Charley felt a pang until he realized that Maerose would probably never see it anyway. “Sure. You want it, you do it,” he said. “Only don’t invite Maerose over here, okay?”
“Why not?”
“She’s a decorator in New York. She decorated this whole place.” His face lighted up. “Say—she could get stuff for you, for this place, wholesale.”
Irene froze for a second. “I never buy wholesale or boosted stuff,” she said. “What do you care, Charley? Anyway, I have nine whole rooms of stuff in California. Beautiful stuff. The best. You’re going to be crazy about it. You’re going to love it when I’m done.”
“So? What’s for dinner?”
“I am trying something new. It’s a very special meat and wine stew, very French, you know, farmhouse French.”
“No pasta?”
“With this dish, which is called
la daube de boeuf Provençale
, you get little
farfallini
, which is absolutely okay for this recipe.”
“Believe me—it is okay for any recipe.”
The telephone rang. It was Pop.
“Hen, Charley!” he said. “So Ed Prizzi took care of everything. That’s nice. Listen, ten o’clock tonight at Ben Sestero’s. They can’t wait anymore with this.”
“Sure, Pop. When are you going to come over and meet the bride?”
“I met the bride, remember? Anyway, she’s not sentimental. Depending on how things work out at the sit-down tonight, figure me dinner on Sunday.”
“Great.” They hung up at the same time.
“They have set a big meet tonight at ten,” he told Irene. “The same one Pop talked about when he called me in Mexico.”
“Big sit-downs bring big money,” Irene said, stirring a pot slowly.
“If everything is even, Pop is coming over here for dinner on Sunday.”
Irene put a lid on the pot. “Okay. Sensational. Then tonight we are going out for dinner and this stew
is going to sit for two days until it is the most tremendous stew ever smuggled out of France when I give it to your father on Sunday.”
“You sit down and have a glass of wine,” Charley said. “Let me cook the dinner, which, you are going to have to admit, is going to be better than eating out.”
“How? What are you going to make?”
“I am going to make you something terrific.”
“What?”
“I am going to make you
pasta con le Sarde
from Palermo, which it is some great pasta shells, like
maruzzi
, about a pound, baked with sardines, secret amounts of chopped anchovy, fennel, raisins and pine nuts, in oil, and seasoned with saffron. Then, after I get you drunk on that, I am going to make love to you all night.”
“Well, at least until half past nine when you leave for the meeting.”
“Ah, the hell with the food,” he said, grabbing her, “we can eat anytime but I couldn’t eat anyways tonight, looking at you.”
***
He arrived for the meeting on Brooklyn Heights five minutes early. The guard, a new Agrigento boy named Sam Falcone, opened the door. Amalia Sestero greeted him, kissing him on both cheeks. “They are all in there,” she said. “I’ll bring Poppa down now.” She took Charley to the sliding doors, opened them, and he went into the room. She closed them behind him.
Don Corrado’s chair was empty at the head of the table. Vincent was seated to the right of it, Ed Prizzi to the left of it, the protocol being set by the order of their birth, not by how much money they brought in, which bugged Ed. Angelo sat at Vincent’s right and there was an empty chair for Charley at his right facing Ben Sestero and Harry Garrone, seated at Ed’s
left. A stranger sat at the foot of the table. He was a somber man with a nose like a rope, a large stomach and two gold watch chains draped across his gray flannel vest. As Charley went around the table at that end nobody introduced him so Charley ignored him.
Almost as soon as Charley’s seat touched the chair, the sliding door opened and Amalia brought Don Corrado into the room and settled him in his chair, which faced all the others. Everyone stood. The don motioned Amalia out of the room with his left hand and, as she left, he said, in Sicilian, that he was happy to see that Charley was cleared of the charges that had been brought. Charley thanked him.
“The gentleman at the far end of the table is Alvin Gomsky,” Don Corrado said, in English, with his indistinct sandpiper voice, “and he is treasurer of our bank. I have asked Mr. Gomsky here so that you could hear from his own mouth what is happening.”
He looked sweetly at Gomsky for his statement. Mr. Gomsky had only been able to understand every other word because of Don Corrado’s rich accent but Ed had told him what he was there for.
