43

Charley got back to Sixty-fourth Street in time to change into dinner clothes, have a light snack, then, at ten o’clock, leave with Mary Barton for the October in Albania Ball in Southampton, which would be heavily covered by W, which meant that Mae had been dressing for it since four in the afternoon, surrounded by fitters, combers, and handlers, to wow the dozens of rich dressmakers who would be at the fete.

Danvers drove them to the East River heliport. They boarded one of the Barker’s Hill eight-passenger Sikorsky choppers and were set down at Southampton twenty-two minutes later. It was really gala. The women were lined up in phalanxes behind their dressmakers to make it easier for the W photographers and caption people. They danced to an Albanian bagpipe orchestra and drank Diet Pepsi. It was a fun night, but they got away early because Mary Barton was chairing the annual meeting of the Public Libraries Association at 3:00 P.M. the next day after a policy lunch at Mortimer’s with the arbiter, and, after the libraries meeting, she looked forward to her time with the twins in Central Park. Also, they couldn’t stay on at the ball because Charley had an oil company takeover beginning at 8:00 A.M., which involved full control through an offer of $6.2 billion for the 45 percent Barker’s Hill did not already own. Whether the $72 a share offer would be enough was still uncertain because the oil company’s stock price had since risen above the bid, but it was only money and Charley was confident of reeling the deal in. But he had to be sharp. So they left the party early, Danvers met them at the heliport, and they were driven to bed at Sixty-fourth Street.

The hit on Santo Calandra reverberated throughout Brooklyn, with the outer waves immediately reaching Atlantic City. He had been one of the elder statesmen of the community, so secure in his place that the surviving professional population was aghast at what had happened. Except Rocco, who, in faroff Atlantic City, with his prior, intimate knowledge of Prizzi thinking, understood what had happened to Santo from the moment Santo called him to tell him that the Prizzis weren’t going to give them the money.

“Who?” Rocco asked.

“Angelo.”

“Angelo? You asked Angelo for the thirty million dollars?”

“He knows me a long time.”

“How in Christ’s name did you ever think Angelo would let you have thirty million dollars? I told you Angelo was the one who had figured out how we were gonna get it. He musta thought you were nuts.” Rocco was talking on the telephone in the kitchen while his wife worked at the stove and his son, Beppino, ate his breakfast.

“I wanted to show him my appreciation that the family was gonna start up again and that he wanted me to head it up. He woulda got his money back plus he’d have his old job again. I woulda made him my consigliere.”

“Holy shit.”

Rocco vacillated between telling Santo to get out of town and telling him to forget the whole thing, that they weren’t going to do what they had talked about, but in the end he decided that the best thing would be to let them move Santo out of the way so that a new plan could be made.

After the call he went back into the small living room and dropped himself on a sofa. His son, Beppino, came in and said, “Whatsa matta, Pop?”

“Nothing a Turns for the tummy won’t cure,” Rocco said.

The next day Beppino came back to the apartment star-crossed by the fate of men. “Somebody done the job on Santo and Melba,” he said.

“Melba?” Mary Sestero said. “What did Melba ever do? What the hell is this, Rocco?”

“It was Angelo’s contract,” Rocco said.

“But—why Melba?”

“She musta saw the contractor.”

“You think Angelo set it up?”

“I know it.”

Rocco ate the lunch his wife had prepared; then he left the apartment and went to one of the three big Prizzi hotels on the boardwalk and let himself into the room he had been alloted on the fourth floor to get the load off his feet when his relief came on. He called his Uncle Eduardo in New York. Eduardo took the call on a scrambler phone.

“Yes, Rocco?”

“Somebody took out Santo.”

“Somebody?”

“Angelo.”

“How is that?”

“Santo went to the laundry and asked him for thirty million to start up a new family.”

“I see. So?”

“So should I forget the whole thing?”

“Absolutely not, Rocco. You’ll have to handle it yourself now—that’s all.”

“Yeah?”

“Then we’ll proceed as planned, shall we?” Eduardo hung up.

The oil company merger pressure had slackened off by about one o’clock. Charley got most of what he wanted by giving in graciously to a few golden handshakes and platinum parachutes. At 1:20 P.M. Claire Coolidge called him.

“Mr. Barton, I feel awful about bothering you, but I wondered if you had had the chance to speak to Edward about—you know.”

“Not yet. But it’s very much on my mind.”

“It’s just that we’d like to set a date, but I feel that I can’t do that until the unfinished business with Edward has been confronted and settled.”

“You can count on me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barton.”

At 1:50 P.M., Dr. Winikus called him. He told Charley that Angelo had had a “small” stroke. Charley said he would be right there. He hung up and was out of the office and into the private elevator to the garage before anyone knew he had gone.

Charley drove himself to Brooklyn in the Chevy van, which he kept in the basement garage of the Barker’s Hill building. He was all shook up. He couldn’t imagine life continuing on the planet without Pop.

Dr. Winikus was waiting for him in the front room at Pop’s house in Bensonhurst. “He’s much improved, Mr. Barton,” he said. “He had minor motor loss on his right side, but we’ve had him under sedatives for almost seven hours, and already his movements, although impaired, are discernible. This time tomorrow will tell the story.”

“Seven hours?” Charley said. “Why wasn’t I told before this?”

“When he became conscious about an hour ago, he asked me to call you.” Winikus looked curious as to what the connection could possibly be between this old Sicilian hoodlum and such a man as the Great Organizer.

“I’m his executor,” Charley said. “Can I see him?”

“Five minutes. That’s all he can take.”

Charley went into his father’s bedroom. Angelo was propped up on pillows staring at the door. Charley had never seen anybody who looked so awful. Angelo’s face had separated into two faces. One was slack, pulled downward by gravity. The other side didn’t match at all. “Ah, Mr. Barton,” he said weakly out of the left side of his mouth.

Charley shut the door behind himself and pulled a chair up to the bedside.

“Jesus, Pop,” he said. “You scared hell out of me.”

“Whatta you expect? I’m eighty years old.”

“Do you hurt?”

“Where I can feel, I feel great.” He sighed. “Except that I’m finally pissed off, a little late. Corrado built a great thing. Then he threw it away.”

“Barker’s Hill doesn’t do too bad.”

Angelo smiled scornfully. “You’ll never come within thirty percent of what the gambling and shit business made for us. The shit business alone—cocaine, that gold mine bigger than the sun—and he sold it all for a nothing royalty. Why?”

“Maybe he saw coke being legalized. It’s very popular on Wall Street.”

“Never. He sold out to buy respectability, Charley. Mae planted the idea on him, and once he had bought it it was if he was cursed with it. He threw it away to become an American. It’s worthless to us, Charley. We been Sicilians for seven hundred years. Corrado knew that better than anybody. He controlled the most respectable people in the world.”

“Take it easy, Pop. What the hell. It’s done.”

“Mae, that crazy, mixed-up Maerose. She’s never gonna make it past St. Peter, Charley. And she is gonna have to pay in this life for all the things she did. What the fuck are we because of her? Like the lost tribe of Israel, scattered and wandering in the wilderness.”

He shook his head; then he threw off the despair. “Charley, lissena me. Don’t let them take me to a hospital. I hate hospitals. Whatta they got that I can’t have here? Round-the-clock nurses, oxygen, portable X ray if that’s what Winikus wants, lab tests—we can have it all right here. Okay?”

“I’ll handle it, Pop. Don’t even think about it.”

Dr. Winikus opened the door to signal that the meeting was over. Charley told Angelo he’d be back as soon as he could; then he left the room to talk to the doctor about turning the small house into a miniature hospital.