by Zev Chafets
Pietro’s meditations were interrupted by a rustle in the rear of the chapel. He turned and saw William Gordon, dressed in a somber black suit, walking toward his father. The old man looked up and saw Gordon approaching, and a look of amazement and rage mottled his face.
Gordon stopped briefly in front of the casket, mumbled something, and then approached the Don. This man has balls of brass, thought Pietro—either that or a serious death wish.
“Mr. Spadafore, I want to offer my condolences,” said Gordon, extending his hand. Spadafore ignored it, looking intently into his face but saying nothing. Gordon, misunderstanding, withdrew his hand. “I want to apologize, too, sir, for the other night. I don’t know what got into Flanagan to pull a stupid prank like that. I know that this isn’t the best time, but I just wanted to say that—”
“You … come … here?” Spadafore interrupted him in a voice choked by emotion into a soupy whisper. “You … come … here, to the body of my son, the son you have taken from me, to offer your sympathy?”
“Who, me?” Gordon exclaimed. He sounded so boyishly astonished that Pietro nearly laughed out loud. “You think I had something to do with Mario’s death?”
Spadafore turned to Sesti. “Get him away from me,” he commanded. Sesti took Gordon by the elbow, and began walking him quickly toward the door. On the steps of the funeral home Gordon pulled away.
“Carlo, what the hell is happening here?” he demanded. “You can’t really think that I—”
“Ah, but we do,” said Sesti. “In fact, we think precisely that.”
“You think that? Or just Spadafore?”
“You are very lucky,” said Sesti. “The period of mourning is sacred to Sicilians, otherwise you would have been killed just now.”
“Carlo, you didn’t answer my question. Do you honestly believe that I could possibly have had anything to do with Mario’s death?”
The consigliere shrugged. “What I believe is irrelevant. The point is that Mr. Spadafore believes it.”
“But why? What possible reason could I have?”
“Why don’t you ask your consigliere,” said Sesti.
For a moment, Gordon looked blank. “My consigliere? Who? You mean Flanagan? What the hell did he do now?”
“He threatened Mr. Spadafore, three days before the death of his son. I have a recording of that conversation.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Gordon. “Can I hear the tape?”
“You can go right now, with your life,” said Sesti.
“Carlo, you’ve got to talk to Spadafore, tell him that this is a ridiculous mistake. We’re reporters, Flanagan and I, not gangsters. We’ve been play-acting, that’s all. You’ve got to make Mr. Spadafore understand that.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have a rather difficult time convincing Mr. Spadafore that two of New York’s most distinguished journalists have been merely play-acting. And, Mr. Gordon, frankly I don’t believe it myself.”
“You mean, you actually think—”
“Yes, I think your Mr. Flanagan is capable of any sort of lunacy. In any event, as I’ve said, it isn’t important what I think. Good-bye, Mr. Gordon.”
“But, Carlo, what’s going to happen? I mean, how do we make a truce, or whatever?”
Sesti gave him a wintry smile. “You still haven’t understood, have you, Gordon? For a man like Luigi Spadafore, there is no possibility of declaring a truce with his son’s murderers.”
“Meaning what?” asked Gordon with a distinct tremor in his voice.
“I can do nothing for you,” said Sesti. “It is out of my hands now. Good-bye, Mr. Gordon.”
CHAPTER 16
Gordon drove back to Manhattan feeling numb. He had often wondered what it would be like to hear from the doctor that he had a terminal disease. Now he knew. Sesti’s message had been unmistakable—a death sentence had been passed on him. Gordon’s instincts told him there must be some process of appeal, but he didn’t know what it might be. Clearly Sesti was no longer an ally. He would have to find out what to do from someone who knew Spadafore’s world and its rules.
Gordon knew he couldn’t go home; there might be people waiting for him there right now. Flanagan would still be at the paper, but he wasn’t ready for Flanagan at the moment. He was too scared to be mad, but he realized that Flanagan was more of a problem than a solution.
Gordon pulled into a gas station near Chinatown and dialed his father’s number. The old man answered on the second ring: “Grossman.” The sound of his father’s gruff voice made Gordon feel safer than he had since leaving Brooklyn.
