Jesus, Charley thought, I never saw anything like this woman.
Maerose darted away into the crowd.
“How about a drink?” Charley said.
“Maybe a glass of wine to the bride and groom,” she said. She had a voice like a jar of smoke! It just drifted out of her and, to Charley, it was visible. It had a color like Florentine gold, with a pink under-painting of the smoke out of a Roman candle on the Fourth of July. He was gonged by her eyes. Jesus! She had healthy eyes. They had fringes like on the lampshades his mother was always making when he was a kid. The white part was bright white and it pushed out the brownness of the rest like flowers coming off a pond. The brown was like maple syrup, then inside that, swimming around among tiny tangerine peels, were little goldfish, and they were changing his life. What would happen when he was able to break away from the eyes and look at the rest of her? He was dropped by this woman.
“Can I take you home? I mean—when you’re ready.”
She stopped a waiter who was carrying a tray loaded with glasses of champagne. Charley lifted two glasses off the tray. “I live in LA,” she said.
“I meant to my home,” Charley said.
Vincent Prizzi began to talk into the microphone on the stage. He was a cement-faced man with crinkly-gray hair, and he still had some of the old-country accent. He was so stolidly built that he seemed like the morganatic husband of Mother Earth, like the patron of rocks, television, and fallen cake. He introduced Don Corrado Prizzi to the guests. Charley stood at attention. He hadn’t as much as seen Don Corrado for two years. A hush fell over the awe-whacked ballroom; not even the Jewish waiters made any noise in all the time it took the ancient, enfeebled body to shuffle across the platform to the microphone, an essence of violent death and corruption so vibrant that the assembly seemed to sigh with gratitude that this sine qua non was the prisoner of such withered flesh.
Of all the leaders of the fratellanza, Corrado Prizzi alone had steadily risen in strength and prestige, because he had never deviated from the code of omertà. In turn, it had preserved and protected him. He was the only one who attended both the Cleveland meeting in 1928 and the Apalachin meeting more than a quarter of a century later in 1957. Of all of those arrested at the Cleveland meeting in 1928, he was the only one whose photograph was no longer in the police files. For over sixty years his renown and power in the fratellanza had steadily increased while his power in the government of the United States had geometrically squared itself. He was the sole United States “friend” who had enjoyed a personal relationship with the late Don Calo Vizzini, who was so close as to be actually within the family of the present Capo di tutti Capi of Sicily, Don Pietro Spina, whose son had attended the wedding today.
Don Corrado tapped on his son’s arm and motioned for him to bring his head down. Vincent bent over, nodding as he listened, then he turned back to the microphone.
“My father welcomes you to this great family occasion,” he translated. “He says you are all going to have a good time. He offers his toast of love to the happiness of the bride and groom and wishes them many children.”
Vincent lifted his glass. The eight hundred guests lifted their glasses. Everyone drank. The old man shuffled slowly off the stage and disappeared behind the piano into the curtain, one man clearing his way, another following him.
The music began again. It was “You, You’re Driving Me Crazy,” a great natural Peabody, the dance people were doing the last time Charley had ventured out on the floor with a woman. “Hey, how about a dance?” Charley said.
Maerose Prizzi grabbed Irene just as Charley was turning her toward the dance floor. “Phone call, Irene,” she said.
“Phone call?” Charley said blankly, but Irene was moving away with Maerose and they got lost in the crowd. He stood where he was, wondering if she would come back, thinking he wouldn’t be able to handle it if she didn’t come back. Numbly, he began to make plans to keep his mind filled. As soon as the bride and groom got away, he would take Irene across the street to the cement park. They would sit on a bench and when they got tired of sitting they would walk around the block, then they would sit on the bench again and decide where they would go for dinner.
After twenty minutes of waiting he went looking for her. He couldn’t find her. He saw Maerose dancing with Al Melvini and he moved around the dance floor in the direction in which they were dancing, waiting until the music stopped. He didn’t want to cut in because Irene might come back and he didn’t want her to think he was interested in any other woman. When Maerose came off the floor he stopped her. “Where’s Irene?” he said.
“Irene?”
“You dragged her away to the telephone.”
“Baby, how should I know?”
***
He was the last wedding guest to leave. He stood at the door, staring into people’s faces, not having any idea of what he could say to her if she did come walking past with some guy. Well, he would talk to her. He had a right to talk to her and if the guy made any objections he would break all his fingers. But what if she didn’t want to talk to him? What if she just gave him a wave and kept moving on or if he tried to stop her and she just froze him with a look?
When everybody had gone he gave the ladies’ room pro five bucks to go in and make sure Irene wasn’t sick in there or something. Nothing. He went to find the Head Cameraman.
“Did you get her?”
“Get what?”
Charley grabbed the man by his shirtfront and lifted him up on his toes. “You want to be dropped in a Dispos-All?” he asked the man plaintively.
“Listen, I remember now. I got the shots for you. Very good. You’re gonna like it.” Charley let go. “When do I see it?”
“We only shoot it, mister. I mean, we turn it in and it goes to the lab. You gotta take that up with the company.”
