“Did it to you?” Vincent said in confusion, unable to sort out semantically what he was convinced he had heard.
“He fucked me, Poppa,” Maerose said. “Three times. Maybe four. I can’t remember.”
Vincent slapped her heavily across the face, knocking her sideways, off the chair. “You wash out your filthy mouth, you hear? Who are you talking to here? You are speaking to your father.”
She got back on the chair, holding her face. “Well, that was it, anyway.”
“The dirty bastard!” Vincent yelled. “He did that to you? Charley Partanna? Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Poppa, you should see the size of him, you should—”
“Stop! How can you say such things to your father? Where is your honor?”
“Charley Partanna destroyed my honor, Poppa. Are you kidding? I have no honor anymore.”
Vincent rushed out of the room. He left the house. He walked the streets. He schemed.
The next night they sat again in the moldering living room. Maerose knitted. Vincent glowered. After twenty minutes he said, “Do you know that Charley has betrayed us in another way? He robbed us for three hundred and sixty dollars.”
“Poppa, listen. Not Charley. The wife ripped you off. The wife was the brains behind the whole thing, then she killed Louis Palo to get the money. This is one thing which Charley had nothing to do with.”
“Whatta you talking about? Sure, all right, the wife was in on it, but so was Charley. They needed the husband, Heller, because he was inside the cage at Vegas, but as soon as they had the money, Charley clipped the husband. Fahcrissake, he married the woman before the husband was cold. Charley killed the husband so he could get the wife.”
“No.”
“Whatta you mean no? Stop saying No!”
“Lissena me. Poppa. You know the cassette? The one Paulie had made of Teresa’s wedding? I had them make prints from that cassette of the wife.”
“Prints?”
“You know—pictures. They were good shots. I took them to Presto Ciglione’s in Vegas…”
When she had finished speaking, Vincent stared at her. “I’m going to talk to Don Corrado tomorrow.” But he said nothing about agreeing that Charley Partanna should be free and clear.
Chapter Twenty-six
Vincent telephoned the house on Brooklyn Heights the next morning just before noon. He was told by Amalia that his father was having a very good day and could see him at five o’clock. Vincent went out the back way at the laundry. He didn’t tell Angelo Partanna, or anyone else, where he was going. It was a matter between himself and his father.
They sat in two Morris chairs in the enormous side room that had been converted into an apartment for the don. It was a living room and bedroom all in one. The colors were different shades of blue; soothing, restful, and calming. The room had been designed, furnished, and decorated by Maerose Prizzi but, because of the enforced alienation between her grandfather and herself at the time, had been executed by her colleagues.
The Morris chairs were something else, wholly apart from the other furniture of the room. The Morris chairs had been in use ever since Vincent could remember, from when his mother had been alive and his father had been a young man.
“What do you want to do, Vincent?” his father asked.
“Well, I am saying that Charley has to be hit. He married the woman who ripped us off as soon as they got the whole deal together. Charley set the whole thing up. Charley has to pay.”
Don Corrado pursed his lips and made a steeple with his fingers. “Lissena me, Vincent. Nobody gets taken out until we get our three hundred sixty back. Even then—and I am going to talk now about ethics. Hitting both of them or either one of them would create an ethically impossible situation. Charley is our own best soldier, our enforcer, your sottocapo, a tremendous, reliable man. His father is my own consigliere. These are very important considerations. What I am saying to you is that if the money is returned, then unless we want to have to kill Angelo Partanna and a lot of the Partannas’ friends, then this is something which deserves clemency. Even if we only do the job on the wife we don’t only have the Partannas on our back. You know what a case the Partannas could make with the Commission, and what a stain it would be upon our name throughout the fratellanza if we were to harm the wife of anyone in the brotherhood. She is Charley’s wife. We can’t take a chance with a thing like that. We have to think about clearing a thing like that with the Commission.”
“Whatta we gunna do?” Vincent demanded. “Are we gunna just let them get away with this?”
“First, Filargi must be arrested and charged. That is the big one, Vincent,” Don Corrado said. “Then I will ask Charley’s wife to give back the money, but I am not going to talk about it with Charley.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
What had made Vincent sensitive to life was the emergence of his brother Ed as the dominating force within the Prizzi family. Corrado, the father, was the natural force of the family and Vincent had never questioned that. But he considered that Ed had gained his power by means unfair to his brother; Ed had insisted upon being educated.
Vincent, always a mature, strong boy with much brutality, had left school at twelve to work with his father. When he took the oath as a made man, at twenty, with Angelo Partanna as his sponsor, he imprinted it upon his mind. Vincent was able to feel each point of the oath of fealty to the fratellanza subjectively, as if it were an oath to protect himself. Reciprocal aid to all members of the society in any case of need whatsoever. Absolute obedience to superiors. An offense against one is an offense against all and must be avenged at any cost. Never reveal the names or secrets of the society or look to government processes for justice. Vincent was obdurate about obeying those rules because he was a Prizzi, at the top, and they had been made to protect him.
