22

Vincent called a meeting with Angelo and Charley Partanna. He was reading a newspaper when they came into the office and sat down. “Listen to this shit they hand out,” he said indignantly. He read aloud, “‘The Presidential Commission said today that Asian organized crime groups threaten to become a fixture in America’s mainstream economy.’ We are taking out five hundred billions a year and all of a sudden this nickel-and-dime buncha Chinks are a threat. Lissena this, fahcrissake—‘The Bamboo Gang came to the United States from Taiwan because of the pressure being placed upon them by Taiwanese law enforcement.’ Did you ever hear such shit? The entire Taiwan government is a hunnert percent hoodlum. It was founded by the Green Gang outta Shanghai. The Taiwan president is a top Green Gang hoodlum, Chiang Kai-shek. So why do they hand out shit like this?”

“We used to make buys from them,” Pop said.

“Anyway, that ain’t what I got you in here for. Charley, you remember Little Jaimito Arrasar?”

“The South American guy, the supplier.”

“He is short-weighting us. I want you to fly to Miami and give it to him.”

“Jaimito moves around with four bodyguards,” Pop said.

“How do you wanna handle it, Charley?”

“Send the Plumber and Phil down ahead of me to lay out where he goes and where he’ll be.”

“Five guys. If even the three of youse jump them, it’s gonna make a helluva racket,” Pop said.

“I can handle it,” Charley said. “I don’t need them two for the hits.”

“Five guys? No way.”

“I can do it with a coupla cyanide grenades.”

“Where you gonna get cyanide grenades?”

“Religio’s outfit can make them or steal them from the Army. Just have somebody in the high tech unit deliver them to me on the plane so I don’t have to take them through security at the airport.”

Vincent sighed. “I can’t understand it. Jaimito is clearing a nice steady five and a half millions a week but he has to short-weight us.”

“A thief is a thief,” Pop said.

“Jaimito’s a nice little guy,” Charley said, “so suppose he don’t know that his people are short-weighting us. I mean, it could be policy in Colombia before it ever gets to Miami. If we zotz Jaimito we could be hitting the wrong guy.”

Vincent and Pop looked at each other in bewilderment. “What’s the difference?” Vincent said.

“The thing is they’ll get the message, Charley,” Pop said. “The next time they won’t offend such a big customer. The whole goodwill thing would be threatened.”

While he waited for the nod from Miami, Charley worked with Religio’s technicians on locks and electronic release mechanisms, so when the Plumber called in and said everything was ready, Charley was ready.

He flew down from New York with Mardell. She had put so much pressure on him that he had to take her. She wasn’t working. She was waiting for the act to be written, so she couldn’t rehearse yet, and the costumes were still being made. (Also, although she didn’t tell him that, the New York season had not gotten under way yet.)

When he told her he would have to be away for a couple of days, she stopped eating. She ran a fever of 104 by taking the medicine that Edwina always took when she wanted to drive her temperature up. She sat in her underwear and stared at the wall. It was a big pain in the ass. Then after he told her she could go with him to Florida, he had to handle the other end of the deal: Maerose.

While Mardell packed, Maerose spent the night at the beach and she got up at dawn to make him a big breakfast so he would know she cared and would be grateful. After the big breakfast, she ran him back to the bed and held him in such a scissors lock around his waist that he thought she wanted the whole breakfast back. She packed his suitcase for him, but thank God she had an early appointment at her office so she didn’t insist on riding to the airport with him.

He was driven to the plane by Zingo Pappaloush, his prospective father-in-law’s own driver, so he certainly couldn’t take Mardell out to the plane in the same car. He had a limousine service pick Mardell up and he got away with it because she knew he lived all the way out in Brooklyn. They had assigned seats on the plane, so that was where they joined up and where a short man in white coveralls carrying the airline’s name across the back walked down the aisle and dropped a small package into Charley’s lap.

“I’m so excited, Charley. I’ve never been to Florida.”

“It’s very nice.”

“I’m going to have to buy a bathing costume.”

“A what?”

“A bathing suit.”

“So long as you don’t wear it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t wanna be killed in the riot when they see you come out in a bathing suit.”

She gave him a playful shove, which numbed his arm and almost knocked him into the aisle. “Oh, you!” she said happily.

“We are in a nice hotel at the best end of the beach, so anything you want during the day, just pick up the phone and tell them.”

“Where will you be?” she asked anxiously.

“I gotta work. I am a nine-to-fiver just like anybody else. I kiss you goodbye in the morning and I go out. Then I come home and we do whatever you wanna do.”

“It’s all right, Charley. I feel secure.”