“The president of the bank is stealing from the bank,” Mr. Gomsky said, “and, if he is allowed to keep up his scheme of bad foreign exchange deals, it will all be over for the bank within nine months or maybe fourteen months.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gomsky.”
“We will look at the books tomorrow morning,” Ed said.
“We will talk about that,” Don Corrado said. “Thank you, Mr. Gomsky. See Mr. Gomsky to the door, Arrigo,” he said to his youngest son-in-law.
“Eduardo will tell you about it,” Don Corrado said in Sicilian when Gomsky had left the room. Eduardo began to speak with full salesman’s voice, collecting the minds of the others, which had been scattered by
the outrageous enormity of the news. Don Corrado closed his eyes, perhaps the better to concentrate.
“The bank was always like a cousin to me,” Ed Prizzi began, speaking in the Agrigento dialect. “The bank made everything happen, and not only with the money it generated. The man who bought seventy-five percent of the bank from us is a Neapolitan named Rosario Filargi. He calls himself Robert Finlay and anyone named Filargi who would call himself Finlay would also have to be stupid enough to think that we wouldn’t protect the remaining twenty-five percent of the bank which we own. The treasurer of the bank, Mr. Gomsky, whom you met tonight, has told us—you heard him—that Filargi is bleeding the bank to death with crooked foreign money deals and, if we don’t protect the bank, that it will be dead in a year.”
“How about a fink like that?” Angelo said. “We should cut his balls off, the fucking fink.”
“You got enough for us to do that, Eddie?” Vincent asked his brother.
“Poppa worked out a plan,” Eduardo said. “You got to hear the whole story.”
“Okay,” Vincent said.
“So where did Filargi’s money come from, to buy the eighteenth-biggest bank in the United States? Well—there is a bunch of robbers in Italy at the very top of the government, just like here, from big business, big money. We are like little stickup men robbing gas stations in the Depression, compared to these people. We are what one slot machine is, compared to everything in Vegas compared to these people.”
He filled the jelly glass in front of him halfway with anisette, then passed the bottle across to Vincent. Vincent wet the bottom of his glass because of his gout and passed the bottle to Angelo. Ed Prizzi didn’t speak again until the bottle returned to his end of the table.
“These men had to have a way to get their money out of Italy, into Switzerland, so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes, so Filargi opened two banks across the border from Como, in Chiasso, and Filargi’s people would pick up the bales of cash from these people and take them to Filargi’s Swiss banks. He did so well for them that he was able to convince them that they shouldn’t keep all their eggs in one Swiss basket, and he got the money from them to buy seventy-five percent of our bank. But Filargi’s name should be changed again, to
spingularu
, because he can never steal enough. Now he is stealing from their seventy-five percent and from our twenty-five percent, but he dishonors us more than he dishonors them, because we feel it more.”
“The loss of the money or the honor?” Arrigo Garrone asked.
Charley looked at him with such brutal questioning that Garrone became pale.
“Harry was trying to emphasize that we feel the loss of both more than anything else,” Ed Prizzi said smoothly. Angelo patted Charley’s leg under the table.
“Still, it is my father’s honor and my father’s money which has been put in peril here, so I will tell you my father’s plan for dealing with Filargi. Some men suffer when you take life away from them, because life is sweetest to them. To Filargi, my father has decided, money is sweetest, so that is what we are going to take away. We will leave him his life without money, and without any way to get money.”
Don Corrado opened his tiny eyes. He looked into the face of every man at the table, nodding. “That is how Filargi must pay,” he said. “I was able to figure it out because Charley gave me the key which showed me the way to justice for Rosario Filargi.”
“
I
gave the key?” Charley said blankly.
“You brought me the key that kidnap insurance
premiums are deductible from the income tax. Eduardo will explain.”
Don Corrado closed his eyes. Everyone looked at Ed Prizzi.
Chapter Twenty
“Very recently,” Eduardo said, “Mr. Gomsky has persuaded his fellow directors of the bank to take out two million, five hundred thousand dollars worth of kidnap insurance to cover all bank officers. The amount of the coverage represents twelve percent of what our twenty-five percent interest in the bank is worth. Naturally, we will have to share up to twenty-five percent of the costs of the high premium rate for the policy, but, as Charley has established for us, that cost will be tax-deductible, and the ransom money the bank will have to pay will also be deductible, so that, in the event that one of the officers of the bank is kidnaped—if Filargi were to be taken, for example—the kidnapers themselves would get two million five hundred thousand net as ransom and the insurance company would have to pay.”
