The Piranhas (18 page)

“Mexicana isn’t a U.S. line,” Rudy said. “Maybe they will be selling to them direct.”

Jed laughed. “The Mexicans have no money. I can guarantee Aerospatiale.”

“Okay, Boss,” Rudy said. “I’ll get on it. Just one question. What do you do if Boeing is pissed off because you short them on 727-200s?”

“It all comes down to money,” Jed said. “The A 300 has a better payload and uses thirty percent less fuel than the B 727. Maybe it’s time Boeing stopped believing they’re the only airplane in the world.”

He put down the phone and looked up at Kim.

Kim nodded. “Scanlon said he would get on it right away.”

“Good.” He smiled at her. “Come home, I’ll shower and dress up. Then I’ll take you out to dinner.”

“You have a deal,” she said. “With one exception.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I won’t ride in that pickup truck.”

“Okay. We’ll take the Corniche.”

“Lovely.” She picked up the telephone.

“Who are you calling?” he asked.

“Chasen’s,” she said. “Where else do you go in a Rolls?”

9

“WHY DON’T YOU
come to bed?” Kim asked. “It’s almost two in the morning and you better get some sleep.”

“Uncle Rocco said he would call, and he will,” Jed replied.

“It’s five in the morning in the East,” Kim said. “He’s not a young man, he’s probably gone to bed. He’ll call you in the morning.”

“You don’t know anything about my family,” Jed said. “Uncle Rocco will call. He’s not called the
Capo
for nothing.”

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe he got tied up with something.”

The telephone rang. Jed looked at it in surprise. It wasn’t his private phone—it was the hotel switchboard. Slowly he picked up the receiver. “Stevens.”

The desk clerk sounded apologetic. “Your uncle is here to see you, Mr. Stevens. He didn’t give me his name.”

“My uncle doesn’t need a name. He’s my uncle.” Jed laughed. “He’s alone?”

“No, Mr. Stevens. He has two gentlemen with him.”

“Have one of the bellmen lead them to my bungalow.” He put the phone down and looked at Kim. “Uncle Rocco is here.”

“I’d better put something on,” she said.

“Take your time,” Jed said. “I’ll meet them in the living room. My uncle isn’t alone,” he added. “He’s with his secretary and his bodyguards.”

“Uncle Rocco must be quite a man,” she said.

“He’s old-fashioned,” Jed said. “The Godfather never goes out without his staff.”

“If he’s old-fashioned, what will he think about me?” she said stepping into a pair of slacks.

“He called you, didn’t he?” Jed asked.

“Yes,” she answered, slipping on a blouse. “He wanted to talk to you.”

“He wouldn’t have called you if he didn’t believe you were okay.” Jed smiled. The door chime rang. “I’ll get it,” he said.

He crossed to the entrance hall and opened the door. He slipped the bellman a fiver and led his uncle into the bungalow. They looked at each other for a moment, then hugged and kissed each other on the cheek. His uncle was wearing a cashmere winter coat. “Welcome to California, Uncle Rocco,” he said. “Let me take your coat. It’s warm here.”

His uncle agreed. “I’m sweating,” he said as he slipped out of his coat. Then he gestured to the men with him. “You remember Danny and Samuel?”

Jed nodded and shook hands with the men. At that moment Kim came into the living room.

His uncle smiled at her. “You’re Kim, Jed’s girl. I’ve spoken to you on the phone several times.” He took her hand and kissed it as an old-fashioned courtier might.

He turned to Jed. “She’s very pretty,” he said, and then in Italian, “Siciliana?”

Kim laughed and answered him in Italian. “No, I’m sorry, my parents were Scotch and Irish.”

“That’s not too bad,” Uncle Rocco said.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “Can I get you some coffee and sandwiches?”

“Just coffee, black and strong,” Uncle Rocco said.

“Right away.” She turned and went to the kitchen.

“You’re looking good, Uncle Rocco,” Jed said.

“At my age you have to watch your diet. Less pasta, less meat, more fish and green vegetables.”

“Vino?”
Jed asked.

“Maybe later. You are surprised to see me?”

“Yes,” Jed answered.

“It’s family business,” Uncle Rocco said. “We couldn’t talk about this over the phone, so I chartered a plane.”

Jed looked at him silently.

“Do we have a place where we can talk alone?” his uncle asked.

“The den. No one can hear us in there,” Jed said.

