by Mario Puzo
Astorre said, “I know you’re the shooters. You have a rep for having big balls. And I checked you out. Now, what I want from you is the name of the broker.”
“You’re wrong,” Stace said. “There is no way you can put that on us. And who the hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m the Don’s nephew,” Astorre said. “His sweeper-upper. And I’ve been checking you two guys out for nearly six months. At the time of the shooting, you weren’t in L.A. You didn’t show for over a week. Franky, you missed two games coaching the kids. Stace, you never dropped in to see how the store went. You never even called. So just tell me where you were.”
“I was in Vegas gambling,” Franky said. “And we could talk better if you took off some of these restraints. We’re not fucking Houdinis.”
Astorre gave him a sympathetic smile. “In a bit,” he said. “Stace, how about you?”
“I was up with my girlfriend in Tahoe,” Stace said. “But who the hell can remember?”
Astorre said, “Maybe I’ll have better luck talking to you separately.”
He left them and went down to the kitchen, where Monza had coffee waiting for him. He told Monza to put the brothers into different bedrooms and keep two guards with each man at all times. Aldo was working with a six-man team.
“Are you sure you have the right fellows?” Monza said.
“I think so,” Astorre said. “If not them, it’s just their bad luck. I hate to ask you, Aldo, but you may have to help them talk.”
“Well, they don’t always talk,” Monza said. “It’s hard to believe, but people are willful. And these two look very hard to me.”
“I just hate to go that low,” Astorre said.
He waited an hour before going up to the room where Franky was. Night had fallen, but reflected in the lamplight outside he could see snowflakes swirling slowly down. He found Franky on the floor in full restraints.
“It’s very simple,” Astorre said to him. “Give us the name of the broker, and you may get out of here alive.”
Franky looked at him with hatred. “I’ll never fucking tell you anything, you asshole. You got the wrong guys. And I’ll remember your face and I’ll remember Rosie.”
“That’s absolutely the wrong thing to say,” Astorre told him.
“Were you fucking her too?” Franky said. “You’re a pimp?”
Astorre understood. Franky would never forgive the betrayal by Rosie. What a frivolous response to a serious situation.
“I think you’re being stupid,” Astorre said. “And you guys have a rep for being smart.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what you think,” Franky said. “You can’t do anything if you have no proof.”
“Really? So I’m wasting my time with you,” Astorre said. “I’ll go talk with Stace.”
Astorre went down to the kitchen for more coffee before he went up to Stace. He pondered the fact that Franky could look so confident and speak so brashly while under such strict constraints. Well, he would have to do better with Stace. He found the man propped up uncomfortably in bed.
“Take his jacket off,” Astorre said. “But check his cuffs and shackles.”
“I figured it out,” Stace said to him calmly. “You know we have a stash. I can arrange for you to pick it up and end this nonsense.”
“I just had a talk with Franky,” Astorre said. “I was disappointed in him. You and your brother are supposed to be very smart guys. Now you talk to me about money, and you know this is about you hitting the Don.”
“You have it wrong,” Stace said.
Astorre said gently, “I know you weren’t in Tahoe, and I know Franky wasn’t in Vegas. You are the only two freelancers who had the balls to take the job. And the shooters were lefties like you and Franky. So all I want to know is, who was your broker?”
“Why should I tell you?” Stace said. “I know the story is over. You guys didn’t wear masks, you exposed Rosie, so you are not going to let us out of here alive. No matter what you promise.”
Astorre sighed. “I won’t try to con you. That’s about it. But you have one thing you can bargain for. Easy or hard. I have a very Qualified Man with me, and I’m going to put him to work on Franky.” As he said this, Astorre felt a queasiness in his stomach. He remembered Aldo Monza working on Fissolini.
“You’re wasting your time,” Stace said. “Franky won’t talk.”
