by Mario Puzo
It was Di Benedetto who talked her into taking her first bribe on a very important drug deal. He spoke like a loving uncle. “Aspinella,” he said, “a cop today doesn’t worry much about bullets. That’s part of the deal. He has to worry about the civilliberties groups, the citizens and the criminals who sue for damages. The political bosses in the department, who will put you in jail to get votes. Especially somebody like you. You’re a natural victim, so are you going to wind up like those other poor dopes in the street who get raped, robbed, murdered? Or are you going to protect yourself? Get in on this. You’ll get more protection from the wheels in the department who are already bought. In five or six years you can retire with a bundle. And you won’t have to worry about going to jail for messing up some mugger’s hair.”
So she had given way. And little by little she enjoyed socking the bribe money into disguised bank accounts. Not that she let up on the criminals.
But this stuff was different. This was a conspiracy to commit murder, and yes, this Astorre was a Mafia big shot who would be a pleasure to take out. In a funny way, she would be doing her job. But the final argument was that it had so little risk and such a big payoff. A quarter mil.
Di Benedetto drove off the Southern State Parkway and a few minutes later rolled into the parking lot of a small two-story mall. All of the dozen or so shops were closed, even the pizza joint, which displayed a bright red neon sign in its window. They got out of the car. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a pizza joint closed so early,” Di Benedetto said. It was only 10:00 P.M.
He led Aspinella to a side door of the pizza joint. It was unlocked. They climbed up a dozen stairs to a landing. There was a suite of two rooms to the left and a room to the right. He made a motion, and Aspinella checked the suite on the left while he stood guard. Then they went to the room on the right. Heskow was waiting for them.
He was sitting at the end of a long wooden table with four rickety wooden chairs around it. On the table was a duffel bag the size of a punching bag, and it seemed to be stuffed full. Heskow shook Di Benedetto’s hand and nodded to Aspinella. She thought she had never seen a white man looking so white. His face and even his neck were drained of color.
The room had only a dim bulb and no windows. They sat around the table, Di Benedetto reached out and patted the bag. “It’s all there?” he asked.
“Sure is,” Heskow said shakily. Well, a man carrying $500,000 in a duffel bag had a right to be nervous, Aspinella thought. But still, she scanned the room to see if it was wired.
“Let’s have a peek,” Di Benedetto said.
Heskow untied the cord around the neck of the duffel bag and half dumped it out. About twenty packets of bills bound by rubber bands tumbled onto the table. Most of the packages were hundreds, no fifties, and two packets were twenties.
Di Benedetto sighed. “Fucking twenties,” he said. “OK, put them back.”
Heskow stuffed the packets back into the bag and retied the cord. “My client requests that it be as quick as possible,” he said.
“Inside two weeks,” Di Benedetto said.
“Good,” Heskow said.
Aspinella lifted the duffel bag onto her shoulder. It wasn’t that heavy, she thought. A half mil wasn’t that heavy.
She saw Di Benedetto shake hands with Heskow and felt a wary impatience. She wanted to get the hell out of there. She started down the stairs, the bag balanced on her shoulder, held with one hand, her other hand free to draw her gun. She heard Di Benedetto following her.
Then they were out in the cool night. They were both dripping with sweat.
“Put the bag in the trunk,” Di Benedetto said. He got into the driver’s seat and lit up a cigar. Aspinella came around and got in.
“Where do we go to split it up?” Di Benedetto asked.
“Not my place. I have a baby-sitter.”
“Not mine,” Di Benedetto said. “I have a wife at home. How about we rent a motel room?”
Aspinella grimaced, and Di Benedetto said smilingly, “My office. We’ll lock the door.” They both laughed. “Check the trunk just one more time. Make sure it’s locked tight.”
Aspinella didn’t argue. She got out, opened the trunk, and pulled out the duffel bag. At that moment Paul turned on the ignition.
