Last Don

by Mario Puzo

  Cross said, “And Rose Marie never talked?”

  “No,” the Don said, sardonically. “She did even better. She became crazy.” There was just a hint of pride in his voice. “I sent her to Sicily and brought her back in time for Dante to be born on American soil. Who knows, someday he might be president of the United States. I had dreams for the little boy but the combination of Clericuzio and Santadio blood was too much for him.

  “And you know the most terrible thing?” the Don said. “Your father, Pippi, made a mistake. He should never have spared Rose Marie, though I loved him for it.” He sighed. He took a sip of wine and, looking Cross full in the face, he said, “Be aware. The world is what it is. And you are what you are.”

  On the flight back to Vegas, Cross pondered the riddle. Why had the Don finally told him the story of the Santadio War? To prevent him from visiting Rose Marie and hearing a different version? Or was he warning him off, telling him not to avenge his father’s murder because Dante was involved. The Don was a mystery. But of one thing Cross was sure. If it was Dante who killed his father, then Dante must kill him. And surely Don Domenico Clericuzio knew that, too.

  CHAPTER 19

  DANTE CLERICUZIO DID not have to hear this story. His mother, Rose Marie, had whispered it into his tiny ear from the time he was two years old: whenever she had one of her fits, whenever she felt her grief for the lost love of her husband and her brother Silvio, whenever her terror of Pippi and her brothers overcame her.

  It was only when Rose Marie had her worst fits that she accused her father, Don Clericuzio, of the death of her husband. The Don always denied giving the order, as he denied that his sons and Pippi had carried out the massacre. But after she accused him two times, he packed her off to the clinic for a month. After that, she only ranted and raved, and never accused him directly again.

  But Dante remembered her whisperings always. As a child he loved his grandfather and believed in his innocence. But he schemed against his three uncles though they always treated him tenderly. Especially, he dreamed of vengeance on Pippi, and though these were fantasies, he thought them for his mother’s sake.

  When Rose Marie was normal she took care of the widower Don Clericuzio with the utmost affection. To her three brothers she showed sisterly concern. With Pippi, she was distant. And because in those times she had such a sweet visage, it was difficult for her to express malice convincingly. The structure of the bones in her face, the curve of her mouth, and the gentle eyes of liquid brown denied her hate. To her child Dante she showed her overwhelming need to love, which she could no longer feel for any man. She showered him with gifts out of that affection, as did his grandfather and his uncles out of something less pure, a love muddied with guilt. When Rose Marie was normal, she never told Dante the story.

  But in her fits she was foul-mouthed, full of curses, even her face could turn into an ugly mask of fury. Dante was always bewildered. When he was seven years old, a doubt entered his mind. “How did you know it was Pippi and my uncles?” he asked her.

  Rose Marie cackled with glee. She seemed to Dante a witch out of his fairy-tale books. She told him, “They think they are so clever, that they plan for everything with their masks and special clothes and hats. Do you want to know what they forgot? Pippi was still wearing his dancing shoes. Patent leather and black string bows. And your uncles always grouped themselves together in a particular way. Giorgio always to the front, Vincent a little behind, and Petie always to the right. And the way they looked at Pippi to see if he would give the order to kill me. Because I had recognized them. The way they wavered, almost shrank back. But they would have killed me, they would have. My own brothers.” She would then burst into such great weeping that Dante would be terrified.

  Even as a small child of seven, he would try to comfort her. “Uncle Petie would never hurt you,” he said. “And Grandpa would have killed them all if they did.” He wasn’t certain of his Uncle Giorgio or even Uncle Vinnie. But in his child’s heart, it was Pippi he could never forgive.

  By the time Dante was ten years old, he had learned to watch for his mother’s fits, and so when she beckoned him to her to tell the Santadio story again, he would quickly take her away into the safety of her bedroom so his grandfather and his uncles would not hear.