“Maybe not,” Astorre said. “But he’ll be taken apart piece by piece, and each piece will be brought to you to check. I figure you to talk to save him from that. But why even start down that road? And Stace, why would you want to protect that broker? He was supposed to cover you, and he didn’t.”
Stace didn’t answer. Then he said, “Why don’t you let Franky go?”
Astorre said, “You know better than that.”
“How do you know I won’t lie to you?” Stace said.
“Why the hell should you?” Astorre said. “What do you gain? Stace, you can keep Franky from going through something really terrible. You have to see it clear.”
“We were just the shooters, doing a job,” Stace said. “The guy higher is the one you want. Why can’t you just let us go?”
Astorre was patient. “Stace, you and your brother took the job of killing a great man. Big price, big ego thing. Come on. It boosted you. You guys took your shot and lost, and now you have to pay or else the whole world is on a tilt. It has to be. Now, all you have is the choice, easy or hard. In an hour from now you can be looking at a very important piece of Franky on that table. Believe me, I don’t want to do that, I really don’t.”
Stace said, “How do I know you’re not full of shit?”
Astorre said, “Think, Stace. Think how I set you up with Rosie. A lot of time and patience. Think, I got you to this place and have seven armed men. A lot of expenses and a lot of trouble. And just before Christmas Eve. I’m a very serious fellow, Stace, you can see that. I’ll give you an hour to think it over. I promise if you talk, Franky will never know it’s coming.”
Astorre went down to the kitchen again. Monza was waiting for him.
“So?” Monza said.
“I don’t know,” Astorre said. “But I have to be at Nicole’s Christmas Eve party tomorrow, so we have to end this tonight.”
“It won’t take me over an hour,” Monza said. “He’ll either talk or be dead.”
Astorre relaxed by the roaring fire for a short time and then went upstairs again to see Stace. The man looked weary and resigned. He had thought it over. He knew Franky would never talk—Franky thought there was still hope. Stace believed Astorre had put all the cards on the table. And now Stace comprehended the fears of all the men he had killed, their last despairing and fruitless hopes for some fate to save them. Against all probabilities. And he didn’t want Franky to die like that, piece by piece. He studied Astorre’s face. It was stern, implacable despite his youth. He had the gravity of a high judge.
The heavily falling snow was coating the windowpanes like white fur. Franky, in his room, was daydreaming about being in Europe with Rosie, the snow coating the Paris boulevards, falling into the canals of Venice. The snow like magic. Rome like magic.
Stace lay on his bed worrying about Franky. They had taken the shot and lost. And it was the end of the story. But he could help Franky think they were only twenty points down.
“I’m OK with it now,” Stace said. “Make sure Franky doesn’t know what’s happening, OK?”
“I promise,” Astorre said. “But I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“No,” Stace said. “What’s the point? The broker is a guy named Heskow, and he lives in a town called Brightwaters, just past Babylon. He’s divorced, lives alone, and has a sixteen-year-old humongous kid who’s a terrific basketball player. Heskow’s hired us for some jobs over the years. We go back to when we were kids. The price was a million, but still me and Franky were leery about taking it. Too big a hit. We took it because he said we didn’t have to worry about the
FBI and we didn’t have to worry about the police. That it was a great big fix. He also told us that the Don no longer had any juice connections. But he was obviously wrong on that. You’re here. It was just too big a payday to turn down.”
“That’s a lot of info to give a guy you think is full of shit,” Astorre said.
“I want to convince you I’m telling the truth,” Stace said. “I figured it out. The story is over. I don’t want Franky to know it.”
“Don’t worry,” Astorre said. “I believe you.”
He left the room and went down to the kitchen to give Monza his instructions. He wanted their IDs, licenses, credit cards, et cetera. He kept his word to Stace: Franky was to be shot in the back of the head without any warning. And Stace was also to be executed without pain.
Astorre left to drive back to New York. The snow had turned to rain, and it rinsed the countryside of snow.
. . .
It was rare that Monza disregarded an order, but as the executioner he felt he had the right to protect himself and his men. There would be no guns. He would use rope.
