“Except one. Pick up a good hatchet at the local hardware store and leave it in the cellar at the rented house.”
“A hatchet?”
“The don promised the thumbs to Willie’s wife.”
At four fifteen he got into the van and drove out to the don’s with a feeling of dread about what the family was going to do to Maerose. He had to back her play. He had to show that he didn’t know any more than anybody else about why she did what she did, because that was why she had done it, to convince everybody that she had sacked him, to show everybody that she didn’t want him anymore. If he began to chop away at why he thought she did it, she would be even deeper in the shit than she was now. She had set the whole thing up right down to the last detail of importing that young guy from somewhere to be her stage prop. She had put on a tremendous performance and he wasn’t going to take anything away from her with anybody.
Amalia took him upstairs to the don’s room. The house itself was overheated, but as he entered the don’s room it was even warmer. The don was seated in his usual chair listening to the music. It sounded to Charley like his father’s favorite, the Simon Boccanegra by Verdi. The don was playing Fiesco’s noble, restrained cry of grief, “Il lacerato spirito.”
“Charley. Good,” the don said. “Siddown. Will you have a glass of grappa? A cigar?” The don spoke in the Agrigento dialect. Amalia left the room, closing the door.
“No, padrino. Thank you.”
“It was a bad night, Charley.”
“Yes.”
“But she did the right thing—wouldn’t you say that?”
“The right thing?”
“She was unhappy because she knew you were unhappy. She wanted to end that. She went too far, but she wanted to end that.”
Charley looked into Don Corrado’s tiny, cold eyes, but he didn’t answer the don’s statement. “What will happen to her?”
“Her father must be considered. He was wronged in front of all of those people. The family was wronged. He will bring her back here, then he will banish her from the family. You are a part of the family, Charley.”
“How do you mean, padrino?”
“It is finished, you and Maerose. What is over must never start again. She will be taken care of, but she will be banished from Brooklyn. What I am asking you to understand is that she will be banished from the family—and you are a part of the family. She is banished from you. It was her choice. She banished herself from you.”
“I understand, padrino.”
“Have a cookie, Charley. Let Amalia get you a nice cup of coffee. Tell me about how you are going to handle Willie Daspisa.”
56
Charley got to the theatre in Newark at the end of the last performance. It was a tryout engagement for the new routine that had been worked up for Mardell: a flashy, complicated thing that had cost Charley $2,300. The two guys who had routined the act were there with Marty Pomerantz, but Charley sat by himself so he could form his own opinion.
The first half of the act was a refined striptease with some very basic bumps and grinds. When she had made the point and had gone off to heavy mitting, she came out again and stood between two pianos that had been painted black, keyboards and all. The two men playing the pianos were covered with black velvet, faces and bodies, except their calcimined white hands. The stage was dark except for three white spots—on Mardell and on the piano players’ hands. As they accompanied Mardell’s singing, the hands were reflected in an arrangement of vertical mirrors and the effect was of their hands moving up and down her body as she sang “That Old Feeling.” It was the second time she had tried it out before an audience and, as far as Charley was concerned, it worked.
He sat out front until she went off, then he worked his way backstage, meeting an excited Marty Pomerantz at the stage door. “We can go anywhere with this,” Marty said excitedly. “A Broadway show, into clubs, or take it on tour and then clean up in Vegas. This is a big act, Charley.”
“I was thinking maybe it would be better without the strip.”
“Without the strip? With that body?”
“Just keep her in town and get the money, Marty,” Charley grinned.
It took almost an hour to get her away from the people. The two guys had a flock of notes and they went over them with Mardell and Marty while Charley sat in a chair and waited.
For a change, Mardell was hungry, so he packed her into the van and took her to La Costa on Twenty-second Street, near her apartment, and watched her eat a steak while he had some minestrone, gnawed on a roll, and sipped some red wine.
“That is one terrific gimmick, that act,” he said.
“Gimmick?”
“Hey, the rest was great, too. I mean, how could anybody know you could sing that good?”
“I like to sing. What did Mr. Pomerantz say?”
“He said he can book you anywhere—a Broadway musical, the big clubs—anywhere.”
“God! I can’t believe it.”
“You’re gonna be a big star, Mardell.”
She smiled, chewing the steak pensively.
“Lissen—I gotta tell you something, but don’t get your balls in an uproar. I gotta go outta town.”
Mardell dropped her fork. “Out of town?”
“Seattle.”
She touched her face in about five places with both hands. “How long will you be gone?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On how it goes.”
She slumped in her chair. Her face got haggard. “You shouldn’t have come back after that party, Charley.”
“Hey, Mardell! Come on!”
“I made my peace when you went away the day of the party. I knew I’d never see you again. Then you just come back as if nothing had happened. You don’t belong to me anymore, but you came back long enough to see that everything went all right on my tryout night so you can tell yourself I’ll be all right and you and she can go on with your life.”
He grabbed her hand across the table. “That isn’t gonna happen, me and Maerose. It’s finished.”
“Finished?”
“Lissen—I gotta make this trip. It’s a very important trip for me. I’ll be gone two days, tops, and that includes the traveling time.”