  By the time Dante grew into manhood, he was too clever to be fooled by all the disguises of the Clericuzio Family. He was of so humorously malicious a nature that he showed his grandfather and his uncles that he knew the truth. And he could perceive that his uncles were not that fond of him. Dante had been designated to join the legal social world, to perhaps take Giorgio’s place and learn the financial complexities, but he showed no interest. He had even taunted his uncles that he had no interest in the sissy side of the Family. Giorgio listened to this with a coolness that for a moment frightened the sixteen-year-old Dante.

  Uncle Giorgio said, “OK, you won’t.” There was sadness in his voice and some anger, too.

  When Dante quit high school in his senior year, he was sent to work in Petie’s construction company in the Bronx Enclave. Dante was a hard worker and developed huge muscles from the hard, grueling work on the building sites. Petie put him on crews of soldiers from the Bronx Enclave. When Dante was old enough, the Don decreed the boy would be a soldier under Petie.

  The Don had come to his decision only after reports from Giorgio on Dante’s character, and some acts committed by Dante. The young boy was accused of rape by a pretty high school classmate and of assault with a small knife by another fellow student, a boy his own age. Dante had begged his uncles not to let his grandfather know and they had promised him, but of course they had reported to the Don immediately. These charges were settled by large sums of money before Dante could be prosecuted.

  And it was during his teenage years that his jealousy of Cross De Lena increased. Cross had grown into a tall, extraordinarily handsome youth with a mature courtesy. All the women in the Clericuzio clan adored him, fussed over him. His female cousins flirted with him, something they never did with the Don’s grandson. Dante, wearing his Renaissance hats, with his sly humor and his short and hugely muscular body, was frightening to these young girls. Dante was too clever not to observe all this.

  When Dante was taken to the Hunting Lodge in the Sierras, he enjoyed trapping more than shooting. When he fell in love with one of the female cousins, as was perfectly natural in the close-knit Clericuzio clan, he was too direct in his advances. And he was too familiar with the daughters of the Clericuzio soldiers who lived in the Bronx Enclave. Finally Giorgio, who had the role of an instructive, punitive parent, enrolled him with the owner of a New York City high-class bordello to quiet him down.

  But Dante’s enormous curiosity, his cunning cleverness, made him the only one of his generation of the Clericuzio who really knew what the Family did. So it was finally decided he would be given operational training.

  As time went on, Dante felt a growing separation from his Family. The Don was as fond of him as ever and made clear to him that he was an heir to the Empire, but he no longer shared his thoughts with his grandson, no longer gave him his insights, his secret little pearls of wisdom. And the Don did not support Dante’s suggestions and ideas on strategy.

  His uncles, Giorgio, Vincent, and Petie, were not as warm in their affection as when he was a child. Petie, it was true, seemed more of a friend, but then he had been trained by Petie.

  Dante was clever enough to think that maybe the fault was his, because he had betrayed his knowledge of the massacre of the Santadio and his father. He even asked questions of Petie about Jimmy Santadio, and his uncle told him how much they had respected his father and how sad they had been about his death. It was never said openly, never admitted, but Don Clericuzio and his sons understood that Dante knew the true story, that Rose Marie, in her fits, had disclosed the secret. They wanted to make amends, they treated him as a child prince.

  But what most formed Dante’s character was his pity and lov
e for his mother. In her fits she inflamed in him a hatred for Pippi De Lena; she exonerated her father and brothers.

  All these things helped Don Clericuzio make his final decision, for the Don could read his grandson’s mind as easily as he could read his prayer book. The Don judged that Dante could never take part in the final retreat to the cloak of society. His Santadio and (the Don was a fair man) Clericuzio blood was too ferocious a mixture. Therefore Dante would join the society of Vincent and Petie, of Giorgio and Pippi De Lena. They would all fight the final battle together.

  And Dante proved to be a good soldier, though an irrepressible one. He had an independence that made him flout the Family rules, and indeed he sometimes did not comply with specific orders. His ferocity was useful when a confused Bruglione or an undisciplined soldier stepped over the Family line and had to be dispatched to a less complex world. Dante was not subject to control except by the Don himself, and mysteriously the Don refused to chastise him personally.

  Dante feared for his mother’s future. That future depended on the Don, and as her fits occurred more often, Dante could see the Don becoming more impatient. Especially when Rose Marie would make a grand exit by drawing a circle with her foot and then spitting in the middle while screaming she would never enter the house again. That was when the Don would ship her off to the clinic again for a few days.

  So Dante would coax her out of her fits, restore her to her natural sweetness and affection. But there was always the dread that finally he could not protect her. Unless he became as powerful as the Don himself.

  The only person in the world Dante feared was the old Don. It was a feeling that came from his experiences with his grand-father as a child. And it sprang, too, from his sense that the sons feared Don Clericuzio as much as they loved him. Which was amazing to Dante. The Don was in his eighties, he no longer had physical strength, he rarely left his mansion, and his height was diminished. Why fear him?

  True, he ate well, he made an imposing appearance, the only physical disarray time had done was to soften his teeth so that his diet was reduced to pasta, grated cheese, stewed vegetables, and soups. Meats were simmered to shreds in tomato sauces.

  But the old Don had to die soon, so there would be shifts of power. What if Pippi became Giorgio’s right-hand man? What if Pippi seized power by sheer force? And if that happened, Cross would ascend, especially since he had acquired so much wealth with his share of the Xanadu.

  So there were practical reasons, Dante assured himself, not his hatred of Pippi, who dared to criticize him to his own Family.

  Dante had made his original contact with Jim Losey when Giorgio decided that Dante should have some points of power and designated him to deliver Losey’s salary from the Family.

  Of course precautions had been taken to protect Dante if Losey should ever turn traitor. Contracts were signed that showed Losey to be working for a Family-controlled security corporation as a consultant. The contract specified confidentiality and that Losey be paid in cash. But in the security corporation’s tax filings, the money was reported as expenses, with Losey using a corporation dummy as recipient.

  Dante had made special payments to Losey over several years before he initiated a more intimate relationship. He was not intimidated by Losey’s reputation, he sized him up as a man who was at a juncture where he was thinking of accumulating a very large nest egg for his old age. Losey had a hand in everything. He was protecting drug dealers, taking Cleri-cuzio money to protect gambling, was even dabbling in strong-arming certain high-powered retail merchants into paying extra protection fees.

  Dante exerted all his charm to make a good impression on Losey; both his sly and vicious sense of humor and his disregard for accepted moral principles appealed to Losey. Dante reacted particularly well to Losey’s bitter tales of his war against the blacks who were destroying Western civilization. Dante himself had no racial prejudices. Blacks had no influence on his life, and if they did they would be mercilessly removed.

  Dante and Losey had a powerful common urge. They were both dandies interested in their looks, and they both had a similar sexual drive for the domination of women. Not so much erotic but as an expression of power. They took to spending time together when Dante was in the West. They went to dinner together and cruised the nightclubs. Dante never dared to bring him to Vegas and the Xanadu, and it was not to his purpose.

  Dante loved to tell Losey of how he was first the abject extravagant courter of women, and the women were imperious in the power of their beauty. And then how he enjoyed the imperiousness by maneuvering them into a position where they could not escape the unwilling giving of sex. Losey, a little contemptuous of Dante’s trick, would tell how he would break women down from the very beginning with his extraordinary macho presence, and then humiliate them.

  Both of them declared that they would never force a woman to have sex who did not respond to their courtship. They both agreed that Athena Aquitane would be a grand prize if she ever gave them an opening. When they roved around the L.A. clubs together and picked up women, they would compare notes and laugh at those vain women who thought they could go to the utmost limit and then refuse the final act. Sometimes the protests would be too vehement, and then Losey would show his shield and tell the women he would bust them for prostitution. Since many of them were soft hookers, the threat worked.

