CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE EMPTY HANDS
Danny Marino had learned something about important men.
The more important they were, the more errands they had for somebody else.
“Go down to Fourteenth Street,” Tony Spada told him. “There’s a tailor shop two doors west of Third. Ask for Mr. Caruso.”
“What am I picking up?”
“Nothing.”
Danny waited.
Tony looked at him.
“That’s the whole job?”
“You go there. You ask for Mr. Caruso. He tells you something. You come back and tell me.”
“Why doesn’t he use the telephone?”
Tony gave him a patient look.
“If we could do that, I wouldn’t need you. If I associate with him, I break parole.”
Danny put on his coat. Nicky Bellomo was sitting at the card table with a plate of sausage and peppers. “Bring back some rolls,” Nicky said. Tony looked at him. Nicky lowered his eyes to his plate. “No rolls,” Danny said.
Outside, the afternoon was gray and cold. Second Avenue was full of trucks, taxis, delivery boys, women with shopping bags, men standing in doorways pretending not to be standing in doorways.
Danny took the bus downtown.
The tailor shop was exactly where Tony said it would be. A narrow window. Three suits without heads. A handwritten sign offering alterations while you waited. A bell rang when Danny opened the door.
An old man looked up from behind a sewing machine.
“Mr. Caruso?”
The old man studied him.
“You Marino?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Who’s asking?”
The old man smiled.
“You’ll do.”
He went into the back room.
Danny waited.
A minute later the old man returned carrying nothing.
“Tell Tony the fitting is Friday.”
“What time?”
“He’ll know.”
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
Danny walked outside. He had gone half a block when he saw the two men. Dark suits. Dark overcoats. Dark hats. They were standing beside a black sedan across the street.
Danny kept walking.
He had seen men like that before. Everybody had. You saw them outside courthouses, government buildings, expensive hotels and funerals where the deceased had known too many people.
They all looked alike until you really looked at them. Then they didn’t. One was tall and narrow, maybe forty-five. The other was heavier and younger. Neither man appeared interested in Danny. That interested Danny. He stopped at a newsstand. He picked up a newspaper. He didn’t buy it.
Across the street the two men spoke briefly. The younger man looked toward the tailor shop. The older man said something.
Danny couldn’t hear all of it.
But he heard enough to hear one of them say, “An associate is never late.”
Danny lowered the newspaper. He had heard that before. Not from government men. The two men crossed the street.
Danny turned away from them and examined a display of magazines as if his future depended upon selecting the correct one.
The men passed behind him.
The younger one said, “He should’ve been here already.”
The older man answered quietly.
“Disrespect is one thing. Stupidity is another.”
Danny didn’t move.
Neither sentence proved anything.
That was the trouble.
The mob didn’t have exclusive rights to English.
But there were ways men said things. Rules underneath the words. Things everybody in a certain world understood without explaining them.
Danny knew that world just well enough to know when he heard its footsteps.
He let the men get ahead of him.
Then he followed them.
Not closely.
Danny had never been trained to follow anybody. His technique consisted mainly of not getting close enough to be punched.
It worked surprisingly well.
The two men walked east. They stopped outside a luncheonette. The younger man went inside. The older man remained on the sidewalk.
Five minutes passed. A delivery truck pulled up. The driver got out carrying a cardboard carton. Danny watched. The driver carried the carton into the luncheonette.
He came out without it.
The younger man came out next. Empty-handed.
The older man looked at him.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
The older man checked his watch.
Then something happened that Danny almost missed.
A third man came out of the luncheonette.
Danny knew him.
Not his name.
His face.
He had seen him only once, briefly, at the Downtown Athletic & Bridge Club.
The man had been introduced to nobody. He had spoken to nobody. He had sat in the corner for twenty minutes and disappeared.
Tony had noticed him.
That meant Danny had noticed him.
The third man walked past the two men in dark suits.
Nobody nodded.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody looked at anybody.
Perfect strangers.
Danny watched the third man turn the corner.
Then the older man in the dark suit said quietly:
“He’s got it.”
The younger man nodded.
They followed.
Danny stayed where he was.
