Prizzi's Glory by Richard Condon
51
Charley and Mary Barton were invited by the president to spend election night at the White House, in the Lincoln bedroom. Charley went alone. Mary Barton stayed with the children, beating a path between the hospital and the nursery on Sixty-fourth Street.
It was a fairly late night because Charley waited up with FMH, his staff, and his family for the election returns to come in, or for as long as it took for Gordon Manning to concede. The ticket carried forty-seven states, Manning winning only Rhode Island, Alaska, and his own Connecticut.
The president took Charley aside after the landslide victory had been confirmed. “You had one helluva lot to do with this victory, Charley,” he said. “And I want you to know just how grateful I am.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“We’re leaving early tomorrow after they’ve gotten the photo opportunity out of the way. My asthma is pretty bad, and I have to get a couple of weeks or so at the Arizona chalet.” Blister, Arizona, was the site of the “winter” White House, which the president had used regularly all year round during his first term of office. “I won’t be seeing you tomorrow, but I want you to know I’ll be getting back to you.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Charley said. “Sorry about that asthma.”
“We’re fifty-three-hundred-feet high out there. Largest ponderosa pine tracts in the world. It’s healthy, Charley. I get total relief—from asthma, that is. Damn sight better than this place.”
“At least you can relax with the knowledge that the campaign deficit has already been handled,” Charley said. “It didn’t come to anything anyway. Two million eight.”
“Don’t know what I’d do without you, Charley. And remember, the bed you’ll be sleeping on tonight is a historic bed. L. B. Mayer slept in it the first night of the Hoover administration.”
Charley went straight home before going to the office the next day. He had breakfast with Mae and tried not to look at her lined, haggard face. He told her of the conversation with the president. She tried to respond with the old-time verve, but she didn’t have it anymore.
“Hold out for something big, Charley. Don’t let him fob off ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.”
“London is nice, Mae.”
“He should have offered you vice-president before the convention. You got him the information and the money that got him reelected. He’s got to pay you off.”
“The vice-presidency is where politicians go to die, Mae. I’m a businessman.”
“Horseshit.”
“So what do you want me to get?”
“Defense?”
“I’m going to listen to what he has to tell me. What’s the news on the baby?”
“Dr. Lesion is going to have a final prognosis this afternoon at two o’clock.” She began to cry silently. She put her head on Charley’s chest and sobbed. Charley realized he had never really talked to his wife before. Or any other woman. It was always the same stuff, sex and money. He held her in his arms and said, “Sometimes we should expect the worst, because, if we dared to hope, it would kill us when the truth came in. We have to say it was an accident, Mae. Rocco wouldn’t let a thing like that happen on purpose.”
“I’m not gonna expect the worst, Charley. What’s the use of having what we’ve got if Rado can’t walk like other kids?”
“Mae, lissena me. What I’m trying to say is—don’t suffer all this until the doctor tells you that’s what’s going to be. We’ll suffer after that unless we don’t have to suffer at all—and it’s probably sixty-forty odds—because Lesion has figured out a way to make the baby walk.”
She nodded dumbly and wept all over his White House tie.
Following an examination of the Barton baby, Dr. Lesion went through the case with the six assembled interns and residents.
“The bleeding inside the skull seems to have stopped long enough for a fibrous membrane to have formed around the clot,” he said. “That was what caused the symptoms to subside. But the hematoma will enlarge when it starts to bleed again. We looked at a pale, irritable baby—weakened by vomiting—with a tense fontanelle. The optic fundi show hemorrhage and papilloedema. Subdural hematoma is confirmed by the needle yield. My intention is to excise the sac; otherwise there will be a scarring of the meninges, which will restrict the growth of the brain, which could result in spasticity and epilepsy. Do you have any questions?”
“Would burr holes be adequate to drain out the hematoma, Dr. Lesion?”
“Not for this patient. Neither will turning the bone flap to evacuate the clot and membrane—or a craniotomy. Since we are going in, we’ve got to get it all out.” He flashed his famous wit at the students. “Modern man doesn’t need a brain. He has computers and television.”
Loud laughter.
“Will the infant ever regain the use of his right leg?”
“I shouldn’t think so. But therapy will help to an extent. It really will.”
52
Charley invited S. L. Penrose to New York for a 7:30 A.M. meeting at Barker’s Hill offices the day after the surgical procedures on Rado. Pen-rose never seemed to sleep, yet he always looked watchful and rested. He entered Charley’s private office the way he always did, directly from the express elevator that ascended from the garage in the basement. No one could have proved he had been there. Charley locked the doors to his office with an electronic switch. Miss Blue heard the click and wished she could have been a fly on the wall.
“Heller says he wants to show his gratitude,” Charley said. “What’s open?”
“Justice, the CIA, and Defense.”
“What’s best?”
“If you can put your own man in Justice, then I think the CIA. You can control the whole cocaine business from the CIA. And if you can set a friend in Defense, the CIA’s big freight carriers can land all kinds of shit at army and air force bases all over the country. No problems with the DEA. They couldn’t get near you. Besides, the DEA comes under the attorney general in Justice.”
