“I called you,” she said. “Maerose gave me your number. But you weren’t in. I was going to call you again on Sunday morning.” She was lying, but it was a nice kind of lie.
“No kidding?” That proved something to Charley, it proved that this wasn’t going to be the one-sided thing he had been afraid it could be. “Let’s go someplace,” he said.
She stood up. She was just right, three inches shorter than he was, but he hadn’t remembered her this tall. “You got higher heels on?” he asked.
“Higher than what?”
“Higher than at the wedding.”
“Oh! Yes. Yes, I do.”
“I’ve got a studio car with a driver in the alley.”
“Let’s take my car. You drive.”
He had never heard such a voice. Before he went home he was going to get Paulie to run some Garbo movies for him because Irene Walker had to sound like Garbo. He had read somewhere that some guy had paid fifteen hundred dollars for a dead rose that Garbo had kissed maybe twenty years before and he had thought that guy was a scimunito. But he understood now. He would pay fifteen hundred dollars for any rose that had even been in the same room with Irene Walker. Now he was in the same room with her and she liked him and soon she would kiss him and someday maybe they would auction him off and only God knew how much he would bring.
They walked out slowly past the elevators and the display cases and the restaurants to the wide, covered driveway. She said something to a car jockey and an amethyst-colored foreign car, a two-seater with the top down, was backed into place in front of them. Charley handed Irene into the car, gave the jockey some money and told him to send the studio car back, then he went around to the driver’s side and got in.
“What kind of a car is this?”
“A Gozzy.”
“A Gozzy?”
“It’s a replica of a 1929 Mercedes. The Japanese make them in England for the Arab market. It’s a great California car.”
“It’s a great anyplace car,” Charley said as they drifted out of the courtyard. “Man, it must cost.”
“Well,” Irene said, “it wasn’t free but, my God, think what it will cost two years from now. What kind of food do you like?”
“Food?”
“You know, what kind of restaurant?”
“Outside? Outside is like a novelty to me.”
“Aiee, do I have an outside restaurant for you.”
They drove to the ocean, then up the Pacific Coast Highway, and Charley felt taller, better, greater, kinder, and smarter than he had ever felt in his life. He felt so good that he told her about the time in Lansing, Michigan, because that was the one thing he had experienced besides Irene Walker that always made him feel good.
“I am there on business and there is a blizzard. There was so much snow that almost all the people who worked in the motel couldn’t get there. There was the assistant manager and the night auditor, that’s all. The guests had to make their own beds and cook and keep the lobby clean and some of them were pretty lousy about it. I saw what a bind everybody was in and, anyway, I like housework and cooking. I live alone and you can’t live like a peasant so I tell the manager I want to help out with the general situation. That guy gave me a smile I can still see, a really beautiful smile. I worked the switchboard, I worked in the kitchen, I tended bar—anyplace I could help out. Most of the guests were pretty good about the blizzard, like they lent each other newspapers and so on, but the other people, the beefers, just hung around the lobby and stared out at the snow going up higher and higher, and made trouble. On the third day, a freelance snowplow guy comes up to the door and he offers to clear out the whole parking lot and the road out to the main road and he wants four hundred dollars for this. The assistant manager naturally says he isn’t authorized to spend that kind of money and anyway they have a contract snowplow guy. The people who live in the lobby make a big yell because he won’t make the deal. Two guys start to push him around so I have to drag them into the lounge and bounce them around a little. That quiets everybody down but they sulk, and the other people, the good people, catch it from them and they won’t work anymore, they just sit around the lobby and beef. I made all the beds. Then I got behind the counter in the coffee shop and they all ate. At four o’clock when it’s already dark, the contract snowplow comes to the front door and tells us he has the snow cleared away and that we can get out on the highway. The motel empties in like ten minutes but only three of those bastards—pardon me—offer to pay, which the assistant manager then tells them there won’t be any bills anyway. When everybody was gone, the assistant manager, his name is Francis M. Winikus, makes a speech to me about how I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing but the speech still made me feel very good. I call him up every Christmas. It gives me a good feeling.”
“I’m proud of you, Charley,” Irene said. “You deserve to feel good.”
He felt exalted. Talk about casting bread on water! A couple of thousand miles and a couple of years later and the bread comes down on me like a ton, Charley thought. “Well, you got to pull your own weight,” he said.
They turned up into the hills and there was the place, which Charley knew he would have to burn into his mind because he knew he would never be able to find it again—not that he doubted it existed, but he felt himself being pulled forward so fast that there could never again be any place he could go back to.
It must be a spic place, he thought, because the waiter looked it and Irene asked him to bring something in what must have been Puerto Rican, which she rattled off.
“What’s he getting us?”
“You should see your face, Charley. It’s got itself all set to resist something foreign.”
“Yeah? Well, what is it?” He tried not to look worried or like a troublemaker.
“Fresh pineapple juice and rum from a blender.”
“Say that name again.”
“Jugo de piña con Bacardi.”
“A Puerto Rican drink?”
“I suppose so. I’ve only had it in Cuba.”
