Maerose was there when she got to the hotel; beautiful and blithe. She was the friendliest girl Irene had ever met. They walked up the hill to the Sestero house, chatting about Charley. When they got to the door Maerose said that was as far as she had been invited to go, but that she would wait at the hotel to drive Irene home. Irene thanked her and explained that she was going to phone Charley when her visit to Don Corrado was over, that they were going into New York for dinner.
The armed guard at the front door passed her to Amalia who took her upstairs to the don’s sitting room. The old man was delighted to see her. He asked Amalia to put a chair close to him so that he could hold her hand as he talked to her. When she had finished tucking Don Corrado in, Amalia left them.
“You are a fine-looking woman,” Don Corrado said. “What a surprise you gave us with this sudden wedding to Charley.”
“The time just seemed right,” Irene answered gaily. “We sort of swept each other away.”
He patted her hand. “I understand,” he said. “I was young once. But the marriage has troubled me.”
“Why is that?”
“You know what hard facts can do to faith, dear child.” He spoke English slowly, well, and with care. His accent was strong but he said everything well. “The people at Presto Ciglione’s place in Nevada have looked at pictures of you and have told us that you killed Louis Palo.” He held her hand tightly, looking directly into her face. He smiled at her.
She could not speak. Like someone who is drowning, scenes and events of her life crowded into her mind. She clutched the old man’s hand tightly with terror, staring at him.
“Under ordinary circumstances,” he said gently, “I would have had to turn you over to Vincent’s people, because such things have to be punished and those who steal must pay.”
She could not control the trembling of her arms and body. She could not take her eyes off his cold, tiny eyes. “However, now you are the wife of my godson, who is the son of my oldest friend, so—in the calm quiet of this room I have searched my compassion for some way to show clemency to you.”
“What can I do? Just tell me what I can do,” Irene said.
“You have the other half of the money which Charley brought back to us,” he said flatly.
Against all of her sensibility Irene nodded her head.
“Was Charley in this with you?” he asked.
“No! He believed me when I told him that it was Marxie’s split. He doesn’t even know that I was in it with Marxie and Louis. He doesn’t have any idea that I did the number on Louis and took all of the money from him, that Marxie never saw any of it. He thinks I just took him to where Marxie kept the money. He told me he suspected me—on the day he asked me to marry him he told me—that he felt that I was somehow a part of the whole scam, but then he decided that I wasn’t, that I couldn’t have been, otherwise he couldn’t have married me.” She knew she was talking for Charley’s life because by now her own had been all settled one way or the other. She felt the sweat running under her arms and between her thighs.
“Charley is a good man. Charley has honor,” Don Corrado said. He sighed. “Well, then my child, you may have five days to get the three hundred sixty dollars and to put it in my hand together with the fifty percent penalty for what you have done to us. Will five days be enough time for you?” he asked considerately.
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She wanted to scream the answer with relief.
“Five days. Five hundred forty dollars.”
***
She met Charley at six o’clock at the Peak Hotel and they drove into Manhattan for dinner.
“Charley, for a change, let’s not eat Italian tonight.”
“Sure. But where is a good Polish restaurant?”
“I have to go to LA in the morning.”
“How come?”
“I have to settle the office lease and there are things I want to ship back to the beach for us. I’ll be back Friday night.”
“I’ll be all day tomorrow out on the Island with Filargi anyway.”
“How is he?”
“He hurts. What did Don Corrado want?”
“You know—welcome to the family and like that.”
“That’s terrific. I can’t believe it. That is a very serious honor, being welcomed into a family in the fratellanza by the head of the whole family. I mean, particularly for a non-Sicilian woman.”
“The Prizzis really are an arm and a leg outfit, aren’t they?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like the route they laid out for Filargi.”
He was surprised. “Baby, that’s the business we’re in. The Prizzis are the most successful outfit in the country because they hit hard. People remember when they get through doing business with the Prizzis.”
“Jesus, I keep thinking about that woman getting off at the wrong floor. Man, she really lucked out.”
“Irene, come on. She was a witness.”
