The second letter made simple demands. It said that Angelo Partanna was to take the Long Island Railroad
to the Jamaica station, in the fourth car on the train, and was to wait on the platform to be contacted. Charley knew there was no chance of the Prizzi’s notifying the police for a stakeout, and no chance that they would do anything but comply with the letter of the contract because of the amount of money involved for them, but the Jamaica station platform was a crowded place when three full trains came in to exchange passengers and the crowd would be the buffer until he could get Pop away.
Charley walked Pop through two trains, across three platforms, then down exit steps to the street, padlocking the gate after them to stop anyone who might have the idea of following them. The Chevy van was waiting at the foot of the exit stairs and they drove away just as clear as everyone, on both sides, had intended.
“How’re you doing, Pop?”
“I got a couple of surprises, Charley. You want to talk about it now?”
“Now is when, Pop.”
“The Boccas hit Vincent.”
“What?
WHAT
?”
“They clipped him in front of the building.”
“What is this? What are they starting up here?”
“The official reason is that Vincent dumped on the Boccas at the meeting about the police captain’s wife in front of everybody so Bocca had no choice, but the real reason is what the meeting was about—the cops are outta their heads to get their hands on the second man who did the job on that woman, the cop’s wife.”
“I don’t get it, Pop.”
“Well, the Boccas hit Vincent to tell us that if we don’t hand over the second man then they are going to hit somebody else in the family until we give them the second man to give to the cops because the cops are pouring the heat on the Boccas, which are the weakest
family in New York because of the business they’re in.
“Fuck them all,” Charley said. He was driving slowly, making his way south. “Can’t they see the standoff or don’t they give a shit?” he asked.
“Charley—the answer is that anybody who knows can see the standoff. If we give them Irene, then Irene tells the cops everything about the Filargi snatch. Either that or she holds out and tells them nothing because they can’t prove she was on the snatch, but unless Filargi is released so he can be arrested, the Prizzis can’t get the seventy million bucks’ profit when we buy back the bank, but when Filargi is arrested, he is going to identify Irene as the one who did the job on that cop’s wife.”
“Then you are telling me the Boccas want it this way? That no matter what the Prizzis do, if they turn the second man in, they get their backs broken?”
“If they turn Irene in, the Boccas take the credit with the cops. The heat comes off them. Then when Irene talks, and drags the Prizzis into the Filargi snatch and the two killings, the Boccas grab what they want. I’m not saying the Boccas know anything right now, but everybody is going to know it when the second man starts to talk.”
“So with all those edges, they had to give it to Vincent.”
Angelo shrugged. “They got their honor, too, Charley. Vincent’s funeral is tomorrow from Santa Grazia’s.”
“I’m sorry I’m going to miss it.” Funerals, births and weddings had great significance in the Prizzi family.
“You want to talk about the deal or do you want to wait till your people can listen?”
“I want to hear it now.”
“The money you asked for is okay, et cetra, et cetra. Don Corrado personally okayed the entire package.”
“You mean that’s it? We don’t negotiate? They are going to just give in—like that?”
“Well, not exactly, Charley, but let me tell you something first. I go to Don Corrado as soon as I see Vincent’s death certificate at the hospital and he starts talking as soon as I give him the bad news. He talks about Vincent, then he tells me that he had fixed everything for Vincent to take over the sports book in Vegas and represent the Commission there. He tells me he had already told you that you was going to take Vincent’s place as Boss. How about that?”
Charley was stunned. He stopped the car, pulling over. “You mean he wasn’t setting me up? He was leveling? He was going to move Vincent out and move me up?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, I don’t know what to say.”
“He only had one thing on his mind after I read your letter to him. He said twice that he had to straighten this thing out with Charley. That is all that is on his mind. He’s got to get it all straight with you.”
“Pop,—”
“You know how I see it, Charley? He wants that seventy million, sure. But Vincent is gone. Corrado and I are old men. He’s gotta have you back to run the operation. Who else is going to do it? Nobody. They are all second men. That’s why I told you that he is ready to give you everything, et cetra, et cetra. I’m a messenger boy here. I’m not the negotiator. Corrado wants you to go to him and talk to him so that he can straighten this whole thing. It’s a tremendous deal.”
