Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (32 page)

 
          
 
"But you realize we'll study it
first."

 
          
 
"I am not here to be stupid,"
Banadando said. His finger moved down to the next item, below THIRSTY. There
was the word KOPYKAT, and under it an address: 1411 BROADWAY. "This is a
copying service," he said. "It's a chain, there's Kopykats all over
the city. This is the Broadway one, you got it?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"They're open on Sunday. This afternoon,
any time this afternoon, you go there and pick up the package for Mr. Robert.
If there's no package, don't worry about it."

 
          
 
"All right."

 
          
 
The stubby finger moved down to the last item
on the sheet of paper: BELLPORT on one
line,
and under
it HOWELL'S POINT. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "It's farther
out from the city, so let's say
ten o'clock
. You bring me the Kopykat package and the
other package, and I tell you what next."

 
          
 
"And the scraps from your table?"

 
          
 
With a thin smile, Banadando shook his head.
"We pay at the end," he said.

 
          
 
"No," Levine said. "We have to
have something now, to prove it's worthwhile."

 
          
 
Banadando sat back, brooding. The small
movements of the boats were comforting at first, but then insistent. A large
white ferry went by,
On
its way to
Fire Island
, and its wake made the Bobby's Dream heave
on the water, like something alive and in pain.

 
          
 
"Upstate in
Attica
," Banadando said at last, "in the
state pen there, you got a guy named Johnson, serving five consecutive life
terms. He's never coming out. He'U
be
the only Johnson
there with that sentence."

 
          
 
Levine smiled faintly. "I guess you're
right."

 
          
 
"In
Vermont
," Banadando said, speaking slowly,
picking his words with obvious care, "there used to be a ski lodge called
TransAlpine, had a big Olympic indoor skating rink.
Burned
down.
No link between that and Johnson at all, right?"

 
          
 
"You tell me," Levine said.

 
          
 
"Johnson did things for Giacomo
sometimes," Banadando said, "Giacomo had a piece of TransAlpine. Not
right out in front, but you could find it."

 
          
 
"And?"

 
          
 
"Johnson
Hired
the torch."

 
          
 
"It was arson?"

 
          
 
"Nobody ever said it was," Banadando
said. "Not up there in
Vermont
. All I say to you is, Johnson hired the
torch, Johnson and TransAlpine, there's no link there, so nobody ever talked to
Johnson about that.
Now all of a sudden Ygiving you a link.
And what has Johnson got to lose?"

 
          
 
"The same as the rest of us," Levine
said.

 
          
 
The man who answered the Thirsty phone number
had thin raspy voice. He said, "I got everything but the gun. You
want?"

 
          
 
"Yes," Levine said.

 
          
 
"In
Manhattan
," the raspy voice said, "
79th Street
anc Broadway, there's benches at the
median, middle of
th
< street, where people sit in
the sun.
Around two o'clocl there
'll be an old guy
there with the package, gift-wrapped. Tell him you're Abe."

 
          
 
Levine followed directions and found half a dozen
elderly men on the stone bench there, faces turned to the thin cleai autumn
sun. The faces were absorbing the gold, hoarding it, stocking it up for the
long cold time in the dark to come. .

 
          
 
One of the old men held in his lap a parcel
that looked likef a box of candy gaily wrapped in Happy Birthday paper. Levine
went to him, identified himself as Abe, and took delivery. When Levine asked
him how he'd come by the package, the old man said, "Fella gave it to me
half an hour ago with a five dollar bill. Said you'd be along, said he couldn't
wait,
said
I had an honest face."

 
          
 
The next old man over
laughed, showing a mouth without teeth.
"I said to the fella,"
he announced, "what kinda face you think /got?
Paid me
no never mind."

 
          
 
Carrying the Happy Birthday parcel, Levine
went down Broadway to Kopykat, where he picked up the package for Mr. Robert.
Then he continued on downtown to hand the material over to Inspector Santangelo
at the Organized Crime Unit. "People upstate are talking to Johnson,"
Santangelo said.

 
          
 
"But is he talking to them?"

 
          
 
Santangelo grinned. "He will."

 
          
 
The next morning, Santangelo brought the two
packages to the Forty-Third Precinct and handed them back to Levine in
Lieutenant Barker's office. The Kopykat package had turned out to be copies of
about forty ledger pages, but only numbers and abbreviations were filled in,
making it useless by itself; you'd have to know what business those pages were
connected to, and presumably Banadando's intended customer would know.

