Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Which was when Jean LeFraque and Renee Chateaupierre arrived, drifting as though aimlessly into the joint, ordering Pernod (for Renee) and cassis (for Jean), then drifting past the empty tables to the upright piano, leaning their elbows and their glasses on the piano top, looking over it down at Charles. It was Jean who said, “Hello, Charles.”

Charles looked up, with a sad little smile, then looked down again at his moving fingers. The piano played on.

Renee spoke: “Hello, Charles.”

Not looking up, Charles said, “Hello, Jean. Ah, Renee, good to see you back.”

“I wasn’t gone anywhere,” Renee said.

“C’est la vie,” said Charles, with a small shrug of the shoulder.

Jean said, “Mauron told me you were here.”

“The piano is a good thing,” Charles said, “when you want to be alone with your thoughts.”

Looking around the empty room, Renee said, “Not much business.”

With another small shrug, Charles said, “Well, it’s a week night.”

“True.”

“We had some action before.”

Getting down to business, Jean said, “Listen, Charles, you want in on something big?”

Charles shrugged. “Naturally,” he said.

“Come on, then.”

Charles seemed to consider. The piano played on. At last Charles shrugged, saying, “All right, why not.” Then he said, “Renee? Would you help me?”

“Any time at all, Charles,” she said.

Charles nodded at the sheet music open on the piano stand. “Would you turn the page?”

“Of course.”

Leaning over the piano top, Renee turned the page. Charles, squinting at the new page of sheet music, brought the tune to an end. “C’est fini,” he said, and got to his feet.

On a narrow canal branching off a less narrow canal branching off a fairly wide canal branching off the Grand Canal of Venice, a gondola came sliding along, with a singing gondolier. He didn’t sing particularly well, but at least he knew all the words. In Italian.

Two people reclined within the gondola. One of these was a nice lady from Ohio, and the other was Angelo Salvagambelli, who was not particularly nice at all. They were smoodging together, these people from two different worlds, murmuring sweet nothings into one another’s ear.

From the opposite direction came a flat-bottomed rowboat, effectively blocking the route of the gondola through the canal. In the rowboat, strongly rowing, sat Rosa Palermo, who didn’t stop her strong rowing until her boat actually crashed into the prow of the gondola, bringing the gondola to an abrupt stop and hurling the gondolier into the dubious water, which brought the gondolier’s song to an abrupt stop.

The nice lady from Ohio and Angelo Salvagambelli both stopped smoodging and stared into one another’s eyes, taken aback. Simultaneously, they said, “What was that?” Simultaneously, they answered, “I don’t know.”

Rosa, getting to her feet in the rowboat and brandishing a long heavy oar, now yelled at the top of her voice, “ Worm !”

The nice lady from Ohio and Angelo Salvagambelli both sat up and stared at this threatening apparition. Astounded, Angelo said, “Rosa?”

“You,” Rosa answered. “Our children are starving, our furniture is in the street, and where ar e you? ”

“Rosa,” Angelo said, “what the hell is this? ”

The nice lady from Ohio stared at Angelo: “You’re married? ”

Gesturing at Rosa, Angelo cried, “To that? What do you think of me?”

The gondolier at last surfaced and attempted to scramble back up onto his perch at the rear of the gondola, shouting. He continued to shout and continued to scramble, but no one paid him the slightest attention.

The nice lady from Ohio said, “No, Angelo. I can’t stand a liar.”

“Me?” Angelo was thunderstruck.

“Goodbye, Angelo,” the nice lady from Ohio said. “Goodbye, forever.” And with that, she dove into the dreadful water of the canal and swam strongly away, using the stroke she’d learned in Red Cross class.

Angelo watched her go, his mouth open. The gondolier continued to try to scramble up onto the gondola, and continued to shout. He continued to be ignored.

Angelo turned his head to stare at Rosa. “Rosa,” he said, “you did this to me. Rosa, what are you pulling?”

“I want to talk to you, Angelo,” Rosa said, putting down her oar and no longer shouting. “I’m in a hurry,” she said, in a brisk and practical way. “It’s a business proposition.”

“If I would get married,” Angelo told her, “I’d marry my grandmother before I’d marry you.”

“What you do in your family is up to you, Angelo. I want to talk business. Get out of that boudoir and into my boat.”

“Join you? If you think I’d—”

“Get out of there,” Rosa said, picking up the oar again, “or I’ll sink it.”

Angelo was nothing if not clearheaded; he knew when he was beaten. Reluctantly transferring himself from the gondola to the rowboat, he complained, “You couldn’t wait till we were finished? Just a little longer? Do you realize that was a schoolteacher from Canton, Ohio? Do you realize they have a union , schoolteachers in America? Do you realize she was going to buy me a watch? ”

Unsympathetic, Rosa sat down, reinserted the brandished oar in its oarlock, and said, “You listen to me, Angelo, you’ll be able to buy your own watch. And someone nice to wear it.” She began to row. The gondolier scrambled and shouted. Angelo sat gingerly in the prow of the rowboat. The canal smelled awful.

The occupant of the jail cell, Vito Palone, was a retired master criminal, a bent little old man with a large gray head and a long gray nose and tired gray eyes. His cell was fairly small but not at all uncomfortable, with pretty curtains on the barred window and a nice rectangle of carpet on the floor, fluffy pillows and blankets on the bunk, pictures on the walls, a small bookcase, even a hotplate and tiny refrigerator. Seated in a comfortable vinyl chair at a small but adequate writing desk, Vito Palone was writing his memoirs, in a small neat hand, in ink, on lined paper. At the moment he was writing:

“It was then, in 1954, that I entered upon my final period of honest endeavor. With my profits from the burglaries described in chapter seventeen, I opened a small manufacturing concern, specializing in bones of the saints and fragments of the true cross. We made the fragments of the true cross in three different sizes, each encased in its own cube of clear lucite plastic. Interestingly enough, our domestic sales were heaviest in the smallest size, while the largest size made up the bulk of our foreign sales, particularly to Ireland. In fact, years later many of these plastic cubes containing the fragments of the true cross were thrown at British soldiers during the troubles in Belfast. So once again I had made a small contribution to history. Taxes, however, ate up most of the profits of my factory, and in early 1955 I was forced to close my doors. Determined to get my money back from the tax officials, I...”

At this point in his narrative, Vito Palone was interrupted by the removal of the outer wall of his cell. The whole thing, masonry, brick, mortar, was ripped off the face of the building and crumbled away in a great cloud of dust and rumbling of material. Vito, terrified, leaped to his feet, overturning his chair and table, and backed quaking to his door, as far from that now nonexistent wall as he could get.

And through the new opening, with its cloud of dust and smoke, stumbled two creatures, both in black clothing and black knit caps, both wearing crash helmets and scuba-diving equipment and thick work gloves.