Blue Heaven (30 page)

As the car prowled through SoHo, Lunch told her, in the most offensive terms, exactly what he and his sympathizers thought of the duchess's base attempts to seduce the aging Freddy. "Coffin snatching," he called it, amongst still riper terms. He made no secret of his belief that Moira had put her mother up to the whole thing as part of her despicable plan to become heiress to Freddy's millions and power. His demands were as follows:

If the duchess even
divorced
the duke before Freddy's demise, Moira would have "an accident." This just as a warning to the duchess.

If the duchess married Freddy anyway the duchess and Moira would be killed following Freddy's death. No amount of preemptive carnage would prevent Lunch's loyal survivors from carrying out his vengeance.

If Moira or the duchess breathed a word to Freddy, or to anyone else who subsequently informed him, Moira, Gilbert, the duchess and Freddy would all die swiftly and terribly.

Gilbert and I just stood there, our jaws slack, unable to believe the rock had gotten bigger and the hard place harder still.

When she'd finished we told them all about Charlie, mentioning
Chick now as well, since there seemed no more point in concealing anything. Then it was
Guernica
time again. Eventually the panic subsided due to sheer exhaustion and we agreed to meet again the following afternoon.

Claire and I shared a cab uptown. As it sped up Central Park West she squeezed my hand and assured me there had to be a way out. Nothing more was said till we bade each other good night as I left the cab.

On the way in I checked the mailbox and found another pasted-up note from Gunther, demanding a final five thousand dollars, payable before the wedding.

Twenty-seven

I
don't know how Claire, Moira or Winslow managed to make it through those final terror-packed weeks, but for Gilbert and me the preferred sedative was sex and plenty of it. We stopped sleeping over at each other's places since we had an uneasy feeling we were being watched, but our discretion extended only so far as this precaution. We never found ourselves alone in a room but Gilbert would gaze at his watch, then at the nearest door, and murmur, "What do you think?"

Our little group spent hour after hour debating strategies for survival, but none of us, not even Claire, could think of a way to reconcile the demands of Lunch, Chick, Charlie and Freddy. There was only one pathetic tactic available and that was to stall.

If Freddy proposed, the duchess would say she needed time to think. Then, just before the wedding, she'd receive a telegram saying the duke was ill and couldn't attend. Following the wedding she'd return to England, wait a week and announce the duke was dead and buried. She'd not said so earlier because she didn't want to ruin her daughter's honeymoon with such tragic news. She would return to the States (we could hardly have Freddy descending on Trebleclef to console her) and fall back on propriety, saying she could hardly discuss remarriage till a suitable period of mourning had passed. This would do nothing to improve the real situation, but it would buy us time to think of a way out.

If we could.

Which we doubted.

The most immediate problem was Gunther, or, more to the point,
what Moira wanted to do to him. When she heard of the new demand she bayed with fury and declared implacably that it was high time we called Freddy's trusty nurse and told him we had a candidate for Sergery.

"Moira," I pleaded, "it just isn't right!"

"I fail to see what's wrong with it. Jesus, Philip!
You're
the one he wants to get killed! Haven't you ever heard of self-defense!"

"It's not the same thing!" said Claire. "This is premeditated murder!"

"Well, of course it's premeditated! How else do we get him first! I don't understand you people at all!"

"Look, Moy," said Gilbert, "he said it's the final payment. And you don't have to pay much! Just five hundred dollars or so! We'll scrape the rest together. Winnie, you've got a lot of jewelry from Freddy you could pawn."

"Pawn my jewels!" twittered Winnie, resplendent in a ruffly purple cocktail dress. "I must say that seems terribly callous when one considers the affection with which they were bestowed. What sort of women would-"

"Winnie!"

"Oh, all right!"

Gilbert and I between us could come up with three grand by the end of the week. Claire pledged five hundred.

"Moira," she said, "you can at least put in as much as I'm contributing!"

"No! There's a
principle
here!" she said and, donning her trench-coat, stormed out, her eyes glinting with terrible purpose.

The moment she left I called Gunther's salon.

"Capelli, may I help you?"

"Listen, Gunther, you've got to stop it! You have no idea how much trouble this blackmail could get you into!"

"Mr. Cavanaugh, I grow weary of these foolish attempts to incriminate me! I will not be duped into saying things that have no basis in truth."

