Red Rag Blues (19 page)

Sammy's blood-red Pontiac was waiting in Hoboken. He led them out of town, many miles, deep into wooded countryside, and turned onto a blacktop driveway that wound between fields. There were a lot of white fences and sleek horses, the kind who dropped their dung regularly, confident that some lackey with a shovel would be around later to clean up the paddock.

The cars turned a corner and stopped in front of a big, handsome house, all faded red brick and mullioned windows. The drive went on, to a stableblock and a scattering of barns. Two boxer dogs came out to meet the visitors. They did not bark. This was not Central Park.

Sammy's uncle followed, introduced himself as Jerome Fantoni, and they all shook hands and went inside, to a room that was twenty feet high and forty feet long. The chintz sofas were king-size. There were coffee tables big enough for dwarves to play table tennis. Ancient Navajo blankets hung on the walls. Huge vases were full of flowers, mainly roses.

An elderly man in a white jacket and black pants brought the drinks they wanted and then got discreetly lost.

“Let's put business out of the way, so that we can enjoy our dinner,” Jerome said. He wore tennis slacks, a dark green blazer, a creamy open-neck shirt with the collar turned up. His voice had the deep charm of an ambassador to a small but well-heeled nation. “Mr. Cabrillo: I'm sure you appreciate the need for utmost security in a sensitive business like mine. It was a matter of security that brought you to 10th Street, wasn't it?”

“Well, now.” Luis almost smiled. He twitched his nose. Julie knew the sign: Luis was in a hole and scrabbling to get out. “This is not a simple matter,” he said. “There are—how shall I put it?—wheels within wheels.” He frowned, trying to give his waffle some weight.

“I have a proposal,” Jerome said. “I'll tell you what I know, and if I'm right, you tell me what you know.”

“Excuse me.” Julie got up. “I'll just go and smell the roses.”

“My house is your house,” Jerome said. He turned to Luis. “You work for British Intelligence, don't you? That's why you went to 10th Street. Vincent Biaggi was aware that something un-American was taking place. You were, too. Furthermore, you
weren't trying to shake off the two men watching the house. They were part of your team.”

“It's an international conspiracy to subvert the Free World,” Luis said soberly. “It calls for a vigorous, coordinated response from intelligence agencies throughout the West.” He took a deep breath. Nearly out of the hole.

“So who's the rotten apple in my barrel?” Jerome asked.

“I was hoping that Vincent Biaggi would tell us that. Somebody got there first.”

Sammy saw his chance to contribute. “Sonny Deakin aced Vinnie.”

“Yeah, but why?” Julie asked, from a distant corner. “And who aced Sonny? Before he could talk to Luis?”

“It's all right,” Luis told Jerome. “She knows everything.”

“Mrs. Conroy is a very smart lady,” Sammy added.

“Here is the sequence of events,” Jerome said. “Three of my associates went to 10th Street to play canasta with Vincent. A regular arrangement. They caught Mr. Deakin red-handed. He resisted them and paid the price. They informed me. I arrived and assumed command. Sammy left to make arrangements, we had time to kill, so I made the fourth at canasta. You know the rest.”

“So who shot Sonny Deakin?” Julie asked. She was back on a sofa again.

“Tony Positano,” Sammy said. “He came to play canasta and—”

“Hey!” Julie pointed a finger at Luis. “You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'? Sonny Deakin could be Wallpaper. Or maybe Garlic.”

“Good Lord.” Luis widened his eyes. Wallpaper and Garlic had been codenames in the Double-Cross System. “Then Mr. Biaggi might be Seagull. Could Mr. Positano be Nutmeg?”

“It all fits,” she said. “Codenames,” she told Jerome. “Red networks always use codenames.”

“It all sounds rather comic-opera,” Jerome said.

“We take it seriously,” Luis said. He was into his stride now. “We broke the code for their New York network and got all the codenames. Yours is Pinetree. Mrs. Stephanie Biaggi is Bluebird.” Sammy laughed, but he was alone and he quickly stopped. “Our information was that Seagull was being blackmailed by Wallpaper into joining the Communist party.”

“Codenamed ‘Hotdog,'” Julie said.

“Where does Mr. Positano fit in?” Jerome asked.

