“Charley’s in New Orleans.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Miss La Tour—I do not want you to think I am interfering in your life, but there are things which I had to be sure that you understood completely.”
“Tea?”
“Thank you.”
Mardell poured the tea. “This tea is better by itself or with a slice of lemon. It is a totally distinctive tea. Lemon?”
“Yeah.”
“Salmon?”
“Why not?”
Mardell served her a plate with five half tea sandwiches. “It is just that I don’t think the decision is ours to make,” she said.
“Decision?”
“About Charley. If one or the other of us left him, he might decide it was the wrong one. You see, I feel he must decide this thing.”
“It is out of the question. Our engagement—our intention to marry—is very much a family thing, Miss La Tour. My family have made involved plans over the years, since we were kids, actually, so—well, even if he were to choose you over me—temporarily—it couldn’t last.” Maerose’s voice hardened. “Do you understand what I am telling you?”
“But if he chooses me over you, I would feel there was no need for me to—ah—sacrifice myself. I would feel, in fact, that you did not—ah—deserve Charley. No, Miss Prizzi. Not at all. I am not going to withdraw without hearing a decidedly firm expression. There is no other way. Charley must decide this.”
Maerose sipped her tea delicately. She opened her purse after biting into the second paper-thin smoked salmon sandwich. She removed a checkbook from the purse.
“Since I am going to have you fired from the Latino,” she said, discarding stilted speech. “You are gonna need money. How much you think you’re gonna need?”
“Money?”
“A straight payoff, baby. I’m gonna give you twenty-five hundred of the easiest dollars you ever made, and you are gonna change the locks on your doors here.”
“Suppose I take the money but Charley won’t let me go?”
“Look, Mardell—I’ll make it an even thirty-five hundred dollars. Also, I’ll pay your expenses for like a week in Nassau or someplace like that. Why not go back to England? You stay away for ten days, two weeks. By that time it will all be over.”
Mardell smiled a pussycat smile. “I’m so sorry, Miss Prizzi. Can’t be done. I’ll wait right here and put the question to Charley a few moments after he walks through that door.”
43
The van dropped him right in front of Mardell’s building. In his brooding about the two women, he had forgotten to tell the driver he was going to use the back door. As they stopped in front of the apartment house, Charley felt as if he had just stabbed himself; he could feel the eyes of Mae’s agency man clocking him as he went in.
Charley stood outside Mardell’s apartment door, took a deep breath, and pushed the doorbell. He heard faint noises of movement inside the apartment so he waited without ringing again. He heard Mardell say, “Who is it?”
“Charley. I’m home.”
The chain lock rattled, the three dead bolts snapped, and the door flew open. Mardell stared at him wide-eyed. “What do you want?”
“Jesus, you lost a lotta weight, Mardell.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms.
She began to weep. “Buckingham Palace has forgotten me, Charley. She must be in Australia,” she sobbed. “I’ve been so sick.”
He eased both of them into the apartment and shut the door.
“Don’t cry. It’s all right. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
She turned away from him and tottered down the hall, turning left into the first doorway. He followed her. She got into bed. He covered her and tucked her in. “Pop told me how sick you were,” he said.
“I’ll be all right,” she said, lying on her back with her eyes closed, her arms stretched at her sides, palms upward.
“How come Pop didn’t get you a nurse here? You ain’t well enough to be all by yourself.”
“I didn’t want a nurse.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wanted you to come here, and when you came I wanted us to be able to talk without a stranger in the place.”
He pulled up a chair and sat where he could look closely at her face. “I go away on a weekend business trip to Miami and I’m gone almost three weeks. While I’m gone, you get pneumonia. If somebody said to me that was gonna happen, I woulda said they could send somebody else to Miami.”
She didn’t answer him. Two large, clear tears appeared at the corners of her closed eyes and ran down the sides of her head.
“I can’t tell you how much I thought about you, how much I missed you,” he said. He picked up her hand and held it. He kissed it.
“That—your fiancée came here yesterday.”
“Who?”
“She said she had just been with you in New Orleans.”
Charley blew up. “What the hell is she? My keeper?” he yelled, getting to his feet with his fists clenched and staring down at Mardell, who opened her enormous eyes at him. “She got herself invited to New Orleans by her aunt. The aunt is my boss’s sister. I had to go to the lunch and see her.”
“Is that where you were? Lunching with her?”
“I didn’t wanna see her. And she’s putting pressure on you for two weeks—Pop told me about those dried-up flowers she sent to the hospital after she practically handed you pneumonia on a silver platter by bugging you and trying to worry you to death.”
“Your father was very kind to me.”
“What is she tryna do now? Give you leprosy? Hey, Mardell—no offense.”
She began to giggle. She pointed her long, thin arm and a long finger at him as the giggle built into bellowing laughter. She held up both of her arms to him and he went into them. They held each other tightly.
“Now I’m sure my mother was putting me on with that story about my dad being a leper,” she gasped.