Charley sat staring at a
DRY CLEANING
sign. He thought of becoming Boss of the Prizzi family. His entire life had pointed him toward that. He had trained for that since he was thirteen years old and now it could happen. He could feel the power as if it were the texture of fine, strong cloth between his fingers. He could taste it as if his mother had come back to
cook one more glorious meal for him. He thought of the money. Vincent must have been good for eight million dollars a year, every dime tax free, every dime safe in Switzerland then reinvested in the thousand ways that Ed Prizzi had set up. He thought about the respect that everyone would have to pay. “It’s good but it’s also dangerous,” he said.
“It’s a lot of things, Charley, but it’s not dangerous.”
“You feel you can personally guarantee that, Pop?”
“I could always guarantee you. And I can guarantee me. Even after fifty years with Corrado, I couldn’t usually make the same guarantee for him, but Vincent is dead and Corrado needs you, Charley. He has to have you as insurance for the family and he also has it in his head that the seventy-million-dollar bank deal is his monument. Looking at the whole thing, yeah—I can guarantee to you that there is no danger for you to meet with him at the Sestero house.”
“When?”
“The day after the insurance company pays off for Filargi.”
“Don Corrado will have that money, I won’t. I’m not giving up Filargi until we are all straight.”
“Look, Charley—it has to be the day after the payoffs because the payoff is going to be happening all around the world, the way he has it set up, but by the time you meet with him, the money will all be confirmed and Filargi will have to be freed. It breaks the whole logjam here. They pay off for Filargi. You meet with Corrado and make your deal, then you release Filargi, the cops grab him, and Corrado moves into position to buy his bank back for ten cents on the dollar.”
Chapter Forty
The payoff for Filargi in Lagos, Hong Kong, Aruba, Panama, and São Paulo happened at the moment of Vincent’s interment in the earth of Staten Island at the Santa Grazia di Traghetto cemetery amid the immense necro-architecture of high-rise marble tombs and monuments that recalled Prizzi, Sestero, and Garrone departed.
The funeral had been quietly spectacular. Vincent was one of the last of the old guard
mafiosi
who had been born across the ocean in Agrigento, and his last rites brought dignitaries, of organized crime and of secular life, from all over the United States and included a representative of the Spina family, who had been Don Corrado’s sponsors and in-laws in Sicily. The newspaper estimate of the value of the flowers was put at “about” sixty-five thousand dollars. All national TV networks had their cameras at the church and at graveside. The attorney general, the secretary of the interior, the head of the FCC, six governors, and eleven senators personally telephoned their condolences to Don Corrado or to Ed Prizzi. The mourners assembled before the requiem mass in a sea of black garments; the black unshaven cheeks of Sicilian men were yet another sign of grief. A brass band, dressed solemnly, played outside the church as the
casket was carried to the black hearse for transport across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to its final rest.
Don Corrado stood at his son’s graveside amid eight saddened bodyguards, engrossed in prayer, while the bishop intoned the collective farewell. Maerose Prizzi tried to throw herself into the grave upon the casket while sixty-four altar boys, dressed with the simulated wings of angels, sang a popularized version of Verdi’s
Requiem
, transcribed by Scott Miller, which was simultaneously being recorded as a musical memory by a Prizzi-owned recording label.
Angelo Partanna worked his way through the crowd to Don Corrado’s side and, putting a comforting arm around the frail shoulders, whispered softly through the sweet air of the perfect summer’s day and said, “The money is in Zurich.” Don Corrado blew his nose.
They returned to the house in the late afternoon to wait out the twenty-four hours until Charley would appear.
***
“How about we head out to Montauk and do a little surf fishing?” the Plumber said.
“Why not?” Charley said. The Plumber went out the back door to walk around the truck to the driver’s seat. They were on their way in three minutes.
Irene said, “Does it still feel right, Charley?”