“That was Cuban you were telling the waiter? It sounds just like Puerto Rican.”
They had another round. Delicious, Charley thought, and it tasted healthy. She got him to eat something called combo nachos and they were terrific. They laughed a lot, which make Charley feel tremendous because nobody else had ever thought he was funny. Very otherwise, in fact. After a while he got around to the nitty.
“You married?” he asked her.
“Not really.”
“Even fake I want to know about.”
“I was married once.” She shrugged it off. “About four years ago. Then he left me and I don’t know where he is. And I don’t want to know.”
“He left you?”
“Crazy, right? He just had a short attention span.”
“What’s that?”
“I suppose he got bored with me.”
“Impossible!” Charley raised his voice and it almost shook the terrace furniture. People stopped eating. They looked around. Irene started to giggle, then she put her hand over his and looked right at him. “I was lucky it worked out that way,” she said.
“I could find him.”
“Let him stay lost.”
“You might want to get married again someday.”
“Could be. But until that time comes, I don’t want to know about him.”
“Marriage shouldn’t be like that,” Charley said. “I know it is a lot of times but that’s not the way. I mean, my mother and my father had a marriage. It made me happy all the time she was alive. I get mad when I hear about the other kind and when it happens to you it tears up the whole road for me. I mean, I hate the guy for walking out on you, but I’m glad he walked out on you.”
“I think the way you think about marriage. My mother and my father had a terrible marriage, but even then I could see how it could have been different. Anyway, I like your jacket, Charley.”
“You like it? It’s my cousin P
aulie’s tailor. He’s in the movie business so I figured he should know. Not that I wear it much. New York, well they dress differently in New York. A jacket like this would stand out in New York. You don’t want clothes for that. In fact, flash is bad. My father used to tell me that twice a week when I was a kid. He means all flashfront stuff but what he was saying to me is it’s better to stand out because of what you are and how serious you are than to let clothes or cars or diamond rings do it for you. For men, that is,” he added quickly.
“He’s right, Charley.”
“How come you aren’t a wop and I meet you at Teresa Prizzi’s wedding?”
“The bishop who married them wasn’t a wop.”
“He wasn’t? Oh, yeah. He was a Polack.”
“You think maybe I’m not a wop because my father was Polish?” She beamed on him.
“Walker is a Polish name?” He was astounded.
“It was Walcewicz. I was born Maida Walcewicz, but I shortened it.”
“I figured maybe you went to college with Maerose.”
“Something like that. How long will you be in LA?”
“Maybe till Tuesday.”
“Do you have to get back?”
“Well, yeah. I’m in olive oil and cheese.” He thought he caught a flicker of amusement in her eyes as he said that. He wondered, briefly, just how well she did know the family. “What business you in, you can afford a car like that?”
“Taxes.”
“Taxes?”
“You know—death and taxes. I’m a tax consultant.”
“Like what do you do when you consult?”
She gave him her tested-sentence answer. “Well, yesterday I had a client who had an interest in a bank and a financial account in a foreign country so I told him he had to file Treasury form nine-oh-two-two-one.”
“Yeah?”
“I save them money. Like if a corporation pays ransom to a kidnaper for the return of a corporation officer, then that is deductible as a theft loss. It’s technical, but that kind of thing.”
“That is simply terrific, Irene. I really mean it.”
He saw her for lunch and dinner for the next two days, Sunday and Monday. He kissed her on Sunday night. I am forty-two years old, he told himself, and this woman has got to be thirty-five and a kiss from her makes me drunk. He told her he loved her at lunch on Monday. “I gotta say it, Irene. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I love you. I am a grown man. Insurance companies will back me up that I am past middle age but nothing, nobody in my life, ever made me feel what I feel about you. I love you. That’s it. That’s everything. I love you.”
She touched his lips with her fingertips, then pressed her fingers to her lips. “I think I am in love with you,” she said.
“Not in love,” he said fiercely. “In love is temporary, then you move on to the next in love. Everybody goes in and out of love. I know about this. I remember everything I ever read about it in the magazines. In love is just a lot of exohormones which is—wait a minute!—a hormonal secretion by an organism which affects the smelling of another person so as to alter it in a certain way. I never forgot that. I wrote it down till I had it pat. Or it is feedback which is—ready?—a reciprocal effect of one person or another person. That’s what in love is. Who needs it?”
“Love,” she said. “I mean—I love you, I think.”
“That is not just good enough, that is unbelievable.”
“It sounds like I hedged it. I just don’t know how to say it because I never said it.”
“Never?”
“I never loved anybody. All my life I had to protect myself, and you can’t protect yourself anymore when you love somebody. I love you, Charley.”
“I thought all the time about you saying that to me. Day and night. Now that I know how you see it, I have to say to you that everything is changed now. You don’t need to protect yourself now. I protect you.”
“We’ll protect each other.”
“You have to live in LA?”
“It’s going to take me a little while to get out. My house, my business—I’m in pretty deep.”