“You are tremendous, Mardell,” he said. “There ain’t another woman like you in the whole world. And that’s okay with me because, if you gotta know, I love you.” He kissed her. Then, recuperation or otherwise, one thing led to another.
After a while, as they rested on a pile of pillows, Mardell said, “I had a lot of time to think about everything, and I decided that I have to accept whatever happens.”
“Whatever happens?” Charley said with alarm. “Whatta you mean?”
“Charley—we haven’t known each other very long. A few weeks. She’s known you all of your joint lives.”
“Know? She knew I was there, I knew she was there. It was strictly zilch. This whole engagement thing is a mockery. I never had nothing to say about it. She said we was engaged, that’s all. I never said we was engaged.”
“She loves you.”
“Aaaah!”
“You don’t love her?”
He went silent. “I like her. She’s okay.”
Mardell started to get out of bed. “I’d better think about making us some dinner.”
He held her down. “What can I tell you? I don’t wanna lie to you. My father proved to me a long time ago that lying makes things worse.”
“What are we going to do, Charley?”
“Why are we alive? That’s what we gotta ask ourselves.”
“Why are we alive then?”
“I read about it in a magazine. I never forgot it because it’s logical. We are alive so we can reproduce ourselves. What are we? the magazine asked—and it was written by a famous scientist, I forget his name. We are envelopes for the genes that rule us, control us, and use us until we reproduce, and then they pass themselves along to a new fresh body that we reproduced from ourselves. So when a baby is made, the whole thing makes the genes what they are—immortal.”
“That’s beautiful, Charley. But what does that have to do with you and Miss Prizzi?”
“The article said the atoms that make us up altogether rule the genes. Who rules the a
toms?”
“God?”
“Let’s not get too deep on this. Anyway, men look around to spread their seed, to reproduce. They don’t have the hard part—having the baby—so their instinct is just to spread the seed.”
“So?”
“That’s what I mean that I can’t lie to you, Mardell. I was following my instinct to reproduce. I was spreading my seed with her.”
“That is as neat an explanation for this sort of thing as I have ever heard.”
“It’s the truth.”
“My mother told my father that all a woman really asks is that a man know his own mind, that a woman will accept almost any conditions if she is sure they are what the man believes.”
“Yeah?”
“You are sleeping with another woman. I have to accept that because I believe in you.”
“I never had such trouble in my life. I can’t keep it up. No matter how rough it turns out to be, I gotta make my move, one way or the other—you or her.”
44
George F. Mallon was deeply impressed by the outside and inside of Gennaro Fustino’s New Orleans house. He was taken into Gennaro’s office by the elderly woman in a Victorian maid’s uniform who answered the front door. It confirmed his hunch that people of real wealth and taste did not have butlers. But even if he fired his butler, where could he get a woman as distinguished as this one to answer the door? The uniform alone bespoke a long tradition.
He was admitted to a large room with fourteen-foot-high tiers of books lining three walls, the fourth being made of glass and having a glass door that led to a patio that could only be described as being the epitome of gracious living. There was something of old Europe about the charm of this place, he thought, although to get a climate like this you’d have to go to North Africa.
A round, quite overweight, sixtyish man came into the room. Aristocratically, he didn’t apologize for keeping Mallon waiting. He sat behind the enormous, bare desk and smiled.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Fustino,” Mallon said.
The plump man nodded benignly.
“I am sure the mutual friends told you about the reason for this visit?”
Gennaro nodded.
“My son—my only son—is in a great deal of trouble, and I can assure you, Mr. Fustino, that every charge against him is the result of a criminal conspiracy.”
“Why not?” Mr. Fustino said. “For the sake of discussion.”
“On the surface, my lawyers tell me, the case seems to be hopeless, but, on the other hand, they said if you could be persuaded to take an interest in it, what could seem to be miracles could be performed.”
Mr. Fustino shrugged.
“Can you help my son?”
“Those things are very difficult, if they can be done at all. Maybe it’s better to find out how the court is gonna handle your son’s case before thinking about any appeal?”
“What happened to my boy is a deliberate consequence of my being one of two candidates for the office of mayor in the City of New York in the elections held this week. My opponent denies it—I have met with him and made the accusation to his face—but who else in this world would do such an infamous thing—and for what reason?”
Mr. Fustino made an abrupt moue as if in sympathy.
“I say to you my son was brutally, criminally, and unjustly framed, Mr. Fustino. I think that is the word. He had his life ahead of him. But now, instead, he faces up to 150 years in prison. He must be freed or spend that life behind bars, and since it has been so expertly arranged through due process that he most certainly will not be freed, then urgent steps must be taken.”
“What steps?”
“I—ah—looked you up, Mr. Fustino. I am a man of the world and I did not rely alone on the counsel of my lawyers. I—ah—understand that you are—ah—able to make certain contacts with key elements and—”
“Key elements?”
“The Mob, I think they are called. People who are adept at bribery and coercion, people who think nothing of suborning public officials.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know any people like that.” He winked.