She stared at him spookily. She was breathing as if all the air was being pumped out of the room.
If he could have watched the whole thing as if he were all-knowing and on the outside of both of them, he would have been knocked out by her performance, because Charley had a real appreciation for good acting; he certainly had seen enough television in his time. But doing that was impossible. He saw it all the way he saw it, the way she had conditioned him to see it, so he thought, Hang around with a nut and you’ll go nuts, but he held her hand and looked right into her eyes.
“Lissena me, Mardell,” he said, “if I could take you with me on this trip, I would absolutely take you. But I can’t and you can’t go anyway. You’re gonna get a Broadway show with this act. Just hang in with me. I’ll be back here in maybe a day and a half. I’m gonna call you and talk to you at your place or at your dressing room at the theatre every morning and every night. You want somebody to ride home with you after the show, I’ll send two guys.”
“Will you stay with me tonight, Charley?”
“What else? I won’t only be witchew tonight, and when I’m away, but”—he took a deep breath and made the biggest decision of his life—“when I get back we’re gonna get married. That’s the way it’s gotta be.”
“Married? What about—?”
“That’s all over. We called it off.”
Mardell let the tears fall. She forgot the makeup and wept with joy. She saw it as a genuine tribute to Mardell La Tour, fictional character. She was living a character which was now hers, completely and utterly. It belonged to her. Hattie Blacker would absolutely get an A + on her thesis.
57
There was a heavy rapping on the bedroom door of the suite. It
was five after eleven in the morning. Maerose yelled, “Who is it?” A muffled voice through the door said it was the assistant manager. She yelled, “Go to the other door.” She put her evening wrap over her slip, crossed the living room from the bedroom, and opened the door. It was the assistant manager, but he was standing beside Al Melvini and Phil Vittimizzare.
“What is this?” she asked them.
They pushed into the room and closed the door behind them. “Get the hell out of here,” she said. “Get these hoodlums out of my room,” she told the assistant manager.
The Plumber said, “Where’s the guy, Miss Prizzi?”
The young man came out of the bedroom, tying the belt of the terry-cloth robe the hotel had provided. He walked into the room. “What’s going on?” he said.
“You son of a bitch!” Phil Vittimizzare said, grabbing both his arms and holding them behind his back. The Plumber stepped in front of him and punched him heavily in the stomach, not once but three times. The young man’s breakfast came up all over the carpet.
“Al, for Christ’s sake!” Maerose yelled, trying to hold his arm. He shook her off and slugged the young man in the face. The body slumped. Phil held him up. The Plumber hit him heavily in the face three more times, marking him good, messing him up. Phil let the body fall to the floor, and the two men, still wearing their hats, kicked in his ribs in on both sides of his body. The assistant manager watched them, appalled.
The Plumber turned away from the work. “Get dressed, Miss Prizzi,” he said. “We got a plane to catch to New York.”
“Drop dead, Al,” she said.
“You get dressed or we dress you. It don’t matter to us.”
She went to the small desk in the room and wrote a check. She gave the check to the assistant manager. “Listen. This check is made out to him and he better get it, you understand? I want the hotel to guarantee all expenses for him with the doctor and the hospital, then you send the bill to me. The address is on the check. You follow me? You understand?”
The assistant manager looked at the Plumber. The Plumber nodded.
“If he doesn’t get the best attention from you and a doctor and the hospital, and if he doesn’t get this check, then I am going to make an affidavit about what happened here this morning and I am going to hire a press agent in New York to get the story into the papers all over the United States, you understand what I’m telling you?”
The assistant manager rolled his eyes to look at the Plumber. “Do what the lady tells you,” the Plumber said, “or I’m gonna flush you down the terlet.”
She rode back to New York in row A of first class. The Plumber and Phillie rode in row B. She refused to eat or drink. The two men ate for six. When the plane got to Idlewild a car was waiting. It was six o’clock in the evening. The car drove them to Vincent’s house in Bensonhurst. Vincent greeted them at the door. The two men left her there.
She sat in the living room of her father’s house. He didn’t speak to her. He stared at her like she was garbage, until she wanted to yell at him.
“You put shame on your family in front of everybody who is anybody in this country,” he said to her. “You showed the whole world what you care about the Prizzi family. You never had the faith in this family. You were allowed to marry the son of your grandfather’s oldest friend but you decided to be a passeggiatrice instead. Thank God, your mother can never know what you done. She is safe from you with the angels. Lissena me! I am never gonna to talk to you again. Angelo Partanna says he forgives you, but Charley can’t ever forgive you, you took his manhood from him in front of all the people in this country. You can make believe to yourself that you still belong to this family, you can make believe you are still my daughter, but you are not. You are not in the Prizzi family. You are not my daughter. I will never speak your name, and I am going to see to it that you stay an old maid for the rest of your life.”
Pop was waiting for her in the old Chevy when she came out of the house with one suitcase. He smiled at her and told her to get into the car.