“What luck! She pushes the wrong button in an elevator and she’s dead.”
“Where are we going for dinner?”
“I’m not so hungry.”
“You want to take in an early movie? Then we could eat after the movie and you’d be hungry.”
“Yeah. A movie.”
“One of the houses on Third Avenue,” Irene said. “But even later I don’t think I’m going to be hungry.”
***
Charley drove her to the airport at 8:30 the next morning. Before they left he filled in the stolen ticket stock that he had picked up from Ed Prizzi’s office for a round-trip, first-class flight. They just had time to buy some newspapers before the flight was called and then she was gone.
***
After takeoff Irene opened the first paper. She turned to an article on page two:
STILL NO LEADS IN KILLING OF POLICE CAPTAIN’S WIFE
There was a picture of a woman’s body laid out neatly on a police stretcher. There was a boxed picture of a police officer inset beside it.
“Police say they still have no leads in the murder of Victoria Calhane, wife of Police Captain Martin B. Calhane, director of the Organized Crime Unit, NYPD. Mrs. Calhane was found dead in a luxury suite on the forty-first floor of the Hotel Vanguard in New York Monday night by the tenant of the murder apartment. Mrs. Calhane’s body had been dumped upon the body of Eugene Gormley, forty-six, a private investigator and professional bodyguard.
“In the hotel corridor outside the murder apartment the police found an inflated rubber doll encased in a baby’s swaddling garments but no explanation of this has been offered by the police.
“Mrs. Eliot Shenker, tenant in the murder flat, said, ‘It was terrible. They were both shot in the face.’ Mrs. Shenker had returned from a matinee performance of a Broadway play when she discovered the bodies.
“Captain Calhane went immediately to the scene of the crime. He said his wife had gone to the hotel to attend a charity auction at the hotel’s roof garden on the forty-third floor.”
***
Irene put the paper down. The silly bitch was going to the forty-third floor so why did she press for the forty-first floor? Holy shit! She leaned back and closed her eyes. Not only had she hit a cop’s wife, but it had to be a cop who worked over hoodlums. It was really going to hit the fan this time. She picked up the paper again, because something was wrong with the story but she didn’t know what. Then it hit her. There was nothing in there about Filargi. A big banker had been snatched and nobody knew anything about it yet—after nearly three days!
She felt like changing planes in LA and going straight on to Hong Kong.
***
When Charley got to the office there was a message to call Amalia Sestero.
“Heh, Amalia!”
“He wants you to come for lunch with him today, Charley.”
“Sure. Great.” Charley had the feeling it wouldn’t be great. After years he was suddenly seeing too much of Don Corrado. Each time he saw him things got rougher
than before.
“He likes a late lunch. Two o’clock—okay?”
“Sure. Great. Fine, Amalia.”
***
Irene took a taxi from the LA airport to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. She walked from the hotel to her office, where she checked the answering machine for calls, but there was nothing. She went to the window and let the light in. It was a sparkling sunny day and she asked herself how anyone could live in Brooklyn, a double dump, if they had a gorgeous house like hers in sunshine and cleanliness like this? Someday, she told herself, she was going to find out what the hell love was, and when she did, she was going to shove it up the guy who invented it. She had never been in such trouble. The biggest hood in the country was after her money. The New York Police Department was looking for her like she was the bubonic plague. There wouldn’t be any easy answers if they got her, no Prizzi lawyer would be able to get her out of this one, and all because of some horseshit called love. She had thrown away a sweet, uncomplicated business, a gorgeous house in the most perfect climate in the world because of this love shit. She wished she had Marxie back. He was a deadbeat and useless but she had been safe with him for seventeen years. They had made out all right and now she had to dig out $540 of her own money, and throw away a sweet $100 contract, and practically hand it over to one of the richest men in the country—for what? Because he said so and because he would have her clipped if she didn’t. The law wanted to clip her and the bad guys wanted to clip her. Jesus, $640!
She got a briefcase out of the closet. It had cost her almost a thousand dollars, retail, and it was a beautiful thing to touch. She left the office with it and went to the bank on Wilshire Boulevard.
