Finally Vincente said, "Ya know who I am."
It was not a question, and Arty just nodded.
"Ya know why I wanna talk to ya?"
Arty shook his head.
The Godfather stared at him and seemed to be deciding whether he had just been fibbed to. "I think ya do," he rasped, "but OK, it all makes sense. Ya wanna write books, you're scared ta write books, the chance ta write a book jumps up and bites ya innee ass, y'act like ya don't notice. This is why ya still work for a newspaper."
Arty said nothing. If he felt insulted, he'd missed the one clean moment to hit back; after that it would just be whining. He looked off toward the baby palms, felt a sudden ludicrous compassion for their struggle up toward daylight, their wispy nakedness before the wind, their helpless patience with the whims of rain.
"I'm askin' ya to work with me," the Godfather resumed. "Tell my story. Be my whaddyacallit, my ghostwriter."
Arty's feet shuffled in the mulch. A mushroom smell came up from the scratched at earth. His mouth fell open, but all that came out was a strangled aah, a doctor's office sound.
"Ya scared?"
Arty nodded.
"Of me? Or the book?"
"Both."
"Fair enough," said the Godfather, and he reached up toward his tie. It could not have been any straighter or any snugger, but he toyed with it anyway, smoothed it down inside his buttoned jacket. He turned a few inches toward the younger man, laid his ebony walking stick across his lap. "Ahty, lemme tell ya a coupla things about how I do business. I don't pressure nobody, I don't get nobody involved that doesn't want to be involved. Ya wanna say no ta me, ya can. No hard feelings. That's the God's honest truth."
Arty looked past the web of brows and wrinkles into the sockets of Vincente's eyes. "I believe it," he said.
Vincente raised a finger. "Believe this too: If we do make a deal, the deal is sacred; it lives as long as we do. Know that. It isn't something you walk away from, some lawyer gets you out of. Any doubts at all, be safe, say no."
Arty's hands were damp, he rubbed them on his pants legs. A man came down the aisle with a hand truck full of poison. The mist went off in one section of the nursery and came on in another; a fresh green smell wafted over from where the watering had started.
"So here's what I'm thinkin'," the Godfather went on. "Five thousan' a month, for as long as it takes. Ya keep your job, it's better that way. The thing is, nobody can know we're doin' this—nobody. 'Cept my sons, I think they got a right ta know. And my friend Bert, he'll figure it out. But no one else. Our secret, Ahty. Y'unnerstand?"
"But a book isn't—"
Vincente fiddled with his tie again. "Nothin' comes out till I'm dead. Which, let's face it, doesn't figure ta be that long. After that, Ahty, y'own it, ya do what ya want." He paused, gave a hissing grunt. " 'Course, if it's like everything else I done in my fuckin' life, it'll turn out no good innee end. But you, maybe you'll make it good, maybe you'll make a fuckin' fortune on it."
A cloud crossed the sun. Under the black mesh net the dappled light went gray and flat, a cool breeze made the baby palm fronds scrape and rattle in their pots.
"Coupla hours," the Godfather said, "I'm flyin' a New Yawk, a week, a month, I don't know for how long. Think it over while I'm gone, will ya do that for me?"
Arty nodded. He reminded himself he could still say no.
Vincente slowly swiveled on the slatted bench to face him, you could see the knobby thinness of his bent leg underneath his woolen pants. "Ahty," he said softly, "I'm like stranglin' inside, I'm like chokin' on shit and bile and secrets and things I think are wrong. What I'm askin' ya, I'm askin' ya ta help me get ridda that shit, y'unnerstand?"
The ghostwriter nodded, swallowed. The sun came back, picked out twenty different kinds of green: waxy, dusty, bluish, silver.
The Godfather turned away, sat facing straight ahead, his hands propped on his walking stick. "Go now," he said. "I wanna sit here a few minutes, smell things, look at people work." He lifted a hand just enough to make a small embracing gesture toward the foliage, the burlap bags, the clay pots stained with wet. "I love it here," he said. "I had my way, I'd spend a lotta time, this is where I'd sit."
Part
Two
12
The Godfather recoiled.
He waved his hands in a fending gesture, leaned far back, and pulled his face away as if shrinking from a bad smell. "Ahty, no," he said. "No tape recorder."
"But Vincente," said Arty Magnus, "it'd make things so much—"
"Ahty, fuhget about it. A tape recorder, believe me, it's like a loaded gun."