Ransom (14 page)

Himself personally, his body or his soul: but he feared for his possessions, for his house and his respectability that was as new and expensive as any of the furnishings that surrounded him. A bomb planted outside his front door would be something he could never hope to survive. The Establishment might be marked for destruction by the urban guerillas (he knew the battle lines as well as any war correspondent; any real social climber today had to be a military historian), but the bombing of his house would not admit him as a welcome refugee into the Establishment. He was still on a temporary visa from his past.

He was fifty-eight years old and he had been twelve when he had first seen Manhattan as the future: the telescope had

been turned the other way around then. Boys on the Jersey shore had had their heroes: Dutch Schultz, Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth; he had yearned to be like Mayor Jimmy Walker and the bosses of Tammany Hall. He had crossed the water from Jersey to Manhattan in 1930, a bad year to be going anywhere, and within six months he had discovered there were other, bigger men than the politicians, rich old-family men who were a law unto themselves. They had become his heroes and he had determined that some day he would join them. But for a poor fisherman’s son from New Jersey the way uptown was far tougher and longer than a mere subway ride. He had had to make commitments along the way: even Christ, he supposed, had had his debts when they finally nailed him to the cross.

“Why should they want to threaten me like that?”

“I don’t know.” Malone knew he had scored with this wild punch; but where was he to go from here? “Unless you know more than you think you know.”

Padua looked at him sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

Malone shrugged; the remark meant as much to him as it did to Padua. I’ve worked in the dark before, he thought, but I’ve never been bloody blindfolded too. “If you told us what you know, maybe Captain Jefferson and I could take them off your back.”

“I am only the go-between,” said Padua. “My connections asked me to see the Mayor - “

“Put us on to your connections.”

“I can’t do that- “

Suddenly all the anger and frustration of the long day burst out of Malone. He grabbed Padua by the front of his jacket, stood over him. “By Christ, I’ll do you, Padua! Tell us who they are!”

Padua, unafraid, looked at Jefferson. “Captain- “

But Jefferson did not move and his dark face remained expressionless.

Malone, blind with fury now, raised his hand and

whipped the knuckles across Padua’s face. Padua fell back, jerking free of Malone’s grip, and fell over a small table. A vase fell to the floor and was shattered. There was a gasp from Padua as his foot crunched into a piece of the vase; he staggered back as Malone came after him. They were up against the fireplace now; Malone swung wildly to grab Padua again, missed, and his hand swept a small figurine from the mantelpiece and it, too, shattered as it hit the floor.

“No! No!” Padua stopped, let himself be snatched at by Malone. “Don’t break anything more!”

“Tell us who your connections are!”

Malone hit Padua again. He had never been as blindly savage as this before; but before this he had never lost anyone as dear to him as Lisa. Jefferson still remained unmoving as Padua was pushed across the fireplace. Padua’s arm came up to protect his face as Malone hit him again, his elbow swept along the mantelpiece and three more figurines were knocked to the floor.

“No-please! No more! I’ll call them! Please!”

Malone let Padua go and the latter stepped away, his foot again crunching on a piece of china. He looked down dazedly at his broken treasures, then up at Malone.

“I could have you killed, you know that?” Padua’s voice was still soft, but his own anger was as furious as that of Malone.

“I’m sure you could,” said Malone. “Your connections would fix that for you. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“You better tell us who they are, Mr Padua,” said Jefferson quietly. “Otherwise Inspector Malone is likely to wreck all this room of yours.”

“The Mayor might not like cops acting the way you two are.” A note of resistance, a whistling into the wind, flickered in Padua’s voice.

“The Mayor knows as well as you and I do that he doesn’t run the law,” said Jefferson. “And I don’t believe you’d complain to him, anyway. Gome on, Padua - !” Abruptly his voice sharpened. “Who are your connections?”

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Padua hesitated, then said, “I’ll have to call them - “

Malone picked up the phone on the table beside the fireplace. “Here!”

“I’d rather be alone when I call them - “

Malone shook his head. “Come on - get on the phone!”

