The Piranhas
Authors: Harold Robbins
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Contents
Book Two: Love, Murder, and the Rico Act
Book Three: There are no More Godfathers
For Jann,
with all my love and gratitude
The Funeral
IT WAS PISSING
rain at eleven o’clock in the morning in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The police had blocked all traffic down Fifth Avenue from Fifty-fourth Street to Forty-ninth Street except buses, and they were only in a single line close to the sidewalk near Rockefeller Center across from the Cathedral. The street itself was crowded with blackened-window stretch limousines. The sidewalk and the steps leading up to the entrance of the Cathedral were jammed with television cameras, reporters, and the morbidly curious crowd that always managed to show up for death and destruction.
Inside the Cathedral all the pews were filled with black-dressed mourners, some very expensively dressed and others in threadbare black—but each looked down toward the altar to the front of the ornate gold coffin with a simple wreath of flowers at the foot. There was an expectant air as they waited to hear the mass that would be given by Cardinal Fitzsimmons. They wanted to hear what he had to say, because he had always hated the dead man.
I was seated in the first seat off the aisle reserved only for relatives of the deceased. I glanced over at the open coffin. My uncle looked fit and relaxed. Better, actually, than he usually had in life. Even as a child I realized that he was taut and always thinking. But most of all, I could always see, peering over his left shoulder, the Angel of Death, who would disappear the moment my uncle would talk to me. There were five other members of the family in the pew with me. Among them were my Aunt Rosa, the sister of my uncle and my father, who had been his brother. Then there were Rosa’s married daughters and their husbands. I had trouble remembering their names because over the many years we had rarely seen each other. I think their names were Cristina and Pietro, and Luciana and Thomas; the latter couple had two young children of their own.
Across the aisle, also in the front pew, were the important people and close friends of my uncle. My uncle had many friends. He had to have many friends because he died in bed of a massive cardiac seizure and not by a bullet as was the usual form of death for his compatriots. I looked across the aisle. I recognized some of the men, somber in black suits, white shirts, and black ties. Next to the aisles, Danny and Samuel were seated. They were young, maybe about my age, fortyish. They were my uncle’s bodyguards. The man sitting next to them I recognized from his photographs in newspapers and magazines. He was very handsome, with silver-gray hair, and wearing a carefully tailored suit, a black handkerchief in his breast pocket matching his tie falling neatly across the front of his white silk shirt. The CEO. The Chairman of the Board. Fifteen, twenty years ago they would have called him the Godfather. The Capo di Tutti Capi. That was what they used to call my uncle. That was forty years ago. They used to kiss his hand. But not today. The CEO was fourth-generation American. And it was not the Mafia. The Mafia, maybe still, in Sicily. Here in America it was a conglomerate comprised of Sicilians, blacks, Latin Americans, South Americans, and Asians. But the CEO held the reins tightly in hand with the board consisting of the five original families. The head of each of the families sat in the same pew as the CEO. In the few pews behind them were the others. The Latins, the blacks, the Asians. The pecking order never changed. Not in all the years.
The Cardinal rushed the mass. The whole thing was over in less than ten minutes. He made the sign of the cross over the coffin, then turned his back and started to walk away from the altar. At the same time, a thin, small, black-suited man seated toward the center of the church began running down the aisle toward the coffin waving a gun wildly over his head.
I heard my Aunt Rosa scream and saw the Cardinal dive quickly down behind the altar, his robes flapping. I left the pew and went after the man, and I saw others running after him. But none of us caught him before he emptied his gun into the coffin; then he stood there and cried loudly: “One death is not enough for traitors!”
My uncle’s bodyguards wrestled the man to the ground. I was just in time to see them begin to break his neck, but the CEO was already there. He gestured with his hand and shook his head. “No,” he said.
The bodyguards rose to their feet, and by that time the coffin was surrounded with uniformed police. Two plainclothes detectives were in charge of the officers. One pointed to the small man still on the floor. “Get him out of here.” The other detective picked up the gun lying on the floor and dropped it in his pocket. He turned to me because I was closest to the coffin. “Who’s in charge here?”
I glanced around. The CEO and my uncle’s bodyguards were back in their front-line pew. My aunt was crying loudly. She broke away from her two sons-in-law, ran to the coffin, and screamed again as she saw the mess inside the coffin. My uncle’s head had been almost obliterated; what remained was more a gargoyle than a man’s face. The silk sheet in the coffin was stained and spattered with brains, pieces of torn skin, and a pale pink fluid that the embalmer had used to replace the blood in my uncle’s body.