“Thank you, Eduardo,” Don Corrado said. “Thank you, Beniamino. Thank you, Arrigo. You may go now. Please—on the way out—please tell Amalia to come for me.”
The three men left the room.
“I think I am getting an ulcer,” Vincent said. “What kind of a thing is that at my age?”
“Don’t drink milk,” Angelo said. “Milk makes the acids flow. It makes the ulcers worse.”
“Who drinks milk?” Vincent said as Amalia came into the room for Don Corrado, leading him out of the room. She closed the sliding doors quietly.
“My father has a terrific plan here,” Vincent said to the Partannas. “We are going to put a two million five price tag on him after we take him, then we are going to leave a trail for the Feds so that they can prove that Filargi organized the whole thing to have himself kidnaped so he could cheat the insurance company out of that kind of money. Jesus, talk about felonies! They will give him ten consecutive life sentences for stealing that much money from such a company with the clout that an insurance company has.”
“Tremendous!” Angelo said, kissing his fingertips and throwing the kiss into the air. “Now you are learning how a real
’narugnutu
should be handled, Charley.”
“That ain’t all my father has figured out for Filargi,” Vincent said. “When Filargi is picked up for engineering his own kidnaping, our people in Italy and Switzerland are going to put the pressure on the
papaveri
who were his partners in buying the seventy-five percent of the bank from us, by telling them how much Filargi was stealing from them on the crooked foreign exchange deals, and they are going to squeeze their government to bring Filargi to trial in Rome, so that if he ever gets out of the joint in this country, he is going to face at least twenty-five years’ time in some fucking Italian prison. In the meantime, as soon as they pick him up here, our people will organize the bank’s stockholders to take him for every dime he has in the world and what they can’t get at, the Italian
pezzocannonati
will take away from him. Believe me, over the next fifty years he’s in the joint here or in Italy, he’s going to have plenty of time to figure out and understand that he had to be out of his mind when he decided to piss on the honor of the Prizzis.”
“It is a beautiful piece of work, is absolutely all anybody can say,” Charley said humbly.
“Well,” Angelo said, “when you figure that we are going to be able to buy at least fifty percent of the bank back from the Italians after it hits the fan, it certainly is a beautiful piece of work.”
“There is going to be points in this for you, Charley,” Vincent said, somberly, because he was talking about giving out the family’s money.
Charley began to protest politely but Vincent held up his hand. “My father wants it that way. Fair is fair. You come up with the gimmick that is going to cook this guy. You are going to get five percent of this job. Five points on two million five is a nice score.”
“Hey, Charley!” Angelo said. “A hundred twenty-five dollars! How about that?”
“What can I say?” Charley said, “it is very generous.”
“Well, you are a married man now,” Vincent said blankly. “You can use the money.”
There was a thoughtful silence. Angelo coughed lightly. Charley thought, shit! Here comes the knife about Maerose again.
“Well, anyways,” Vincent said, “you gettin’ married finally lets Maerose off the hook.”
“God bless her,” Angelo said. “Now back to the Filargi job.”
“It’s a job I should be doing myself,” Vincent said, “as my father’s son I should be the one who sets Filargi up, but I got this fucking gout and now, I think, this fucking ulcer, and my father don’t think the Little Sisters’ prayers to St. Gerardo will work in time.”
“When you get gout like that, you really got gout,” Angelo said.
“How do you want me to handle it?” Charley asked deferentially.
“You’re in charge. You pick your own people. We don’t want to know. You run the show. We got the working side of the operation all worked out. You take Filargi on a Monday afternoon at his hotel, because Tuesday is a good news day and for the rest of
the week. He goes home for lunch, fahcrissake, the head of the eighteenth-biggest bank in the country and he goes back to his hotel and fries himself an egg in the middle of the summertime.”
“When?”
“Soon. We’ll give you plenty of notice. My father has to work out how the payoff is going to be picked up.