by Mario Puzo
“Why Pippi De Lena?” Losey asked.
“Because he’s about to turn traitor,” Dante said.
Losey was still looking doubtful. It would be the first time he committed the crime of cold-blooded murder. Dante decided to give it something extra.
“You remember that Boz Skannet suicide?” he said. “Cross made that hit, not personally, but with a guy named Lia Vazzi.”
“What does he look like?” Losey asked. When Dante had described Vazzi he realized it was the man accompanying Skannet when he had stopped him in the hotel lobby. “Where can I find this Vazzi guy?”
For a long moment Dante considered. He was doing something that broke the only really holy law of the Family. Of the Don. But it might get Cross out of the way, and Cross would be someone to fear after Pippi’s death.
“I’ll never tell anybody where it came from,” Losey said.
Dante for a moment reconsidered, then he said, “Vazzi lives in a hunting lodge my family owns up in the Sierras. But don’t do anything until we finish with Pippi.”
“Sure,” Losey said. He would do what he liked. “And I get my two hundred grand right up front, right?”
“Right,” Dante said.
“Sounds good,” Losey said. “One thing. If the Clericuzio come after me, I’ll sell you down the river.”
“Don’t worry,” Dante said amiably. “If I hear that, I’ll kill you first. Now we just have to work out the details.”
It all went as they planned.
When Dante fired the six shots into Pippi De Lena’s body and when Pippi whispered, calling him a “fucking Santadio,” Dante felt an exultation he had never felt before.
CHAPTER 20
LIA VAZZI, FOR the first time, deliberately disobeyed the order of his boss, Cross De Lena.
It was unavoidable. Detective Jim Losey had made another visit to the Hunting Lodge and had again asked questions about Skannet’s death. Lia denied all knowledge of Skannet and claimed he had just happened to be in the hotel lobby at that particular time. Losey patted him on the shoulder, then lightly slapped him across the face. “OK, you little guinea prick,” he said, “I’ll get you soon.”
In his mind Lia signed a death warrant for Losey. No matter what else happened, and he knew his future was in peril, he would make sure of Losey’s fate. But he had to be very careful. The Clericuzio Family had strict rules. You never harmed a police officer.
Lia remembered driving Cross to the meeting with Phil Sharkey, Losey’s retired partner. He had never believed that Sharkey would remain quiet on the promise of a future fifty grand. Now he was sure that Sharkey had informed Losey of that meeting and probably had seen Vazzi waiting in the car. If this was true, there would be a great danger to Cross and himself. In essence he distrusted the judgment of Cross, police officers stuck together like Mafioso. They had their own kind of omertà.
Lia recruited two of his soldiers to drive him down from the Hunting Lodge to Santa Monica, the home of Phil Sharkey. He was confident that just by talking to Sharkey he would know if the man had informed Losey of the visit by Cross.
The outside of Sharkey’s house was deserted, the lawn empty except for an abandoned mower. But the garage door was open, a car in it, and Lia walked up the cement path to the door and rang the bell. There was no answer. He kept ringing. He tested the knob, the door was not locked, now there was a choice to be made. Did he go in or leave immediately? He wiped his prints off the knob and bell with the tail of his tie. Then he went through the door into the small hallway and called Sharkey’s name in a shout. There was no answer.
Lia moved through the house; the two bedrooms were bare, he looked into the closets and under the beds. He went through the living room, looking under the sofa and through the cushions. Then he went into the kitchen and to the patio table where there was a container of milk and a paper plate that held a partially eaten cheese sandwich, white bread with dehydrated yellow mayo on the edges.
There was a slatted brown door in the kitchen, and Lia opened it to reveal a shallow basement only two wooden steps down, sort of a dropped room with no windows.
Lia Vazzi descended the two steps and looked behind a mound of used bicycles. He opened a closet with huge doors. In it was a policeman’s uniform hanging all by itself, on the floor was a pair of thick black shoes, and resting on the shoes was a braided street policeman’s cap. That was all.
