carmine?” she said.

“Mrmh.”

“Are you asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Carmine?”

“Mrmh.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I’m asleep, I told you.”

“Carmine, I have a feeling that something terrible has happened to Lewis.”

“Nothing has happened to Lewis, go to sleep.”

“How do you know nothing has happened to him?”

“Nanny knows exactly where we are. If anything was wrong, she’d call. That’s how I know.”

“Still.”

“Go to sleep, Stella.”

“All right, Carmine. Good night, Carmine.”

“Good night, Stella.”

Stella listened to the guitar. She wished she understood Italian. Thirty years ago, when Carmine asked her to marry him, she had answered, “But I don’t understand Italian, Carmine.”

“What’s that got to do with love?” he said.

“Suppose we were out with some of your friends, and they began talking Italian?”

“I would tell them to talk English,” Carmine said.

“Yes, but would they do it?”

“They would do it,” he said, and gave a short emphatic nod that convinced her immediately. Carmine, who had been twenty years her senior even then, was true to his word. Whenever any of his friends began talking Italian in her presence, he would say, “Talk English.” As a result, Stella still didn’t understand Italian. Not that she minded, except on a night like this when she was so homesick, and a guitar player was singing songs she couldn’t translate.

“Carmine?” she said.

“Mrmh.”

“Carmine, I’m homesick.”

“We’ll be going home at the end of the month, go to sleep.”

“Carmine, aren’t you homesick?”

“No.”

“Don’t you miss Lewis?”

“Yes, but I’m not homesick.”

“Don’t you miss the house?”

“Only the darkroom,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

Mario Azzecca lived on Sutton Place South in an apartment building that had two doormen. The doormen were there so that none of the tenants would be burglarized in their sleep or mugged in the elevator. A third man ran the elevator, which meant that the bastions were well guarded against criminal assault at every hour of the day or night. Paulie Secondo, carrying fifty thousand dollars in cash and a round-trip airline ticket to Naples-via-Rome, arrived at Azzecca’s building at twenty minutes past eight. He was announced by the doorman and promptly asked to go right up, sir, elevator on the left, seventh floor, apartment 7G as in George.

Mario Azzecca was sitting in his living room waiting for the Delacorte fountain to go on. It went on every night at eight-thirty sharp, shooting a spray of water some hundred feet into the air, and was not turned off again until ten. From Azzecca’s living room, he could see clear across the East River to the southerly tip of Welfare Island, where Delacorte had erected the fountain for an estimated cost of three hundred thousand dollars. It was rumored that the fountain cost twenty-five thousand dollars a year to operate, and that it had been constructed for the amusement and amazement of United Nations delegates, but Mario Azzecca firmly believed it had been placed there for his pleasure alone. For hours on end, he would watch the display with unflagging interest. It was even better than watching the traffic on the Queensboro Bridge, which was also fascinating. He was, in truth, a trifle annoyed that Paulie Secondo arrived just a few minutes before the fountain was scheduled to erupt against the nighttime sky.

“Have you got the money?” he asked, somewhat brusquely.

“I have got the money,” Paulie said. Paulie spoke with a distinct Italian accent that was sometimes embarrassing. Being Italian himself, Azzecca did not mind dealing with other Italians, but he drew the line at outright greaseballs — unless they happened to be very high up in the organization, which Paulie Secondo happened to be. Reflecting on the hierarchy (while nonetheless keeping one eye on the southern exposure), Azzecca decided it might be judicious to adopt a more cheerful manner.

“I’m sorry we had to put you through all this trouble, Paulie,” he said. “But Ganooch needs the money right away.”

“No trouble,” Paulie said. “He told you why?”

“No.”

Paulie shrugged. “No matter. He wants the money, he gets the money.”

“There it goes,” Azzecca said, and looked at his watch.

“What?” Paulie said.

“The fountain.”

“Oh,” Paulie said, and peered through the window. “Nice,” he said, and turned away without interest. He reached into his jacket pocket and threw a bulging envelope onto the glass-topped coffee table. “Fifty thousand,” he said. “In hundred-dollar bills, okay?”

“Fine,” Azzecca said.

Paulie threw an airlines folder onto the table beside the envelope. “One ticket New York-Rome, Rome-Naples,” he said. “And return.”

“What airline?” Azzecca asked.

Paulie raised his eyebrows. “What airline you think?” he said.

“Who do you want us to send?” Azzecca asked.

“It’s done,” Paulie said.

“What do you mean?”

“On the ticket. It was necessary to give a name.”

“Who?”

“Someone of little importance. Something goes wrong, we want no connection, capisce?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Get the ticket and the money to him, tell him to be on the Alitalia plane tomorrow night at ten o’clock. He will be met in Naples on Saturday at two.” Paulie looked through the window again. “How long does that thing shoot water?” he asked.

“Until ten.”

“Looks like somebody laying on his back and taking a piss in the air,” Paulie said.

Azzecca picked up the airlines folder, pulled out the ticket, and looked at the passenger’s name.

“Ah yes,” he said, “Benny Napkins.”