Inherit the Mob (32 page)

Pietro felt Jupiter’s thin, muscular thighs tighten around his ass. Soon she would begin to moan and cry, and call out filthy words. When she did that, it was a sign that she wanted to be taken faster. He stole a glance at the clock on the nightstand—six-nineteen. With a little luck she’d climax by six-thirty, which would give them time to shower and dress and drive into the city. Coming to his father’s farm had been a good idea, but he wanted to be back in town by ten, when Julie Morganfield got through rehearsing. He licked her neck the way she liked it, and felt her respond. “God, you’re a sexy woman,” he groaned. He wondered if there would be a parking spot near the theater, or if he’d have to leave the Jaguar in the lot.

At seven-fifteen, Pietro and Jupiter emerged from the farmhouse. The sun was setting and she could hear the mooing of cows in a distant field. Everything was so still, so beautiful, so perfect. Even this, she thought, Pietro had known, had sensed her need to make
love in a rustic place, a spot, she recalled suddenly, not too different from the lake where she had first been awakened to sex.

Jupiter felt the lust rising in her once again. She knew what she would do. When Pietro climbed into the car she would lean over, open his pants and take him in her mouth. She was thrilled at her own boldness—she had never before tasted a man.

Pietro helped her into the red Jaguar, walked around the car and slid into the driver’s seat. As he put the key in the ignition she leaned over and touched him between the legs. She felt his hips move, and his penis grow hard. Jupiter gently opened his fly, eased him out of his trousers and lowered her mouth onto the head of his cock. Pietro Spadafore sighed happily, turned the key in the ignition, and six pounds of TNT attached to the Jaguar’s starter blew them both into a million pieces.

It took the Massachusetts state police laboratory twenty-four hours to positively identify the bodies of Jupiter Evans and Pietro Spadafore, and the media twenty minutes to flash the news around the globe. “Movie Queen Killed in Mafia Love Nest,” read the
Tribune
’s headline. “Police Suspect Gangland Slaying.”

In gangland, war was declared. Within an hour of Pietro’s identification, the area around Luigi Spadafore’s mansion looked like Fort Dix. Dozens of heavyset men in overcoats patrolled the streets, or stood stonefaced at the intersections leading to the house. Half a dozen sharpshooters were deployed on the roof, with orders to fire at suspicious automobiles first and ask questions later. These orders came directly from Spadafore himself. The murder of his younger son reawakened in him a ferocious thirst for blood that he had long forgotten, and could now barely control.

“They must be killed,” he commanded Carlo Sesti. “Hunt them down like wild dogs and destroy them. Gordon, Flanagan, the father—I want them all dead.”

“Justice demands it,” agreed Sesti. “You have always been a man of peace, Don Spadafore, but there is no other way.”

The phrase “man of peace” grated on Spadafore’s ears. This was the thanks he got for the long and prosperous Pax Luigi that he had imposed on the East Coast underworld. Like his hero Augustus
Caesar, his sons had been murdered, not, in his case, by the devious Livia, but by the even more treacherous Grossman. He had been too trusting, too soft. But that was all over now. Luigi Spadafore, at the end of his illustrious reign, had no intention of going down in history as the don who allowed himself to be humiliated by an old Jew, a reporter and an Irish madman.

Spadafore shot Sesti a sharp look. “There is no need, consigliere, for you to tell me what kind of man I have been. I am perfectly capable of evaluating my own character,” he said. “I remind you that it was you who brought these people into our world. I hold you responsible.”

“Yes, Don Spadafore,” Sesti said quickly. “I have already called a council of war; this afternoon I will meet with the captains, and we will formulate a plan. There is only one small difficulty.…”

“Yes?”

“Flanagan and especially Gordon are eminent men. A highly public execution would focus unbearable attention on our affairs, particularly following the death of the movie star. How shall we handle that?”

Don Spadafore was impressed in spite of himself. Carlo had a cool head. Maybe too cool; he was, after all, the chief beneficiary of the death of his sons. The old man knew that his consigliere was perfectly capable of engineering the murders, but this knowledge did not in any way alter his resolve to take revenge on Gordon and the others.

Over the course of his long career, Spadafore had learned that honor was largely a matter of public perception. In his world, it would be assumed that the journalist and his friends were guilty, and thus his honor could be preserved only if they were executed. In the meantime, he would quietly look into Carlo’s connection with the affair. In the event that the consigliere was indeed a traitor, there would be time to deal with him later. But until Gordon and the others were dead, Sesti was as inviolate as a nun. The Don knew that should anything happen to his consigliere now, it would be interpreted as yet another defeat for the Spadafore Family.

