Antonio Granelli was a shock to Jennifer. He was in a wheelchair, a feeble skeleton of a man, and it was hard to imagine him as he once must have been.
An attractive brunette with a full figure walked into the room, and Michael said to Jennifer, “This is Rosa, my wife.”
Jennifer had dreaded this moment. Some nights after Michael had left her—fulfilled in every way a woman could be—she had fought with a guilt that almost overpowered her. I don’t want to hurt another woman. I’m stealing. I’ve got to stop this! I must! And, always, she lost the battle.
Rosa looked at Jennifer with eyes that were wise. She knows, Jennifer thought.
There was a small awkwardness, and then Rosa said softly, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Parker. Michael tells me you’re very intelligent.”
Antonio Granelli grunted. “It’s not good for a woman to be too smart. It’s better to leave the brains to the men.”
Michael said with a straight face, “I think of Mrs. Parker as a man, Papa.”
They had dinner in the large, old-fashioned dining room.
“You sit next to me,” Antonio Granelli commanded Jennifer.
Michael sat next to Rosa. Thomas Colfax, the consigliere, sat opposite Jennifer and she could feel his animosity.
The dinner was superb. An enormous antipasto was served, and then pasta fagioli. There was a salad with garbanzo beans, stuffed mushrooms, veal piccata, linguini and baked chicken. It seemed that the dishes never stopped coming.
There were no visible servants in the house, and Rosa was constantly jumping up and clearing the table to bring in new dishes from the kitchen.
“My Rosa’s a great cook,” Antonio Granelli told Jennifer. “She’s almost as good as her mother was. Hey, Mike?”
“Yes,” Michael said politely.
“His Rosa’s a wonderful wife,” Antonio Granelli went on, and Jennifer wondered whether it was a casual remark or a warning.
Michael said, “You’re not finishing your veal.”
“I’ve never eaten so much in my life,” Jennifer protested.
And it was not over yet.
There was a bowl of fresh fruit and a platter of cheese, and ice cream with a hot fudge sauce, and candy and mints.
Jennifer marveled at how Michael managed to keep his figure.
The conversation was easy and pleasant and could have been taking place in any one of a thousand Italian homes, and it was hard for Jennifer to believe that this family was different from any other family.
Until Antonio Granelli said, “You know anythin’ about the Unione Siciliana?”
“No,” Jennifer said.
“Let me tell you about it, lady.”
“Pop—her name is Jennifer.”
“That’s not no Italian name, Mike. It’s too hard for me to remember. I’ll call you lady, lady. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jennifer replied.
“The Unione Siciliana started in Sicily to protect the poor against injustices. See, the people in power, they robbed the poor. The poor had nothin’—no money, no jobs, no justice. So the Unione was formed. When there was injustice, people came to the members of the secret brotherhood and they got vengeance. Pretty soon the Unione became stronger than the law, because it was the people’s law We believe in what the Bible says, lady.” He looked Jennifer in the eye. “If anyone betrays us, we get vengeance.”
The message was unmistakable.
Jennifer had always known instinctively that if she ever worked for the Organization she would be taking a giant step, but like most outsiders, she had a misconception of what the Organization was like. The Mafia was generally depicted as a bunch of mobsters sitting around ordering people murdered and counting the money from loan-sharking and whorehouses. That was only a part of the picture. The meetings Jennifer attended taught her the rest of it: These were businessmen operating on a scale that was staggering. They owned hotels and banks, restaurants and casinos, insurance companies and factories, building companies and chains of hospitals. They controlled unions and shipping. They were in the record business and sold vending machines. They owned funeral parlors, bakeries and construction companies. Their yearly income was in the billions. How they had acquired those interests was none of Jennifer’s concern. It was her job to defend those of them who got into trouble with the law.