Ed never even married. He stayed “engaged” to different women and the three he had around him the longest were called his “natural” wives. This was a
friend of the cardinal! Of Billy Graham! Of Rabbi Kahane! Ed got away with anything. He never seemed to work. He was always on the telephone or in an airplane. He ran a tremendous business, but that was the least part of why Ed’s shadow had kept Vincent in perpetual night. Ed was one of the people who ran the
country
, fahcrissake. He had so much clout that when any other family in the entire
fratellanza
, or the Jewish combinations, or the blacks who had come up so fast, had to get something done at the federal level, they went to Ed. Ed knew everybody’s price, so Ed was The Man.
What was Vincent? He ran the troops—period. He was muscle. The newspapers called him a hoodlum. They called Ed a leading industrialist. His own daughter had been unable to respect him, so she had shamed him in front of the entire environment in the United States by acting like a nothing whore and costing herself her whole future as the wife of the man who was sure to take her father’s place in the family someday. Now Charley Partanna—son of the man who Vincent and his father and even Ed trusted most in the world—had shown him that he had no respect for him. Charley had betrayed his family but it had been directed against Vincent. He had wanted to dishonor Vincent and he had left that honor in the gutter by the time he was through. Because of that and because of what he had done to Vincent’s daughter, Vincent had become obsessed with the idea that Charley had to be hit.
He called Casco Vagone, the
consigliere
to the Bocca family in downtown New York.
“Hey, Casco! Vincent. How they hanging?”
“Hey, Vincent!”
“I gotta be in New York today and there’s some business we got to go over.”
“Where you want to make it?”
“How about we’ll eat?”
“You got it. The Pavone Azzurro. One o’clock.”
Casco was an old buddy. They had been made the same year, 1935. Casco was maybe six years older than Vincent. They cut up old touches throughout the lunch, remembering details of people and jobs that they were sure they had forgotten. When they were drinking the coffee Vincent said that four of his boys had cased a fur warehouse in the Bocca family’s country and he wanted permission to whack it.
“Well, like you say—that is our country, Vincent. So we would have to have the usual arrangement.”
“Of course. Certainly. I will personally be responsible.”
They worked out the details for the distribution of the proceeds of the robbery, then Vincent said, “I want a telephone number from you. I want to get in touch with the best freelance hitter around.”
“Angelo Partanna has them numbers.”
“I know,” Vincent said.
“Well, if you want the best, it costs.”
“How much?”
“About seventy-five dollars.”
“I need the number, Casco.”
“You got it. It’s a Kansas City number. Also, the worker is a woman.”
Vagone wrote on the inside of a folder of paper matches. “It’s a woman, but she is the best.”
Vincent went to a telephone booth in the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown and called the Kansas City number. The automatic relay switched the call to the machine in Beverly Hills. The machine said: “This is an answering machine. Please leave your message at the sound of the tone.” It was a woman’s voice. The tone sounded and Vincent said, “Meet me at—uh—the little park, Paley Park, on Fifty-third offa Fifth in New York. Full price. I will have a copy of—uh—
Popular Mechanics
beside me on the bench so you’ll know it’s me. Nine-twenty
A.M.
Tuesday the first of September.” He hung up.
Vincent was in place in Paley Park at 9:05 to be sure he could get a bench. All the benches were empty. Irene came in at 9:15. She hesitated for a fraction of a moment when she saw who the client was, then she registered that Vincent had never seen her so he couldn’t recognize her as Charley’s wife.
She walked directly up to the bench and sat down. “Whoever heard of a really popular mechanic?” she asked pleasantly.
“You the contractor?” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
“Okay. How much?”
“It depends. Some are simple, some are tricky. Who do you want whacked?”
“A Brooklyn fellow by the name of Charley Partanna. You know him?”
Irene looked at him sardonically, raising her eyebrows. “That could be a very tricky hit,” she said. She didn’t take the time to think about Charley. This was business. First, a price, then she could think.
“How much?”
