39

George F. Mallon knew he had been outgeneraled by God, by fate, or by some rotten sons of bitches at City Hall. He knew who had done this to him and to poor Marvin; the party in power had cold-bloodedly set out to ruin him through his son; his poor ham-fisted, dim-witted, poor relation of a son. He should have sent the boy into the seminary for television training when he had declared for Jesus. He could have had his own television church by now, raking in the bales of money, helping to set the foreign policy of the United States; but he had to insist on trying to turn the boy into a businessman. Somebody had to take over the business. They were only beginning to build television tabernacles.

Mallon boiled with outrage. A conscienceless pack of unscrupulous politicians had been willing to wreck a fine young man’s life just to hold on to their rotten, filthy power over the city he had tried so hard to love. What was there to love? New York was, at most, a picture on an airline calendar which stretched for thirty blocks each way on three avenues in Manhattan, and its symbol was an apple, just as the symbol of the fall of Adam and Eve had been an apple.

Those rotten ward heelers must have been into ten times the graft that he and his people had suspected. The stakes must be higher than heaven for a man like His Honor the Mayor to go along with a terrible scheme like this—using his whey-faced, boob-brained son’s natural life as if it were some ten-cent chip in an evil gambling game.

George F. Mallon certainly knew about organized crime. He was an American businessman who had been in the construction business all over the country for most of his life. Even though he had been building for the Greater Glory of God and His Nielsen ratings, that fact had not spared him from the inexorable demands of hoodlums. He had paid them off. He had even entertained them from time to time because it had seemed like sound business policy. Some of the most religiously thrilling Christmas cards he had ever received had come from organized criminals, their wives, and their families.

Nonetheless, the main plank in his platform had been to use the powers of his office, if elected, to crush, or otherwise negotiate with, the forces of organized crime in the City of New York. But, despite his long experience with them and his plans for organized criminals, he did not make the connection between the heinous threat to his candidacy and the future of his son with the life and liberty of the underboss of the Prizzi family. George F. Mallon knew it was just rotten politics and rottener politicians who had framed his boy and would continue to threaten his future until the election had passed.

He was sickened by the enormity of knowing that people outside his intimate circle of counselors, aides, and speech-writers had known about his determination to prosecute the hoodlum who had shot the other hoodlum almost in the actual presence of the mayor of New York at Manhattan Beach that fateful night, and most certainly in the presence of and with the full knowledge of high officers of the police department, and it was slowly coming to him that perhaps even the criminal organization of the city had had something to do with Marvin’s predicament. He spoke with perplexity to the two campaign aides who were hunkered around his desk.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, “I simply cannot believe that in this day and age the mayor of the City of New York would stoop so low as to do this thing to my son just to ensure his chances of re-election.”

“Well, you better believe it, G.F., because that’s what he did.”

“You don’t think it was the hoodlum element?”

“What could they have to do with the election?”

“Set up a meeting with the mayor for tonight.”

“Tomorrow is Election Day, G.F.”

“He is holding my son as his hostage! I have to see him.”

The meeting was arranged with considerable difficulty because the mayor, understandably, felt that George F. Mallon had maligned him beyond the call of political campaigning. The meeting was to be held in a room reserved by a Mallon aide at the McBurney Branch of the YMCA on West Twenty-third Street for fifteen minutes between six thirty and six forty-five that evening. The mayor arrived alone, wearing shades. George F. Mallon was waiting when the mayor knocked on the door of the single room. He sat on the bed. The mayor sat on the only chair.

“I’m sorry about your troubles, Mallon,” the mayor said. He was a hyperkinetic man who thought of himself as being at the center of a sea of calm.

“Let’s not waste this precious time with hypocrisy, Heller. My son is in a Louisiana prison. He could be seventy-three years old before he gets out—at the minimum.”

“Whatta you want from me? Maybe you should have gotten him laid before you sent him to New Orleans.”

“I will pray for you, Franklin Heller. Now. Let us talk about how you can undo what you have done to my boy.”

“Done? What I done? Who gave him such an allowance that he could afford two ounces of heroin? Did I tell him to carry a gun?”

“Who planted that dope and that gun on him?” Mallon exclaimed. “Who switched his room at that hotel while he was out at the Evangelical Convention? Who framed him?”

“How do I know? What? You mean you think my people set your kid up?”

“Who else?”

“Who else? You’re six months in politics and you think this is how people get elected? You should have your mind washed out. I’m twenty-one years in politics. You win some, you lose some, but you don’t frame people on narcotics charges and murder charges and rape and indecent exposure charges just to keep a city job. Shame on you, Mallon. And good night, you disgust me.” He leaped to his feet.

“Mr. Mayor! Please. Accept my profound apologies. I am—I’m distraught. I have no experience with this kind of thing—politics included—I’m grabbing at straws.”

The mayor shrugged. He knew less than Mallon about how it had happened that Marvin Mallon had been arrested in New Orleans. George F. Mallon had told the world that he planned to break his back and throw him out of office by making him an accessory in the zotzing of Vito Daspisa. But he didn’t know Vito Daspisa had been zotzed. He thought Vito Daspisa had been shot while resisting arrest. He had been there himself. He had seen most of it happen with his own eyes, and the rest of it, like everybody else, on a television screen. Mallon was a monster but he had been ruined, and his kid was in trouble.

“All right. Listen to me, Mallon. About what happened to your boy in New Orleans, I don’t know whether he is innocent or guilty. But I can tell you two things. First, whatever happened down there cost you the election—although, frankly, you never had any chance to win the election—and two, me and my people had nothing to do with it. What happened to your kid, I mean. Now I gotta run. We got a big rally at the Garden. Tomorrow is Election Day, in case you want to remember.” He patted Mallon on the shoulder and left the room.