Prizzi's Glory

by Richard Condon

  In the first three weeks on the job, he held meetings with all of the senior executives in the home office, fifty-four specialists, granting them a half-hour each and receiving the next one at sixty minutes after the first one left. This allowed him to listen to four executives a day (in alphabetical order of their fifty-four names) and allowed fifty-five minutes for lunch and one hundred and thirty-six minutes for telephone calls from around the country and the world. Allowing for time in the john and in front of the mirrors swearing vengeance against whoever had vandalized the don’s memory, that gave him approximately nine hours and eleven minutes in the building each day, which was four hours and three minutes longer than Edward S. Price had spent, Mary Barton told him.

  “Well—yes,” Charley said, responding to the Price erg rate. “But Eduardo didn’t have to see four executives a day at such fixed periods and he probably had his lunch in the office.”

  “Eduardo never ate lunch in his office, Charley.”

  Mary Barton had laid down a fixed routine for Charley to follow at each individual senior executive meeting. He would ask them to explain their jobs as they saw it in ten minutes. Halfway through the explanation, Charley would spray a little fear over them, engendering fright mixed with guilt in some cases, and, in the guilty cases, they would begin to backtrack on what they said, helping him to judge them. The method let Charley winnow out the reliable from the flaky, to mark at least two of them for transfer overseas, one of these to the company’s spice manufactory on Devil’s Island.

  The second ten minutes were given over to suggestions from the men for streamlining or generally improving their operations. Charley stared at them implacably throughout these recitations, nodding at rare intervals. In the last decant of the meeting, the men were encouraged to bring their problems to Charley, which he would then ask them to repeat in memorandum form and to have the memo on his desk within twenty-four hours.

  As the memoranda came in, Charley would turn them over to each of his two executive assistants, Chandler Sestero and Carleton Garrone, requiring that they return with a written answer to the problem by the end of the day. When the operational answer was on his desk, Charley called the senior executive who had raised the matter as a problem and gave him the solution, verbally, never in writing in case the recommendation turned out to be faulty. It was standard operating procedure in the corridors of power, whether in business or politics, a ponderous system that Mary Barton had soon made more effective by insisting that individual computer work stations be installed at each senior executive’s desk so that the solutions could go out from a central computer in the Office of the Chief Executive to each work station, eliminating palaver and conserving Charley’s time. As time went on she brought the Omaha-based Cray 3 supercomputer into it so that Charley—or someone delegated by Charley—could issue instantaneous solutions to policy problems directly to desks of the senior Barker’s Hill executives in 74 cities in the continental United States, then, later, via satellite, to the individual stations in the 117 Barker’s Hill offices in the world.

  During the first year of Charley’s leadership, Barker’s Hill raided then took over eleven large companies worth $14.2 billion, instantly earning $4.7 billion by the raids. Working through its four brokerage house/investment banking firms on Wall Street, BH made $317 million from insider trading made possible by the foreknowledge of the takeover transactions. Its junk bond flotations and leveraged buyouts had further increased earnings by means so shady as to have made Charley flinch if no one else in the firm. Its enormous Department of Defense contractors, who remained fixed in place no matter what heinous revelations were made concerning the shoddiness of their products or the towering amounts of profits they made on the unit prices charged, showed an annual increase, under Charley’s leadership, of $5.1 billion. Through it all, he made all the Barker’s Hill companies toe the line and was gratified that they delivered an increase of 17.3 percent over the yields produced by Edward Price’s stewardship.

  Throughout all of Charley’s first year on the bridge at Barker’s Hill, the company’s superb public relations department, the 117 people of the Community Affairs division, concentrated on establishing Charley in the minds of the American people as one of the greatest business leaders of history. The public relations department of Barker’s Hill, like that of Ronald Reagan, could be compared to the Lords of Shouting of the Old Testament, consisting of 1,550 angels “all singing glory to the Lord.” It is written that, because of the chanting of the Lords of Shouting, “judgment is lightened and the world is blessed.” Charley, like Ronald Reagan, left golden footprints wherever he walked amid the hosannahs that confirmed his glory.

  Charles Macy Barton showed up on the evening news rotating across the five networks, about three times every month. His byline over his recorded opinions on absolutely everything that was the currency of the day seemed to live on the op-ed pages of the great American newspapers. No Sunday morning was complete for the American family without seeing and hearing Charles Macy Barton and his breathtaking tailoring on the talk shows. Sam Donaldson beamed upon him. William F. Buckley, Jr., purred over him. If there was a national crisis of any kind, McNeil-Lehrer called him before their inquisitors. He made pronouncements regarding acid rain, the strength of the dollar, urged a close economic alliance with Japan providing it was brought to its knees, discussed cures for stuttering, took a stand on surrogate motherhood, abortion, and school prayer, condemned the Soviet while praising glasnost to the skies, and, through it all, his PR people never stopped selling him as the greatest organizer of American history. Over and over again this image of Charley reappeared in the print and electronic media of the world, until his name became a household word. Charley was instantly recognizable to the American people, and universally known, as the Great Organizer. The business schools of great universities used case histories in which Charley’s towering judgment dominated: he was the sublime model of the American business executive as reflected in the claims made by his PR people. It was the American way because it revered the holy Bible. The Lords of Shouting had returned to bring salvation to the pious.

