Blood Money

32

Al Castananza sat in his booth at the Villa restaurant and waited for his dinner. He had learned as a child that letting people read on his face the contents of his mind was a bad idea. It had gotten him into so much trouble at school that education had been a brief experience and lingered as an incomprehensible memory after fifty years. After that, he had served the first of his prison terms, and he had learned quickly.

Tonight, he was feeling anxious and confused, but he knew that showing anything except his mask of imperturbability was about the same as putting a gun in his mouth. He sat staring at the poster of the Venice Biennale that hung on the wall across from him, and distracted himself by wondering what it was that happened in Venice every two years. It sounded like a car race, but he couldn’t imagine why anybody would have a car race in a city that was half flooded.

Saachi came in from the front dining room and sat beside him on his right, as he always did. Saachi wouldn’t end up eating anything until nearly midnight, after Castananza went home. He would sit there protecting Castananza’s weak side while Castananza ate. He would make payments from the roll of bills in his pocket and handle all the petty problems that people came in with so Castananza could swallow his food without getting agita.

Castananza always listened while he was eating, but if he didn’t have to gulp down a mouthful of unchewed food to say something, then he didn’t. If Saachi made a wrong decision, he never told him in front of anyone. He waited until they were alone, so Saachi could fix it himself.

Monday night’s special was veal scaloppine, and he felt happy. He could have gone into any restaurant anywhere and ordered the whole menu if he wanted, but he had lived a long life by never doing that. If he had asked Marone, the Villa’s owner, for a special meal made of rare and costly ingredients, Marone would have rushed around trying to make it, but the daily specials were what Castananza liked. If half the people in a restaurant were having the same meal, then it would be pretty damned hard to get a spoonful of rat poison on the right plate.

Saachi sat there for a second, then said, “Al, I’m glad I got here before the waiter.”

Castananza’s hopes fell. Saachi was telling him he wouldn’t want to hear this while he was eating. “Yeah?” he said. “What sort of problem have we got?”

“It’s this thing with Bernie.”

The owner of the restaurant himself walked toward the table, carrying a tray on which four plates of veal scaloppine were expertly wedged, so the edge of each plate sat on the edge of the next. Castananza gave his head a regretful little shake. Marone saw it and delivered the four plates to other, less distinguished diners without letting them suspect that Castananza had turned them down.

“So tell me.”

“I think maybe we should get out of here and talk in the car.”

Castananza looked at Saachi. His old friend’s face was concerned, the lines over his eyebrows all showing even in the soft light of the Villa, but the eyes weren’t scared. That would have required Castananza to behave differently. He had always been alert to signs that Saachi was scared, because that was the way he would look if he ever decided that being Castananza’s right hand was the same as being Castananza. He said, “Sure. Should we go out the back?”

“I got my car out there,” said Saachi.

The two men slid out of the booth and walked the few steps to the back of the restaurant, past the telephones Castananza’s people never used because they were tapped, and out to the little square of asphalt where the waiters parked their cars.

There were two men standing beside Saachi’s Continental, and Castananza acknowledged them. “Hi, Mike. Bobby, how are you?” He didn’t listen to their respectful mutterings as he got into the passenger seat. They were too much in awe of him to say anything he needed to hear.

Saachi started his car, and the two young men went around the building to another one, and drove up behind them. As Saachi crept down the alley to the street, he sighed to signify that he was ready.

“So?” asked Castananza.

“The two guys we sent to watch Albuquerque airport for Danny Spoleto and the girl—DiBiaggio and Lomarco. They called the other day and said they saw something strange.”

“What was it?”

“They saw some guys in the airport. I guess it was DiBiaggio who knew one of them, really. It was a made guy he remembered from the old Castiglione days. They got to talking, and when they got around to the subject of Spoleto, these two guys don’t have anything to say, just look at each other and kind of chuckle.”

“How?”

“Like they knew where he was. No, like they had him already. Like the game was over, and they already won. The two of them say, ‘Well, so long. Got to go.’ Lomarco keeps an eye on them, to see where they’re going. Maybe they’re changing flights to go someplace else, and he wonders where. But they just go to a restaurant in another part of the airport. Pretty soon a couple of other guys arrive on a different flight, and they all wait.”

“This doesn’t sound like a big deal,” said Castananza. “I would have been curious too, but what’s the big deal?”

“Over the next hour or so, they keep arriving. It goes on until there are like twelve of them. Then they leave.”

“Is that when Lomarco and DiBiaggio called you?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it didn’t seem like a big thing. I told them guys from a dozen families are all over the place, looking for these people, so you could run into anybody anywhere. We didn’t hear from them again, so I let it go. But then we didn’t hear from them for a couple more days, so I started to wonder. A couple of hours ago we started making some calls.”

“So what did you find out?”