"I'm not trying to dupe you! I'm just saying you have to cancel the new demand. We already paid you once!"

"A paltry sum, when you consider the damage you have done me!"

"Then you admit you accepted the money!"

"I accepted money from you, yes. But I did not
request
it. You
took it upon
yourself
to mail it to me. Since I have lost considerable income, I am not so foolish as to refuse just compensation."

"Listen, Gunther, you're playing with the wrong people. If you don't stop this you'll be killed. Do you understand that?
Killed!"

"Death threats, Mr. Cavanaugh? Perhaps it might interest you to know that I am
also
recording this conversation. So if anything should happen to me I now have a tape which my attorney-"

"Jesus Christ!"
I said, and hung up. "Oh,
lovely!
Now Moira's going to have Gunther murdered and the only evidence is going to implicate me!"

For once, though, mob tradition was on our side. When Moira returned she sourly agreed to kick in five hundred. What prompted her change in heart was not any moral reawakening but an unexpected lesson in the economics of assassination. Having Gunther hit would cost fifteen hundred, to which sum the rest of us refused to contribute a penny. Faced with the choice of eliminating him for fifteen hundred or mollifying him for five she opted frugally for the latter. So, later that week we placed the bills in a heavily padded envelope along with a note Moira insisted on adding which read, "Final payment! Try this again and you're dead meat!" and mailed it to the correct post office box.

My share having exhausted my funds, I was unable to buy a wedding gift for Gilbert and Moira. This was a problem only because of the famed custom of opening the gifts for the delectation of all. Claire hit upon the solution of finding some nice antique from God's Country, wrapping it up, then returning it after the wedding.

As for Freddy's courtship in the weeks before the duke's death, Mummy steered a cautious middle course, neither seeing as much of him as she had before Chick's threat nor as little as she had after it. This, of course, pleased no one, but it didn't leave anyone trigger-happy either.

Given these recent developments, you can, I'm sure, understand why neither Gilbert nor I was much looking forward to his bachelor party, particularly since all three of our prospective murderers would be among the guests. There was no choice, though, but to attend. It was among the most dreadful nights of our lives, all the more so
because neither of us could for a moment betray our revulsion at the bacchic excesses Ugo had so lovingly devised. We had to pretend to enjoy it all-the lesbian porn film, the novelty ashtrays that let you be a rapist every time you extinguished a cigarette, the besotted revelers retching in the john, and the stripper who accepted the ten-and twenty-dollar bills of admirers in a way which gave new meaning to the words "safe deposit box."

This tridextrous miss, we soon gathered, had been leased by Ugo as his own special gift to Gilbert. Gilbert, he announced to hoots of approval, could do whatever he wanted with her. What Gilbert wanted to do with her, of course, was to send her to a vocational school in another state, but he couldn't exactly say so. My heart bled for him as he had to sit there in front of a drunk and applauding crowd, pretending to be inflamed with lust as she thrust her betassled tits in his face. Finally, when she knelt before him and began undoing his belt, he had no choice but to leap up, grab her hand and, amidst whistles and stomps of approval, lead her into Aggie's office and lock the door. There he blushingly told her he'd caught the clap from another of her trade and had only seven penicillin filled days to go till his honeymoon. She was grateful for his honesty and only too happy to bump the door rhythmically with her behind while shrieking in pleasure, to the crowd's roaring chant of "Do it! Do it!! Do it!"

As I said, Lunch, Chick and Charlie Pastore were among the crowd which also included Marlowe Heppenstall, fat Cousin Steffie's hubby George Lucci, Christopher, Mike, Lou the chef, the dishwasher, Lunch's son-in-law Lou, various mobsters and Holly Batterman (who left immediately after Gilbert's feigned dalliance, his dialing finger tumescent with anticipation).

Chick and Charlie drank harder and laughed louder than anyone, letting Gilbert and me know they were on our side. Both found some discreet moment to make inquiries as to whether the romance was proceeding satisfactorily toward fruition or extinction. I informed Charlie that wedding bells were sure to chime eventually, and I told Chick that the royal hussy had gotten the message but was trying to squeeze a few more baubles out of Freddy before reconciling with the duke. Both seemed satisfied.

The party dragged on, endlessly it seemed, but by three or so all had left but Ugo. He was smashed but still offering toasts and waxing maudlin about his new friendship with us. We were different from
him, he knew, with different tastes and ways of expressing ourselves, but we were all right and in getting to know us he had broadened his horizons. We assured him that he had broadened ours as well and he happily vomited and passed out on the banquette.