  A growing amount of time, usually on Saturday morning or at the Sixty-fourth Street house at odd hours, whenever the president wanted advice or information, Charley (and Mary Barton) would need to turn their attentions to that set of problems. Not altogether slowly, Franklin M. Heller and Charley had built an intimate relationship in that election year of 1992. Heller had convinced himself that Charley had vital information at his fingertips and could get it faster than the White House staff could get it, on certain issues such as Republican Party strategies.

  When the White House had to have instant information on projected Republican moves, Charley would call Pop at the laundry in Brooklyn. Pop would call Eduardo wherever he was; then Eduardo would turn the matter over to his principal campaign adviser, Carter B. Modred, former national chairman of the Republican party, to get the information in all partisan innocence. Eduardo would call Pop with it. Pop would pass the word immediately to Mary Barton, who would tell Charley. Charley would then call the delighted president.

  If the Republicans planned a major offensive relating to international trade or planned evasive tactics to avoid vitally necessary increased taxation, before they could announce it, the White House was able to call in the media and lay down a superseding program of its own. The same happened in all the major campaign areas: foreign policy, defense positions, and election year promises on the support of the Freedom Fighters no matter where they were bleeding for democracy in the world.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Charley,” Heller said every time. “The opposition is absolutely emasculated. Your information is always better than the stuff my staff gets and twice as fast.”

  Two months after the breaking-in period in New York, Charley and his personal staff of seventeen troubleshooters took to the road in the wide-bodied company jet to attend the get-acquainted meetings Mary Barton had insisted be org
anized in fifteen key cities, drawing an average of five Barker’s Hill field office senior executives into the key cities of their region. The procedure was fixed: Charley took over the office of the head BH honcho in each key city and received delegations of up to twelve senior field executives to whom he gave a short talk that had been prepared by Mary Barton and that drove home the new quotas and raised objectives of the new headquarters management. It was a short talk allowing just enough time for Charley to spray a light steam of fear over those attending the meetings; then he would leave the meeting to the home-office executives concerned with the assembled divisions and go off to look at the branch’s computer installation, its squash courts, and its Jacuzzis.

  In California he had the chance to renew his old friendship with the lieutenant governor, Arthur Shuland. Not that he was able to reveal the basis of their lifetime friendship, when he had been Charley Partanna. He was the new head of Barker’s Hill Enterprises. That was enough. Shuland was so pleased to take Charley’s call in Sacramento that he flew to Los Angeles at once for a closed door luncheon meeting in Charley’s hotel.

  “I’m gonna make my pitch for the Senate,” Arthur said. “State politics are all right, but the national arena is where the money is.”

  “You need money?” Charley asked with surprise.

  “I’m not hurting. And someday my grandfather has to leave me a bundle. But that could be twenty years from now. In the meantime, I’ll stick to politics for a living.”

  “Say the word, Governor,” Charley said, “and we’ll surround you with a couple of thousand PACs. But don’t move too fast. Give me till after this election. I might have something very nice for you.”

  Charley had arrived late at the hotel in Detroit and had to wait more than twenty minutes in the lobby until he could get into his suite, greatly enraging his entourage, who fell just short of beating up on the hotel manager. By some thoroughly rotten mismanagement, Charley’s suite had been rented to one of the greatest rock stars of the international culture. While Charley’s people battled it out with the manager, Charley went to the newsstand and bought a selection of magazines to carry him through the off-hours and to sharpen his conversational gambits. Twenty minutes later he was eating his room service dinner in the Presidential Suite, with his security detail, when, one after another, two blips flickered across the far right of his peripheral vision.

  “Somebody just went into the bedroom,” he said to Al Melvini, the security man in charge of the detail.

  “I didn’t see nobody, boss,” Melvini said.

  “Get in there!” Charley snarled, trying to eat a medium-rare cheeseburger.

  Melvini took out his piece and went into the bedroom. Within five minutes, he came out again, herding two middle-aged women ahead of him.

  “How about this?” Melvini said. “They were hiding behind the drapes. They hoped they would get lucky with the singer.”

  “Ladies!” Charley said, shocked. “You are old enough to be his mother!”

  Melvini kept them moving toward the front door. “The great man was moved outta here because he didn’t belong here,” he told the women. “This is our suite.” Just before they passed out of view one of the women turned and faced Charley, pointing a quivering finger at him. “If they put Little Caligula out of this suite for him, who is he? Who is he?”

  “I am Charles Macy Barton,” Charley said simply.

  The woman blanched, then lunged toward him. “My God!” she moaned. “The Great Organizer!”