“No matter how I add it up it comes out that we got to win. No running. No face jobs or new paper. We pick up all the points, plus we run the whole thing from now on. Did you ever think you’d be married to the Boss of the biggest family in the whole country? It’s fantastic.”
“You are fantastic. If it wasn’t for you we’d be up that creek.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” Charley said, “but I’m not going to believe it until I hear it from Corrado Prizzi.”
“Let’s find a drugstore phone booth somewhere and I’ll wait there tomorrow night so you can call and tell me how it went.”
“Yeah! Anyway, we got to set up where we’ll meet because the next step is that we have to spring Filargi, the poor bastard.” He turned and stared compassionately at Filargi’s door. “However that works out we’re going to need the Chevy so why don’t you and the Plumber figure to be in Brentwood where the van is at say six-thirty, seven tomorrow night and I’ll call you there.”
“Fantastic,” Irene said.
Charley took the train from Smithtown to New York at two
P.M.
the next day.
***
Don Corrado wept as he spoke to Charley about Vincent. He went back to the family’s earliest days in New York, when Vincent had been a small boy, and they had lived on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. “He was a serious boy, even then,” Don Corrado said. “We had so much trouble keeping him in school because he wanted to help me to get the business started. The Spinas, my wife’s people in Agrigento, were able to arrange good credit for me to be able to import cheese and olive oil. I began to expand out to Brooklyn. By the time we moved everything to Brooklyn Vincent was twelve years old and I had to beat him every day to make him go to the school, and he went until I was too busy to be able to think about it, just a few months more. I had the bank going by that time—a small, store-front bank for the Italian people of Brooklyn—and the idea came to me that with a bank behind me I could start an Italian lottery. It was a colossal success but I needed someone to run it so that I could go on expanding. I wrote to Pietro Spina in Agrigento,
the
friend of the friends, and he sent your father to me in 1926, when he was a young man of seventeen years, and he arrived just in time,
right in the middle of Prohibition, so we prospered, we became successful. Your family has a great place within my family. The Prizzis and the Partannas have worked side by side for almost sixty years. Your father is my most important friend, my oldest and dearest friend, and now the great circle has come to rest and you are here to take up my work just as your father took it up for me so long ago. My son is taken from me and now you shall be the son of my family. I name you now, under your oath of obedience and silence, to be the Boss of the Prizzi family’s most sacred operations. Do you accept, son of my friend and son of my family?”
“You have honored me, Padrino.”
“We will seal that,” the don said, taking a straight pin from the lapel of his jacket. He pricked the end of his forefinger with the pin and a droplet of scarlet blood appeared. He held the finger out to Charley, who licked the blood away. “You have gained,” Don Corrado said. He took up Charley’s hand and pricked his forefinger. When the blood appeared, he licked it away. “We are now of one mind and substance. My enemies are your enemies. My will becomes your will.”
Charley felt dizzy with the power he had just received. “I will serve you well,
Padrino
,” he said huskily.
“To the business,” Don Corrado said briskly, blowing his nose. “The Plumber must go. His betrayal of the family on this Filargi matter must be faced. Also he now knows too much about you and your father. Soon he could be drinking and talking about how he worked both sides. Besides, he did what he did only for more money, I am sure. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t defending his marriage, as you were. He wasn’t even acting out of loyalty to you, his
sottocapo
. He betrayed his family only for money. If he had been
loyal to me, he would have agreed to join you and your wife so that he could do the job on
you
. He dishonored me. Let him finish this job with Filargi. Let him believe I have forgiven him. In a week or two have your people handle it.”
Charley was disgusted with himself. He had blown his first chance to show that he was a real leader. But he had learned a lesson.
“But that is incidental. We are talking about my monument, Charley. Listen to how you must release Filargi so that, step by step, it will lead to his arrest, his trial, his disgrace, his conviction, the shaming of the bank, and its return to my family for ten cents on the dollar.” The old man shoved a box of Mexican cigars at Charley, talking enthusiastically. “The insurance company has paid over the money and it is now in the bank in Zurich. Beginning tomorrow, at any time you say, your share—the whole two and a half million—will be transferred to your own account.”