Pa’s gargantuan hospital, whose lab threw off such great figures, towered considerably higher along the East River, north of the Queensborough Bridge, than the white cliffs of Dover. Pa had settled down in a three-room suite, the equivalent of the owner’s cabin on an ocean liner but more luxurious. He had a duplicate of his White House switchboard, with its eighteen direct lines, installed beside his bed. There was no smell of iodoform in Pa’s suite. There was a gentling scent of Jolie Madame which Pa sprayed on his two nurses three times a day. For decoration, the Metropolitan had sent four important pieces—two paintings and two sculptures. There was a magnificent vaseful of two dozen long-stemmed roses from the directors of the hospital. But most decorative of all were the two nurses, Eve and Rose, beautiful young women with brave, starched white caps and great big knockers. One of them was reading to Pa from Barron’s Weekly, the other was feeding him grapes, when Nick arrived. Pa seemed so content that Nick could hear the regret in his voice when he asked Eve and Rose to leave him with his son.
“How’d you like to climb one of those, kid?” he asked when they left.
Nick shrugged.
“How did the magazine meeting go?”
“I have a meeting in Cleveland at eleven tonight with a man named Irving Mentor who is at the top of the Syndicate.”
“Why should you?”
“Nick, when I say ‘even you,’ I am reaching away out to the edge of the world, right? But even you may have heard of Frank Mayo. Did you ever hear of him, Nick?”
“Certainly. Frank Mayo, the grand vizier of the underworld.”
“Do you know of a bigger hood?”
“I don’t know any others.”
“Frank Mayo will be here in about ten minutes. We’ll ask him about Irving Mentor.”
“Gee, Pa, how come?”
“Because I’ve been in the whiskey business and a few other businesses since the twenties. Frank was my partner in a lot of things. Punks who were street-corner hustlers when I was a big man with these guys are now big bosses. That’s the ‘Gee, Pa, how come.’”
“Who don’t you know?” Nick asked with a sudden flash of hatred.
“Well, I don’t know you, kid, but it doesn’t throw me, because you don’t either.”
“If the National Magazine says Mentor is a big man, then he has to be a big man in crime,” Nick said.
“Would you ask Frank Mayo to recommend a newsstand? It’s the same thing. Business is business. Frank knows. Those punks wouldn’t know a Syndicate executive from Mary Miles Minter.”
Eve popped her head into the room. “Mr. Mayo is here, Mr. Kegan,” she said gaily.
“Send him in,” Pa said.
Salvatore Verdigerri, a/k/a Frank Mayo, a/k/a Frank Brown, was a flawlessly dressed man in elegant charcoal-gray flannel, with a carefully knotted black knitted Mafia tie and immaculate fingernails without polish. He sounded perpetually hoarse, as if he spent the mornings bawling out police captains at the top of his voice. He had quiet assurance and the gift of geniality. He could have been about five years younger than Pa, Nick thought. Of the two men Nick would have found it far easier to believe that Pa was the criminal, Frank Mayo the tycoon.
Pa became manically hospitable. He directed Mayo to a wicker chair. He introduced Nick. He asked how Mr. Mayo had liked the two nurses, Eve and Rose. Then he said, “Frank, wait’ll you hear this. I got an actual salame de felino and a culatello di Zibello from Parma, direct from Parma, and fifteen pounds of grana from Montecchio—absolutely gorronteed straveccione—just like the old days.”
“How? How did you get it?” Mayo asked with amazement.
“Interest is the key to life,” Pa said. “I sent a man over in my own plane with a blank check and he came back with it. But that ain’t all, Frank. I got a whole case of Brunello de Montalccino 1945. Right here.”
“Holy Jesus.”
Eve and Rose came trooping in with tea carts loaded with slices of salame and culatello, oblong hunks of parmigiano cheese, glasses and three opened bottles of red wine.
“Holy Jesus,” Mr. Mayo said again. “Don’t tell anybody I’m so crazy about this kind of food, because I’m supposed to be a Sicilian.” His voice was really so coarsely hoarse that he might have had a touch of syphilis of the larynx. He took a bite of the cheese very daintily, staring at Pa while he chewed it. “That has got to be eight, ten years old,” he said. “I don’t know where you can get eight-year-old parmigiano even in Parma, fahcrissakes.”
“I’m going to send you a wheel of it,” Pa said. The nurses poured the wine and the men sipped it reverently. “Eat!” Mr. Mayo said to Nick. “Jesus, just try that culatello.”
Nick dug in.
“That’s some glassa wine—right, Mr. Thirkield?” Mr. Mayo said to Nick.
“I’ll accept a case,” Nick said, and that broke Mr. Mayo up. When he recovered he said, “What’s on your mind, Mr. Kegan?”
“Frank, I am going to tell you something that I will not tell to anybody else—and you know what a tight trap I have.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Kegan.”
“Nick and I are on the trail of the bastards who killed my boy, Tim.”
“Son-of-a-bitch!”
“Okay, Frank, did you ever hear of a pezzo da novanta in the Syndicate named Irving Mentor?”
“Mentor?”
“M-e-n-t-o-r. Irving.”
“No. Never. A pezzo da novanta? Never. And I am two hunnert percent sure.” He glared at Nick to defy him.
“Frank, this is very close to me.”
“Look, Mr. Kegan—there could be like a coffee-runner who works for some paperhanger who has a son who is like maybe a barber who cuts hair for Syndicate fellas, but, believe me, there is no pezzo da novanta name of Irving Mentor—believe me, I am telling you.”
“This is the straight story, Frank. Somebody in Cleveland gave the contract to Joe Diamond to hit my son Tim—your President.”
Nick blinked.
Mayo and Pa stared at each other. Mr. Mayo poured another glass of wine. Looking at the glass, he sighed very lightly before he spoke again. “You always hear about these things too late. I knew about it right after. But it wasn’t a business thing. They did it on their own.”
“Frank—I’m with you,” Pa said. “But now my son needs to talk to the man who gave Joe Diamond the contract, because he will know who paid the bills.”
“Mr. Mayo,” Nick said, “if you are talking to Cleveland, maybe you could ask who this Irving Mentor is.”
“Who told you about him?”
“Aa! They think Big Jim Colisimo is still operating.”
“Nick is supposed to meet this Irving Mentor at eleven tonight,” Pa said.
“Well, that’s a long trip for nothing, Mr. Thirkield,” Mayo said. “Why don’t you let us cover it for you?”
“We have a lot of questions we want to ask him,” Pa said smoothly. “But thanks, Frank, just the same.”
Mayo stood up, brushing his fingers lightly. “I’ll call you tumorra,” he said hoarsely. He shook hands with both of them.
“I’ll send the rest of the case of wine with the wheel,” Pa said.
“You’re gunna make me a hero in my house,” Mayo said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something. Okay?”
When Mayo was gone Nick sipped the unctuous red wine and nibbled on the heavenly cheese.
“We know Mentor is nothing,” Pa said, “but that doesn’t make it a wild-goose chase. That’s why you have to go.”
“I have to go just to have it on the National Magazine,” Nick said. He felt sad because a chance at the big time had just eluded Chantal. She had enough stardust in her eyes to bread a veal cutlet.
“You better get moving,” Pa said.