Every Little Crook and Nanny Read online

  The words echoed in Luther Patterson’s high-ceilinged living room, “free and equally brutalizing to all,” a phrase that John Simon himself, were he not most certainly a modest man, might have emblazoned on his shield as a motto of sorts—“Free and Equally Brutalizing To All,” lapis on azure perhaps, with two gules pendant.

  In a burst of familiarity, Luther called out, “Johnny, what do you think of that idea?” Receiving no reply, he replaced both cherished volumes on the shelf and went into the kitchen, where Ida was preparing lunch. He lifted the cover of the pot on the rear burner of the stove, picked up a tasting spoon, glanced at the ceiling again, and said, “John Simon, do you know I have a doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University, do you realize that, John? Do you know that I was graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, third in my class? John Baby, let’s have a drink together one day—after I’ve collected, of course, after this is over and done with—sit together in the salon on my yacht and exchange literary bons mots, how I’d enjoy that, how I would truly enjoy that.” He put the cover back on the pot, and the spoon on the stove top. Then, because he was a critic, he said, “This soup stinks,” and went back into the living room.

  If there was one thing Luther Patterson possessed, it was an enormous library. The one reason he had taken this huge tenth-floor apartment on West End Avenue (besides the cheap rent) was that it had a living room almost as long as a bowling alley, the length of which was covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, which in turn supported hundreds and hundreds of books, all of which Luther had carefully read and evaluated. Luther got the books free. He also got paid to read and evaluate them. He did not enjoy reading too much, but then, who did? In that one respect, he was truly envious of his colleague John Simon (he dared to whisper the word “colleague” only in the privacy of his own mind, as though sacrilegiously linking his own name with that of, say, George Bernard Shaw or William Jennings Bryan). Simon not only reviewed books, he also had the opportunity of seeing a lot of plays and movies free before expressing his carefully considered opinions. That was a very nice aspect of the profession, Luther thought. Simon’s profession, not his. Luther reviewed only books. Always books. For unimportant journals and obscure publications. Books all the goddamn time. The only way he ever got to see a play free was to sneak in during the intermission and then look around in the dark for an empty seat. He never did this when he was with Ida. Ida disliked dishonesty of any sort. She wasn’t even too keen on his having kidnaped Lewis Ganucci.

  Luther sat in his high-ceilinged, book-lined living room overlooking West End Avenue, tapped the balls of his fingers ever so lightly together, and wondered how the Ganucci lad was doing. He had locked the son of the retired soft drinks magnate in the back bedroom of the apartment, where any cries for help would register only on the blank brick wall of the adjacent building. He had then driven back to Larchmont in his 1963 hardtop Chevrolet and put the ransom note in Carmine Ganucci’s mailbox. He had felt a thrill of accomplishment as he slid the envelope in with the morning mail. Not the same thrill he had felt while composing the note, of course, nor even the same thrill he had experienced when stealing into the millionaire’s mansion last night and clapping his hand over the boy’s mouth and spiriting him away; no, that had really been quite exciting.

  “It was really exciting, Martin,” he said aloud. “Vraiment émouvant, if you take my meaning.”

  In fact (and he had to admit this because if there was one thing Luther admired about himself, it was his uncompromising honesty), the Ganucci grounds and house had been the most exciting part of the entire adventure. He had never been to a place as exuberantly gauche as the Ganucci homestead, but then what could one expect of a man who had made his fortune bottling and selling soft drinks in the Midwest? To each his own, certainly, but there was hardly anything creative about such a pursuit, and Luther should not have been surprised to find the millionaire’s mansion a baroque monstrosity that dominated acres of rolling green lawn and . . .

  “How would you put that, John?” Luther asked aloud. “Virid mead? Hát nézd, tulajdonképp nem számít, John,” he said, lapsing into Hungarian. “A stilusod kifogástalan, a képeid érzékletesek, a kritikai érzéked megtámadhatatlan.”

