26

When Mardell opened her eyes up and stretched out her hand across the bed to touch Charley, she woke up with a shock because the other side of the bed was empty. He had to be reading in the other room. Reading? What was there to read?

“Charley!” she yelled.

Then she remembered the woman who called her. She moaned, wondering whether she had overcharacterized the thing. She propped herself up on three pillows and thought the situation through objectively. It clearly had been a mistake to have taken the two aspirins as if they were sleeping pills, as if she were Cleopatra with her asp and she couldn’t bear to keep on talking to him. There was no question about it: the thing to have done would have been to just melt into the whole thing as if she couldn’t stand the agony it was causing him; holding him and kissing him and telling him that whatever had happened to him back in the past before he had ever set eyes on her was nothing she could possibly have anything to say about—and other nonsense like that.

She got out of bed, lay on the floor, and began to do the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises, remembering that she was missing a sensational shoe sale at Saks in New York. She had to locate a cleaning woman. Cleaning was wonderful exercise, but it kept her in the house and, more and more, Freddie was taking that shuttle flight from Washington to New York. Her mother thought he was behaving very seriously. Mardell knew he was behaving seriously. She was determined that he must value the prize (herself) that he would win, but she felt he really had to strive just a little more for it before she lowered her eyes and said yes to hear him say that she had made him the happiest man in the world. But it mustn’t all happen too fast. She had to round out this organized crime case history for Hattie Blacker before Mardell La Tour could cease to exist.

She was sure she had gotten herself into some kind of Sicilian blood feud with that intense woman on the phone yesterday. Still, that Charley was a real little devil, having a loving fiancée on the side and carrying on with her like the whole thing was a French farce. She yawned and stretched, wondering whether she should rent a car and go up to Palm Beach to see the Spaldings.

She found Charley’s note on his pillow and read it with amusement. He must have known his fiancée was capable of coming down here with a large gun and letting him have it. She tried to imagine what the fiancée could be like: short, with a light mustache. She probably wore little bows on her shoes and had an ankle bracelet.

God knows what time he had gotten up to make his escape. She knew that he knew he didn’t intend to see her again because he couldn’t stand the heat from the Sicilian fiancée. It had been good fun while it had lasted. She decided to have a pitcher of grapefruit juice for breakfast. It was very filling and wouldn’t put one ounce on her.

She began to think of the fun of playing the whole string out with Charley and his fiancée. God, the passions these people could go through; it would be like singing the soprano role in grand opera; being right onstage in the middle of all the noise and the action. Although this looked like a very appropriate and natural time to withdraw discreetly from the adventure, she felt in her bones that she couldn’t just disappear in the middle of the second act. She had to wait around and see how the whole thing was going to turn out. She owed it to Charley. He was too sweet for her not to stay around to find out what was going to happen to him.

The phone rang. She picked it up, dropping back into her tremulous character of Mardell La Tour, fighting not to overdo it.

“Charley?”

“Miss La Tour?” It was a soft, low, sympathetic voice.

“Yes?”

“This is Charley’s father.”

“His father?”

“Charley works for me. A very big opportunity came up. I talked to him this morning but he must have taken it in the other room because he didn’t want to wake you up. You are a very important element in Charley’s life. You know that, I’m sure.”

This was a real pro. This man was smoooooth.

“Where is he, Mr. Partanna?”

“I’m in New York. The main thing is—there was no time so early this morning for Charley to wake you up and go over everything with you—but he insisted that I call you at the earliest civilized hour. So here I am.”

Mardell had never heard a slicker, trickier voice. She was beginning to realize that this whole thing could have many dimensions. Maybe Charley did have to go away on some awful criminal business.

“My assistant in our Miami office—a very dignified lady—will bring you back to New York, Miss La Tour, a first-class seat and a nice meal—then you and me will have dinner in some nice restaurant tonight and I’ll tell you the whole story about what Charley is doing for us. It’s a very big deal, a big responsibility. He had to move on it, Miss La Tour.”

“Please call me Mardell.”

“Mrs. Bostwick will have the tickets. The limousine will take you to the airport. Just tell the bell captain when you are ready. I will call you at five o’clock this afternoon at your place to tell you when we will meet tonight.”

“You are very kind, Mr. Partanna.”

“No, no, Mardell. Please. Not kindness. It is Charley’s way.”

“How will I know Mrs. Bostwick?”

“Mrs. Bostwick will be carrying two large suitcases and she’ll have one of them on the pavement at the door of the limousine.” Mrs. Bostwick was the mule who brought the pure to New York twice a week, where the Prizzi lab stepped on it only six times.