  29

  Angelo Partanna had lines out all over the city, high up and low down, trying to find the don. As the weeks went on, he stayed on the telephone, asking discreet questions because he had to be careful not to let anybody know of the catastrophe and following hunches up blind alleys. There were rumors that a crooked undertaker had tried to sell a body in Cincinnati, but the body turned out to be his brother-in-law’s. A tiny, wizened old man showed up on the beach in British Samoa spending American dollars like water, but he turned out to be a vacationing Iranian mullah.

  Pop never gave up the search during the months after the don’s body was lifted. While the RS Jack Frost was rolling north along the coast of Togoland, the don in his eternal crystallizing sleep, Angelo had a visit at the laundry from Santo Calandra, who was in charge of enforcing the collections on the metropolitan franchises.

  “Whatsamatta?” Angelo asked him.

  “I got a beef, Boss.”

  The vats were turning on schedule, seven minutes before the hour, in the laundry outside Angelo’s office door, and thirty-one vats filled with crashing water, turning in unison, made so much noise that the conversation had to be shouted to be heard.

  “The Hispanics in East Harlem and the Busacca family are in a hassle over which one controls the Riker’s Island market, but that ain’t the beef.”

  “So what’s the beef?”

  “They want Don Corrado to handle it, but they can’t get him onna phone.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “I told them you’d handle it, but”—Santo shrugged—“the Busaccas said, of course, okay, but the Hispanics only know the don and they say he’s gotta rule on it.”

  “Jesus, that’s the trouble doing bidniz with foreigners. Whatta they know about the American way?”

  “Listen, they can hardly speak English.”

  “They can’t see him. Nobody can see him.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Tell them the don has to rest—doctor’s orders—tell them that for thirty years I been the one who handles shit like this. Tell them there is no way they are gonna get to the don on this.”

  “I already told them.”

  “Who heads up the Hispanics?”

  “A Puerto Rican. Jesus Salvador.”

  “Jesus Salvador. That must be his stage name.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hit him.”

  “That could make it a bigger beef.”

  “Then tell both sides that the don says Riker’s Island is an open territory.”

  “In three months, we do that, and they’ll be shooting each other.”

  “Then nobody gets Riker’s Island. We’ll sell there ourselves.”

  “That could be the worst. All the franchisees would say we are back on the street after we told them that we were selling the street to them.”

  “Santo! Fahcrissake! Whatta we supposed to do here?”

  “Well, I don’t know what I’m saying, but like if I was the don, and I felt good enough to talk to them, I would tell them that the Busaccas can have the franchise to sell the hard shit and the Hispanics can sell the speed and the ganja.”

  “What’s the difference between that and making the island open?”

  “It gives them a ruling. They don’t care which way it goes; they wanna know that they follow the rules or they lose the franchise.”

  “So tell them. In the don’s name.”

  “He can’t last forever,” Santo said. “Nobody in this business ever lived so long as the don. It’s even money that he’s gotta go sometime, and when he goes and we throw him a big funeral, then they’ll all know the don can’t settle anything and they’ll listen to whoever takes over.”

  “A funeral.”

  “A tremendous funeral.”

  Angelo called Charley on his private line and set up a meet for seven o’clock that night at Angelo’s house in Bensonhurst. Charley called Mary Barton and told her he would be late and why. Mary Barton called Angelo.

  “Pop? Mae. Charley called me.”

  “I gotta talk something over, Mae.”

  “What?”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Then have the meeting here. On Sixty-fourth Street.”

  “I’m not coming all the way in from Brooklyn, Mae. Not at this time of night. Them muggers like old people.”

  “I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “You stay with your kids. I’ll tell Charley, he’ll tell you.”

/>   “All right. But tell him you told me you would tell him to tell me or he’ll clam up.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Also, while you’re telling him that, please remind yourself that he’s not Charley Partanna anymore so don’t forget yourself and give him some work to do.”

  “Not on the phone, Mae.” They hung up.

  Charley had grown up in his father’s house in Bensonhurst. He had been a boy there; his mother had been alive there. It had all seemed very respectable to him, no matter what the don and Maerose might have thought. Mae was 47. Counting the time she had been away at school, she hadn’t really lived in Brooklyn for almost thirty years, so that was why she had put the heat on her grandfather to be respectable. Mae was respectable to the people she hung out with in New York, but he knew there were people in Brooklyn, the old people who used to fill the Palermo Gardens in the old days, who didn’t think she was respectable because she hung out with a lot of people who did nothing but go to hairdressers and dressmakers and spend their time either sleeping or going to parties. Charley knew one thing: he didn’t feel any more respectable going back to Bensonhurst than he felt about going to East Sixty-fourth or to Barker’s Hill, where he was stealing money and running rackets just like he had never left the laundry. He had found out that being respectable, very respectable, was a matter of who had the most money to show, not necessarily who had the most money. If the don had only known it, he could have been more respectable than the Pope. The way Mae saw it was that if she began to show her grandfather’s money around, right away she’d be in trouble with the IRS, which was not respectable, but she decided to show it in a big way anyway and drop a little awe on the people she wanted to be respectable for; then she could take it for granted that she was respectable.