Poppaloush sat there, disinterested. He didn’t even watch the fire. Rocca stared into his face. “Holy shit, Boss,” he said. “Somebody did the job on Zingo.”
“
What?
”
“He’s dead. They shot his fucking eye out.”
“Then somebody lit that fire on us!” Vincent yelled. Hundreds of shocked, frightened people were pouring out of Palermo Gardens, embedded in black smoke that packed in around them like plague. “They did the job on Zingo so we would know they lit that fire on us. Am I right, Angelo?”
“Yeah. Right. Rocco, fahcrissake, dump Zingo and get us the hell out of here.”
He leaned forward and opened the door next to the body. Rocco shoved it out into the street and got behind the wheel. The car moved slowly through the dazed crowd then roared away.
“Drive to my father’s house then get to a phone and call my brother Ed to get ambulances over there and to handle the media so this don’t come out like some gang massacre. Jesus, I can’t get it through my head that somebody done this to us. Who would do it to us, Angelo?”
“Slow down, Vincent. You got blood pressure you gotta think about. We’ll talk it out when we get to your father’s.”
“Listen, Rocco,” Vincent said, “the first call you make is to get some soldiers over to the don’s house. Whoever hit Poppaloush tonight—whoever set the fucking fire could try to get a shot at the don.”
“We’ll button up the whole house,” Rocco said.
“Listen, Rocco,” Vincent said. “The first thing you do is put six guys onna phone and they call all over town to find out who done this then we are gonna
move my father outta town and blast the shit out of them.”
Vincent and Angelo went slowly up the stone steps to the front door of the Sestero house. Vincent was breathing heavily and his face hung on his head like a gray mask. He pulled a large key chain out of his pocket and opened the door. A man with a sawed-off shotgun rushed forward as if to ram them but Angelo said, “Okay, okay, Freddo. It’s the Boss.”
“Jesus, sorry, Boss,” the guard said. “There was no lights so I figure take no chances.”
“You done right,” Vincent said, brushing past him. The two men climbed the long flight of stairs to the first floor. Vincent leaned against the wall while Angelo knocked on the door to Don Corrado’s room. “It’s me, Corrado, Angelo,” he said. “I’m with Vincent.”
They heard the old man’s voice calling out to tell them to come in. Angelo opened the door then stood aside for Vincent to go in first. Don Corrado was playing a complicated game of solitaire with three decks of cards. He looked up at them. “What happened?” he said.
Vincent fell into a chair. “You don’t look good, Vincent,” his father said. “Never mind what happened. Angelo will tell me. I want you to go across the hall to the bedroom. I want you to get undressed and get into bed. You have a night’s sleep and we will talk tomorrow morning.”
Angelo helped Vincent to his feet. “I feel lousy, Poppa,” he said. He turned away and shuffled out of the room.
When the door closed, Don Corrado looked at Angelo.
“Somebody set Palermo Gardens on fire,” Angelo said. “Just before that they shot Zingo Poppaloush. He was sitting in Vincent’s car out front.”
“Who did it?”
“The Boccas.”
“Why?”
Angelo told him what Vincent had said at the meeting in the rented boardroom at the midtown bank. “He treated Bocca like a piece of shit in front of all the families. Bocca had to keep his honor. They are all going to back him up on this.”
“How many were caught in the fire?”
“Vincent put Ed’s people on the count with the cops and the fire department. We won’t know until they put the fire out, like sometime tomorrow.”
“How many do you think?”
“It was crowded, Corrado. They were all rushing for the front door when we left to go out the back door. It could be a hundred people. It could be a couple of hundred.”
“That is the kind of revenge a pimp takes,” Don Corrado said without inflection.
If anyone else had been listening they would have said that he felt nothing. But Angelo knew that Corrado felt the deep pain of a loss of honor and waited for what was to come.
“Vincent insulted him in front of the families so Bocca waited until all of our people were in one room and he had the torch put to it. Women were in there. Daughters were in there. What will the others say to that when they back Bocca up on what he did? There were big politicians in there—and five judges. There were at least three cripples at those tables tonight—what are the others going to say to that when they back Bocca up?”
“Corrado, no one is going to accuse Bocca of setting the fire. No one can prove who set the fire or maybe they can’t even prove that the fire was actually started by anything but some accident.”