First he took four guards to help him strangle Stace. The man didn’t even try to resist. But with Franky it was different. For twenty minutes he tried to twist away from the rope. For a terrible twenty minutes Franky Sturzo knew he was being murdered.
Then the two bodies were wrapped in blankets and carried through the heavy glades as the rain changed back into snow. They were deposited in the forest behind the house. A hole in a very dense thicket was the hiding place, and they would not be discovered until spring, if ever. By that time the bodies would be so destroyed by nature that, Monza hoped, the cause of death could not be determined.
But it was not only for this practical reason that Monza had disobeyed his chief. For like Don Aprile, he felt deeply that mercy could only come from God. He despised the idea of any kind of mercy for men who hired themselves out as killers of other men. It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.
CHAPTER 9
KURT CILKE BELIEVED in the law, those rules man invented to live a peaceful life. He had always tried to avoid those compromises that undermine a fair society, and he fought without mercy against the enemies of the state. After twenty years of the struggle, he had lost a great deal of his faith.
Only his wife lived up to his expectations. The politicians were liars, the rich merciless in their greed for power, the poor vicious. And then there were the born con men, the swindlers, the brutes and murderers. The enforcers of the law were only slightly better, but he had believed with all his heart that the Bureau was the best of all.
Over the past year he’d had a recurring dream. In it he was a boy of twelve, and he had to take a crucial school exam that would last all day. When he left the house his mother was in tears, and in his dream he understood why. If he did not pass the exam, he would never see her again.
In the dream he understood murder had become so rampant that laws had been set up with the help of the psychiatric community to develop a protocol of mental-health tests that could predict which twelve-year-olds would grow up to become murderers. Those who failed the test simply vanished. For medical science had proved that murderers killed for the pleasure of killing. That political crimes, rebellion, terrorism, jealousy, and stealing were simply the surface excuses. So it was only necessary to weed out these genetic murderers at an early age.
The dream jumped to his return home after the exam, and his mother hugged and kissed him. His uncles and cousins had prepared a huge celebration. Then he was alone in his bedroom shaking with fear. For he knew there had been a mistake. He should never have passed the exam, and now he would grow up to be a murderer.
The dream had occurred twice, and he did not mention it to his wife because he knew what the dream meant, or thought he did.
Cilke’s relationship with Timmona Portella was now over six years old. It had begun when Portella murdered an underling in a blind rage. Cilke had immediately seen the possibilities. He had made arrangements for Portella to be an informant on the Mafia in return for nonprosecution of the murder. The director had approved the plan, and the rest was history. With Portella’s help, Cilke had crushed the New York Mafia but had had to turn a blind eye to Portella’s operations, including his supervision of the drug trade.
But Cilke, with approval from the director, had plans to bring Portella down again. Portella was determined to acquire the use of the Aprile banks to launder the drug money. But Don Aprile had proved obstinate. At one fateful meeting Portella had asked Cilke, “Will the FBI be surveilling Don Aprile when he attends his grandson’s confirmation?” Cilke understood immediately, but he hesitated before he answered. Then he said slowly, “I guarantee that they will not be. But what about the NYPD?”
“That’s taken care of,” Portella said.
And Cilke knew he would be an accomplice to murder. But didn’t the Don deserve it? He had been a ruthless criminal most of his life. He had retired with enormous wealth, untouched by the law. And look at the gain. Portella would walk right into his trap by acquiring the Aprile banks. And of course, there was always Inzio in the background, with his dreams of his own nuclear arsenal. Cilke knew that with luck he could wrap it all up and the government could get ten billion dollars’ worth of Aprile banks under RICO, for there was no doubt that the Don’s heirs would sell the banks, make a deal with Portella’s secret emissaries. And ten or eleven billion dollars would be a powerful weapon against crime itself.
But Georgette would despise him, so she must never know. After all, she lived in a different world.
