CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOT POTATO
Danny Marino was beginning to enjoy the advantages of being nobody. Nobody watched a nobody.
Important men lowered their voices when other important men entered the room. They stopped talking when a capo appeared. They changed the subject when somebody from another family came through the door.
Danny was a nobody that they sent for coffee. That was how he learned about Miami.
He was sitting in the back room of the Downtown Athletic & Bridge Club with an empty coffee cup in front of him. Tony Spada was at the telephone. Tony had been on the telephone for twenty minutes. Mostly he listened. “No,” he said finally. “You listen to me. Nobody here sent you anything.”
He listened some more.
“I don’t care what he told you.”
Another pause.
“Then ask him.”
Tony hung up.
Nicky Bellomo was sitting at the card table eating a meatball sandwich. He had managed, as usual, to get sauce on his shirt, his tie and, somehow, the back of his left hand.
“What?” Nicky said.
Tony looked at him.
“Nothing.”
Danny looked at the empty coffee cup.
Tony picked up the telephone again.
This time he dialed.
“Charlie.”
He waited.
“It’s me.”
Another wait.
“Miami has three, I don’t know how they ended up there.” Danny stopped looking at the coffee cup. Tony glanced at him. Danny resumed looking at it.
“That’s right,” Tony said. “Three.”
Whatever Charlie said took a while. “No. They didn’t come from us.”
Pause. “I know what they think.”
Another pause.
“No, I don’t know where the fourth one is.”
Tony hung up the phone.
Nicky wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Danny tried his level best not to look. If he looked, he knew he would laugh. Not a good plan.
“So what’s Miami gonna do with them?”
Tony stared at him.
Nicky shrugged.
“It was just a question.”
“They’re sending them north.”
“North where?”
“Chicago.”
Nicky stopped chewing.
“Why Chicago?”
“Because Chicago isn’t Miami.”
Nicky considered this.
“That makes sense.”
Tony looked at Danny.
“Coffee.”
Danny stood.
“For everybody?”
Tony stared at him.
Danny went for coffee.
The truck left Miami shortly before midnight.
Danny didn’t know that yet.
He wouldn’t know it for another two days, and when he did learn it, he would learn it from a man who didn’t know what was in the truck.
The driver had been told he was carrying machine parts.
The man who arranged the truck had been told it was industrial equipment.
The man who paid him had been told nothing.
Three attaché cases sat inside three wooden crates near the front of the trailer.
They made it less than sixty miles. Two automobiles forced the truck onto the shoulder. Four men took the driver out of the cab. One of them apologized. That frightened the driver more than anything else. They drove away with the truck. By sunrise, the truck was gone. So were the three cases.
The next morning Danny was having coffee on Second Avenue when Charlie sat down across from him.
Charlie didn’t order anything.
“You hear anything?”
Danny looked at him.
“About what?”
Charlie smiled slightly.
“I don’t know.”
The waitress came over. Charlie changed his mind and ordered coffee.
“You know anybody in Miami?”
“No.”
“Chicago?”
“No.”
“Washington?”
Danny shook his head.
Charlie seemed pleased.
“You don’t know anybody anywhere.”
“I know Rosie.”
“That may be enough trouble.”
The waitress brought Charlie’s coffee.
Charlie waited until she walked away.
“You know what your problem is, Danny?”
“I’ve got several.”
“Nobody knows who you are.”
“I know who I am.”
“That puts you one ahead.”
Charlie stirred his coffee although he hadn’t put anything in it.
“Five families in this town,” he said. “Different people. Different interests. Different businesses. But there’s one thing they can all agree on.”
Danny waited.
“They don’t want New York blown up.”
Danny looked at him.
Charlie took a sip.
“Bad for business.”
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Danny finally said, “Blown up?”
Charlie studied him.
There were moments when Danny could actually feel himself becoming better at keeping his face still.
This was one of them.
“Forget I said it.”
“All right.”
“You can’t forget it, can you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Charlie looked out the window.
“Diamond District. Banks. Wall Street. Garment business. Shipping. Real estate. Half the rackets in America touch New York sooner or later. You don’t blow up the cash register.”
“So somebody wants to?”
Charlie looked back at him.
“Somebody wants money.”
“Who?”
“If we knew that, I wouldn’t be having coffee with you.”
Danny thought about that. It wasn’t flattering. Charlie leaned closer.
“The strange part isn’t that somebody has four cases.”
“Had.”
Charlie stopped.
Danny wished immediately that he hadn’t said it.
“Had?”
Danny looked at his coffee.
Charlie waited.
Danny said, “Tony said Miami had three.”
Charlie continued looking at him.
“He said it on the telephone.”
“In front of you?”
“I was getting coffee.”
Charlie sat back.
Something almost like amusement appeared in his face.
“Of course you were.”
Danny said nothing.
“And now?”
“Chicago.”
Charlie stared at him again.
“How do you know that?”
“Nicky asked where they were going.”
“And?”
“Tony said Chicago.”
Charlie slowly smiled.
“Nobody tells me anything.”
“They don’t tell me anything either.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“They know I’m listening.”
Danny understood.
Charlie put some money on the table and stood.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“I want you to meet somebody.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Danny remained seated.