“Charley Partanna has a lot of experience,” Irene said. “And he is dangerous. It would be fifty-fifty that he would do me before I could do him.”
“How much?”
“I couldn’t take the chance for less than one hundred.”
“That’s ridiculous, lady. I mean, that is a really mixed-up number.”
“If you can buy it for less, so buy it for less.”
“They told me seventy-five.”
“You told me Charley Partanna.”
“Ah, shit!” Vincent said. “I’ll go to ninety.”
“Remember, I’m out in the cold. Nobody can get me out but me. That’s why it’s gotta be one hundred.”
“All right.”
“How soon?”
“Right away.”
“I need time to lay it out. I need to watch him. I
have to know the best place to take him—listen, maybe I won’t take him at all. If it doesn’t look right to me, I won’t take him.”
“When you going to know?”
“Tell me where I can call you. I’ll call you by two weeks.”
“Look, that don’t work with me. You took the call. You come to New York because you know what your work is. Maybe is nothing.” He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his shapeless dark jacket and tossed it on her lap. “That’s fifty dollars. The first payment. What are we here, a bunch of schoolboys with the maybe? You’re supposed to be the best in your business.”
Irene took up the envelope and opened its loose flap. She looked at fifty thousand-dollar bills. They were well-used bills. She took out and rubbed them together.
“When is the next payment?” she asked.
“When you make the hit. All right. Two weeks if you want. He is in and out of town right now anyway.” Vincent brought out a postcard. On its address side someone had written Charley’s address at the beach and under it the address of the St. Gabbione Hotel Laundry. She turned the card over. There, in four colors, was the scene of the beach at Coney Island, where you couldn’t even see the sand there were so many goddamn people. “The top one is where he lives. The bottom one is where he works. You can routine the hit with that.”
Irene put the envelope in her purse, telling herself she would figure it out later. “On the next payment,” she told him, “give me half in hundred-dollar bills.”
“Fahcrissake, I’ll need a suitcase.”
“Whatever.” Fifty dollars was fifty dollars, she told herself. At the back of her mind she thought that maybe, before the time came to make the hit, she could do the job on this peasant and everything would be solid because she would still be fifty dollars ahead.
She let herself hear Charley’s voice. She watched him while he was eating and felt him all around her when he was making love to her. Fifty dollars couldn’t give anybody memories like that.
***
Irene had lunch alone at Schrafft’s and thought the whole proposition through. On the plus side was the high fee. Also she was going to make a big score from yesterday’s Filargi grab. Already she had made more this year than the President of the United States admitted he made. On the minus side was the fact that it wouldn’t be worth that much or almost any amount of money to do the job on Charley, because he was irreplaceable. She would like it to work out that she would be offered one-hundred dollars to bury Vincent Prizzi, but there was no way that she could clip Charley. So, fuck it, she would mail the deposit back and be out the hundred. Maybe, since Vincent had it in his mind to have Charley whacked, maybe she should hit Vincent. But there was always the chance that somebody else would get the idea to hit Vincent and, if they did, there was always the chance that she would be offered the work and maybe get the hundred back.
She ate chicken salad and pondered upon love. How could somebody be worth more than a hundred dollars, she thought. What could she buy with Charley? He was a luxury. She had gone the luxury route from day one as soon as she was able to, and she
bought
the luxuries, she hadn’t given up a big bundle just for the privilege of being able to buy them. She paid for the luxury of Charley with her body every night. It was terrific, there had never been anything like it, she supposed that was part of what love was, but that was her ticket of admission. She paid when she cooked. She paid by having left California to live in Brooklyn, she paid by not having her Gozzy, so Charley as a luxury was all paid for. The hundred dollars was separate. Jesus! She thought of her mother
lying in the corner of that stinking stockyards tenement in Chicago after her father had punched dents in her and she wondered what the fuck love could be if her mother could put up with an animal like that year after year and if she could give up a hundred dollars because love had punched some dents in her, too.