Padua took the phone reluctantly. He stepped on another piece of china, heard it crush beneath his heel, and he shut his eyes as if in pain, as if the shard had gone right in to cut his foot. He opened his eyes again, looked at Malone with hatred, then dialled a number.

Malone, his anger dying down, reason returning, lifted a hand and looked at it. The knuckles were skinned and a trickle of blood ran down the back of his hand. He stared at it in surprise, then looked at Jefferson as if asking the cause of it.

“It got what we wanted,” said Jefferson quietly. “Sometimes it’s the only way.”

Padua spoke into the phone: “This is Frank Padua. I’ve had a visit from - from one of our friends.” He glanced at Malone, smiled thinly; he was recovering his composure. “He wants to see someone … Anyone, I guess - ” He looked at Malone again.

“Not anyone” said Malone. “The top one. The bloke who sent you up to see the Mayor.”

Padua sighed, spoke into the phone again. “He insists on seeing the top man.” He waited, looking from one policeman to the other. Once he looked down at the shattered pieces of china on the floor, bit his lip, then glanced around the room at what he still possessed. Then he held the phone close to his ear again: “Okay. They’ll be there as soon as they can.”

He hung up, scribbled an address on the pad beside the phone, tore off the sheet and gave it to Jefferson, ignoring Malone. “Someone will be waiting there for you.”

“They’re prepared to see both of us?” said Jefferson.

“I don’t know. You’ll know that when you get there.”

When the two policemen had gone, Padua remained

standing in front of the fireplace looking about him. He put his fingers up to the weal across his jaw where Malone had hit him, but the pain there was nothing to the other pain he felt. He knelt down, picked up the largest piece of broken china. Now he had regained his composure he knew that not only the Australian was to blame for what had happened. There were others, the ones who had never forgotten that his father was a Sicilian. The ones who had done him favours years ago when he had first crossed to Manhattan, who had waited all these years before asking for repayment. Men like Don Auguste Giuffre, a voice from the past that had called today and mentioned an old debt.

“Where are we going?” Malone said.

“Staten Island. We’ll go over the Verrazano Bridge from Brooklyn.”

Verrazano: the man who had been eaten by cannibals. “John, are you sure you want to see this through with me?”

“I’m sure. Only when we see these guys, don’t get rough. They won’t stand for it the way Padua did.”

They had driven across from Manhattan through the Queens Midtown Tunnel, out along the Long Island Expressway, then turned on to the Brooklyn - Queens Expressway. Malone could see little but watery auroras of neon off on either side of the expressway; for all he knew they could have been passing through the Brooklyn tundra, if there was such a thing. They saw three cars piled up on the side of the expressway, two police cars and two ambulances parked behind them; but Jefferson drove past without a glance at the accident, his mind intent only on the interview ahead. He knew he was laying his head on the block by accompanying Malone on these “unofficial” visits to Padua and whomever they were going to see in Staten Island, but he liked this phlegmatic Australian and he knew how he

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would have felt if any jerk had ever kidnapped Mary. There were times when the job was of no importance at all except for the clout it could give you.

They crossed the Verrazano Bridge, the storm blasting at them, threatening to sweep them off into the Narrows beneath. “If they release those guys from The Tombs, they’re gonna have to drive them to Cuba. I can’t see any planes taking off tomorrow, not unless this storm blows itself out all of a sudden.”

“I’ll drive the bastards there myself,” said Malone, “if it means getting my wife back.”

They came down off the bridge on to the Staten Island Expressway, turned off and headed south. There was less neon out here; they were in the suburbs of darkness. Then Jefferson slowed, began peering out at street signs; finally he turned right and pulled up in front of a tavern. There was a small neon sign in the window, offering Beer and Cocktails to the traveller in the storm.

They got out of the car and went into the bar, a dingy stall staffed by a St Bernard in a dirty apron. Before they had time to speak to him a thin young man in a black raincoat and a plaid cap got up from one of the booths.

“Mr Malone?” He had a pleasant smile and he looked to Malone like one of the youngsters one used to see in the films they no longer made any more, the quiet dark boy who was the buddy of the college hero. There’s something wrong: this kid looks too square to have anything to do with Padua or his connections or the kidnapping. “You have a car? We’ll go in that, if you don’t mind. Mine is an MG, it might be a squeeze for all of us.”