“What else?”
S. L. Penrose grinned. “Hey, that’s like a trillion a year, fahcrissake. The fratellanza will petition the Pope to get you canonized.”
“Forget it. Nobody can get all of it.”
“Then there’s the secret funds the White House and the CIA control for the Freedom Fighters and their little wars all over the world. At least sixty percent of that is skim. I’m not saying it’s skimmed in Washington, but from maker to wearer it’s skimmed. After we get through milking the defense contracts, there are a hundred rackets in the CIA. What is the operative word in secret police? Secret.”
“Would you take the job?”
“Why not?”
“Could you get confirmed?”
S. L. thought of the National Landscape Association files on the Congress “under the mountain” in West Virginia and of his own almost sacred position amid the power bases. He grinned again. “Why not? But lemme say this, Charley, everything will work better if we have our own man at Justice. Like for one thing, the DEA comes under Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs at Justice. Federal indictments, the Prisons Bureau, the courts, the FBI, organized crime, the Pardon Attorney—they all start there. Justice and the CIA and Defense, with that outtasight budget at Defense—it’s like a license to turn the country into a gold mine.”
“Eduardo is the natural for a g.”
“Nobody better. But he’s such a Republican.”
“To get a man of Eduardo’s caliber, I’ll bet Heller would take a larger view.”
“What are you gonna take, Charley?”
“Even if I don’t take anything, I can try to set you and Eduardo and Defense.”
“Who for Defense?”
“Arthur Shuland.”
S. L. grinned from ear to ear.
Charley permitted himself a very small smile. “And the families and the Blacks, the Hispanics, and the Orientals will all show their gratitude.”
“Don’t leave out the Israelis,
“Everything is covered,” Charley said. “And, besides, Eduardo and I have to go to a very important wedding tomorrow.”
After Penrose left, Charley stared out of the window, up Sixth Avenue and across Central Park. He had the feeling that Pop would have been pleased. It had almost all worked out. The don and Mae had got their respectability at the cost of one little kid never being able to be like other little kids. He had been able to take over Barker’s Hill, and soon he would be taking over the government of the American people to give them what they absolutely insisted they had to have.
The fratellanza hadn’t known what they were talking about when they had called Corrado Prizzi the Boss of Bosses. That was one thing you had to say about respectability, Charley thought, it was great for business.
Tomorrow, he promised himself with deep pleasure, I will put the lock on Eduardo.
53
Eduardo’s stretch limousine, containing Eduardo and Charley, picked up Claire Coolidge at the entrance to her apartment building, and the car moved downtown to City Hall for the wedding ceremony. As Eduardo and Charley had left the Barker’s Hill offices, Charley had asked what sort of a wedding present Eduardo was going to give.
“A check,” Eduardo said.
“How much?” Charley asked.
“Five thousand.”
“Don’t give it to her today,” Charley advised. “Send it to her with a formal note. It’s better to keep a distance between you so as not to embarrass the young man.”
“My dear fellow, of course I won’t give it to her today.”
The bride was so happy that even Eduardo had to decide that it was all worth having to give her up. Charley had a bouquet of flowers for her in the front seat, which he gave to her. She chatted excitedly all the way downtown.
“I don’t want you two starchy WASPs to be too surprised when you meet Joseph,” she said. “He’s Italian way back. One of those dark, romantic Mediterranean beauties. And he loves the ballet.”
“I have nothing against Italians,” Eduardo said.
“Neither have I,” Charley put in loyally. “I have known some very pleasant Italians.”
“As a matter of fact,” Claire said, “I am actually Italian. My parents are, that is.”
“Really?” Charley said. “I would never have thought Coolidge was an Italian name.”
“It was Cuchiari,” Claire said.
“Boston?” Charley asked.
“Yes, actually. How did you know that?”
“I did some business with people named Cuchiari—in Boston—a few years back.”
Joseph, the prospective groom, was waiting for them at the Marriage Bureau office. Eduardo stopped walking when he saw him. Claire, both arms around the young man, was totally unaware of the dismay in the eyes of all three men. The groom was Beppi Sestero, Rocco’s son. The three men looked as if they had turned to stone, but Charley got a grip on Eduardo’s forearm, and with inbred control in the presence of outsiders, all three men brought off the illusion that the groom was a stranger.
Claire introduced the groom to Eduardo and Charley.
“Edward, may I present the man who is to be my husband in a few minutes, Joseph Sestero.” She beamed on her young man. “Joseph, this is the famous Edward S. Price and this”—she held Charley by the upper arm—“is the almost equally distinguished Charles Macy Barton.” The men shook hands stiffly. Charley kept talking about what a happy day it was. Eduardo asked for directions to the men’s room and excused himself. The bride-to-be kissed and hugged the groom, who had gone into pale greenish colors.
