Inherit the Mob (24 page)

Pietro Spadafore stood silently in the small chapel of the Fortuna Bros. funeral home, looking into his brother’s open casket. Mario made a good-looking corpse, Pietro thought. Death had taken the cruel stupidity out of his face and replaced it with a bland, angelic look. It was, he reflected, the advantage of the ugly man to leave life looking better than before.

Pietro wondered what he would look like in his own casket, and the thought made him shudder. He was too young to even contemplate dying, and yet, standing in front of his dead brother, it was hard to avoid the notion. He wondered whether his father would give him
a send-off as grand as Mario’s—five thousand dollars’ worth of flowers, a silk-lined ivory casket, the cardinal himself to deliver the eulogy. Probably, he decided; he was as much his father’s property as Mario, and for Luigi Spadafore to do any less would be an act of disrespect to someone he loved—himself.

Pietro sneaked a peek at his watch. Eleven-fifteen. He had promised Debbie Hearns that he would meet her for lunch at the Plaza at one. He looked at the body of his older brother with theatrical grief, hoping his act would appease his father when he told him, in a few minutes, that he had an appointment. He knew he would have a problem with the Don, especially now that Mario was gone. The old man would want him to take over, and Pietro intended to use all his wiles to avoid that.

Luigi Spadafore would have been astonished to know that his younger son had a capacity for duplicity that matched his own. From childhood, Pietro had been a misfit in the Spadafore Family, like one of those human babies raised in the woods by wolves. He was oppressed by his father’s harsh demands, and by the solemn, old-world atmosphere of the huge brownstone. He had realized that his only possibility of escape was to play dumb. It had been an easy enough role; his father, already used to one idiot son, had taken Pietro’s stupidity almost for granted.

He looked at his watch again, and at his father’s grim, stricken face. Five more minutes and he would make his departure. The Don’s grief was, he knew, a pose; the old man cared nothing for Mario. Pietro mumbled what he hoped sounded like a prayer and thought about Debbie Hearns, who liked to make love standing in front of mirrors in public rest rooms.

For Pietro, women were an acquired taste. He had initially been drawn to them not for glandular reasons but to fortify his image as a foolish playboy. But as he gained experience, he made a surprising discovery; he, Pietro Spadafore, needed and loved women, and he had the capacity to evoke their need and love in return.

It was not just his looks—he knew hundreds of better-looking guys who couldn’t get laid at a Playboy bunny convention. No, it was something deeper, more subtle. He understood women, knew instinctively how to approach them, what to say, when to act and when to hesitate. Women were not merely a diversion, as his father imagined.
They were as crucial to him as a sunrise to a painter, or the song of birds to a composer. They were his inspiration, his medium of expression, each relationship a self-created world of its own, and his ability to bring such worlds to life gave him a power far greater than anything his father could possibly offer.

He knew the Don considered his passion for women to be an effeminate weakness, but his father was an old man, and limited. Women, Pietro knew, were not trivial, but essential. Throughout history they had humbled kings, made philosophers dumb with desire, caused honorable men to break oaths and spill blood. And he, Pietro Spadafore, conquered these wild creatures. He could never explain this to his father, not because the old man would not understand, but for fear that he might—might realize that his son Pietro had a dominating spirit and intelligence not too different from his own.

Pietro’s meditations were interrupted by a rustle in the rear of the chapel. He turned and saw William Gordon, dressed in a somber black suit, walking toward his father. The old man looked up and saw Gordon approaching, and a look of amazement and rage mottled his face.

Gordon stopped briefly in front of the casket, mumbled something, and then approached the Don. This man has balls of brass, thought Pietro—either that or a serious death wish.

“Mr. Spadafore, I want to offer my condolences,” said Gordon, extending his hand. Spadafore ignored it, looking intently into his face but saying nothing. Gordon, misunderstanding, withdrew his hand. “I want to apologize, too, sir, for the other night. I don’t know what got into Flanagan to pull a stupid prank like that. I know that this isn’t the best time, but I just wanted to say that—”

“You … come … here?” Spadafore interrupted him in a voice choked by emotion into a soupy whisper. “You … come … here, to the body of my son, the son you have taken from me, to offer your sympathy?”

