“That is very good, Poppa,” Eduardo said.
“That is
tremendous
,” Vincent said. “That is a sensational wrinkle. The problem part of any snatch, irregardless, is always the payoff. They are always nailed when they reach for the ransom money. We could turn this into a very, very nice business in this country with a wrinkle like that.”
“No, Vincent,” Don Corrado said sadly. “Stick to the harmless rackets which bring people a lot of pleasure and which they want. Start snatching big shots and the media starts screaming, they get the people all agitated, the politicians see right away that they can’t protect us because the people don’t want them to protect us on a thing like that, and we’ve got ourselves a lot of heartaches. Besides, the payoff, the way it is set up for Filargi, could be one of those things that only works once.”
“You’re right, Poppa,” Vincent said contritely.
***
Angelo Partanna sat with his old friend in the overheated study on Brooklyn Heights at six o’clock that evening, explaining in exhaustive detail why Charley had decided that a woman had to do the second man’s stand on the forty-first floor of Filargi’s hotel. When he came to the part where the woman tossed the fake baby at the bodyguard, Don Corrado nodded his appreciation of the fine point. “That is really professional,” he said. “And much better than my way.”
“Then it is okay?”
Don Corrado nodded.
“It
is
a woman,” Angelo said. “And that
is
a specialist.”
“Give her whatever she wants, my friend,” Don Corrado said, “this is my monument.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The Prizzis had rented the north side apartment on the forty-first floor of Filargi’s hotel in devious ways eight days before the Monday on which Filargi was to be taken. Angelo Partanna sent matinee theater tickets and a luncheon invitation for two at one of the city’s heaviest restaurants as the grand prize of a community contest that the woman tenant of the south apartment couldn’t remember entering, but which she was delighted to have won. Irene checked into the south apartment at 1:25
P.M.
of the day they were going to take Filargi. Charley took his place in the north apartment at 1:37. Filargi’s bodyguard would come out of the east apartment, Filargi’s, at between two and six minutes after two o’clock.
Irene moved as coolly as always. She inflated the rubber doll and wrapped it in the swaddling that she carried under her coat. When the whole package was weighted and put together in its Baby Bunting sack, all that was needed was sound effects to convince anyone that it was a baby. She grinned as she put the package together, thinking of the look on the bodyguard’s face when she tossed the baby at him. She took her place in the south apartment. Charley waited behind his north door.
On schedule, at three minutes after two, the
bodyguard came out of the east apartment. He was a wiry-looking, medium-sized man with a blue-black underbeard and a loud red, purple, and white necktie. He pressed the elevator bell. Within ninety seconds the elevator door opened and the bodyguard stepped into it to push the Hold button. He left the open car and crossed the hallway to the door of Filargi’s apartment and knocked. The door opened immediately. Filargi, a man of about sixty-three, short, plump, and nervous-looking, wearing a bow tie and a Panama hat, appeared immediately. As soon as the spring locker of the door closed behind him, Irene opened the door and, carrying the baby, stepped out into the hall. Both the bodyguard and Filargi half-turned to look at her. Irene was about three feet from the bodyguard, her purse open behind the baby so she could grab her piece, when she said, “Catch!” and tossed the baby at the bodyguard.
The bodyguard sidestepped the baby and let it fall to the floor. He went for his gun. Irene pulled her piece out of the purse. Charley came out of the north apartment, gun in hand. The second elevator door opened directly beside Irene and the bodyguard as they pulled the guns. A woman in her middle fifties started to come out of the elevator car just as Irene shot the bodyguard. The woman said distinctly, staring at Irene, “I must have the wrong floor.” Irene shot her in the face.
The doors of the second elevator began to close. Irene leaped forward to stop them. Charley sprinted in behind Filargi and jammed the piece to his back and slammed him up against the mail chute between the two elevators while Irene went in, punched the Hold button, then dragged the woman’s body, which had been knocked backward by the force of the bullet, out of the car by the feet, the dress riding up to the hips to show the tops of pantyhose and dead-white belly skin. When the body was out Irene released the
Hold button and pressed G to send the elevator back to the lobby.
“No bloodstains,” she said to Charley.
“Jesus,” he said, “I thought that elevator was going to take her down to the street.”
Charley manhandled Filargi, grabbing him by the upper arm and pushing him toward the bodies. “Come on!” he said. “We gotta move this shit out of here.” Filargi, pale with shock, watched Charley take the bodyguard under his arms and drag him across the threshold of the south apartment, telling Filargi to bring in the woman.
“I can’t,” Filargi said. “I don’t have the strength.”
“Take one arm,” Irene said. “I’ll take the other.” Together they dragged the woman’s body into the south apartment. Its shoulder caught in the side of the mail chute. Irene had to jerk the arm to drag the body free.
“I had to hit her, Charley,” Irene said, “she was looking right at me.”
“It’s okay,” Charley said. “You had to do it.”
They left the south apartment, closing the spring lock on the door, the unlucky woman sprawling obscenely over the legs of Filargi’s bodyguard, and pushed Filargi into the holding elevator. Charley pressed the Basement and Express buttons and the car fell from the forty-first floor.
“He let the baby hit the floor,” Irene said. “Suppose it had been a real baby? It could be dead, the son-of-a-bitch.”
“What are you
doing
?” Filargi said. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Lissena me,” Charley said. “You are going with us. When we get down to the garage you are going to lay down on the floor in the back of the car. That’s all you got to know.”
“You are
kid
naping me?” Filargi said. “Are you crazy?”
“All right. Here we are,” Charley said. The doors opened and Al Melvini was standing there, chewing gum. “What did you do,” he asked, “take a coffee break?”
They walked Filargi rapidly along the short entrance to the garage, through revolving doors, and out into the open back door of a Buick sedan. “Get in front, Irene,” Charley said. He and the Plumber pushed Filargi into the back seat, got in and shut the doors. Filargi lay on his back on the floor. The plumber saturated a handkerchief with chloroform and strong, sweet, sick-making fumes filled the car. He pressed the handkerchief over Filargi’s face. Filargi struggled weakly, then Melvini covered him with a blanket. “Okay, Dom,” he said and the car moved sedately to the exit of the garage. Dom Bagolone was driver and second helper. Like the Plumber he was a made man. They drove east across town to the Queensboro bridge. No one spoke until they were in Long Island City, then Charley said, “What did you lay in for dinner?”
“I thought the chicken cacciatore,” Melvini said.
“This is Irene.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the Plumber said.
“Likewise,” said the driver.
***
They settled Filargi in the cellar room of the house in Brentwood. Charley called his father at eleven o’clock that night.
“On schedule,” he said.
“You better come in,” Pop said.
“When?”
“Ten tomorrow. At the office.” Pop hung up.
“They want me and Irene in New York,” Charley told the Plumber. He included Irene because, according to the original plan before the dumb broad pushed the wrong button, she wasn’t supposed to be there anyway.
“What’ll we do for a car?” the Plumber asked.
“Whatta you need a car for? You going someplace?”
“You coming back?”
“I’ll be back tonight.”
“That’s great. Then we’ll have a car. I feel naked without a car.”
“Charley, bring a case of canned tomatoes,” Dom said. “When we stocked up the house we forgot the tomatoes.”
Charley made a careful note. “Somebody must have lost their mind,” he said. “Don’t try to cook anything until I get back,” Charley said. “We don’t want Filargi to have any complaints.” That got a laugh.
***
They left Brentwood at three
A.M.
for the drive into the city. Charley took Irene to their apartment at the beach. They took a shower together, then they made love. Afterwards, lying motionless, intertwined naked upon the sheet in the air-conditioned room, Irene said, “I can’t get it through my head that that son-of-a-bitch sidestepped the baby. Suppose it was a real baby? It could have been crippled for the rest of its life.”
“What the hell, Irene. You don’t think he thought that was a
real
baby?”
“What the hell else could he think?”
“Anyway, he wasn’t paid to bodyguard no baby,” Charley said.
***
At ten o’clock Charley was in his father’s office at the St. Gabbione Hotel Laundry.