  They spent evenings of camaraderie, orchestrated by Dante. Losey, when not telling the “nigger” stories, tried to define the varieties of hookers.

  There were first the out-and-out prostitutes who held one hand out for money and grabbed your cock with the other. Then there was the soft hooker who was attracted to you and gave you a friendly screw and then, before you left in the morning, asked you for a check to help pay the rent.

  Then there was the soft hooker who loved you but loved others too and established a long-term relationship studded with gifts of jewelry for every holiday, including Labor Day. Then there were the freelance nine-to-five secretaries, airline stewardesses, shop clerks in fancy boutiques, who invited you up to their apartment for coffee after an expensive dinner and then tried to throw you out on your ass to freeze in the street without even a hand job. These were their favorites. Sex with them was exciting, fraught with drama, tears, and subdued cries for forbearance and patience, which produced a sex that was better than love.

  One night after they had dinner at Le Chinois, a restaurant in Venice, Dante suggested they take a stroll along the boardwalk. They sat on a bench and watched the human traffic go by, beautiful young girls on Rollerblades, pimps of all colors pursuing them and shouting endearments, the soft hookers selling T-shirts decorated with sayings incomprehensible to the two men. Hare Krishnas with begging bowls, bearded groups of singers with guitars, family groups with cameras, and reflecting them, the black ocean of the Pacific, on whose sandy beaches isolated twosomes crouched under blankets they believed disguised their fornication.

  “I could lock up everybody here for probable cause,” Losey said, laughing. “What a fucking zoo.”

  “Even those pretty young kids on skates?” Dante asked.

  “I’d just bust them for carrying pussies as a dangerous weapon,” Losey said.

  “Not many eggplants here,” Dante said.

  Losey stretched out on the beach, and when he spoke it was with a fair imitation of a Southern accent.

  “I think I’ve been too hard on my black brethren,” he said. “It’s like the liberals always say, it all springs from their having been slaves.”

  Dante waited for the punch line.

  Losey linked his hands behind his head and pulled back his jacket to let his gun holster show to scare off any reckless punks. Nobody paid attention, they had spotted him for a cop by his first step on the boardwalk.

  “Slavery,” Jim Losey said. “Demoralizing. It was too easy a life for them so it made them too dependent. Freedom was too hard. On the plantations they were taken care of, three meals a day, free rent, they were cl
othed and they were given good medical attention because they were valuable property. They weren’t even responsible for their children. Imagine. The plantation owners fucked their daughters and gave those children jobs for the rest of their lives. Sure they worked but they were always singing, so how hard could they be working? I’ll bet five white guys could do the work of a hundred niggers.”

  Dante was tickled. Was Losey serious? It didn’t matter, he was expressing an emotional view not a rational one.

  They were enjoying themselves, it was a balmy night, the world they observed gave them a comfortable feeling of security. These people were never a danger to them.

  Then Dante said, “I’ve got a really important proposition to put to you. Do you want the rewards first or the risks first?”

  Losey smiled at him. “Rewards first, always.”

  Dante said, “Two hundred grand cash up front. A year later, a job as head of security at the Xanadu Hotel. With a salary five times what you get now. Expense account. Big car, room, board, and all the pussy you can eat. You get to do all the background checks on the hotel showgirls. Plus bonuses like you make now. And you don’t have the risk of being the primary shooter.”

  “Sounds too good,” Losey said. “But somebody has to get shot. That’s the risk, right?”

  “For me,” Dante said. “I’m the shooter.”

  “Why not me?” Losey asked. “I have the badge to make it legal.”

  “Because you wouldn’t live six months after it,” Dante said.

  “And what do I do?” Losey asked. “Tickle your ass with a feather?”

  Dante explained the whole operation. Losey whistled to express his admiration for the daring of the idea.