The explosion sent a shower of glass over the mall. It was raining glass. The car itself seemed to float in the air and came down in a hail of metal that destroyed Paul Di Benedetto’s body. Aspinella Washington was blown almost ten feet away, an arm and leg broken, but it was the pain from her torn-out eye that rendered her unconscious.
Heskow, exiting in the rear of the pizza shop, felt the air press his body against the building. Then he jumped into his car and twenty minutes later was in his home in Brightwaters. He made himself a quick drink and checked the two packets of hundred-dollar bills he had taken out of the duffel bag. Forty grand—a nice little bonus. He’d give his kid a couple of grand for spending money. No, a grand. And sock the rest away.
He watched the late TV news that reported the explosion as a breaking story. One detective killed, the other badly hurt. And at the scene, a duffel bag with a huge amount of money. The TV anchor didn’t say how much.
When Aspinella Washington regained consciousness in the hospital two days later, she was not surprised to be closely questioned about the money and why it was just forty grand shy of a half million. She denied she had any knowledge of the money. They questioned her about what a chief of detectives and an assistant chief were doing out together. She refused to answer on the grounds that it was a personal matter. But she was angry that they questioned her so relentlessly when she was obviously in such grave condition. The department didn’t give a shit about her. They did not honor her record of achievement. But it ended OK. The department didn’t pursue her and set it up so that the investigation of the money came to nothing.
It took another week of convalescence for Aspinella to figure things out. They had been set up. And the only guy who could have set them up was Heskow. And the fact that there was forty grand missing from the payoff meant the greedy pig couldn’t resist grafting his own people. Well, she would get better, she thought, and then she would meet with Heskow once again.
CHAPTER 10
ASTORRE was now very careful of his movements. Not only to avoid a hit but also not to allow himself to be arrested for any reason. He kept close to his heavily guarded home with its five-man round-the-clock security teams. He had sensors planted in the woods and grounds around the house and infrared lights for night surveillance. When he ventured out, it was with six bodyguards in three two-man teams. He sometimes traveled alone, counting on stealth and surprise and a confidence in his own powers if he should meet only one of two assassins. The blowing up of the two detectives had been necessary, but it generated a lot of heat. And when Aspinella Washington recovered she would figure out it was Heskow who had betrayed her. And if Heskow spilled, she would come after Astorre himself.
But by now he knew the enormity of his problem. He knew all the men guilty of the Don’s death and the serious problems before him. There was Kurt Cilke, essentially untouchable; Timmona Portella, who ordered the murder; as well as Inzio Tulippa and Michael Grazziella. The only ones he had succeeded in punishing were the Sturzo brothers, and they had been mere pawns.
All the information had come from John Heskow, Mr. Pryor, Don Craxxi, and Octavius Bianco in Sicily. If possible, he had to get all his enemies in one place at the same time. To pick them off singly would surely be impossible. And Mr. Pryor and Craxxi had already warned him he could not touch Cilke.
And then there was the consul general of Peru, Marriano Rubio, Nicole’s companion. What was the extent of her loyalty to him? What had she blotted out in the Don’s FBI file that she did not want Astorre to see? What was she hiding from him?
In his spare moments, Astorre dreamed of the women he had loved. First there had been Nicole, so young and so willful, her small, delicate body so passionate tha
t she had forced him into loving her. And now how changed she was, her passion absorbed by politics and her career.
He remembered Buji in Sicily, not exactly a call girl, but very close, and with an impulsive goodness that could easily turn into rage. He remembered her gorgeous bed, in the soft Sicilian nights, when they swam and ate olives out of oil-filled barrels. Most fondly of all he remembered that she never lied; she was completely frank about her life, her other men. And her loyalty when he had been shot, how she had dragged him out of the sea, the blood from his throat staining her body. Then her gift of the golden collar with its pendant to hide the ugly wound.
