But his loathing of all those unwashed, crudely accented people in the fratellanza who would directly benefit from such policies choked in his gullet again. Whenever he thought of those people, he thought of his swinish brother, Vincent. He loathed being the force that would make all of those swinish people richer and more powerful. As if they could be. If he did do it, he was going to make some hard, hard deals through Sal Penrose so that at least he could know that he was making something substantial out of every enhanced dollar he would be helping to let them make. God, he thought, imagining the CIA flying in drugs from all the contributing countries of the world for absolutely trouble-free entry into the market cities of North America. There were hundreds of billions to be made and the lion’s share of it could be his. They could put cocaine in every household, as available as packaged bread. He decided to forget his objections to most of the individual members of the fratellanza. He would carry out his father’s policy willingly and serve his government.
The fratellanza, when advised by S. L. Penrose, was, in all its innocence, unconscious of the hyperactive destiny that Eduardo Prizzi had in store for them and was pleased by the outcome of the nomination. Eduardo, they were told by their consiglieri, would be more useful to its directly patriotic interests than if he had won the nomination for the presidency in that he would be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States: after all, their principal business was breaking the law on behalf of a pleading public.
Those portions of the families that had been contributing to get Eduardo elected president were now told to switch their allegiance to the Manning ticket, while the other half of the families worked and spent for the candidacy of Franklin M. Heller so that the two-party system would be preserved.
41
Rocco entered his Uncle Eduardo’s security system on a high aerie floor of the four-floor Price apartment in New York’s Trump Tower at 8:26 A.M. the following morning, requiring that he get out of bed at 3:45 A.M. to drive from the Jersey shore into the city. He was processed by Eduardo’s security people and ready to enter his uncle’s breakfast room at 8:37. He resented the whole thing. Rocco had been a resenter all his life, one of the people with cancer of the soul. He had made capo because his mother controlled what his grandfather got to eat, and his mother had been determined to make something out of Rocco. All his life he had figured that, when the don died, he—or his mother, which was the same thing because he’d get it in the end—would come into a fortune. He was Corrado Prizzi’s grandson so—what else? But nothing happened when the don died. The don left his mother the income on five hundred thousand dollars and not a dime to him. Then his mother died twenty minutes later, so he got it. What was it, the income? Twenty-two thousand nine hundred a year. Fahcrissake, he had spent more than that on a weekend at Vegas. What kind of a life had they handed him, the grandson of Corrado Prizzi, who got only the income on five hundred grand and a big line of horseshit?
Eduardo was waiting for him in the breakfast room. It would have been an imposing room for the state dinners of the Shah of Iran in his salad days. The furniture was made of solid silver, which shone capriciously in the morning sunlight, requiring a full-time staff of two to keep it polished. The powerful, not to say overwhelming, Rembrandt, The Master Clock Maker, valued by Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous at $8.7 million, which was quite large and very striking, would have dominated the room were it not for the glassed-in junglelike arboretum that filled the longest wall, in which families of rhesus monkeys swung from branch to branch or searched for lice in each other’s fur. The arboretum was Eduardo’s statement in support of worldwide environmental protection, a deeply personal, not merely political, conviction.
Eduardo rose and embraced his nephew. “I am brokenhearted about your mother.”
They settled down to a reassuring Sicilian breakfast of focaccia, which were rolls with a filling of ricotta cheese and minced kidney; strong coffee; and cubaita, an expressive sweet made from sesame seed, sugar, and honey. Eduardo, of course, never ate Sicilian food unless he was with members of his family from whom he needed something, which was as seldom as it needed to be, so his people had been scouring the Sicilian food markets of the city since dawn to come up with something approximately suitable.
“This is tremendous, Uncle Eduardo. You must have a fucking genius of a Sicilian cook.”
Eduardo shuddered lightly. He offered Rocco a selection of Zeno Davidoff’s breakfast cigars. He passed a ruby- and emerald-studded Zippo lighter to Rocco, saying, “Keep it as a little souvenir.”
“Holy shit, Uncle Eduardo!”
“As the surviving head of the Prizzi family, I’ve been thinking, Rocco, about how your grandfather had somehow passed you over in his few bequests.”
“Shit, yes.”
“I think you are entitled to more than the interest on the five hundred thousand dollars which was passed on to you from your mother.”
“Shit, yes.”
“I don’t suppose the interest is very much?”
“A lousy twenty-two thousand nine hundred a year.”
“Whaaaaaat? Good heavens I could do better than that for you.”
“How much?”
“Say thirty thousand.”
Rocco snorted. “Thirty thousand,” he said. “I gotta work my ass off just to stay even.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a pit boss at the number three in Atlantic City.”
“You must be on your feet most of the time.”
“You can say that again.”
“Well, by God, by my lights, it just isn’t fair. You, the grandson, get twenty-two thousand nine hundred a year, but Maerose, the granddaughter, is the custodian of billions.”
“Ah, shit, Uncle Eduardo,” Rocco moaned.
“The injustice of the whole thing has been bothering me so that I can’t sleep nights. Really. I’ve had to put on my thinking cap about it, and I think I have evolved a way in which you can pick up a million or two in a perfectly straightforward way.”