“Then they are going to back Bocca for killing the young Greek, Poppaloush, for what Vincent, a Boss
and my son, said to Bocca? Do you believe that, Angelo?”
“That is the formality of it, Corrado. That is what they will back Bocca on if we accuse him of the killing.”
“What if we accuse him of setting that fire?”
“They will not back him on that. But they are fair. And they aren’t all our friends. Some are Bocca’s friends. They will ask for proof.”
“Then we will wait a few months. When Charley gets back—because I am going to make a deal with Charley which he will accept—I want the people close to Bocca to die by natural accidents or bad illnesses. When only Bocca is left, surrounded by new people—and a few of the new people will be our people to get us the inside on his operation—we will have the police in eight or ten states move in on him and we will see that he is set up with consecutive sentences from a friendly judge to fifty years in the Federal prison on the Mann Act. We won’t need the families to back us up on that because no one is going to be able to prove that we did it, any more than they can prove Bocca set the fire tonight.”
***
Eighty-nine people burned to death in the fire at Palermo Gardens; 217 were severely burned; 4 were blinded. Miraculously, the congressmen and the judges came through the fire unharmed. Survivors were advised by Ed Prizzi’s people to bring suit against the Palermo Gardens’ owners but the building was owned, following a 1934 donation from its “anonymous” owners, by the blessed Decima Manovale Foundation Order, a nonprofit organization of religious ascetics who had taken vows of poverty.
Chapter Thirty-five
There were more cops at the Palermo Gardens fire than there were firemen: Mitgang, the commissioner, himself, chiefs in and out of uniform, captains, detectives, traffic cops, and plainclothes men. The PC, Vincent Mulqueen, in charge of the uniformed force, Joe Maguire, chief of detectives, and John Kullers, the chief inspector, stood apart from the mobs of police and firemen and, beyond these, a crowd of a few thousand pleasured citizens.
“How do you figure a thing like this?” Mitgang asked rhetorically.
“I can tell you where we start to figure it, Commissioner,” Maguire said. “We can’t figure the Prizzis set the fire themselves to get the insurance—although that’s one of the few shots at grabbing money that they haven’t taken—because every one of their top people were in there. No, sir. This fire is connected to the Calhane case.”
“How?”
“Somebody—one of the families or all the families—is putting the pressure on the Prizzis to throw us the killer. It is absolutely one hunnert percent sure that the Prizzis snatched Filargi, and whoever snatched Filargi killed Vicky Calhane.”
“The dirty prick,” Chief Kullers said.
“Who makes the next move?” Mitgang asked.
“Corrado Prizzi is no dummy,” Maguire said, “and that goes for Angelo Partanna. They have to be up there with the ten greatest schemers of all time. They have to be figuring out a way to give us the Calhane killer without any risk to them on the Filargi snatch.”
“Yeah? How do they do that?”
“Believe me. They will figure a way. They have to move. After what happened tonight he knows that the families have declared war against him. They are leaning on him—and he knows this fire tonight is only the beginning—to force him to give us whoever it was who did the job on Vicky Calhane.”
“So we wait?”
“We gotta wait, Commissioner,” Chief Maguire said.
“What are you going to tell the press?”
“That’s easy—and they’ll eat it up. This is the whole nutshell. Gangland Orgy Results in Eighteen Deaths—or however many. Hoodlum Celebration Turns into Preview of Hell.”
“Good,” Mitgang said. “I think you got it figured.”
***
The Palermo Gardens burned until 9:20 the next morning. During the night, while he was still with Corrado Prizzi, Angelo called the chief inspector’s office and asked for Lieutenant Hanly. The cop who answered said Hanly wasn’t there.
“Well, you better find him and tell him to call Angelo.”
“Call
An
gelo? At one o’clock in the morning?”
“He lives in Brooklyn, doesn’t he? All cops live in Brooklyn.”
“What the hell is this?”
“Tell him to call Angelo, my friend.”
Two hours later Hanly reached Angelo at Angelo’s apartment. It was 3:10
A.M.
They agreed to meet at Charley Partanna’s apartment at the beach.
Angelo had hot coffee and some zucchini muffins ready when Hanly got there.
