The Father Hunt

A reply I got at the Times was from a woman who had been a clerk at Altaian's in 1944 and was now at a nursing home in Fairfield County. Fred took her, and found her so vague that after twenty-four hours he was still trying to find out how she knew that a customer she had waited on several times was named Carlotta Vaughn, since there was no record of any deliveries ever made to her. But she, too, had picked Carlotta Vaughn out of seven pictures, so she got her five centuries.

The third reply that seemed possible, which I got at the Gazette, was from a man named Salvatore Manzoni. I took him. He had been a waiter at Sardi's for fifteen years and still was. In 1944 he had been a waiter at Tufitti's, a restaurant on East Forty-sixth Street which had folded in 1949, and Carlotta Vaughn had dined at one of his tables two or three times a week for several months in 1944, He spotted her picture instantly, and he knew her name was Carlotta Vaughn because she had often reserved a table. What made Salvatore Manzoni a real find was that he had probably actually seen Amy's father hi the flesh, not once but many times, for Carlotta Vaughn

bad always had a male companion, and always the same one. When I heard that, I had a tingle at the bottom of my spine; by God, I was going to get the name, then and there. But I didn't. It wasn't that Salvatore Manzoni couldn't remember it; he had never known it. As far as he knew, a reservation had never been made under the man's name. Possibly it might have been known to someone else at the restaurant, perhaps the owner and manager, Giuseppe Tufitti, who might or might not be still alive.

A description by anyone of a man he saw last week will never make you really see him, and 1944 was twenty-three years ago, and this subject had been mostly sitting at a table when he was under Salvatore Manzoni's eyes, which makes a difference. What I got was: age, early thirties. Height, around six feet. Weight, around a hundred and seventy. Shoulders, maybe square, maybe rounded a little. Head, a little bigger than average. Face, not round, maybe rattier long; not pale, maybe a little tanned. Hair, dark brown. Eyes, brown (just a guess). Nose and mouth and ears and chin, yes, he had them.