Scarlet Night (16 page)

“I can think of something even lovelier: suppose Mr. X loaned it for some exhibition and his name is in the catalogue.”

“Oh, my dear girl!”

“I’ll be going home in about an hour, Mr. Romano.”

“Do not hesitate to call me at any hour. And if you are at all uneasy about your personal safety, I shall provide protection.”

“I’m not really.”

“What time will you come tomorrow? And do you want the limousine?”

“I don’t, thank you. And I’ll have to call you.”

“Speak with Alberto if I’m not available, and tomorrow you must meet the rest of the staff.”

The rest of the staff. She thought of a friend, a nightclub comic, who called Romano The Little King. He was right: that fit him better than “the little caesar.” She had a feeling Romano wouldn’t be caught dead with a cigar in his mouth.

It wasn’t until she was in the deli on the way home waiting for them to wrap up a barbecued chicken that she remembered the letter from Mrs. Ryan. She opened it and read:

Dear Julie:

Mr. O’Grady asked me to find out if by any chance he left his pocketknife at your place that day we both stopped in. He cant remember having it since then. It is valuable for sentimental reasons. He thought he should ask before starting to question the pawn brokers in the neighborhood.

I miss you.

Love,

Mary R. and Fritzie

The phone call came a few minutes after seven.

“Mrs. Hayes? This is Ginni Bordonelli. I am Maude Sloan’s daughter.”

“Hello,” Julie said. Very cheerful.

“I understand we are to meet at my mother’s party Saturday…”

Julie didn’t say anything. She ought to have been prepared and maybe she was, but she didn’t feel that way.

“I’m not sure I want to have the party after what happened to Ralph’s paintings, but I suppose we might as well. It was going to be a celebration.”

“What happened to Ralph’s paintings?” Without a tremor.

“Didn’t you know? He destroyed them all except for the one you have.”

“That’s pretty drastic,” Julie said.

“Or did you decide to let that dealer have it?”

That
dealer. “I haven’t decided,” Julie said. “In the end I may let him have it.”

“Rubicoff, is it? Mother knows him. She always gets names wrong.”

“Something like that,” Julie said.

“I’m going to try to get Ralph to start over. I don’t care what anybody says. I was his patron for a while. You and I agree, don’t we, that he does have talent? You will come on Saturday?”

“I expect to,” Julie said.

That voice of Ginni’s: a half note higher and it would crack. But it gurgled with culture. “And your husband? Mother wanted to know.”

“I can’t ever be sure of Jeff. I hope he’ll be able to make it.”

“Do you suppose I could come by and have a quick look at
Scarlet Night?”

“Why not?” Her own voice hit the top of its register, but she made it sound hospitable. She was dying to add qualifications, but something told her not to.

Ginni said, “The trouble is
when.
I want to see so many people while I’m in New York…”

“I’ll tell you what,” Julie said, “if I decide to let Mr. Rubinoff have it in the next few days, I’ll give you a ring first and you can come by and we’ll drink a farewell toast to it—or something like that. Okay?”

“Oh-kay,” Ginni said heartily. “I’ll see you Saturday if not before. You sound like someone I really want to meet.”

“It’s mutual, I’m sure.”

Had she really said that? Julie wondered, hearing a kind of play-back when she’d hung up the phone. It was something her mother used to say, making fun of
her
mother who had said it in earnest.

B
Y LATE AFTERNOON, WITH
no word from Ginni, O’Grady went out and provisioned his cupboard, begrudging every dollar he spent. The two boys ate as though they hadn’t had food for a month. They left him with the dishes and stretched out, one on the daybed and the other on the only easy chair in the room. “Jet lag,” Steph managed in English.

It was eight o’clock when Ginni called and the boys came wide awake at the mention of her name.

“Johnny, everything’s fine,” she crooned.

“Is it now?”

“How are the boys?”

“Oh, they’re just grand. They’re waiting for you to come and fetch them and take them out on the town.”

“You take them, Johnny. They liked you the minute they saw you.”

“They’ve changed their minds, shut up with me here.”

“Take them to Little Italy. There’s a festival. There’s a band playing and crowds of people. They’ll love it.”

“And you, what are you doing?”

