15

Everything wasn’t exactly open-and-shut about setting up the metropolitan area franchises. Six hundred and nine soldiers decided to retire to Miami or Atlantic City, where there was still a good dollar. One hundred and eighty-nine began to think about setting up chicken farms in New Jersey. The three caporegimes felt that since the Prizzis were going to get out, they should inherit the whole Prizzi business without having to buy franchises, that they were entitled to divide up the whole operation among themselves. The heads of each operating division under the capos, particularly Matteo Cianciana, who ran the shit, coke, crack and boo operation, and Vanni Aprile, who handled gambling—the national sports book; the numbers and the lottery; the Sport of Kings; the blood stock importing business; the boxing industry; the jai alai frontons; the international tennis book; the relationships with two football league owners, coaches, referees, and linesmen; the three Prizzi hotel casinos in Vegas and the three in Atlantic City—got very agitated at the idea of anyone else being able to outbid them for what they had come to consider as their own thing because they were already skimming the split with the capos, Charley, and the Prizzis by almost 1 percent, a lot of money.

Charley called a meeting of all administrators at the board room of the Dorsetshire Bank & Trust Company in downtown Brooklyn immediately after ten o’clock Mass got out on the first Sunday of August 1988. It was in a big cork-lined, sound- and bugproof room, about forty feet by twenty-eight feet with a twenty-seven-foot-long table set at its middle. There was a pad, a ballpoint pen, an ashtray, and a sixpack of Mexican cigars at each place. These could have been Havana cigars, because contacts at the CIA had offered to bring them in, but Corrado Prizzi had never forgiven Castro for closing down the family’s two casinos in Cuba.

Angelo Partanna, the three capos: Rocco Sestero, Amalia’s son, who was Maerose’s first cousin; Salvatore Prizzi, Vincent’s son by a first marriage and Maerose’s half-brother; and Pinocchiaro Li Causi, who had gotten the job on merit. Under them were the people who headed up the principal divisions: the shit operation, which was the big operation for profits; gambling, which ran second; labor racketeering, loan-sharking, extortion, prostitution/pornography/orgies; recycled postage stamps and credit card fraud; and Santo Calandra, the family’s vindicatore and chief dispatcher of the shtarkers, who did the heavy muscle work and made the hits, as required. Santo was a resolutely stupid man who had an ego that convinced him that he was smarter than the men who had invented the computer and the self-winding watch, kinder than St. Francis d’Assisi, and more long-suffering than Abraham Lincoln. Angelo Partanna, who measured such things, had had to send to Sicily for Santo’s birth certificate because he had told Charley that Santo couldn’t be a Sicilian, he was too stupid. Also, and it figured, he tooted coke.

Charley came into the meeting, after everyone had assembled and was seated around the table, with Calandra and three sidemen. Vanni Aprile, who was as slippery as home-made ice, went over to Charley with a big smile, his hand extended.

“Fuck you, Vanni,” Charley said, brushing past him. Charley took his seat at the head of the long table; Santo stood behind him and the three helpers leaned against the wall around the room. Angelo sat at Charley’s right hand. The capos were in chairs on either side at the top of the table. The rest of them found seats wherever they could.

“All right,” Charley said. “Now lemme tell you something.” He hosed fear down each side of the table, soaking everyone in the room with it, including, for the first time, his own father. Angelo had to marvel at the increasing power and intensity Charley had been able to pack into his stare over the years. He decided Charley did it partly with the eyes, the nostrils, partly with that “unconscious” quiver in the muscles of his right cheek and the terrifying way he held his mouth. He had never thought he would ever see Corrado Prizzi’s equal at fear-spraying, but Charley had done it.

“What the fuck do you think the Prizzis are, a fucking charity?” Charley said to them. “The don built this business when most of youse still had your ass hanging out of your pants. He watched what you could do and he took you out of a fucking soldier’s job where you had to break your balls to make more money than you ever thought you’d see in your life and made you what you are, making more money than you ever thought existed. What are you? A bunch of cafoni who were too fucking lazy to be peasants so you worked the street as hoodlums. How long do you think you’d stay in your jobs, making the kind of loot you’re walking with, if the don don’t want you there?” He hosed the fear on them again.

“All right—the don is going to franchise the New York operation. That’s it. Whoever gets the franchise in each division carries his own overhead, delivers a gross percentage to us, and we take care of the cops, the courts, and the politicians. Nowhere could you get a better deal. We’re giving you first shot. You don’t want it, then there are four other families in the area plus the Blacks, the Hispanics, and the Orientals are waiting in line. You get my pernt? You get first crack. You make us an offer. Then we let the people on the outside make their offer. Then we give you the right of topping their offer which is what nobody else outside this family will ever get. If you can’t top it, then they get it. Capeesh?”

There was a low rumble from the room. Nobody looked at anybody else.

“We are witchew one hunnert percent, Boss,” Jerry Picuzza, who ran the hookers, gay bars, and lost child placement, said loudly.

“Lemme second the notion,” Rocco Sestero said loudly.

