Supermind
himself, and opened the door.
The room inside appeared to be mostly desk. The gigantic slab of wood
sat against the far wall of the room, in the right-hand corner and
spreading over toward the center. It appeared, in the soft half-light
of the room, to be waiting for somebody to walk into its lair. Malone
was sure, at first sight, that this desk ate people; it was just the
type: big and dark and glowering and massive.
There wasn’t anybody seated behind it, which reinforced his belief.
The desk had eaten its master. Now it was out of control and they
would have to have it shot. Malone took a deep breath and tried not to
veer.
Then he heard a voice.
“Sit down, Mr. Malone,” the voice said. “How about you having a drink
while we talk? If this is going to be so friendly.”
The voice didn’t belong to the desk. It belonged, unmistakably, to Big
Cheese himself. Malone turned and saw him, sitting in the left-hand
corner of the room behind a low table. There was another empty chair
facing Manelli, and Malone went over and sat in it.
“A drink?” he said. “Okay. Sure.”
“Bourbon and soda, isn’t it?” Manelli said. He stood up.
“Your research department gets fast answers,” Malone said. “Bourbon
and soda it is.”
“After all,” Manelli said, shrugging slightly, “a person in my
position, he has to make sure he knows what is what, and all the time.
It’s routine, what you call S. O. P. Standard Operating Procedure,
they call it.”
“I’m sure they do,” Malone murmured politely.
“And besides,” Manelli said, “you are a well-known type. I thought I
knew the name when old Fred mentioned it, or I would never talk to
you. You know how it is.”
Malone nodded. “Well,” he said, as Manelli went over to a small
portable bar at the back of the room and got busy, “we’re being frank,
anyway.”
“And why shouldn’t we be frank, Mr. Malone?” Manelli said. “It’s a
nice, friendly conversation, and what have we got on our minds?”
For the first time, as he turned, Malone got a glimpse of something
behind the structured and muscular face. There was panic there, just a
tiny seed under iron control, but it showed in the eyes and in the
muscles of the cheek.
“Just a nice, friendly conversation,” Malone said. Manelli brought the
drinks over and set them on the table.
“Take your pick,” he said. “That’s not what a good host should do, ask
the guest to pick one, like a game; but I got into the habit. People
get nervous about arsenic in the drinks. Which is silly.”
“Sure it is,” Malone agreed. He picked up the left-hand glass and
regarded it carefully. “If you wanted to kill me, you’d need a motive
and an opportunity, and you don’t have either at the moment. Besides,
you’d make sure to be far away when it happened.” He hoped he sounded
confident. He took a sip of the drink, but it tasted like bourbon and
soda.
“Mr. Malone,” Manelli said, “you say these things about me, and it
hurts. It hurts me, right here.” He pressed a hand over the checkbook
side of his jacket. “I’m a legitimate businessman, and no different
from any other legitimate businessman. You can’t prove anything else.”
“I know I can’t,” Malone said. “But I want to talk to you about your
real business.”
“This is my real business,” Manelli said. “The advertising agency. I
work here. Advertising is in my blood. And I don’t understand the
least little bit why you have to do things to me all the time.”
“Do things?” Malone said. “What did I do?”
“Now, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. He took a swallow of his drink. “You
said let’s be frank, so I’m frank. Why not you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Malone said, telling part of
the truth.
Manelli took another swallow of his drink, fished in a jacket pocket
and brought out two cigars. “Smoke, Mr. Malone?” he said. “The very
best, from Havana, Cuba. Cost me a dollar and a half each.”
Malone looked with longing at the cigar. But it was okay for Manelli
to smoke cigars, he thought bitterly. Manelli was a gangster, and who
cared how he looked? Malone was an FBI man, and FBI men didn’t smoke
cigars. Particularly Havana cigars. That, he told himself with
regretful firmness, was that.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I never smoke on duty.”
Manelli shrugged and put one cigar away. He lit the other one and
dense clouds of smoke began to rise in the room. Malone breathed
deeply.
“I understand you’ve been having troubles,” he said.
Manelli nodded. “Now, you see, Mr. Malone?” he said. “You tell me you
don’t know what’s happening, but you know I got troubles. How come,
Mr. Malone? How come?”
“Because you have got troubles,” Malone said. “But I have nothing to
do with them.” He hesitated, thought of adding: “Yet,” and decided
against it.
“Now, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. “You know better than that.”
“I do?” Malone said.
Manelli sighed, took another swallow of his drink and dragged deeply
on the cigar. “Let’s take a for-instance,” he said. “Now, you
understand my business is advertising, Mr. Malone?”
“It’s in your blood,” Malone said, involuntarily.
“Right,” Manelli said. “But I think about things. I like to figure
things out. In a sort of a theoretical way, like a for-instance.
Understand?”
“What sort of theoretical story are you going to tell me?” Malone
said.
Manelli leaned back in his chair. “Let’s take, for instance, some
numbers runners who had some trouble the other day, got beat up and
money taken from them. Maybe you read about it in the papers.”
“I haven’t been following the papers much,” Malone said.
“That’s all right,” Manelli said grandly. “Maybe it wasn’t _in_ the
papers. But anyhow, I figured out maybe that happened. I had nothing
to do with this, Mr. Malone; you understand that? But I figured out
how maybe it happened.”
“How?” Malone said.
Manelli took another puff on his cigar. “Maybe there was an error at a
racetrack—we could say Jamaica, for instance, just for laughs. And
maybe two different totals were published for the pari-mutuel numbers,
and both got given out. So the numbers runners got all fouled up, so
they got beat up and money taken from them.”