“I see that we understand each other. Very well.” He removed a long, brown, oversized legal envelope from his side pocket. He slid it across the desk to Gennaro. “In that envelope you will find one hundred thousand dollars. I am pleading with you to agree to pass that along to the right parties inside the—uh—Mob who will know the who, what, why, when, and where concerning precisely the right people in your state’s police and judicial systems who can bring about the early release of my boy.”
Gennaro swept the envelope into the top drawer of his desk with a move so fast it was difficult to know that it had really happened except that the envelope was no longer there.
“You mean you want to bribe people to persuade them to go lightly with your son?”
“I mean they must be bribed so that they will free my son.”
“I am happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Mallon. May we meet again in the near future.”
George F. Mallon held up a hand. “There is one more thing, Mr. Fustino. I have been wondering if—in the course of your contacts in the milieu—”
“The what?”
“The underworld—what I referred to as the Mob—”
Gennaro made a gesture to indicate his understanding.
“—if you could find me what is known among those people as a hit person.”
“A hit person?”
“You know what I mean,” Mallon said grimly.
“Why?”
“Because I have been thinking about the trouble my son finds himself in and it all goes back to one man.”
“One man?”
“A man we need feel no compunction about rubbing out, as they say in the underworld. He is himself a killer, and because it was my declared intention to unmask him and to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, his people caused my son to be framed and brutalized.”
“His people?”
“The mayor and others. He is a criminal who is employed by New York mobsters. His name is Charley Partanna.”
Gennaro’s face remained impassive.
“I want to talk to someone in the New Orleans underworld, far removed from the New York mob, who will take on the assignment of rubbing out Mr. Charley Partanna.”
“Charley Partanna.”
“That is his name.”
“You feel this man costed you the election, Mr. Mallon?”
“Yes. And I would be less than human if I did not admit to a need for vengeance for that, too. As well as what he brought upon my boy.”
Gennaro wheeled his swivel chair around so that he could stare out at the patio, his back to Mallon. He rolled his eyes to the heavens.
Mallon said, “Can you arrange such an introduction, Mr. Fustino?”
Gennaro turned his chair around to face Mallon and said, “What is this? Whatta you think I am? How can you ask me such a thing?” He winked again.
“Thank you, Mr. Fustino, and good day to you.”
When George F. Mallon was gone, Gennaro took the exposed reel of film out of the 8mm movie camera that had photographed and recorded Mallon and his measured words. Then, picking up the telephone, he asked that his driver, Gus Fangoso, be sent in. He slipped the negative reel into a heavy manila envelope and addressed it. When Gus came in, Gennaro gave him the envelope.
“Take it to Jerry at the lab. Make one copy. Bring the negative back to me and take the print to Angelo Partanna in New York. Then come back here. I’m gonna need you to drive me out to the track tomorrow.”
45
The 8mm print went to New York on an afternoon flight that day, and the delivery was made to Angelo Partanna at St. Joseph’s Laundry at 4:40 P.M. Angelo had dinner with Rocco Sestero, whose wife was visiting her daughter in Michigan, but he flatly refused to eat at Tucci’s. He got home a little after ten and ran the film. He told himself that, if he hadn’t been around for all t
he years he had been around, he couldn’t believe it. If they didn’t bother to find out what the environment was doing to them, then it had to be that they deserved what they got.
He called Gennaro Fustino.
“Gennaro? Angelo. How they hangin’?”
“You see the movie?”
“My God.”
“I sat here staring at this guy. You wouldn’t believe it. He was in charge, the big executive.”
“Did you put him in touch with the guy he wanted?”
“They have a meet set for tomorrow night.”
“Where is the contractor gonna take Charley?”
“Wherever you say.”
“Charge him extra for what the contractor’s gonna do for him.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Thanks for the help, Gennaro. We owe you one.”
“Listen, for favors that pay as good as this one—anytime, Ang.”
Angelo called Eduardo Prizzi and made an appointment at Eduardo’s office the next morning. “It won’t take ten minutes,” he said. “But it’ll be very productive.”
Maerose ran a finger over the heavy engraving on the rich parchment paper and drank in the words that glowed like jewels under her eyes.
Mr. Vincent Prizzi
of
New York City
announces the engagement
of his daughter
Miss Maerose Amalia Prizzi
to
Mr. Charles Amedeo Partanna
son of Mr. Angelo Partanna
of New York City
For the fourth time she read the information that Eduardo’s people would give out to the press:
Mr. Vincent Prizzi has announced the engagement of his daughter, Miss Maerose Amalia Prizzi, to Mr. Charles Amedeo Partanna, both of New York City. Miss Prizzi is a graduate of the Marymount School in New York and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. For the past year she has been working as a partner of Price-Hoover Designs, interior decorators. Mr. Partanna was also educated in New York. In Vietnam he served as a Staff Sergeant, Special Forces, where he was decorated with the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Since then he has been associated with the St. Joseph’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning Service of New York as general manager.