“Any questions?” Charley asked.

After a silence that seemed to brick up every member of the meeting into a separate room, Matteo Cianciana, the shit and coke manager, stood up slowly. “You know what, Charley? You can shove your fucking franchise right up your ass. That is my question.” He sat down.

“Anybody else?”

Vanni Aprile got up. “I got the same question,” he said. He sat down.

Charley became still, but more pleasant-looking.

Angelo Partanna said, “Let’s have a show of hands. Everybody who buys the franchise idea, put up your hands.”

Everybody’s hand went up except Cianciana’s, Aprile’s, and Sal Prizzi’s.

“Well,” Angelo said, “majority rules.”

“Majority, my ass,” Charley said. “Don Corrado Prizzi, who decided to make the rich get richer, made the rules.”

There was a nervous laugh. People were edging away from the three partypoopers.

Charley said, “I appreciate you guys coming here on a Sunday. I’ll be at the laundry tomorrow. Write down how much you wanna bid, sign your name, and bring it in by Wednesday. And don’t worry—we’re gonna help you with the credit arrangements but no shylocking.” The men left their chairs and filed past Charley to shake his hand. Charley, as customary for a Boss, took the handshakes sitting down.

Matteo Cianciani, Vanni Aprile, and Sal Prizzi were still in their seats when the rest of the meeting had been cleared. Angelo and the muscle kept their places.

“You don’t needa hang around, Sal,” Charley said to Sal Prizzi.

Sal stayed where he was, staring sullenly at Charley. Sal was a Prizzi through his father. Rocco Sestero was a Prizzi through his mother. It had made a big difference because each one had a totally different point of view on the advantages of being a Prizzi. Sal, like Iago, felt that he had been passed over for promotion. His father had been Boss so he believed he should have been made Boss when his father had been zotzed, not Charley Partanna. That had burned a few holes in his mind. Rocco didn’t care who was Boss. Nobody in the world was closer to the don than Amalia Sestero, his mother. The don was a very, very old man. When he went, Amalia would come into a pile, which was the same as saying that he, Rocco, would come into the pile. “Let the other guy knock himself out” was Rocco’s slogan.

Charley looked contemptuously at the three rebellious men. “Whatta you waiting for?” he asked them pleasantly enough. “There is nothing to talk about. You are out.”

“Out?” Vanni Aprile said.

“You are not only outta jobs, but you better get outta town,” Charley said.

“You are telling me I am out of a job and I should get outta town?” Sal Prizzi shrilled with concussed outrage. “Did you freak out, Charley? I am a Prizzi.”

“You most of all, Sal. Them two is just hustlers.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, Charley,” Matteo Cianciani said. “I got the connections in Miami; I got my organization up and down the coast. Go ahead and sell the shit franchise. The thing is, whoever buys it is gonna have one tough fucking time meeting my prices.”

“You going in business for yourself, too, Vanni?” Charley inquired softly.

“I ain’t getting out if that’s what you wanna know, Charley.”

“Okay. You got a perna view.” He got up. Angelo got up. They left the room with the three muscles. Santo Calandra stood at the head of the table just looking at the three seated men, shaking his head gently to express his compassion, then left.

“You guys must be crazy,” Sal Prizzi said to the two other holdouts. “You tryna get whacked?”

“What about you?” Matty asked him.

“I got insurance. I’m a Prizzi.”

“That hit shit is a golden oldie,” Vanni Aprile said. “They ain’t gonna zotz anybody. They’ll negotiate and it all has to come out as a better deal.”

Sal left first, then Vanni. Matty lit a cigar from the sixpack and considered his options.

Charley and his father were in Charley’s van. Santo leaned in the window.

“Hit Matteo when he comes out of the bank,” Charley said. “He goes first because he smells like the most trouble. Then, tonight, or whenever, hit Vanni.”

“What about Sal?”

“I gotta clear that with the don.” Charley started the van and it rolled away.

“Whatta you think, Pop?”

“It looks like problems.”

“But if we nail Matteo and Vanni right away, then it’s settled.”

“Maybe.”

“Whatta you mean?”

“Matteo and Vanni are just a couple of businessmen. What they want is to talk it over and maybe work out a sweetheart deal. Sal is something else. He doesn’t give a shit about franchises one way or another. He wants to get even because you’re Boss and he thinks, because he’s Vincent’s son, that he should be Boss. And he’s just as dangerous as Vincent ever was.”

“Matty is the live one.”

“That’s not the thing. If you don’t contact him to set up a private meet, he’s gonna try to hit you before you hit him. All three of them are. But Sal is breathing the hardest.”

“First, we get an okay to hit Sal,” Charley said. “If the don okays it, I’ll handle Sal myself.”

Calorino was at the door of the don’s house when Charley and Pop arrived at 11:20 A.M. Charley said, “Lissena me, Calo. I’m putting a man on the back door and a man on the don’s floor for a coupla days. Who do you like?”

“Placido and Pino Salvaggio. They are stand-up. But make sure they know I’m gonna run them.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“Tell them to bring tools.”

