Menaced Assassin

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Martin Prince, like so many great football players in the NFL, had come out of one of the small, desperately poor steel-puddling towns of western Pennsylvania. He had been an Honorable Mention All-American in college, but had been too smart to go into the pros even if he had been heavy enough.

Now in his mid-fifties, Martin Prince was dynamic, corrupt, kept fit by massages, saunas, and heroic avoidance of the richly sauced pastas he loved. He had a wedge-shaped head, heavy jaws, and a chin that one could imagine jutting out over the thousands in Piazza Venezia. Prince’s rise had not been so meteoric as II Duce’s-but for the past five years, he had reigned supreme in Las Vegas.

It was to Martin Prince that the other capos came when they needed a neutral city in which to iron out their differences. They trusted him because he was quicker of mind, more decisive and more ruthless than they. Today he was cautious.

“Gideon, my good friend,” he said into the scrambler phone five minutes after he had hung up from Otto Kreiger, “how would you like a weekend in Vegas? We are opening our new golf course here at Xanadu and it would not be right if you didn’t hit the first ball down the fairway. Otto will also be here-I believe he wants to try to sell you one of those racehorses of his.”

“The man can always try,” Gideon chirped, then added before Prince could hang up, “You’ll like this one, Mr. Prince. This sexy young woman comes to a dinner party with this rich, ugly old man. She’s wearing this huge diamond, and the woman sitting next to her says it’s the most beautiful diamond she’s ever seen. So the sexy young woman says, ‘Yes, but this is the Plotnick diamond. It comes with a curse.’ The other woman says, ‘What’s the curse?’ and the sexy one looks over at her ugly companion and whispers, ‘Plotnick.’”

They shared a chuckle and hung up with mutual assurances of regard. Martin Prince was well pleased. He found Gideon, unlike the BB-eyed Nazi Kreiger, always Old Worldly and full of respect even if a bit boring.

As it should be. Respect. He beckoned, they came. Good men, strong men in their own right-but men who recognized him as the capo di tutti i capi — not that anyone believed in that Mustache Pete stuff anymore. Not in his organization. Though he had come up through the ranks in the traditional way, he had abandoned as many of the trappings of the Mafia as he could.

But he had never forgotten where he had come from and where his interests, talents, and allegiances lay. His old man had been a waiter in a wop restaurant, sweating and scrimping and saving for countless hours to send his kid first to parochial school and then to college; Prince had shown his appreciation for his education by murdering his first man for profit the night after he had thrown a winning touchdown pass against Penn State-who would suspect last night’s hero?

He had killed twice more, but only to show he had coglioni, quello! — big enough balls for the Pittsburgh underworld. After those three, he had never personally killed again, which meant his brains were as big as his balls. Martin Prince had never spent a night in jail, and had made a solemn vow to himself that he never would.

That was why he was phoning certain specific invitations for purposes having nothing to do with the mini crime summit he had decided St. John’s phone call demanded. Should the FBI be somehow listening this fine day, they would get nothing useful.

After speaking with Salvador Madrid, whom he had opposed for the council but had been overridden, his last call was to Enzo Garofano, one of the old-timers whose advice he valued and who still ran his own quadrant of the nation at the age of eighty-two. A little frail, perhaps, but only of body, not of mind or will.

Enzo’s passion was Italian opera, so Prince said, “Don Enzo, vi aspetta una cosa favolosa nel Showcase Lounge del casino, Abbiamo una nuova cantatrice.”

“Martin, io le cantatrici le sento ogni giorno.”

“Non come questa, vi assicuro. E meglio di Callas.”

“Meglio di Callas non c’e.”

But Martin Prince knew he had the old Mustache Pete in his pocket. Just in case the girl in the Showcase Lounge was as good a singer as Maria Callas the fiery Greek had been, Don Enzo would not be able to keep himself from coming to Vegas. Prince switched to English.

“That is why I implore you, Don Enzo, come and hear her for yourself. I insist on sending my jet to pick you up.”

Enzo agreed. Prince hung up and went to the window and looked out at his city. His city. Bugsy Siegel might have built it, but Martin Prince ran it-and would have called Bugsy “Bugsy” to his face if the stronzo had been around today.

Prince’s name had once carried extra syllables; after his father had somehow scraped up enough money to send little Marcantonio Princetti to St. Paddy’s across the river, rhymes with spaghetti had been the schoolyard taunt of the predominantly Irish lads at the school.

Sweeney.

Kiley.