After Eduardo returned, their names were called. In every way it was a sort of famous first in the annals of City Hall marriages. The man who gave the bride away had murdered the father of the groom and the groom had killed the father of the best man, although neither son knew that. It was a sort of Father’s Day.
Fifty minutes later, after Eduardo and Charley had wished the young couple Godspeed in their lives and on their honeymoon at the entrance to a luxurious hotel on Central Park South (the bride had to report for rehearsals Monday morning and, it was revealed, the groom had most reluctantly consented to become her manager), the two men drove away after Charley told the driver to take them around the park.
“Did you know about that?” Eduardo asked as the limousine headed toward the Sixth Avenue park entrance.
“I looked at him standing there and I couldn’t believe it. Five million men in New York and she picks your nephew.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I can tell you what you’re going to do about it, Eduardo. Now, in this car, right here, you are going to make out a check for fifty thousand dollars for the bride. That’s your new, revised wedding present.”
“Have you lost your mind, Charley?”
“Do it.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“You want to be attorney general? I can do that for you, Eduardo. And I’ll do it for you because it’s good for business, even though I should have you whacked through the head and dumped in a cement mixer.” He stared at Eduardo, laying the fear on him.
Eduardo became alarmed. “Charley, what’s the matter? What did I do?”
“We both know what you did. You lifted my two kids for thirty million dollars in bonds.”
“Charley! That’s crazy!”
“You dropped one of my kids, and he’ll never be the same again.”
“I dropped—Charley! I handled those kids like they were my own sons. They were little babies! They were breakable! I took every care. If that is what happened, then Rocco did it.”
“I’m not going to make you pay, Eduardo. I am going to make you work for me. We are talking business now.”
“Charley, you’ve got to understand—” Eduardo was frozen by the fear Charley was throwing over him. Charley interrupted him.
“Rocco Sestero worked for me. He ran one of my regimes. I knew him. He was a very experienced man, and when he took on a job he always delivered the goods he was paid for just the way they were supposed to be delivered.”
“Charley, I swear to God—on my dead mother—”
“Rocco would never have let anyone near him in a setup like that unless he had at least two backup men who would have frisked the man who came to pick up the babies. But you were his Uncle Eduardo, the big man who had almost been president of the United States. So Rocco—Rocco Sestero—a man who knew more about hits than Ty Cobb, went there alone and you took him.”
“Charley, listen to me—”
“But there was a sting in it. I told the brokerage house to switch in a whole set of counterfeit bonds that we were going to put up for collateral on a heavy manufacturing deal in Taiwan. That thirty million dollars worth of bonds you think you have isn’t worth a dime, Eduardo. Try to cash them and you’ll do thirty years.”
Eduardo was showing all the symptoms of a heart attack.
“You got pills in your pocket?” Charley asked solicitously. “You want a pill or something?” He jammed Eduardo violently into the far corner of the seat. “All right, you devious shit. Get the top off your fountain pen. Write a check to Claire Coolidge for fifty thousand dollars. I’ll see that she gets it.”
54
The day after F. M. Heller was seen on the national evening news getting off the helicopter from Andrews Air Force Base, into which he had flown from Blister, Arizona, and being set down in the backyard of the White House, not saluting the Marine guard at the foot of the ramp or waving at anyone, whether they were there or not, he called Charley to set up a private lunch meeting in the family quarters for the next day.
Charley was ushered in, and he and the president were alone. “I don’t eat much for lunch,” FMH said. “How about you?”
“Usually some fruit and yogurt.”
&nb
“My dad had a favorite chair,” Charley lied.
“Barry Cooper wants to leave. He says the job is only good for two years but a sure burnout for four. He’s been here four years and he says he has to leave or lose his temper, which, for Barry, is about the worst crime on the books.”
“He’s a good man,” Charley said.
“He wants to take six months off, then use his experience with some big company. I thought you might help him.”
“I’ll put my best thinking on it. It’s got to be exactly the right job at the very top for Barry.”
“But that leaves Barry’s job to fill. I had an FBI check run on you, and you’re sound, Charley. And you have one helluva fine reputation as an organizer, I don’t have to tell you, so confirmation won’t be any problem. They respect you on the Hill.” The president gazed at Charley as fondly as it was possible for him to regard anything. He nodded his head. “You’ll make a great chief of staff. What do you say?”
“If I said yes right now, considering the size of the honor, sir, I wouldn’t be saying the right thing. It is just the most overwhelming opportunity anyone has ever had to serve his president and his country. Please let me sleep on it and give you my answer in the morning.”
The fruit salad under raspberry yogurt arrived. The two men chatted about the president’s health until the waiters left. “The central reason why I need you,” the president said, “is that I have to know that the White House and the country are running as smoothly as a watch because this term—my asthma is simply murder in this climate, Charley—I’m going to have to spend more and more time at Blister just to be able to stay on my feet.”
“I understand, Mr. President.”
“Frank.”
“Frank—I meant to say Frank.”