“All right,” Charley said. “I can do that.”
He got into the beat-up black Chevy van in his tuxedo and drove out to the beach thinking that maybe it was just as well that she had disappeared because he would have had to drive her in this dumpy heap. But what the hell, he thought. He could have gone to the bell captain and rented a limousine. He could have left the Chevy and sent somebody in to get it tomorrow. When he got home to the four-room apartment that Maerose had decorated for him—without any books, though he hadn’t noticed that omission in the nine years he had lived there—he took off his bow tie and sat on his small terrace overlooking the bay and thought the whole situation through. He had to find her. That was all. That was all there was to it. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of life like some kid thinking about what his life would have been if she hadn’t disappeared, he had to find her. It wasn’t exactly kosher but he had to call Maerose and ask her. It could result in a whole series of pains in the ass but she was his only connection with Irene. He lifted the phone to his lap and dialed her number.
“Mae?”
“She isn’t here. You want to leave a message?”
“Who is this?”
“This is the girl.”
“You got a pencil?”
“Wait. I’ll get a pencil.”
She came back. “Okay.”
“This is Charley Partanna. You want me to spell it?”
“No. I got it.”
“So spell it.”
She spelled it. “Good,” he said. “You give me your name and I’m going to mail you ten bucks at that address.”
“Ten bucks?”
“Yeah. What’s the name?”
“Miss Peaches Altamont.”
“All right, Peaches. Tell Miss Prizzi she has to call me no matter how late. She has the number.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hung up and called Paulie at his hotel. There was no answer. He went to a table and pulled open a drawer. He took out an envelope, put a ten-dollar bill into it, sealed it, then addressed it. He went out of the apartment to the mail chute across from the elevator and got a stamp out of his wallet. He pu
t the stamp on the envelope and dropped it into the chute.
The elevator door opened and two men got out.
“Hey, Partanna,” the big one said.
Charley felt a flash of panic, naked without a gun in the open hallway. The man flashed his shield. “Gallagher, Homicide,” he said.
Charley relaxed. “What’s up?”
“You don’t want to talk about it out here.”
“Sure. Come on in.”
They went into the apartment.
“So?” Charley asked.
“Somebody hit Sal Netturbino this afternoon.”
“Yeah?”
“At his hotel.”
“Who did it?”
“Where were you between two and five today?”
“At the wedding, Corrado Prizzi’s granddaughter’s wedding.”
“What did I tell you?” Gallagher said to the other cop. “They are all going to turn out to be at the wedding.”
Chapter Two
One of Ed Prizzi’s lawyers got Charley away from the cops at ten o’clock that night. They had questioned him for over three hours but he had nothing to tell them and anyway his mind was deep into how to find Irene. Maerose had told him by the way she acted that she knew Irene well, but suppose she didn’t? If she didn’t then she was going to have to remember who introduced her to Irene, and no matter how far backward he had to go, he was going to come up with a way to find Irene again. When he left police headquarters he went to a phone booth in a drugstore and called Paulie at his hotel.
“I was just leaving for the airport,” Paulie marveled. “It’s a real freak thing. I am walking past the phone to go out to the airport and it rings.” Paulie was a hysteric so he was in the movie business. He always made everything out as if God had designed it to happen only to him.
“Listen, Paulie,” Charley said, “you remember the pictures I wanted of that girl and you gave me your card to hand to the guy?” Charley came over a telephone line like a talking brewery horse.
“Yeah?”
“The thing is how can I get it and put it on a cassette?”
“You want it, we’ll do it.”
“Great. Thanks, Paulie.”
“Is the girl an actress? You think we’d be interested in looking at her?”
“You looked at her already. The girl in the church with the green-and-yellow dress.”
“Oh, that one. Well, anyway. The thing is, you gotta look at the footage yourself, Charlie. Who else knows what you want?”
“When can I look at it?”
“Day after tomorrow. But at the studio. That’s the only way.”
“You got it. I’ll fly out there the day after tomorrow. And I want to tell you something else, Paulie. I am glad you and me don’t like the same kind of broads, because I don’t like what you like, either.”
“Charley!” Paulie said. “What did I say? I didn’t say anything!” Charley hung up.
***
When he got back to the beach it was almost midnight. There was a message on the machine from Maerose. He called her. She sounded a little smashed so maybe she had gone to bed with pills.
“Charley, what is it with you?” she asked wearily. “You are something else, you know? I am pooped.”
“Look, Mae, this is important or I wouldn’t bother you. I got to know how I can get in touch with the girl, you know, Irene Walker.”
“Charley, I only know her like an hour longer than you know her.”
“Who introduced you?”
“Some people.”
“Then, okay. Will you call those people who introduced you and run down where she lives?”
“I don’t know, Charley.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
She sighed. “It’s like cutting my own throat. It’s pushing you further away.”
“Who pushed who further away? Me? No, you. That’s finished. That was almost ten years ago.”
“Okay, okay. Ah shit. I had my shot but somebody bumped my arm.”
“I’ll appreciate it.”
“I can’t do it tonight, Charley.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
“I’ll try.”
“I can call you like noon tomorrow?”