I pulled her back and pushed her into the sons-in-laws’ arms. “Get her away from here,” I said.
Aunt Rosa did the right thing. She fainted, and the two men dragged her back to the pew as her daughters rushed to her aid. At least now she was quiet. I turned to one of the undertakers. “Close the coffin.”
“Don’t you want us to take him back and clean him up?” one of them asked.
“No,” I said. “We go right to the cemetery.”
“But he looks terrible,” the man protested.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “I’m sure that God will recognize his face.”
The detective looked at me. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m his nephew. My father was his brother.”
“I don’t know you,” the detective said curiously. “I thought I knew all of his family.”
“I live in California and just came in for the funeral.” I took out a business card and handed it to him. “Now, let me get the funeral on the road. I’ll be at the Waldorf Towers if you want to get in touch with me this evening.”
“Just one question. Do you know anything about the nut who pulled this stunt?”
“Nothing,” I said.
The Cardinal came toward us. His face was pale and drawn. “Sacrilegious,” he said huskily.
“Yes, Your Eminence,” I agreed.
“I’m very upset,” the Cardinal said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in here.”
“I’m sorry, Your Eminence,” I said. “But if damages have occurred, please give me the bill and it will be taken care of.”
“Thank you, son.” The Cardinal looked at me. “I’ve never met you?” he asked.
“No, Your Eminence,” I answered. “I’m the prodigal. I’m from California.”
“But you are his nephew, I understand,” he said.
“True,” I replied. “But I never have been baptized. My mother was Jewish.”
“But your father was Catholic,” the Cardinal said. “It is not too late for you to come back to the faith.”
“Thank you, Your Eminence,” I said. “But there is nothing to come back to because I have never been a Catholic.”
The Cardinal looked at me curiously. “Are you of the Hebrew faith?”
“No, sir,” I answered.
“What faith do you profess to?” he asked.
I smiled. “I’m an atheist.”
He shook his head sadly. “I am sorry for you.” He paused a moment, then gestured to a young priest to join us. “This is Father Brannigan, who will accompany you to the cemetery.”
* * *
THERE WERE TWO
flower cars and five limousines following the hearse down Second Avenue, under the Midtown Tunnel to Long Island, through the gates of First Calvary. The family mausoleum shone brightly in the noonday sunlight, the white marble columns in front of the iron grillworks in the doors set with stained-glass windows. Over the door the family name was chiseled in white Italian marble.
DI STEFANO.
The doors were wide open as the cortege came to a stop in the narrow roadway.
We stepped out of the cars and waited for the men to roll the coffin onto a four-wheeled trolley and push it up the pathway toward the mausoleum. The flower cars were immediately unloaded and followed the coffin up the pathway. Aunt Rosa and her family, who had been in the first car of the procession, were led by Father Brannigan to the coffin. I had been in the second car with my uncle’s bodyguards, and we followed Aunt Rosa and her family. From the three cars behind emerged the Chairman, his bodyguards, then my uncle’s attorneys and accountants. Following them were six men, all older Italian men, probably friends of my uncle.
The flowers were piled high at the side of the open mausoleum doors as we entered the cool of the mausoleum. The coffin was still on the trolley in the middle of the room. In the far corner was a small altar over which the Christ looked sadly down at the coffin as it sat at the foot of the cross upon which He agonized.
Quickly the priest, his voice echoing hollowly in the room, gave the Blessed Sacrament and the last rites over the coffin, then made the gesture of the cross and stepped back. One of the undertakers handed each of us a rose, and after Aunt Rosa placed her rose on the coffin we followed with our own.
Quietly, four men raised the coffin and slid it into its place in the wall. A moment later, two men fastened the bronze plaque over the opening. In the light streaming in from the stained-glass windows, I could see the etched lettering.
ROCCO DI STEFANO.
Born 1908. Died ———. R.I.P.
Aunt Rosa began crying again and her sons-in-law escorted her out. I glanced around at the walls of the mausoleum. I saw names of other relatives I had never known. But my father and mother were not there. They were buried in an interdenominational cemetery north of New York City on the banks of the Hudson River.
I was the last man to leave the mausoleum. I watched for a moment while one of the cemetery workmen turned the big brass key to lock the door. He looked at me. I caught the message. I took out a hundred-dollar bill and pressed it into his hand. He touched his cap as acknowledgment. Then I followed down the path to the roadway.