“We were—well, we were going together, he was very serious, he said, but—he was engaged to be married to another woman.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“A woman named Maerose Prizzi.”
“Prizzi? Maerose Prizzi?”
“Don’t tell me you know her, too.”
“That is very high fratellanza, Mardell. That is the very top in the—uh—the honored society.”
“The Mafia?”
“Sssh!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nobody—the politicians, the media, particularly the—the—fratellanza—wants anybody to say that word.”
“Why not?”
“It shows a lack of sensitivity toward Italian-Americans.”
“Then they should pass a law that would change the name of everybody with an Italian name and a police record.”
“To what?”
“Well, to an Eskimo name.”
“Wouldn’t that show a lack of sensitivity toward Eskimo-Americans?”
“It wouldn’t matter. There aren’t any Eskimo politicians.”
“No wonder you didn’t want to talk on the phone with Charley. A woman like that could be dynamite.”
“Oh, I’m not mad at him. I’m just teaching him a lesson. My general theory is that if he can’t get me on the phone, he’ll come home sooner.”
“But what about—you know who?”
“Who?”
“Miss Prizzi.”
“I think that’s going to be all right,” Mardell said. “She wants to have a meeting.”
When Angie left, Mardell settled down to write a letter to her mother.
Dear Mother,
I’m pretty sure now that I’ll be home for Christmas and stay on for a while. You and I have to talk about Freddie. He is pressing me very hard and sooner or later I will have to have a respectful answer for him. We are both fairly certain what that answer will be, because I love him and he loves me and you have always told me what should be the proper outcome of that sort of thing. My job in New York is just about over. They want to move me to Nevada but that doesn’t appeal to me at all. The “hit person” in New York about whom I wrote to you is still on hand and he’s very good company. Hattie Blacker says the material I have dredged up on him is going to be the absolute center of her master’s thesis. The surprise of all is that I had a touch of pneumonia. I was playing tennis at the court the Laverys have in their field house at the very elegant place on Sixty-fourth Street, then, all sweat, I went to change and some clown had turned the air-conditioning on. Don’t get all upset because it’s all over. The father of my Brooklyn friend had me deposited into a hospital at the first sign, and before it could take any hold, it was gone.
There was a knock at the hospital room door.
“Come in,” Mardell sang out.
A very tall young man wearing a dark gray vicuña overcoat with a velvet collar came into the room. He smiled at her warmly.
“Hi, Gracie.”
“Freddie! What a surprise. How ever did you find me?”
“Edwina told me. How did you ever find this hospital?”
She filled the room with her smile. God, she thought to herself, what a beautiful man.
33
On her way back from the office, Maerose stopped off at a florist and sent a small bouquet of gladiola to the woman at the hospital, with her business card enclosed. Directly under her name on the card she wrote: “CP’s fiancée.”
After she found out about Charley and the woman, she told her father she had to go to Washington on business. She went into the apartment she kept in New York on East Thirty-seventh Street and took her own time about getting drunk. She knew she had to clobber Charley to make sure he knew who was boss and who was going to be boss for the rest of their lives. But she had to move carefully, because if her grandfather found out that Charley was cheating on her with a two-ton showgirl, it was really going to hit the fan. And if her father ever got it into his head that Charley had dishonored her, then it could even be goodbye Charley. Her father was such an animal about honor!
She had to stay cool if she was going to get what she wanted yet protect Charley from her family. The girl she would buy off. She would give her a chance to get back to New York, then she’d sit down with her, give her a check for fifteen hundred dollars, maybe two thousand, and watch her while she changed the locks on her doors. There was no rush. It would all be done in her own sweet time after she had trained Charley, but nothing must stand in the way of putting Charley in her father’s job as Boss of the family. With the clout she would have through Charley, she could put the pressure on her Uncle Eduardo, so that when he had enough of it she could take over his operation. Being a woman could be a drag, but she was a Prizzi.
She sipped more champagne and wondered what it was the woman had that she could get out of Charley more than Maerose Prizzi could get out of him. He went to Miami to do the job on somebody, but he took the woman, not her, so in a lot of ways the woman had to have the edge on her with Charley. It couldn’t be in bed. The woman was too big and heavy to be able to keep up with Charley in bed. You had to be a tiger in the sheets to stay even with Charley.
She sipped more champagne and began to see it the only way it could look. Charley being who he was, nobody could have an edge on a Prizzi with Charley. He wouldn’t have to realize it, he would feel it on all the levels from his feelings about herself, which she was sure were one-hundred-percent-twenty-two-carat-absolutely-the-most, then on the working level with her father, who Charley knew was famous for his vengeance, then—towering above all of them—on the effect it would have on her grandfather if Charley jilted her for another woman. No matter what, Charley couldn’t do it. Charley was hers. The woman was only temporary.
