Prizzi's Family

by Richard Condon

  She took up the phone and dialed.

  “Aunt Amalia? Maerose. Could you get me in to see him some time this afternoon?”

  “Whatsamatta, Mae?” Amalia’s voice was anxious.

  “I want to tell him that I am gonna marry Charley Partanna.”

  “Mae! Mae, that’s wonderful! You will make him so happy!”

  “I want to tell him first. I haven’t even told my father yet.”

  “But Charley will tell Angelo—”

  “Charley won’t open his mouth. Will you get me in, Aunt Amalia?”

  “Come on over here at half past four. This is the happiest day of my life.”

  Maerose put on a green tweed Lovat dress with a green sweater and green woollen stockings. She wore flat-heeled shoes and very little makeup to create a little-girl effect. After she was completely dressed she changed her mind. There was a better way to look like a little girl for her grandfather. She took off the dress and put on a kilt with the Fraser plaid and a Shetland pullover, then a tartan tam-o’-shanter with a chin strap and a big tuft on top. She stared at herself in a full-length mirror and wondered how Scotch transvestites dressed.

  The phonograph was playing Vincenzo Bellini’s Il Pirata, a Sicilian story. It was in the middle of the melting cantilena, “Pietosa al padre,” when Amalia brought her into the don’s room. Her grandfather smiled at her and bowed with his head but held up a hand to keep her from speaking until the aria was finished. Maerose sat down with her feet held primly together.

  The room was a replica of the duke’s bedroom from Corrado Prizzi’s boyhood. There was hardly a space on the wall that was not covered with a nineteenth-century painting or aquatint in a baroque frame. The furniture was dark, heavy, and overstuffed, and everything in the room except the don had fringes on it.

  The aria ended. The don stood and opened his arms to her. She rushed into his embrace—but carefully, because he was so small and fragile.

  “My beautiful girl,” the don said. “Come, you must sit down and have a cookie, my dear.”

  They sat side by side with a small tabouret holding a heaping plate of Sicilian sweets and cookies between them.

  “How good it is to see you,” the don said.

  “I wanted you to be the first to have the news, Grandfather. I haven’t even told Poppa yet.”

  “News?” he said delicately.

  “I am going to be married to Charley Partanna.”

  “Oh! What wonderful news.” He clasped his hands before his tiny chest and rolled his eyes heavenward. “The two most perfect young people of my life—a marriage!”

  “I have come for your blessing.”

  “You have my blessing a thousand times, if you are sure this is what you want and that there will be a marriage.”

  “We are sure, Grandfather.”

  “Then we must have a big party and make the announcement. Because it is for you—my favorite granddaughter—it will be the biggest party our people have seen for months. At the old Palermo Gardens. About four weeks from now?” He held out his hand and she kissed it. She left the room with wet eyes. On the phonograph, the quintet and soon the sextet began to develop with comments from the chorus. It was a beautiful moment, and she had nailed Charley to the stage.

  24

  George F. Mallon had had a hard day of campaigning in the upper Bronx, standing in the freezing rain as his motorcade swept past absolutely nobody, past DeWitt Clinton High School along Mosholu Parkway to the upper Grand Concourse then down to the most miserably attended rally he had ever seen at the Yankee Stadium. The same hardcore congregations of the Electronic Evangelical Church that had been swept up in all five of the boroughs, in New Jersey, and in Connecticut, had been bused there to hear him make the same speech again. There were no television cameras. It had been decided that there would be no radio because they were saving what was left of the appropriation for the last driving week of the campaign after he had arrested Charley Partanna and the real church music would begin to roll out of the mighty organs.

  He was weary when he got home to his simple duplex on Fifth Avenue, near the Metropolitan Museum—which, although he had never had time to enter it, underscored his hunger for art and culture.

  Luigi, his perfect Sicilian butler, took his coat, scarf, hat, and gloves and handed him a tall whiskey with some water and ice in a large glass. “Mr. Marvin is in the study, sir.” Marvin was Mallon’s thirty-one-year-old son. Mallon took several sips of his drink before going in to face Marvin because, fact be known, a few hours with Marvin was like several months alone in a spaceship roaming Alpha Centauri. Marvin should have been a clergyman, a spiritual clone of the holy man, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who had instructed his people thusly: “One day Jesus is going to come and strike down all the Supreme Court rulings in one fell swoop,” but Marvin’s dad had barred the way. Marvin was his executive assistant, carrying out the innumerable duties of the tabernacle complex construction around the country, while his dad gave everything he had to become the mayor of the City of New York, the second biggest elective job in the United States of America. Mallon finished half the highball standing alone in the foyer, then he squared his shoulders and marched into the study to join Marvin.

  Marvin was built more like his mother than like Sean Connery’s James Bond. He was short and round. He had butter-colored hair and a mouth full of butter-colored teeth. He sang when he talked and, no matter what he said, he worked laboriously at smiling after he said it, while he was saying it, and before he said it, in the orthodox manner of the Electronic Evangelical Clergy. What payess were to orthodox Jews, what a zucchetto was to a Catholic cardinal, the shit eater’s smile was to the high tech evangelical ministry.