 
          
 
As for the birthday present, that box had
contained a jumble of sales slips, for items ranging from automobiles and furs
to coffee tables and refrigerators, plus a bunch of photos and negatives. There
were a dozen pictures of what appeared to be the same orgy, there were pictures
of a man getting into a car on a city street, pictures of a man at a
construction site, of a truck being loaded or unloaded at the same site, of two
men exchanging an envelope in the doorway of an appliance store.

 
          
 
Everything had been fingerprinted and
photographed and brooded over, but there wasn't so far much value in this
material. "
It's
puzzle parts," Santangelo
said.
"Just a couple stray puzzle parts.
Banadando has the rest."

           
 
Monday was a less pretty day than Sunday had
been, the broad sky piling up with tumbled dirty clouds and a damp breeze
blowing from the northeast. With Banadando's packages on the front seat beside
him, Levine drove out the Long Island Expressway and took the turnoff south for
Bellport. He found Howell's Point, left the car, and saw Banadando approaching
on a bicycle, dressed in his yachting outfit, with a supermarket bag in the
basket. Banadando looked unexpectedly human and vulnerable, not at all like the
tough guy he really was. Levine was pleased with the man, almost proud of him,
for how matter-of-factly he carried it off.

 
          
 
Dismounting, Banadando said, "Take the
groceries, okay? The
boat's
just over here."

 
          
 
Banadando walked the bike, and Levine followed
with the bag and the two packages. The bag contained milk, tomatoes, lettuce,
English muffins,
a
steak. Levine found himself
wondering: Does Banadando have a wife? Is she part of his escape plan, or is he
abandoning her, or does she not exist? Maybe she's already gone on ahead to
prepare their next home. Banadando's style was that of the complete loner, but
on the other hand he was only involved in this problem because of his emotional
attachment to his son.

 
          
 
That was why Levine had never been able to go
along with the idea that a murdered mobster was something to be happy about.
Even the worst of human beiAgs was still in some way a human being, was more
than and other than a simple cartoon criminal. No death should be gloated over.

 
          
 
Aboard the boat, Banadando lashed the bike to
the foredeck, then cast them off and headed out onto the bay, while Levine went
below and put away the groceries. Coming up again on deck, where Banadando sat
in a tall canvas chair at the wheel, steering them on a long gradual curve
eastward into
Bellport
Bay
, Levine said, "I'm not wired today.
Thought you'd like to know."

           
 
Banadando grinned at him. "Waste of good
tape, huh?"

 
          
 
"You won't say anything useful while I'm
recording you."

 
          
 
"I won't say anything useful at all. Not
the way you mean."

 
          
 
They ran southeast for fifteen minutes, then
Banadando dropped anchor near
Ridge
Island
and they went below together to talk.
Levine explained that the Thirsty man had said he had everything but the gun,
and Banadando waved that away: "I don't need the gun. I got enough without
the gun."

 
          
 
"Well, here it all is," Levine said,
gesturing to the two packages on the table.

 
          
 
Banadando nodded at the packages and grinned.
"Made no sense to you, huh?"

 
          
 
"That's right."

 
          
 
"It'll make sense to some people,"
Banadando said. "And that's all it has to do. What about Johnson?"

 
          
 
"He's being talked to."

 
          
 
"He'll be very interesting, Johnson.
Okay, time to memorize."

 
          
 
It was another sheet of paper, instructions on
another two pick-ups. Levine listened and nodded, and when Banadando was done he
said, "How long am I your messenger?"

 
          
 
"Two more days," Banadando said.
"Tomorrow morning, you bring me this
stuff,
I
give you the last shopping list. Wednesday morning, you bring me the last of
it,
I give you a nice package for yourself. The Johnson stuff
is just a teaser; Wednesday morning I give you a banquet."

 
          
 
"And you leave."

 
          
 
"That's right," Banadando said.
"And if you keep your ear to the ground the next few months. Detective
Levine, you will hear some far-away explosions."

 
          
 
Their business done, they both went up on
deck, and Levine sat in the second canvas chair while Banadando steered back
toward Bellport. Even though the sky was lowering with clouds and there was a
chill dampness in the air, there was something extraordinarily pleasant about
being out here in this boat, skimming the choppy little wavelets, far from the
cares of the world.

 
          
 
Not far enough. They were almost to Howell's
Point, Levine could actually see his own car and a few other cars and some
people walking along the pier when Banadando suddenly swore and spun the wheel
and the Bobby's Dream veered around in a tight half-circle, lying way over on
its side into the turn, spt-wing foam in a great white welt on the gray water.