Jaimito was at the Bolívar. The Plumber had fixed up Charley’s reservation. At eight o’clock in the morning, Charley installed himself in the penthouse suite across the hall from Jaimito’s apartment; they were the only two apartments on the floor. He changed into a T-shirt and a white jumpsuit—which was what the hotel’s handymen wore—and at a quarter to ten he sat in a chair and looked through the hole he had bored in the door, until Jaimito and the four men left the suite and went down the hall to the elevator. Charley waited ten minutes, then he went across the hall and removed the lock from the front door of Jaimito’s suite. He replaced it with a remote-control lock and tested it. He went into the suite and put identical locks tied to the same circuit box into the sliding door to the terrace and the only other inside door, which led from the living room to a hall that gave access to the bedrooms.

He hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob, put a gas mask over his nose and mouth, got up on a light aluminum stepladder with some difficulty because of the leg he had got out of the war, and fixed the grenades to each of the chandeliers at either end of the room. They were suspended on release wires that were controlled from his circuit box. Upon being released, the grenades would drop to face level on copper wire, and that would pull the pins in the grenades, liberating the cyanide gas.

While he worked, the other door opened and a small blonde with black eyebrows came into the room wearing a short nightgown. She was about nineteen, and very wise-looking. The Plumber’s survey had missed her. “Whatta you doing up there?” she said sharply. “Why you got that thing on you face?” She walked over beside the ladder and stared up at him.

He kicked her on the point of her chin with his good leg, hoping he wouldn’t fall on his ass. He climbed down from the ladder, stripped off her panty hose, and used them to tie her hands and feet together behind her back. He dragged her along the bedroom hall to the second bedroom, jammed a big ball of Kleenex into her mouth to keep her quiet, and dumped her in a closet. He returned to the living room and cleaned everything up before he took the DO NOT DISTURB sign off the door and went back to the apartment across the hall at twelve ten in the afternoon.

He waited in the apartment across the hall. At three twenty he could hear the five men returning down the hall, making Spanish noises like a pet shop in a fire. Charley broke the electronic connection with the door to the suite and thus released the lock, so when the first goon got there he said, “Hey, boss, the maid forgot to lock the door.”

“You guys go in first,” Jaimito said in Spanish.

Charley watched through the peephole as all five men disappeared into the suite and shut the door. He activated the remote electronic locks on all three doors. Then he triggered the chandelier mechanism that released the grenades and pulled the pins. He waited twenty minutes, then he slipped the gas mask over his face and went into the apartment. The five bodies were sprawled around the room, on chairs and on the floor. Charley released the lock on the terrace door and opened it wide to let the ocean breeze ventilate the room so that when the night chambermaid came in to turn the beds down, the air in the room wouldn’t make her sick.

He was back at his hotel with Mardell at six thirty. Mardell was preoccupied. Her voice sounded far away.

“Did you have a good day at the office?” she asked.

“Very good.”

“That’s nice.”

“Did you have a good day?”

“I had lunch at the pool.” She spoke listlessly. “Some men wanted to join me so I picked up a priest and that kept them away.”

“Did he give you any trouble?”

She tried to laugh but she had something else on her mind. “No. Where shall we have dinner?”

They ate a big seafood dinner at a place the bell captain recommended.

“How come you’re so quiet?” Charley said.

“I’m eating.”

They got back to the hotel early. While they were getting ready for bed, Mardell decided to talk.

“A woman called you today.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“She said her name was Maerose Prizzi.”

He was stepping out of his trousers and he had his back to her.

“She wanted to know what I was doing in your room.”

“It must have been some crazy woman.”

“She said she was engaged to be married to you.”

He turned to face Mardell, in his boxer shorts and Paris garters. “She said that?”

“Yes.”

“She had no right to say that. I never said I was engaged to her.”

“Who is she, Charley?” Mardell asked as if she were talking over the recipe for a ham sandwich.

“She’s the granddaughter of the man I work for. She’s much younger than me.”

“How much younger? About twenty years? Is she about ten, Charley?”

“Listen—I know her all my life. I mean, she’s had one of those schoolgirl crushes from way back.”

“Then you are not engaged to marry her.”

“Engaged? To Maerose Prizzi?”

“You’ve got to arm me with all the facts, Charley.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“She said she was going to call me when we get back to New York. She wants to come to see me.”

“She’s behaving like a kid who is trying to make trouble! I mean, I’m going to have to talk to her grandfather about this. You certainly don’t think I could bring you with me to Miami if I was engaged to another woman.”

“That has happened. Men do things like that.”

“Mardell—she’s like a relative to me.” He gave God a chance to strike him down. “I mean, like a second cousin—or a kid sister.”

Mardell got into bed, took two sleeping pills, shaking them out of the vial elaborately, snapped out the light on her night table and lay on her side, facing away from the other side of the bed. “Don’t talk to me anymore, Charley. The only way to settle this is to sit down, all three of us, all together.”

Charley jammed himself into his pajamas and stamped off into the living room. He dropped into a chair, lit a big cigar, and stared at a racing form. He suddenly knew what Vito had felt like when he threw the bolts on that door and flung it open. He was a condemned man.