Lia went to the one trunk on the floor and pulled up the lid. It was surprisingly light. The interior was filled to the top with neatly folded gray blankets.
Lia went back up the stairs and stood on the patio staring at the ocean. Burying a body in the sand was foolhardy, so he dismissed the idea. Maybe somebody had come by and picked Sharkey up. But for an assassin there would be a risk of being seen. Also, Sharkey would be a dangerous man to kill. So, Lia reasoned, if the man was dead he had to be in this house. Immediately he went back down to the basement and threw all the wool blankets out of the trunk. And sure enough, there at the bottom was first the large head, and then the lean body. There was a hole in Sharkey’s right eye and over it a thin cake of blood like a red coin. The facial skin, waxy with long death, was pockmarked with black dots. Lia, as a Qualified Man, knew exactly what that meant. Someone trusted had been allowed to come very close to shoot point blank into the eye; those dots were powder marks.
Carefully, Lia folded the blankets, put them back over the body, and then exited the house. He had not left any fingerprints but was aware that fragments of the blankets must have adhered to his clothing. He would have to destroy the clothes thoroughly. His shoes, too. He had his soldiers drive him to the airport, and while he was waiting for a plane to take him to Vegas, he bought a change of clothing including new shoes in one of the stores in the airport mall. Then he bought a carry-on bag and put his old clothes into it.
In Vegas he checked into the Xanadu and left a message for Cross. Then he showered thoroughly and dressed again in his new clothes. He waited for Cross to call.
When the call came, he told Cross he would be up to see him. He brought the bag of his old clothing, and the first thing he said to Cross was “You just saved yourself fifty grand.”
Cross looked at him and smiled. Lia, usually a natty dresser, had bought a flowery shirt, blue canvas pants, and a light jacket, also blue. He looked like a low-caste casino hustler.
Lia told him about Sharkey. He attempted to make excuses for his actions, but Cross dismissed them. “You’re in this with me, you have to protect yourself. But what the hell does this mean?”
“Simple,” Lia said. “Sharkey was the only one who could tie Losey with Dante. Otherwise it’s just your say-so. Dante made Losey kill his partner.”
Cross said, “How the hell could Sharkey be that dumb?”
Lia shrugged. “He figured he could get money from Losey and then get the fifty from you anyway. He knew that Losey must be playing for big stakes because of the money you gave him. After all, he was a detective for twenty years, he could figure these things out. And he never dreamed Losey would kill him, his old partner. He didn’t figure on Dante.”
“They were extreme,” Cross said.
“In this situation you cannot allow an extra player,” Lia said. “I must say I’m surprised that Dante could see that particular danger. He must have convinced Losey, who really would not want to kill an old partner. We all have our sentimentalities.”
“So now Dante is controlling Losey,” Cross said. “I thought Losey was tougher than that.”
“You’re talking about two different classes of animal,” Lia said. “Losey is formidable, Dante is crazy.”
“So Dante knows I know about him,” Cross said.
“Which means I have to act very quickly,” Lia said.
Cross nodded. “It will have to be a Communion,” he said. “They will have to disappear.”
Lia laughed. “Do you think that will deceive Don Cleri-cuzio?” he said.
“If we plan it right, nobody
can blame us,” Cross said.
Lia spent the next three days with Cross going over plans. During that time he burned his old clothes in the hotel incin-erator with his own hands. Cross exercised by shooting a lone eighteen holes of golf, with Lia accompanying him to drive the golf cart. Lia could not understand the popularity of golf in all the Families. To him it was a quaint aberration.
On the night of the third day they sat on the balcony of the penthouse. Cross had laid out the brandy and Havana cigars. They watched the crowds on the Strip below.
“No matter how clever they are, my death so soon after my father’s would compromise Dante with the Don,” Cross said. “I think we can wait.”
Lia puffed on his cigar. “Not too long. Now they know you spoke with Sharkey.”
“We have to get them both at the same time,” Cross said. “Remember, it will have to be a Communion. Their bodies must not be found.”