But Ed had never had any interest in being made. Ed had graduated from high school high in his class. Vincent mocked him when Ed asked for his father’s permission to go to college. He was shocked and ashamed when Ed entered law school. In Vincent’s view, his brother had copped out and Vincent stood behind the old Sicilian proverb, “The less things change, the more they remain the same.” Ed was trying to change everything. What the fuck good was an education in the rackets? When his boyhood pals, Ben Sestero and Harry Garrone, went away to study whatever it was they said they were studying, Vincent even had moments of worry, wondering how the family was going to carry on.
He was encouraged when Charley Partanna had the good sense to quit high school after two years but bitterly resentful when Charley went back to night school to finish after he had been made.
Vincent was a schooled resenter by the time Ed came back and took over the family’s business side. Poppa made no objections. Poppa said Ed and Ben and Harry were going to triple the business, maybe more. Vincent had never grasped what Poppa had been building on the legit side all through the years, but when Ed came back, a lawyer, Vincent began to see and to resent deeply that his operation, the real business of the family which had financed all the rest of it with the tax-free capital, had become the dog that was wagged by Eduardo’s tail.
The realization of Ed’s dominance came over him so suddenly that it was like a shot on the head with a hammer. Ed was legit. He knew how to go anywhere. Ed was in and out of Washington, Camp David, the friend of presidents. He took senators and congressmen and cabinet secretaries on hunting trips or boat rides in the Caribbean or to his place in Palm Springs, where Vincent refused to go. But never to Vegas. Ed was too pure for Vegas.
Ed never even married. He stayed “engaged” to different women and the three he had around him the longest were called his “natural” wives. This was a friend of the cardinal! Of Billy Graham! Of Rabbi Kahane! Ed got away with anything. He never seemed to work. He was always on the telephone or in an airplane. He ran a tremendous business, but that was the least part of why Ed’s shadow had kept Vincent in perpetual night. Ed was one of the people who ran the
country, fahcrissake. He had so much clout that when any other family in the entire fratellanza, or the Jewish combinations, or the blacks who had come up so fast, had to get something done at the federal level, they went to Ed. Ed knew everybody’s price, so Ed was The Man.
What was Vincent? He ran the troops—period. He was muscle. The newspapers called him a hoodlum. They called Ed a leading industrialist. His own daughter had been unable to respect him, so she had shamed him in front of the entire environment in the United States by acting like a nothing whore and costing herself her whole future as the wife of the man who was sure to take her father’s place in the family someday. Now Charley Partanna—son of the man who Vincent and his father and even Ed trusted most in the world—had shown him that he had no respect for him. Charley had betrayed his family but it had been directed against Vincent. He had wanted to dishonor Vincent and he had left that honor in the gutter by the time he was through. Because of that and because of what he had done to Vincent’s daughter, Vincent had become obsessed with the idea that Charley had to be hit.
He called Casco Vagone, the consigliere to the Bocca family in downtown New York.
“Hey, Casco! Vincent. How they hanging?”
“Hey, Vincent!”
“I gotta be in New York today and there’s some business we got to go over.”
“Where you want to make it?”
“How about we’ll eat?”
“You got it. The Pavone Azzurro. One o’clock.”
Casco was an old buddy. They had been made the same year, 1935. Casco was maybe six years older than Vincent. They cut up old touches throughout the lunch, remembering details of people and jobs that they were sure they had forgotten. When they were drinking the coffee Vincent said that four of his boys had cased a fur warehouse in the Bocca family’s country and he wanted permission to whack it.
“Well, like you say—that is our country, Vincent. So we would have to have the usual arrangement.”
“Of course. Certainly. I will personally be responsible.”
They worked out the details for the distribution of the proceeds of the robbery, then Vincent said, “I want a telephone number from you. I want to get in touch with the best freelance hitter around.”
“Angelo Partanna has them numbers.”
“I know,” Vincent said.
“Well, if you want the best, it costs.”
“How much?”
“About seventy-five dollars.”
“I need the number, Casco.”
“You got it. It’s a Kansas City number. Also, the worker is a woman.”
Vagone wrote on the inside of a folder of paper matches. “It’s a woman, but she is the best.”
Vincent went to a telephone booth in the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown and called the Kansas City number. The automatic relay switched the call to the machine in Beverly Hills. The machine said: “This is an answering machine. Please leave your message at the sound of the tone.” It was a woman’s voice. The tone sounded and Vincent said, “Meet me at—uh—the little park, Paley Park, on Fifty-third offa Fifth in New York. Full price. I will have a copy of—uh—Popular Mechanics beside me on the bench so you’ll know it’s me. Nine-twenty A.M. Tuesday the first of September.” He hung up.
Vincent was in place in Paley Park at 9:05 to be sure he could get a bench. All the benches were empty. Irene came in at 9:15. She hesitated for a fraction of a moment when she saw who the client was, then she registered that Vincent had never seen her so he couldn’t recognize her as Charley’s wife.
She walked directly up to the bench and sat down. “Whoever heard of a really popular mechanic?” she asked pleasantly.
“You the contractor?” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
“Okay. How much?”
“It depends. Some are simple, some are tricky. Who do you want whacked?”
“A Brooklyn fellow by the name of Charley Partanna. You know him?”
