"Ya wanna talk ta me, Vincente?"
The Godfather pursed his loose lips, let out a hissing grunt. His fingers were linked across his wizened tummy. "Before you came, Bert, ya know what I was thinkin'? I was sittin' heah thinkin' it ain't right, it ain't fair, that somethin' goes sour right at de end. It goes sour inna middle, maybe ya got time, strength, ya can fix it. Or maybe you're lucky, ya can walk away. It goes sour right at de end, fuck can ya do? Can't do shit. Ya die wit' a bitter taste in your mouth."
Bert's dog was lying at his feet. He reached down and petted it, took solace from the feel of its veiny ears. A scrap of breeze moved across the yard, brought with it a smell of limestone dust and seaweed.
After a moment Vincente went on. "Gino fucked up bad. He mighta got himself killed."
"Mighta?"
The Godfather looked away, swallowed hard, fought a little battle with himself, and decided at last to confide in his old friend. He told Bert as much as he himself knew of Gino's subterfuge, Gino's fiasco. Bert listened with his chin on his fist; now and then he nodded. At the end, he said, "Marrone."
"So what the fuck do I do?" Vincente resumed.
"I gotta figure, if he ain't already dead he's wit' Messina. And, Messina, there's no way I can go ta him."
Bert absently petted his dog; white hairs the length of eyelashes came off between his fingers. "Vincente, due respect, maybe this ain't the time for—"
"Pride?" the Godfather interrupted. He was shaking his head, as at a hopeless position in chess. "Pride's got nothin' to do wit' it, Bert. I'd go on my fuckin' knees ta save my son. But it's this crazy bind Gino put me in. He tol' Ponte I'm the one who's takin' back that union. So Messina thinks he's got a beef wit' me. He's gonna make nice while he thinks I'm fuckin' 'im? Or say I try ta set 'im straight, tell 'im it was Gino on his own—wha' does that accomplish? He thinks Gino's that ambitious, that much of a cowboy, he'll take 'im out for sure."
The Shirt looked at the ground and silently thanked God he had no children, thanked Him as well for the massive coronary that had cut the thread of his former life, freed him from its vicious logic and infernal circles of ambush and revenge. Without much conviction, he said, "There's gotta be some way."
"Bert." Vincente sighed. "I been thinkin' nonstop since yesterday. I ain't slept. I'm thinkin' So we make concessions, we give 'em back that union. Then I realize Shit, that does nothin', it's their union ta begin with. So then I figure, OK, we give up somethin' more. But wha' more do I have ta give away? On'y turf I can give away is Gino's—and the Fabrettis'd get alla that by clippin' 'im. The other capos—I can't give away what's theirs; sad truth, I don't have that kinda power. So then I tell myself Fuck it, get tough, fight. But Messina just stared down everybody by takin' out Carbone—he's gonna back down now?"
"Ya need a go-between," Bert blurted. "A peacemaker."
Vincente pulled up short at the suggestion. He'd expected a sympathetic ear but not advice. It took him a moment to disengage from his own tangled net of thought; then he said, "Yeah, Bert, that ain't a bad idea, but who the fuck is there? Looka my lieutenants. Sal Barzini: solid guy, but married to a niece of Emilio Carbone. Tony Matera: a hothead. Benny Spadino: I don't trust his loyalty—"
"Nah," said Bert, "'s'gotta be someone y'absolutely trust."
"Someone who knows how ta smooth things out, not make people nervous," Vincente added.
"A diplomat, like."
"A guy that everyone respects."
A small cloud crossed the sun; its shadow slipped over the yard and evened out the shade. The smell of chlorine seemed to grow sharper in the brief coolness. The old men looked away from each other. The same thought was pushing them both toward the same undodgeable conclusion, and neither wanted to presume to give it voice.
The cloud dragged its wispy tail behind it; full sunshine returned. Bert swiveled in his chair, cocked his head, and presented to Vincente a face that for all its ravages—the sagging chin, the wrinkled jowls, the droopy eyes—was full of readiness.
Vincente met his gaze, swallowed, and said, "Bert, nah, I couldn't ask ya."
"Ya didn't," said the Shirt, holding his prepared and willing posture.
"He might not even be alive," Vincente said.
"You're his father. Ya got a right ta know, at least."