“How?”
“Tax-free, of course.”
“No kidding? How, Uncle Eduardo?”
“Do you know an absolutely stupid but reliable man whom you could enlist to sort of—front—this thing for you?”
Rocco thought. His mind wasn’t as fast as an Olivetti 260 work station, but he got there. “Yeah. Santo Calandra.”
“The collector for the franchises? The former vindicatore?”
“Yeah. He’s like the stupidest anywheres.”
“I see. Well! That’s splendid. Now—this is what I want you to do. Down to the last detail. We’ll go over it two or three times, but if there is anything about the plan which you do not understand, I rely on you to ask me about it now, because—except for one more time—we won’t be meeting again.” He smiled benignly. “In this connection, that is.”
42
Rocco set the meet with Santo Calandra by inviting him for a weekend at the fanciest of the three Prizzi hotels in Atlantic City. When Santo got there on a Friday afternoon, Rocco laid on a gorgeous broad, stacks of chips, all the New Jersey champagne Santo could drink, a suite with a private steam room, and four hard-core porn videos. The whole hospitality knocked Santo out until three o’clock the next afternoon, which was when Rocco went up to see him.
Santo had worked in Rocco’s regime during the years of Vincent Prizzi and Charley Partanna. He had a wary respect for Rocco, who not only had been the source from which all good things had flowed for most of his professional life, but also was a Prizzi on his mother’s side, where it counted.
They sat at either end of an enormous sofa, smiling at each other. Santo was wearing a light pink undershirt and orange shorts. He looked like the flag of an emerging African nation. Santo was a bulky man with a nose like a boxing glove who had so much respect for his skin that he only shaved every other day. Beardwise, Rocco thought, he could have took a shave every four hours. As long as Rocco had known him, Santo had stayed ju
st busy enough not to have the time to clean his fingernails, or even to wash his hands for that matter. He could have grown Perricone grapes in the accumulation of soil at the end of each grimy finger. Most of all, just sitting around like this, he missed Santo’s neckties. Santo’s adventurousness showed in his neckties, which made him look as if he had encouraged people to break eggs all over his chest. His suits were too tight but looked a lot better than his underwear. Just the same, Rocco remembered wistfully, when Santo didn’t have his feet up on the furniture like this he wore the most beautiful shoes in Brooklyn.
Rocco was a vertical of the right creases, old-school tie, button-down collar, and a charcoal-gray blazer with brass buttons. He wore a black mourning band on his left sleeve.
“They take good care of you?” Rocco asked.
“Sensational.”
“How was the broad?”
“Sensational.”
“Wait’ll you see what I got for you tonight.”
“No kidding?”
“Two. Real movie stahz.”
Santo grinned, which, considering the state of his teeth, his stubble, and the size of his head, was not the most considerate thing he could have done.
“How did you make out downstairs?”
“Like I broke even, maybe won a little.”
“I ain’t seen you for a long time. Not since the franchises.”
“Yeah.”
“I got a tremendous proposition for you.”
“Yeah?”
“For maybe three-four months I been asking around about who is the most natural leader to take over the family if the family was gonna go back into bidniz again.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“I mean the franchise thing ain’t right. We gotta take them back and operate them the way my grandfather set them up.”
“But those other outfits paid like thirty million for the franchises.”
“So we’ll give them the money back.”
“Where are we gonna get that kind of money?”
“Later. Don’t worry about it.”
“Where do I come in here?”
“You are the natural capo di famiglia. Everybody I talked to from the old setup agrees with that.”
“No shit?”
“We’re gonna call it the Calandra family.”
“No shit?”
“What else?”
“Whose idea was this, anyway?”
“Angelo Partanna.”
“Angelo?”
“But he wants you to stay far away from him until we get the whole thing set up.”
“This ain’t easy to follow, Rocco. It’s coming at me very fast. So if we gotta pay thirty million to get the franchises back, then where we gonna get it?”
“That’s the beauty part Angelo thought of. You know who got the money when my grandfather went?”
“Who?”
“My cousin’s kids.”
“Who?”
“Maerose’s kids.”
“So?”
“So you line up a couple of solid helpers and you lift my cousin’s kids.”
“What for?”
“For thirty million bucks.”
“The don left that kind of money?”
“Then you get the franchises back and you head up the Calandra family.”
After Rocco left, Santo went back to bed to think the whole thing over. It was a terrific proposition. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he needed to talk to Angelo before he made any moves on Maerose’s kids. What he needed more than he needed the thirty million was a consigliere, and everybody knew Angelo was the best in the business, coast to coast. He lay on the emperor-size bed on top of an antique American patchwork quilt made by little old ladies high up in Vermont or maybe Taiwan, and he could feel the power inside his head like it was water on the brain, but even so he was big enough to admit that he owed it to Angelo to offer him the job because he never forgot how he owed it to Angelo, who had given him his start as a contract hitter when he had been a young guy just starting out. Also he wanted to lay it on Angelo a little because the time had finally come when he was about to move up from wiseguy to the top of the heap. The Calandra family! Jesus, he wished his mother was still alive.