They gave her a private cubicle in the vault room and brought in her boxes. This was her entire lifetime of work here. This was her blood mixed with a couple of gallons of her cold sweat. She didn’t think she could stand it. She thought of the condition of the underwear of the men she had scored when she had been hustling in Chicago, before Marxie came along. She thought of the pimples on their thighs and the coarse hair on their backs, and their breath, and she made herself sick. She thought of trying to keep warm for the first fourteen winters of her life while her father snored like chains caught in moving machinery and while her mother whimpered, then drank, then whimpered and drank some more. She was supposed to hand $540 over to that old man! More than half a million dollars! People who paid taxes had to work for eighteen years at $127 a year in order to accumulate $540 in one piece. She put her face in her hands and wept bitterly. Why the fuck had she ever met Charley? If she had just gone along the way it was meant to be, she and Marxie could be in Singapore by now, or somewhere on the South Island of New Zealand where the pickings were all sheep, and that didn’t interest the mob. She and Marxie could be in a clinic in Switzerland right now, getting over an operation on their faces and on their prints. They could have new paper and go anywhere, but she had to run into Charley and all the love shit.
She knew she should empty all the boxes on that table and run right now for the airport and fly over the Pole to Zurich and make her connections. Ten days from now she could have a new face and new prints and new paper. She would have her money and she would be safe.
But no Charley. Even for $540 she didn’t think she could hack it without Charley.
***
Charley drove to Brentwood after he left the office. The Plumber was on duty, reading some tit magazine, and the place was a mess.
“What are you guys, animals?” Charley said indignantly as he went from the kitchen, piled with dishes and garbage, to the living room, which had plates of half-eaten sandwiches and sour beer glasses on almost every surface. “What do you want? A knock on the head? This is not only childish it is unhygienic.”
“Charley, whatsa matter with you?”
“All right! Where’s the vacuum cleaner? Where’s the scrub pail?”
“How do I know?”
Charley picked Melvini up by the front of his collar and knocked him over the back of a sofa. “You are going to get this place clean, you hear. Where the fuck is Dom? Get him down here.” He kicked Melvini. “And don’t give me any crap about how you’ll stuff me down the fucking toilet because that’s where you and Dom are going if this place isn’t cleaned up in one hour.”
Dom appeared at the stair landing. “Heh, what the fuck is going on?” he said. “I’m tryna sleep here.”
“The Soap Fairy wants you,” the Plumber said.
“Get down here, you slob,” Charley roared. Dom hurried down the stairs. “All right. You, clean up all this shit laying around in here,” he pushed the Plumber’s shoulder, “then work that vacuum cleaner wherever you can find carpets or curtains. You, you little prick, get in there and wash those dishes. And when you finish that you are going to scrub the floor. You hear me? Move!”
The two men scurried to work. Charley went down the cellar stairs to the room where they kept Filargi. He used two different keys to open two padlocks. Filargi was writing a letter.
“How’s it?” Charley asked.
“The men are pleasant. The food is good,” Filargi said.
“You look all right.”
“I am well enough. I can’t stop thinking about that woman as she got out of the elevator, but maybe that will go away. I have nightmares about that awful woman coming to get me. I can’t get her face out of my mind. She didn’t change a flicker of an expression when she shot that defenseless woman in her face.”
“That woman who got clipped was a goddamn dummy,” Charley said. “She pressed the wrong button.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“It looks very good for you, Mr. Filargi. Next Monday the bank gets the ransom routine. You know about the bank being insured for the money. They make the payoff and we turn you loose. That’s the whole bit.”
“When?”
“Maybe two-three weeks.”
“You are really going to let me go?”
Charley nodded gravely, thinking of what Don Corrado had in store for this poor son-of-a-bitch.
“You don’t care that I can identify you and the woman and those two men upstairs?”
“Mr. Filargi—look. You were standing there when we did the job on your bodyguard and on that lady. We are going to let you go free. But if you get into that shit of telling the police you can identify us, then you’ll be dead. No matter where you are, you’ll be dead. So it’s not such a hard choice. Anything you want me to bring you from New York?”
“Well—I have this short list of books. And, if you can do it, I’d like to have a television set down here.”
“Certainly. Why not?”
***
Charley went in to find Pop to talk about Don Corrado sending for him but Pop was at a breakfast meeting with two basketball coaches. Charley got into the panel truck and drove to The Corner. Nobody was there. Mrs. Latucci was all smiles. “Coffee onna house,” she said. “You know what the Lady Carrot paid? Twelve to one. I had ten bucks going three ways. Jesus, it was terrific. Whatta you got for today, Charley?”
“Today is nowhere,” Charley said. “There isn’t a race in the country I would bet.”
“How you betting the pennant?”
“It’s too early. Two more weeks. I’ll give you the word in two weeks.”
Phil Vittimizzare came in, ordered a Danish, and went to the pinball machine. “Hen, Charley,” he said. “What happened to the Plumber? I don’t see him around.”
“Beats me,” Charley said.
“He missed mass Sunday,” Vittimizzare said primly. “Father Doniger asked me about him.”
“He’ll show up,” Charley said. “You know the Plumber.”
He left the luncheonette and drove to a downtown Brooklyn movie place. He had two hours to kill and a war movie was playing. He sat in the loges and after about twenty minutes some creep came over and sat beside him. Then the guy put his hand on Charley’s thigh so Charley turned his arm over across his kneec
ap and broke it. He changed seats to the other side of the theater. What the fuck kind of a world do we live in, he thought, if you got to be molested by degenerates right in a Brooklyn theater?
He drove the Chevy to Brooklyn Heights, parked it illegally around the corner from the Sestero house, and rang Corrado Prizzi’s doorbell.
Don Corrado was known as the heaviest fork in the history of the fratellanza on the Eastern seaboard. He had a small glass of olive oil for breakfast and another small glass of it for dinner. He ate only one meal a day, but to see the amount of food he was able to pack so effortlessly into that tiny frame, containing a stomach about the size of a doll’s derby and intestines no longer than a skipping rope, was like watching a great illusionist work. He never had more than one guest at lunch, and never more than one lunch guest in a month. Because he couldn’t bear to share even a small part of the food from his table.
He greeted Charley in an abrupt and preoccupied way, because his mind was entirely on the meal to come, then led him to the trough.
They began with a glass of Sicilian wine, Mamertino, which was semisweet, very strong, golden-white wine with a powerful aroma.
“Charley—tell me how it happened that you had to hit a cop’s wife on that job?”
“Padrino! You never saw anything like it. The broad pushed the wrong elevator button. The door opens the minute the second man shoots the bodyguard. The woman is standing right there. She makes all of us. She had to go.”
“I knew it had to be something like that. But it’s making a real storm, Ed says. The entire department is gone crazy because you hit that woman.”
“How come? Why?”
“Charley, you didn’t hear me! That was not only a cop’s wife you did that number on, that was the wife of the captain who runs the organized crime squad, and when they finally figure out that Filargi was grabbed they are going to make it into a mob operation and God know how much heat they’ll generate.”
The soup arrived. It was called Le Virtù and it contained pork sausages, meat balls, greens, vegetables, and pasta. Even though Charley had been warned about Don Corrado’s lunches since childhood, he mistook the giant’s soup, the hero’s soup, for the main course and came back for seconds. The don put away four bowls of it, just as if it were cement going into a mixer. After that he poured each of them a glass of red wine, Corvo di Casteldaccia, dry and delicate, while Amalia served them the spiral pasta from Abruzzi, ricci di Donna, over which she had poured a stew made of roasted crabs with tomatoes, garlic, and pieces of toast; pungently aromatic. Charley looked up at her sharply as she came to serve him, after having served the don, and she lowered her eyes, nodded slightly, and gave him just a spoonful of each of the dishes on her tray. Don Corrado didn’t notice the omission. He ate two large portions before he spoke again. “Amalia, dear one,” he said, “I have a feeling for pasta today. We could be in for an early winter. Could we possible have another pasta? Is there any way you could do that?”