“Maybe.”
“What I’m trying to say is, if you went up the fire escape there and looked in the windows, would one of the rooms seem familiar to you?”
“Maybe. But I’m not about to go up that fire escape in broad daylight.”
“What time is it now?” Benny asked.
“A little after three.”
“It won’t be dark till maybe eight, eight-thirty,” Benny said.
“So what’s the hurry?” Dominick asked.
“What’s the hurry? Suppose they kill that little kid?”
“Nobody would do a crazy thing like that,” Dominick said.
“I would,” Nonaka said, making conversation.
He was not, of course, referring to Carmine Ganucci’s son, though if Ganooch asked even that little favor of him, Nonaka might have been willing to comply. The thing that motivated Nonaka was that he had been 4-F during World War II (because of a slight hernia) and had never been drafted to fight. Carmine Ganucci, in Nonaka’s mind, was carrying on the noble tradition of battling the Fascist Pigs. Not that Nonaka liked breaking heads so much. What he liked most was breaking doors with his bare hands. That was what really thrilled him. He liked to bring back his arm, bent at the elbow, and then release it like a piston, the hand held stiff and rigid, and he liked to yell, “Hrrrraaaaagh!” and hit the door with the hard edge of his hand, and watch it splinter. Boy, he really liked to do that. He was disappointed that he would have to wait till it got dark to hit a door. But of course, Benny Napkins was right; you couldn’t go smashing down doors unless you knew what was on the other side of them.
Once, when Nonaka had been a much younger man, he had gone out to Hicksville (Long Island) on a job for Ganucci and had broken an aluminum screen door with one swipe of his hand, and then had given a chop at the inside wooden door, almost shattering the jamb in the bargain, and then had run into the living room, heading for the back bedroom of the small development house, where he hoped to break down yet another door. What he found on the floor of the living room was three people with bullet holes in their heads. That was when he heard a police siren coming from the vicinity of Old Country Road, and decided he had better get out of there fast because somebody had beaten him to the punch.
It was later discovered that Ganucci had got his wires crossed somehow, sending Nonaka to Hicksville instead of to Syosset, and sending the other fellows to do the job Nonaka was supposed to do. As a result, a very fancy deadbeat named Oscar the Pimp got away to Jamaica (Long Island) and had to be sought for thirty days and thirty nights before he was found living off the proceeds with a girl named Alice. It was Nonaka who finally located Oscar in the Jamaica rooming house, and therefore had the opportunity to break down first the door to the room, and then the door to the bathroom, where he found Oscar taking a bath in the same tub with Alice. Oscar later drowned.
“What do you want to do, Benny?” Dominick asked.
“Let’s go get a drink someplace, and wait till it gets dark.”
“I could use a drink,” Dominick said.
“Me too,” Nonaka said.
Carmine Ganucci had boarded a plane from Naples at 2:40 P.M. local time and had arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport at 5:05 P.M. local time, where he had transferred to another plane that left England at 6:15 P.M. local time. Because of the vagaries of date lines and daylight saving time and such, he had already been over the Atlantic Ocean for several hours by the time Snitch got back to the city. In fact, Ganucci’s plane was scheduled to land at Kennedy at 9:05 P.M., exactly six hours from the moment Snitch parked Arthur Doppio’s car in a space on Second Avenue and walked up the street to the tenement where Arthur lived with two cats and a myna bird. The bird had a vast vocabulary, knew far more Italian than Arthur did, and was often heard to shout, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!” over the roar of the beer drinkers sometimes found in Arthur’s apartment.
Snitch did not know that Carmine Ganucci was airborne, otherwise he might have reconsidered. As it was, he found Arthur teaching the myna bird a new word.
“Why are you teaching him that particular word?” Snitch asked.
“I think it’s a good word for the bird to know,” Arthur said.
“It’s a word I never even heard of.”
“I got it out of the dictionary,” Arthur said.
“I never heard of it.”
“Did you ever hear of vermouth cassis?” Arthur asked.
“Never. Though a lot of information comes my way,” Snitch said.
“It’s a drink. It’s supposed to be delicious. Freddie Corriere was with a young lady last night who drank nothing but vermouth cassis. She said it was delicious. In fact, Freddie told me...”
“I don’t wish to interrupt,” Snitch said, “but how would you like to pick up some change doing nothing at all?”
“What would I have to do?” Arthur asked.
“I just told you. Nothing at all. Does the idea appeal to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“All you have to do is say you kidnaped Carmine Ganucci’s kid,” Snitch said.
“You’re crazy,” Arthur said. “I like you a lot, Snitch, but you’re crazy. Listen, would you like to hear what Freddie and this girl done last night? He met her in this bar, you see...”
“What we’ll do,” Snitch said, “is we’ll tell Nanny you’re the guy who...”
“Who’s Nanny?”
“The Ganucci governess.”
“Oh yeah, the one he brought over from London, England, right?”
“Right.”
“What about her?”
“We’ll tell her you snatched the Ganucci kid...”
“I don’t want...”
“... and that you’ll bring him back as soon as she gives you the ransom money. How does that sound to you?”
“Terrible. I don’t want to be nowhere near nothing that smells of snatching Ganooch’s kid. Snitch, I like you a lot, I really do, but you’re a little crazy, I mean it.”
“You could wear a mask,” Snitch said.
“I don’t have a mask,” Arthur said.
“You could pull a nylon stocking over your head.”
“I don’t have no nylon stockings.”
“I know where we can get one,” Snitch said. “The Jackass has a whole drawer full of nylon stockings.”
“Then get him to help you.”
“He’s too stupid,” Snitch said. “This job requires somebody with brains.”
“Me?” Arthur said.
“Right,” Snitch said.
“How much money is involved here?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Let’s say we could get ahold of a nylon stocking someplace,” Snitch said. “Then you could sit down and talk to Nanny with the stocking pulled over your head. And tell her to hand over the money. And promise to bring the kid back.”
“How do I do that?” Arthur said.
“Do what?”
“Bring the kid back. Where is the kid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how can I bring him back?”
“That’s her problem, ain’t it?”
“It’s also my problem if Ganooch finds out I took fifty G’s from the little lady he’s got living there in his house.”
“How could Ganooch find out? And how could anybody know it’s you if you got a stocking pulled over your head?”
Arthur thought this over for a few moments.
“Why not?” he said at last.
“Why not?” Snitch said.
“Intercourse,” the myna bird said.
It was strange how something could be sitting there right under a person’s nose, and a person could never notice it. Take Marie Pupattola.