She drank some more champagne. But suppose Charley had flipped? Suppose the woman was to him like the woman who is always showing up in the books and in the movies, even in opera? Suppose he had decided that nothing was going to keep him away from this broad? He wasn’t afraid of Vincent; he could take Vincent any day. Charley couldn’t take Vincent’s entire organization any day, but he would have Angelo in there rooting for him. He had respect for her grandfather but that was a ritualistic thing, a formal thing that his feelings for the woman might brush away no matter how much it hurt his own honor or her grandfather’s belief in the family. She knew if Charley really decided to go with this woman even his own father couldn’t stop him. Charley was the only man she had ever known who worked like some kind of a horse until he decided what was right, then he did what he thought was right whether it was right or not.
He had blown his best friend away because—need against need—his need against the family’s need—he had understood in his heart that Vito had to go. If he decided—need against need—the woman’s need against her own need—that the woman had to be supported because somehow he got the idea that she, herself, was strong and could go right ahead with her life without him, then he would throw her away and protect the woman. She had been handling the whole thing wrong. She saw that. She had come on accusing him, trying to get the maximum sweat out of the guilt he had to be feeling. But what was guilt to Charley? It wasn’t there. It had never been there because he only understood that all he had to do was the right thing, the right thing in his own head, and when he did that there was nothing to feel guilty about.
She drank more champagne. Charley was a contractor, sure. Out of the 1,800 soldiers in her grandfather’s family there were about fifteen or twenty who did that kind of work, but with a big difference. She knew some of the other men who did what Charley did, not the big jobs maybe, but that’s what they did, they zotzed people for a living. And they were all mostly a bunch of average slobs who did the work for money. And because they did it for money they felt the guilt and the guilt made monsters out of them. Charley was different, he never took a dime for the work. He had his two points in the Prizzi street operation. He had his Swiss bank account, his Panama bank account, and his Nas
sau bank account. Charley did everything first and foremost for the reasons that the Prizzis were right, so she was going to have to handle Charley differently.
She got out her book and called her Aunt Birdie in New Orleans. What could she have thought she was doing, telling Charley she was going to New Orleans like he was Prince Nowhere at whom she could scream for a little while and then tell him to do whatever she wanted him to do? It was the shock of Charley’s taking the woman to Miami, and not taking her instead, that had wrecked her judgment.
“Aunt Birdie? Maerose.”
“Hey, what a treat!”
“I wonder if I could come down and see you for a couple of days.”
“Lissen—that would be the most terrific thing that could happen to us. How come we rate a treat like this?”
“Charley Partanna is there. We’re engaged?” She said it shyly, very ladylike. “I want to surprise him.”
“Engaged? You and Charley? I can’t believe it. This is tremendous. Does Corrado know?”
“He knows. I have his blessing.”
Birdie got serious. “Lissen, don’t surprise Charley. Never surprise a man, because they’ll surprise you worse every time if you do it. Those things happen. It’s lonesome on the road. I ain’t saying that Charley is lonesome, but he could be so don’t give him no surprises. When you coming?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Take the courier plane. Eastern. Our people ride down on that every day. Somebody will make your reservation out of New York.”
“You are some organizer, Aunt Birdie.”
“Wait’ll you see how I organize a lunch for you and Charley tomorrow. Bring all the news you can lay your hands on.”
34
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon on Sheep Meadow in Central Park, George F. Mallon offered 43,900 of his most active supporters (a police count) free hot dogs, free beer, an appearance by the governor of California, a rising star, and three nationally televised electronic clergymen, plus a massing of 219 tubas for a concert of patriotic airs. The massed tubas had been brought in from “the first planned Christian family resort in America,” the $150-million-dollar complex at My Birthright, USA, a religiously motivated real estate development George Mallon’s vision had fostered. What a vision it had been! It had 2,760 employees and a payroll of $30 million in testament to the Power of the Word of the Lord.
The happy crowd had been assembled mainly through the cooperation of participating television ministries in Greater New York, in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island, and by busing in members of Identity, the Posse Comitatus, the Klan, and the Christian Defense League from the Midwest and the South. All were strong adherents of George F. Mallon’s for devout religious reasons—and because he had pointed out to them that if they donated their possessions to any Electronic Church they could avoid taxes and that, in that event, the church would own their weapons so they could not be prosecuted on any charges of illegal possession of firearms. They were all as white as Wayne, the John Wayne who had done so much to build the American fortress-mentality—and who had watered the desert for Christian television worship and the assorted crazies who supported it.
The candidate told the sea of Christian faces before him, and the audience of 138 people who were watching at home on television, “The city is rotten to its core. Gambling, prostitution, narcotics, labor racketeering, extortion, and massive corruption are rampant in our daily lives, conducted in an evil partnership with the Jewish administration of this city—by its elected black officers and the Catholic hoodlum chiefs of organized crime.”
He paused dramatically. He spoke slowly and clearly and his voice roared out over the speakers, which had been placed in trees or on poles throughout the crowd and, most particularly, in the seated media section beside the dais. “Tomorrow evening at seven o’clock I will have in my hands the name of the Mafia hit man hired by the mayor of this city to eliminate Vito Daspisa, the gangster who was murdered five weeks ago in a police stakeout in the borough of Brooklyn. This man, whose name I will announce tomorrow evening from the pulpit of the three local television network outlets in this city, is now a fugitive who broke and ran because my investigation had reached the point of bringing him to justice. Brutal killer though he was, this man was only a tool of the mayor of this city and its police department. The mayor of the City of New York ordered the killing of Vito Daspisa. I repeat—the mayor of the City of New York, protecting his narcotics empire, ordered the death of this man. I shall make specific and formal charges on the airwaves tomorrow night, when justice will be done and the voters of this city can make their choice. Until then, God save you from the Commies, the Jews, the blacks, and the Catholics—and God bless you.”