“I haven’t seen Mother in over a year.” Which didn’t answer his question at all.

“Ginni, what did you mean, everything’s fine? It’s not as though I haven’t contributed my share to this operation, you know.”

“You’re whining, Johnny. It’s the worst thing in the world to do with me. It makes me furious.”

“What a bloody shame to disturb that darling disposition of yours. What did you work out with Rubinoff? I want to know.”

“Things will go on exactly the way they were planned. Mrs. Hayes has invited me to have a drink and see
Scarlet Night
one last time before she gives it to him.”

“To Rubinoff?”

“Yes, Johnny, to Rubinoff. She’s still making up her mind, but she’ll give it to him.”

“It wouldn’t’ve hurt you to tell me that without making me drag it out of you.”

“You are a partner and you will get your share. I never promised you anything else.”

“Christ! You’d think I was the one that mucked things up. You’d think I was the one running off to South America yesterday.”

“Could you have stopped him?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“No, Johnny. It
is
the point. You were on the brink of disaster.”

“Through no fault of mine, but to hell with that. Ginni, you’re the only reason I’m in on the whole thing.”

“I don’t believe that. I really don’t. Shape up! I’ve never felt so marvelous in my whole life and you should too. You’re supposed to enjoy it.”

He turned his back on the boys, whether or not they could understand his pleading. “Isn’t that how we planned it, Ginni? All we were going to do, you and me, when I came…Remember the song I sang you? ‘Bring me back more money than both of us can haul…!’” He heard her sigh, a cruel sound, and yet he could not stop. “We were going to Paris, to the Riviera, though what in hell I’d do there I don’t know.”

“I’ve got to go. Someone’s waiting for me.”

“Who?”

She hesitated, then: “Really, Johnny.”

“All right, forget I asked it.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Give the boys my love.” And she was gone—to whoever was waiting for her.

He stood a moment and tried to swallow the pain. Then he turned and roared at the two: “Put on your shirts and let’s get the hell out of here!”

People were swarming like maggots around the booths, and in doorways and around the bandstand where, without a doubt, the worst band he had heard in his life was playing the only way it could, loud. But the boys loved it, she was right. They tried to buy clams with
lire
and offered to open the shells themselves. O’Grady paid and they’d eaten a dozen before he got his change. They hugged and thanked him and a minute later gave the
lire
to the statue of Our Lady where she was lit up and shrouded with dollar bills. A soprano with a voice as big as her bosom came to the mike and sang “O, dolce Napoli…”

The boys took off for the bandstand, O’Grady after them. By the time they reached it, the whole street seemed to be singing. All up and down Mulberry Street, people hung out their windows or swayed on the fire escapes. People dangled among the banners like God’s own puppets. The confetti floated down and the smell of sausage and garlic and sweat floated up. O’Grady’s black mood lifted.

People kept shouting new songs for the woman to sing until she was hoarse. She tried to get off the bandstand, throwing them kisses. The musicians left the stand and lit cigarettes. Tommy and Steph seemed on the verge of mounting the platform; someone beat them to it: a long-haired lad with a harmonica. He was good and the singer got off throwing kisses to him. But his playing wasn’t something the crowd could join in on and they began to drift away. Before O’Grady could make up his mind whether or not to try to stop them, Tommy and Steph leaped up on the stand. The crowd gave them a hand. Tommy mimed an organ grinder to keep the harmonica player going and did a couple of twists and turns to advertise himself, while Steph moved chairs and music stands out of the way. He and Tommy took off their shoes and went to work, somersaults, leaps, and flips, things O’Grady couldn’t begin to name. The harmonica player faded out and the crowd came back.

A plump, ruddy-faced man in a white suit and straw hat came and stood alongside O’Grady. He puffed on a cigar that fouled the air around him. He watched them for a while, and out of the corner of his eye sized up O’Grady as well. O’Grady wanted to move off but he was afraid of losing the boys. As though he could.

The stranger took the cigar from his mouth. “Who are they?”

O’Grady wasn’t sure what to answer. The truth: “They’re circus performers here on a visit.”

“Where from?”

He could be F.B.I. or Immigration—or Mafia. Or, considering where they were, a majordomo in the night’s celebration. “They’re Italian,” he said.