  George F. Mallon allowed his son to have access to every level of his business except the money side. There was something in Marvin’s manner which hinted that he might have run off with all the money; an illusion, Mallon knew, but Marvin had wanted dearly to be one with the Electronic Evangelical Church, whose only sacrament was money.

  Mallon sighed. Money was all Marvin would ever run off with. He would be the safest man in the world to leave with a woman. He might attempt to pray over her in a lewd sacerdotal way but he would never run off with her. Marvin was a eunuch, Mallon was sure of that, and the time had come to get him out of town again before the really heavy campaign action started after Partanna’s arrest, because Marvin was excited by activity and action and he would only screw up at some crucial moment.

  Mallon entered the cathedral-like study with its facing lecterns for joint prayer and Bible study. It wasn’t a cozy room because of its six-foot-by-twelve-foot snooker table, its War Room maps from AEF headquarters in Bosnia in World War I that the decorator had off-loaded on the decor, and the enormous carved Florentine desk holding the day’s New York Times crossword puzzle precisely at its centerpoint. Mallon shook his son’s hand in greeting and accepted a kiss on the cheek. He lighted a cigar. Luigi, the perfect butler, slipped another tall drink into his hand.

  “Aren’t you drinking a bit too much, Dad?” Marvin asked, saying the name as he always pronounced it: Dod.

  “No, Marvin.”

  “Alcohol is a narcotic, Dad.”

  “Are you keeping busy, Marvin?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “The National Electronic Evangelical Convention and Exhibition begins Saturday next in New Orleans, Marvin. I will be otherwise engaged—rather heavily, as you know—so you must represent the firm in our booth and, I hope, on the platform.”

  “It’s all arranged, Dad. I will be the fourth speaker, after Edgar Henshaw Dove. I will leave for New Orleans Sunday morning and I’ll be there just in time for the big Monday conferences.”

  “What shall your text be?”

  “‘She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.’ Joshua 1:9.”

  “I would have thought, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Matthew.”

  Luigi, the perfect butler, tidied up
unobtrusively in the room. He refilled Marvin’s cup of Ovaltine.

  “You will have a selling job to do, Marvin,” George F. Mallon said. “You’ll need a hard-sell text either from the scriptures or from Will Shakespeare to put across the new Audience-Parishioner’s Retirement Plan in your talk. It’s such a new wrinkle in church activity and such an opportunity that it will go like hot cakes. It pays a large clergy participation—three percent—for each individual audience-parishioner policy sold, so it should go over sensationally with the conventioneers.”

  “Dad, let me say this—I think it will be bigger than your concept for the first Christian Resort Complex in America, or even bigger than your new, more aggressive concept for Identity and the Klan.” He grinned greasily in his butter-colored way. “I prophesy a thirty-million-dollar gross in the very first year with that one.”

  “Prophesy, Marvin?”

  “As a business forecast, Dad. Not in the biblical or political sense. I’m really going to zing it to them in New Orleans.”

  25

  Charley was floating in the middle of a transparent, blue-green sea, taking the sun on Mardell’s creamy white belly, her head a few miles to his right and the cliffs of her painted toenails a few miles to his left. Maerose Prizzi was beginning to appear from the other side of Mardell’s left breast, the steady, heavy heartbeat making the climb precarious. As Maerose reached the summit she looked around, took out a gun, and shot at Charley. The gun made a terrible noise. It woke him.

  The telephone on the night table beside his ear was ringing in the darkness. He picked it up and said hello into it, looking over his shoulder at Mardell, asleep beside him. With her, sleeping pills worked.

  “Charley?” It was Pop.

  Charley woke up. “What time is it?”

  “Ten after six.”

  “In the morning?”

  “The girl with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll do the talking. Get dressed. Don’t pack anything. A car will pick you up downstairs in ten minutes.”

  “I can’t. Something happened here.” He whispered into the telephone.

  “Charley—I’m talking about that you temporarily got to run for your life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not now. Get moving.”

  “What about my clothes?”

  “You’ll get new ones.”

  “What is this?”

  “George F. Mallon.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll talk later. The car will take you to the Miami airport. Go to the first phone booth nearest to the Eastern check-in counter. I have that number. I’ll call you there.”

  “But what about—”

  “Leave a note for the girl. Tell her your office called you away on business. Tell her a car will pick her up after she calls the bell captain when she’s ready. A woman will be in the car to take her to New York, so she’ll have company.”

  “What woman?”

  “Mrs. Bostwick.”

  “Jesus, Pop, this is more complicated than you think.”

  “You gotta move, Charley. You’ll understand when I talk to you later.” Pop hung up.

  Mardell stirred dopily. “Whassamatta?”

  He leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

  He dressed rapidly, threw some water on his face, and combed his hair. He sat at the small desk in the room. “Dear Mardell,” the note said, “I have a business thing that came up. I have to travel, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT LAST NIGHT.” He printed that sentence in fat capital letters and then he underlined it. “When you wake up and are all dressed and packed, call the bell captain and an assistant of my father’s will be waiting to take you back to New York. I will talk to you tonight. Everything is fine. No worrying, please. Everything is coming up roses. Love, Charley.”

