by Mario Puzo
Pippi and Cross remained silent during all this. They were a little shaken by the governor’s intensity. Also, both understood Gronevelt was working to a purpose.
“You have to put all of that behind you,” Gronevelt said. “Don’t let this tragedy destroy your life.” His unctuousness would have irritated a saint.
The governor threw his baseball cap across the room and helped himself to another whiskey at the bar.
“I can’t forget,” he said. “I lie awake at night and dream about squeezing that little cocksucker’s eyes out of his head. I want to set him on fire, I want to cut off his hands and legs. And then I want him to be alive so I can do it again and again.” He smiled drunkenly at them, almost fell, they could see the yellow teeth and smell the decay in his mouth.
Wavven now seemed less drunk, his voice became quiet, he spoke almost conversationally. “Did you see how he stabbed her?” he asked. “He stabbed her through the eyes. The judge wouldn’t let the jury see the photos. Prejudicial. But I, her father, could see the photos. And so little Theo goes free, with that smirk on his face. He stabbed my daughter through the eyes but he gets up every morning and he sees the sun shining. Oh, I wish I could kill them all—the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, all of them.” He filled his glass and then walked around the room furiously, his speech a crazy ramble.
“I can’t go out there and bullshit about what I no longer believe. Not while the little bastard is alive. He sat at my dinner table, my wife and I treated him like a human being even though we disliked him. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. Never give anybody the benefit of the doubt. We took him into our home, gave him a bed to sleep in with our daughter and he was laughing at us all the time. He was saying, ‘Who gives a fuck if you’re the governor? Who gives a fuck if you have money? Who gives a fuck that you are civilized, decent human beings? I will kill your daughter whenever I like and there is nothing you can do. I’ll bring you all down. I’ll fuck your daughter, then I’ll kill her, and then I’ll stick it up your ass and go free.’ ” Wavven staggered and Cross quickly went to hold him. The governor looked up beyond Cross, to the high mural-decorated ceiling above, all pink angels and white-clad saints. “I want him dead,” the governor said and burst into tears. “I want him dead.”
Gronevelt said quietly, “Walter, it will all go away, give it time. File for senator. You have the best years of your life ahead of you, you can still do so much.”
Wavven shook himself away from Cross and said quite calmly to Gronevelt, “Don’t you see, I don’t believe in doing good anymore. I’m forbidden to tell anyone how I really feel, not even my wife. The hatred I feel. And I’ll tell you something else. The voting public has contempt for me, they perceive me as a weak fool. A man who lets his daughter get murdered, then can’t get him punished. Who would trust the welfare of the great state of Nevada to such a man?” He was sneering now. “That little fuck could get elected easier than me.” He paused for a moment. “Alfred, forget it. I’m not running for anything.”
Gronevelt was studying him carefully. He was catching something that Pippi and Cross did not. Passionate grief so often led to weakness, but Gronevelt decided to take the risk. He said, “Walter, will you run for senator if the man is punished? Will you be the man you were?”
The governor seemed not to understand. His eyes rolled slightly toward Pippi and Cross, then stared into Gronevelt’s face. Gronevelt said to Pippi and Cross, “Wait for me in my office.”
Pippi and Cross quickly left. Gronevelt and Governor Wavven were alone. Gronevelt said to him gravely, “Walter, you and I must be very direct for the first time in our lives. We’ve known each other twenty years, have you ever found me to be indiscreet? So answer. It will be safe. Will you run again if that boy is dead?”
The governor went to the bar and poured whiskey. But he did not drink. He smiled. “I’ll file the day after I go to that boy’s funeral to show my forgiveness,” he said. “My voters will love that.”
Gronevelt relaxed. It was done. Out of relief, he indulged his temper. “First, go see your dentist,” he told the governor. “You have to get those fucking teeth cleaned.”
Pippi and Cross were waiting for Gronevelt back in his penthouse office suite. He led them into his living quarters so that they could be more comfortable, then told them what had been said.
“The governor is okay?” Pippi asked.