As we began sifting through the wreckage, Aggie showed up.

"Well, well. Look at this place! I'm just getting out of a li'l party m'self and I thought I'd swing by and assess the dam'ges. Not half as bad as I 'spected. You shoulda seen the joint after
this
one's bachelor party," she said, gesturing toward the prone figure of Ugo.

She was very drunk, as were we, but none of us was quite insensible.

"You boys have fun?"

"Yeah."

"It was great!"

We mustn't have sounded too convincing because she threw back her head and roared.

"That bad, was it!"

At that point, after having worn the masks of macho revelers all night long, the temptation to let them drop was overwhelming, and we did. Not that we said anything; we just exhaled mightily and shook our heads slowly in the way one does to convey one has just been tried in the furnace.

A look of motherly concern came over her. She sat at our table and lit up a cigarette.

"My spies tell me you boys have been taking some heat lately."

We eyed each other quickly, each warning the other to exercise caution. God only knew what
her
angle was. So, we just nodded vaguely, noncommittally, and fell silent.

"Want to tell me about it?" she asked.

We shook our heads. She smiled.

"My, oh my! They got you so scared you don't know who to trust, do you? Well, don't worry about me, boys. I'm not on anyone's side. Haven't been for years."

She kicked off her shoes, leaned back, and put her feet up on the table. She puffed dreamily on her cigarette and gazed serenely at the wreckage.

"Got me a nice fat bundle from my first hubby, took over this place and told them all to leave me
out
of it. I said to Lunch and the rest of 'em 'I'm sick and tired of sitting up nights worrying maybe the cousins are getting an edge. Who cares? S'all the same to me. You
boys have all the fights you want, just don't have 'em here.' My place is a neutral zone. Isn't that nice? No guns, no grudges. They respect it, too. Wouldn't let 'em in if they didn't. Stand at the door with a goddamn gun."

Another silence fell and Gilbert quietly asked why people were so concerned about the duchess. She laughed.

"S'a long story, darlin', but I'll try to give you the short version. If you'll just answer me a little question."

"What?"

"You two boys are gay, aren't you?"

We sat there tongue-tied for a few seconds and Aggie said, "C'mawwwn, guys, I can keep a secret. I know anyway, from all Chrissy's catty remarks and the way
you"
-she meant me-"used to get so damn flustered when I came on to you. You're gay, right?"

We nodded.

"Then, Gilbert darlin',
why
on earth are you marrying that honey-tongued bitch, Moira?"

"For the gifts," said Gilbert, and Aggie threw back her head and laughed louder and harder than I have ever heard anyone laugh in my life.

"HAH! HAH! HAH HAH! Well I hope you get some
nice
ones, honey!"

When it had finally subsided she poured herself another drink and answered our question.

Freddy was unique among godfathers in that he did not have a "boss," a clear second in command. He used to have one, his son Harry "Gotcha" Bombelli, but Gotcha succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver about two years ago. There was much pressure on Freddy to fill the post quickly but Freddy saw the whole thing as a tremendous opportunity to spur productivity. He told the underbosses who headed the three families, Lunch, Chick and Charlie, that he would choose one of them to fill Gotcha's shoes. He would not, however, choose for one year, his decision to be based on which of the family businesses performed best within that period. This edict was grudgingly accepted and profits predictably zoomed right across the board.

With the rise in profits, however, came an attendant rise in rivalry. While the families continued to socialize and appear mutually supportive there were dark rumors of plans to deliberately sabotage rival cousins' profits. Then the Coast Guard seized narcotics which were
earmarked for Chick. Though these things happen in even the best-run businesses and had certainly happened before, now there were whispers of tip-offs. And when Big Jimmy Fabrizio died in a car wreck only two weeks later there were hushed speculations about fixed brakes, despite the coroner's assertion that Jimmy was a walking wine cellar at the time of his death.

Aggie felt that neither the drug incident nor the car wreck were more than unfortunate accidents, but their happening so close together set into effect a chain of discreet sabotages and murderous reprisals. The murders were all meticulously arranged to look like accidents in order to avoid detection and more reprisals (which, of course, didn't work very well, as none failed to result in retaliation). Accusations were sometimes quietly made but were always hotly denied.