Then he thought of Rosie, his treacherous Rosie, so sweet, so beautiful, so sentimental, who always claimed she truly loved him while betraying him. Yet she could always make him feel happy when he was with her. He had wanted to break down his feeling for her by using her against the Sturzo brothers, and he had been surprised that she relished the role, an adjustment to her make-believe life.
And then flitting through his mind like some ghost came the vision of Cilke’s wife, Georgette. What stupidity. He had spent one evening watching her, listening to her talk nonsense he didn’t believe, about the pricelessness of every human soul. Yet he could not forget her. How the hell had she married a guy like Kurt Cilke?
On some nights Astorre drove to Rosie’s neighborhood and called her on his car phone. She was always free, which surprised him, but she explained that she was too busy studying to go out. Which suited him perfectly, since he was too cautious to eat in a restaurant or take her to a movie. Instead he stopped at Zabar’s on the West Side and brought in delicacies that made Rosie smile with delight. Meanwhile Monza waited in the car outside.
Rosie would lay out the food and open a bottle of wine. As they ate she put her legs in his lap in a comradely way, and her face glowed with happiness at being with him. She seemed to welcome his every word with a pleased smile. That was her gift, and Astorre knew that she was that way with all her men. But it didn’t matter.
And then when they went to bed she was passionate but also very sweet and clinging. She touched his face all over and kissed him and said, “We’re really soul mates.” And those words would send a chill through Astorre. He didn’t want her to be a soul mate with a man like himself. He yearned for classic virtue at these times, yet he couldn’t stop himself from seeing her.
He’d stay for five or six hours. At three in the morning he would leave. Sometimes when she was asleep he would gaze down at her and see in the relaxation of her facial muscles a sad vulnerability and struggle, as if the demons she held in her innermost soul were fighting to get free.
One night he left early from a visit with Rosie. When he got into the waiting car, Monza told him there was an urgent message to call a Mr. Juice. This was a code name that he and Heskow used, so he immediately picked up the car phone.
Heskow’s voice was urgent. “I can’t talk on the wire. We have to meet right away.”
“Where?” Astorre said.
“I’ll be standing right outside Madison Square Garden,” Heskow said. “Pick me up on the fly. In one hour.”
When Astorre drove by the Garden, he saw Heskow standing on the sidewalk. Monza had his gun in his lap when he stopped the car in front of Heskow. Astorre pulled open the door, and Heskow hopped into the front seat with them. The cold left watery streaks on his cheeks. He said to Astorre, “You have big trouble.”
Astorre now felt a cold chill. “The kids?” he asked.
Heskow nodded. “Portella snatched your cousin Marcantonio and has him stashed someplace. I don’t know where. Tomorrow he invites you to a meeting. He wants to trade something for his hostage. But if you’re careless, he has a four-man hit team to focus on you. He’s using his own men. He tried to give me the job, but I turned him down.”
They were in a dark street. “Thanks,” Astorre said. “Where can I let you off?”
“Right here. My car is just a block away.”
Astorre understood. Heskow was anxious about being seen with him.
“One other thing,” Heskow said. “You know about Portella’s suite at his private hotel? His brother, Bruno, is using it tonight with some broad. And no bodyguards.”
“Thanks again,” Astorre said. He opened the door of the car, and Heskow disappeared into the darkness.
. . .
Marcantonio Aprile was having his last meeting of the day, and he wanted to keep it short. It was now seven in the evening, and he had a dinner engagement at nine.
The meeting was with his favorite producer and best friend in the movie business, a man named Steve Brody, who never went over budget, had great instincts for dramatic stories, and often introduced Marcantonio to up-and-coming young actresses who needed a little help in their careers.
But this evening they were on opposite sides of the fence. Brody had come with one of the most powerful agents in the business, a man named Matt Glazier, who had a vehement loyalty to his clients. He was there pleading the case of a novelist whose latest book he had turned into an epic, eight-hour TV serial drama. Now Glazier wanted to sell the novelist’s three previous books.
