30

Charley and his father sat on either side of a large (commercial) pizza that had arrived from Vesuvio Deliveries five minutes before Charley. It had a very Neapolitan look, but what are you going to do? Charley thought. His father was uneasy talking to a face that claimed to be Charley underneath and that Angelo was fairly sure had to be Charley’s, but it made him nervous talking business to a stranger like this, and he dreaded it when Charley started to speak, clutching all the sounds at the back of his throat as if he were being strangled, then releasing them like goo from a squeezed fist.

“It’s about the franchises we sold them,” Pop said.

“Yes?”

“The Busaccas and the Hispanics needa talk to the don about who handles the Riker’s Island shit sales.”

“Talk to the don?”

“I ain’t satisfied the don is dead, Charley. I only thought he was dead when I said he was dead. We never had a doctor say he was dead. He could be alive, Charley.”

“I don’t think so, Pop. Even if he were alive when we left him that last day, it’s not likely that he could survive the kind of winter this has been wherever he went in his nightshirt.”

“Anyways, he ain’t here to settle this beef and unless we wanna let all the franchises think we’re some cockamamie outfit with no don we gotta come up with some ideas.”

“We’re not an outfit, Pop. We’re a collection agency.”

“We control the franchises.”

“We control them as long as we can control them.”

“I can’t be the one to let it fall apart, Charley.”

“Won’t they talk to you?”

“No.”

“Then tell them the don said the Busaccas can have the hard shit for the island and the Hispanics get the rest.”

“I told ’em that already, Charley. That’s not the point. It’s a very small beef and it can be worked out. But sooner or later there is gonna be a big beef that it is gonna take a capo di famiglia of the family which controls the franchises to sit down with them and settle it. But we don’t even know where the don is. Somebody else took control of our own capo di famiglia.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I wanna talk. Santo said it. He said that sooner or later the don had to go, then, when he went, there would have to be a new don to sit on top of this tremendous franchise business all over the world and when we had a don who could lay down the law to them, then everything would go back to normal.”

“But we can’t even prove the don is dead. How can we show them a new don?”

“Yeah.”

“What else from Santo?”

“It follows. The way we prove the don is dead, we have a big funeral.”

“Like mine?”

“If we had one, which is impossible, it would have to be bigger, Charley.”

“But if the don’s body shows up after his funeral, we’re never going to get them straightened out.”

“Maybe you better talk it over with Mae.”