Irene looked at him sardonically, raising her eyebrows. “That could be a very tricky hit,” she said. She didn’t take the time to think about Charley. This was business. First, a price, then she could think.
“How much?”
“Charley Partanna has a lot of experience,” Irene said. “And he is dangerous. It would be fifty-fifty that he would do me before I could do him.”
“How much?”
“I couldn’t take the chance for less than one hundred.”
“That’s ridiculous, lady. I mean, that is a really mixed-up number.”
“If you can buy it for less, so buy it for less.”
“They told me seventy-five.”
“You told me Charley Partanna.”
“Ah, shit!” Vincent said. “I’ll go to ninety.”
“Remember, I’m out in the cold. Nobody can get me out but me. That’s why it’s gotta be one hundred.”
“All right.”
“How soon?”
“Right away.”
“I need time to lay it out. I need to watch him. I have to know the best place to take him—listen, maybe I won’t take him at all. If it doesn’t look right to me, I won’t take him.”
“When you going to know?”
“Tell me where I can call you. I’ll call you by two weeks.”
“Look, that don’t work with me. You took the call. You come to New York because you know what your work is. Maybe is nothing.” He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his shapeless dark jacket and tossed it on her lap. “That’s fifty dollars. The first payment. What are we here, a bunch of schoolboys with the maybe? You’re supposed to be the best in your business.”
Irene took up the envelope and opened its loose flap. She looked at fifty thousand-dollar bills. They were well-used bills. She took out and rubbed them together.
“When is the next payment?” she asked.
“When you make the hit. All right. Two weeks if you want. He is in and out of town right now anyway.” Vincent brought out a postcard. On its address side someone had written Charley’s address at the beach and under it the address of the St. Gabbione Hotel Laundry. She turned the card over. There, in four colors, was the scene of the beach at Coney Island, where you couldn’t even see the sand there were so many goddamn people. “The top one is where he lives. The bottom one is where he works. You can routine the hit with that.”
Irene put the envelope in her purse, telling herself she would figure it out later. “On the next payment,” she told him, “give me half in hundred-dollar bills.”
“Fahcrissake, I’ll need a suitcase.”
“Whatever.” Fifty dollars was fifty dollars, she told herself. At the back of her mind she thought that maybe, before the time came to make the hit, she could do the job on this peasant and everything would be solid because she would still be fifty dollars ahead.
She let herself hear Charley’s voice. She watched him while he was eating and felt him all around her when he was making love to her. Fifty dollars couldn’t give anybody memories like that.
***
Irene had lunch alone at Schrafft’s and thought the whole proposition through. On the plus side was the high fee. Also she was going to make a big score from yesterday’s Filargi grab. Already she had made more this year than the President of the United States admitted he made. On the minus side was the fact that it wouldn’t be worth that much or almost any amount of money to do the job on Charley, because he was irreplaceable. She would like it to work out that she would be offered one-hundred dollars to bury Vincent Prizzi, but there was no way that she could clip Charley. So, fuck it, she would mail the deposit back and be out the hundred. Maybe, since Vincent had it in his mind to have Charley whacked, maybe she should hit Vincent. But there was always the chance that somebody else would get the idea to hit Vincent and, if they did, there was always the chance that she would be offered the work and maybe get the hundred back.
She ate chicken salad and pondered upon love. How could somebody be worth more than a hundred dol
lars, she thought. What could she buy with Charley? He was a luxury. She had gone the luxury route from day one as soon as she was able to, and she bought the luxuries, she hadn’t given up a big bundle just for the privilege of being able to buy them. She paid for the luxury of Charley with her body every night. It was terrific, there had never been anything like it, she supposed that was part of what love was, but that was her ticket of admission. She paid when she cooked. She paid by having left California to live in Brooklyn, she paid by not having her Gozzy, so Charley as a luxury was all paid for. The hundred dollars was separate. Jesus! She thought of her mother lying in the corner of that stinking stockyards tenement in Chicago after her father had punched dents in her and she wondered what the fuck love could be if her mother could put up with an animal like that year after year and if she could give up a hundred dollars because love had punched some dents in her, too.
Chapter Twenty-eight
On the day after Irene’s meeting with Vincent in Manhattan, Maerose called her at the beach and said that Corrado Prizzi would like to see her at five o’clock that afternoon. It was two o’clock, Irene was vacuuming, and she wanted to wash the awnings because Charley had complained that morning that they hadn’t been washed all month, but Irene knew what had to be done so she asked how to get to the meeting. Maerose said she would drive out to get her. Irene said that would be too impossible a trip so Maerose said she should take a taxi to the Peak Hotel in the Heights and that they could meet in the lobby at a quarter to five.
At four o’clock she called Charley and told him where she was going. “What the hell is that all about?” Charley said. “I don’t get it.”
“He probably just wants to welcome me into the family,” Irene said.
She got into the taxi almost cold with the fear that Vincent Prizzi would be at his father’s house. She had only seen Vincent twice before in her life, once up on the stage at Teresa Prizzi’s wedding party and once at Paley Park, but that was a lot of times in one bunch considering the length of her life, and there had to be trouble for her if he saw her again while she was standing next to someone who could explain who she was.