11

At 8:30 A.M. on July 11, 1988, which Amalia Sestero explained to them was St. Gomer’s Day, the saint invoked against hernias, the patron saint of glovemakers, Angelo and Charley Partanna were summoned to Don Corrado’s house. She led them up the two flights of stairs to the don’s enormous room, knocked at the door, opened it, then left them. The don waved them absentmindedly into the room as, simultaneously, he pursued his hobby, the lineages of the nobility of Sicily from the Arab invasion to the arrival of the American troops in the western end of the island in World War II, which had so vigorously reestablished the Honored Society after it had been almost wiped out by the Italian government.

“Come in, come in,” the don called out gaily, then ignored them for the next twenty minutes. Angelo Partanna lighted a cigar. Charley looked out the window at two youths mugging an old woman on the esplanade until Don Corrado announced his readiness to open the meet.

“I got two big jobs for you, Charley,” he said. “First, we’re gonna franchise all the East Coast operations either to our own people, the other New York families, or to the Blacks, Hispanics, and the Orientals, which means, deal for deal, you gotta scare them shitless so we can be sure of collections.”

“Blacks, Hispanics, Orientals?”

“What’s wrong with giving the other guy a chance?”

“What about our own people? We got eleven hundred out there working their asses off and nine hundred more around in case we need them.”

“Charley, lissena me. Before you talk to the Blacks or the Hispanics, certainly you’ll offer the franchises to our people and, if they’re ready to put up more money than the Blacks or Hispanics, then they get it. I don’t needa tell you, loyalty comes first with me. The big thing is—whoever gets it we gotta be sure we collect our end so out of the people we got out there, you gotta hold out a couple of hundred soldiers—from the rest who’ll be absorbed by the new guys—for enforcement and collections.”

“Don’t worry about the collections, padrino. Anybody takes a franchise from us, I make the collections.”

“That’s the second thing I want from you, Charley. After you set the franchises with solid people and after you set up the special enforcement to make the collections—you don’t make any more collections yourself—I want you to move up into Eduardo’s job.”

“Me?” Charley’s jaw dropped. “What about Eduardo?”

“We’re gonna run him for president.”

“But—whaaat?”

“Don’t worry. In the end he’ll settle for attorney general. But what you gotta do is get us outta the street operation. I want strong franchise deals for every piece of action we got going for us—not like the national franchises, where we were choosy about what we let them have—but franchises for everything we got going on the East Coast and maybe Colombia, Turkey, and Asia. All we’re gonna have left is the enforcement organization you’re gonna set up.”

“The operating manuals for every racket we operate outta New York are all mimeographed and ready, Charley,” Angelo Partanna said. “They run more than five hundred pages each, and they make it just like the franchisee has signed on to run a Taco Bueno. Anybody can run a franchise if they follow the manual. You just gotta sign up the franchisees and put the fear into them, then line up the picciotti you want to do the enforcing and collecting.”

“And a solid worker to run it,” the don said.

“Run it? I’ll run it.” Charley wasn’t the quickest guy in the world to catch on.

“After you set it all up,” the don said patiently, “you are off the street.”

“Off the street? I won’t be Boss no more?”

“Boss of what? There won’t be no street operation. You wanna be Boss of enforcement and collection? You’re an executive. Execute. No pun intended.”

“Charley, lissena me what the don is saying to you,” his father tried to explain. “You are going up to the top, to where the big money is, you’re gonna run Eduardo’s operation. You’re gonna triple your money.” Charley was already banking 6 percent of the street operation and 2 percent of the national franchise operation in eleven safe banks overseas. He had no idea of how much money he had.

“What do I know about Eduardo’s operation?”

“You know how to run the people who run everything Eduardo runs,” the don snarled. “And whatta you needa know about the inside over there? Your wife can tell you anything you needa know. She’s been Eduardo’s assistant for nine years.”

“She’s smart, Charley, we don’t needa tell you that,” Angelo said.

“What you needa tell me is how we’re gonna get away with this. Eduardo is a big man in every department. The media and the cops know me. What are they gonna say when I take over an operation the size of Eduardo’s?”

“Charley, on paper you are already CEO of Lavery, Mendelson in Wall Street.”

“I never been on Wall Street in my life. They’d make me the first day.”

“That’s the third thing,” the don said.

“There’s a third thing?”

“After you set the franchises up, you and Mae are going to Europe. Harry Garrone is lining up a good face doctor, maybe also a dentist, and Mae is looking now for somebody to show you how to talk like Eduardo talks.”

“Jesus, padrino!”

“A couple of tailors will come over to Switzerland from London, and in eight months, a year, you’ll be ready to come back to New York to take over Eduardo’s spot.”

“What happens to the real me?”

“The papers will run it that you got pneumonia or something and that it put you under. We’ll give you a big sendoff and everybody will forget all about you. No offense meant.”

Charley gave a little shrug. “Well, if that’s what you want, that’s what I’m gonna do, but no wonder today is the saint’s day for the patron saint of hernias.”

As they drove away from the don’s house in Charley’s van, Pop said, “Whatta you think of this franchise idea for New York?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“It can’t work. They’ll go along with it. They’ll pay the advance because Corrado is who he is, but it ain’t gonna work. They’ll run with it and they’ll laugh at us when we come for the royalties.”

“But why would the don make a mistake like that?”

“Because he’s hung up on this respectability thing. I can’t do nothing with him. That’s all he wants. He’s through with the street operation, throwing away all that money just so that everybody can look up to his descendants. Well, what the hell. He made the biggest score of alla them in his time. I tried, but I can’t change his mind; there ain’t nothing I can do about it. So we gotta go with it.”