“Who, me?” Gordon exclaimed. He sounded so boyishly astonished that Pietro nearly laughed out loud. “You think I had something to do with Mario’s death?”

Spadafore turned to Sesti. “Get him away from me,” he commanded.
Sesti took Gordon by the elbow, and began walking him quickly toward the door. On the steps of the funeral home Gordon pulled away.

“Carlo, what the hell is happening here?” he demanded. “You can’t really think that I—”

“Ah, but we do,” said Sesti. “In fact, we think precisely that.”

“
You
think that? Or just Spadafore?”

“You are very lucky,” said Sesti. “The period of mourning is sacred to Sicilians, otherwise you would have been killed just now.”

“Carlo, you didn’t answer my question. Do you honestly believe that
I
could possibly have had anything to do with Mario’s death?”

The consigliere shrugged. “What I believe is irrelevant. The point is that Mr. Spadafore believes it.”

“But
why
? What possible reason could I have?”

“Why don’t you ask your consigliere,” said Sesti.

For a moment, Gordon looked blank. “My consigliere? Who? You mean Flanagan? What the hell did he do now?”

“He threatened Mr. Spadafore, three days before the death of his son. I have a recording of that conversation.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Gordon. “Can I hear the tape?”

“You can go right now, with your life,” said Sesti.

“Carlo, you’ve got to talk to Spadafore, tell him that this is a ridiculous mistake. We’re reporters, Flanagan and I, not gangsters. We’ve been play-acting, that’s all. You’ve got to make Mr. Spadafore understand that.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have a rather difficult time convincing Mr. Spadafore that two of New York’s most distinguished journalists have been merely play-acting. And, Mr. Gordon, frankly I don’t believe it myself.”

“You mean, you actually think—”

“Yes, I think your Mr. Flanagan is capable of any sort of lunacy. In any event, as I’ve said, it isn’t important what I think. Good-bye, Mr. Gordon.”

“But, Carlo, what’s going to happen? I mean, how do we make a truce, or whatever?”

Sesti gave him a wintry smile. “You still haven’t understood, have
you, Gordon? For a man like Luigi Spadafore, there is no possibility of declaring a truce with his son’s murderers.”

“Meaning what?” asked Gordon with a distinct tremor in his voice.

“I can do nothing for you,” said Sesti. “It is out of my hands now. Good-bye, Mr. Gordon.”

G
ordon drove back to Manhattan feeling numb. He had often wondered what it would be like to hear from the doctor that he had a terminal disease. Now he knew. Sesti’s message had been unmistakable—a death sentence had been passed on him. Gordon’s instincts told him there must be some process of appeal, but he didn’t know what it might be. Clearly Sesti was no longer an ally. He would have to find out what to do from someone who knew Spadafore’s world and its rules.

Gordon knew he couldn’t go home; there might be people waiting for him there right now. Flanagan would still be at the paper, but he wasn’t ready for Flanagan at the moment. He was too scared to be mad, but he realized that Flanagan was more of a problem than a solution.

Gordon pulled into a gas station near Chinatown and dialed his father’s number. The old man answered on the second ring: “Grossman.”
The sound of his father’s gruff voice made Gordon feel safer than he had since leaving Brooklyn.

“Dad, it’s me,” he said.

“Yeah, right. You ain’t been around much, Velvel.”

“Listen, Dad, I’m in trouble. I need your help.”

There was a frightened tone in his son’s voice that Grossman had forgotten. The kid was such a hotshot, always calling from some foreign country, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, I’m fine,’ no matter where he was, and then, when he got home, the stories about the battlefields and the dictators. Grossman was supposed to be impressed, but he never was; his son was a spectator, a tourist to other people’s tsuris with a passport and credit cards.

“What kind of trouble? You knock up that les, or what?”

“Dad, can you meet me someplace? I mean right now?”

“I’m busy right now, boychik. You don’t call for what, two three weeks, and then you expect me to slide down a poll like a fireman and meet you? Forget it.”

“Dad, honest to God, I really need you.”

“Yeah, OK, it’s touching a boy needs his dad. I’m a sucker for sentiment. I’ll meet you at six, same place as last time. But don’t plan on wasting my evening, I got tickets to the Rangers-Bruins.”

“Thanks, Poppa,” said Gordon, and Grossman realized that his son had stopped calling him Poppa when he was seven years old.

Around noon, Flanagan got up from his computer and slipped into his jacket, walked down the long corridor leading out of the city room, and stuck his head into Corry Rosen’s office. “I’m going out to get some lunch,” he told the city editor. “I’ll be back in time to go over the Queens zoning thing.” Rosen nodded and waved. “Have a good time,” he said.

Flanagan took the elevator to the lobby and walked into the street, turning left on Forty-ninth and heading briskly toward Broadway. Mario’s murder puzzled him; maybe, he thought, the Spadafores are on the brink of a war with some other Family. If so, it could screw up his own plans. Flanagan decided to get in touch with Boatnay Threkeld after lunch, and to see what the cops knew about the hit on Mario.

Halfway up the block, Flanagan saw a tall man in a tan jacket. The man had a broken nose and a longish dirty-blond ducktail. It was the haircut that caught Flanagan’s attention; he hadn’t seen one like it since the fifties, in Brooklyn.

The man approached Flanagan. “Scuze me, mister, you got the time?” he asked in a Southern accent.

“Yeah,” said Flanagan, looking at his watch. “Twelve-fifteen.”

“Thanks.” Suddenly the man’s arm flashed and Flanagan felt a sharp pain in his stomach, just below his rib cage. “Shit!” he screamed, grabbing the wound and sinking to the sidewalk. He called for help, but he could barely hear his voice over the pounding in his ears. He lay in his own blood, looking up at the patch of blue sky between the tall buildings. It was a beautiful day. There were people in the offices above who didn’t know a thing about what was happening to him. Flanagan felt an overpowering rage. Goddamn it, I’m going to die, he thought. Right here on Forty-ninth Street.

The man with the beaky nose and the dirty-blond hair stood above him, and suddenly he was gone. Flanagan heard voices, and then he stopped hearing them.

Gordon called Jupiter. He had four hours to kill and he wanted to spend them with her. But she was out and her service said that she had left no message. Probably just as well, he thought; seeing Jupiter might make him even shakier.

He left his car in a parking garage near Chinatown and hailed a cab. He was afraid to hang around downtown, near Little Italy. The streets looked dirty and corrupt, like Saigon or Bangkok or Munich after dark. Gordon wanted to be around rich white Americans, people in tweed clothing with dogs on leashes. He told the driver to take him to the Providence Club, on Seventy-fourth off Madison.

Gordon had been a member of the Providence Club for close to twenty years; Cy Malkin put him up after his first Pulitzer. During his time abroad, he often stayed there during home leave, but since coming back to the city he had rarely used the place. Most of the members were journalists or television executives, and he found their smug certainties about the world to be silly and sometimes offensive. Once, soon after returning from Tehran, where he covered the overthrow
of the Shah, he had met a senior editor from the
Daily News
in the reading room. “I saw your stuff from Iran,” the editor told him. “I think you went a little overboard on the Islamic fundamentalist angle. What the people over there really want is Coca-Cola and color television.” On another occasion, a syndicated columnist, full of vodka and Perrier, had assured him that African nations would never be able to develop modern economies. “No sense of technology,” he said. “The only things that blacks ever invented are the peanut and the zip gun.” Normally this kind of wisdom kept Gordon away from the Providence Club, but today he was anxious to be among members of his fraternity, safe on familiar ground.