Luis shrugged. “Difficult to say. He could be Nutmeg, or conceivably Stork, or even Hambone. It makes a difference. We were hoping Wallpaper could tell us, but unfortunately …”

“Nutmeg shot Wallpaper,” Julie said.

“If he
is
Nutmeg,” Luis added.

“This ain't right.” Sammy sounded upset. “Sonny knocked off Vinnie on account of Vinnie couldn't shoot straight.”

“That's what they want us to think,” Luis told him.

“So you can't name names,” Jerome said.

“Only codenames,” Luis said, “and they may be phony. The investigation is ongoing.”

That ended the business discussion.

The apartment block didn't have 24-hour doorman service. After 8 p.m. the tenants used their keys to get into the building. It was a nice old building and the front door had a nice old lock and Spence Mallaby had a set of picks that opened it in seven seconds flat.

He took a pride in blending with his surroundings. For Central Park West on a summer evening he wore a pair of old but well polished cordovans, wool trousers in a quiet brown check, a faded russet shirt and a gray windcheater. He was pushing fifty, medium height, absentminded expression. Right now there were ten thousand guys between the Park and the Hudson who looked just like him: out for a stroll in the cool of the evening.

Nobody in the lobby. He took the elevator to the penthouse. Tapped on the door. He was sorry to bother you, but he had the apartment down below and there was water dripping from the ceiling. Nobody answered. Tapped again. Nothing. This time the lock was modern and expensive and his picks took twelve seconds.

Ever since he gave up smoking he enjoyed a cup of coffee at this time. The penthouse had coffee: Columbian, his favorite. He brewed a pot and turned out the lights and took a mug—black, no sugar—onto the terrace and waited for the young couple to return.

They went in to dinner.

It was not Italian; it was English: mushroom soup, crown roast of lamb with mint jelly, strawberry fool, a small Stilton. Jerome carved the lamb. “I believe in the right of the individual to better himself,” he said. “The Bolsheviks want to share the misery equally. That's not the American way.”

“How would you define the American way?” Luis asked.

“Let me give you an example.” Jerome tasted the claret and nodded. The elderly servant poured. “Major construction projects. The lifeblood of the economy. Years ago, each union was demanding bigger kickbacks than the next union. Chaos. New York was getting a very bad name constructionwise. For the sake of the city, we had to step in. Today, in return for a small, fixed percentage of the budget, we guarantee that every union will perform as promised, and harmony reigns. Harmony expands opportunity. That's freedom to build. I'm a libertarian, always have been.”

“And take fish,” Sammy said. “That Fulton Street Fish Market was a disgrace until we knocked a few heads together. Now you can eat the best sea bass in the country. Clams, too.”

“Any plans for expansion?” Julie asked. She sounded like NBC talking to General Motors.

“The banks are letting the city down,” Jerome said. “They open late and shut early and treat customers like cattle. The place that really cries out for reform, however, is City Hall.”

“You ever tried to renew your driver's license?” Sammy asked her. “Better take sandwiches. Take a sleeping bag. Take three days off, for Pete's sake. It's worse'n the Kremlin down there.”

“You've got a point,” Julie said.

“I'm concerned about extortion by the City's building inspectors,” Jerome said. “In Manhattan, for the simple restoration of the gas supply to an apartment, I'm told they demand thirty dollars.”

“Forty, I paid,” Julie said.

“If we put our guys in City Hall we could get it down to fifteen,” Sammy said.

“It's a matter of resisting the arbitrary restraint of trade,” Jerome said.

For coffee, they returned to the room with the sofas and the roses. Rain had begun to patter on the windows.

“This is all very civilized,” Luis said. “Would it be indelicate of me to recall our first meeting, when you seized me warmly by the throat?”

Jerome sighed, not entirely with regret. “Sometimes we act, not as we wish, but as we must. This afternoon my associates expected strong words and prompt action from me. You see, I'm obliged to play a dual role: sometimes Hamlet, sometimes Henry the Fifth.”

“Sometimes Ivan the Terrible,” Luis suggested

“Well, you pushed your luck,” Julie told him.

