by Mario Puzo
Pippi drove. The operation had been planned in the most specific detail. No member of the operations team was to go into the restaurant. Detectives would question the help about all the customers. The surveillance team had reported what Theo was wearing, the car he was driving, the license plates. They were lucky that Theo’s car was a flaming red and that it was a cheap Ford, easily identifiable in an area where Mercedeses and Porsches were commonplace.
When Pippi and Cross arrived in the parking lot of the restaurant, they could see Theo’s car was already there. Pippi parked next to it. Then he turned off the car lights and ignition and sat in the darkness. Across the Pacific Coast Highway they saw the ocean shimmering, parted with streaks of gold that were the moonlight. They saw one of their team cars parked on the far side of the lot. They knew their other two teams were at their stations on the highway waiting to shepherd them back to the house, ready to cut off any pursuers and intercept any problems before them.
Cross looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. They had to wait another fifteen minutes. Suddenly Pippi hit his shoulder. “He’s early,” Pippi said. “Go!”
Cross saw the figure emerging from the restaurant, caught in the glow of the door lights. He was struck by the boyishness of the figure, slight and short, a shock of curly hair above the pale, thin face. Theo looked too frail to be a murderer.
Then they were surprised. Theo, instead of going to his car, walked across the Pacific Coast Highway, dodging traffic. On the other side, he strolled out onto the open beach to the very edge, daring the waves. He stood there gazing at the ocean, the yellow moon setting on the horizon so far away. Then he turned and came back across the highway and into the parking lot. He had let the waves reach him, and there was the squish of water in his fashionable boots.
Cross slowly got out of the car. Theo was almost on him. Cross waited for Theo to go past, then smiled politely to let Theo get into his car. When Theo was inside, Cross drew the gun. Theo, about to put his key into the ignition, his car window down, raised his eyes, aware of the shadow. At the moment Cross fired, they looked into each other’s eyes. Theo was frozen as the bullet smashed into his face, which instantly became a mask of blood, the eyes staring out. Cross yanked open the door and fired two more bullets into the top of Theo’s head. Blood sprayed into his face. Then he threw a pouch of drugs on the floor of Theo’s car. He slammed the door shut. Pippi had started up the motor of his car just as Cross fired. Now he opened the car door, and Cross hopped in. According to plan he had not dropped the pistol. That would have made it look like a planned hit instead of a drug deal gone sour.
Pippi drove out of the lot, and their cover car pulled out behind them. The two lead cars swung into position, and five minutes later they were back at the Family house. Ten minutes after that, Pippi and Cross were in Pippi’s car heading toward Vegas. The operations team would get rid of the stolen car and the gun.
When they drove past the restaurant there were no signs of police activity. Obviously Theo was still undiscovered. Pippi turned the car radio on and listened to the news broadcasts. There was nothing. “Perfect,” Pippi said. “When you plan right, it always goes perfect.”
They arrived in Las Vegas as the sun was coming up, the desert a sullen red sea. Cross never forgot that ride through the desert, through the darkness, through the moonlight that never seemed to end. And then the sun coming up and then, a little later, the neon lights of the Vegas strip shining like a beacon heralding safety, the awakening from a nightmare. Vegas was never dark.
At almost that exact moment, Theo was discovered, his face ghostly in a paler dawn. Publicity centered on the fact that Theo was in possession of half a million dollars worth of cocaine. It was obviously a drug deal gone sour. The governor was in the clear.
Cross observed many things from this event. That the drugs he had planted on Theo cost no more than ten thousand dollars, although the authorities had placed the value at half a million; that the governor was praised for the fact that he sent condolences to Theo’s family; that in a week the media never referred to the matter again.
Pippi and Cross were summoned East for an audience with Giorgio. Giorgio commended them both for an intelligent and well-executed operation, making no mention of the fact that it was supposed to look like an accident. And Cross was aware on this visit that the Clericuzio Family treated him with the respect due the Family Hammer. The primary evidence of this was that Cross was given a percentage of the income of the gambling books, legal and illegal, in Las Vegas. It was understood that he was now an official member of the Clericuzio Family, to be called to duty on special occasions with bonuses calculated on the risk of the project.
Gronevelt, too, had his reward. After Walter Wavven was elected senator, he took a weekend retreat at the Xanadu. Gronevelt gave him a Villa and went to congratulate him on his victory.
Senator Wavven was back in his old form. He was gambling and winning, he had little dinners with the showgirls of the Xanadu. He seemed completely recovered. He made only one reference to his earlier crisis. He said to Gronevelt, “Alfred, you have a blank check with me.”
Gronevelt said, smiling, “No man can afford to carry blank checks in his wallet, but thank you.”
He didn’t want checks that paid off all the senator’s debt. He wanted a long, continuing friendship, one that would never end.
In the next five years, Cross became an expert on gambling and running a casino hotel. He served as an assistant to Gronevelt, though his primary job was still working with his father, Pippi, not only in running the Collection Agency, which he was now certified to inherit, but also as the number two Hammer for the Clericuzio Family.
By the age of twenty-five, Cross was known in the Clericuzio Family as the Little Hammer. He himself found it curious that he was so cold about his work. His targets were never people he knew. They were lumps of flesh enclosed in defenseless skin; the skeleton beneath gave them the outline of wild animals he had hunted with his father when he was a boy. He did fear the risk but only cerebrally; there was no physical anxiety. There were moments in his life’s repose, sometimes when he awoke in the morning with a vague terror as if he had some terrible nightmare. Then there were times when he was depressed, when he called up the memory of his sister and his mother, little scenes from childhood and some visits after the breakup of the family.
He remembered his mother’s cheek, her flesh so warm, her satin skin so porous that he imagined he could hear the blood flow underneath, contained, safe. But in his dreams the skin crumbled like ash, blood washing over the obscene breaks into scarlet waterfalls.
Which triggered other memories. When his mother kissed him with cold lips, her arms embracing him for tiny moments of politeness. She never held his hand as she did Claudia’s. The times he visited and left her house short of breath, his chest burning as if bruised. He never felt her loss in the pres-ent, he only felt her lost in his past.
When he thought of his sister, Claudia, he did not feel this loss. Their past together existed and she was still part of his life, though not enough. He remembered how they used to fight in the winter. They kept their fists in their overcoat pockets and swung at each other. A harmless duel. All was as it should be, Cross thought, except that sometimes he missed his mother and his sister. Still, he was happy with his father and the Clericuzio Family.
So in his twenty-fifth year Cross became involved in his final operation as a Hammer of the Family. The target was someone he had known all his life. . . .
A vast FBI probe destroyed many of the titular Barons, some true Brugliones, across the country, and among them was Virginio Ballazzo, now the ruler of the largest Family on the Eastern Seaboard.
Virginio Ballazzo was a Baron of the Clericuzio Family for over twenty years and had been dutiful in wetting the Cleri-cuzio beak. In return the Clericuzio made him rich; at the time of his fall, Ballazzo was worth over $50 million. He and his family lived in very good style indeed. And yet the unforeseen ha
ppened. Virginio Ballazzo, despite his debt, betrayed those who had raised him so high. He broke the law of omertà, the code that forbade giving any information to the authorities.
One of the charges against him was murder, but it was not so much fear of imprisonment that made him turn traitor; after all, New York had no death penalty. And no matter how long his penalty, if indeed he was convicted, the Clericuzio would get him out in ten years, would ensure that even those ten years would be easy time. He knew the repertoire. At his trial, witnesses would perjure themselves in his behalf, jurors could be approached with bribes. Even after he had served a few years, a new case would be prepared, presenting new evidence, showing that he was innocent. There was one famous case in which the Clericuzio had done such a thing after one of their clients had served five years. The man had gotten out and the state had presented him with over a million dollars as reparation for his “false” imprisonment.
No, Ballazzo had no fear of prison. What made him turn traitor was that the Federal Government threatened to seize all his worldly goods under the RICO laws passed by Congress to crush crime. Ballazzo could not bear that he and his children would lose their palatial home in New Jersey, the luxurious condo in Florida, the horse farm in Kentucky that had produced three also-rans in the Kentucky Derby. For the infamous RICO laws permitted the government to seize all worldly goods of those arrested for criminal conspiracy. The stocks and bonds, the antique cars might be taken. Don Cleri-cuzio himself had been angered by the RICO laws, but his only comment was “the rich will rue this thing, the day will come when they will arrest the whole of Wall Street under this RICO law.”
It was not luck but foresight that the Clericuzio had removed their old friend Ballazzo from its confidence in the last few years. He had become too flashy for their tastes. The New York Times had run a story on his collection of antique cars, Virginio Ballazzo at the wheel of a 1935 Rolls-Royce, a debonair visored cap on his head. Virginio Ballazzo, on the TV at the running of the Kentucky Derby, riding crop in hand, talked about the beauty of the sport of kings. There he was identified as a wealthy importer of rugs. All this was too much for the Clericuzio Family, they became wary of him.
When Virginio Ballazzo opened discussions with the United States District Attorney, it was Ballazzo’s lawyer who informed the Clericuzio family. The Don, who was semi-retired, immediately took charge from his son Giorgio. This was a situation that required a Sicilian hand.
A Family conference was held: Don Clericuzio; his three sons, Giorgio, Vincent, and Petie; and Pippi De Lena. It was true that Ballazzo could damage the Family structure, but only the lower levels would suffer greatly. The traitor could give valuable information but no legal proof. Giorgio suggested that if worse came to worst, they could always set up headquarters in a foreign country, but the Don dismissed this angrily. Where else could they live but in America? America had made them rich, America was the most powerful country in the world and protected its rich. The Don often quoted the saying, “Rather a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished,” then added, “What a beautiful country.” The trouble was that everyone got soft because of such good living. In Sicily Ballazzo would never have dared become a traitor, would never even have dreamed of breaking the law of omertà. His own sons would have killed him.
“I’m too old to live in a foreign country,” the Don said. “I will not be driven from my home by a traitor.”
A small problem in and of himself, Virginio Ballazzo was a symptom, an infection. There were many more like him, who did not abide by the old laws that had made them all strong. There was a Family Bruglione in Louisiana, another in Chicago, and another in Tampa, who flaunted their wealth, who showed off their power for all the world to see. And then these cafoni when they were caught sought to escape the punishment they had earned by their own carelessness. By breaking the law of omertà. By betraying their fellows. This rot must be eradicated. That was the Don’s position. But now he would listen to the others; after all, he was old, perhaps there were other solutions.
Giorgio outlined what was happening. Ballazzo was bargaining with the government attorneys. He would willingly go to jail if the government promised not to invoke the RICO laws, if his wife and children could keep his fortune. And of course he was bargaining not to go to jail, for that he would have to testify in court against the people he betrayed. He and his wife would be placed in a Witness Protection Program and would live the rest of their lives under false identities. Some plastic surgery would be performed. And his children would live the rest of their lives in respectable comfort. That was the deal.
Ballazzo, whatever his faults, was a doting father, they all agreed. He had three well-brought-up children. One son was graduating from the Harvard School of Business, the daughter, Ceil, had a fancy cosmetics store on Fifth Avenue, another son did computer work in the space program. They were all deserving of their good fortunes. They were true Americans and lived the American dream.
“So,” the old Don said, “we will send a message to Virginio that will make sense to him. He can inform on everyone else. He can send them all to jail or to the bottom of the ocean. But if he speaks one word about the Clericuzio, his children are forfeit.”
Pippi De Lena said, “Threats don’t seem to scare anybody anymore.”
“The threat will be from me personally,” Don Domenico said. “He will believe me. Promise him nothing for himself. He understands.”
It was Vincent who spoke up then. “We’ll never be able to get near him once he’s in the Protection Program.”
The Don spoke to Pippi De Lena. “And you, Martèllo of mine, what do you say to that?”
Pippi De Lena shrugged. “After he testifies, after they hide him away in the Protection Program, sure we can. But there will be a lot of heat, a lot of publicity. Is it worth it? Does it change anything?”
The Don said, “The publicity, the heat, is what makes it worth doing. We will send the world our message. In fact when it is done it should be done a bella figura.”
Giorgio said, “We could just let events take their course. No matter what Ballazzo says, it can’t bury us. Pop, your answer is a short-term answer.”
The Don pondered that. “What you say is true. But is there a long-term answer to anything? Life is full of doubts, of short-term answers. And you doubt that punishment will stop those others who will be trapped? It may or may not. It will certainly stop some. God himself could not create a world without punishment. I will talk personally to Ballazzo’s lawyer. He will understand me. He will give the message. And Ballazzo will believe it.” He paused for a moment and then sighed. “After the trials, we will do the job.”
“And his wife?” Giorgio asked.
“A good woman,” the Don said. “But she has become too American. We cannot leave a bereaved widow to shout her grief and secrets.”
Petie spoke for the first time. “And Virginio’s children?” Petie was the true assassin.
“Not if it’s not necessary. We are not monsters,” Don Domenico said. “And Ballazzo never told the children his business. He wanted the world to believe that he was a horse rider. So let him ride his horses at the bottom of the ocean.” They were all silent. Then the Don said sadly, “Let the little ones go. After all, we live in a country where children do not avenge their parents.”
The following day the message was transmitted to Virginio Ballazzo by his lawyer. In all these messages, the language was flowery. When the Don spoke to the lawyer he expressed his hope that his old friend Virginio Ballazzo had only the fondest memories of the Clericuzio, who would always look out for their unfortunate friend’s interests. The Don told the lawyer that Ballazzo should never fear for his children where danger lurked, even on Fifth Avenue, but that the Don himself would guarantee their safety. He, the Don, knew how highly Ballazzo prized his children; that jail, the electric chair, the devils in hell, could not frighten his brave friend, only the specter of harm to his children. “Tell him,” the
Don said to the lawyer, “that I, personally, I, Don Domenico Clericuzio, guarantee that no misfortune will befall them.”
The lawyer delivered this message word for word to his client, who responded as follows. “Tell my friend, my dearest friend, who grew up with my father in Sicily, that I rely on his guarantees with utmost gratitude. Tell him I have only the fondest memories of all the Clericuzio, so profound that I cannot even speak of them. I kiss his hand.”
Then Ballazzo sang, “Tra la la . . .” at his lawyer. “I think we better go over our testimony very carefully,” he said. “We do not want to involve my good friend. . . .”
“Yes,” the lawyer said, as he reported later to the Don.
Everything proceeded according to plan. Virginio Ballazzo broke omertà and testified, sending numerous underlings to jail and even implicating a deputy mayor of New York. But not a word of the Clericuzio. Then the Ballazzos, man and wife, disappeared into the Witness Protection Program.
The newspapers and TV were jubilant, the mighty Mafia had been broken. There were hundreds of photos, live TV action shots of these villains being hauled off to prison. Ballazzo took up the whole centerfold of the Daily News, TOP MAFIA DON FALLS. It showed him with his antique cars, his Kentucky Derby horses, his impressive London wardrobe. It was an orgy.
When the Don gave Pippi the assignment of tracking down the Ballazzo couple and punishing them, he said, “Do it in such a way that it will get the same publicity as they are getting now. We don’t want them to forget our Virginio.” But it was to take the Hammer more than a year to complete this assignment.