He thought about following them.
Then he thought about living.
Living won.
He went back to Second Avenue. Tony was in the back room when Danny arrived. Nicky was still at the card table. The sausage and peppers were gone. There were now rolls.
Danny looked at them.
Nicky shrugged.
“I got connections.”
Tony said, “Caruso?”
“The fitting is Friday.”
Tony nodded.
“What time?”
“He said you’d know.”
Tony nodded again.
Danny didn’t leave.
Tony noticed.
“What?”
“I saw two guys.”
“What guys?”
“Dark suits. Dark coats.”
Tony looked at him differently.
“Where?”
“Across from Caruso’s.”
Nicky stopped chewing.
Danny told him what had happened.
He told him about the luncheonette.
The delivery truck.
The cardboard carton.
The third man.
Tony interrupted.
“What third man?”
“I’ve seen him here.”
Tony’s face didn’t change.
That was how Danny knew he had said something important.
“When?”
“Couple days ago. Maybe three.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“Nobody.”
“Who brought him in?”
“I don’t know.”
Tony leaned back.
Danny continued.
“The two guys followed him.”
Tony was silent.
Nicky had stopped eating entirely now.
That was more alarming than anything else that had happened.
Tony said, “The two guys in suits.”
“Yeah.”
“Were they carrying anything?”
“No.”
“Briefcase?”
“No.”
“Package?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Tony stood up.
“Think.”
Danny thought.
“Empty hands.”
Tony walked to the window.
He stood there for a long moment.
Then he turned around.
“Which one was carrying the case?”
Danny shook his head.
“Neither one.”
Tony stopped moving.
The room became very quiet.
Nicky put down his roll.
Tony looked at Danny.
“Then what the hell were they guarding?”
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN BREAKDOWN
THE EMPTY HANDS
Chapter Eighteen changes the direction of the investigation. Up to now, attention has been concentrated on the four attaché cases: who has them, where they are going, and whether they can be assembled into a nuclear threat.
Now another possibility appears: the cases may not be the whole operation.
THE ERRAND
Tony sends Danny to a tailor shop on Fourteenth Street for what appears to be a completely meaningless assignment. Danny is to ask for Mr. Caruso and return with a verbal message:
“The fitting is Friday.”
The errand reinforces Danny’s position in the organization. He is still a nobody, and that makes him useful. He can go places and carry messages without attracting much attention.
THE MEN IN BLACK
Outside the tailor shop Danny notices two men in dark suits, overcoats and hats.
They might be government agents.
They might be mobsters.
They might be something else.
Danny becomes suspicious when he overhears phrases that belong naturally to the world he has been entering:
“An associate is never late.”
and:
“Disrespect is one thing. Stupidity is another.”
Neither statement proves anything, but Danny recognizes the language and, more importantly, the attitude behind it.
DANNY FOLLOWS THEM
The two men proceed to a luncheonette.
A delivery driver enters carrying an ordinary cardboard carton and comes out without it. One of the dark-suited men goes inside and also returns empty-handed.
Then a third man emerges.
Danny recognizes him from the Downtown Athletic & Bridge Club.
The two men pretend not to know him.
After he passes them, one says:
“He’s got it.”
They follow him.
Danny wisely decides not to follow all three.
THE IMPORTANT CLUE
Danny reports everything to Tony.
Tony isn’t particularly interested in appearances. He asks a practical question:
What were the two men carrying?
Nothing.
No attaché case.
No package.
Nothing at all.
That changes the problem.
If the Men in Black weren’t transporting one of the four cases, what exactly were they protecting?
WHAT THE CHAPTER ACCOMPLISHES
The story now opens a second line of mystery.
The four cases still matter, but somebody else appears to be conducting an operation alongside—or underneath—the struggle between New York, Miami, Chicago and the other interested parties.
Danny has also become more valuable. He notices details that important men overlook precisely because nobody considers him important enough to hide things from.
And Tony’s final question leaves Chapter Eighteen hanging on a new possibility:
If the cases are the bomb, what are the empty-handed men guarding?
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Here’s the Bardo bus now!!! Hop on board!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby