“Yes, Grandfather.”
“That is serious talk, Granddaughter.”
“She stole seven hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars from you. She gave half of it back to save herself. She still has your three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“She did the job on Louis, she stole the family’s money. She dishonored us. So she must pay, isn’t that right?”
“But what would that do to Charley?”
“Charley married her. He married her right after she gave back half the money. I’m not saying that he knew anything about what she had done, but he knew she was involved somewhere because her husband was Louis’ helper on the whole scam. Charley has to put her in the ground. That is what his penance has to be. Doing the job on her.”
“Now you are his priest. You examine the sin and you prescribe the penance.” He gazed at her with admiration. “You are like me,” he said, with the affection that can come from any mirror. “We forgive nothing.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I must think about it,” the don said. “I must ask some questions. It is my duty as the head of the family to prevent injustice.”
Chapter Twenty-five
When Maerose moved back into her father’s house after almost ten years of exile, she took great care to be sure she looked like a ruined spinster. She pulled her hair back into a tight bun at the back of her head. She wore no makeup, but powdered her face carefully, then worked in a few lines under her eyes with a black eyebrow pencil. She wore a black shawl and black dress and she pretended that she could not look him in the eye.
Vincent stared at her, remembering the vital, beautiful young woman he had forced out of his life. In the years she had been gone he had thought about her constantly, and he had seen her living in the same kind of tenement flat his family had lived in when he had been a boy, facing an airshaft and the sound of the rats dragging off the neighbor’s baby, but he had never thought of that changing her physically. He began to weep as he looked at her. He held open his arms as tears poured down his face, and took her to himself, the top of his head just below her chin while her hardened eyes glinted with pleasure. She wondered how long she would have to stay in this dump before she could get the job done. She had kept the apartment at the Matsonia in New York; had negotiated a leave of absence from the interior decorating
firm. She hoped that she would have ruined her father, destroyed Irene, and recaptured Charley in three months’ time—maybe two, maybe four.
During the next week, she worked silently and ceaselessly as a penitent in her father’s house and he wasn’t able to tell her that she must stop this, because that was what he thought women were for, and because on his best day Vincent wasn’t a communicator.
He saw his daughter rise with the sun, scrub floors, wash sheets, cook meals, make beds, and polish furniture (after she had applied the Charles Addams makeup grimly every morning), and since he believed that the beautiful girl who had once been the light of his life was a broken woman, and since it was impossible, under Sicilian rules, to blame himself for what had happened to his daughter, and since, at the instant he had forgiven his daughter, all possibility of blame had been removed from her—Vincent therefore blamed Charley. Shit, Charley had behaved as if he had been forced into the betrothal with her. Now that Vincent had to look at the results of that betrothal, to look day after day on this woman who had been so vital and beautiful and who had been turned into a crone whom he would never be able to get off his hands, Vincent was able to hate Charley openly: secretly to the world, openly to himself, the Sicilian way.
More than only taking his beautiful daughter from him and giving him this indifferent slattern in return, there had been a defilement of Prizzi honor. He was Vincent Prizzi. There was nothing that a Prizzi could value and cherish and protect more than honor and Charley had walked up to it, unzipped his fly, and pissed all over Vincent’s only irreplaceable possession. So long as Charley remained alive, that was how long Vincent would choke on his shame.
He began to scheme. Since the day Charley had come back from doing the job on Marxie Heller, Vincent
had been convinced that something was fishy. Somebody had killed Louis Palo to get all the money. Half to Marxie Heller. All right. Half to Louis. All right. Whose half had Charley brought back and where was the other half? Charley must have copped the money. Every day Vincent convinced himself further that Charley must have copped the missing half of the money. What kind of Boss was that? When Vincent went to Vegas, Charley would be Boss—a Boss who started out by clipping his own family for $360!