O’Malley.

He’d never forgotten these ringleaders of the taunts during his formative years, so just about the time the extra syllables had been dropped to make Marcantonio Martin, faith an’ be jaysus, and those poor Irish boyos each had a wee drap o’ bad luck.

Martin Prince had never called to gloat. He’d never had to. They knew. At least Sweeney and Kiley did. O’Malley didn’t know much of anything anymore except how to piss down his pant leg. None of them could ever do anything about their misfortunes, but they would know.

Respect. Enzo Garofano still held his important meetings in the back room of an Italian restaurant, but he got respect. Martin Prince demanded it too. But on a much grander scale and with great personal pride in the safety measures that were his secret passion. He believed in careful evaluation and planning, and had a great deal invested in Atlas Entertainment; the company’s continued profitability depended on its connection with the Mafia remaining secret.

He met the four undercapos in the executive boardroom on the top floor of his Xanadu Enterprises hotel, casino, sports and entertainment complex. The three who were associated in greater or lesser degrees in the Atlas Entertainment affair, and the fourth, Spic Madrid, who was not involved but would serve as protective coloration should the feds belatedly realize these men were in Vegas for more than pleasure. Others might meet in a drafty warehouse or upstairs over a pizza joint; Martin Prince had flown in an interior decorator from Via del Babvino to furnish the suite with exquisite appurtenances from declining Roman estates and a lighting system developed in Cine Citta.

Prince had imported San Francisco’s most famous private detective to oversee the security arrangements. The place was swept twice daily for bugs, and waves of electronic vibrations washed inaudibly across the surfaces of the windows during meetings, so the latest laser mikes couldn’t pick up voice-shimmers off the glass and turn them back into human speech through a complicated electronic process.

“Enzo, mio caro amico. La cantatrice e brava, no?”

The old man nodded his seamed and shrunken head. Even in Las Vegas he wore a wool suit, vest, tie, polished shoes.

“Maria Callas- mai! But a good opera singer…” He shrugged and made a gesture of approval with the fingers of his hand pinched together at the tips. “You should encourage her.”

“Perhaps, Don Enzo, you would like to tell her personally how much you enjoyed her singing…”

By the look on Don Enzo’s face, he knew he had made the perfect suggestion. He would make a couple of suggestions to the cantatrice, too. What the hell, he owned her contract.

He turned to Salvador “Spic” Madrid, who controlled street drug sales in four upper Midwest states and had recently been elevated to the board after winning a rather messy internecine war on his own cold northern turf.

“Salvador-you find the floor shows pleasing?”

Spic couldn’t quite keep the gleam out of his eyes.

“Magnifico!” he exclaimed. “Last night… there was one blond showgirl… she looked seven feet tall…”

They all carefully laughed with him, not at him. Martin Prince nodded sagely. “I believe she might be waiting in your suite when this meeting is over.”

Spic tried to look man-of-the-world, but his eyes had gone round at the prospect of feasting on a woman two feet taller than he, one who outweighed him by fifty pounds and carried no extra flesh at all except where it counted.

To give Spic time to recover his poise without anyone seeming to be overtly aware he had lost it, Gid Abramson chirped up, bright as a bird.

“Martin, that golf course! It is a dream, a treasure! I almost had a hole in one on my first round!”

“And your stud farm is impeccable,” said Otto Kreiger. He sincerely meant it-and lusted after it. If Martin should ever stumble, Kreiger would pick up the pieces. If he stuck out a foot for Prince to trip over, Kreiger wondered, would he have any allies on the board to help him take over?

After the waiters had brought drinks and had departed, Martin Prince pushed a button to play back his phone conversation with Skeffington St. John.

“Mr…..Mr. Prince, this is Skeffington St. John-”

“Skeffington! Always a pleasure.”

“I thought I should notify you-that policeman from San Francisco was here yesterday. Dante Stagnaro. Trying perhaps to enlist me by suggesting that the Organization might be involved with Atlas Entertainment and also… also with… Molly’s, ah… my daughter’s, ah…”

“With the death of your daughter? My God, man, I felt about Molly just as I do about my own daughter!”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Prince, I understand that totally! But I felt you should know so appropriate actions could be taken.”

“Well, Skeffington, I want to thank you, and tell you again how keenly I feel for you in your loss. I hope to get you over here to Vegas soon, cheer you up a bit.”

