A Fine and Private Place (2 page)

“Oh, I agree,” the tall man said. “A man would have to be a fool, Nino, as you say. He'd never have a China-man's chance against you.”

The large head wagged.

“Now you insult me. You're still playing games. You think I'm guessing, trying to trap you when I don't really have the goods on you? Another of your mistakes,
amico
. I sent an expert to examine your books. Under cover, of course.”

The controller said slowly, “That new man, Hartz.”

“
S'intende
. He reports to me that my smart controller-vice-president has stolen from me and my brothers over the past three years over $300,000. What's more, he brought me the proofs. If I turn the proofs over to the district attorney and the Internal Revenue, Mr. Controller, you'll spend what is left of your life either in Sing Sing or the Danbury prison, depending on whether New York State or the federal government gets its hands on you first. You were going to say?”

“You might offer the condemned man a cigar.”

Importuna looked surprised. He extended the box of stogies.

“Not those, if you don't mind,” the tall man said. “The Havanas you keep for your peers are more to my taste.”

“Your taste,” the tycoon said, smiling for the third time. “Oh, yes.” He picked up the antique Florentine dagger he used as a letter opener, and with it he nudged a tooled-leather humidor toward the other side of the table. The controller opened it, scooped out a handful of big fat fragrant green cigars, lit one, slipped the others carefully into his breast pocket, sat back, and puffed with enjoyment.

“I don't know what you paid the man who smuggled these in from Cuba for you, Nino, but they'd be a bargain at triple the price. How can you keep polluting the atmosphere with those ghastly black pretzels of yours when you've got these to smoke? But what I was about to say, Nino,” he went on, “is that if you've called me up here this evening to talk about it, you've something other than policemen and income tax people in mind for me. That was clear from the start. Of course, I couldn't be altogether sure. I mean, if I seemed a bit nervous, I'll admit I was. But now I'm positive. Your so-called proofs are the lever with which you're trying to shove me into a deal. You want something for your money, and I've apparently got it.”

“That,” Importuna said with the soft smile, his fourth, “is not the saying of the
stupido
I took you for.”

“I feel fairly safe in assuming that, with your usual efficiency and thoroughness, you've gone into my activities in depth. So you probably know where the allegedly borrowed funds went, and how, and you know as well that I haven't a dime of it left—that I'm additionally in debt, in fact, way over my head. So you can't be expecting restitution. At least not in kind. So what's the quid pro quo, Nino? What do I have that you could possibly want?”

“Virginia.”

For a moment the tall man sat quite still. As he sat his eyes darkened to a deep sea blue. “Virginia,” he said, as if it were a word he had never heard before.

“Virginia,” the industrialist repeated, tasting it.

He took the Havana out of his mouth, peering at its smoke. “Well, I don't know, Nino. This isn't your mountainside Italy. Or the 19th century. By the way, you are proposing to marry my daughter, aren't you? Not just play some dirty bedroom game with her?”

“
Maiale! E figlio d'un maiale
!”

The tall man sat unmoved by the almost visible steam coming out of the espresso eyes. He was a little surprised at Importuna's wrath; the old cod must really like the girl.

The man behind the table sank back, fuming. “Yes, she's to be my wife,” he said curtly. “Don't make me mad again. What I say to you is this: You talk Virginia into marrying me, and I not only won't prosecute you for embezzling Importuna money, I'll even pay your debts—$46,000, isn't it?”

“Forty-eight and some,” the embezzler said delicately.

“—because then, you see, you'll be my father-in-law. My
suocero
, as they say in the old country. Family. You know how we take care of family …
suocero
.”

“I'm a bit young for the role,” the controller murmured, “but unsuccessful thieves are like beggars, Nino, aren't they?” He stuck the cigar back between his teeth. “At that I'm not sure I understand. You say you want to marry Virginia. You've never struck me as an Italian Miles Standish. You usually speak right up when you want something. How come you haven't asked her? Or have you?”