“You want I should get the Yellow pages?” Sammy asked helpfully. They wanted. He came back with a directory three inches thick. “This is merely a party trick,” Jerome said. He flexed his fingers and slowly ripped the book in half.

“Crikey,” Luis said. “Did you learn that at Princeton?”

For the first time, Jerome smiled. “I majored in music. I still play the piano for three hours every day.” He looked at his hands. “Bach deserves all the credit.”

When it was time to leave, thunder was grumbling around the horizon and rain was punishing the driveway.

“Your little convertible will drown in this,” Jerome said. “Sammy, fetch one of the Buick sedans.”

They waited in the hall. The boxers, eternally good-mannered, came to see them off.

“You needn't answer this,” Luis said, “but exactly how did you know I worked for British Intelligence?”

“I didn't know. I took a chance, and guessed.” The Buick swished up to the front door, and they all shook hands. “It's almost flattering to be a victim of Red infiltration, isn't it?” Jerome said. “They target the vital organs—the State Department, the Atom Bomb, the Army, Hollywood, and now my operation. Almost flattering.”

*

The storm had sucked up a large part of the Caribbean and it still had a lot left to dump on New Jersey. Luis was glad to be driving the Buick. It felt big and safe and rich. The interior smelled of the hides of rare animals, lightly smoked over a fire of ten-dollar bills. Luis felt pleased with himself, and grateful for Jerome's generosity. “The man may be a thug but he's a prince,” he said.
He turned the wipers to maximum. They flung the rain back into the night.

“I was right about good food,” Julie said. “Everything else, I'm not so sure.”

“We bamboozled him. Eldorado strikes again. Bullshit baffles brains.”

“You reckon? All that stuff about saving the construction industry? And straightening out City Hall? Who was bullshitting who?”

“Wasn't it all true?”

“Yeah, sure, City Hall stinks. And nobody lays a brick in New York without the Mob skims a percentage off the budget. It's a racket, everyone knows that. It's
his
racket, and there he was, giving us this civics lesson.”

“Well… maybe he was relaxing. Maybe he has a wry sense of humor.”

She grunted. “Mafia jokes usually turn out to be as funny as a boil on the backside. And I'll tell you another bad joke. You just missed the turning for Montclair.”

“I don't want to go to Montclair. I want Richfield, then Rutherford—”

“Luis, whatever you want, you're on Interstate 80 heading west. Keep it up, and you'll hit Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Okay?”

“That's no damn good. I want Route 46, south. Where's 46? You've got the map.”

They argued about it. He had to drive a long way before he found an exit that let him get off Interstate 80 westbound and onto Interstate 80 eastbound. “Don't do anything clever,” she said. “Just stay on this and we'll hit the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.”

“I don't want the bloody bridge. I want the bloody tunnel. It's not raining in the bloody tunnel.” They began arguing again.

Jerome Fantoni smoked a long cigar and played backgammon with Sammy. They always played for a dollar a point. Money was the only thing that made his nephew shut up and concentrate on the game; and Jerome liked backgammon because it let him think clearly about other matters.

He won twenty dollars and they stopped.

“Flattery,” he said. “I find it depressing how much flattery most people can take. Look how Cabrillo leaped at my suggestion that he was a British Intelligence agent.”

“The guy's a phony?”

“Sammy, a real intelligence agent would have a cover story ready to hand, a legit reason for being in America, a job, whatever. Instead, Cabrillo tried to bullshit me with that flim-flam about codenames. That was not smart.”

“That was stupid,” Sammy agreed.

Jerome studied the stub of his cigar. “Stupid is dangerous. Cabrillo blunders into something which is not his business and then believes that his bullshit will erase his blunder. Instead he has doubled it.”

“That was
real
stupid.”

“You know where he lives? Yes, of course you do. Take his Studebaker, go there now and delete him from the records. Not the girl, unless you have to. Lose the Studebaker, I don't want to be associated with it. Bring back the Buick. Dump the body in Connecticut.”

“Long Island's nearer.”

“No. Connecticut went Republican. I don't like Connecticut.” Jerome walked with Sammy to the door. “I should have known better when I saw them arrive. What sort of clown drives a Studebaker?” All around, thunder was still grunting and growling. “Drive carefully, Sammy. The roads are full of homicidal maniacs.”