Once in the car he gave them directions, then sat back, occasionally passing casual remarks about the weather. “I was sailing only yesterday, out on the Sound. Now look at this - ” Then he leaned forward. “That’s the place.”

It was a closed-down picture theatre standing in a line of dark locked-up stores, some of them with their fronts boarded up. As they got out of the car, the wind and the rain still

lashing at them, the young man said, “We are waiting for this section to be re-zoned. Eventually, we hope, we’ll have a development of better class homes and apartments here.”

“Are you in real estate?” Jefferson asked.

“I’m still at college studying business administration. But I was the one who saw the possibilities here.” He said it with almost shy modesty, as if he were ashamed of being so precocious. “This way, please.”

“Do I come too?” said Jefferson.

“That’s up to you - Captain Jefferson, isn’t it? Mr Padua rang back after you’d left, just to say you were with Mr Malone. Are you here officially or unofficially?”

“Unofficially,” said Jefferson. “Very.”

“Then there’s no problem.”

He slid back a grille across the front of the theatre, opened a door and led the way across the lobby. The place was in darkness, but by the light of the flickering street lamps outside Malone had seen the posters peeling off the billboards on the walls. A torn and mangled Shirley MacLaine smiled at him, and behind her dozens of other stars were leaning on her as they peeled off the wall. The posters, Malone imagined, might go right through the wall: Tom Mix might be buried somewhere there in the peeling sheets, pushing Lillian Gish out of the way to smile at the public who had gone forever. The young man opened another door into the picture theatre itself.

Malone paused, all at once realizing how far they had come, aware of the unknown danger that might lie ahead. “Why do we have to come to a place like this?”

“Privacy, Mr Malone. You’ll have to trust us. We don’t want trouble, any more than you do. We’re just trying to be civic-minded, Mr Malone.”

“That’s all you guys are these days,” said Jefferson. “Nice harmless civic-minded people.”

“I get your point, Captain,” said the young man with a smile. “But would you believe - I’ve never heard the word Mafia spoken in our family?”

“How about Cosa Nostra?”

“Fairy-tales.” The young man smiled again, but now there was just a slight coolness to his voice. “But is this the time to be asking such questions?”

Then he led them into the theatre, down an aisle between the rows of empty seats. Malone, eyes alert, saw the four men standing in the shadows, one to each corner of the big cavernous barn. He saw Jefferson undo the button of his jacket, making it easier to get at the gun in his shoulder-holster if the emergency arose. Then they had stopped by an elderly, heavily-built man sitting in an aisle seat.

“Grandfather, this is Mr Malone and Captain Jefferson.” The young man gestured at the old man who was wrapped in a dark overcoat and was wearing a black homburg hat. “My grandfather, Don Auguste Giuffre.”

“Wait at the back, Ralph. In case we have some other customers.” He chuckled, waited till his grandson had gone back up the aisle. Then he raised his hand, waved it in a dismissal gesture. The two men down at the front of the theatre moved up the side aisles, joined their partners at the back and the four of them disappeared through the door into the lobby. Then, and only then, did Don Auguste Giuffre look up at Malone and Jefferson. “I own this movie house. Once I come here with my family every Saturday night -two features, three shorts, a newsreel, all for fifty cents. Pete Smith was my favourite. Now - ” He made a gesture of disgust. “I could keep it open, make money by showing dirty movies. But my grandchildren, the young ones, not Ralph back there, they might come here. Not good. Sit down, gentlemen.”

Malone looked over his shoulder towards the back of the theatre. The four men had disappeared, but Ralph Giuffre stood by the door. The two policemen moved into the row in front of the old man, faced him with their buttocks perched on the backs of the seats behind them. The lights along the side walls were on, but they had been dimmed: the show was about to start. Two features, three shorts and a newsreel, all

for fifty cents: Malone wondered what price the old man was going to ask for what he was about to offer them.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” Giuffre’s accent was rough, as ineradicable as a birthmark; but his manners were impeccable, he took his position as don of his Family as seriously as any president or prime minister. “Our friend said you were having some trouble - “