He stood up, turned away from them, left the room, and walked rapidly toward the nursery.
He sat with Mae in their Egyptian pharaoh-style bedroom with its pyramid-shaped bed canopies and its red sandstone walls. “Just believe me, sweetheart,” he said. “All Rocco wants is money and he knows we are going to give it to him. He won’t lay a finger on the kids. He showed his face to you so you would know that he isn’t going to do anything to them. His wife, after all, she had four of her own kids. She’ll take care of them and you know she’s a good mother.”
“Why should Rocco let me make him? Where is the fear if that’s what he meant when he showed himself to me?”
“He knows we’ll pay. He knows the kids are more important than money.”
“But where is the fear, Charley?”
“Well, what the hell, Mae—we don’t pay and he can send them back to some little village in the old country for the rest of their lives.”
She moaned. He held her by the shoulders. “That isn’t going to happen, Mae. And no FBI or cops are going to make waves on this. I am going to call the president right now, and he is going to call off all these guys downstairs. It’s all gonna work out.”
“You think so, Charley? You really think so? You will call the president on this?”
“Watch. And Rocco is too smart to set up the contact with us direct. He’ll have a cut-out and the FBI will be whistling Dixie. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but we’ll be told in a way that nobody but Rocco and us are going to know. He’ll tell me how much and I’ll get the money together. I’ll hand him the money and he’ll hand me Rado and Angier. I swear this to you.”
Mary Barton’s face was all stone. “And when you have them back and they are home and safe, then you give it to my cousin Rocco.”
“You can bet your sweet ass on that.”
Speaking clearly into the phone so that the FBI monitor wouldn’t miss anything, but mostly so that Mae would be reassured that the cops would stay out of it, Charley said, “I hope I haven’t broken in on anything, Mr. President, but—”
“What’s the problem, Charley?”
“My seven-month-old twins were kidnapped this afternoon.”
“My God!”
“I need a favor, Mr. President.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“I want to ask you if you will tell the FBI to stay out of this until the ransom payment has been made. And if you will instruct them to so advise the New York Police Department.”
“Kidnapping is our most heinous offense, Charley. What you are asking is very dangerous. A cover-up.”
“It is the only way I can be sure that my children will be returned to their mother safely.”
“My people have a lot of experience at this. It’s all new to you, Charley.”
“I will pay the kidnappers, get my children back, then cooperate entirely with every law enforcement agency.”
“You know I’d call out the National Guard for you, Charley. As it is you can have the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, but—”
“I am pleading with you, Frank.”
“Does the media have this?”
“It will certainly be on the seven o’clock news.”
“I’ll talk to my people.” The line went dead.
45
The twins were just as happy as they had ever been, under Mary Sestero’s loving care in Atlantic City. Rocco played with them in the morning and at night before he went off to the casino and they were given their prebedtime bottle.
“Ain’t they beautiful kids?” Mary Sestero said.
“Very rich kids,” Rocco said.
“Such beautiful natures. They’re always good. They only cry when they’re hungry. Mae must be a terrific mother.”
“She has baby nurses she ain’t even used yet.”
When Mary was busy with the twins, Rocco brooded with Beppino about what Angelo had done to Santo.
“How do you know it was Angelo, Pop?”
“I didn’t say he done it. He had it done.”
“How come you’re so sure it was Angelo?”
“Because that meathead, Santo, told me he had gone to see Angelo and he told him that he was gonna take over.”
“What a stupe.”
Rocco repeated the line Eduardo had told him to stick to. “This whole thing is Angelo’s deal.”
Beppi wagged his head in admiration. “He’s a smart old guy, Pop. He can really put two and two together. When he seen that Santo was fucking up, he had him taken out.”
“Big deal,” his father said, “so we hadda lift the two kids ourselves.”