“Jesus,” Hanly said, “I bet if you had known about the hours in your business, you woulda probably stood in Sicily.”
“Who sleeps at my age?” Angelo said.
They sat down and Hanly got to work on the muffins. “What’s this, fahcrissake! This is terrific!”
“That’s one of my son’s zucchini muffins,” Angelo said. “He makes them up then freezes them.”
“Charley can
cook
?”
“Charley is your typical all-around man,” his father said. “Davey, listen—we know who tried to wipe us out last night.”
“Who?”
“The Boccas.”
“Yeah? How come?”
“Old Quarico Bocca is around the bend. He thinks Vincent insulted him.”
“Well? Vincent did insult him. Right? At the Yariyaki Bank? Two days ago?”
“You guys are regular detectives,” Angelo said. “Yeah. Vincent insulted him so Bocca set fire to a building which had the whole Prizzi family in it. Even Don Corrado himself was there last night.”
“Still—you wouldn’t have been wiped out exactly.”
“No. There was a coupla dozen soldiers who wasn’t there.”
“Charley wasn’t there.”
Angelo didn’t comment on that.
“Where was Charley, Angelo?”
“Charley went to Miami to meet a shipment that couldn’t wait.”
“When can I see Charley?”
“When he gets back.”
“I can’t resist it. I’m gonna have another muffin.”
“I got a little surprise for you, Davey, I got another
haffa dozen muffins in a paper bag for you to take with you.”
“I thought I was off the pad.”
“Never for zucchini muffins, Davey.”
Hanly buttered part of a muffin. “You have to admit that it is unusual for one of the New York families to go to the cops about another family.”
Angelo shrugged.
“You guys have always been very strict about things like that. Bocca tried to burn you down and that is usually a thing about honor with you guys that you pay them off yourself.”
“Nobody needs to tell Corrado Prizzi about honor,” Angelo said. “We had a meeting. We decided that, considering where the Department stands right now, that this is no time to start a war with the Boccas, that’s all.”
“Yeah. It could also be that Prizzi didn’t want to start a war because he could be starting a war against all the other New York families.”
“Why do you say that, Davey?”
“Look, Angelo. Why fuck around on this? At the meeting at the Yariyaki Bank they all put it to Vincent and you that they were tired of all the money going out and none coming in. They told you they wanted you to give us the Calhane killer so Vincent staged his big insult scene and you walked out. Angelo, you think only the families are pissed off about our clamp-down? We are more pissed off than they are. We are digging into our safe deposit boxes to stay alive and comfortable the way it was meant to be. You guys know and we know that the laws which keep the people from their pleasures, like gambling, shit, and women, are not only impossible laws, but impossible to enforce. You people don’t have any pad for armed robbery or arson or any other reasonable felony. We nail you every time in your tracks when you pull any shit like that. But gambling is a misdemeanor. Soliciting
is a misdemeanor. And we are not allowed to arrest the important half of any of those collars because the eager citizen who is out to put down a bet or get laid, the customer who causes the commission of the misdemeanors, isn’t considered by the law to be any part of the offense. But the people have to have it so it throws off a lot of money. We both make money because, together, we supply the services the public wants. So this is costing us one huge pile of money, Angelo. Give us the piece man who hit Vicky Calhane and not only can we all get back to business, but I promise you we are going to look the other way when you go out to blow the Boccas off the street.”
“You make one helluva case, Davey,” Angelo told him, “but there’s nothing else I can say.”
Chapter Thirty-six
The Plumber was on duty outside the cellar door; Dom was sleeping upstairs. Charley went out of the kitchen, where the telephone was, to talk to the Plumber.
“That was my father. I got to go into town for a sit-down. I’ll be back about eight in the morning.”
“Bring me a couple of tit magazines.”
“I’m embarrassed to buy them,” Charley said.
“What?”
“I always think the guy will think that I think they are full of real girls instead of little pictures of girls. What good is a picture? How can anybody except a pervert get his jollies from a little picture?”
“I must be a pervert,” Melvini said. “I like them.”
“I cooked up a big beef stew. All you got to do is throw in a couple of cans of peas and carrots and cook the pasta to go under it.”
“What kind of pasta?”