  He went to the window and looked out through the heavy curtains to make sure it was as early as Pop said. It was. Everything was coming up poison ivy. He let himself out of the suite on tiptoe and went out to the elevator bank. He pressed the DOWN button. The instantly answering ping of the waiting car made him jump. This business of being jammed between two hostile women had him all on edge. He looked down to see if he had remembered to put his socks on.

  There had to be a book that would tell him how to handle the situation. He would go to the public library in whatever town he was being sent to. He punched the LOBBY button. When the elevator door opened the Plumber was standing there.

  “What’s going on?” Charley asked.

  “You got me, Charley. I got a limo outside.”

  The Plumber handed Charley an envelope through the window of the limo. “The ticket,” he said. “In the name of Fred J. Fulton.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You.”

  “To where?”

  “Dallas.”

  Charley put the envelope in his pocket. “What a business,” he said bitterly. “See you, Al.” The car moved out along Collins Avenue.

  As they crossed the Julia Tuttle Causeway for a direct run to the airport, he thought this had to be serious. Pop didn’t play games. But what could be as serious as the jam Maerose had put him in with Mardell? “I am Charley’s fiancée,” she had said—or something like that. How in God’s name had she gotten it into her head that they were engaged? He wasn’t engaged to anybody, including Mardell. What he and Mae had done on the new bed in his apartment was an absolutely natural thing for people of their age group and health ratings. The Surgeon General of the United States and Psychology Today would back him up on that. What they had done on that bed had been nice, it had worked the way both of them had a right to hope it would work, so they had tried it again a couple of times. If every time a young, healthy American male got on a bed with a young, healthy American female they automatically became engaged, there wouldn’t be enough engagement rings to go around. Sixty percent of the entire population would be interchangeably engaged to one another. No one could ever get married because they’d be engaged to so many people.

  But look what it had done to Mardell. She was nearly totaled, and just at the time when she needed him most this goddam thing had come up to turn him into a fugitive. What would she do when she woke up? How would she ever get herself together again all alone?

  There was nothing Mallon could pin on him. Davey Hanly wasn’t going to give up a nice steady sixty-thousand-a-year from the pad because Mallon asked him some questions. Anyway, Davey was eight floors below when the accident happened. Mallon could yell all he wanted but he couldn’t make anything stick. There was no witness who had seen him zotz Vito. Maybe the crisis was that Pop had a tip-off about Little Jaimito. They probably hadn’t even found Jaimito yet and, anyway, there was nothing that could hang it on him, and the cops would be too gratified that somebody did the number on a bunch of guys like that to get in an uproar. Maybe Vincent was setting up a contract in Dallas or somewhere that Pop didn’t want to talk over until he knew he had a safe line or until he could send somebody down from New York with what had to be done. But Pop had said George F. Mallon. How could it be Mallon? If that was it, he was going to have somebody’s ass because of all the times for him to have to leave Mardell this was absolutely the worst. She already figured he sold her out. But no matter what Maerose or anybody said, how could she think he sold her out? He brought her to Miami with him, not Maerose, didn’t he? It was a no-win situation.

  Jesus, next he had to listen to Maerose. Wherever Pop was sending him, she was going to find out where he was and she was going to call him just as if they were engaged and she had the right to call him. It was a toss-up which was worse: Mae or Mardell. How could he tell himself not to lie? When it was all over, what would be the use of lying? If he wanted to get this straightened out, he would have to level with both of them. But if he lied to one he had to lie to both, because he knew in his heart that the one he didn’t lie to was the one he wanted to keep. That was instinct
, but suppose his instincts were wrong?

  It was better to have to hear it the first time from Maerose on the phone than to be in the same room with her while he tried to control his eyes and the sound of his voice. He was going to have to get a book on lying or he was never going to convince anybody. Whatever was going to happen out of all this, it wasn’t good for Mardell. This was going to make a lot of trouble for Mardell, and he was glad he’d had that talk with Pop about her because Pop would move in on the situation and ease it up until Charley could get back to New York. Sending Mrs. Bostwick in to ride up with her to New York showed how important Mardell was to him and he was grateful Pop had thought of it. But whatever it was Pop wanted him to do, wherever Pop was sending him, he couldn’t stay away more than a couple of days because he had very bad vibes about Mardell and he didn’t want anything to happen to her.

  It was the usual pandemonium at the airport. Time of day made no difference in airports: it was about half past six on a Friday morning, and it looked like Ghandi’s funeral. How could tens of thousands of people even think of going anywhere at this time of day?

  He located the phone booth nearest the Eastern counter, sat in it, and closed the door. In the next five minutes two different people came up to it, even at that hour of the morning, looked in, and banged on the door. Charley opened the door with deliberate slowness, thought of Humphrey Bogart, hosed fear all over them, and they went away. The phone rang.

  “Pop?”

  “Yeah. Did you do the work down there?”

  “The work?”

  “On Jaimito.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Lissena me. You know Mallon who is running for mayor on the Reform ticket?”