“Many times.”

“Then she's turned you down.”

“Each time …” Importuna was about to say more. Instead, he crushed his stogy out.

“Then how do you expect me to get her to change her mind? You've been an American long enough to know that dutiful daughters and arranged marriages went out with bundling and the bustle.”

“You'll find an argument,
suocero
. For instance, you might mention to her certain funds you took that didn't belong to you? The hardness of the mattresses in Sing Sing and Danbury? The disgrace of your old family name? I leave the approach to you,
amico
. In view of your fate otherwise, I have confidence you won't fail.”

“You talk like a damned soap opera, you know that?” the embezzler muttered; most of his mind was already occupied with tactics. “Look, Nino, it isn't going to be that easy. Virginia has a mind of her own—”

“But she loves you,” Importuna said. “Though the good Jesus alone knows why.”

“And that's another thing. There's the religious difference—”

“She will convert to the Church. That's to be understood.”

“Just like that? Suppose she simply won't go along, Nino. There's no guarantee even with the prison argument.”

“That's your problem. Always remembering,” Importuna said, “that if you don't deliver I charge you with grand larceny.”

The Havana went out. He took it out of his mouth, regarded it with regret, and set it down on Importuna's ashtray. “How much time are you giving me?”

“Ah,” the swarthy man said briskly. “Today is August 9th. I'm allowing you one month to talk her into it. One month to the day. I want to marry Virginia on the 9th of September.”

“I see.” He was silent. Then some residue of decency made him say, “You know, Nino, rogue and peasant slave though I am, Virginia's my little girl still, and to think of playing on her feelings for me to force her into the arms of a man three times her age—”

“Shall I cry,
amico
?” Importuna said. “You're beginning to bore me. You'd sell her to an Arab if you could and there were enough money in it. Yes, I was born on September 9th, 1899, so I'll be 63 next month, and Virginia is 21, making me exactly three times her age, as you say. It would be a perfect day for a marriage; the numbers are very good,
perfetto
.”

“But three times …”

“I said no more!” Importuna shouted.

The tall man was startled. “All right, Nino,” he said, “all right.”

Importuna subsided, muttering in Italian. Finally he looked up. “Don't stand in the way of this. I want her. You understand? You can point out to her what she gets by marrying me. I give my promise, on my mother's memory, that she will have anything and everything she asks for. I offer her villas, chateaux, palaces—you know my properties. A private yacht, one of the biggest; bigger than Onassis's, than Niarchos's. A jet of her own. Jewels—by the pound, if she likes. Clothes designed just for her by any or all of the great designers. Anything. Everything.”

“Everything but a young husband in her bed,” the tall man said. He did not quite know why he said it. He regretted the taunt immediately. A kind of boiling began to take place in the depths of the coffee-colored eyes. But then the hands, which had tightened about the dagger, relaxed and went Dürer again.

“Is that so much to give up,” Importuna asked icily, “when she gets so much? Spare me the fatherly sentiment,
amico
. I know you for what you are.”

Maybe you do and maybe you don't, the tall man said silently. Aloud he said, “Then that's the deal?” When Importuna shook his head the tall man said, “There's more to it, of course.”

“
Sì davvero, caro mio
. There will be a before-marriage paper—an agreement which Virginia will sign.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“It will say that she consents to have no property claim against me or my estate, not even the ordinary dower right, for five whole years after the wedding. This is so that she will not become my wife and then leave me. But if she sticks to our bargain—if she's still my wife and living with me on September 9th, 1967–then she becomes my heir. My only heir,
suocero
. How does that grab you, as they say? Could anything be fairer than that?”

“There's the little matter of good faith between man and wife,” the prospective father-in-law began; then he stopped and laughed. “No, you certainly have the right to protect yourself under the, uh, circumstances.” He reached over, retrieved the Havana, and relit it. “But, Nino …”

“
Ora che cos'è
?”