Vincente looked away, chewed his lower lip. "I ain't used ta askin' anyone—"
Bert shushed him with a raised hand. The Godfather pushed some air out past his gums, then he reached up, removed his unraveling straw hat, and dropped it gently to the ground. Slowly he rose from his chair and held his arms out to his friend. Bert rose just as slowly; they brought their slack and skinny chests together and kissed each other on the cheek. "Bert," Vincente said, "I don't know how ta thank ya."
"Don't try," the old friend said.
He bent down gingerly, gathered up his brittle dog, and turned to go. There were certain imperatives that went with the decorum of the moment, and Bert and Vincente both knew what they were: There could be no further talk, no hesitation, no looking back.
The retired mobster walked resolutely around the swimming pool and across the yard, maintaining his dignity as best he could while slipping between the rainspout and the oleanders. It was not until he was crunching across the driveway that he realized he was terrified.
His fear did not have primarily to do with confronting Aldo Messina, though he knew that could be dangerous. People had tempers; you never knew when they might take offense. The rules, even back when the rules were obeyed, had been hazy when it came to messengers, ambassadors.
But Bert was frightened mainly because of something else. He was frightened with an old man's quiet panic at the thought of leaving home, venturing out of his routine, sallying through bustling and unfriendly places. Terminals with baffling signs and corridors long as the stroll between the ocean and the Gulf. Devious escalators with oily treads, trampling crowds moving murderously as tidal waves, felonious cabbies and traffic lights that didn't give you time enough to cross the icy street.
He was seventy-six years old, and he hadn't been to New York in a decade. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't been anywhere. He hadn't packed a suitcase, hadn't even looked at his ancient winter clothes hanging in their dusty and forgotten garment bags. Somewhere at the bottom of his closet, buried amid his late wife's undiscarded shoes, was a carpeted carrier for Don Giovanni; the thought of the befuddled dog cooped up inside it, whimpering and cold, caused the old man anguish.
But he'd as much as promised he was going, and he would go. He nestled his chihuahua more closely against his nervous stomach and walked slowly home to begin the daunting chore of making his arrangements.
32
In the windowless bathroom of number 308 at Key West's Gulfside Inn, Mark Sutton's ankle weights dangled from the shower-curtain rod like salamis in a deli window, his hand squeezers lay on a shelf beneath the medicine chest, and two of his extra-support jockstraps were draped over the faucet in the tub. A mildewed towel had been crumpled up to seal the crack below the door, and by a dim red light the avid young agent was printing the film he'd shot that morning. Exacting with his wooden tongs, he placed an eight-by-ten of Debbi Martini—on roller blades in the company of a known mafioso—in the basin of developer; the image congealed like cooling Jello. He washed it in fixer, then clipped it onto a wire to dry with the others.
When he emerged from his portable darkroom, he saw Ben Hawkins standing at the window in his jockey shorts, smoking a cigar and sourly contemplating the vista: a parking lot; a dreary procession of rented cars on U.S. 1; then, behind a sparse row of yellowing and scraggly palms, the shallow rocky water of the Gulf. "So wha'dya get?" he asked without much interest.
"Some good shots of the girl talking with d'Ambrosia," Sutton said. "Nice and sharp, even with the sun behind them."
Hawkins said nothing for a moment, just puffed on his cigar. He was bored. He had no stomach for grabbing Delgatto on RICO. Murder one, sure—
but he would have bet his pension that the break in the Carbone case would come from somewhere else, that his time in Key West was being totally wasted because of politics and bureaucratic waffling. And meanwhile he was partnered with this hyperactive righteous tyro.
"Mark," he said at last, "let me ask you something about those pictures. Is there such a thing as a card you wouldn't play—in the name, say, of mercy, or gallantry, or just wanting to see someone have a second chance?"
The agent with muscles didn't seem to understand the question. He came up on the balls of his feet and said, "Look, if she's violating her probation—"
"You an agent or a parole officer?" Hawkins asked.
"The information's there to be used," said Sutton. "It's in the computer. I don't see any reason not to—"
"Come on, Mark. She made a mistake. What's it got to do with Delgatto? With the Mob? What's it have to do with anything?"
"It's about leverage."
"Straight from the textbook, Agent Sutton. Very good."
