48

When Charles and Mary Barton returned to Sixty-fourth Street that night with Horace Gavin and a special agent, Nanny Bledsoe was sitting in a straight chair in the entrance hall waiting for them. As Mary Barton came in the front door, Nanny Bledsoe said, “The babies are home, madam. They are asleep in the nursery.”

Mary Barton sprinted across the main hall and up the stairs.

“Who brought them here?” Horace Gavin asked sharply.

“Mr. Edward Price, sir. He’s waiting in the study.” Gavin went off to find Eduardo. Charles Barton stared dumbly at Nanny Bledsoe.

“They are fine, sir. Conrad was sleepy but Angier his usual happy, boisterous self. Will that be all, sir?” Charley nodded and watched her climb the stairs to the nursery floor; then, numbly, he went across the drawing room to the study.

“You should have told us you were in contact with the kidnappers, Mr. Price,” Gavin was saying to Eduardo.

“If I had, the children wouldn’t be here.”

“If you please, tell me what happened, Mr. Price.”

“I had a call last Thursday—I think it was Thursday—to have the ransom money ready.”

“What ransom did they demand?”

“Thirty million dollars in U.S. bearer bonds.”

“What did you do?”

“I called Mr. Barton. He authorized me to assemble the money.”

Gavin glared at Charles Barton. “You knew that wild trip to Brentwood was a phony?”

“I told you at the beginning that I was going to get my children back.”

Gavin turned to Eduardo. “Were the bonds marked? Were their serial numbers recorded?”

“No,” Eduardo said.

“The bonds are just out there somewhere with hundreds of thousands of other bonds bought last Thursday.”

“Yes,” Eduardo said.

“All right. I want all the details. I want every shred of information from you about where you made the pickup and a description of the methods and people which turned the babies over to you. Did you recognize the people who held the babies?”

“No,” Eduardo said.

A large picture of the ruined and bloody Rocco Sestero was on the front page of the New York DAILY NEWS and the Philadelphia papers that were delivered to the Sestero apartment in Atlantic City on Sunday morning. The FBI and the local police had been there since seven-fifty that morning. Mary Sestero had become hysterical under the questioning, but she held to the story that she knew nothing about her husband’s business except that he had worked at the casino of the Mirabelle Hotel. When the police left she turned on her son.

“Angelo Partanna killed your father, whatta you gonna do about it?”

“Angelo?” Beppino said.

“You were here when your father said it! This whole thing, the kids, was Angelo’s idea. Angelo set up the whole thing. Angelo was the only one who knew about it, so Angelo had somebody do the job on your father.”

“I didn’t know. I mean I never figured it that an old guy like Angelo would—”

“He set up Santo, didn’t he? You were here. You heard your father say it that Angelo put out the contract on Santo?”

“Angelo gave it to Poppa. Okay. I’m going to New York and give it to Angelo. I know what I gotta do.”

Angelo Partanna passed away in his sleep because of heart failure at 1:27 A.M. while his night nurse, Agnes Brady, was making some strong black coffee in the kitchen. At 4:00 A.M. she got out of her chair in Angelo’s bedroom to make the regular four-hour check on his vital signs. She put a thermometer in his mouth and picked up his wrist to time his pulse. She knew he was dead. She was dialing Dr. Winikus’s telephone as Beppino Sestero let himself into the house by the front door and came into the bedroom. She looked up and had the chance to ask sharply, “What are you doing here?” before he shot her; then he stood beside the bed and shot Angelo twice through the head, crossed himself, and left.

Dr. Winikus heard both shots. He telephoned the police from his house in Brooklyn Heights, dressed, and drove to the Partanna house in Bensonhurst. The police were there when he got there. He identified the bodies at 4:55 A.M.

After the forensic squad had made their measurements, looked for prints, and taken their pictures, the bodies were taken to the city morgue for autopsy. Keifetz, the homicide sergeant, asked Dr. Winikus for Angelo Partanna’s next-of-kin.

“I don’t know of any,” Winikus said. “Do you know who the old man was—or is that before your time?”

“Who was he?”

“That was the right-hand man to Corrado Prizzi.”

“Angelo Partanna? That was Angelo Partanna?”

“The only name I have to call is his executor, Charles Macy Barton.”

“That is his executor? Holy shit, I’m gonna get my name inna papers.”

At 9:07 A.M., Sergeant Keifetz called Charles Macy Barton at his office while Barton was in a meeting to reorganize a steel company having seventeen subsidiary companies, identifying himself as NYPD, Homicide. Miss Blue asked the policeman if she could take a message. Sergeant Keifetz said he would prefer to speak to Mr. Barton. Miss Blue said it was impossible for Mr. Barton to come to the telephone. Sergeant Keifetz said the message was urgent and that it involved Angelo Partanna, whose executor, he understood, Mr. Barton was. Mr. Partanna was dead. Mr. Partanna had no survivors known to his doctor; therefore it was necessary that he advise Mr. Barton.

“May we call you back, Sergeant Keifetz?” Miss Blue, having been with Edward S. Price for twenty-two years before she served Mr. Barton, knew Angelo Partanna, who had, from time to time, come to see Mr. Price. It was apparent to Miss Blue that Angelo Partanna had some unusual connection with Barker’s Hill if, after years of association with Edward Price, it now had happened that Mr. Barton was Mr. Partanna’s executor and that Mr. Partanna was dead.

“Right away, please,” Keifetz said. He gave Miss Blue a number.

“Sergeant? Was Mr. Partanna murdered?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll get right back to you.” She hung up.

Miss Blue sat at her desk and typed a note to Mr. Barton. It said: “Sergeant Keifetz, NYPD Homicide, called urgently. Mr. Angelo Partanna has been murdered. Sgt. Keifetz urgently wishes you to call him back.” She folded the message slip and took it into the meeting. She passed it to Mr. Barton.

Charley read the message twice before he understood it. The world fell out from under him. He had been waiting for something like this all his life until he had finally decided that it could never happen. That Pop had been over eighty years old didn’t change the meaning of what had happened to him. Pop had grown up at the center of this, always knowing that it could happen, never excusing himself from the possibility because he was getting older and older even though he had been the one to see the don die in bed. It was Pop who had made him a man; Pop who had taught him everything. Pop, unassailable, invincible, and everlasting. And somebody had walked into his house in the night and had done the job on him. Business. That fucking business. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe it was better being respectable where the business was only in doing the job on whole companies, then walking away with them and leaving whatever you had to leave behind. Nobody tried to shoot you for it. They gave you testimonial dinners instead. Pop was gone. He had to begin to understand that. Somebody had zotzed Pop.

“Mr. Barton! Are you all right?” The entire table of twenty-six men and women was staring at him.

Charley stood up. He walked unsteadily out of the room, Miss Blue and Carleton Garrone directly following him. In Miss Blue’s office, he took Keifetz’s number and dialed it.

“Keifetz,” the voice said.

“This is Charles Barton.”

“You the executor of the late Angelo Partanna?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me at the morgue in half an hour. We gotta confirm the identification.”

Charley asked for his driver. As they got into the elevator, Charley said to Miss Blue, “Please call Mrs. Barton and tell her what has happened.”