“Marcantonio,” Glazier said, “the other three books are great but didn’t sell. You know how publishers are—they couldn’t sell a jar of caviar for a nickel. Brody here is ready to produce them. Now, you’ve made a shitload of money on his last book, so be generous and let’s make a deal.”
“I don’t see it,” Marcantonio said. “These are old books we’re talking about. They were never best-sellers. And now they’re out of print.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Glazier said with the eager confidence of all agents. “As soon as we make the deal, the publishers will reprint them.”
Marcantonio had heard this argument many times before. True, the publishers would reprint, but actually this was not much help to the TV presentation. The TV broadcast would help the publishers of the book more. It was essentially a bullshit argument.
“All that aside,” Marcantonio said, “I’ve read the books. They have nothing for us. They’re too literary. It’s the language that makes them work, not incident. I enjoyed them. I’m not saying they can’t work, I’m just saying it’s not worth the risk and the extraordinary effort.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Glazier said. “You read a reader’s report. You’re the head of programming—you don’t have time to read.”
Marcantonio laughed. “You’re wrong. I love to read and I love those books. But they are not good TV.” His voice was warm and friendly. “I’m sorry, but for us it’s a pass. But keep us in mind. We’d love to work with you.”
After the two had gone, Marcantonio showered in his executive-suite bathroom and changed his clothes for his dinner date. He said good night to his secretary, who always stayed until he left, and took the elevator to the lobby of the building.
His date was at the Four Seasons, just a few blocks away, and he would walk. Unlike most top executives, he did not keep a car and driver exclusively for himself but just called one when necessary. He prided himself on his economy and knew he had learned it from his father, who had a strong prejudice against wasting money on foolishness.
When he stepped out onto the street, he felt a cold wind and shivered. A black limo pulled up, and the chauffeur got out of the car and opened the door for him to enter. Had his secretary ordered the car for him? The driver was tall, a sturdy man whose cap stood oddly on his head, a size too small. He bowed and said, “Mr. Aprile?”
“Yes,” Marcantonio said. “I won’t need you tonight.”
“Yes, you do,” the chauffeur said with a cheerful smile. “Get into the car or get shot.”
Suddenly Marcantonio was aware of three men at his back. He hesitated. The chauffeur said, “Don’t worry, a friend just wants to have a little chat with you.”
Marcantonio got into the backseat of the limo, and the three men crowded in beside him.
They drove a block or two, and then one
of the men gave Marcantonio a pair of dark glasses and told him to put them on. Marcantonio did so—and seemed to go blind. The glasses were so dark they screened out all light. He thought that clever and made a mental note to use this in a story. It was a hopeful sign. If they did not want him to see where he was going, that meant they were not planning to kill him. And yet it all seemed as unreal as one of his TV dramas. Until he suddenly thought about his father. That he was finally in his father’s world, which he had never completely believed in.
After about an hour, the car came to a stop and he was helped out by two of the guards. He could feel a brick path under his feet, and then he was led up four steps and into a house. Up more stairs to a room, the door closing behind him. Only then were the glasses removed. He was in a small bed-chamber whose windows were heavily curtained. One of the guards sat in a chair beside the bed.
“Lie down and take a little snooze,” the guard said to him. “You have a tough day ahead.” Marcantonio looked at his watch. It was almost midnight.
Just after four in the morning, with the skyscrapers ghosts in darkness, Astorre and Aldo Monza were let off in front of the Lyceum Hotel; the driver waiting in front. Monza jangled his ring of keys as they ran up the three flights of stairs and then to the door of Portella’s suite.
Monza used his keys to open the door to the suite, and they entered the living room. They saw the table littered with cartons of Chinese takeout food, empty glasses, and bottles of wine and whiskey. There was a huge whipped-cream cake, half-eaten, with a crushed-out cigarette adorning the top like a birthday candle. They went to the bedroom, and Astorre flicked on the light from the wall switch. There, lying on the bed, clad only in shorts, was Bruno Portella.