“On September 9, 1967 you'll be—let's see—68? Since we're speaking frankly,” he said through a dribble of Cuban smoke, “I have to raise the disagreeable possibility that you may no longer be with us on that date. What happens to my daughter if you should die before the expiration of the agreement? She'd be left holding a very empty bag.”

“Yes,” Importuna said, “and so would you.”

“But, Nino, that could mean she'll have wasted up to as much as five years of her young life. That doesn't seem right—”

“I agree,
amico
. But it's a chance she'll have to take. Is it such a bad gamble? Considering the stakes? Besides, try to see it from my point of view.”

“Oh, I do, Nino. Still, Virginia's all I have. Her mother is dead, as you know. Not a single relative we know of left on either side—”

“My poor future
suocero
. I bleed with you. But what do they say? You won't be losing a daughter, you'll be winning a son-in-law.”

“So true,” the tall man murmured. “Well, Nino. I can only say I'll do my damnedest. Oh, yes. About those proofs …”

“What about them?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“I keep my bargains,” Importuna said. “Do you doubt my word?”

“Certainly not—”

“And you may keep your controllership and the vice-presidency. You pull this off and I may even raise your salary, give you stock. But I warn you, Mr. Big Shot.”

“About what, Nino?”

“No more borrowings from Superba Foods, Ultima Mining, the others. Little borrowings that add up so fast to so much.
Capito
?”

“Of course. Naturally.”

“And no more magic tricks with the books. Hartz will be checking you.”

“Nino, I give you my word—”

“And don't offer Hartz a cut of your thievings to give me false reports—there will be someone you don't know double-checking
him
. Not that I give nine damns in hell whether you rot in jail or not,
caro
. But how would it look for the wife of Nino Importuna? Her own father. Excuse me.” He picked up one of the battery of telephones on the Florentine table, the one that was discreetly buzzing. “Yes, Peter.”

“Mr. E just got in from Australia,” a man's voice said.

“Mr. E? He's here? In the apartment?”

“Waiting.”

“Good, Peter! I want to see him right away.”

Importuna hung up and waved his right hand to his visitor in dismissal. He appeared no more self-conscious about the hand in waving it a few feet from the tall man than when he had kept it in sight on his chin during their long conversation. The hand possessed only four fingers; where the index and middle fingers should have been there was a single finger of double thickness, a sort of digital Siamese twin.

It was curiously flexible.

“
Ciao, suocero
,” the nine-fingered multimillionaire said gently.

CONCEPTION

Under normal conditions the ovum lies in the uterus for about 24 hours, waiting
.

If fertilization takes place, then, instead of passing through the uterus into the world of waste, the organism
—
now a zygote
—
attaches itself to the uterus wall and sets about its built-in program of growth
.

From the Diary of Virginia Whyte Importuna

DECEMBER 9, 1966

I wonder why I keep adding to this, oh,
construction
. This higgledy-piggledy, slam-bang architecture of feelings … hopes, disappointments, terrors, joys, the lot. Is it because of the joys? The few I have? And the almost addictive need to express them? Then why do I keep dwelling on the bad scenes? Sometimes I think this isn't worth the risk. If N. were ever to find you, Diary … Well, what could he do? After all!

Plenty.

He would, too. And not just to daddy.

Let's face it, Virginia. He's got you by the lady parts.

I feel … Today was the Bitch of Time. A bad one, yea, verily. It began on that marvelous self-generating morning note of hope, rising, raising the flesh really in a gorgeous thrill of beauty digging deep and a sense of much more under
that
, like Sutherland at the Met when she's in top voice … Oh, stop drooling along like some ninny teen-ager rolling around in her first crush. At the age of twenty-five! And allegedly married.

The fact is I was on the upsurge, wanting, wanting to be alone with P., not daring even to
look
at him with that monstrous kipper of a Crump around watching with those fried eyes of his while that prissy mouth shapes those luscious “Madams” that sound as if he's tasting me.