25

“What the hell is this?” shouted Catania. “Will somebody please tell me?” He stood up so fast that his belt buckle hooked on the edge of the table and upset his glass of orange juice. The two men across the table from him watched the pulpy liquid soak the deck of cards, then moved their chairs back to watch it drip onto the floor near their feet. The floor of the Rivoli Social Club was very old wood, and over the years a lot of things had soaked into it, but neither of the men wanted orange juice stuck to the bottoms of their shoes.

Pescati glanced at the cards in his hand, then at the wet deck on the table, and tossed his cards beside it. “It could be just a story.”

“Yeah?” said Catania. “What’s the point of making up a story that proves you can’t find your own ass with both hands? Or that some little chick kicked the shit out of you and took your car?” Catania began to pace. “This is unbelievable,” he muttered. “It’s got to be a joke.” He stopped, grasped thin air with his hands, and shook it. “Has the whole universe suddenly gone crazy?”

“If it did happen, it’s just one of those things,” said Cotrano.

“One of what things?” The two men could see that Catania was working himself into a blind rage. Since his rage was not directed at them, they were not afraid. If they could be polite long enough to weather it, they would be all right. “What kind of things? Talking dogs? Pigs with wings? Lifetime guarantees?”

“He means it’s just a temporary setback,” said Mosso in a soothing voice from the other side of the room. “They said she surprised Langusto’s guy in the Seattle airport. I suppose it’s possible she did. What does it take to trip a guy in the middle of an airport, with a million people around? Even if he was in the mood, he couldn’t exactly gut her and skin her in the middle of a crowd, could he?”

Catania was calming down. “He could have stopped her, or stopped the plane. This is billions of dollars.”

The other men looked at Mosso expectantly. He took a deep breath and walked closer. “We’ve been thinking about this,” he began. “If I’m wrong, tell me to shut up. But it doesn’t seem to us that everything they told you on that bus is true.”

“They hardly told me anything on the bus,” snapped Catania. “You know what I learned? Tasso thinks it’s Bernie’s ghost, who is pissed off because I wanted him to empty his brain onto a computer disk. Molinari thinks it’s Delfina, who happens to be boss of a family about the size of a pro football team, which makes him a good one to blame it on. The Langusto brothers think we shouldn’t waste time making guesses. We’ve got to do the same things to stop them no matter who it is, and we’ll find out when we find out.”

“That’s the one that strikes me as odd,” said Mosso. He was four years older than Catania, and at sixty-three was beginning to look wise and distinguished, so he cultivated the impression. When Catania had been a small, skinny boy on the streets, Mosso had stepped into the role of protector and quiet adviser, and let Catania speak for him. He had always been uncomfortable when he was singled out for notice, but he had seen instantly that Catania craved attention as though it were sunlight. Whenever Mosso spoke, Catania’s head would turn toward him and he would fall into unaccustomed silence.

“What’s so odd?”

“The Langustos. They kind of took charge, didn’t they?”

“They wish,” said Catania contemptuously. “Joe has connections in brokerage houses and banks, so he was in a position to find things out. The Langustos were supposed to be responsible for Bernie all these years, so they should take on more of the headache. And Phil’s the head of their family, that’s all.”

Mosso nodded, and sat in silence. Catania looked away and walked back to the table, picked up his empty juice glass, then glanced at Mosso, still sitting in mute immobility. His silence was beginning to feel loud. Catania put down his glass. “What?”

“The Langustos call a meeting,” said Mosso. “They tell everybody what they ought to be looking for, but they also tell everybody what they shouldn’t be looking for. And it sounds like an odd choice: who’s doing it. Then this woman nobody knows supposedly shows up in Seattle and hammers a full-grown made guy. But who saw it besides him, and whose guy is this?”

“Langusto’s,” conceded Catania. “But that could just be odds. They’ve got more guys out looking than anybody else. They flew them all over the place. I figured it’s better Phil Langusto pays those travel bills than me.”

Mosso sat in silence. His silence was expanding again, and Catania began to feel it taking up space. Catania said, “Are you thinking that the Langusto family don’t want us to find the money?”

“I don’t want to say the Langustos are trying to get all that money for themselves. Maybe they wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course they would,” said Catania. “I would, you would, anybody would.”

Mosso shook his head and feigned bewilderment. “I’m not as smart as a lot of people: you, them.… But wouldn’t a good way be to send everybody else to look in all directions except the one that will pay off?”

Catania’s eyes began to burn. He nodded.

Mosso said, “This is like being in a card game where the dealer is a little too good. You don’t know he’s dealing from the bottom, because you didn’t see it, but you can tell he could if he wanted to. So if he’s not, why isn’t he?”

“It’s true. The Langustos might be trying to keep us all out of the way while they concentrate on finding the people who have the money and then shaking them down.”

