Ransom (2 page)

“What are you going to the Holland Society for?” They still had not yet got into the habit of confiding fully in each other. That would come in time, he mused without resentment. Then, of course, there would be the completion of the circle when they would return to keeping their confidences to themselves. Being a policeman made you cynical about the long-term prospects of a marriage. Then he cursed himself for his treasonable thought and, as compensation, moved towards Lisa and kissed her again.

“You’re love-sick this morning, aren’t you? But don’t stop. I can give you two minutes.”

“Not long enough. I’d feel like the bloke who was double-parked outside the brothel and didn’t want to get ticketed.”

She kissed him back; they were like a couple of teenagers in love for the first time. “I’m going to the Holland Society because Mother wants me to find out how far the Pretorious family has spread throughout the world. She’s a snob, you know that, and I think she’d like to discover that it was actually a Pretorious who founded New Amsterdam. After I’ve been there I’ll do some shopping for presents to take home. I’ll meet you back here for an early lunch, then we’ll do that boat trip round Manhattan.”

“Don’t go mad. This city is only for millionaires.”

“I didn’t tell you, but I brought some of my own money with me.”

Again the tiny secret. How long would it take before they had no secrets from each other? Probably never: he knew only too well that no one, not even the simple-minded saint, ever fully told the truth about himself. “I’m supposed to be the bread-winner.”

“Don’t let’s go into that again.” In Sydney she worked for a public relations firm and till he had been promoted had earned more than he did. “I’m going back to work as soon as we arrive home.”

“I’ll get you pregnant and put an end to your working.”

“What makes you think being pregnant isn’t work?” She kissed him again. “You men have it so easy. A couple of minutes’ exercise for you and nine months’ hard labour for us.”

A few minutes later Malone, still at the window, watched Lisa as she crossed the street and hailed a cab on the corner of First Avenue. This hotel in the East Thirties had been highly recommended by the travel agent in Sydney, but Malone now suspected the travel agent was another of those who had a vested interest. The hotel was clean and comfortable and comparatively inexpensive, once Malone had raised his sights from what Lisa called his Salvation Army hostel complex; she had pointed out, with what he called her heavy Dutch sarcasm, that just because jails provided free accommodation, hotels did not have to operate on the same principle. Still, he thought the rooms in this hotel had been designed for skinny dwarfs, the windows could not be opened and the central heating was at an unchangeable level that was better for breeding orchids than for warming guests. Added to that it was in an area through which Malone, even had he been here in New York by himself, would not have liked to walk at night. Down below, on the other side of the street, he could see two men, drunks or junkies, lolling on the steps of a shabby tenement; farther up the street a

gang of long-haired youths were blocking the sidewalk, making passers-by step into the gutter to walk round them. The cop in him bristled; then he relaxed. Stay out of it, Malone. Your business is ten thousand miles away and you’ll be back there soon enough.

He went into the tiled closet that was called a bathroom, took off his robe and began to shave. The man in the mirror, twisting and turning his face under the electric shaver, was no stranger, but sometimes he wondered how much he knew of himself. The face was not handsome, but the features had enough symmetry about them to stop it short of being plain or ugly; the chin was strong and the eyes had enough humour left in them to persuade even the meanest villain that maybe this wasn’t the worst pig in the world. The body was long and broad-shouldered and the legs also were long; so far none of the six feet and one hundred and eighty-five pounds of Malone had begun to turn to fat; there was still a resemblance to the fast bowler he had been ten years ago when he had played for his State at cricket. But lately he had begun to look at other, slightly older men as he had never looked at them before, searching for warning signs: the slowing walk, the thickening gut, the solidifying prejudices. The stranger round the corner of next year and the next and the next, the man you never met till they finally closed your eyes and you saw him there on the inside of your lids.

