"Vincente. I can't talk long. I've seen Gino. He's alive, Vincente."
The Godfather sat in Joey's study. Moonlight smeared itself like butter across the glass block wall. He heard the words and instantly began to cry. It was an odd thin sort of crying. No sound went with it, and the feeling behind it was raw but distant, less an emotion than a memory of something that could be recalled but not recaptured.
"But Vincente, listen," Bert went on, "somethin' ain't right. I found 'im at Messina's club. They were tryin' much too hard ta look like friends. Then Gino turns around and says he don't want me goin' home, seein' you, talkin' t'anybody for a while. They kidnap me, like—"
"So how're you callin?" Vincente cut in.
"I got away. I'll tell ya about it sometime. But inna meantime . . . Vincente, listen. Unless I have this very wrong—I hope I'm wrong, believe me—but how it looks ... I think they made him take a contract on your buddy Ahty."
The line went silent. The Godfather held the phone a few inches from his face and didn't so much think as open old passageways to the flow of remorseless and untamed logic that would lead his colleague Aldo Messina to use one irritant to destroy another. Of course that's what he would do.
"Vincente, you there?"
He answered only with a wheezing breath.
"He's on his way, Vincente. For all I know, the job is done. I'm sorry."
Bert the Shirt, his lungs smarting, the phone like dry ice against his face, waited a moment, understood that no reply was coming, and hung up.
In Key West, the Godfather absently put down the handset; then, with trembling fingers, he riffled through Joey's desk drawers until he found a phone book. He looked up Arty Magnus's number; he dialed. The signal went as far as the ripped-out wires, then bounced back and rang and rang, it was hellish in the bland futility of its ringing. He shouted for his son Joey, told him to get the El Dorado ready.
On Varick Street, Bert climbed stiffly back into his cab. He picked up his dog, hugged it, and shivered. Then he looked at the cabbie's license mounted on the dashboard. The guy's first name was Pavel and his last name was mostly z's and w's.
"Pavel, ya feel like drivin' a Florida?"
Strange things happened in America. Pavel knew that from TV. "You are gangster maybe?"
"Thousand dollars, Pavel. Half up front."
"You vait vun minute pleass," the cabbie said. "I call vife."
———
"Ya know what I hate?" said Gino, punctuating the words with tilts and thrusts of his pistol. "I hate when a fuckin' outsider tries ta worm his way someplace he don't belong. Like a fuckin' smartass Jew in a Sicilian family. I mean, where the fuck da you come off? Gettin' buddy-buddy wit' my father. Skimmin' off money. Diggin' up secrets, stuff ya got no right ta know. You're a fuckin' worm, a bloodsucker. I hate that."
Arty stood there, pinned like a bug in Gino's flashlight beam. He didn't answer; there was nothing to say. He looked across the width of the bed and wondered if he would have a chance to make a move, to fight, before Gino killed him, or if he would go down passive and pathetic, without so much as a gesture of resistance.
"An' ya know what else I hate?" said the murderer. He jerked the light toward Debbi, seemed to want to ram it through her flesh. "I hate the kinda weak-ass woman who if her pussy's empty fifteen minutes, if she don't have a man t'usher her around, pay for things, she's in a fuckin' panic, she'll spread her legs for anything in pants. Even a Jew bloodsucker. Fuckin' tramp. I hate that."
Debbi said nothing. Her breath came in short quick puffs; Arty felt the heat of rage and terror pulsing off her flank.
Gino rose, he made a lot of noise as he unfolded his damp bulk from the chair. "The t'ree of us," he said, "we're goin' for a ride now. Someplace nice and quiet. The slut drives. I sit inna back. Ya don't do exactly like I tell ya, I splatter brains, I promise."
48
Joey was two blocks away when he saw the car shoot out of Nassau Lane and head up Fleming Street, pointing out of town. He couldn't see beyond the moonstruck windows, couldn't see how many people were inside. But he could tell it was a T-Bird, and he knew his brother's taste in cars.
He hit the gas, and the eight thick pistons of the El Dorado clattered in their bloated cylinders. His father braced himself with a thin yellowish hand against the dashboard. The old man still had his smoking jacket on, his face was gray and hollow under the flicking streetlamps.
At White Street the T-Bird ran a yellow light; Joey ran the red, tires squealing as the Caddy leaned fatly into the turn. He headed for the bridge that arched over Garrison Bight and led on to the highway. A rusty pickup truck pulled out of the bar at the marina, got between Joey and his quarry, and crawled. When it was time to make the left onto U.S. 1, the T-Bird slipped through on the arrow and the El Dorado sat there two cars back.