“Not you,” the man said, looking at him with heavy eyes.

“What difference does that make?”

The man shrugged. He put the cigar back into his mouth and squinted at the boys through the smoke. “They’re good,” he said then.

“They are.”

“Friends of yours?”

“You might say.” He didn’t even know their last names.

The man took the cigar from his mouth again and pointed with it. “Come to the restaurant two blocks down, Piccolo Paradiso. I want you to bring them. You will be my guests. All right?”

“Thanks,” O’Grady said. “I’ll ask them.”

The man laughed in his face. He threw the cigar into the gutter and clapped his hands twice at the performers. He spoke at the top of his voice in Italian, and whatever he said, they stopped the act right there. When they came down he shook hands with them and they all jabbered away in the boys’ native tongue. It was Tommy who introduced O’Grady to Tony Gatto.

Gatto led the way, shooing people from in front of them with the hat. The vendors all knew him and hailed him by name. The restaurant was festooned with great paper flowers in all the colors of the rainbow. The diners were mixed, some young and some older, a prosperous-looking lot that worked more with their heads than their hands, by O’Grady’s guess. He doubted a man among them lived in Little Italy, though some might have got their start there. It was not McGowan’s, sure.

Gatto set them down at the family table in back where one of the waiters was having his own late dinner, a round table with a fair sampling of the night’s sauces staining the cloth. He seated himself between O’Grady and the boys and said he would order for all of them. And order he did. O’Grady cursed himself for having stuffed them with salami and spaghetti out of a can when it could have been saved for the next day. Shrimp, vermicelli in butter and garlic, broiled chicken, and salad soon arrived. The pitcher of wine was refilled every time it went dry.

Gatto kept leaning back in his chair to where he could look at the two of them. “Beautiful boys,” he would say, which conjured up all kinds of mischief in O’Grady’s mind. Then they would talk again: it was about the circus, he knew that. And Mama and Papa. Then he caught the name “Ginni” and that turned him cold.

“Mr. Gatto,” he interrupted, “would you do me a favor and tell me what this is all about?”

Gatto, who had had only coffee, sat back and took a cigar from his inside pocket. He went back for another and offered it to O’Grady.

“Thank you, I’ll save it.” Billy McGowan loved a good cigar.

“Do you know a club called The Guardian Angel?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“I’d like to book them in there for a week. We just lost an act.”

“Why in hell didn’t you say so? Here I thought it was white slavery or such.”

Gatto gave a great booming laugh. He translated for the boys.

A tough-looking little man with a limp took a place at the table. Gatto greeted him, but made no introductions. He turned back to O’Grady.

“Who is Ginni?”

“Well now,” O’Grady said, drawing out the words, “to the best of my knowledge, they must think her a kind of fairy godmother.” Christ! Who was Ginni? Had they no sense, the two of them? “She collects all sorts of artists and entertainers and does this and that for them.”

The boys looked at him hopefully, expectantly. He could feel the sweat cold on his back. Tommy spoke to Gatto and Gatto translated: “They want you to call her and ask her.”

“Not me,” O’Grady said. “They can give you an answer themselves tomorrow. They’re visitors, man. Wouldn’t they need work permits?”

Gatto gave a great shrug. “A week—who would care?”

“Starting when?”

“By the weekend. Are you in show business? O’Grady, is that the name?”

“It is. I’ve a good voice. I sing a song and read a bit of verse now and then.”

Gatto looked at him with a mixture of pity and contempt and turned back to the boys. O’Grady hated himself for having yielded to a hope he had long tried to purge: he would have dearly loved to be an actor but never got beyond looking at himself in the mirror. The eyes of a mesmerist without the power to mesmerize…or a magician maybe, and him with a hand like a foot.

Gatto and the boys were at it in Italian again. O’Grady looked at the man across the table who was wiping his silverware with a napkin, something that made the Irishman feel a kinship with him. “My name is O’Grady,” he said.

The man nodded and tied the napkin around his neck. Not the friendly sort. The waiter put a bowl of spaghetti in front of him.

Gatto rounded on O’Grady again and rested the dark, yellow-flecked eyes on him. “They say you’re jealous. You’re in love with Ginni and they are too. She must be quite a chick.”