“Then you don’t think-”

“That this Stagnaro is anything to worry about?” Martin Prince chuckled. “He knows Gounaris is connected to Atlas Entertainment, and he knows you are. But he doesn’t know any of you are connected to us. And he won’t know.”

“But the things he said about my daughter-”

“He’s just manipulating you, Skeffington. Shaking the box to see if anything rattles.” He added, with malice too delicate to be identified, “Unless you can think of something in your personal life that makes you vulnerable…”

“Oh, no, no, there’s nothing like that, Mr. Prince.”

“Then don’t give him another thought,” said Prince heartily. The tape clicked off. There was a long silence.

“This is a badly frightened man,” chirped Gid finally.

“Too frightened,” said Kreiger.

“On the other hand,” said Prince, “he called me when Stagnaro came to see him. He told me that Stagnaro told him we had been instrumental in his daughter’s death. It takes a certain strength of character to make such a call.”

“Or cunning,” said Spic, who’d had a brandy and felt himself an expert on cunning. With a sudden dazzling certainty, he knew that someday he would own this whole thing that was Prince’s. “He knew we’d hear one way or another about Stagnaro asking him questions.”

“But perhaps too frightened to handle our affairs?” persisted Kreiger. His tone was deferential, but he wanted to establish his position as contrary to Prince’s, without doing so strongly enough to make it obvious that was what he was doing. Prince caught the subterfuge, but said nothing.

“This guy is too frightened to live, perhaps?” suggested Spic Madrid.

“First the daughter, then the father? Both associated with Atlas Entertainment?” Enzo Garofano shook his aged head.

Fortunately, thought Martin Prince, Enzo didn’t know about that troubling hit on their bought policeman, Lenington. Also, indirectly, associated with Atlas.

Garofano continued, “And with this organized crime cop, what’s his name, turncoat wop bastard, Stagnaro, with him snooping about…”

“Yeah, what about doing him?” asked Madrid. “He’s the guy who’s scaring this St. John and pressuring Gounaris.”

“Hit a policeman? Very chancy,” said Garofano.

“I think we are going astray here,” said Prince.

“How’d the woman find out about it in the first place?” asked Spic. “This Gounaris was fuckin’ her, was he stupid?”

“She was a computer whiz,” said Gid very quickly but with a relaxed chuckle. This was dangerous ground for Kosta, he wanted to deflect the attention. “As we have been able to piece it together, she was looking not so much for something in the computer as for the space where she thought something should be in the computer if there was anything illegal going on.” He looked around the room. “If that makes sense to any of you.

“It made sense to my computer man, that’s good enough for me,” said Martin Prince. He held up a hand to forestall further discussion. “Our immediate problem is the demoralization of Skeffington St. John, which I do not believe to be acute. He has been a very fine attorney for this organization. He set up the Atlas Entertainment deal in the first place. He got an injunction that stopped the pressure Stagnaro was putting on Gounaris.”

“He’s a sexual degenerate of the worst kind,” broke in Kreiger. Prince knew he didn’t really care if St. John was a deviate, he was cautiously stalking out a position counter to Prince’s. “That makes him susceptible to the pressures a man like Stagnaro can bring. Promises of immunity…”

Otto was getting hungry, looking for a way to move up. Probably seeing Prince’s stud farm for the first time had done it. So much better than Otto’s, his horses of such better bloodlines. Not that he cared much about horses himself. Martin Prince tapped on the side of his water glass with his pen. Everyone fell silent.

“Let’s put to a vote whether Skeffington St. John is still a reliable part of this organization. Any seconds?”

“Second the motion,” said Enzo Garofano.

“Thank you. I believe a show of hands will suffice.”

But then Otto Kreiger came out into the open. “I would also like a show of hands on the question of the policeman Dante Stagnaro.”

“Second,” said Spic Madrid quickly.

Bene. These two lusted after Martin Prince’s domain, and might align themselves together against him. Martin Prince was stimulated by the challenge. He smiled benignly.

“One motion at a time, gentlemen, please,” he said. After the vote, he signaled Enzo Garofano to stay on after the others had left. “You heard, Don Enzo?”

“The tinkle of a distant goat bell.”

“It will get louder.”

Garofano nodded judiciously. “Perhaps send a message… Si! We can trust Eddie Ucelli to take his time in finding the right moment. He will do it right. He and I go a long way back, I will call myself.”

Martin Prince bowed his respect and admiration.

“La cantatrice — she is waiting in your room to discuss her career, Don Enzo.”

Garofano nodded in turn, a sudden lustful gleam in his faded octogenarian eye.