Sunburn(17)

Thinking about it made Arty groggy. He got up to fetch another cup of coffee.

On the way back from the dispenser, he decided to hang out awhile by the AP teletype. It was an old machine, archaic, a clunky-looking workhorse on a graceless pedestal, but Arty liked the way it chattered, how it filled up endless rolls of yellow paper with its untiring monologue. For an outfit like the Sentinel, the wire was the only pipeline from the drear world north of mile marker twenty; it carried epochal dispatches from places like the UN, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C., portentous accounts of coups, disasters, the fall of the West, which would then be reduced to fourline items that ran next to the police blotter in the column other news.

Arty sipped his coffee and watched the yellow paper fill up with ink.

.

dateline paris: economic summit flounders.

dateline moscow: russians talk of ethnic cleansing.

dateline new york: mafia big slain in brooklyn.





.


This one Arty read.

The gist of it was that Emilio Carbone, fifty-nine, boss of the Fabretti family, was midway through a plate of calamari rings at a seafood joint in Sheepshead Bay when three gunmen walked calmly through the swinging kitchen doors and shot him eleven times in the liver and the lungs. Also killed was fifty-six-year-old under-boss Rudy Catini. The restaurant was full but no one seemed to get a good look at the shooters. An FBI expert said that the very public nature of the killings meant one of two things: Either the hit was sanctioned by the other families or it was carried out by a renegade faction whose clear aim was to intimidate. The rubout, stated the source, was "a sign of weakness, not strength, further evidence of the Mafia's desperate condition."

Arty sipped his coffee and wondered if Vincente yet knew. Or if Vincente, for that matter, between planting flowers and pruning shrubbery, between strolling on the beach and eating with his family, had pronounced sentence on Carbone. Who knew what strings the old man pulled, how ruthless he might be, how he really operated? What would it be like, Arty wondered, to pick up the phone like you were ordering a pizza, but instead you ordered someone killed?

He was back in his office when, three quarters of an hour later, Marge Fogarty, the silver-haired copy editor and keeper of the three-button switchboard, called to tell him a man was on the line for him but wouldn't give a name.

Arty put his pencil down. He knew it was the Godfather, knew it with the placid certainty that sometimes tells a batter when a curve is coming, a gambler when an ace is going to fall. He picked up the receiver, saying nothing till he heard the inquisitive Marge drop out of the circuit.

"Hello?"

"Ahty, I wanna talk ta ya. Can ya meet me for a little while?"

The editor, a reluctant sort of person, didn't answer for a moment. He was playing a game with himself. He knew he would say yes, but it dawned on him that he should take the time to wonder if he would say yes of his own free will or if he was already slipping into some sort of nameless perilous thrall. It was important, he felt, to be clear about that now, because the thrall could only deepen with involvement, become an atmosphere, a fact of nature, a gravity you forgot about but that was always tugging. He persuaded himself that he could say no, then said, "Sure."

"The nursery," said the Godfather. "Plants, we both like plants. Whaddya say, we meet at the nursery, have a little talk?"





11


Arty Magnus locked his old fat-tire bicycle, wiped some sweat off his neck, ran a hand through his damp and frizzy hair.

It was a weekday morning and the nursery wasn't crowded, it had the brisk backstage atmosphere that pertained when only the professionals were around. Here and there workers went by with shears, with trowels, with atomizer bottles. People carried trees, it looked bizarre when all you saw was feet beneath a walking poinciana. Under the bird netting, the light was soft and cool. One quadrant of the yard was being misted; a lavender fog hung over it.

Midway down an aisle of buttonwood and bougainvillea, the Godfather was sitting on a slatted bench. He was wearing a gray suit that was much too warm for the weather; you could see the texture of the wool. Cinched tightly around his shrunken neck was a wide tie of burgundy silk. He sat with great stillness, his veiny spotted hands resting on an ebony walking stick with a scalloped silver knob on top. He saw Arty and lightly patted the bench next to him, a grandfatherly gesture, beckoning a child to sit down, to pass some time with him.

Arty sat. The Godfather slowly waved a hand across the greenery, breathed deeply of the flowers and the peat. "I love this," he said. "Florida changes ya, don't it? I first saw this place, it was too plain for me. Now it's perfect."

Then there was a silence, a long one. A workman walked past with a shovel, it made Arty think of Emilio Carbone.