“I’ll call you. I don’t know how I’m going to do on this.”
After she had hung up she fell back on her bed, then turned over to stare at the wall. She had once had it made with Charley and her whole life, then they had that fight—some fight, she had made it a fight—and she went out of the joint with that guy and they wound up in Mexico City, drunk. She didn’t know what to do so she stayed with the guy and they stayed drunk. Then one morning two of her father’s people came in the door and beat the shit out of the guy while the fucking assistant manager just stood there. They made her get dressed and they never talked to her. They never said anything to her. They took her out of the hotel like a couple of cops and flew her back to New York. She sat in a room with her father and he stared at her until she wanted to yell at him. He looked at her like she was garbage. “You put shame on your family,” he said. “You showed what you care about Prizzi honor. You were going to marry the son of your grandfather’s oldest friend but you became a passeggiatrice instead. Thank God, your mother can never know what you did. She is safe from you with the angels. Listen to me! I am never going to talk to you again after this. Angelo Partanna says he forgives you, but Charley doesn’t forgive you, you took his manhood from him. You can make believe you are a member of this family, make believe you are still my daughter, because that’s the way your grandfather wants it, or you can get out—you are not in this family, you are not my daughter, and I am going to see to it that you stay an old maid for the rest of your life.”
She didn’t run into Charley for five months. He said, hello, how are you, just like nothing had happened. He wasn’t even cold to her. She had lost him. She loved him and she had lost him and he never came near her again.
Chapter Three
Charley and his father had to spend most of the day with the chemist testing out batches of a shipment of cinnari that had just come in from Asia via Colombia. It was Grade A, Number 4 heroin and they stayed with the chemist while he cut it into wholesale lots and into dealer lots. In the midafternoon, while they were riding back through Long Island City, Charley remembered to tell his father he had been picked up for the Netturbino hit.
“Yeah. Ed told me,” his father said. “But you couldn’t be cleaner, right?”
“Who made the hit, Pop?”
“We did.”
“We did? How come we did? I didn’t know nothing about it.”
“Well, that’s the best way, ain’t it?”
“Who hit him?”
“Outta town talent. It was a specialist kind of job.”
“How come?”
“Vincent told me to set it up so we couldn’t have nothing to do with it. There’s going to be a rumble in the commission about it, but that has nothing to do with us. We was all at the wedding having our pictures taken, right? Don’t get hot. It was good thinking.”
“Jesus, it was great thinking,” Charlie said.
He got back to the beach at 9:10 that night and called Maerose as he sat out on the terrace. It was a louse of a night. Rain was pounding down and he had to stay in the far corner between the awning and the wall but he had always figured that anybody who had a terrace with such a view had to use it or let him go back and live in a tenement in west Brooklyn.
Maerose had Irene’s number. “Let me tell you it was some job to get that, Charley,” she said. “It would have been easier to get the number of the telephone booth on top of Mount Everest.”
“I want to send you something really nice for this, Mae. What do you need? Tell me. Whatever.”
She gave him the sad laugh. “Send me a Valentine,” she said, “that’s what I need.”
It was 9:25. So it was 6:25 in California, a good time. Irene picked up on the third ring.
�
�This is Charley Partanna,” he said. He held his breath.
“Charley Partanna?”
“Yeah.”
“This is terrific! How did you get my number?”
“I asked somebody for it. You’re not sore?”
“Sore? I am tickled. Where are you?”
“I’m in Brooklyn.”
“Oh.”
“But I have to be in LA tomorrow, but that won’t take long. I thought—maybe we could have dinner tomorrow night.”
There was a seven-beat pause. “All right,” she said. “I think I can do that.”
“Sensational. Okay. Then I’ll pick you up. What’s a good time for you?”
“Seven?”
“Great.”
“But not here. Make it—well—how about the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire?”
“Sure. Okay. That’s great. Sleep warm.”
He pushed the disconnect button but he sat there for a long time staring at the telephone. All his life he had just taken telephones for granted, like they were part of the furniture, for Christ’s sake. What about when you needed a lawyer or a doctor? What about the thing it had just done for him, like it was nothing, like it was giving you the Gag of the Day or your horoscope, for Christ’s sake? This telephone had changed his entire outlook on life. This telephone had delivered Irene to him. If he heard of any rotten kids ripping out a telephone booth like they did sometimes in the neighborhood, he was going to beat the shit out of them.
***
Just sitting in that hotel lobby under a shiny green balibuntal hat, which by itself could return millinery to a leading place in the arts, she had slowed down the lobby traffic, as Charley could see from across the lobby, to minus nine miles an hour. He studied everyone who was within sight of her in the room, pitying poor Paulie, and he imagined that he could see old men’s eyes getting misty, room clerks and bystanders developing erections, and every woman who saw her realizing that she was doomed to hostile dreams that night. She had turned Charley’s legs to water just by sitting there when he came into the lobby. He was holding on to the back of a chair as he stared at her; she looked up, lifted two fingers and fluttered them at him. He crossed the lobby and loomed over her saying, “I was scared I wasn’t going to see you again.”
Prizzi's Honor Page 2