Four terrible days inched past before the two messages arrived at their separate destinations. Charley didn’t go near the office. He tried to comfort Mae. Once every day, he drove to Bensonhurst to check on his father, whose condition, Dr. Winikus said, remained unchanged. On the morning of the fourth day things began to happen for the kids. The fake note went to Mary Barton at Sixty-fourth Street. It said, in newsprint that had been razored out of the Daily News pages, KIDS OKAY. WILL CONTACT AGAIN. The FBI intercepted the fake note at the postal delivery station before allowing it to be delivered, but that got them nowhere because it had been sent to divert attention from the real action.
The day the note was delivered to Sixty-fourth Street, Rocco Sestero called his uncle, on Eduardo’s private line, at his apartment at 8:47 A.M. and read from a script that Eduardo had prepared. When the telephone rang, Eduardo switched on the tape recorder.
“Uncle Eduardo? Rocco.”
“Are they all right?”
“Sure, certainly.”
“This is an outrage, Rocco.”
“It’s business, Uncle. And maybe part of it is what I shoulda got when the old man died. It wasn’t right the way Mae got everything.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“And Angelo had no right to have Santo zotzed.”
“Tell me what you want, Rocco,” Eduardo said patiently.
“I want what the families paid for the franchises.”
“How much was that?”
“Around thirty million. Angelo knows.”
“Thirty million?”
“In ten thousand denomination U.S. government bearer bonds.”
“That’s a lot of bonds.”
“If there is any left over, make it up in thousand-dollar bills depending on the figure. Have them make the bonds up in stacks of five hundred. Put the packages in cardboard cartons in a new gray Dodge van and tape them shut. Then we want you, and nobody else but you, to park the van under the West Side Highway a block before the Twelfth Street ramp at between ten minutes to seven and seven P.M. next Saturday. Two days from now. You park the van, with the keys in it; then you open the back doors to the van so we can see you are alone and walk away, going toward Tenth Avenue.”
“When do we get the babies?”
“You walk around the block. When you get back the van will be gone, but the kids will be inside a Ford Escort parked where the van used to be.”
“Be careful, Rocco. That’s all you have to do. Be careful with those children.”
“We’ll be watching you park it. We’ll be watching the whole area starting like an hour ago for any scene of FBI people or cops. Okay, Uncle Eduardo?”
“Yes.”
Both men hung up simultaneously because they had come to the end of the script.
Eduardo called Charley at the office. They talked in technicalities about the aftermath of the oil company takeover for about four minutes. Toward the end of the call Eduardo said, “My nephew called me.”
“How is he?” Charley said.
“Oh, fine. How are you for an old-time power breakfast today?”
“That would be great,” Charley said.
“I have an absolutely splendid cook here, so make it at my apartment in a half-hour.”
“I’ll be there,” Charley said. The FBI monitor recorded the call with the other routi
ne business calls that had been made to Charley that morning and entered it in the log for the hourly pickup.
46
Charley entered Eduardo’s apartment as bland as a Reblochon cheese. He had repeated the mantra “It’s only business” more than three thousand times inside his skull in the past four days. He had said it aloud to Mae over and over again, but she was taking the whole thing as if she had grown up in a square family and didn’t know what he was talking about.
After he had taken Eduardo’s call at the office, he had gone home, taken Mae into the study, turned on the record player and the TV to foul up any bugs the FBI had put in the room, and told her how Rocco had made his real move. She collapsed in his arms. He held on to her, staggering a little because her dead weight was as unmanageable as a drunk’s; then he dumped her on a sofa and went to the bar to get her a shot of brandy. By the time he got back with it, she had come around.
“I gotta go to Eduardo’s,” he said. “We gotta get the money together. The point is, it’s all settled.”
“Get a grip on yourself, Charley. You’re beginning to sound like some street creature again.”
Eduardo had already started the four Barker’s Hill brokerages assembling the bearer bonds. He played the tape of Rocco’s call back for Charley. They listened intently, side-by-side.