“We got a little trouble, Charley,” Angelo Partanna said. “That woman you hit at Filargi’s was a police captain’s wife.”
“Oh, boy!” Charley said. “That does it. How do you like a dumb broad who pushes the wrong floor?”
“They don’t know we took Filargi yet. The woman
with the theater tickets came home and she finds the two people piled on top of each other. The baby out in the hall—you know, the doll—helps the media to confuse everybody as usual so it looks like tomorrow before anybody notices that Filargi is missing.”
“That guy never caught the baby. Irene threw it and he just sidestepped it.”
“Very professional,” Angelo said.
“When do you lay the first ransom note on the bank?”
“Well! We figured three days after the papers know Filargi is gone. Now this throws the whole thing off, because tomorrow is Wednesday, when they figure it out that Filargi is gone, then we come into the weekend, and the bank is closed. So I suppose we’ll mail the first letter on Friday and they’ll get it next Monday.”
“I think we should have one more guy at Brentwood. That would give them three eight-hour shifts out of every twelve.”
“Fuck that,” Angelo said. “They’re just sitting on their ass. Let them work it out. They’re getting a nice piece of money so how can I justify one more guy at that kind of money? Anyway, you’re going to drive out there every other day. That’ll give them a little time off.”
“Well,” Charley said, “we’re going to catch a lot of heat from that dumb broad being a police captain’s wife.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Maerose telephoned to Amalia to ask, in humble spirit, for an audience with Don Corrado, so that she might thank him for the meaning he had returned to her life by convincing her father that she should be allowed to come home. Amalia, her good friend, called back within the hour to say that her grandfather would see her at five o’clock that afternoon.
Maerose arrived, dressed in black, and knelt before Don Corrado’s chair to kiss his hand. He flushed at the old-fashioned flavor of the obeisance, clucked over her and bade her sit in a chair beside him and hold his hand.
The ladies near Corrado Prizzi understood that he liked to hold females’ hands, not for amorous reasons, no longer at any rate, but because of the tactile sensuality of the hand’s plumpness or softness or definition—and because he believed he could flow into their bodies and minds through their hands as he had once felt the power of the
Capo di tutti Capi
of all Sicily flow into him when he was a boy.
He held Maerose’s hand and, with his tiny, icy, augur-eyes, bored into her consciousness. Beyond the wide window, Manhattan lay out at his feet like a field of stone asparagus, and beyond that stretched America in a sheet of endless pavement. “Amalia has told
me,” he said with his ruffled voice, “that you wish to thank me for bringing you home, but I am the head of our family—who else should have gone to your father and pleaded for the only place for you in the world where you belong? You are blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, and as long as I am able, I will think of your well-being.”
“Thank you, Grandfather,” Maerose said, his match in the bravura aspects, “you have drawn me back from Purgatory. I am a part of you and the family again. Only that could fulfill me.”
“I wish you had been a son. You have the sensitivity and you have the strength to endure. Would you like a cookie?”
“It is I who must offer a gift to you, Grandfather.”
“I love gifts. I think I have always enjoyed gifts.”
She opened her purse and took out an envelope. She opened the envelope and removed three photographs. She gave them to the don.
“Ah! Who is this handsome lady?”
“That is Charley Partanna’s wife, Grandfather.”
“His
wife
? When? Why wasn’t I told of it? Weddings, births, and funerals are the most important things a family can share.”
“It was sudden, Grandfather. In California.”
“Well, well.”
“Grandfather, this is my gift to you. Not only the pictures but what they mean. Do you remember that Louis Palo was killed?”
“Yes.”
“He was shot in a car in the parking lot of Presto Ciglione’s place outside of Las Vegas.”
“I remember.”
“I took the pictures to Ciglione, a respectful man. I lay them down under his eyes and I asked him to show them to the people who worked for him—who were there the night Louis caught it. There was a girl who had been out in one of the cars in the parking lot and
she said she saw the woman in these pictures get out of a car and walk to the car where Louis was hit. Then after a few minutes there was like a pop and she got out of Louis’ car and opened the trunk and took out a satchel then went to her own car and drove away.”
“The woman who married Charley?”