Since Maerose had come home, Vincent had not gone out at night. He sat with his daughter in the living room that had not been changed in the twenty-one years since his wife had died and, because she hardly said anything, he began to talk more and more against Charley and, by her silence, his daughter encouraged him in his hatred.
He began at the beginning and covered, again and again, all of the ground that had become the swamp of his honor.
Did Maerose think Charley had ever cared for her? She did not answer nor did he expect an answer. Had Charley ever tried to see her since she had come back from Mexico almost ten years ago? She did not answer. He said he was sure that Charley had never tried to see her because he had no use for her. He had accepted the honor of marrying into the Prizzi family but he had no use for her. Maerose protested the first few times her father told her this. Each night he brought all of it up again she allowed him to see her agitation more and more, a little bit at a time. On the fifth night, after he had spent the day brooding over how he could prove that Charley had ripped his family off for $360, he charged into his daughter like the exhausted bull that he was, bellowing out his shame that because of one foolish mistake by a nineteen-year-old girl, Charley Partanna had manufactured the excuse to turn his back on the daughter of Vincent Prizzi, the
granddaughter of Corrado Prizzi, because he had no use for her.
“He had use for me, Poppa,” Maerose said. “He came to my place in New York the night before he left to marry the woman in California and he forced himself on me and did it to me.”
“Did it to you?” Vincent said in confusion, unable to sort out semantically what he was convinced he had heard.
“He fucked me, Poppa,” Maerose said. “Three times. Maybe four. I can’t remember.”
Vincent slapped her heavily across the face, knocking her sideways, off the chair. “You wash out your filthy mouth, you hear? Who are you talking to here? You are speaking to your father.”
She got back on the chair, holding her face. “Well, that was it, anyway.”
“The dirty bastard!” Vincent yelled. “He did that to you? Charley Partanna? Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Poppa, you should see the size of him, you should—”
“
Stop
! How can you say such things to your father? Where is your honor?”
“Charley Partanna destroyed my honor, Poppa. Are you kidding? I have no honor anymore.”
Vincent rushed out of the room. He left the house. He walked the streets. He schemed.
The next night they sat again in the moldering living room. Maerose knitted. Vincent glowered. After twenty minutes he said, “Do you know that Charley has betrayed us in another way? He robbed us for three hundred and sixty dollars.”
“Poppa, listen. Not Charley. The wife ripped you off. The wife was the brains behind the whole thing, then she killed Louis Palo to get the money. This is one thing which Charley had nothing to do with.”
“Whatta you talking about? Sure, all right, the wife was in on it, but so was Charley. They needed the
husband, Heller, because he was inside the cage at Vegas, but as soon as they had the money, Charley clipped the husband. Fahcrissake, he married the woman before the husband was cold. Charley killed the husband so he could get the wife.”
“No.”
“Whatta you mean no? Stop saying No!”
“Lissena me. Poppa. You know the cassette? The one Paulie had made of Teresa’s wedding? I had them make prints from that cassette of the wife.”
“Prints?”
“You know—pictures. They were good shots. I took them to Presto Ciglione’s in Vegas…”
When she had finished speaking, Vincent stared at her. “I’m going to talk to Don Corrado tomorrow.” But he said nothing about agreeing that Charley Partanna should be free and clear.
Chapter Twenty-six
Vincent telephoned the house on Brooklyn Heights the next morning just before noon. He was told by Amalia that his father was having a very good day and could see him at five o’clock. Vincent went out the back way at the laundry. He didn’t tell Angelo Partanna, or anyone else, where he was going. It was a matter between himself and his father.
They sat in two Morris chairs in the enormous side room that had been converted into an apartment for the don. It was a living room and bedroom all in one. The colors were different shades of blue; soothing, restful, and calming. The room had been designed, furnished, and decorated by Maerose Prizzi but, because of the enforced alienation between her grandfather and herself at the time, had been executed by her colleagues.
The Morris chairs were something else, wholly apart from the other furniture of the room. The Morris chairs had been in use ever since Vincent could remember, from when his mother had been alive and his father had been a young man.
“What do you want to do, Vincent?” his father asked.
“Well, I am saying that Charley has to be hit. He married the woman who ripped us off as soon as they
got the whole deal together. Charley set the whole thing up. Charley has to pay.”
Don Corrado pursed his lips and made a steeple with his fingers. “Lissena me, Vincent. Nobody gets taken out until we get our three hundred sixty back. Even then—and I am going to talk now about ethics. Hitting both of them or either one of them would create an ethically impossible situation. Charley is our own best soldier, our enforcer, your
sottocapo
, a tremendous, reliable man. His father is my own
consigliere
. These are very important considerations. What I am saying to you is that if the money is returned, then unless we want to have to kill Angelo Partanna and a lot of the Partannas’ friends, then this is something which deserves clemency. Even if we only do the job on the wife we don’t only have the Partannas on our back. You
know
what a case the Partannas could make with the Commission, and what a stain it would be upon our name throughout the
fratellanza
if we were to harm the wife of anyone in the brotherhood. She is Charley’s wife. We can’t take a chance with a thing like that. We have to think about clearing a thing like that with the Commission.”
“Whatta we gunna do?” Vincent demanded. “Are we gunna just let them get away with this?”
“First, Filargi must be arrested and charged. That is the big one, Vincent,” Don Corrado said. “Then I will ask Charley’s wife to give back the money, but I am not going to talk about it with Charley.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
What had made Vincent sensitive to life was the emergence of his brother Ed as the dominating force within the Prizzi family. Corrado, the father, was the natural force of the family and Vincent had never questioned that. But he considered that Ed had gained his power by means unfair to his brother; Ed had insisted upon being educated.
Vincent, always a mature, strong boy with much brutality, had left school at twelve to work with his father. When he took the oath as a made man, at twenty, with Angelo Partanna as his sponsor, he imprinted it upon his mind. Vincent was able to feel each point of the oath of fealty to the
fratellanza
subjectively, as if it were an oath to protect himself. Reciprocal aid to all members of the society in any case of need whatsoever. Absolute obedience to superiors. An offense against one is an offense against all and must be avenged at any cost. Never reveal the names or secrets of the society or look to government processes for justice. Vincent was obdurate about obeying those rules because he was a Prizzi, at the top, and they had been made to protect him.
But Ed had never had any interest in being made. Ed had graduated from high school high in his class. Vincent mocked him when Ed asked for his father’s
permission to go to college. He was shocked and ashamed when Ed entered law school. In Vincent’s view, his brother had copped out and Vincent stood behind the old Sicilian proverb, “The less things change, the more they remain the same.” Ed was trying to change everything. What the fuck good was an education in the rackets? When his boyhood pals, Ben Sestero and Harry Garrone, went away to study whatever it was they said they were studying, Vincent even had moments of worry, wondering how the family was going to carry on.
He was encouraged when Charley Partanna had the good sense to quit high school after two years but bitterly resentful when Charley went back to night school to finish after he had been made.
Vincent was a schooled resenter by the time Ed came back and took over the family’s business side. Poppa made no objections. Poppa said Ed and Ben and Harry were going to triple the business, maybe more. Vincent had never grasped what Poppa had been building on the legit side all through the years, but when Ed came back, a lawyer, Vincent began to see and to resent deeply that
his
operation, the
real
business of the family which had financed all the rest of it with the tax-free capital, had become the dog that was wagged by Eduardo’s tail.
The realization of Ed’s dominance came over him so suddenly that it was like a shot on the head with a hammer. Ed was legit. He knew how to go anywhere. Ed was in and out of Washington, Camp David, the friend of presidents. He took senators and congressmen and cabinet secretaries on hunting trips or boat rides in the Caribbean or to his place in Palm Springs, where Vincent refused to go. But never to Vegas. Ed was too pure for Vegas.