They drove north, toward the Brooklyn Bridge. “The don wants me to tell you the new rules,” he said. “But first I want to tell you that I understand you, what you done. It took more guts than I got.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Angelo. What are the new rules?”
“You gotta stay outta Brooklyn. You can’t come over here to see anybody in the family. You can’t come to weddings, funerals, christenings. You can’t see nobody in Brooklyn.”
“What the hell. I need a change anyway.”
“Your Aunt Amalia wants you to call her anytime, anywhere. At the don’s house. She don’t care.”
Mae began to cry quietly.
“The same goes for me. You need anything. You wanna find out something. You need company, you call me. I’ll be there. I’ll go wherever you are and we’ll have a nice meal.”
“Charley?”
“Charley is like Brooklyn. It’s all over, Mae.”
“That’s the way I wanted it.”
“We’ll let some time go by. Amalia and me will work on the don and Vincent. Gradually, we can get some changes made. Gradually, you can come back for the weddings and the funerals.”
“You’re my friend, Angelo.”
“It’s just gonna take a little time. Give it time. There ain’t nothing that can’t be changed by time.”
58
Louis flew out to New York one week ahead, to Seattle and then to Yakima. Before he went he was summoned to Brooklyn and received by the don himself, who told him how much he appreciated what he would be doing and promised him that, when Willie and Joey had been straightened out, he was going to make Louis assistant casino manager at the big Prizzi hotel in Vegas. Louis was knocked out by the don. The don had been a legend to him all his life and now there he was, seeing everything was done right.
Louis checked into a hotel in Yakima, took off his shoes because his feet were killing him, and called the number of one of the real estate agents he had looked up in New York. He made an appointment for the agent to pick him up at nine o’clock the next morning to show him three-bedroom houses on the outskirts of town. Then, to relax a little, he called a woman he knew in Vegas and talked dirty on the telephone.
The next morning, after a solid breakfast, he met the real estate man in the lobby and began the circuit to check out houses. He decided the fourth house they saw was right for him. It was a little inconvenient for town, maybe even a little isolated, but it had an indefinable charm, Louis said. “Indefinable charm?” the real estate man repeated. “I’ve got to remember that.”
They went back to the agent’s office where Louis signed a three-year lease in the name of Arthur Ventura and gave the man a check for three months’ rent. He asked the agent if the town had a furniture dealer, and if there was an interior decorator. The agent said that, as a matter of fact, a new outfit which sold furniture and did decorating had just opened a couple of months ago. He didn’t know anything about their work, but the name was Hobart Thurman, who was a fellow member of the Optimists, and the company name was Quality Custom Furniture and Decor. He gave Louis the telephone number.
“Maybe you could call them for me,” Louis said.
“Sure thing.” The agent dialed the number.
“Bart Thurman, please,” he said. Louis blinked. Bart? he thought. Could it be Willie?
“Bart, this is Ev Wisler. At Wisler Realty? Sure. You bet. Bart, I’ve got a potential customer here for you, sitting right in front of me, just took a three-year lease on an unfurnished house off the Selah road, and he’d like to come over and talk to you about fixing it up. Sure thing. His name is Mr. Arthur Ventura. I’ll send him right over.”
Louis didn’t see Joe Labriola on the first visit. Willie took him around the showroom and sat him down in front of some big furniture catalog.
“What kind of furniture was you looking for, Mr. Ventura?” Willie said.
“I’m not sure. I am think
ing that I might look for an interior decorator in Seattle and have him look the place over and tell me.”
“Hey—you don’t needa go to Seattle for that,” Willie said. “We got a staff decorator right here in the premises. Absolutely top talent. He’s New York–trained. I mean, really up there with the top talent.” He drew a line across his forehead.
“Well—”
“Listen. You, me, and the decorator will go out to your place, he’ll look it over, then in two days he’ll come up with a list of ideas and some sketches so you’ll see how good he is and you can save yourself maybe three months moving into your place.”
“That’s fine.”
“I can tell you he is an absolutely terrific decorator.”
“My wife and kids are in Memphis—I just got transferred—and the sooner I can get them out here the better.”
“Yeah? What line are you in?”
“It’s strictly confidential, but my company is going to open a factory here. We make bed linen—sheets and spreads and pillowcases. We can’t get started till I get settled.”
“A lotta your people will be renting here?”
“Oh, yes. At least the four on the executive staff.”
“Are we gonna do a job on your house!”
“Great.”
“We can go out there right now if you want,” Willie said.
“Tomorrow morning would be better.” They shook hands and Louis went back to the hotel.
Willie got Joey on the phone, told him the big chance had come—that they had a big, new rush job. Except for selling some Barca Lounger chairs, painting some walls and a dining room suite, Louis was the only decorating action Joey had seen since they opened.
Joey came on very restrained, but he couldn’t hold himself down. He wore a trench coat draped over his shoulders and over a white silk Hamlet blouse. He wasn’t wearing any makeup, but he looked as if he should. His voice had changed as though the Witness Protection Program had also given him a whole new set of vocal chords, Louis told Charley on the phone from a telephone booth two towns away that night, because he couldn’t have sounded like that when he was working in Brooklyn.