Kim left two pots of coffee for them and closed the door behind her. Jed filled both cups and leaned back in the chair. “Okay?” he asked.

“She makes good coffee,” Uncle Rocco said.

Jed nodded. “You didn’t come here for coffee.”

“That’s right.” He took another sip. “The Canadian got whacked,” he said.

“I know,” Jed said. “I was there.”

“He was a bad man,” Uncle Rocco said.

“No worse than the others,” Jed said. “Everybody gets greedy when it comes to money.”

“It’s not only money,” Rocco said. “He turned on his friends. That’s against the rules.”

“I don’t understand,” Jed said.

“Rico,” he said. “He went to New York and told Giuliani where I get all the money I loaned him. Now Giuliani is getting the U.S. District Attorney in New Jersey to prepare another case against me. They tried to get me in Manhattan, then in Brooklyn, and lost. Now they’re trying again.”

“What is that law about double jeopardy?” Jed asked.

Rocco laughed. “Don’t be stupid. Each case is different. They’re digging up other charges. The latest I hear from the grapevine, they’re trying to tie me into the unions and the corruption in Atlantic City.”

“Can they make it stick?” Jed asked.

“I don’t think they can. When I was offered Atlantic City unions, I turned it all down and gave it to the Scarfo family from Philadelphia. They wanted it, so I told them they could have them all. I was not interested in the day-to-day bullshit. I wanted to be like Frank Costello. An elder statesman.”

“Then what do you have to worry about?”

“Nothing, I hope,” he said. “The only hard information they have was from Jarvis. But he can’t go in front of the grand jury now. Dead men can’t give testimony.”

Jed stared at his uncle in surprise. “Don’t tell me you had him whacked?”

Uncle Rocco was indignant. “Do you think I’m stupid? Then Giuliani would really crawl up my ass.”

“He’ll still try to nail you,” Jed said.

“Trying and getting are two different things,” Uncle Rocco retorted. “Not that I wouldn’t have liked to get the son of a bitch, but somebody beat me to it.”

“I need a drink,” Jed said, getting up. He looked down at his uncle. “Would you like something?”

The old man nodded. “Do you have any
vino rosso?
”

“Bolla Chianti,” he said.

“Vintage?” his uncle asked.

“Of course. I learned something from you.”

He walked into the living room. Uncle Rocco’s men were sitting on the couch, a pot of coffee on the small table before them. He went into his bedroom.

Kim was sitting on the bed, a newspaper spread out in front of her. She looked at him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. How about you?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “A little bit nervous but okay.”

“Relax,” he said. “Uncle Rocco wants
vino rosso
and I need a drink, too. I just came out to get it.”

“Want me to help?” she asked.

“No, I can handle it.” He went back through the living room to the kitchen. He opened a bottle of wine. Then he went to the bar in the corner of the living room and picked up a bottle of Glenlivet, glasses, and a bucket of ice, put them on a tray, and went back to the den.

His uncle picked up the wine and checked the label. “Eighty-two,” he said in a satisfied voice. “A very good year. You really learned something.”

Jed smiled and helped himself to scotch on the rocks while his uncle poured himself a glass of wine. He held up his glass.
“Salute.”

“Salute.”
Jed sipped at his drink. He waited until his uncle finished his wine and refilled the glass. He met his uncle’s eyes. “Do you have any idea who did it?”

“I have an idea,” Uncle Rocco answered. “The hit was ordered out of Canada. The hit man was a French Canadian who works both sides of the border.”

“It ought to be easy for the police to pick him up then,” Jed said.

Uncle Rocco smiled. “They’ll never come near him. He’s a real pro. By now he’s probably on his way to Europe or South America.”

“You seem sure of that,” Jed said.

“That’s where he’ll be paid. France or Peru.” His uncle drank more of his wine. “If he’s really smart he’ll go to France. If he winds up in Peru, he’ll be finished. He’ll get whacked.”

“You know something that I don’t?” Jed asked.

His uncle nodded. “Alma Vargas.”

“The Peruvian girl?” Jed said in surprise. “Where did she get into this?”

“She had married Jarvis in France three years ago. He was getting ready to divorce her. She didn’t like it. Jarvis was a very rich man. Now she’s a very rich
putana.
” Uncle Rocco chuckled. “You don’t know how difficult it was for me to get her out of the country when you came back with her. She wanted to marry you.”