“The governor was not as drunk as he pretended,” Grone-velt said. “He gave me the message without really implicating himself.”
“I’ll fly East tonight,” Pippi said. “This must get the Cleri-cuzio OK.”
“Tell them I think the governor is a man who can go all the way,” Gronevelt said. “To the very top. He would be an invaluable friend.”
“Giorgio and the Don will understand that,” Pippi said. “I just have to lay everything out and get the OK.”
Gronevelt looked at Cross and smiled, then he turned to Pippi. He said gently, “Pippi, I think it’s time Cross joined the Family. I think he should fly East with you.”
But Giorgio Clericuzio decided to come West to Vegas for the meeting. He wanted to be briefed by Gronevelt himself, and Gronevelt had not traveled for the last ten years.
Giorgio and his bodyguards were established in one of the Villas, though he was not a high roller. Gronevelt was a man who knew how to make exceptions. He had refused the Villas to powerful politicians, financial giants, to some of the most famous movie stars in Hollywood, to beautiful women who had slept with him, to close personal friends. Even Pippi De Lena. But he gave a Villa to Giorgio Clericuzio, though he knew Giorgio had spartan tastes and did not really appre-ciate extraordinary luxuries. Every mark of respect counted, mounted up, and one breach, no matter how tiny, could be remembered someday.
They met in Giorgio’s Villa. Gronevelt, Pippi, and Giorgio . . .
Gronevelt explained the situation. “The governor can be an enormous asset to the Family,” Gronevelt said. “If he pulls himself together, he may go all the way. First, senator, then the presidency. That happens and you have a good shot at getting sports gambling legalized all over the country. That will be worth billions to the Family and those billions will not be black money. It will be white money. I say it’s something we have to do.”
White money was far more valuable than black money. But Giorgio’s great asset was that he was never stampeded into rash decisions. “Does the governor know you are with us?”
“Not for sure,” Gronevelt said. “But he must have heard rumors. And he’s not a dummy. I’ve done some things for him that he knows I couldn’t do if I were alone. And he’s clever. All he said was that he would run for office if the kid were dead. He didn’t ask me to do anything. He’s a great con, he wasn’t that drunk when he broke down. I think he figured the whole thing out. He was sincere, but he was faking it too. He couldn’t figure out his revenge but he had the idea I could do something. He is suffering, but he’s also scheming.” He paused for a moment. “If we come through, he’ll run for sena-tor and he will be our senator.”
Giorgio prowled uneasily in the room, avoiding the statues on their pedestals, the curtained Jacuzzi whose marble seemed to shine through the fabric. He said to Gronevelt, “You promised him without our OK?”
“Yes,” Gronevelt said. “It was a matter of persuasion. I had to be positive to give him a sense that he still has power. That he could, still, cause things to happen, and so make power appeal to him again.”
Giorgio sighed. “I hate this part of the business,” he said.
Pippi smiled. Giorgio was so full of shit. He had helped wipe out the Santadio Family with a savageness that made the old Don proud.
“I think we need Pippi’s expertise on this,” Gronevelt said. “And I think it’s time for his son, Cross, to join the Family.”
Giorgio looked at Pippi. “Do you think Cross is ready?” he asked.
Pippi said, “He’s had all the gravy, it’s time for him to earn his living.”<
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“But will he do it?” Giorgio asked. “It’s a big step.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Pippi said. “He’ll do it.”
Giorgio turned toward Gronevelt. “We do it for the governor, then what if he forgets about us? We take the risk and it’s all for nothing. Here’s a man who is governor of Nevada, his daughter gets killed and he lies down. He has no balls.”
“He did do something, he came to me,” Gronevelt said. “You have to understand people like the governor. That took a lot of balls for him.”
“So he’ll come through?” Giorgio said.
“We’ll save him for the few big things,” Gronevelt said. “I’ve done business with him for twenty years. I guarantee he comes through if he’s handled right. He knows the score, he’s very smart.”
Giorgio said, “Pippi, it has to look like an accident. This will get a lot of heat. We want the governor to escape any innuendos from his enemies or the papers and that fucking TV.”