“You know him better than I do, Charley,” Eduardo said when they came to the end of the tape for the second time. “How reliable is he?”
“Rocco is good at his work. There’s no flash with him. He’s steady and he made a good plan.”
“How is Angelo?”
“It’s slow but he looks a little better.”
“How is Mae?”
“Well, you know. Women.”
“Maybe you’d better put someone on buying a new Dodge van. Or maybe I’d better call Lee in Detroit and ask him to fly one in to be sure it’s gray and brand-new.”
“Give him my best.”
“That’s it then. We’ll have all the bonds packaged and assembled by Friday morning. The Dodge van should be here by then. I’ll have them load in the basement at Lavery, Mendelson downtown on Saturday morning. They can bring the bonds right down to the garage in their basement.”
“That’s good,” Charley said.
“You’ll have the fake demands in the mail Saturday. You and Mae will go off somewhere Rocco tells you to go, and the FBI will follow you out. By the time you get back from wherever it is, I’ll have the twins back with their nannies at Sixty-fourth Street.”
“Please God.”
“Don’t believe it that the FBI has been called off this thing.”
“No. I only called Heller so Mae would feel better.”
“That’s it then.”
“Except for one thing,” Charley said.
“What?”
“Claire Coolidge wants to get married.”
“How do you know Claire Coolidge?”
“Eduardo! For heaven’s sake! I gave her to you.”
Eduardo’s eyes flickered, but he gave no other sign that he had heard. “How can I marry Claire Coolidge or anyone else?” he said evenly.
“Not you, Eduardo. She’s in love with a fellow her own age. She couldn’t find the heart to tell you, so she asked me to tell you.”
Eduardo flared. “How does she know you in your new—uh—style?”
“The ballet. Being on the board of the ballet goes with the job I inherited from you. She knows we both serve the same company, so she asked me to tell you.”
“I suppose she wants money.”
“I don’t think so. She just wants to make it as easy as possible for you.”
“Who is the man?”
“What’s the difference? He’s maybe thirty years old. You aren’t going to compete with that.”
“Well, I have to get used to it just the same, don’t I? What do you want me to do?”
“Get used to it; then, after you get that settled, call her and give her your blessing.”
47
The second fake note, spelled out in newsprint, read:
PARKING LOT BRENTWOOD STATE HOSPITAL.
INSTRUCTIONS UNDER REAR FENDER HONDA
ACCORD LICENSE PLATE GFL 8367 AT
TEN MINUTES AFTER NINE SATURDAY NIGHT.
BRING ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS IN
HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS TO SHOW GOOD FAITH.
BE ALONE.
It was delivered in the mail to Sixty-fourth Street on Saturday just after noon. The note was handed to Charley by Horace Gavin. “My orders are to allow you and Mrs. Barton to go unaccompanied to Brentwood.”
“At last something is happening,” Charley said hoarsely. “Will you arrange permission for the chopper to land on the hospital grounds?”
“I’ve done that. There’s just one thing, Mr. Barton.”
“What’s that?”
“That seems to be an unusually small demand.”
Charley dummied up. “Unusual?”
“You are known to be a wealthy man.”
“We can only do what the note says, Mr. Gavin. Now, if you will excuse me, I must make arrangements to get the money.”
“We have the money ready.”
“Funny money, Mr. Gavin?”
“Standard procedure, Mr. Barton.”
Charley raced up the stairs to get Mary Barton. They were downstairs again in seven minutes. The suitcase containing the cash was in the car. Danvers drove them to the heliport. Gavin wasn’t in sight. The chopper took them to Brentwood, fifty-one miles away. They touched down twelve minutes after takeoff.
Charley and Mary Barton half ran, half walked to the parking lot, which held several hundred cars. They began to look for the Honda Accord with the specified plates. They searched in every row of the parking lot, but there was no Honda Accord. After twenty minutes of searching, Gavin appeared, coming up the walk from the hospital. “It was a hoax,” he said. “There is no such car. In fact there is no such license plate.”