Chapter Twenty-eight
On the day after Irene’s meeting with Vincent in Manhattan, Maerose called her at the beach and said that Corrado Prizzi would like to see her at five o’clock that afternoon. It was two o’clock, Irene was vacuuming, and she wanted to wash the awnings because Charley had complained that morning that they hadn’t been washed all month, but Irene knew what had to be done so she asked how to get to the meeting. Maerose said she would drive out to get her. Irene said that would be too impossible a trip so Maerose said she should take a taxi to the Peak Hotel in the Heights and that they could meet in the lobby at a quarter to five.
At four o’clock she called Charley and told him where she was going. “What the hell is that all about?” Charley said. “I don’t get it.”
“He probably just wants to welcome me into the family,” Irene said.
She got into the taxi almost cold with the fear that Vincent Prizzi would be at his father’s house. She had only seen Vincent twice before in her life, once up on the stage at Teresa Prizzi’s wedding party and once at Paley Park, but that was a lot of times in one bunch considering the length of her life, and there had to be trouble for her if he saw her again while she was
standing next to someone who could explain who she was.
Maerose was there when she got to the hotel; beautiful and blithe. She was the friendliest girl Irene had ever met. They walked up the hill to the Sestero house, chatting about Charley. When they got to the door Maerose said that was as far as she had been invited to go, but that she would wait at the hotel to drive Irene home. Irene thanked her and explained that she was going to phone Charley when her visit to Don Corrado was over, that they were going into New York for dinner.
The armed guard at the front door passed her to Amalia who took her upstairs to the don’s sitting room. The old man was delighted to see her. He asked Amalia to put a chair close to him so that he could hold her hand as he talked to her. When she had finished tucking Don Corrado in, Amalia left them.
“You are a fine-looking woman,” Don Corrado said. “What a surprise you gave us with this sudden wedding to Charley.”
“The time just seemed right,” Irene answered gaily. “We sort of swept each other away.”
He patted her hand. “I understand,” he said. “I was young once. But the marriage has troubled me.”
“Why is that?”
“You know what hard facts can do to faith, dear child.” He spoke English slowly, well, and with care. His accent was strong but he said everything well. “The people at Presto Ciglione’s place in Nevada have looked at pictures of you and have told us that you killed Louis Palo.” He held her hand tightly, looking directly into her face. He smiled at her.
She could not speak. Like someone who is drowning, scenes and events of her life crowded into her mind. She clutched the old man’s hand tightly with terror, staring at him.
“Under ordinary circumstances,” he said gently, “I would have had to turn you over to Vincent’s people, because such things have to be punished and those who steal must pay.”
She could not control the trembling of her arms and body. She could not take her eyes off his cold, tiny eyes. “However, now you are the wife of my godson, who is the son of my oldest friend, so—in the calm quiet of this room I have searched my compassion for some way to show clemency to you.”
“What can I do? Just tell me what I can do,” Irene said.
“You have the other half of the money which Charley brought back to us,” he said flatly.
Against all of her sensibility Irene nodded her head.
“Was Charley in this with you?” he asked.
“No! He believed me when I told him that it was Marxie’s split. He doesn’t even know that I was in it with Marxie and Louis. He doesn’t have any idea that I did the number on Louis and took all of the money from him, that Marxie never saw any of it. He thinks I just took him to where Marxie kept the money. He told me he suspected me—on the day he asked me to marry him he told me—that he felt that I was somehow a part of the whole scam, but then he decided that I wasn’t, that I couldn’t have been, otherwise he couldn’t have married me.” She knew she was talking for Charley’s life because by now her own had been all settled one way or the other. She felt the sweat running under her arms and between her thighs.
“Charley is a good man. Charley has honor,” Don Corrado said. He sighed. “Well, then my child, you may have five days to get the three hundred sixty dollars and to put it in my hand together with the fifty percent penalty for what you have done to us. Will five days be enough time for you?” he asked considerately.
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She wanted to scream the answer with relief.
“Five days. Five hundred forty dollars.”
***
She met Charley at six o’clock at the Peak Hotel and they drove into Manhattan for dinner.