Stung, the younger man flexed his fists and thought ungenerous thoughts about his partner's attitude. Was it the age thing or the black thing that made him so unambitious? "Look, we have a job to—"
"You think that girl's a menace to society?"
"Ben, she has a drug charge on her record. She's Gino Delgatto's girlfriend. She's a guest in the same house as the Godfather, for chrissake. She's supposed to have no contact with criminals, and she's with criminals all the time. If there's a way for us to use that—"
"Use it to what purpose?"
Mark Sutton, girded with the armor of blithe and youthful certainty, was sure he had an answer for that, but when he opened his mouth no words came out. He blamed it on Ben Hawkins's cigar smoke, which, he suddenly realized, was choking him. He longed for fresh air and for the unquestioning simplicities of his jockstraps and his ankle weights. "Ben," he said, "I don't see what you're on the rag about. I'm going for a run."
———
On the Verrazano Bridge, yesterday's snow was mixed with sand and coated with car exhaust. It had been plowed off toward the edges of the roadway, and it stood there in its gray crags and yellow valleys like a tiny range of sulfur hills.
At two-thirty the traffic on the outbound side was thickening up but still moving briskly, and Bo, taking his turn at the wheel of the dark blue Lincoln, was very pleased with himself.
"We're gonna be there nice and early," he said.
Pretty Boy yawned, put his feet up on the glove box. "Who gives a shit? I coulda slept another half an hour."
"Half an hour," said Bo, "the trucks woulda started, d'early part a rush hour; we woulda stood here gettin' aggravated."
"An' I don't see why we're flyin' outa fuckin' Newark."
"Ya look at a map," said Bo, as they drove under the second stanchion, "you'd be amazed: different state and all, 'sno farther thanna New York airports."
Pretty Boy didn't care to look at maps; he yawned again. He'd popped a few Halcion to defeat the benedrine so he could fall asleep. The small blue pills hadn't quite worn off, and he didn't want them to.
The geography-minded Bo went back to a previous line of reasoning. "An' dis half-hour thing? Makes a huge difference. Say we're drivin' straight tru. Dis half hour gets us tru Jersey before it's really da worst a rush hour. Rush hour, we're in Delaware, and Delaware, I don't think they got rush hour in Delaware. By da time we hit D.C., rush hour's—"
"Bo," pleaded Pretty Boy. "We ain't drivin' straight tru. So will ya shut up and drive?"
The scarfaced thug frowned at his partner, shrugged, and looked off at the coastline of Staten Island.
But now the handsome thug gave a bent, carnivorous smile. Something had occurred to him that cheered him up. "Dis time we're flyin', Bo. Ya know what that means, Bo? It means we ain't cartin' anybody back wit' us this time."
———
"What about I buy the dog a separate seat?" said Bert the Shirt. He was sitting in his cluttered living room at the Paradiso condo, reclining in his oxblood Barcalounger with the phone perched precariously on the arm.
"He'd still have to stay in the carrier," said the travel agent. "FAA regulations."
"The whole trip?"
"Mr. Ambrosia, Key West-Miami is forty-five minutes. Miami-New York is only two and a half hours."
"That's a long time to a dog," said Bert.
"A sleeping pill might be a good idea," the travel agent suggested.
Bert watched Don Giovanni lying white and rigid on his discolored dog bed in the middle of the discolored carpet. Abandoned squeak toys—a plastic hamburger, a hotdog with rubber mustard— were strewn under the glass-topped coffee table and against the skirt of the old brocaded couch. "This dog," he said, "ya give this dog a sleeping pill, he ain't ever wakin' up."
There was a grudging pause. It was a busy time of year for travel agents. "So shall I book the one ticket, the dog to go as cabin baggage?"
Bert just nodded. In his preoccupation he'd forgotten for the moment that he was on the phone, he had to talk. He squeezed out a yes, and the travel agent fired off a salvo of flight numbers, seat numbers, the terminal to transfer to, which airport bus to take. Bert took in none of it beyond the stark fact that he had to be at Key West airport at seven-thirty next morning.
He hung up the phone. His hand was unsteady and he wasn't really watching; the receiver bumped the base and the whole thing clattered to the carpet. Don Giovanni gave a convulsive quiver at the noise, glanced up at his master, and instantly absorbed Bert's debilitating dread. Standing up on its cushion, the dog did a couple of slow yet frantic pirouettes. It managed to lift a leg just slightly; the effort was like an old man's memory of when he had a jump shot. A single drop of urine dribbled out of the distracted creature.
The chihuahua stepped away and sniffed at the damp place as though the drop had fallen from the sky. Bert got up very slowly and walked stiffly to the bedroom to ferret out some winter clothes.
33
"Killing," said the Godfather. "Y'ask me what I wanna talk about tonight, I wanna talk about killing."
Arty Magnus spread his cheap blue notebook on his lap and hoped his Adam's apple hadn't jumped too much when he swallowed. He was trying his best to look unshockable. He used his front teeth to pull the cap off his ninety-nine-cent pen, pressed his bare shins against the side of the low metal patio table, and was ready to take notes on rubbing people out.
"Murder. 'Zat OK wit' you, Ahty?"
There was something goading, needling, in the way Vincente said it, and for the first time in a long time Arty felt like he was being tested. He had no idea why—though Joey Goldman had taken him aside when he'd arrived and warned him that it might be a difficult evening. Something was going on within the family, he'd said; the less the ghostwriter knew about the messy business, the better off he was. But Vincente was under a lot of strain. He needed care and he needed diversion. Would Arty stay for dinner? It might not be the cheeriest gathering, but Debbi was cooking sausage and peppers. . . .
"Murder," the Godfather repeated. His tone now was not cruel, exactly, but flat with an awful neutrality like that of a desert. "Ya get right down to it, ya cut tru alla bullshit, that's really what da thing hinges on. Murder. Not necessarily ya do it, but ya could do it, you're, like, capable. Ya wouldn't back away from it, an' everybody knows at."
He paused, reached slowly forward toward his glass of garnet wine. The mild air was very still; it had the sweetly tired smell of flowers closing for the night.
Arty said, "So it's the fear—"
Vincente licked his lips, then cut him off. The writer didn't understand the unaccustomed hardness in his voice.
" 'Course it's fear," the old man said. "World runs on fear, ain't ya noticed? But there's fear an'en there's fear. Say I'm gonna beat y'up. You're afraid, it ain't gonna be pleasant, but you'll heal; maybe sometime you'll get even. Say I'm gonna rob ya. You're scared, you're pissed off, but prob'ly you'll make back what I take.
"
"I kill ya—that's it, the end, it's over. The clock stops. No more chances, ever. Think about it, Ahty. That's fear. Ya kill someone, it'see on'y final act. Ya wanna talk about crime, it'see on'y crime that means a damn. Anything else is just a racket, a caper, pissin' around. A rough game, but a game— at most, a warning. Ya kill someone, that's really the on'y serious move, the on'y punishment."
The Godfather sipped wine, then Arty said, "And sometimes you have to punish." He didn't mean to say it; there was something in the mood that pulled it out of him. He heard the words as though someone else had spoken them; they sounded rude, insinuating, and he couldn't decide if they were more like conspiracy or accusation.
But if the ghostwriter was nervous that he'd overstepped, the Godfather didn't seem to notice. He simply nodded with the weary patience of a teacher who's taught the same lesson too many times. "Sometimes ya have ta judge," he said. "Sometimes ya have ta punish." He looked off to the west. Night was stretching toward the edge of the sky, darkness coming down like a sheet being pulled toward the last corner of a bed. After a moment the old man spoke again; the voice was gravelly and barely audible. "And sometimes, maybe a long time later, and maybe indirectly like, the punisher gets punished."
"Hm?" said Arty.
Vincente didn't answer. He reached for his wine, drank some, then pressed his knuckles against his mouth like he was holding something down. "Fuhget about it," he said at last. "I'm bein' a morbid pain innee ass tonight. Fuhget about it, Ahty. What say we try and find a little lighter subject?"
———
Crouched on the far side of the aralia hedge, armed with a long lens whose casing poked unseen between two knobby stems of the tropical weed, Mark Sutton had captured the meeting on infrared film.
When he walked back to the dark sedan where Ben Hawkins was waiting, he was almost shivering with righteousness and excitement. "That fucking liar," he said.
"Who?" asked Hawkins mildly.
"Magnus," said Sutton, settling into the passenger seat. "Friends with the son, my ass. Ben, he's sitting in there with Delgatto, just the two of them, heads together, sipping wine, talking like best friends. He's taking notes, for chrissake."
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