Lia said, “You’re putting last things first. And first we have to be sure we can kill them.”
Cross sighed. “It’s going to be very difficult. Losey is a dangerous man and careful. Dante can fight. We have to isolate them in one place. Can it be done in Los Angeles?”
“No,” Lia said. “That is Losey’s territory. He is too formidable there. We will have to do it in Vegas.”
“And break rules,” Cross said.
“If it’s a Communion then nobody will know where they were killed,” Lia said. “And we are already breaking the rule by killing a police officer.”
“I think I know how to get them to Vegas at the same time,” Cross said. He explained the scheme to Lia.
“We will have to use more bait,” Lia told Cross. “We have to make sure Losey and Dante come when we want them here.”
Cross drank another brandy. “OK, here’s some more bait.” He told Lia, and Lia nodded in agreement. “Their disappearance will be our salvation,” Cross said. “And it will deceive everyone.”
“Except Don Clericuzio,” Lia said. “He is the only one to fear.”
BOOK VIII
Communion
CHAPTER 21
VERY LUCKILY STEVE Stallings did not die until his final close-up scene in Messalina was shot. It could have cost millions of dollars in reshooting.
The last scene to be shot was a battle scene that actually took place in the middle of the film. A desert town had been erected fifty miles from Vegas to denote the base of the Persian army that was to be destroyed by the Emperor Claudius (Steve Stallings) accompanied by his wife, Messalina (Athena).
At the end of the day, Steve Stallings retired to his hotel suite in the small town. He had his cocaine and his booze and two female companions for the night, and he was going to kick everybody’s ass, he was pissed off. For one thing, his part in the picture had been cut to a character part, not a star. He realized he was shifting into a secondary career, an inevitable fate for aging stars. Another thing, Athena had been distant from him all during the shoot, he had hoped for more. Also—and this was, he himself felt, a little childish—at the wrap party and showing of the rough cut, he was not getting star treatment; he had not been given one of the Xanadu Hotel’s famous Villas.
After his long years in the movie business, Steve Stallings knew how the power structure worked. When he was a Bankable Star, he could override everyone. Theoretically, the studio chief was boss, he gave the green light for a picture. A powerful producer who brought a “property” to the studio was also the boss, he got the elements together—i.e., stars, director, screenplay—supervised the development of the script, and raised independent money from people who were given a credit as associate producers but had no power. For that period he was the boss.
But once the picture started shooting, it was the director who was the boss. Providing he was an A director or the even more powerful Bankable Director (that is, one who would assure an audience in the film’s opening weeks and attract Bankable Stars to appear in the movie).
The director had complete charge over the picture. Everything had to go through him. The costumes, music, sets, how the actors played their parts. Also, the Directors Guild was the most powerful union in the movie business. No name director would accept the job of replacing another director.
But all these people, powerful as they were, had to bow to the Bankable Star. A director who had two Bankable Stars in the same movie was like a man riding two wild horses. His balls could be scattered to the four winds.
Steve Stallings had been such a star and knew he no longer was.
The day’s shoot had been physically taxing and Steve Stallings needed relaxation. He showered, ate a big steak, and when the two girls came up, local talent and not bad looking at all, he fed them cocaine and champagne. For once he relaxed his prudence, after all his career was entering its twilight years, and he didn’t really have to be careful anymore. He went heavy on the coke.
The two girls were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with sTEVE STALLINGS ASS KISSERS, in tribute to his buttocks, admired by fans all over the world, male and female. They were properly awe-stricken, and it was only after the cocaine that they peeled off their T-shirts and bundled in with him. This cheered him up somewhat. He took another snort of cocaine. The girls were caressing him, stripping off his shorts and shirt. Stallings daydreamed as they fiddled, their fiddling putting him at ease.