Gronevelt said, “Yes, it’s important that nothing can be implied about the governor.”
Giorgio said, “Maybe this is too tricky for Cross to make his bones on.”
“No, this is perfect for him,” Pippi said. And they could not object. Pippi was the commander in the field. He had proved himself in many operations of this kind, especially in the great war against the Santadio. He had often told the Clericuzio Family, “It’s my ass on the line, if I get stuck, I want it to be my fault, not somebody else’s.”
Giorgio clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s get it done. Alfred, how about a round of golf in the morning? Tomorrow night I go on business to L.A. and the day after I go back East. Pippi, let me know who you want from the Enclave to help, and tell me if Cross is in or out.”
And with that Pippi knew that Cross would never be admitted to the inside of the Clericuzio Family if he refused this operation.
Golf had become a passion for Pippi’s generation of the Cleri-cuzio Family; the old Don made malicious jokes that it was a game for Brugliones. Pippi and Cross were on the Xanadu course that afternoon. They didn’t use driving carts; Pippi wanted the exercise of walking and the solitude of the greens.
Just off the ninth hole there was an orchard of trees with a bench beneath. They sat there.
“I won’t live forever,” Pippi said. “And you have to make a living. The Collection Agency is a big moneymaker but tough to keep. You have to be in solid with the Clericuzio Family.” Pippi had prepared Cross, had sent him on some tough collecting missions where he had to use force and abuse, had exposed him to Family gossip; he knew the score. Pippi had waited patiently for the right situation, for a target that would not arouse sympathy.
Cross said quietly, “I understand.”
Pippi said, “That guy that killed the governor’s daughter. A punk prick and he gets away with it. That’s not right.”
Cross was amused by his father’s psychology. “And the governor is our friend,” he said.
“That’s right,” Pippi said. “Cross, you can say no, remem-ber that. But I want you to help me on a job I have to do.”
Cross looked down the rolling greens, the flags above the holes dead still in the desert air, the silvery mountain ranges beyond, the sky reflecting the neon signs of the Strip he could not see. He knew his life was about to change and he felt a moment of dread. “If I don’t like it I can always go to work for Gronevelt,” he said. But he let his hand rest on his father’s shoulder for a moment to let him know it was a joke.
Pippi grinned at him. “This job is for Gronevelt. You saw him with the governor. Well, we’re going to give him his wish. Gronevelt had to get the OK from Giorgio. And I said you would help me out.”
Far away on one of the greens, Cross could see a foursome of two women and two men shimmering cartoonlike in the desert sun. “I have to make my bones,” he said to his father. He knew he had to agree or live a completely different life. And he loved the life he led, working for his father, hanging out at the Xanadu, the direction of Gronevelt, the beautiful showgirls, the easy money, the sense of power. And once he did so he should never be subject to the fates of ordinary men.
“I’ll do all the planning,” Pippi said. “I’ll be with you all the way. There’s no danger. But you have to be the shooter.”
Cross rose from the bench. He could see the flags on the seven Villas flapping, though there was no breeze on the golf course. For the first time in his young life he felt the ache of a world that was to be lost. “I’m with you,” he said.
In the three weeks that followed, Pippi gave Cross an indoctrination. He explained that they were waiting for a surveillance team report on Theo, his movements, his habits, recent photos. Also, an operations team of six men from the Enclave in New York were moving into place in Los Angeles where Theo was still living. The whole operation plan would be based on the report of the surveillance team. Then Pippi lectured Cross on the philosophy.
“This is a business,” he said. “You take all the precautions to prevent the downside. Anybody can knock somebody off. The trick is never to get caught. That is the sin. And never think of the personalities involved. When the head of General Motors throws fifty thousand people out of work, that’s business. He can’t help wrecking their lives, he has to do it. Cigarettes kill thousands of people, but what can you do? People want to smoke and you can’t ban a business that generates billions of dollars. Same with guns, everybody has a gun, everybody kills everybody, but it’s a billion-dollar industry, you can’t get rid of it. What can you do? People must earn a living, that comes first. All the time. You don’t believe that, go live in the shit.”
The Clericuzio Family was very strict, Pippi told Cross. “You have to get their OK. You can’t go around killing people because they spit on your shoe. The Family has to be with you because they can make you jailproof.”
Cross listened. He only asked one question. “Giorgio wants it to look like an accident? How do we do that?”
Pippi laughed. “Never let anybody tell you how to run your operation. They can go fuck themselves. They tell me their maximum expectations. I do what is best for me. And the best is to be simple. Very, very simple. And when you have to get fancy, get very, very fancy.”
When the surveillance reports came, Pippi made Cross study all the data. There were some photos of Theo, photos of his car showing its license plates. A map of the road he traveled from Brentwood up to Oxnard to visit a girlfriend. Cross said to his father, “He can still get a girlfriend?”
“You don’t know women,” Pippi said. “If they like you, you can piss in the sink. If they don’t like you, you can make them the Queen of England and they’ll shit on you.”
Pippi flew into L.A. to set up his operations team. He came back two days later and told Cross, “Tomorrow night.”
The next day, before dawn, to escape the heat of the desert, they drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Driving across the desert, Pippi told Cross to relax. Cross was mesmerized by the glorious sunrise that seemed to melt the desert sand into a deep river of gold lapping at the foot of the distant Sierra Nevadas. He felt anxious. He wanted to get the job done.
They arrived in a Family house in the Pacific Palisades where the six-man crew from the Bronx Enclave was awaiting them. In the driveway was a stolen car that had been repainted and had false license plates. Also at the house were the untraceable guns that were to be used.
Cross was surprised at the luxuriousness of the house. It had a beautiful view of the ocean across the highway, a swimming pool, and a huge sundeck. It also had six bedrooms. The men seemed to know Pippi well. But they were not introduced to Cross nor he to them.
They had eleven hours to kill before the operation started at midnight. The other men, ignoring a huge TV set, started a card game on the sundeck; they were all in bathing suits. Pippi smiled at Cross and said, “Shit, I forgot about the swimming pool.”
“That’s OK,” Cross said. “We can go swimming in our shorts.” The house wa
s secluded, shielded by enormous trees and an encircling hedge.
“We can go bare-assed,” Pippi said. “Nobody can see except the helicopters and they’ll be looking at all the broads sunbathing outside their Malibu houses.”
Both of them swam and sunbathed for a few hours and then ate a meal prepared by one of the six-man crew. The meal was steak, cooked on the sundeck grill, and a salad of arugula and lettuce. The other men drank red wine with their food, but Cross had a club soda. He noticed that all the men ate and drank sparingly.
After the meal, Pippi took Cross on a reconnaissance in the stolen car. They drove to the western-style restaurant and coffee shop farther down the Pacific Coast Highway where they would find Theo. The surveillance reports showed that on Wednesday nights Theo, on his way to Oxnard, had made a habit of stopping at the Pacific Coast Highway Restaurant at around midnight for coffee and ham and eggs. That he would leave about one in the morning. That night a surveillance team of two men would be tailing him and would report by telephone when he was on the way.
Back at the house Pippi rebriefed the men on the operation. The six men would have three cars. One car would precede them, another would bring up the rear, the third car would park in the restaurant lot and be prepared for any emergency.
Cross and Pippi sat on the sundeck waiting for the phone call. There were five cars in the driveway, all black, shining in the moonlight like bugs. The six men from the Enclave continued their card game, playing with silver coins: nickels, dimes, and quarters. Finally at eleven-thirty the phone call came: Theo was on his way from Brentwood to the restaurant. The six men got in three cars and drove away to take up their appointed posts. Pippi and Cross got into the stolen car and waited another fifteen minutes before they left. Cross had in the pocket of his jacket a small .22 pistol, which, though it had no silencer, only gave off a sharp little pop; Pippi carried a Glock that would make a loud report. Ever since his only arrest for murder, Pippi always refused to carry a silencer.