Santo and Angelo met at the laundry on Tuesday morning.
“Look at it this way, Angelo,” Santo said. “Nobody can say nothing against the Prizzis because there ain’t no Prizzis. Also Charley is gone. No family honor is involved here. You are like the janitor for the operation, so nobody is gonna blame you.”
“Janitor?” Pop said. “If I’m the janitor, what does that make you—the men’s room attendant, you marble-headed wop stupe?”
“No offense, Angelo. It just gets you off the hook.”
“I’m over eighty years old. That’s the only hook I needa get off.”
“What I’m saying is, it has nothing to do with you. Nobody is gonna blame you.”
“But they’re gonna blame you, Santo. The Blacks, Hispanics, and Orientals and the families who bought them franchises are gonna blame you. They paid out all that money to buy them businesses—how do you think you’re gonna stay alive after that?”
“Because I am gonna give them back the money they paid for the franchises.”
“Why should they sell it back for what they paid? Why should they sell it back at all? What the fuck you think they bought it for inna first place? You think they keep paying us the royalties if it wasn’t making a shitpot fulla money?”
“I didn’t say they’d sell it back. I said I’d make the offer to pay it back so I could have a position if it comes up in the Commission. Pretty good, hah?”
“If it comes up? If? And suppose they say sure, old pal, we’ll give it back. Where you gonna get that kinda money?”
Santo hadn’t expected such a question; then he remembered how Rocco had told him that Angelo had to be kept far out of this until the new Calandra family had been set up, so he improvised. What was the difference? Whatever he said, they both knew exactly what they were talking about. “Where? You are gonna give it to me.”
“Me? Where am I gonna get it?”
“You’re the only one left out of the whole Prizzi family. You got the money. So you give it to me, and I give it back to them.”
“Santo, don’t work overtime being a schmuck. You think the Prizzis put the thirty million from the franchises inna tin box and handed it to me? Use your head, fahcrissake.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“I mean the Prizzis wouldn’t let fifty bucks lay around without reinvesting it. The money was all washed. It’s out working. It’s been moved under a half dozen different names since it was paid in. Whatta you, some kinda cretino?”
Santo thought maybe he could be wrong thinking about Angelo as a consigliere. Where was the respect here? What kind of attitude was this? “So who got the don’s money?” he said. “Maerose Prizzi?”
“The Salvation Army,” Angelo said.
“Yeah? Rocco’s mother told him Mae’s kids got it,” Santo said.
“Jesus!” Angelo said. “Now you give me street gossip. Santo, lissena me. You got a good thing going with the override on the franchise collections. What you were thinking you could do only looks good on paper. Forget it. And I’ll forget we ever had this meeting.”
“Fuck that, Angelo. I’m not running no collection agency for a lousy three percent when I can have the whole thing.”
“So maybe we can work it out to five percent,” Angelo lied. “That’s a lotta money, Santo. That was the boss’s cut in the old days.”
“A lotta money? You know what’s left after a hundred and thirty-four collectors get their end and the payoff money is taken out and I pay the overhead? Practically nothing, that’s what’s left.”
“It’s more money than you ever saw in your life,” Angelo said. “And the way you wanna routine it, it’s gonna be a very short life.”
“So a buncha hoodlums are gonna get in an uproar. So
there’ll be a little war. Then everybody will go back to business.”
“You are gonna sting Sicilians for thirty million plus and they’re gonna forget it?”
“Maybe I didn’t think it through, Angelo. But I will. And when I do, I’m gonna take over all that business. And you’re gonna hafta decide whose side you’re on.”
“Think what through, you asshole?”
“I’m gonna get the money, that’s what I’m gonna think it through.” Santo saw that he would need to get back to Rocco to get this thing opened up for him a little more.
“How’re you gonna get the money, you shithead?”
“That’s what I gotta think through,” he said stiffly, deeply offended. He stood up and left the laundry.
Pop swiveled his chair around and stared out of the window at the bricks and the cats in the garbage. After a while he turned back to the desk. He called Charley at the Barker’s Hill office. “Something came up, Charley,” he said into the phone.
“When do you want to make it?”
“Like now.”
“The laundry?”
“Yeah.”
Charley drove himself to Brooklyn in the Chevy van. He was wearing a gray flannel suit with the tailoring that Mary Barton said made him look like Gary Cooper around the torso, and a maroon Bohemian Grove tie. The Ralph Lauren alligator scuffles he had on had cost him more than the quarterly rent on the apartment at the beach in the old days and that was after inflation had set in. Pop was sitting too quietly when Charley came into the office, staring at a statue of St. Gennaro, a leftover from Vincent Prizzi’s time. It was a nice summer day. There was a redolent breeze off the Gowanus Canal, three miles to the northwest.
Charley sat in one of the two chairs facing his father, who was behind the desk that held Vincent’s fake bronze plastic sign that said: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING.
“A nice suit, Charley.”
Charley shrugged. “It happened in Europe.”
“I used to be a snappy dresser. But—you get outta the habit, I guess.”
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