He finished shaving, showered, then dressed, putting on the clothes Lisa had laid out for him. He had no interest in clothes, but he was good-humouredly allowing himself to be groomed by Lisa, just so long as she appreciated that a cop was never meant to be a fashionplate, that the best detective was the one nobody could ever remember meeting. She had him in a grey suit today, with a blue button-down shirt and a dark blue tie that at first glance he thought was patterned with foetuses but which, when he looked closer, he was relieved to find were sea-horses. When he was dressed he didn’t look at himself again in the mirror: whatever

failings he had, and he knew he had as many as the next man, vanity was not one of them. If Lisa thought he would look all right in this outfit today, that was good enough for him. From now on she was the only one he really wanted to please.

He left the room, went out of the hotel, walked several blocks across town and caught the subway down to Police Headquarters, to make the courtesy call that Police Commissioner Venneker back in Sydney had asked him to make. He was glad he did not belong to the New York Police Department, not with their crime figures. The longer he was away from Sydney the more he appreciated it. So far that was something he had kept from Lisa.

The phone rang in the office on the tenth floor of Cornwall Gardens on East 69th Street. Polly Nussbaum took the carton of sugar out of the filing cabinet and moved across to her desk. She had been promising herself for years to have the cabinet moved in back of her desk, but somehow she had never gotten around to it: Procrastinating Polly, her mother had always called her. But now her feet were about to force her into it; even the few short steps across the office were killing her. Maybe she should have gone to work for a chiropodist instead of a dentist. Never any trouble with the teeth - “You’re my best advertisement,” Dr Willey was always telling her. But the feet! …

“Dr Willey’s office.”

“This is Mrs Michael Forte’s private secretary.” The woman’s voice was soft and pleasant.

Polly Nussbaum always admired nice voices, but at forty-nine she had left it too late to do anything about her own. In a Jewish apartment overcrowded with her quarrelling parents and her five loud-mouthed brothers and sisters, who got to speak like Claudette Colbert? Claudette Who? You’re

dated, Polly, you live your life in the Late Late Show. “Yeah-yes?”

“I am just double-checking Mrs Forte’s appointment for ten o’clock this morning.”

“Yes, we are expecting her at ten.”

“Thank you. Mrs Forte will be on time.”

Polly Nussbaum hung up, sat back in her chair and eased her shoes off under the desk. She poured sugar into the cup of coffee she had made for herself and prepared to enjoy the only five minutes of leisure she would have from now till one o’clock. Dr Willey did not get in till nine-fifteen and the first patient was due at nine-thirty. She hoped she had done the right thing by trying to fit in that (she checked her book) Mrs Malone. Mrs Malone would never know it, but it had been her voice that had got her the appointment.

Come to think of it, Mrs Forte had a nice voice too. But underneath it all, she suspected, Mrs Forte was holding back a screech just like Momma’s. I wouldn’t want to work for her, not even if some day she ends up as the President’s wife. She would be a bitch to work for, always making sure you never forgot the tiniest thing. That was probably why she had had her secretary check twice in the past week on this morning’s appointment.

Polly spread out The Daily News on her desk, began to leaf slowly through it. Hurricanes, famine, murder, drugs: she didn’t know why she bothered to waste her money each morning. Misery even at ten cents was too expensive. Then she stopped. Michael Forte, handsome in that nice Italian way that always reminded her of Marcello Mastroianni, smiled up at her, inviting her vote. Okay, Mr Forte, you got my vote, especially if you can bring law and order back to this town. Your wife I can do without; but she’s your pain, not mine. I got rid of my pain, Irving Nussbaum, ten years ago. May God never send him back.

She pulled on her shoes, got up, went into the small washroom and washed her cup, came back into the office and stood for a moment at the window, looking down at the ants

in the street. Poor schlemels, even at this height none of you look happy. Toothache, aching feet, ache in the heart. When did I last see a smile on the face of someone my age on the street?

Who’d want to be Mayor, trying to straighten out such a town?

“I have to be at Dr Willey’s at ten,” said Sylvia Forte.

“What?” said her husband abstractedly.