“Then I’ll keep coming out here till we can get it all settled. I’ll work in New York for a couple of days then I’ll catch like a seven-o’clock plane out then I’ll catch the red-eye back.”
“That will be heaven.”
“Can you sometimes get away to New York?”
“Sometimes.”
“Listen—Irene—everything being even, would you marry me?”
“Everything being even? That’s some mountain.”
“Just suppose.”
“Yes, I would marry you, Charley.”
They made love Monday afternoon on his rented bed at the hotel. There was never anything like it. Not for anybody. Not in history, Charley thought.
***
Paulie ran the Irene footage for him at the studio. It was absolutely sensational stuff and, for once, Paulie didn’t have any comments. They got it down to two minutes, forty-nine seconds, out of almost three minutes of stuff. One shot showed them standing together. It was a real John Gilbert-Greta Garbo deal that could have stood up against any love scene ever made, Charley thought. He couldn’t get over the great way Irene looked at him. How come he didn’t see it when it was happening? Well, maybe actually he did see it, but he didn’t take in all of it. These were moments preserved on tape and Charley waited for Paulie to ask him if he could bring in all the movie directors on the lot so they could see how it happened when it was real. This guy was a sensational photographer, Charley thought. Christ, he makes me look tremendous! The color was brilliant. The necktie he had on was worth the eleven dollars he had given the booster for it. The sound was a lot of crowd noises but Paulie said they could put a filter on that and bring it down. There was one confusing shot in the batch on Irene, which Charley didn’t have them include in the cassette. It was just a flash, almost. Maerose brought Irene to his father, then it was over.
***
Charley took the cassette back with him to New York. A studio car picked him up at the hotel on Tuesday morning. They were passing through Watts when the car’s telephone rang. It was his father in New York.
“Hey, Cholly!” Pop said. “How they hangin’?”
“Terrific, Pop. You sound like you’re in the next room.”
“They got rooms in them Hollywood cars?” Pop said, and he broke himself up, yelling har-har-har into the phone for about half a mile. “Listen, Charley, we got a little problem here so come straight to the office when you get in.”
Chapter Four
Charley went from La Guardia to the St. Gabbione Hotel Laundry where Vincent Prizzi ran his end of the family business. Pop was waiting for him.
“Before I forget,” Charley said, “I got a gimmick maybe you or Ed can use.” He told his father about the tax dodge on kidnap insurance that Irene had told him.
“That’s a good wrinkle,” Pop said, “where’d you get it?”
“Some tax expert. So—what’s the problem?”
“Marty Gilroy is shorting payoffs again.”
“What?”
“So break his legs.”
“No, Pop. This proves it. Marty has to be stupid. If I talk to him that will make the second time and that ain’t right. He don’t give a shit. We only break his legs and the other bankers are going to think he is getting away on us.”
“You want to hide him in the garbage?”
“I want to shove a bruciatóre in his mouth and keep it there until he signs a check for every dime he has. Then I want to take him out on the Island until his checks clear, then I want to break his legs and let him hitchhike home.”
“Why is that different?”
“Because we will flash his certified checks to every banker and runner in Brooklyn and Queens and they will know Marty isn’t getting away with only broken legs.”
“That’s very good. It’ll keep Marty straight. I like Marty, he’s a real hitter.”
“Po
p?”
“What?”
“Who was the girl you were talking to at the wedding?”
“What girl? Half was girls.”
“A great looker in a green-and-yellow dress.”
“A great looker?”
“Yeah—sure.”
“Hey! I’m an old guy. I don’t remember those kind of things like you do.”
“Maybe if I showed you pictures?”
“Why not? But how come this is such a big deal?”
“She’s a very special woman and I need to know all I can find out about her. Paulie has a movie shot of you and her.”
“From where?”
“From Teresa’s wedding. From after—at the hotel.”
“Yeah? I’d like to see it.”
“Can you come over to my place tonight? I’ll cook you a meal. It’s video, the picture. It takes a machine.”
“I got a meet tonight.”
“Well—as soon as you can.”
“Sure, Charley.”
“I’ll go talk to Marty Gilroy.”
Charley went to a phone and called Al Melvini, who was called “the Plumber” because he always threatened to flush people down toilets when he was on a job. Charley told him to be at The Corner in half an hour and to bring tools.
It was too early to call Irene in California. He went out the back door of the laundry and got into his anonymous, black Chevy van and drove the four blocks to The Corner. He went into the luncheonette to see who was around. Phil Vittimizzare was eating a Danish while he played the pinball machine and two dealers were counting out decks of heroin at a table in the back.
“Hey, Cholly!” Mrs. Latucci yelled at him from behind the counter. “Come on. Have a cuppa coffee and give me a good horse for today.”
Charley waved to her and stood next to Phil. “I’ll be in the car,” he said. “Take your time. We gotta wait till the Plumber gets here.”
He started to go back to the Chevy van.
“Hey, Cholly!” Mrs. Latucci yelled. “First, give me a horse.”
“Lady Carrot in the third at Pimlico,” Charley said as he went out. The two dealers and Mrs. Latucci wrote the information down.
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