CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE DRY CLEANER
Danny Marino was beginning to think that half the criminal activity in New York involved the garment industry.
He sat quietly in the shadows at the social club. Things were quiet.
Tony Spada folded the racing form and put it on the desk.
“Okay, Danny, go see Caruso.”
“The tailor?”
“How many Carusos do you know?”
“Just the one.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
Danny put on his coat.
Nicky Bellomo was at the card table eating a hard-boiled egg.
“Get the rolls this time.”
Tony looked at him.
Nicky peeled another egg.
Danny went downstairs.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but as usual, the city hadn’t noticed yet. As usual, water dripped from fire escapes and awnings. The gutters were running black along Second Avenue. Danny walked downtown.
Mr. Caruso’s tailor shop was unsurprisingly exactly where it had been the last time, two doors west of Third Avenue on Fourteenth Street. The bell over the door tinkled when Danny entered.
Caruso came through the curtain at the back. He recognized Danny immediately. “You again.”
“Me again.”
“I already told you, not Thursday.”
“I told Tony not Thursday.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to come see you.”
Caruso looked annoyed.
“I already gave you the message.”
“I already delivered it.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Danny considered this.
“I don’t know.”
Caruso stared at him for a moment.
Then he went behind the counter.
“You people got nothing better to do?”
“I don’t know who my people are.”
Caruso stopped.
Danny had the feeling he’d said something wrong.
Caruso studied him.
Then he reached beneath the counter and brought out a brown paper claim ticket.
He put it down.
Danny looked at it.
“What is it?”
“A claim ticket.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
Danny picked it up.
There was a number stamped on it.
317.
“What’s it for?”
Caruso had already turned away.
“Dry cleaning.”
Danny waited.
Caruso disappeared through the curtain.
The bell over the door rang again, as Danny plunged through the door onto the street. He stood on the sidewalk and examined the ticket. There was no name on it. Just the number.
Danny put it in his pocket.
The dry cleaner was three blocks away. That bothered him. He didn’t know why.
The shop was narrow and warm and smelled of steam and chemicals. Clothes hung behind the counter in long moving rows.
A woman with gray hair looked up from a magazine.
Danny put the ticket on the counter.
She looked at it.
“Name?”
“There isn’t one.”
“There has to be a name.”
“There isn’t.”
She examined the ticket again.
Then she looked at Danny.
“Wait.”
She went through a door in the back.
Danny waited.
A machine hissed somewhere behind the wall.
A man came in carrying two shirts. He put them on the counter and stood beside Danny.
Neither of them spoke.
The gray-haired woman returned.
She wasn’t carrying clothes.
She put a small cardboard box on the counter.
Danny looked at it.
“This isn’t dry cleaning.”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You work here.”
“So?”
Danny looked at the box.
It was about the size of a cigar box and tied with ordinary string.
“Who left it?”
The woman picked up her magazine.
“Next.”
The man with the shirts stepped forward.
Danny took the box.
Outside, he stood under the awning.
The box weighed almost nothing.
He shook it gently.
Nothing moved inside.
He thought about opening it.
Then he thought about Tony.
He tucked it under his arm and started uptown.
At Twenty-Third Street he noticed the man with the umbrella.
It wasn’t raining.
The man was half a block behind him, walking at exactly Danny’s pace.
Danny crossed the street.
The man crossed the street.
Danny stopped at a newsstand.
The man stopped to look in a lighted store window.
Danny bought a newspaper he didn’t want.
Then he continued north.
The man continued north.
Danny turned west.
The man turned west.
Danny sighed.
He was getting tired of this.
At the next corner Danny stepped into a luncheonette. He sat at the counter and ordered coffee and a donut. Through the window he watched the sidewalk. The man with the umbrella didn’t appear.
Danny waited.
The coffee and donut came.
He drank half of the coffee and choked down a few bites of very dry donut.
Somebody sat down beside him.
Danny didn’t look over.
The man said quietly:
“You got the wrong box.”
Danny kept looking straight ahead.
“What box?”
“The one under your arm.”
Danny turned.
The man beside him was about fifty. Gray suit, gray hat, equally gray face.
He wasn’t the man with the umbrella.
Danny looked through the window again.
“Who are you?”
“Somebody who’s telling you that that’s the wrong box.”