  But the amazing thing about his response to the ugly old house was that he had been overwhelmed by the sheer luxury of it, the heady scent of moneyed exclusivity almost causing him to become dizzy as he pried open the sleeping lad’s window. All during the abduction, he experienced this same sort of giddy awareness of immense wealth, heightened by the knowledge that at least some of that wealth would soon accrue to him. Before he had stolen onto the grounds past the dozens of maples that stood like leafy sentinels (Nice, he thought, well put, Luther) on the lawn in front of Ganucci’s architectural horror, he had thought of asking no more than ten thousand dollars for the safe return of the boy. But on the way back to Manhattan, he had been unable to dispel the scent, the stink, the stench of millions and millions of dollars earned, for Christ’s sake, by bottling soft drinks when a truly creative person like himself strained so hard to earn the meanest living. It was then that he decided to raise the ante to twenty thousand dollars; his weeks of careful research were at least worth that much. By the time he got back to the West End Avenue apartment, however, the smell of money was so overpowering that he had to revise his note three more times, escalating the demand in ten-thousand-dollar jumps until he reached his final draft, wherein he set the ransom at $50,000.

  His approach had been unorthodox, to say the least. He had first looked for an estate that appeared as though it might support the kind of family he hoped to victimize. (Well, victimize was perhaps too strong a word. It had never entered his head until this moment, as a matter of fact, and he rejected it at once. He intended no harm to the boy. All he expected was some reasonable recompense for his labor.) He had found Many Maples quite by chance, having drawn on an Esso map a circle with a radius of twenty-five miles, its center being New York City. He had explored Lower Westchester like a latter-day Richbell. Many Maples seemed perfect. Moreover, his discreet inquiries in town, at shops and gasoline stations, restaurants and cocktail lounges, boutiques and haberdasheries, garnered for him the information that Carmine Ganucci was one of the wealthiest men in the small community, a respected member of the school board and head of the Lions Club Ambulance Corps. But what interested Luther most was the fact that Carmine Ganucci had a ten-year-old son named Lewis.

  The thing to do now (well perhaps not this instant, but certainly after lunch sometime—if he could get through soup) was to call the Ganucci mansion and ask them if they had got the money together. He would then say they would be contacted again to let them know when and where he wished the money delivered.

  Luther was feeling good.

  “I think I’ll have a drink, John, Martin, what do you say?” he asked aloud. He went to the bar opposite the bookcase and began mixing himself a very strong martini. The way he looked at it (and this was what made him feel so good), if he couldn’t be as successful a critic as Simon or Levin, he could certainly be a successful kidnaper instead.

  And that was most assuredly the next best thing.

  4: The Corsican Brothers

  It was almost three P.M. before Benny got downtown to Forty-second Street.

  He had left Many Maples at noon, and then had driven to Harlem to pick up the work, which had taken longer than he’d expected because a man insisted he had put fifty cents on number 311 yesterday and that was the number that had come in, whereas Benny had the word of the collector himself that the number played was 307, not 311, a common enough mistake, seven-eleven being the ritual chant of dice players and gamblers everywhere.

  The number, of course, had only been written down a half-hour after the bet was placed, it being the habit of policemen (suspicious by nature) to assume automatically that if a man had several dozen policy slips in his pocket, he wa
s engaged in the policy or numbers racket. The bet had been placed by Walter Anziano, a nice enough old man in his seventies, who had been playing the numbers since he first arrived in America from Palermo fifty-three years ago, fifty cents a day every day of the week, and who had hit only once in all that time, for the amazing sum of three hundred dollars.

  Benny did not like to lose a steady customer like Walter Anziano. So he told the old man that there had apparently been some mixup, but that a check of yesterday’s work had revealed a slip of paper in the collector’s handwriting with the numerals 307-50 on it, meaning that Anziano had bet fifty cents on 307, not 311. The collector claimed he had written down the number as soon as he’d got off the street, and that he was certain Anziano had said 307, so it was now a matter of the collector’s word against Anziano’s. In any event, Benny informed the old man that they could not pay off. However, Benny was willing to give Anziano a free fifty-cent ride every day for the next week, if only to show the good will of himself and his fellows, an offer the old man grudgingly accepted only after having been plied with four shots of Four Roses in a local bar. It had been the entertainment of Walter Anziano that had occupied most of the afternoon, while little Lewis was in the hands of some cheap hoods who were undoubtedly maniacs or worse. Benny could not think of anyone but maniacs kidnaping the son of Carmine Ganucci.

  He had agreed with Nanny that the matter should not come to Ganooch’s attention in any way, manner, or form, because whereas it was nice weather for swimming, it would be difficult indeed to effect a splendid crawl while wearing cement blocks. The best way to keep the matter from Ganooch was to make certain that none of the fellows higher up found out about it. And the best way to make certain of that was to pay those crazy maniacs the fifty grand at once. Which was why Benny was so anxious to talk to the Corsican Brothers.

  Vinny and Alfred were just beginning their famous amazing dancing doll act when Benny finally caught up with them. Alfred, the younger of the twins by fourteen hours, winked at him as he approached, and then launched into his monologue, the prelude to a choreographic masterpiece.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I know you are all hurrying home to your loved ones after a hard day’s work, but if you’ll grant me just a minute of your time, I think I can show you something wonderful to bring home to the wife or kiddies. I have here in this carton you see here at my feet, a limited amount of amazing dancing dolls which cost only fifty cents each and which when you see them perform I am sure you will agree are worth ten times that amount. There are no mechanical parts on these dolls, they are easily folded for carrying in pocket or purse, and they will continue to delight your loved ones, friends, neighbors, and all and sundry who witness their remarkable performance. If I can have one moment more of your valuable time, I am going to take one of these amazing dancing dolls out of the box here and show you what it can do.”

  The stage upon which the Corsican Brothers worked was a stretch of sidewalk some four feet long and three feet wide, their backdrop a brick wall darkened by the soot of centuries. An audience composed of summer out-of-town visitors, shoppers, and cinema buffs (who had wandered over from the twenty-five-cent peepshow displays slightly farther west), some two dozen people in all, watched as Alfred reached into the box. Benny stood to the left of the crowd, also watching. To the right of the crowd, standing almost against the brick wall, his hands in his pockets, stood Vinny, the star performer in the amazing dancing doll act, but a performer who sought neither applause nor recognition, a performer whose role necessitated that he remain absolutely silent, anonymous, and practically invisible. Standing directly opposite Alfred and the cardboard box that contained the amazing dancing dolls, Vinny watched like any other curious member of the audience, his hands in his pockets.

  “Now this may look to you like just an ordinary doll made of cardboard and flimsy paper,” Alfred said to the crowd. “In fact, as you can see, the head here is made of cardboard, as are the hands and the feet, and the arms and legs are just this flimsy accordion-pleated paper, practically tissue paper, you may wonder how this doll can do what it is about to do. That is the amazing thing about this doll. This doll, which is only sixteen inches tall from the top of its head to the tips of its toes, is going to dance. I can make it dance, you can make it dance, and it will continue to dance for hours and hours without ever needing recharging or replacement of parts because there are no batteries in this amazing dancing doll (how could there be when the whole thing is made out of paper and cardboard) and there are no mechanical parts to wear out or break. It is paper and cardboard, that is all, but the paper is specially treated so that it gathers electric ions from the very air you and I, all of us, are breathing all around us. And once those ions are gathered and stored in these flimsy little legs, why the amazing dancing doll can hardly stand still with excitement, it just begins dancing all over the place for hours on end. I’m going to show you in a minute how this little doll dances, but I want to explain first that the reason we can offer it at the low price of fifty cents is that the doll is made out of just this flimsy paper and cardboard, as you can see, and that’s practically what it costs to manufacture and ship, with a very small markup for profit. The electric ions in the air are free and, as you all know, it is the power source that causes most prices to soar and become a burden on the consumer. Not so with this amazing dancing doll. Now let me show you.”