Charlie looked down at him.
“What?”
“Is this somebody who knows me?”
“No.”
Danny stood.
“Good.”
They were halfway to the door when a thin man in a dark suit entered the coffee shop.
Danny had seen him before.
He wasn’t sure where.
The man saw Charlie.
Then he saw Danny.
Nothing happened.
That was what Danny noticed.
No nod.
No expression.
No hesitation.
The man walked to the counter and ordered coffee.
Charlie kept walking.
Outside, Danny said, “You know him?”
“No.”
“He knows you.”
Charlie stopped.
“How do you know?”
“He didn’t look at you.”
Charlie turned toward the window.
The thin man was stirring sugar into his coffee.
Charlie said, “You know him?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
Charlie looked at Danny.
“That’s a very irritating habit.”
“What?”
“Giving the right answer.”
They started walking again.
At the corner Charlie said, “The truck never made it to Chicago.”
Danny stopped.
Charlie didn’t.
Danny caught up.
“Where is it?”
“Hijacked. Nobody knows.”
“The cases?”
“Nobody knows.”
“All three?”
Charlie looked at him.
“Now you’re asking too many questions.”
They crossed Second Avenue.
Behind them, the thin man came out of the coffee shop.
He went the other way.
By noon, three different organizations were looking for the truck.
By two o’clock, there were five.
By evening, there were seven.
Not one of them knew exactly what they were looking for.
Some thought the truck contained money.
Some thought it contained narcotics.
One group had been told it contained diamonds.
Two men had been told not to ask. Those were the smartest men involved.
Nobody knew who had built the four devices. Nobody knew who had arranged their delivery. Nobody knew who had made the first demand. Nobody even knew for certain whether the person demanding the money still controlled any of them.
The only thing everybody knew was that four attaché cases existed.
Three had gone south. Apparently, to Miami, where they had been hijacked off the truck and sent north, probably to The Outfit, the mob that ran Chicago.
The fourth case had disappeared. Now the three cases from Miami had disappeared too.
Danny Marino knew none of this.
He knew only scraps.
Three cases.
Miami.
Chicago.
A missing truck.
Four families of strangers who seemed frightened of one another.
And a thin man who didn’t look at Charlie.
It wasn’t much.
But it was more than any one of the important people knew.
Danny put his hands in his pockets and walked beside Charlie.
“Where are we going?”
Charlie pointed toward a Pontiac sedan parked at the curb.
“Brooklyn.”
Danny stopped again.
“What?”
Charlie opened the passenger door.
“They found something.”
“What?”
Charlie looked at him.
“I really don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.”
Danny got in. It was going to be another long ride.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN BREAKDOWN
HOT POTATO
Chapter Thirteen expands the mystery while establishing Danny Marino’s greatest advantage: he is nobody.
Danny isn’t made. He doesn’t belong to a family. He has no rank, territory or known allegiance. Important men therefore don’t treat him as a threat. They talk while he’s getting coffee. They let him stand around. They assume that anything important will go over his head.
It doesn’t.
This is an important mystery-writing device: the outsider can sometimes learn more than the insiders.
Each powerful character has access to one part of the story. Tony knows something. Charlie knows something else. Miami has another piece. Chicago may have another. But each organization protects its information from the others.
Danny belongs to none of them, so fragments from all of them begin collecting in him.
The chapter also turns the four attaché cases into a game of hot potato.
New York doesn’t want them because New York is too valuable to destroy. Miami doesn’t want them either, so three cases are sent toward Chicago. Before they arrive, the truck is hijacked.
Now nobody knows where the three cases are.
More importantly, nobody knows who originated the plot.
Who built the devices?
Who arranged their delivery?
Who made the extortion demand?
Are the people demanding the money even the people who now possess the cases?
Nobody knows.
That keeps the mystery from becoming a simple mob-versus-extortionist story. The criminal organizations themselves are trying to solve the mystery.
The thin man in the coffee shop adds another layer. Danny notices something seemingly insignificant: the man deliberately doesn’t look at Charlie.
Charlie misses it.
Danny doesn’t.
This demonstrates Danny’s value instead of explaining it. He isn’t a brilliant detective because the author says so. He notices little things because nobody expects him to be noticing anything.
The humor continues to work by being played straight. Miami sends the cases to Chicago for the perfectly reasonable reason that Chicago isn’t Miami. Nicky accepts this as logical.
Underneath the humor, however, the danger is increasing.
At the beginning of the chapter, there are four dangerous cases whose movements are partly known.
By the end, their locations are uncertain.
Then comes the hook:
They found a case.
Whose case?
Where was it found?
Who found it?
Is it one of the original four?
The chapter ends before answering any of those questions.
WRITING LESSON
A mystery grows stronger when obtaining an answer produces a larger question.
Danny learns that Miami had three cases.
Answer.
They were sent toward Chicago.
Answer.
The truck was hijacked.
New question.
The cases disappeared.
Bigger question.
Someone finds a case.
Bigger question still.
The writer doesn’t need to conceal everything from the reader. Give the reader information constantly.
The trick is to make each piece of information increase the mystery instead of reducing it.
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Here’s the Bardo bus now!!!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby