by Mario Puzo
“So Grandson,” he said to Dante, “how would you solve this problem?”
“Send him swimming to the bottom of the ocean,” Dante said, and the Don smiled at him.
“And you, Croccifixio? How would you solve this situation?” the Don asked.
“I’d just accept it,” Cross said. “I’d learn from it. I just got outfoxed because I didn’t believe they’d have the balls.”
“Petie and Vincent?” the Don asked.
But they refused to answer. They knew the game he was playing.
“You can’t just ignore it,” the Don said to Cross. “You will be known for a fool and men all over the world will refuse you any respect.”
Cross was taking the Don seriously. “Eli Marrion’s house still holds his paintings and they’re worth about twenty or thirty million. We could hijack them and hold them for ransom.”
“No,” the Don said. “That would expose you, reveal your power, and no matter how delicately handled, could lead to danger. It is too complicated. David, what would you do?”
David puffed on his cigar, thoughtfully. He said, “Buy the Studio. Do a civilized businesslike thing. With our banks and communications companies, buy LoddStone.”
Cross was incredulous. “LoddStone is the oldest and richest film studio in the world. Even if you could put up the ten billion, they wouldn’t sell it to you. That’s simply not possible.”
Petie said in his joker’s voice, “David my old buddy, you can get your mitts on ten billion? The man whose life I saved? The man who said he could never repay me?”
Redfellow waved him away. “You don’t understand how big money works. It’s like whipped cream, you get a small amount and whip it up into a big froth with bonds, loans, stock shares. Money is not the problem.”
Cross said, “The problem is how to get Bantz out of the way. He controls the Studio and whatever his faults, he is loyal to Marrion’s wishes. He would never agree to selling the Studio.”
“I’ll go out there and give him a kiss,” Petie said.
Now the Don made his decision. He said to Redfellow, “Carry out your plan. Get it done. But with all caution. Pippi and Croccifixio will be at your command.”
“One more thing,” Giorgio said to Redfellow. “Bobby Bantz, by the terms of Eli Marrion’s will, has total command over the Studio for the next five years. But Marrion’s son and daughter have more stock in the company than Bantz. Bantz can’t get fired but if the Studio is sold, the new owners will have to pay him off. So that’s the problem you have to solve.”
David Redfellow smiled and puffed on his cigar. “Just like the old days. Don Clericuzio, the only help I need is yours. Some of those banks in Italy may be reluctant to gamble on such a venture. Remember, we will have to pay a big premium over the actual worth of the Studio.”
“Don’t worry,” the Don said. “I have a lot of money in those banks.”
Pippi De Lena had watched all this with a wary eye. What disturbed him was the openness of this meeting. By procedure only the Don, Giorgio, and David Redfellow should have been present. Pippi and Cross could have been given orders separately to help Redfellow. Why had they been let in on these secrets? Even more important, why were Dante, Petie, and Vincent brought into the circle? All this was not like the Don Clericuzio he knew, who always kept his plans as secret as possible.
Vincent and Rose Marie were helping the Don up the stairs to go to bed. He had stubbornly refused to have a lift chair installed on the railings.
As soon as they were out of sight, Dante turned to Giorgio and said furiously, “And who gets the Studio when we own it? Cross?”
David Redfellow interrupted coolly. “I will own the Studio. I will run it. Your grandfather will have a financial interest. This will be documented.”
Giorgio agreed.
Cross said laughing, “Dante, neither one of us can run a movie studio. We’re not ruthless enough.”
Pippi studied all of them. He was good at scenting danger. That’s why he had lived so long. But this he couldn’t figure out. Maybe the Don was just getting old.
Petie drove Redfellow back to Kennedy Airport where his private jet waited. Cross and Pippi had used a chartered jet from Vegas. Don Clericuzio absolutely forbade the owning of a jet by the Xanadu or any of his enterprises.
Cross drove their rented car to the airport. During the drive, Pippi said to Cross, “I’m going to spend some time in New York City. I’ll just keep the car when we get to the airport.”
Cross saw that his father was worried. “I didn’t do well in there,” he said.
“You were OK,” Pippi said. “But the Don was right. You can’t let anybody screw you twice.”
When they arrived at Kennedy, Cross got out and Pippi slid across the seat to get behind the wheel. Through the open window, they shook hands. In that moment Pippi looked up at his son’s handsome face and felt an enormous wave of affection. He tried to smile as he slapped Cross gently on the cheek and said, “Be careful.”
“Of what?” Cross asked, his dark eyes searching his father’s.
“Everything,” Pippi said. Then, startling Cross, he said, “Maybe I should have let you go with your mother but I was selfish. I needed you around.”
Cross watched his father drive away and for the first time he realized how much his father worried about him, how much his father loved him.
CHAPTER 15
MUCH TO HIS own dismay, Pippi De Lena decided to get married, not for love but for companionship. True, he had Cross, he had the cronies at the Xanadu Hotel, he had the Clericuzio Family and a vast network of relatives. True, he had three mistresses and he ate with good and sincere appetite; he enjoyed his golf and was down to a ten handicap, and he still loved to dance. But as the Don would say, he could go dancing to his coffin.
So in his late fifties, robust in health, sanguine in temperament, rich, semiretired, he longed for a settled home life and perhaps a new batch of kids. Why not? The idea appealed to him more and more. Surprisingly, he yearned to be a father again. It would be fun to raise a daughter, he had loved Claudia as a child, though they no longer spoke. She had been so cunning and so forthright at the same time, and she had made her way in the world as a successful screenplay writer. And who knows, maybe someday they would make up. In some ways she was as stubborn as he was, so he under-stood her and he admired the way she stood up for what she believed in.
Cross had lost the gamble he had taken in the movie business, but one way or another his future was assured. He still had the Xanadu and the Don would help him recover from the risk he had taken with his new venture. He was a good kid, but he was young and the young must take risks. That’s what life was all about.
After dropping off Cross at the airport, Pippi drove to New York City to spend a few days with his East Coast mistress. She was a good-looking brunette, a legal secretary with a sharp New York wit, and a great dancer. True, she had a tongue that lashed out, she loved to spend money, she would be an expensive wife. But she was too old, over forty-five. And she was too independent, a great quality for a mistress but not for the kind of marriage that Pippi would demand.
It was a pleasurable weekend with her, though she spent half the Sunday reading the Times. They ate in the finest restaurants, went dancing in the nightclubs, and had great sex in her apartment. But Pippi needed something more placid.
Pippi flew to Chicago. His mistress there was the sexual equivalent of that brawling city. She drank a little too much, she partied too exuberantly, she was happy-go-lucky and a lot of fun. But she was a little lazy, a little too messy, Pippi liked a clean home. Again, she was too old to start a family, at least forty, she said. But what the hell. Was he up to running around with a really young broad? After two days in Chicago, Pippi crossed her off the list.
With both, he would have a problem settling them in Vegas. They were big-city women, and Vegas, Pippi knew in his heart, was really a hick cow town where casinos took the place of cattle. And there was no
way that Pippi would live in any place but Vegas, for in Vegas nighttime did not exist. Electric neon banished all ghosts, the city shone like a rosy diamond in the desert at night, and after dawn the hot sun burned away all the wraiths that had escaped the neon.
His best shot was his mistress in Los Angeles, and Pippi was pleased that he had geographically positioned them so neatly. There could be no accidental confrontations, no mental struggles in choosing between them. They served a certain purpose and they could not interfere with any temporary love affairs. Indeed, looking back, he was pleased at how he had conducted his life. Daring but prudent, brave but not foolhardy, loyal to the Family and rewarded by them. His only mistake had been in marrying a woman like Nalene, and even there, what woman could have given him more happiness for eleven years. And what man could boast of having made only one mistake in his lifetime? What was it the Don always said, It was OK to make mistakes in life as long as it was not a fatal mistake.
He decided to go directly to L.A. and not stop in Vegas. He called to notify Michelle that he was on his way and refused her offer to pick him up at the airport. “Just be ready for me when I get there,” he told her. “I’ve been missing you. And I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Michelle was young enough, thirty-two, and she was more tender, more giving, more easy on the nerves, maybe because she had been born and raised in California. She was also good in bed, not that the others were not, for this was a primary qualification for Pippi. But she had no sharp edges, she wouldn’t be trouble. She was a little kooky, she believed in New Age crap called channeling and being able to talk to spirits, and talked about all the past lives she had lived, but she could also be fun. Like many California beauties, she had dreamed of being an actress, but that had been knocked out of her head. She was completely wrapped up in yoga and channeling now, in physical health, running and going to the gym. And besides, she always complimented Pippi on his karma. For of course none of these women knew his true vocation. He was simply an administrative officer of the hotel association in Vegas.
Yes, with Michelle, he could stay in Vegas, they could keep an apartment in L.A. and when they got bored they could make the forty-minute flight to L.A. for a couple of weeks. And maybe to keep her busy, he would buy her a gift shop in the Hotel Xanadu. It could really work out. But what if she said no?
Something struck his memory: Nalene reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears when the children were small. He was just like Goldilocks. The New York woman was too hard, the Chicago woman was too soft, and the L.A. woman was just right. The thought gave him pleasure. Of course, in real life nothing was “just right.”
When he deplaned in L.A., he breathed in the balmy air of California, not even noticing the smog. He rented a car and drove first to Rodeo Drive, he loved to bring his women little gifts as a surprise and enjoyed walking down the street of fancy shops that held the luxuries of the world. He bought a gaudy wristwatch in the Gucci store; a purse in Fendi’s, though he thought it ugly; a Hermès scarf; and some perfume in a bottle that looked like an expensive sculpture. When he bought a box of expensive lingerie, he was in such good spirits that he kidded the saleswoman, a young blonde, that it was for himself. The girl gave him one look and said, “Right . . .”
Back in the car, three thousand dollars poorer, he headed for Santa Monica, the goodies in the passenger seat, gifts crammed into a gaily colored Gucci shopping bag. In Brentwood, he stopped in the Brentwood Mart, a favorite place. He loved the food stores that boxed an open square studded with picnic tables where you could have a cold drink and eat. The food on the plane had been terrible, and he was hungry. Michelle never kept food in the refrigerator because she was always dieting.
In one store he bought two roast chickens, a dozen barbecued spareribs, and four hot dogs with all the trimmings. In another shop, he bought fresh baked white and rye bread. At an open stand he bought a huge glass of Coke and sat down at one of the picnic tables for a final moment of solitude. He ate two of the hot dogs, half of one of the roast chickens, and some French fries. He had never tasted anything so good. He sat in the golden light of the late afternoon sun in California, the sweet balmy air washed his face clean. He hated to leave but Michelle was waiting. She would be bathed and scented and a little tipsy and she would take him to bed immediately before he could even brush his teeth. He would propose to her before they started.
The shopping bag holding the food was decorated with type telling some fable about food, an intellectual shopping bag as befitted the intellectual clientele of the Mart. When he put it into the car, he read only the beginning line, “Fruit is the oldest product of human consumption. In the Garden of Eden . . .” Jesus, Pippi thought.
He drove to Santa Monica and stopped in front of Michelle’s condo, which was in a two-story-high series of Spanish-looking bungalows. When he got out of the car he carried the two bags automatically in his left hand, leaving his right hand free. Out of habit, he surveyed the street up and down. It was lovely, no cars parked, the Spanish styles provided commodious driveways and a mildly religious benignity. The runners along the curbs were hidden by flowers and grass, the heavy-branched trees made a canopy against the descending sun.
Pippi now had to walk down a long alleyway whose wooden, green-painted fences were draped with roses. Michelle’s apartment was in the back, a relic of the old Santa Monica, which was still bucolic. The buildings themselves were of seemingly old wood, and each separated swimming pool was adorned by white benches.
Outside the alleyway, far down the other end, Pippi heard the growling motor of a stationary vehicle. It alerted him, he was always alert. At the same moment he caught sight of a man rising from one of the benches. He was so surprised that he said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The man’s hand did not come out to greet him and in that instant everything was clear to Pippi. He knew what was going to happen. His brain processed so much information that he could not react. He saw the gun appear, so small and inoffensive, saw the tension on the killer’s face. Understood for the first time the look on the faces of men he had put to death, their supreme astonishment that life was at an end. And he understood that finally he would have to pay the price for living his life. He even thought briefly that the killer had planned badly, that this was not how he would have done it.
He tried his best, knowing there was no mercy. He dropped the shopping bags and lunged forward, at the same time reaching for his gun. The man came forward to meet him, and Pippi in exultation reached for him. Six bullets carried his body into the air and flung it into a pillow of flowers at the foot of the green fence. He smelled their fragrance. He looked up at the man standing over him and said, “You fucking Santadio.” Then the final bullet crashed into his skull. Pippi De Lena was no more.
CHAPTER 16
EARLY ON THE day Pippi De Lena was to die, Cross picked up Athena at her Malibu home and they drove to San Diego to visit Athena’s daughter, Bethany.
Bethany had been prepared by the nurses, she was dressed to go out. Cross could see she was a blurry reflection of her mother, and tall for her age. There was still the blankness in her face and eyes, and her body was too slack. Her features did not seem to have real definition, as if partially dissolved, like a bar of used soap. She still wore the red plastic apron that she used to protect her clothes when she was painting. She had been painting on the wall since early that morning. She didn’t acknowledge seeing them, and she received her mother’s hug and kisses with a shrinking away of her body and face.
Athena disregarded this and hugged her even harder.
The day was to be a picnic at a wooded lake nearby. Athena had packed a lunch basket.
On the short drive, Bethany sat between them, with Athena driving. Athena frequently brushed back Bethany’s hair and caressed her cheek while Bethany stared straight ahead.
Cross thought of how when the day was done he and Athena would be back in Malibu making love. He was imagining her nak
ed body on the bed and him standing over her.
Suddenly Bethany spoke, and it was to him. She had never acknowledged him before. She stared at him with her flat green eyes and said, “Who are you?”
Athena answered, and her voice was perfect, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for Bethany to ask. She said, “His name is Cross and he’s my very best friend.” Bethany seemed not to hear and retired into her world again.
Athena parked the car a few yards from a dazzling lake nestled in the forest, a tiny blue gem in a vast cloth of green. Cross took the basket of food, and Athena unpacked it onto a red cloth she spread over the grass. She also put out crisp green napkins and forks and spoons. The cloth was embroidered with musical instruments that caught Bethany’s attention. Then Athena spread out a pile of different sandwiches, glass bowls of potato salad, and sliced fruits. Then a plate of sweet cakes oozing cream. And a platter of fried chicken. She had prepared everything with the care of a catering professional because Bethany loved food.
Cross went back to the car and took a case of soda from the trunk. There were glasses in the basket and he poured soda for them. Athena offered her glass to Bethany, but Bethany struck her hand aside. She was watching Cross.
Cross stared into her eyes. Her face was so rigid it could have been a mask instead of flesh, but her eyes were now alert. It was as if she was trapped in some secret cave, that she was being smothered but could not call for help, that her flesh was blistered and she could not bear to be touched.
They ate, and Athena took on the role of the insensitive chatterbox, trying to make Bethany laugh. Cross marveled at how skillful she was, affectedly irritating and boring, as if the autistic behavior of her child was perfectly natural, treating Bethany as a fellow gossip though the girl never answered. It was an inspired monologue she created to ease her own pain.