Mosso shrugged. “I’m too slow to figure out what they’re doing. It could be that. It seems to me that if the Langustos have all these connections and they’re so good at figuring it all out, why call a meeting? Why cut everybody else in? Are they doing it because they want to be fair and make sure each family gets what it laid off with Bernie? Why? How?”

Catania stared down at the soaked cards on the table. He seemed to be unable to find an answer.

Mosso held up both hands. “I’m not saying it’s one thing or another. We came to you because you’re our capo, and you’re smarter than we are. We came to ask.” Cotrano and Pescati stared at Mosso in undisguised admiration.

Catania said, “You came to tell me I’ve been walking around with my eyes closed.”

Pescati was braver now. “No, Victor. It’s just that to us, the whole thing smells a little ripe, you know? We’re all supposed to spot any of this money moving, and report to Langusto’s guy, Pompi—who, incidentally, would steal the dirt from your fingernails. I’ve known him for years. We’re looking for a bodyguard and a maid. What happens if we find them? Do we bring them to the Langustos?”

Cotrano said quietly, “It’s a little bit like Phil Langusto was the boss, and we all worked for him.”

Catania’s head snapped to face Cotrano.

Pescati said, “He means—”

“I know what he means,” Catania interrupted. “He means what he says.” Catania walked faster, turning when he came to the wall, walking to the end of the room, and spinning again. “The truth is, I don’t know any more than you do about this. Maybe Bernie really did do what we all thought, and started writing down where he put the money. Maybe he even did it because I asked him to think about it. This could all be my fault. Maybe I got him to write it down, and now there really is somebody moving it around to wash it. But you’re right. Phil Langusto is trying to control this. It might just be that he wants to sucker us all into helping look for these people, then get to the money first and say he never found it—or pay everybody a tenth of what we put in, and hide the rest. But it could be a hell of a lot worse than that.”

“What are you thinking of?” asked Mosso.

Catania’s eyes began to glow again. “Think back a few months. Suppose that, while the rest of us were worrying about what would happen if Bernie died, the Langustos were thinking about it another way.”

“What way?”

“Everybody knew Bernie wouldn’t live forever. The Langustos added up what they would lose if Bernie kicked off right away. It came to—I don’t know—say, a billion dollars. It occurred to them that they might make bigger money if they killed him themselves.”

“I’m lost,” said Pescati.

Catania spoke quickly but patiently. “They kill Bernie. They get every family together who stood to lose money, and say, ‘We’ve all got to look for the money together, because none of us can find it alone. Just for efficiency, report what you find to us and we’ll tell everybody else.’ People get used to talking to the Langustos instead of each other. Pretty soon the Langustos are telling everybody’s people where to look for the money and who to call if they see anything. And they’re deciding who gets to be cut in and who’s cut out. I told you they didn’t invite Frank Delfina to that meeting, right?” His mind seemed to take another turn that surprised him. He asked, “Who have we got out on this right now?”

Mosso pursed his lips and looked at the ceiling. “I guess it’s about three hundred made guys out of town, and the ones who work on their crews. Figure a thousand, fifteen hundred.”

“Suppose something happened right now—today, right here in New York? Say I need guys to line up along Thirty-ninth Street and protect this building from the Langustos? How many will show up?”

Cotrano frowned. “Jesus, Victor … ”

“How many?”

“In twenty-four hours, everybody, with all their crews. In half an hour, I don’t know. Maybe fifty, probably less. We kept the good earners at home, not the guns. We’ve even got some of them out running down bank accounts and addresses and stuff.”

“Mixed right in with people from the other families, right? Molinari’s guys, Langusto’s guys … ”

Pescati and Cotrano began to look increasingly uneasy. Even Mosso seemed uncomfortable.

“See what I mean?” said Catania. “It’s like this was designed to sucker people like me. I figure, if I keep my guys at home and the rest of them find our money, are we going to get it? No. So I send my soldiers away, so I don’t lose out. But what if that was the whole point? The families that go along with the program like they already work for the Langustos … well, pretty soon, they’re going to find out that they do. But the ones the Langustos know will be trouble can be handled. Like me. Instead of having to face my four hundred guys with his four hundred and fifty, they just have to face the fifty guys we kept home because they were good at arithmetic, but not so good in an alley on a dark night.”

“You think Phil Langusto is making his move like Castiglione did?” asked Mosso.

Catania shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought from the beginning that if somebody killed Bernie the Elephant and got his hands on the money, the place we’d find it wasn’t going to be the March of Dimes. The only thing I’m sure of now is that this is a hell of an easy way to take over another family.” His eyes were sad and wistful as he stared down at the street outside the window of the Rivoli Social Club. “I wish I had thought of it myself.”