  Alfred, holding the doll by the top of its cardboard head, bent over so that the dangling cardboard feet on their accordion-pleated paper legs were almost touching the sidewalk. He shook the doll vigorously. He shook it again, even more vigorously.

  “I am gathering in the electric ions,” he said.

  He shook the doll again.

  “One, two, three shakes, sometimes a few more depending on weather conditions,” he said, “that is all it takes to store the energy and set the thing in motion. Now watch.”

  He released the top of the doll’s head. The doll began to bounce. Unsupported by Alfred, who backed away from it, the doll began to jiggle and jump on its flimsy paper legs, up and down, up and down, as though dancing for joy now that it had been infused with all those marvelous life-giving electric ions, free in the air for all to breathe. What the crowd did not see (because the brick wall backdrop was so filthy with soot) was the slender black thread stretching tight from the rim of the carton to where Vinny stood across the sidewalk, silently watching the performance albeit a performer himself. The taut black thread went directly into Vinny’s pocket, where it was wrapped around the forefinger of his right hand. As Vinny jiggled his forefinger, the black thread simultaneously jiggled, and as the thread jiggled, so did the doll because what Alfred had really been doing (while earlier shaking out the doll to gather in all those electric ions) was hanging it onto the thread from a tiny hook on the back of the cardboard head. As the crowd watched goggle-eyed now, Alfred picked up the doll and said, “Who’ll buy the first one, ladies and gentlemen? They’re only fifty cents each, who’ll buy the first one, there is only a limited supply.”

  A sucker in the audience (there are suckers in every audience, Benny mused silently) asked the anticipated sucker question.

  “How do we know all the dolls can dance and not just that one doll there?”

  “They can all dance,” Alfred answered, “because they have all been specially treated with the ion-attracting matter. Would one of you people here just reach into the box and hand me any doll that’s in there. There’s nothing special about this particular doll, believe me. They are all of them exactly alike, they are all amazing. Madam, would you please do us the favor?” he said, turning to an old woman who looked like a minister’s wife, but who may very well have been a retired prostitute. It made no matter; Alfred truly did not know her, and his claim that all of the dolls were exactly alike was a valid, honest, and legitimate one. The old lady gingerly picked a doll from the box at random.

  “Now
please shake it out for me, madam, just as you saw me do with the other doll,” Alfred said.

  The old lady shook out the doll.

  “Again, please, a little harder. Thank you. And here, sir,” he said to the man who had raised the question, “you give it a few shakes, too. Madam, may I, please?” He took the doll from the old lady, and handed it to the man. The man studied the doll with the scrutiny of Geppetto, gave it two vigorous shakes, and handed it back to Alfred, who immediately bent low, smiled at the crowd, and said, “Few more shakes for good measure,” as he swiftly hooked it onto the black thread that ran arrow-straight into his brother Vinny’s pocket. Alfred released the doll, and lo and behold, the cunning little darling began jiggling and bouncing and dancing its little heart out! Any skeptic in the crowd was immediately convinced. Common sense stridently warned that a paper and cardboard doll could not defy the laws of gravity in such a manner, even if it were specially treated with monosodium glutamate or aluminum chloral hydrate. But an old lady and a disbeliever, both as honest as the day was long, had each shaken the doll and passed it back to Alfred, who did nothing more than shake it again and set it on its feet—and now look at the damn thing dancing! Dollar bills appeared in anxious fists. Alfred busily began making change and dispensing dolls from the carton as Vinny’s forefinger twitched and the doll on the unseen black thread danced its way to fame and glory. In less than five minutes, Alfred had sold fourteen of the dolls, for an almost pure profit of seven dollars. He might have gone on to sell another dozen to the growing crowd had not Vinny emitted a low whistle at that point, the signal that the cop on the beat was approaching. Alfred snatched up the amazing dancing doll in the middle of one of its more complicated entrechats, tossed it into the carton, said, “Good night, folks, thank you,” and bolted off after his brother, who hastily left behind him on the sidewalk a broken cotton thread, his only invisible means of support.