Tomorrow at the wrap party, he would see all his conquests. He had screwed Athena Aquitane, he had screwed Claudia who had written the movie, he had even screwed Dita Tommey long ago, when she wasn’t yet fully convinced of her true sexual orientation. He had screwed Bobby Bantz’s wife and, though she no longer counted because she was dead, Skippy Deere’s wife. It always gave him a feeling of virtuous fulfillment when at a dinner party he looked around and tallied up all the women who were now sitting so placidly with their husbands and lovers. He was an intimate of them all.
There was a distraction. One of the girls was sticking a finger up his ass and that always annoyed him. He had hemorrhoids. He rose from the bed to snort some more cocaine and take a full swig of champagne, but the wine upset his stomach. He felt nauseous and then disoriented. He didn’t quite know where he was.
Suddenly, he was aware of a great fatigue: his legs sagged, the glass fell from his hand. He was bewildered. Very far away he heard one of the girls scream and he was furious with her for screaming, and then the very last thing he felt was a lightning bolt exploding in his head.
What happened next could only have happened with a combination of stupidity and malice. One girl had screamed because Steve Stallings had toppled over her onto the bed and had lain there, mouth open and eyes staring, so obviously dead that both girls panicked and just kept screaming. The screaming attracted the hotel personnel and a number of people who were gambling in the tiny hotel casino, which held only slots, a dice table, and a large, round poker setup. These people followed the screaming and came upstairs.
There were, outside Stallings’s hotel room, with its now-open door, several people staring at his naked body sprawled out on the bed. In what seemed just a few minutes, an additional crowd gathered from the town, hundreds of them. They crowded into the room to touch his body.
At first there were just reverent touches for the man who had made women all over the world fall in love with him. Then some women kissed him, other women touched his testicles, his penis, one women took out a pair of scissors from her purse and cut off a great thatch of glossy black hair to expose the underlying fuzz of gray on his skull.
The malice came in because Skippy Deere had been one of the first to arrive and had failed to call the police immediately. He watched the first wave of women approach Steve Stallings’s body. He had a clear view. Stallings’s mouth was open as if he had been caught in the act of singing and there was a look of astonishment on his face.
The first woman who reached him—Deere saw her clearly— gently closed his eyes and pushed his mouth shut before she softly kissed him on the forehead. But she was pushe
d aside by the next wave who were not so restrained. And Deere felt the malice within him, the horns Stallings had given him years ago seemed to tingle, and he let the invasion continue. Stallings often boasted that no women could resist him and he was certainly on the mark. Even dead, women were caressing his body.
Only when a piece of Stallings’s ear vanished and he had been turned sideways to show his famous buttocks, his whole body deathly pale, did Deere finally call the police and take command of the situation and solve all the problems. That was what producers did. That was their forte.
Skippy Deere made all the arrangements for the body to be autopsied immediately and then shipped to Los Angeles, where the funeral would be held three days later.
The autopsy showed that Stallings had died of a cerebral aneurysm which, when it exploded, sent all his blood rushing through his head.
Deere hunted down the two young girls who had been with him and promised them they would not be prosecuted for cocaine use and that they would be signed for small parts in a new movie he was producing. He would pay them a thousand a week for two years. However, there was a moral turpitude clause that would end the contract if they talked to anyone about Stallings’s death.
Then he took the time to call Bobby Bantz in L.A. and explain what he had done. He also called Dita Tommey to give her the news and have her tell all the Messalina personnel, above the line and below the line, to be sure to attend the showing in Vegas and the wrap party. Then, shaken more than he would admit, he took two Halcions and went to sleep.
CHAPTER 22
THE DEATH OF Steve Stallings did not affect the showing and wrap party in Vegas. That was Skippy Deere’s expertise. And the emotional structure of movie making. It was true that Stallings had been a star, but he had ceased to be a Bankable Star. It was true that he had made love to many women in their bodies, and millions more in their minds, but his love had never been more than reciprocal pleasure. Even the women in the picture, Athena, Claudia, Dita Tommey, and the three other featured female stars, were less grieved than would be imagined by romantics. Everyone agreed that Steve Stallings would want the show to go on, nothing would distress him more than to have the wrap party and screening canceled because of his death.