But now he had to meet with Portella again. There was the matter of his butchered German shepherds and who was behind it. He would start with Portella.
Timmona Portella was that rarity in Italian men of achievement: a bachelor in his fifties. But he was by no means celibate. Every Friday he spent most of the night with a beautiful woman from one of the escort services controlled by his underlings. The instructions were that the girl be young, not too long in the game, that she be beautiful and delicately featured. That she be jolly and upbeat but not a wise-ass. And that no kinkiness be proposed. Timmona was a straight-from-the-shoulder sex guy. He had his little quirks, but they were harmlessly avuncular. One of them being that the girls had to have a plain Anglo-Saxon name like Jane or Susan; he could cope with something like Tiffany or even Merle, but nothing with any ethnicity. Rarely did he have the same woman twice.
These assignations were always held in a relatively small East Side hotel owned by one of his companies, where he had the use of an entire floor, consisting of two interlocking suites. One had a fully stocked kitchen, for Portella was a gifted amateur chef, oddly enough of Northern Italian cuisine, though his parents had been born in Sicily. And he loved to cook.
Tonight the girl was brought to his suite by the owner of the escort service, who stayed for a drink and then disappeared. Then Portella whipped up supper for two while they chatted and got acquainted. Her name was Janet. Portella cooked with quick efficiency. Tonight he made his specialty: veal Milanese, spaghetti in a sauce with Gruyère cheese, tiny roasted eggplants on the side, and a salad of greens with tomatoes. Dessert was an assortment of pastries from a famous French patisserie in the neighborhood.
He served Janet with a courtliness that belied his exterior; he was a large, hairy man with a huge head and coarse skin, but he always ate in shirt, tie, and jacket. Over dinner, he asked Janet questions about her life with concern unexpected in so brutal a man. He delighted to hear her tales of misfortune, how she had been betrayed by her father, brothers, lovers, and the powerful men who led her into a sinful life through economic pressures and unwanted pregnancies so she could save her poverty-stricken family. He was amazed at the varieties of dishonorable behavior displayed by his fellow men and marveled at his own goodness with women. For
he was extremely generous with them, not only by giving them huge sums of money.
After dinner he took the wine into the sitting room and showed Janet six boxes of jewelry: a gold watch, a ruby ring, diamond earrings, a jade necklace, a jeweled armband, and a perfect string of pearls. He told her she could choose one as a gift. They were all worth a few thousand dollars—the girls would usually have them appraised.
Years ago one of his crews had hijacked a jewelry truck, and he had warehoused the contents rather than have them fenced. So, actually, the gifts cost him nothing.
While Janet considered what she wanted, and finally chose the watch, he drew her a bath, carefully testing the temperature of the water and providing her with his favorite perfumes and powders. It was only then, after she had relaxed, that they retired to bed and had good normal sex, as any happily married couple would do.
If he was particularly amorous, he might keep a girl until four or five in the morning, but he never went to sleep while she was in his suite. This night he dismissed Janet early.
He did it all for his health. He knew that he had a wild temper that could get him into trouble. These weekly sex trysts calmed him down. Women in general had a quieting effect on him, and he proved the efficacy of his strategy by going to his doctor every Saturday and hearing with satisfaction that his blood pressure had returned to normal. When he told this to his doctor, the man had only murmured, “Very interesting.” Portella was very disappointed in him.
There was another advantage to this arrangement. Portella’s bodyguards were isolated in front of the suite. But the back door led to the adjoining suite with its entrance into a separate hallway, and it was there that Portella had meetings he did not want his closest advisors to know about. For it is a very dangerous business for a Mafia chief to meet in private with an FBI special agent. He would be suspected as an informer, and Cilke might be suspected by the Bureau of being a bribe taker.
It was Portella who supplied the phone numbers to be tapped, named the weaklings who would cave under pressure, pointed to clues to racket murders, and explained how certain rackets worked. And it was Portella who did some dirty jobs that the FBI could not legally do.