“Jesus,” Jed said. He poured himself another scotch. “There goes your money.”

“Maybe not.” Uncle Rocco smiled. “She still likes you.”

“Wait a minute,” Jed said. “She’s not going to give you back the money.”

“I know that,” Uncle Rocco said. “All I want you to do is arrange for her to put Jarvis’s interest in support of Shepherd.”

“Does she know that you gave Jarvis the money?”

“She introduced me to Jarvis. I thought he had a great plan.” He stared into his wineglass. “Maybe I wasn’t so smart, but neither was Jarvis. That Peruvian
putana
was smarter than all of us.”

“Peruvian pussy.” Jed laughed.

“I don’t understand,” his uncle said.

Jed looked at him. “One day, many years ago, when I was young, she stood naked on the deck of the boat in the Amazon, and she told me about Peruvian pussy. It was the best in the world, she said. But she never told me as well that it was the smartest.”

“What do you think?” Uncle Rocco asked. “Will you talk to her?”

“Of course I will,” Jed replied. “But we don’t have to do anything. The money is already in the company and there’s no way she can get it out. Believe me, Uncle Rocco, this is something I really know about. By the time I’m finished, Shepherd and I will control it all, and she will have only a minority interest.”

The old man stared at him. “You mean that?”

“That’s my kind of business,” Jed answered.

Uncle Rocco sat there silently for a while, then he sighed. “I’m getting old,” he said. “Ten years ago I would never have gone for a scam like this. It was too legal for me.”

“Legal or illegal—it’s where they draw the lines. They’re the same thing.”

“No,” the old man said. “I’m too old. I’ve lost my smarts.”

“You’re the same as you always were, Uncle Rocco,” Jed said gently. “It’s just a different game.”

Uncle Rocco shook his head slowly. “I want you to come back to the family.”

“I’ve never left the family, Uncle Rocco,” Jed said. “What is it that you want me to do?”

“I am getting old,” Rocco said in a weary voice. “I want you to help me.”

Jed took the old man’s hand. He felt it trembling. “Tell me, Uncle Rocco.”

“Get me out of the battlefield,” Uncle Rocco said. “I want to die in bed.”

The Last Man of Honor

SALTWATER TAFFY. THE
Steel Pier. The auction houses that filled every other store on the boardwalk with phony antiques. The two-passenger rolling chairs pushed back and forth along the boardwalk by a smiling black man who also acted as a tour guide for seventy-five cents an hour. The white sand covered with picnicking families. The vendors, mostly teenage kids, selling candy apples, Eskimo pies, and popsicles. That was the Atlantic City I remembered when I was eight years old and spent two weeks at Aunt Rosa’s in the small house she had rented at the far end of the boardwalk.

It was not anything like the monster hotels and casinos I looked down on from Uncle Rocco’s penthouse that turned the million lights into Las Vegas-on-the-boardwalk. I moved away from the windows and went back to Uncle Rocco’s large mahogany desk. On the corner of the desk was a large candy dish of saltwater taffy. I gestured toward it. “I never knew that you liked that.”

“Why not? The President has a jar of jelly beans on his desk.”

I laughed. “Okay. But I remember when I stayed at Aunt Rosa’s she wouldn’t let me have any. She said it would make cavities in all my teeth.”

“All women had funny ideas in those times. Did it ever give you any cavities?”

“I had a few when I was a kid,” I said. “But I don’t know whether it was from saltwater taffy. I never got to eat that much.”

“I eat it all the time and I don’t have any cavities. All it does is stick to my choppers and I have to take them out and clean them.”

“I never knew you had false teeth.”

“I’ve had them a long time,” he answered. “When I was young some son of a bitch hit me in the face with a baseball bat.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied. “I was going to blow the bastard away but your grandfather stopped me. He was a Genovese, and it would have started a war. That would have been really crazy because they would have wiped us out. At that time the Genovese was the biggest family in New York. So my father sent me to the best orthodontist in Manhattan and I wound up with the greatest-looking choppers in the world.”

I laughed. “They’re still pretty good.”

He nodded. “This is about the fifth pair.”

I looked at him. “We have some things to talk about.”

“That’s right,” he said. The telephone rang and he picked it up. He listened for a moment, then answered, “Send him in.” He looked up at me. “I have to talk to this man. It won’t take too long.”

“I can wait,” I said. “Do you want me to leave the room?”