Pop led the way upstairs. He knocked lightly at the don’s door. They waited for the faint response from the other side, then they went in.

“Today was the meeting?” the don asked.

“Matteo and Vanni don’t want it, Corrado,” Pop said.

“Who else?”

“Sal Prizzi.”

“I thought so. He’s like Vincent, a dumb ox. How’re you gonna handle it, Charley?”

“Santo Calandra is gonna try for a zotz on Matty and Van when they come outta the bank.”

“What about Sal?”

“I hadda clear it with you.”

“Charley, that is very nice. I appreciate it. I don’t have to think about it because I knew how it would go. He’s like Vincent. They go pazzo under pressure. You won’t believe it but he drinks gin. A Sicilian, what does he know about gin? But he knows he does a thing like this, he’s gotta take his chances. What kind of loyalty is it when out of all those people, Sal, my own grandson, betrays me openly? I got no choice.”

“Then I better get moving.”

“Charley—”

“Yes, padrino—”

“Let your people handle it. It’s better if you’re not the one. This is a Prizzi thing. He’s Maerose’s brother, you know what I’m saying?”

Sal Prizzi, from the day his father had been hit, had bitterly resented Charley being made Boss. He was a Prizzi, his father had been Boss, so when his father got iced, he should have gotten the job. He was a Prizzi. Nobody could change that. He was the top capo in the famiglia. Charley was just another plugger whose only experience in the family’s business had been doing the job on people. It was his fucking sister, that Maerose with her fucking college education, who had set it up, he thought. She was always in and out of his grandfather’s house. His grandfather never asked him over to the house. He was going to get a bottle of gin, go home, and figure the whole thing so that Charley Partanna would be out on his ass.

Sal Prizzi was a short, dumpy, unpleasant-looking man of fifty-two with a blue-black underbeard and mean eyes. He treated people just as badly sober as when he was drunk, the way a peasant treats his animals. Dr. Adler would have diagnosed a superiority complex with Sal, a notion as old-fashioned as Sal’s belief that being born a Prizzi could solve everything.

He sat in his shirt-sleeves at the kitchen table in the house his father had lived in and left to him in Bensonhurst and broke the seal on the bottle of English gin. His wife, Asunta, was at her father’s in New Jersey, getting ready for Columbus Day. If she knew he was going to hit the gin, she would have hit him with a chair. Sal was a bad drunk because two drinks and he was peeing in his pants and because on the best day of his life he was short on empathy and long on resentment, which had begun when his mother had died and his father had not only married again but had knocked out two children who, right away because they were girls, became the focus of his grandfather’s eye. His father had been as crafty and brutal as Sal had become.

A wave of disgust rolled over him. He knocked back a half-tumbler of gin, wishing he could have slit open his father’s belly because Vincent could have set it up any time he wanted, but Sal wasn’t even made until he was twenty-nine years old, even though he had knocked and beaten and slugged and hounded more union people than anybody else in the family. He had dominated the hospital and the city employees’ union, particularly the cleaning women who worked in federal and municipal buildings. He had established the Prizzis in those areas. Charley Partanna was made when he was seventeen years old, the little prick, just because he made a lucky hit when he was a kid. He, Sal Prizzi, could have done that work. His father could have gotten him that work. In fact, it was his father’s own work, fahcrissake, he was the vindicatore then, but it was too tricky, he lost his nerve, so they sent a dumb kid in to do the job, and that had made Charley with the don.

Now this crazy fucking franchise operation. His grandfather must be ga-ga to think up such a crazy fucking thing. Sal Prizzi, a caporegime, a man who was more responsible for the family’s success than anybody else, was now supposed to dig down and pay good money for what he had built up with his own fucking hands. He gulped down another half-tumbler of gin. They wanted him to buy what was, by rights, already his. He couldn’t get it through his head that out of everybody at that meeting, only he and two other guys had told Charley what he could do with his franchises. He sat brooding and drinking.

Almost an hour went by. He thought he smelled smoke. He tried to stand up, but he fell back into the chair. He got a good grip on the table and pulled himself to his feet. Jesus, he did smell smoke. What the hell was this—he could hear like the sound of fire, a sound like distant trains running. He moved unsteadily to the door to the dining room, which they never used. When he opened it, a roaring fire leaped at him. He was dazed by the shock of it, and the gin, which had widened all the blood vessels on the surface of his body, doubled the searing force of the heat. He slammed the door. He ran as well as he could to the back door, which led out into the yard. He fumbled with the lock, put on the outside light, and stepped out on the back porch. The porch and the back of the house were on fire. A bullet hit the frame of the door. Another bullet smashed into the door beside his head. He pulled back into the kitchen, slamming and locking the door. It was that fucking Charley. They were trying to zotz him. The fucking ceiling was on fire. Where was his piece? He ran to the door that opened into the living room. The piece was in his harness on the sofa in the living room, which was ablaze. What the hell kind of a thing was this? Were they outta their heads? He was a Prizzi. He was a Prizzi, fahcrissake.