“So what’s the right box?”
The man put a dime beside Danny’s coffee. “Do yourself a favor and take the box back.”
“Back where?” But the man was already getting up.
Danny watched him leave. He looked at the box. Then he looked through the window. Across the street, the man with the umbrella was standing beneath an awning. Watching him.
Danny finished his coffee. He picked up the box.
For the first time since Tony Spada had started sending him on errands, Danny knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
Unfortunately, two different people quite clearly wanted him to do something else.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE BREAKDOWN
THE DRY CLEANER
WHAT HAPPENS
Tony sends Danny back to Mr. Caruso, the tailor, even though Caruso has already delivered his message about the blue suit.
Caruso seems irritated by the whole business, but gives Danny a claim ticket numbered 317.
The ticket leads Danny to a nearby dry cleaner.
Instead of clothing, Danny receives a small cardboard box tied with string.
Nobody tells him what is inside.
On his way back, Danny realizes that a man carrying an umbrella is following him—even though it has stopped raining.
Danny ducks into a luncheonette.
There, a completely different man sits beside him and tells him:
“You got the wrong box.”
He tells Danny to take it back, but leaves without explaining where, why, or who he represents.
Outside, the man with the umbrella is still watching.
Danny now has a problem.
Two different parties appear to be interested in the same box.
And Danny doesn’t know which one, if either, he’s working for.
WHAT THE CHAPTER DOES
This chapter turns another meaningless errand into something potentially important.
Tony still explains nothing.
Caruso explains nothing.
The woman at the dry cleaner explains nothing.
The mysterious man explains almost nothing.
Everybody seems to know more than Danny.
Danny remains the perfect courier precisely because he doesn’t know what he’s carrying.
THE COMEDY
The running clothing business continues.
A tailor.
A blue suit.
Dry cleaning.
A claim ticket.
Danny is apparently becoming involved in organized crime through the garment industry.
The dialogue with Caruso also continues the central joke of the series: Danny asks perfectly reasonable questions and receives answers that make him wish he hadn’t asked.
THE CHANGE
Until now Danny has mostly been carrying messages.
Now he’s carrying an object.
That’s a significant escalation.
A spoken message disappears once it’s delivered.
A box can be stolen.
A box can be switched.
A box can contain evidence.
And, apparently, there can be a wrong box.
THE IMPORTANT QUESTION
The chapter never asks:
What’s inside the box?
That’s deliberate.
The more interesting question is:
Who thinks Danny has it?
At least two people are watching him.
They may represent different groups.
Or they may represent the same group without Danny knowing it.
Either possibility is trouble.
DANNY’S POSITION
Danny finally knows exactly what he’s supposed to do:
Take the box back to Tony.
Unfortunately, somebody else has just told him to take it back somewhere else.
For the first time, Danny isn’t merely confused about an assignment.
He’s caught between instructions.
And in Danny Marino’s world, following the wrong instruction may be considerably more dangerous than not knowing what’s going on.
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THE DANNY MARINO MYSTERY CLUB
New York City. 1958.
Danny Marino isn’t a cop. He isn’t a gangster. And he’s certainly no detective.
Mostly, he’s a guy somebody asks to do a favor.
Deliver an envelope. Pick up a package. Give somebody a message. Go see a tailor.
Simple.
Except the envelope belongs to somebody else, the package may be the wrong package, the tailor won’t tell him what he’s picking up, and the guy following him with an umbrella isn’t carrying it because it’s raining.
Welcome to The Danny Marino Mystery Club—short mysteries set in the streets, luncheonettes, social clubs, funeral parlors, tailor shops and back rooms of New York City in 1958.
Danny doesn’t go looking for mysteries.
People hand them to him.
JOIN THE CLUB
Joining means you become one of Danny’s regular readers. You’ll get each new Danny Marino short mystery as it appears, along with its original pulp-style cover and occasional notes from the strange little world of New York, 1958.
Follow the cases. Get to know Tony, Nicky, Rosie and the rest of the crowd. Notice the clues Danny misses. Decide for yourself who is lying, who is dangerous, and who just wants somebody to bring back the rolls.
Membership is your standing invitation to come back to 1958 whenever the next case arrives.
Just don’t ask what’s in the box.
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Hello, here’s the Bardo bus, right on time!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby