“Who did it?” Ed whispered in the phone.
“The Boccas.”
“How’s Vincent?”
“He’s gone.”
“That’s terrible,” Ed said into the telephone. Two large tears ran out of his dark eyes. “It’s going to be very hard for Poppa.”
“He’s strong,” Angelo said.
“Well, at least, now we won’t have to give Vincent to Charley.”
“No,” Angelo said. “But the fact is something happened to Vincent. He lost it. He was a tremendous man, I never saw a tiger like him from the time he was just a kid, but something snapped and he lost it.”
“It was the daughter,” Ed said. “She wore him down. Well, you better go over and break the news to Poppa.”
***
Angelo paid off the cab in front of the Sestero house at five minutes to six. He climbed the front steps and the door opened when he got to the top. Amalia was waiting for him in a front room, her face ravaged by grief. Angelo held her in his arms, patting her shoulder, murmuring softly. “Poppa can’t understand why everybody is so late,” she said.
Angelo climbed the stairs slowly and knocked on the double doors of the room that faced west. He could hear the voice telling him to come in. He entered, closed the doors behind him and walked toward Don Corrado.
“Who is dead?” the old man asked.
“Vincent.”
“Who did it?”
“The Boccas.”
“How?”
“Outside the building.”
“You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“He missed you?”
“I was about eight feet back. Ed was getting a paper. They were only looking for Vincent anyway.”
The little old man looked out at Manhattan, caught in the dying heat of the summer light, the buildings standing like a crowd waiting to get into a bathhouse. “Vincent was a lovable man,” he said. “He was shy, he couldn’t show anything, but he felt everything. He loved his family. He lived for honor.”
“We won’t forget him,” Angelo said.
“He was such a man. Then—I don’t know—he got old. Something happened. He lost it. I told him he had enough and he agreed with me. Then I had Charley over here for lunch a couple of days ago and I told him he was going to take over Vincent’s job. He will hold everything together.”
Angelo felt a pain go through him that came up through his stomach and across through his left arm and it knocked him right straight down into a chair. “Angelo, Angelo,” the old man said. “Jesus, you been under a terrific strain today. You ain’t no kid. You got to take it easy.”
Angelo got a vial of pills out of his right jacket pocket, took off the top very slowly, shook two pills out, and popped them into his mouth. Don Corrado handed him a half glass of red wine and he washed the pills down.
“I’m okay now,” Angelo said.
“Can you talk or do you want to rest for a while?”
“I can talk,” Angelo said. “Give me a full glass of that wine and I can sing.”
The don poured out a glass of red wine carefully. He sat down in the Morris chair facing his consigliere. “What did the Filargi letter say?” he asked.
“Charley wants the earth,” he said, drawing the letter out of his pocket. He opened it carefully on his lap, put on a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses and read the letter through, aloud, to Don Corrado.
“You know what?” the old man said. “I can see now that Charley thought I was setting him up when I told him he had Vincent’s job.”
“Well,” Angelo said, “that’s the way Sicilians think.”
“Vincent’s daughter wanted to make her suffer. Maybe they were two of those kind of people who are put here, side by side, to make each other suffer. That’s why he put out a contract on Charley. He told himself that Charley made him suffer so she made Vincent suffer and he loved her and he wanted to have a life with her like a father and his daughter have a right to have a life, and then when Charley married the woman who ripped us off with Louis Palo in Vegas, I suppose he just collapsed inside. He put out the contract on Charley, and because everything was against him by that time, he had the bad luck to pay Charley’s wife to do the job on him.”
“I seen it go like that, too, Corrado. Vincent lost it. It all ran out of him.”
“Well, what did we expect from Charley—if we knew. He thinks I set him up so he wouldn’t suspect anything while Vincent sends out a specialist to hit him, so he naturally figures that when I tell his wife that she can pay back the money and a penalty, because she is Charley’s wife and we don’t do numbers on wives, that I am only telling her to get the money and then set her up so our people can hit her. Charley is a man. He has to protect his wife. He has to fight back. And he does it with the fire that he gave to his family from the time he was a thirteen-year-old kid and he took Little Phil Terrone up in the Bronx. So we got to straighten this thing out. Sure, Ed wants to get the bank back and win the seventy million, and so do I, but just as much I want to get this all straight with Charley. Who is going to negotiate this?”
“Me.”
“Good. All right, set the first meeting. Tell him that he’s got to make the final deal with me. Tell him to come here. Lunchtime is good because he likes to eat but he’s going to be tense so he can’t enjoy it, so make it around five o’clock in the afternoon of a sunny day—if it rains we’ll wait until a sunny day comes along—and tell him to come here. Tell him my daughter Amalia will go out and wait with his wife wherever he says—only you will know where—so that if I am lying to him, if I betray him, then the wife can take my favorite daughter. We’ve got to straighten this out with Charley.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
The mobile home that Irene rented had been built on a Macktruck chassis in 1961, and either it had been mothballed for fifteen years or they had built much better automobiles then. The housing was designed to provide two bedrooms, a combination living room and dining room, a galley, a toilet and a shower. Up front, behind the driver’s seat, was a wide, comfortable bunk. Charley relieved the Plumber with the driving for two hours every five hours. The Plumber slept, when he wasn’t driving, in the driver’s bunk, which within two days he had decorated with nude beaver shots from the national magazines. The Plumber was the only student of the media on the team and didn’t look at the news columns. The others never thought about reading a newspaper because they figured they knew what was happening, and that was what the newspapers would be conjecturing upon, and they had neither radio nor TV with them.
Not that they didn’t know what was happening. Irene always looked at the headlines when she went shopping in towns along the way for food. But she didn’t go shopping very often because Charley didn’t think it was a good idea. “The vegetable department is always handled by a wop and they have brothers and cousins who could be looking for us,” he said. “Believe me, Don Corrado has a long arm.” Still, Irene’s eye caught a headline about the fire at Palermo Gardens and she brought the paper back to the truck. Charley and the Plumber were almost sick when they read the names on the list of people who had been burned in the fire. They had known every one of them for all of their lives. “This is the worst single thing I ever seen in my life,” the Plumber said, “Jesus! Mary Gingarola! I almost married Mary Gingarola.” He dropped the paper and turned away. They were took sick about it to read past the list and the front page. They never made the connection with the Boccas. They were away out on the Island after that, so they missed the news about Vincent getting hit.
Irene and Charley handled the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning up. Filargi was settled in the forward bedroom. Charley had rigged a heavy shutter over its window for when they were parked, but the shutter was left open when they were running, which was most of the time.
The truck moved on a regular pattern between Riverhead and Montauk, going out to the end of Long Island along the South Shore roads, as far out as Montauk Point, coming back through S
ag Harbor and taking the ferry from Shelter Island to Greenport to cruise the North Shore. As much as they could, they stayed off the main highways. At night, whenever they could they parked at trailer camps for water hookups. On the fourth day, the second day after Charley’s letter had been delivered in New York, Irene took the morning train in from Riverhead, took a cab from Penn Station to Fifty-sixth Street and checked out that the house flag of the New York Athletic Club was flying from the thirty-third-floor pole. When that was confirmed she sent a messenger to Ed Prizzi with the second letter.
The second letter made simple demands. It said that Angelo Partanna was to take the Long Island Railroad to the Jamaica station, in the fourth car on the train, and was to wait on the platform to be contacted. Charley knew there was no chance of the Prizzi’s notifying the police for a stakeout, and no chance that they would do anything but comply with the letter of the contract because of the amount of money involved for them, but the Jamaica station platform was a crowded place when three full trains came in to exchange passengers and the crowd would be the buffer until he could get Pop away.
Charley walked Pop through two trains, across three platforms, then down exit steps to the street, padlocking the gate after them to stop anyone who might have the idea of following them. The Chevy van was waiting at the foot of the exit stairs and they drove away just as clear as everyone, on both sides, had intended.
“How’re you doing, Pop?”
“I got a couple of surprises, Charley. You want to talk about it now?”
“Now is when, Pop.”
“The Boccas hit Vincent.”
“What? WHAT?”
“They clipped him in front of the building.”
“What is this? What are they starting up here?”
“The official reason is that Vincent dumped on the Boccas at the meeting about the police captain’s wife in front of everybody so Bocca had no choice, but the real reason is what the meeting was about—the cops are outta their heads to get their hands on the second man who did the job on that woman, the cop’s wife.”
“I don’t get it, Pop.”
“Well, the Boccas hit Vincent to tell us that if we don’t hand over the second man then they are going to hit somebody else in the family until we give them the second man to give to the cops because the cops are pouring the heat on the Boccas, which are the weakest family in New York because of the business they’re in.
“Fuck them all,” Charley said. He was driving slowly, making his way south. “Can’t they see the standoff or don’t they give a shit?” he asked.
“Charley—the answer is that anybody who knows can see the standoff. If we give them Irene, then Irene tells the cops everything about the Filargi snatch. Either that or she holds out and tells them nothing because they can’t prove she was on the snatch, but unless Filargi is released so he can be arrested, the Prizzis can’t get the seventy million bucks’ profit when we buy back the bank, but when Filargi is arrested, he is going to identify Irene as the one who did the job on that cop’s wife.”
“Then you are telling me the Boccas want it this way? That no matter what the Prizzis do, if they turn the second man in, they get their backs broken?”
“If they turn Irene in, the Boccas take the credit with the cops. The heat comes off them. Then when Irene talks, and drags the Prizzis into the Filargi snatch and the two killings, the Boccas grab what they want. I’m not saying the Boccas know anything right now, but everybody is going to know it when the second man starts to talk.”
“So with all those edges, they had to give it to Vincent.”
Angelo shrugged. “They got their honor, too, Charley. Vincent’s funeral is tomorrow from Santa Grazia’s.”
“I’m sorry I’m going to miss it.” Funerals, births and weddings had great significance in the Prizzi family.
“You want to talk about the deal or do you want to wait till your people can listen?”
“I want to hear it now.”
“The money you asked for is okay, et cetra, et cetra. Don Corrado personally okayed the entire package.”
“You mean that’s it? We don’t negotiate? They are going to just give in—like that?”
“Well, not exactly, Charley, but let me tell you something first. I go to Don Corrado as soon as I see Vincent’s death certificate at the hospital and he starts talking as soon as I give him the bad news. He talks about Vincent, then he tells me that he had fixed everything for Vincent to take over the sports book in Vegas and represent the Commission there. He tells me he had already told you that you was going to take Vincent’s place as Boss. How about that?”
Charley was stunned. He stopped the car, pulling over. “You mean he wasn’t setting me up? He was leveling? He was going to move Vincent out and move me up?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, I don’t know what to say.”
“He only had one thing on his mind after I read your letter to him. He said twice that he had to straighten this thing out with Charley. That is all that is on his mind. He’s got to get it all straight with you.”
“Pop,—”
“You know how I see it, Charley? He wants that seventy million, sure. But Vincent is gone. Corrado and I are old men. He’s gotta have you back to run the operation. Who else is going to do it? Nobody. They are all second men. That’s why I told you that he is ready to give you everything, et cetra, et cetra. I’m a messenger boy here. I’m not the negotiator. Corrado wants you to go to him and talk to him so that he can straighten this whole thing. It’s a tremendous deal.”
Charley sat staring at a DRY CLEANING sign. He thought of becoming Boss of the Prizzi family. His entire life had pointed him toward that. He had trained for that since he was thirteen years old and now it could happen. He could feel the power as if it were the texture of fine, strong cloth between his fingers. He could taste it as if his mother had come back to cook one more glorious meal for him. He thought of the money. Vincent must have been good for eight million dollars a year, every dime tax free, every dime safe in Switzerland then reinvested in the thousand ways that Ed Prizzi had set up. He thought about the respect that everyone would have to pay. “It’s good but it’s also dangerous,” he said.
“It’s a lot of things, Charley, but it’s not dangerous.”
“You feel you can personally guarantee that, Pop?”
“I could always guarantee you. And I can guarantee me. Even after fifty years with Corrado, I couldn’t usually make the same guarantee for him, but Vincent is dead and Corrado needs you, Charley. He has to have you as insurance for the family and he also has it in his head that the seventy-million-dollar bank deal is his monument. Looking at the whole thing, yeah—I can guarantee to you that there is no danger for you to meet with him at the Sestero house.”
“When?”
“The day after the insurance company pays off for Filargi.”
“Don Corrado will have that money, I won’t. I’m not giving up Filargi until we are all straight.”
“Look, Charley—it has to be the day after the payoffs because the payoff is going to be happening all around the world, the way he has it set up, but by the time you meet with him, the money will all be confirmed and Filargi will have to be freed. It breaks the whole logjam here. They pay off for Filargi. You meet with Corrado and make your deal, then you release Filargi, the cops grab him, and Corrado moves into position to buy his bank back for ten cents on the dollar.”
Chapter Forty
The payoff for Filargi in Lagos, Hong Kong, Aruba, Panama, and São Paulo happened at the moment of Vincent’s interment in the earth of Staten Island at the Santa Grazia di Traghetto cemetery amid the immense necro-architecture of high-rise marble tombs and monuments that recalled Prizzi, Sestero, and Garrone departed.
The funeral had been quietly spectacular. Vincent was one of the last of the old guard mafiosi who had been born across the ocean in Agrigento, and his last rites brought dignitaries, of organized crime and of secular
life, from all over the United States and included a representative of the Spina family, who had been Don Corrado’s sponsors and in-laws in Sicily. The newspaper estimate of the value of the flowers was put at “about” sixty-five thousand dollars. All national TV networks had their cameras at the church and at graveside. The attorney general, the secretary of the interior, the head of the FCC, six governors, and eleven senators personally telephoned their condolences to Don Corrado or to Ed Prizzi. The mourners assembled before the requiem mass in a sea of black garments; the black unshaven cheeks of Sicilian men were yet another sign of grief. A brass band, dressed solemnly, played outside the church as the casket was carried to the black hearse for transport across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to its final rest.
Don Corrado stood at his son’s graveside amid eight saddened bodyguards, engrossed in prayer, while the bishop intoned the collective farewell. Maerose Prizzi tried to throw herself into the grave upon the casket while sixty-four altar boys, dressed with the simulated wings of angels, sang a popularized version of Verdi’s Requiem, transcribed by Scott Miller, which was simultaneously being recorded as a musical memory by a Prizzi-owned recording label.
Angelo Partanna worked his way through the crowd to Don Corrado’s side and, putting a comforting arm around the frail shoulders, whispered softly through the sweet air of the perfect summer’s day and said, “The money is in Zurich.” Don Corrado blew his nose.
They returned to the house in the late afternoon to wait out the twenty-four hours until Charley would appear.
***
“How about we head out to Montauk and do a little surf fishing?” the Plumber said.
“Why not?” Charley said. The Plumber went out the back door to walk around the truck to the driver’s seat. They were on their way in three minutes.