Mary Barton, probably because of the tension of playacting until she could get back to Sixty-fourth Street, broke into tears. Charley comforted her.
Eduardo drove up in the new gray Dodge van and parked it well in-between the stanchions under the Twelfth Street ramp at ten minutes to seven on Saturday evening. The place was deserted. At five minutes to seven Rocco drove up in a Ford Escort. He watched his uncle get out of the truck and walk slowly toward him. He just has it, Rocco thought. Every move he makes is classy. From the depths of his pariah complex, Rocco decided that Eduardo had to be the most respectable Prizzi who ever lived. Eduardo reached the car and peered into the backseat. On the floor between the seats were the twins, each one in his own basket, clean and pink, fast asleep or drugged or something, Eduardo thought, but at least they were quiet.
“Good work,” he said, standing beside Rocco at the open window. He took a revolver out of his jacket pocket and shot his nephew through the head. He opened the car door, leaned over, and shot him once again for good measure. He shut the front door, opened the back door, lifted the first basket out by its handle and carried it to the back of the van. He opened the back door of the van, put the first basket inside, then carried the second basket from the car to the van, closing and locking the van door when the loading was done.
He got into the van and backed it out of the recess, then headed uptown. He drove through the Midtown Tunnel to Long Island to his summer hideaway at Sands Point, a house that he had not had opened that year because of the preoccupation with the campaign. He unlocked the tall iron gates and rolled into the tree-lined avenue to the main house, locking the gate behind him. He opened the garage door and drove the van inside.
It was necessary to remove the baskets from the back of the van to get the boxes containing the bonds out, and, unfortunately, perhaps in his haste to get the bonds out, but certainly not out of carelessness, he dropped one of the baskets containing a baby. The basket just sort of tilted as if it had a malevolence of its own, and Co
nrad Price Barton fell a distance of three feet nine inches, landing on the left side of his head on the concrete floor of the garage. Eduardo got the baby back into the basket, packed it into the backseat of a Ford Escort, which was standing by, then transferred the baby in the other basket. The dropped baby was too damned quiet, he thought as he transferred the bonds from the van to the walk-in vault in the cellar of the house. He finished the transfer of the bonds in twenty minutes. He backed the sedan out of the garage, then closed and locked the garage with the Dodge van inside it. He drove with the babies in the back to the Macy-Barton house on Sixty-fourth Street, arriving at ten minutes to nine. He gave the babies over to their happy nannies, then sat in the study, sipping a malt whiskey until Charles and Mary Barton returned from the Brentwood insane asylum.
48
When Charles and Mary Barton returned to Sixty-fourth Street that night with Horace Gavin and a special agent, Nanny Bledsoe was sitting in a straight chair in the entrance hall waiting for them. As Mary Barton came in the front door, Nanny Bledsoe said, “The babies are home, madam. They are asleep in the nursery.”
Mary Barton sprinted across the main hall and up the stairs.
“Who brought them here?” Horace Gavin asked sharply.
“Mr. Edward Price, sir. He’s waiting in the study.” Gavin went off to find Eduardo. Charles Barton stared dumbly at Nanny Bledsoe.
“They are fine, sir. Conrad was sleepy but Angier his usual happy, boisterous self. Will that be all, sir?” Charley nodded and watched her climb the stairs to the nursery floor; then, numbly, he went across the drawing room to the study.
“You should have told us you were in contact with the kidnappers, Mr. Price,” Gavin was saying to Eduardo.
“If I had, the children wouldn’t be here.”
“If you please, tell me what happened, Mr. Price.”
“I had a call last Thursday—I think it was Thursday—to have the ransom money ready.”
“What ransom did they demand?”
“Thirty million dollars in U.S. bearer bonds.”
“What did you do?”
“I called Mr. Barton. He authorized me to assemble the money.”