39
Phil Langusto stared at his brother, then at Tony Pompi. Their faces were expressionless. They didn’t want to come in and tell him anything that required them to draw a conclusion. They just wanted to pretend they were technicians, showing him facts and figures because facts and figures weren’t their fault. He waited impatiently while Pompi extracted the folded map from its envelope and laboriously unfolded it. His brother Joe took the other end of it, and they held it like a blanket and set it on the floor.
Phil walked to the edge of the map and looked down. It made him sick. The country looked like the body of a dead hippopotamus, lying there on its side with blood-red dots all over it. The spatters of red that had been concentrated on both coasts now overlapped into huge streams that ran down from Canada to Mexico in the west, and from New England to Florida in the east. But the part that had changed most was the midsection. There were dots on most of the major cities from Minneapolis to New York, and from the Great Lakes south to the Mason-Dixon line.
Phil said quietly, “This is what you wanted to show me?”
Joe nodded. “It was pretty much what we thought. They were on their way into the Midwest to mail the rest of the donations.”
Phil glared at Joe, then at Pompi. “What is it? Did you come in just to tell me that you were right and get a pat on the head? Do you have some new theory, some new plan?”
Joe stared down at the map regretfully. “Not exactly. We just thought it was time to show you what we were seeing.”
“I see a few thousand bright red dots. What do you see?”
Joe cleared his throat, nervously. “The map hasn’t changed in a few days.”
“What do you mean? It looks terrible.”
“Yeah,” said Joe. “It does. But what worries us is that it isn’t any more terrible than it was about a week ago.” He waited for Phil to catch on, but his brother’s eyes just burned into his. “We think they’re through mailing letters.”
Phil stared down at the map. “But there are still a few empty spots. Nothing down in here at all.” He pointed at the bottom of the map with the toe of his shoe, vaguely indicating Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana.
Tony Pompi said, “We noticed that too. But the letters have stopped. Either they weren’t going down there in the first place, or … ” He shrugged.
“Or somebody stopped them?”
Joe Langusto said, “Well, it’s a possibility.”
Phil walked to his desk and dialed the telephone. “Bobby?” he said. “Phil. Have you found him yet?” He listened for a few seconds. “What? Are you sure?” He stared at the floor for a moment and frowned. “Bobby, stay right where you are. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” He hung up.
“What’s that?” asked Joe.
“While you two have been playing with your map, a lot of stuff has been happening,” said Phil. “Things I don’t like.”
“To start with, guys are getting pulled out. One minute they’re in an airport watching the baggage claim, and then next minute they’re upstairs buying a ticket out. Our own guys have been calling in from everywhere. They want to know what’s up.”
“What is up?” asked Joe.
Phil stared at him with an expression that was almost hatred. After an effort, the look softened, as though he had momentarily forgotten Joe’s face, then recognized it. “First it’s Castananza. All of his guys went in the middle of the night. Then it’s Catania: a few here, a few there, sneaking off. Then Delfina. None of them said a word to anybody.”
“Why would they do that?”
Phil backed to the chair by the phone, let his knees buckle, and sat down hard. He scowled into space, and then his eyes cleared. “They must have found it.”
“Found what?”
“What the hell are we talking about? Bernie the Elephant’s money.”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t see how you can—”
Phil sighed, then spoke to his brother patiently. “Joey, listen carefully, and think. Every family has been out searching for Danny Spoleto, for Rita Shelford, and for this woman who was mailing letters. Why would anybody stop looking?”
Light seemed to enter Tony Pompi’s eyes. “If they caught one of them!”
Phil nodded. “Or all of them. Anyway, they found the one who could give back the money.” He began again. “Now, we have another strange happening. Frank Delfina has disappeared.”
“When was he anything but disappeared? He travels all the time, like a salesman.”
“Since the minute the first of his guys started to leave, I’ve been calling, trying to reach him. His guys in L.A. say he’s in Omaha. His guys in Niagara Falls say he’s in Albuquerque. The ones in Oakland say he’s in L.A. They’ll make sure he gets back to me. They’re all nervous, they don’t know when he left or when he’ll be back.”
“I don’t get it,” said Joe.
“Why would he drop out of sight right now? He’s the one who has the money,” said Phil. “You just said they’re not mailing money out anymore. Well, I know why. Because Delfina caught them. He’s got them, and he’s spent the last week getting the money collected. By now he’s got enough of it back to start buying himself the support of a few other families. Castananza, Catania. There will be others soon.”
“I can hardly believe it,” said Joe.
Phil stared at the carpet. His look of understanding deepened, then turned sour. “This is why the families have never been able to get anywhere. You make a deal that whoever finds the money will share it, and … here we are again. These people, their word is worth shit.”
Joe cocked his head. He and his brother had spent hours discussing ways to keep most of the money themselves, but there was no reason to distract him now with unwelcome reminders. “And you think they won’t share it?”
“If they were going to share, would they do it this way—call their guys home with no warning, no explanation?”
“I guess it makes sense that if they found it, they wouldn’t leave their guys standing around in airports forever.” He thought for a moment. “And if Delfina is the one behind all of it, I suppose he would want to be hard to find.”
Phil reached for the telephone and pushed a few numbers. “Bobby? Yeah. Here’s what I want you to do. Call in all our guys except the ones in Chicago, Cleveland, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia. In those places, leave a few guys. Have everybody else home tonight. The ones who are left, tell them to stay put, but make themselves invisible. I want them to slip out of sight, rent a room someplace, and sit tight by the phone.”
He listened for a few seconds. “Right. Get enough home to protect our territory, and leave a few out there that nobody knows about. If somebody decides to surprise us, they’ll find out my arm is longer than theirs. Somebody hits, I want soldiers right under his nose to hit back.”
His brother Joe watched him, and he could feel that something was on his mind. “What?” he snapped.
“It sounds like you’re getting ready to retaliate in all directions at once. Wouldn’t it be better to figure out who’s doing what, and then pick who you’re going to hit?”
Phil winced. The man knew absolutely nothing. He had grown up in this house watching their father run the family, then watched Phil do it, and he had learned no more than if he had been the family dog. “Don’t you think that if our guys noticed all these soldiers were being pulled back, somebody else noticed too? Do you think we’re the only ones in the country who know that Frank Delfina has dropped off the radar screen?”
Joe said, “I imagine other people wouldn’t have missed that.”
“Well, nobody called me. I’ve known about it for a week, and not one person bothered to pick up the phone and tell me.”