“That’s why I thought I had to ruin your dinner, Al. It seems the New Mexico state police found their bodies. They were way the hell out in someplace called Cibola National Forest.”

“They weren’t supposed to make noise or cause trouble,” said Castananza.

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t, Al,” said Saachi. “When you told me to send guys, I didn’t think you wanted walking meat. I sent good, strong hands. Both of these guys were young, but not kids. I was there the night Lomarco made his bones. He went in alone, did this guy with a knife, and walked slow around the corner to the car with a smile on his face. He had a set of stones on him.”

“Do their families know?”

“Not yet,” said Saachi. “I just found out.”

“We’d better make a swing over to their houses tonight, so I can talk to them myself,” Castananza said. “You got enough money on you?”

Saachi’s look of anxiety returned. “This is just an opinion, Al, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“It doesn’t take long, and it’s what people expect. If I don’t do it, people are going to wonder why. In a little while, their wives are going to be wondering what’s going to happen to them and the kids.”

“I can go give them some money by myself,” offered Saachi. “We don’t know how bad this is yet.”

Castananza turned his eyes to watch Saachi. He was glancing in the rearview mirror to be sure the two boys were still back there. “You have a theory?”

“I don’t know, Al,” said Saachi. “Two perfectly capable guys are sitting in an airport, and a few days later, they’re dead, a hundred miles away. It makes you think.”

“So what does it make you think?”

“Well, what’s going on?” asked Saachi. “Nobody killed them in an airport. Maybe they followed those twelve guys into an ambush. Or maybe somebody talked them into leaving the airport. If DiBiaggio remembered one of them from the Castiglione crew, who can they belong to but DeLuca?”

“Could have been Delfina. He got some of those guys when the family split.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right,” said Saachi. “DeLuca got most of them, so I sometimes forget. But Delfina or DeLuca or anybody else, why would they kill our guys?”

“You think our guys found something—like Bernie’s money?”

“Or their guys did, and wanted to be sure nobody else knew about it.”

“Or maybe it’s all been some kind of setup from the beginning,” said Castananza.

“You think so?” asked Saachi.

Castananza shrugged. “That’s what I’ve been afraid of. One minute we hear Bernie the Elephant is dead, and we lost a lot of money. Then we hear that we’re supposed to send people all over the country. Why? To look for Bernie’s bodyguard, who is suddenly missing. Maybe ‘missing’ means he killed Bernie. But maybe it means somebody else killed both of them.”

“It beats me how the hell anybody was going to get the money out of Bernie after he was dead anyway,” said Saachi.

Castananza shrugged. “Vincent Ogliaro is in jail, but he was supposed to be smart. And that family has always been tight. Tasso was saying Ogliaro’s old man was a tough son of a bitch, and it made me remember him.”

“Well, his family ain’t tight anymore. It’s like somebody lopped off their head, and they’re just lying there. I think somebody is going to wait a decent interval and then take over.”

“DeLuca?”

Saachi squeezed his face into a doubtful look and cocked his head. “He did put the bomb in Di Titulo’s car. And I’ve been hearing that there are a lot of guys from Chicago hanging around Detroit.”

“And everywhere else, too,” said Castananza. “There seem to be a few in every airport our guys have been covering.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Saachi.

“I told you. Take me to DiBiaggio’s house, and Lomarco’s.”

“Are you sure?” Saachi turned the car toward DiBiaggio’s house.

“We’ve got no choice, now. When everybody else hears they’re dead, they also better hear I already gave their wives a pile of money to tide them over. People have got to feel like this is a tight family if we’re going into a war.”

“War?” asked Saachi. “With who? DeLuca?”

“Not DeLuca,” said Castananza. “It’s too big for DeLuca.”

“Who, then?”

“Maybe him and somebody else,” said Castananza in growing frustration. “DeLuca, at least two of the New York families, and Chi-chi Tasso in New Orleans. I don’t know who else, but they’re a good bet.”

“Chi-chi Tasso?” Saachi’s voice revealed his confusion.

“Yeah. He was the one who said this was all a fantasy. He said Bernie took the money himself and gave it to charities. It was a real conversation stopper. He took up half the ride with this nonsensical thing about how Bernie lost his mind and heard voices that told him to do it.”

“What do you think they’re up to?”

“Just what I said. They got Bernie. They got the rest of us to spread our guys out looking for Bernie’s money. Now they’ll cut off a few heads and take over. And we can’t fight them on that plan. Any one of them is bigger than we are. The best we can do is get our feet out of their trap before they get it all cocked and ready.”

“How do we do that?”

“Get everybody home. I mean everybody. I don’t want to hear later how one or two guys didn’t get the word and suddenly found themselves out there alone. But first take me to DiBiaggio’s house, and Lomarco’s.”