“Dad, it’s me,” he said.
“Yeah, right. You ain’t been around much, Velvel.”
“Listen, Dad, I’m in trouble. I need your help.”
There was a frightened tone in his son’s voice that Grossman had forgotten. The kid was such a hotshot, always calling from some foreign country, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, I’m fine,’ no matter where he was, and then, when he got home, the stories about the battlefields and the dictators. Grossman was supposed to be impressed, but he never was; his son was a spectator, a tourist to other people’s tsuris with a passport and credit cards.
“What kind of trouble? You knock up that les, or what?”
“Dad, can you meet me someplace? I mean right now?”
“I’m busy right now, boychik. You don’t call for what, two three weeks, and then you expect me to slide down a poll like a fireman and meet you? Forget it.”
“Dad, honest to God, I really need you.”
“Yeah, OK, it’s touching a boy needs his dad. I’m a sucker for sentiment. I’ll meet you at six, same place as last time. But don’t plan on wasting my evening, I got tickets to the Rangers-Bruins.”
“Thanks, Poppa,” said Gordon, and Grossman realized that his son had stopped calling him Poppa when he was seven years old.
Around noon, Flanagan got up from his computer and slipped into his jacket, walked down the long corridor leading out of the city room, and stuck his head into Corry Rosen’s office. “I’m going out to get some lunch,” he told the city editor. “I’ll be back in time to go over the Queens zoning thing.” Rosen nodded and waved. “Have a good time,” he said.
Flanagan took the elevator to the lobby and walked into the street, turning left on Forty-ninth and heading briskly toward Broadway. Mario’s murder puzzled him; maybe, he thought, the Spadafores are on the brink of a war with some other Family. If so, it could screw up his own plans. Flanagan decided to get in touch with Boatnay Threkeld after lunch, and to see what the cops knew about the hit on Mario.
Halfway up the block, Flanagan saw a tall man in a tan jacket. The man had a broken nose and a longish dirty-blond ducktail. It was the haircut that caught Flanagan’s attention; he hadn’t seen one like it since the fifties, in Brooklyn.
The man approached Flanagan. “Scuze me, mister, you got the time?” he asked in a Southern accent.
“Yeah,” said Flanagan, looking at his watch. “Twelve-fifteen.”
“Thanks.” Suddenly the man’s arm flashed and Flanagan felt a sharp pain in his stomach, just below his rib cage. “Shit!” he screamed, grabbing the wound and sinking to the sidewalk. He called for help, but he could barely hear his voice over the pounding in his ears. He lay in his own blood, looking up at the patch of blue sky between the tall buildings. It was a beautiful day. There were people in the offices above who didn’t know a thing about what was happening to him. Flanagan felt an overpowering rage. Goddamn it, I’m going to die, he thought. Right here on Forty-ninth Street.
The man with the beaky nose and the dirty-blond hair stood above him, and suddenly he was gone. Flanagan heard voices, and then he stopped hearing them.
Gordon called Jupiter. He had four hours to kill and he wanted to spend them with her. But she was out and her service said that she had left no message. Probably just as well, he thought; seeing Jupiter might make him even shakier.
He left his car in a parking g
arage near Chinatown and hailed a cab. He was afraid to hang around downtown, near Little Italy. The streets looked dirty and corrupt, like Saigon or Bangkok or Munich after dark. Gordon wanted to be around rich white Americans, people in tweed clothing with dogs on leashes. He told the driver to take him to the Providence Club, on Seventy-fourth off Madison.
Gordon had been a member of the Providence Club for close to twenty years; Cy Malkin put him up after his first Pulitzer. During his time abroad, he often stayed there during home leave, but since coming back to the city he had rarely used the place. Most of the members were journalists or television executives, and he found their smug certainties about the world to be silly and sometimes offensive. Once, soon after returning from Tehran, where he covered the overthrow of the Shah, he had met a senior editor from the Daily News in the reading room. “I saw your stuff from Iran,” the editor told him. “I think you went a little overboard on the Islamic fundamentalist angle. What the people over there really want is Coca-Cola and color television.” On another occasion, a syndicated columnist, full of vodka and Perrier, had assured him that African nations would never be able to develop modern economies. “No sense of technology,” he said. “The only things that blacks ever invented are the peanut and the zip gun.” Normally this kind of wisdom kept Gordon away from the Providence Club, but today he was anxious to be among members of his fraternity, safe on familiar ground.
At three, the dining room was empty, but there was a crowd at the bar in the wood-paneled saloon. Gordon joined a group of reporters, who greeted him with good-natured banter about the soft life he was living as a columnist. No one seemed surprised to see him. None of them had any idea of the life he had been living for the past few weeks, or that right now swarthy men with weapons under their topcoats were cruising the city looking for him. He wondered what they would do if a couple of hoods burst into the cozy room. Who would stand up for him, defend him? He looked at his colleagues and felt an inward chill. None of them would lift a finger. He was on his own. The only person he could count on was his father.
Gordon sat listening to the reporters brag and bullshit. Once, long ago, he had been flattered to be included in these sessions, and anxious to hold up his end with combat stories and rueful tales of memorable benders. He had seen something colorful and heroic in these men, insiders who knew the secrets of the world, intrepid witnesses to history. Now, listening to them drop the names of overrated Third World hotels—the Commodore and the Colony, Raffles and Mena House—they sounded to him like so many Midwestern tourists with stickers on their suitcases.
“I was in Cairo one time and this U.S. senator was supposed to check into the Sheraton,” said Wharton, a bibulous Texan with a red nose and walrus mustache. “So I gave the desk clerk a ten and told him to call when the guy arrived. One hour, two hours, I don’t hear anything, so I call him up. Anything happening, Mohammed? The senator get there yet? All of a sudden, Mohammed says, ‘Wait a minute,’ and leaves me on the phone. A few minutes later he comes back on and says the senator isn’t there yet. The next day I found out where Mohammed went.” He paused, allowing them to wonder. “Seems somebody just assassinated the prime minister of Jordan, Wasfi Tal, on the steps outside. He went out there to see what happened, but he didn’t bother to mention that. It wasn’t part of the deal.”
There were chuckles from the other reporters. They all had a headful of tales about the Mohammeds and Pedros and Shin Lis of the world. “Fuckin’ wogs,” said the Texan, savoring the story.
“Hey, Jack, you ever been to the Hobbit in Manila?” a man in a bow tie and suspenders asked the Texan. “What a place. Everybody’s a midget. Bartenders, band, waiters, even the bouncer—all midgets. One time I was over there, and we went over to the Hobbit, me and Harvey McKenzie and Gary Lauffer, from the AP. Anyway, we walk in and see all these midgets, and McKenzie goes over to the bar and says, ‘Double bourbon on the rocks, and go easy on the thalidomide.’ ” The reporters laughed. “Easy on the thalidomide,” the bow tie repeated, eyes dancing with mirth.
“Fuckin’ midgets,” said the Texan.
“Gordon, remember the time we were in, where was it, Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, must have been in Jerusalem because we were with Cy Vance, staying at the King David, I think, which has got to have the worst fucking room service in the world, nothing but cold little kosher sandwiches after midnight. Anyway, we’re in the bar and these two hookers come in, and Dave Gershenson from the Post takes one upstairs. So, about half an hour later, he comes down with this shit-eating grin on his face. Turns out the hooker’s got a stack of telex receipts she picked up from her sister, who works at the post office. Gershenson’s got one, made out for international telex charges, one hundred dollars. Remember that, Gordon? ‘I’ll take the whole thing off expenses,’ Gershenshon says. And, you know what? Three days later, he comes down with the clap. And you know what Artie Simms told him? He says, ‘That only proves that when it comes to pussy, you get what you pay for.’ ” The group roared once again.
“Fuckin’ Israelis,” said the Texan. “No offense, Gordon.”
“Yeah, right,” said Gordon. He looked around and saw Todd Dorfman rush into the room. “Hey, you guys, you hear what just happened?” he said. “John Flanagan got stabbed on Forty-ninth Street on the way to lunch.”
Gordon felt a freezing terror in the pit of his stomach. “Stabbed? What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I don’t have all the details, but apparently he was walking down Forty-ninth and someone tried to mug him. He’s in critical condition.”
“Is he going to make it?”
Dorfman shrugged. “They don’t know yet. He lost a lot of blood, they said. It’s on the radio.”
“Where is he?” asked Gordon, hoping no one could hear the panic in his voice. Dorfman shrugged again. “Didn’t say. Hey, Gordon, I’m really sorry.”
“What for, you didn’t stab him,” said Gordon. “I gotta get back to the paper.”
“This city’s a goddamn jungle,” said Warden. “It’s worse than Beirut. Fuckin’ New York.”
“Hey, speaking of Beirut, did I ever tell you about the time the Shi’ites tried to kidnap Cassie Rutherford, when she was with Reuters in Lebanon …?”
CHAPTER 17
Pietro Spadafore walked into the Palm Court of the Plaza a few minutes after one, and he was immediately warmed by the appraising gazes of several of the women waiting for tables. After his grim getaway scene with the old man, he needed female company and admiration; Debbie Hearns, a red-haired actress with long legs, an upturned nose and a way of listening with her lips slightly parted, would do nicely.
Pietro was pleased and a little excited to find her with Jupiter Evans. The two women had made a movie together the previous year, and Debbie sometimes spoke of her. Pietro couldn’t help contrasting Debbie’s pert, somewhat shallow beauty with Evans’s strong, sensual face and piercing eyes. He had heard that she was gay, but Pietro didn’t really believe that there was such a thing, any more than he believed in nymphomaniacs or ball busters. To him, each female was a unique fascination; unlike other men, Pietro never classified them.
“Peter, I have bad news and good news,” said Debbie with a smile. “The bad news is that I have to stand you up—my accountant has something urgent to go over with me, and it’s now or when he gets back from Jamaica two weeks from now. The good news is that Jupiter is my stand-in this afternoon.”
“That is, if you don’t mind,” Evans said in a low, melodious voice.
“Delighted,” said Pietro, meaning it. He had wanted to meet Jupiter Evans for a long time.
“Don’t be too delighted, Peter,” said Debbie Hearns. “I’ll call you later. Maybe we can get together tonight.”
“I’ve got something to do tonight,” said Pietro, keeping his eyes on Jupiter. “I’ll call you tomorrow. And good luck with the accountant.”
Pietro and Jupiter used Debbie Hearns as a conversational shoehorn, agreeing at more than
normal length that she was a delightful girl. Another man might have wondered if the two actresses were lovers, but Pietro knew they weren’t. His instincts about women were almost never wrong. He had once read about certain baseball players whose eyesight was so good that they could actually see the stitches on the ball on its way to the plate. That’s the way it was for Pietro with women; he saw and understood them in slow motion, as though they were larger than life.
For twenty minutes or so they kept the conversation light, chatting about new films and the sensational divorce of a local tycoon. As they spoke, Pietro watched Jupiter’s brown eyes soften, and her body lean involuntarily toward him across the table. It was time, he sensed, to lead things in a more personal direction.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” he said, speaking in an easy tone. “I feel nervous just sitting here with you. I’ve admired you for a long time.”
“Really? What have you seen?” she asked.
“It’s not the plays and movies, it’s you,” he said. “Sometimes I watch you act and I feel that you’re special, a person with a secret.”
Evans searched Pietro’s face for signs of stupidity. Only a very stupid man, or a very smart one, would say such a thing. She had been eager to meet Pietro Spadafore because Gordon had talked so much about his father; she thought it would be fun to surprise him with some inside information of her own. She had been expecting a Brooklyn hood, but Pietro, with his blue eyes and long lashes, soft skin and well-made sensitive hands, was anything but a greaser.
Jupiter followed Pietro’s lead, allowing the conversation to take on a more intimate tone, and she found him almost eerily attuned to her moods. When she came to a difficult subject, he opened the door for her with a graceful word, and then stood aside to allow her to enter. Unlike most men, who tried to impress her with their anecdotes and opinions, or attempted to play on her vanity, Pietro drew her out, made her want to reveal herself. She found herself wondering what it would feel like to lick the smooth skin of his neck, run her hands over his body. It was a sexy thought, and scary; for the first time in many years, Jupiter Evans truly wanted a man.
