Evan Hunter: Every Little Crook and Nanny

It was a gorgeous Wednesday in August, of which there had not been too many in New York this summer. It reminded Benny Napkins of the good old days in Chicago, back in the sixties, when he had been in the garbage and linen profession. Not the winters in Chicago, no, because to tell the truth those had not been so pleasant, having to hang onto ropes tied to office buildings to keep from getting blown off Michigan Avenue, who needed that kind of breeziness? But he could recall Chicago summer days that inspired a man to poesy, mild summer zephyrs wafting in off the lake, guitars strumming, broads parading. Still, what good did it do to reminisce? Bygone days were bygone days. Linger on memories of summers past, and a person could miss the beauty of a truly magnificent August day that was actually here and now, the sky the color of Jeanette Kay’s eyes, the trees in splendid emerald leaf awaiting the onslaught of fall.

He looked at the expectant trees through the windshield of the red Volkswagen. I think that I shall never see, he recited silently and completely from memory, a poem lovely as a tree. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and glanced simultaneously into the rearview mirror. This was not a day to get stopped by a state trooper. Not that any day, for that matter, was a day to get stopped by anyone connected with the Law. But especially not today. Nanny had called today, and Nanny had said there was trouble.

“What kind of trouble?” he had asked.

“Serious trouble,” Nanny had replied.

“Yes, but what kind?”

“I can’t tell you on the telephone.”

“If you can’t tell me on the telephone, why did you telephone?”

“To ask you to come here right away.”

“I’m still in bed,” Benny had said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s nine-thirty in the morning.”

“Jeanette Kay is still asleep. As God is my witness, Nanny, she is asleep here beside me.”

“So what?”

“A man can’t simply get out of bed and disappear in the middle of the night without telling his loved one that he is leaving.”

“Wake her and tell her,” Nanny had said.

“I don’t like to do that. I like her to sleep till she’s all slept out.”

“Leave her a note.”

“Jeanette Kay wouldn’t read it.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t like to read.”

“Make it a short note.”

“Even if it’s short.”

There had been a gravid silence on the line. Then Nanny had said, in the very precise English she used whenever she wished to remind people she had come from London only two years ago, “I am certain that Mr. Ganucci, when he returns, will be interested in learning that one of his trusted fellows did not respond to a call for help from his son’s governess.”

There had been another long silence.

Then Benny had said, “I’ll get dressed and come right over.”

“Yes, please do,” Nanny had replied, and hung up.

It was now ten forty-five, which meant that in just an hour and fifteen minutes, Benny had got out of bed, taken off his black silk pajamas, showered, drunk a glass of grapefruit juice and a cup of coffee, dressed in his lightweight wool-Dacron suit (with matching blue socks, striped tie, white shirt, and black shoes), run down the five flights from his apartment on Third Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, rushed across the street to where he parked the Volkswagen in a garage owned by Ralph Rimessa, whom he had known in Chicago in the sixties when he had been in the garbage and linen profession and who consequently charged him only half the usual rate for monthly parking, and driven all the way here to (he looked for a parkway sign to tell him where he was; well, wherever he was, almost to Larchmont, that was for sure, which was pretty fast moving for a man as big as he was).

Not that he was big.

He was, in fact, exactly five feet eight and three-quarter inches tall. He had once tried to talk a clerk at the Motor Vehicle Bureau into putting 5’9” on his driver’s license, but the clerk had been one of those namby-pamby Goody Two-shoes who insisted on doing everything by the book, even though Benny had been throwing around some pretty big figures. As a matter of fact, he still found it impossible to understand why that mealymouthed little clerk could not be convinced — what difference did a lousy quarter of an inch make when the sum in question was something like forty dollars? But five feet eight and three-quarter inches it had remained, and that was what he was, and that was not big.

Well, perhaps in his childhood neighborhood on Taylor Street, five feet eight and three-quarter inches might have been considered big, especially since most of the people there were immigrants from Naples, which did not boast of a particularly statuesque population (with the possible exception of Sophia Loren, who, Benny supposed, was a population unto herself). But he had not been tall as a child, either.

The only time he could have been considered big, in fact, was when he had put on thirty pounds in as many days merely because it had been necessary to sample the food in so many restaurants. In those good old days, all the fellows had called him Fat Benny Napkins. Behind his back, of course. Until one night he overheard Andy Piselli bandying the name about, and then Andy met with that unfortunate accident of his in Cicero after which all the fellows immediately began calling him plain Benny Napkins again, or Ben Napkins, which was even more dignified.

He smiled as he drove along, the sun glancing through the branches of the trees, the leaves throwing their dappled patterns onto the windshield of the small car. It was a gorgeous Wednesday, and he was delighted to be awake and about before his usual hour. On a day like today, only an ingrate could be unhappy. He quickly recited a Hail Mary completely from memory and simultaneously reviewed all the things that made him so happy today: He had a nice little apartment on Twenty-fourth Street, which Jeanette Kay Pezza was kind enough to share with him most of the time, not to mention a little cottage in Spotswood, New Jersey, where he grew corn so sweet it made the teeth ache; he had a 1968 Volkswagen that had never given him a minute’s trouble and started up immediately even in the winter; he had a nice outdoor job that didn’t demand too much of his time and that paid a decent salary; and here he was on the way to Larchmont, enjoying the beautiful day and the drive to Many Maples, where he would try to help Nanny. He was flattered that she had chosen him over all the other fellows as the person to whom she wished to talk. He enjoyed listening to her. She was a lady to the marrow, and her voice with its pleasant English lilt was as lyric as a lark’s.

“The little bastard’s missing,” Nanny said.

They were sitting in the living room near the big marble fireplace, Ganooch’s collection of clocks on the wall, and also on the mantel, and also standing to either side of the open hearth (filled with flowerpots now), all of them ticking away minutes, throwing minutes into the room like strings of firecrackers. It was almost eleven o’clock. The governess was wearing a black dress with a little white collar. Her slender hands were folded in her lap. There was a look of intense pain and bewilderment on her face.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Benny said.

“That is the beginning.”