He was a handsome man of just above middle height, with a broad, dark face in which bone and flesh would for the next ten years be fighting a battle; if the bone won he would remain handsome till he was an old man. He had a quick nervous energy to him, exemplified by his wide smile; though some people, mostly those who voted against him, thought the smile was prompted by St Voter’s Dance, the politicians’ endemic, and was not a natural characteristic. Which showed how little he was understood by almost half of the city’s population.

He stood at the window gazing out at the East River that was dull as dirty pewter under the grey November sky. The trees in the grounds of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York City, had no shine to them in the dull light; the fall foliage was the colour of stained leather and bad wine, a dismal frame for what might be the eve of his dethronement. He looked up at the sky, hoping that Hurricane Myrtle would swing away east before it reached New York: not only would it strip the trees of their leaves and perhaps even their branches, it would also strip the polling booths of voters. New Yorkers did not think enough of their politicians to go out into wind and rain to register their approval or disapproval of them.

Despite the dull light he could see up beyond the Tri-borough Bridge to the northern tip of Astoria on Long

Island; on such days he imagined he could see clear into the past, the family history that he had never experienced. Old Michele Forte, his grandfather, had settled over there in Astoria when he had arrived in America from Lerici in Italy in 1895, getting off the ship with a wife, three small children, forty dollars, a strong back and a driving ambition that had almost consumed him like a cancer. The family construction business had begun there and the Triborough was one of the monuments to it: M. Forte and Sons had been one of the contractors on the bridge. Michael knew that Sam, his father, the last surviving son of old Michele, never looked back at Astoria, but maybe that was understandable. America was full of first-generation sons trying to escape from their background. But then Sam Forte had never run for political office, had never had to convince the voters that, though rich, he was as good and humble as they were.

“I hope you listen to your ward bosses more than you do to me,” said Sylvia.

Michael smiled at her, his husband’s smile, not his politician’s. “Sorry. I’ll be able to give you my undivided attention after tomorrow - I hope. What are you doing this morning?”

She sighed, a little impatiently. “I’m going to Dr Willey’s at ten, I’m blessing children or something at St Mary’s School at eleven - ” She was not a Catholic, but there had never been any religious arguments between them and they felt secure enough to make small jokes about each other’s faith. “I’ll remind the nuns to vote for you.”

“They’ll vote for me anyway. I donated all the rosary beads for the last First Communion class.”

She shook her head in mock wonder. “It’s just like dealing with the Indians - you’re buying Manhattan again. What order do you think Mother Teresa and the nuns belong to -the Algonquins or the Delawares?”

“I’ve never seen the Pope as Sitting Bull, but it’s a thought.”

“Then I’m due at a luncheon at the Colony Club - ” She used the word luncheon instead of lunch, but then she would not have been a member of the Colony Club had she done otherwise. She would also have not been a member had she been only Michael Forte’s wife and no more; but being the daughter of Henry and Clara Veerkamp was another matter. It might take Michael to get her into the White House, but the Veerkamp name had got her admitted to everything that counted in the State of New York.

“Why there? They’re not the sort who’ll vote for me.”

“They may - perhaps I can persuade them to. According to Scotty Reston this morning - ” she tapped the copy of The New York Times that lay on the breakfast table - “you’ll need every vote you can get tomorrow.”

He looked at her admiringly; and with some sympathy that he hoped she would not detect. She was the perfect political wife: beautiful, with that red-gold hair that was a sensation on colour television, hard-working, always polite to the right people, never wasting her time on the wrong ones: if I don’t make it tomorrow, he thought, she is the one who is going to be disappointed. She and Old Sam.

As if on# cue, Nathan, the black butler, came to the door of the small dining-room where the Fortes usually breakfasted. “Mr Samuel is here, sir.”

Michael smiled to himself at his father’s punctilious formality. Ever since Michael could remember, his life had been run by his father, but once he had reached political office, first as a Congressman in Washington and then as Mayor here in New York, his father had always had himself announced when he called. Preparing for bigger things, Michael thought with slightly sour amusement: Sam would never expect to enter the White House without being announced. To Sylvia and Old Sam, Gracie Mansion was just a wayside stop on the road to the ultimate destination.