He dropped his head to his chest and his arms to his sides. The enormous crowd cheered wildly, and slowly, across the vast meadow, thousands of voices, backed by the massed tubas, began to take up the hymn “Onward Christian Hustlers.” Thousands of people looked around nervously, waiting for the collection to start, but no collection was made. The handouts had explained this anomaly: those who wished points toward their eternal salvation could send their checks directly to My Birthright, USA, the George F. Mallon Meaning.
35
Charley was picked up at the New Franciscan Hotel at 4:45 P.M. that Sunday afternoon by Natale Esposito, a small plump man who was sliding down the backside of middle age in a small, middle-aged Dodge. In the backseat of the car was a teenage girl wearing patent-leather Mary Janes and a modified pinafore. She was able to chew gum and make up her mouth at the same time.
They parked in a side street on the far side of Canal away from the Vieux Carré, and went into the New Iberia Hotel through separate entrances—Charley alone, Natale with the girl. Natale was carrying a suitcase. They rode in separate elevators to the eighth floor and met again at the end of a hall outside room eight-twenty-seven. Natale took out a master key and let them into the double bedroom.
Charley found Marvin’s empty suitcase in the large closet. As Natale emptied the bureau drawers of shirts, underwear, and socks, Charley packed them into the empty suitcase with the suit and three neckties he found hanging in the closet. The girl unpacked the suitcase they had brought with them, taking out women’s lingerie, sweaters, dresses, and accessories in two sizes, and putting them into the bureau drawers or hanging them in the closet. When the packing-unpacking was finished Natale said to the woman, “Get ready.”
She took off her jacket and turned to face Natale. He took a firm hold on the top of her blouse and pulled down heavily, ripping the entire front of her blouse in half. She was not wearing a brassiere. For such a young kid, Charley thought, she was certainly stacked.
“Here comes the hard part,” Natale said.
“For you, not for me,” the girl said.
He hit her a really good shot on the upper left cheekbone, knocking her down. He helped her to her feet and she sat down, messed up the hair on her head, and lighted a cigarette.
“About ten minutes,” Natale said, looking at his watch. “I gotta pee.” He left the room. Charley looked out the window.
“You new at this?” the girl asked him.
“Sort of.”
“It’s not as tough as it looks.”
Charley wandered over and stood at the wall beside the door, to be on the offside of the door when it opened.
“You sure are a good soldier,” he said to the girl.
“They are paying me for it.” She had hard Texas speech.
“I might as well stay in here,” Natale said from the john.
They remained where they were, silently and reposefully until there was the scratch of a key at the lock. The door opened. Marvin Mallon, short, fat, came into the room. He stared at the woman in the chair. “My God!” he said. “Excuse me. I must be on the wrong floor.”
Charley chopped him with a rabbit punch across the back of his neck. He went down. Charley closed the door. Natale came out of the john holding two tinfoil packets and a
revolver. Charley unzipped the man’s fly, ripped open his shorts, and exposed his limp genitals. Natale put the tinfoil packets in each breast pocket of the man’s suit jacket and slid a revolver into the waistband of his trousers.
“Okay,” he said to the girl, whose left eye was swelling and discoloring nicely.
He and Charley left the room with the suitcase packed with Marvin’s clothes. The girl gave them about two minutes to get down the hall to the staircase leading to the lower floor, then she screamed. Almost instantly, the house officer, followed by two city police detectives and a news photographer, let himself into the room with a passkey. The girl tried to cover herself with her bare arms. “Thank God, you are here,” she said. “That junkie beat me up and tried to force me into unnatural practices.”
Charley and Natale went into room six-ten, two floors below and on the other side of the hotel, unpacked the suitcase, hung up the suits, put the shirts and underwear in the bureau drawer, laid out the toilet articles on the washbasin shelf, and rumpled up the bed.
While the police were doing their best to: (a) cover the girl decently, and (b) interrogate her about what had happened, her “mother,” Mrs. Elton Toby, returned to the hotel room from a shopping expedition and, on being told by her daughter what had happened, that the man on the floor had let himself into the room with a key and had attacked her, turned on Marvin Mallon with the fury of a tigress and kicked him so hard and so repeatedly before she could be restrained that she fractured three of his ribs.
Charley was back at the New Franciscan at about six thirty. There was a message to call Birdie Fustino, Gennaro’s wife, so he called her.
“Mrs. Fustino? Charley Partanna.”
“Hey, whatta you? Call me Birdie.”
“Sure. Great. Certainly.” She was the don’s sister, fahcrissake.
“I had a call from my niece tonight. She’s coming down tomorrow.”
“Your niece?”
“Maerose. Your intended. She’s coming down.”