10

Hanly got Charley out of the building through the back delivery entrance. Charley walked around the block and gradually made his way to the bar across the street from Vito’s building. Pop was sitting in the last booth.

“Okay?” Pop asked.

“Yeah.”

Pop got up and went to the telephone booth, took out the OUT OF ORDER sign off the mouthpiece, put it in his pocket, and dialed.

Charley decided he would have time to catch a quick movie before he went to the Latino and picked up Mardell at eleven thirty. He could use a little of Mardell after the work he had just done, if there was such a thing as a little of Mardell. Pop came back from the phone booth.

“The don is prouda you, Charley,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Did anybody tell Vincent yet?”

“How could I tell him? He’s home, asleep.”

“I mean did anybody tell him about the stakeout?”

“It’s hard to say. Jesus, you can’t imagine what a tiger Vincent used to be.”

“I still wouldn’t want to be the one who crosses him.”

“You wanna have dinner?”

“I ain’t really hungry, Pop.”

“Can I drop you?”

“I gotta get a cab and go back to the school. My car is still there.”

“You done right tonight, Charley. That’s all you gotta know, you done right.”

Charley nodded. “That Vito was sure a crazy guy.”

He was waiting for Mardell at the Latino bar on the street level when she came up the stairs from the club at eleven forty. She was surprised to see him. He asked her if she wanted a drink, but she wanted to get out of there. As they moved out to the street he said, “How come the rush?”

“That place is filled with gangsters. They make me nervous.”

“Where do you get those ideas?”

“I can tell, Charley. I know the types. They are dangerous people.”

“Dangerous? What about me? You said I was a gangster the night we met.”

“Oh, I know about you. I had a long talk with Mr. Smadja. He told me.”

“He told you?”

“He told me you were an absolutely crack salesman, that you could persuade people right off their feet. Can we have a little snack before you take me home, Charley?”

A snack for Mardell was a steak. “Won’t a snack make you sleepy?”

“Oh, no. And I’m famished.” He took her to Gallagher’s.

While she was eating the steak, the Idaho with the cottage cheese and chives, the side order of onion rings, and the green salad and he was just sitting there just adoring her, she said, “Do a lot of gangsters eat here, Charley?”

“How should I know?”

“That man, two tables on your right.”

Charley looked. “That’s a priest, fahcrissake.”

“They wear disguises.”

“Priests?”

“Gangsters.”

“Where do you get your information?”

“I am rather well informed, Charley. The Buckingham Palace radio beam that keeps me well also keeps me out of danger.”

“Listen, Mardell—I found out what Buckingham Palace is.”

“You found out? Everyone knows.”

“The Queen of England lives there.”

“I know that, Charley.”

“So? How come the Queen of England is taking care of your health?”

“I—I don’t quite understand it. My mother arranged it. But thank heaven she does, and thank heaven it works.”

Mardell invited him into her apartment that night, and the whole sky fell on Charley. It was as if he had never known a woman before. He had gotten laid for the first time when he was eleven—Vito’s sister Tessie—but he had never met the woman. He knew his time would come. He wasn’t in any hurry because he was sure it would happen. That was the way it was set up and, in the meantime, he fooled around a little but nothing that would give anybody any ideas. He generally did it outside the neighborhood, because if he knocked up one of the neighborhood girls everybody would make him marry her. When the Prizzis had made him Vincent’s sottocapo and vindicatore he had turned into sort of an instant celebrity in the environment. Women who had probably just admired him from afar now all wanted to fuck him. But this Mardell! There was no way even to think about it. Nothing like it had ever happened to anybody in the history of the world. Everything fit, there was no problem like he had worried he might get himself lost in there. She keened, she wept, she made noises like a lunch whistle over and over again. He couldn’t believe that he could ever have kept going the way he kept going. He had seen a television documentary once, about mountain climbers, and that was what he was doing, exactly what he had been doing, rappeling up and down Mardell, his mind like a bowl of Jell-O, his eyes rolling like dice in his head, the world and time and the work on Vito all wiped out because she loved him; she had said it and then she said it again: she loved him. After a couple of hours, they just couldn’t move or talk and they fell asleep, holding each other safe from all the dangers.