53

At breakfast the next morning, while the don drank his one ounce of olive oil and watched Amalia lay down two hot focacce in front of her brother, he smiled his terrible smile and waited for Amalia to finish her ritual.

“How are you feeling, Vincent?” Amalia asked.

“Better. I feel better.”

“You look agitated. That’s not good for the blood pressure. But I am happy for you about Mae and Charley.” She patted his cheek fondly and left them. As soon as she was gone, Vincent laid it on his father.

“It’s been months, Poppa, since Willie Daspisa went into the Program and Eduardo comes up with zilch.”

“First we’ll talk about the betrothal.”

“It was good news.”

“Did you talk to Charley?”

“Yeah, about that and about Willie Daspisa. Charley has been with almost every family in the country about Willie. He is also hot, and he’s got a right to be, about Willie throwing him to Mallon. He’s got people on the street from coast to coast lookin’ for Willie and he also talked to Eduardo about it twice. Evvey time he talks to him, Eduardo don’t say nothing. He stiffs Charley, Charley told me this morning, he changes the subject. Why is Eduardo laying down, Poppa? Willie cost us. Everybody knows Willie cost us. He’s gotta pay.”

“It must be a misunderstanding, Vincent, my son. I remember Eduardo was upset because Willie’s brother got it after Eduardo had wasted a lot of money on arrangements for Willie’s brother to be handled, and—the way Eduardo sees it—if Vito had been taken care of in a different way, Eduardo’s way, Willie would never have gone in the Program.”

“What kind of thinking is that, Poppa? We don’t have Eduardo to tell us why he thinks Willie went into the Program.”

“You’re right, Vincent.”

“We gotta have a meeting with Eduardo, Poppa.”

Pop and Charley arrived at the don’s house together that night at seven o’clock. Vincent came in ten minutes later, then the don and Eduardo came down from upstairs together. They all sat around the table with the hanging light over it, a light with a large, round shade that had golden fringes on it. There was a big bowl of fruit at the center of the table.

The don said, “I been talking to Eduardo about Willie Daspisa. He wants to tell you about it.”

Eduardo said, “I didn’t see any reason to rush. Willie will be there, wherever he is.”

“You gotta put your arm around a whole new bunch of people in Washington,” Vincent complained. “It could take months.”

“So the longer we take the more Willie suffers when we give it to him. Every day gives him more of a false sense of security.”

“I think we gotta know now where he is,” Charley said in an even, ominous voice, which was all the more frightening because he felt it, he didn’t even have to think of Bogart when he said it. Even the don was hit by the fear. He blinked.

Eduardo tried to stare Charley down, but he couldn’t hold it. “You are at this meeting, Charley,” Eduardo said slowly, “only because you were the whole cause of Willie going into the Program.”

Charley didn’t answer him. He just kept staring at him.

Vincent said, “Whatta you mean, the cause? Willie went into the Program because he stole money from us and so he could keep doing it to Joey Labriola without anybody saying anything. Charley done Willie a big favor by icing Vito and giving Willie an excuse to go into the Program. Charley actually fixed him up with Joey—and what does Willie give him back? He tries to turn him in to Mallon.”

“I don’t mean the advertent cause. I mean if Willie’s brother were alive today, Willie would still be working for us.”

“That’s a lotta shit,” Charley said.

“Why are we getting ourselves lost in words here?” Pop said. “We are here to get something done about Willie Daspisa.”

“Then you want me to go to the Democrats for the information?”

“Eduardo—what’s the difference? Republicans or Democrats? You sound like you think we was children,” Vincent said. “Call your people in Washington and tell them what you want. Willie Daspisa has been living on velvet long enough.”

Eduardo looked at his father. The don nodded benevolently.

“Charley can go out there wherever Willie is right after the engagement party,” the don said.

Of the 25,465 lawyers who practiced in Washington, D.C., which came out to one for every twenty-five inhabitants, the law firm sponsored by Barker’s Hill Enterprises—Schute, Fink, Blanke and Walker—was the most effective because it had connected lawyers who had the most money behind them to solve their clients’ problems.

An Assistant Attorney General of the United States had a purely social lunch at the Metropolitan Club with the firm’s senior partner, Basil Schute. The distinguished lawyer explained with profound delicacy why his firm was interested in locating the former Guglielmo Daspisa, who was under the protective cloak of the Witness Protection Program. It could mean an inheritance for Mr. Daspisa, and although the bequest could not be paid out indirectly, if it were possible, in this unusual instance, to divulge Mr. Daspisa’s whereabouts—the matter would be wholeheartedly appreciated by his firm’s clients.

Later, while they were having coffee and enjoying the AAG’s Havana cigars with a Honduran trademark on the box, the AAG earnestly brought up the matter of contributions to the Political Action Committee, which was seeking legislation to aid destitute corporation lawyers. The counselor agreed. “No cause could be nearer to my heart,” he said.

“Make the check out to the Needy Attorneys of America PAC,” the AAG said. “That will handle it.”

When Schute got back to his office, a Justice Department courier delivered an unmarked brown manila envelope containing four-color Polaroids of Willie’s and Joey’s new faces: full front and profile. They had raised Willie’s eyebrows and dyed his hair white, straightened his nose and put a bulb on the end of it, and sagged the right side of his face slightly by lifting the left. They had put a cleft in his chin and given him a crooked set of caps on his upper teeth. The double chin was gone. The eyes were still feral, but they were in a different face.

The more characteristic protective coloration was Joey’s. The surgeons had made him a pretty storybook prince; perfect teeth, where before they had looked like a mouthful of Roquefort; wide blue eyes where they had been squinty, small, and brown; perfect nose and cheekbones, which triangulated with his chin in a chatoyant, feminine way. His hair was blond, cut in the Prince Valiant style. It was so long the ends rested on his shoulders.

Willie’s new name was Hobart Thurman. He was living and working in Yakima, Washington, which was about ninety miles south-southeast of Seattle, over the Cascade Mountains, population about 43,000. Yakima was the commercial center of an agricultural region, very big on apples, and it manufactured lumber, flour, and cider. Mr. Thurman lived with his nephew, Chandler Owens. They were partners in an upmarket furniture and decorating business.

Schute slipped the information into another envelope, called for a car to catch the next shuttle, and sent a junior partner to fly the pictures and Willie’s new name and address to Edward Price in New York.

“If I didn’t know it was them, I wouldn’t hardly know who it was,” the don said at the meeting with Eduardo, Pop, and Charley. “Look at that Joey Labriola. How can that be? I knew his father and his mother, they lived six miles from Agrigento on the Caltanissetta road.” He shook his head in awe. “How could anybody think up names like that?” As he marveled, the phonograph reeled out Zerlina’s aria, “Vedrai, carino,” from Don Giovanni, in the 1939 recording with Ezio Pinza and Richard Tauber that the don planned to play over again as soon as these people left so he could keep a pure lyric line in his head.

“It cost a lot of money to get that information,” Eduardo said, “but just the same we have to be sure it’s right. We don’t want Charley going all the way out to Yakima and doing the job on some guys who always were Hobart Thurman and Chandler Owens just because the Department of Justice wants to even up some old hassle.”

“We’ll know the minute they see me,” Charley said. “They’ll pee their pants.”