The mafioso got slowly, menacingly to his feet. “Listen to me, avvocato, you gotta lot of fancy words that make for conclusions, but we ain’t got no book like that and I’ll tell you how I can prove it! If there was anything anywhere written down that could burn your ass, I’d be shoving it in your face right now, capisce?”
“That’s not illogical,” said the well-dressed attorney, once again uncrossing and crossing his legs as the resentful capo sullenly returned to the couch. “Flannagan,” added the Wall Street lawyer. “Naturally … of course, Flannagan. He and his hairdresser bitch had to have their insurance policy, no doubt with minor extortion in the bargain. Actually, I’m relieved. They could never use it without exposing themselves. Accept my apologies, Louis.”
“Your business finished?”
“I believe so.”
“Now, the Jew shrink.”
“What about him?”
“Like I said, he’s a gold mine.”
“Without his patients’ files, less than twenty-four carat, I think.”
“Then you think wrong,” countered Louis. “Like I told Armbruster before he became another big impediment for you, we got doctors, too. Specialists in all kinds of medical things, including what they call motor responses and, get this, ‘triggered mental recall under states of external control’—I remembered that one especially. It’s a whole different kind of gun at your head, only no blood.”
“I assume there’s a point to this.”
“You can bet your country club on it. We’re moving the Jew to a place in Pennsylvania, a kind of nursing home where only the richest people go to get dried out or straightened out, if ya know what I mean.”
“I believe I do. Advanced medical equipment, superior staff—well-patrolled grounds.”
“Yeah, sure you do. A lot of your crowd passes through—”
“Go on,” interrupted the attorney, looking at his gold Rolex watch. “I haven’t much time.”
“Make time for this. According to my specialists—and I purposely used the word ‘my,’ if you follow me—on a prearranged schedule, say every fourth or fifth day, the new patient is ‘shot up to the moon’—that’s the phrase they use, it’s not mine, Christ knows. Between times he’s been treated real good. He’s been fed the right neutermints or whatever they are, given the proper exercise, a lot of sleep and all the rest of that shit. … We should all be so careful of our bodies, right, avvocato?”
“Some of us play squash every other day.”
“Well, you’ll forgive me, Mr. Park Avenue, Manhattan, but squash to me is zucchini and I eat it.”
“Linguistic and cultural differences do crop up, don’t they?”
“Yeah, I can’t fault you there, Consigliere.”
“Hardly. And my title is attorney.”
“Give me time. It could be Consigliere.”
“There’s not enough years in our lifetimes, Louis. Do you go on or do I leave?”
“I go on, Mr. Attorney. … So each time the Jew shrink is shot up to that moon my specialist talks about, he’s in pretty good shape, right?”
“I see the periodic remissions to normalcy, but then I’m not a doctor.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but then I’m not a doctor, either, so I’ll take my specialist’s word for it. You see, every time he’s shot up, his mind is pretty clear inside, and then he’s fed name after name after name. A lot, maybe most, won’t mean a thing, but every now and then one will, and then another, and another. With each, they start what they call a probe, finding out bits and pieces of information, just enough to get a sketch of the patient he’s talking about—just enough to scare the shit out of that lasagna when he’s reached. Remember, these are stressful times and this Hebe doctor treats some of the fattest cats in Washington, in and outside the government. How does that grab you, Mr. Attorney?”
“It’s certainly unique,” replied the guest slowly, studying the capo supremo. “His files, of course, would be infinitely preferable.”
“Yeah, well, like I say, we’re working on that, but it’ll take time. This is now, immediato. He’ll be in Pennsylvania in a couple of hours. You want to deal? You and me?”
“Over what? Something you don’t have and may never get?”
“Hey, come on, what do you think I am?”
“I’m sure you don’t want to hear that—”
“Cut the crap. Say in a day or so, maybe a week, we meet, and I give you a list of names I think you might be interested in, all of which we got information on—let’s say information not readily available. You pick one or two or maybe none, what can you lose? We’re talkin’ spitballs anyway, ’cause the deal’s between you and me only. No one else is involved except my specialist and his assistant who don’t know you and you don’t know them.”
“A side arrangement, as it were?”
“Not as it were, like it is. Depending on the information, I’ll figure out the charge. It may only be a thou or two, or it may go to twenty, or it may be gratis, who knows? I’d be fair because I want your business, capisce?”
“It’s very interesting.”
“You know what my specialist says? He says we could start our own cottage industry, he called it. Snatch a dozen shrinks, all with heavy government connections, like in the Senate or even the White House—”
“I understand fully,” interrupted the attorney, getting to his feet, “but my time’s up. … Bring me a list, Louis.” The guest walked toward the short marble foyer.
“No fancy attaché case, Signor Avvocato?” said the capo, rising from the couch.
“And upset the not so delicate mechanisms in your doorway?”
“Hey, it’s a violent world out there.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
The Wall Street attorney left, and at the sound of the closing door, Louis rushed across the room to the inlaid Queen Anne desk and virtually pounced on the ivory French telephone—as usual, tipping over the tall thin instrument twice before securing the stem with one hand while dialing with the other. “Fucking swish horn!” he mumbled. “Goddamned fairy decorator! … Mario?”
“Hello, Lou,” said the pleasant voice in New Rochelle. “I’ll bet you called to wish Anthony a happy birthday, huh?”
“Who?”
“My kid, Anthony. He’s fifteen today, did you forget? The whole family’s out in the garden and we miss you, Cousin. And hey, Lou, what a garden this year. I’m a real artist.”
“You also may be something else.”
“What?”
“Buy Anthony a present and send me the bill. At fifteen, maybe a broad. He’s ready for manhood.”
“Lou, you’re too much. There are other things—”
“There’s only one thing now, Mario, and I want the truth from your lips or I’ll carve them out of your face!”
There was a brief pause from New Rochelle before the pleasant-sounding executioner spoke. “I don’t deserve to be talked to that way, cugino.”
“Maybe, maybe not. There was a book taken from that general’s place in Manassas, a very valuable book.”
“They found out it was missing, huh?”
“Holy shit! You got it?”
“I had it, Lou. It was going to be a present to you, but I lost it.”
“You lost it? What the fuck did you do, leave it in a ‘taxi’?”
“No, I was running for my life, that maniac with the flares, what’s his name, Webb, unloading at me in the driveway. He grazed me and I fell and the lousy book flew out of my hand—just as the police car arrived. He picked it up and I ran like hell for the fence.”
“Webb’s got it?”
“I guess so.”
“Christ on a trampoline … !”
“Anything else, Lou? We’re about to light the candles on the cake.”
“Yeah, Mario, I may need you in Washington—a big cannoli without a foot but with a book.”
“Hey, wait a minute, cugino, you know my rules. Always a month between business trips. What did Manassas take? Six weeks? And last May in Key West, three, almost four weeks? I can’t call, I can’t write a postcard—no, Lou, always a month. I got responsibilities to Angie and the children. I’m not going to be an absentee parent; they’ve got to have a role model, you know what I mean?”
“I got Ozzie Nelson for a fuckin’ cousin!” Louis slammed down the phone, and instantly grabbed it as it crashed over on the desk, its delicate ivory stem displaying a crack. “The best hit man in the business and he’s a freak,” mumbled the capo supremo as he dialed frantically. When the line was picked up, the anxiety and the anger disappeared from his voice; it was not apparent but it had not gone away. “Hello, Frankie baby, how’s my closest friend?”
“Oh, hi, Lou,” came the floating, but hesitant, languorous tones from an expensive apartment in Greenwich Village. “Can I call you back in two minutes? I’m just putting my mother into a cab to take her back to Jersey. Okay?”