A Fine and Private Place

“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 Diirer 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.”

“Si 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’e?”

“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