“It could have happened that way,” Malone said.
“I figure maybe the FBI had something to do with this,” Manelli said.
“We didn’t,” Malone said. “Frankly.”
“And that’s not all,” Manelli said. “Let’s say at Jamaica one day
there was a race.”
“All right,” Malone said agreeably. “That doesn’t require a whole lot
of imagination.”
“And let’s say,” Manelli went on, “that the bookies—if there are any
bookies in this town; who knows?—that they got the word about who
came in, win, place and show.”
“Sounds natural,” Malone said.
“Sure it does,” Manelli said. “But there was a foul-up someplace,
because the win animal was disqualified and nobody heard about it
until after a lot of payoffs were made. That costs money.” He stopped.
“I mean it would cost money, if it happened,” he finished.
“Sure,” Malone said. “Certainly would.”
“And you tell me it’s not the FBI?” Manelli said.
“That’s right,” Malone said. “As a matter of fact, we’re investigating
things like these confusions and inefficiencies all over.”
Manelli finished his drink in one long, amazed swallow. “Now, wait a
minute,” he said. “Let’s say for a joke, like, for laughs, that I am
some kind of a wheel in these things, in bookies and numbers boys and
like that.”
“Let’s call it a syndicate,” Malone said. “Just for laughs.”
“Okay, then,” Manelli said, with a suspicious gaze at Malone.
“Whatever you call it, a man like me today, he wouldn’t be some
two-bit chiseler without brains. He would be a businessman, a
smooth-operating smart businessman. Right?”
“Right,” Malone said. “And what I want to know is: how’s business?”
“You’re kidding?” Manelli said.
“I’m not kidding,” Malone said. “I mean it. The FBI’s investigating
mix-ups just like the ones you’re telling me about. We want to stop
them.”
Manelli blinked. “You know, Mr. Malone,” he said softly, “I heard
about government interference in private enterprise, but don’t you
think this is a little too far out?”
Malone shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “Take it or
leave it.”
“Just so it’s understood,” Manelli said, “that we’re talking about
imaginary things. Theoretical.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Imagine away.”
“Well,” Manelli said slowly, “you heard about this wrecked night-club
in Florida? It happened maybe a month ago, in Miami?”
“I heard about it,” Malone said.
“This is just a for-instance, you know,” Manelli said. “But suppose
there was a roulette wheel in that club. Just a wheel.”
“Okay,” Malone said.
“And suppose the wheel was rigged a little bit,” Manelli said. “Not
seriously, just a little bit.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “This is going to explain a wrecked club?”
“Well, sure,” Manelli said. “Because something went wrong with the
machinery, or maybe the operator goofed up. And number seven came up
eight times in a row.”
“Good old lucky seven,” Malone said.
“So there was a riot,” Manelli said. “Because some people had money on
the number, and some people got suspicious, and like that. And there
was a riot.”
“And the club got wrecked,” Malone said. “That’s what I call bad
luck.”
“Luck?” Manelli said. “What does luck have to do with roulette?
Somebody goofed, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Sure.”
“And that’s the way it’s been going,” Manelli said. He puffed on his
cigar, put it in a nearby ashtray, and blew out a great Vesuvian spout
of smoke.
“Too bad,” Malone said sympathetically.
“It’s all over,” Manelli said. “Mistakes and people making the
mistakes, goofing up here and there and everyplace. There have been
guys killed because they made mistakes, and nobody can afford guys
being killed all the time.”
“It does run into expense,” Malone said.
“And time, and hiring guys to do the killing, and then they goof up,
too,” Manelli said. “It’s terrible. Some guys have even been killed
without they made any mistakes at all. Just by accident, sort of.”
“Well,” Malone said carefully, “you can depend on the government to do
everything in its power to straighten things out.”
Manelli frowned. “You mean that, Mr. Malone?”
“Of course I do,” Malone said honestly. He hadn’t, he reminded
himself, promised to help Manelli. He had only promised to straighten
things out. And he could figure out what that might mean later, when
he had the time.
“All I say is, it’s funny,” Manelli said. “It’s crazy.”
“That’s the way it is,” Malone said.
Manelli looked at him narrowly. “Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “maybe
you mean it at that. Maybe you do.”
“Sure I do,” Malone said. “After all, the government is supposed to
help its citizens.”
Manelli shook his head. “Mr. Malone,” he said, “you can call me
Cesare. Everybody does.”
“No, they don’t,” Malone said. “They call you Cheese. I’ve got a
research staff too.”
“So call me Cheese,” Manelli said. “I don’t mind.”
“There’s only one little trouble,” Malone said. “If I called you
Cheese, you’d call me Ken. And word would get around.”
“I see what you mean,” Manelli said.
“I don’t think either one of us wants his associates to think we’re
friends,” Malone said.
“I guess not,” Manelli said. “It would cause uneasiness.”
“And a certain lack of confidence,” Malone said. “So suppose I go on
calling you Mr. Manelli?”
“Fine,” Manelli said. “And I’ll call you Mr. Malone, like always.”
Malone smiled and stood up. “Well, then,” he said, “goodbye, Mr.
Manelli.”
Manelli rose, too. “Goodbye, Mr. Malone,” he said. “And good luck, if
you really mean what you said.”
“Oh, I do,” Malone said.
“Because things are terrible,” Manelli said. “And they’re getting
worse every day. You should only know.”
“Don’t worry,” Malone said. “Things will be straightened out pretty