“You are correct, Carlo,” he said. “I want these men killed discreetly. When you have the bodies, take them to the waste-treatment plant in New Jersey and have them ground into fine powder. Then
it will be my pleasure to personally flush them down the toilet. Does this answer your question?”

Sesti nodded, regarding Spadafore with real admiration. The Don had already been an old man when Sesti was appointed consigliere, and this was a side of him he had never seen. “I will meet with the captains,” he said, “and your enemies will be destroyed.”

At five o’clock the war council gathered in the massive brownstone: Bertoia, head of the Bronx regime, Fazzio from Queens, Rizzoli from Staten Island and Negrone from Long Island. Sesti was the youngest man in the room. During the long years of peace, Spadafore had promoted his captains according to seniority and executive ability rather than ferocity or military prowess. Now, seated around the table, Sesti saw four bland elderly men who could be counted on to carry out orders, nothing more.

Fortunately, thought Sesti, wartime preparedness was not necessary. He knew, as Don Spadafore did not, that Gordon and Flanagan were perfectly harmless. Still, the pretense that they were dangerous assassins was necessary; otherwise, suspicion could focus on him. Thus did Carlo Sesti deploy his troops as if they faced a major campaign.

Sesti spoke to the captains in Sicilian dialect, the language of war. “As I see it, we are up against a serious enemy,” he told them. “Not because they have many guns, but precisely because they are few, and unpredictable. They do not follow the established rules of war, and they have no scruples. Gordon murdered Mario, and then brazenly offered condolences to Don Spadafore. His father came to this house and swore a blood oath of innocence while, at that very moment, he was planning the assassination of Pietro. Only lunatics would strike out this way at a superior force, and lunatics can be dangerous foes.

“You have, among you, almost one thousand men,” he continued. “let each regime provide fifty soldiers to protect the house; Nestore Bertoia will command the guard.” Bertoia nodded, proud of the confidence that such an assignment reflected.

“Next, I want another fifty men from each regime to conduct a citywide search for the filth who killed Mario and Pietro. This force will be commanded by Bruno Rizzoli. Following this meeting I will provide you with pictures of Grossman, Gordon and Flanagan, as well as the information we have about them.”

“Where should we concentrate our efforts?” asked Rizzoli. “Two hundred men are not enough to cover the entire city.”

“Keep a watch on their houses and on the newspaper,” said Sesti. “Also, have some people at the airports and the railway stations. Within a few hours I hope to have more specific information.” Sesti had already spoken to a friend in the police department, who had promised to use his resources to find the fugitives. He also had Grady Rand on the streets. Unlike these jowly men, Rand was a true professional, and Sesti was counting on him to track down Gordon and the others. Dispatch was the key. Prompt action would make Spadafore eternally grateful to him; and, in the case of the seventy-seven-year-old Don, eternity would not last forever.

Gordon and his bodyguards heard about Jupiter’s death on the six o’clock news. “Film star … reputed Mafia figure … Spadafore Family … romantic connection … explosion”—the words rattled in Gordon’s uncomprehending brain like beans in a bag, refusing to stick together. Jupiter and Pietro Spadafore? She didn’t know Spadafore. What could they have been doing together, how could she have been caught up in a bombing …?

Then, in a flash of clarity, he saw the entire picture. Jupiter had gone to Pietro Spadafore to plead for his life. There could be no other explanation, no other reason. He could picture her piercing brown eyes fixed on Pietro, begging him in her husky, melodious voice to spare her man. Gordon didn’t know who or what had caused the explosion, but he was certain of one thing—because she had loved him and wanted to protect him, Jupiter Evans was now dead.

He was possessed with a furious urge to avenge her. He saw now how badly he had underestimated Luigi Spadafore. The old man was a demon, a nemesis who had killed Jupiter, attempted to murder Flanagan and forced Gordon himself to hide like a criminal.

Gordon had a sudden impulse to pick up the phone and call the head of the FBI or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hell, he could probably get through to the President. But, what would he say—that he was hiding from the Mafia, and could they possibly send a platoon of marines to Brooklyn? No, it was up to him; he would have to act alone.

“There’s gonna be blood on the streets now,” said Sleepout Louie. Gordon spun his head in Levine’s direction, shocked that the old man had read his thoughts.

“Relax, kid, we can handle the lokshen,” said Handsome Harry Millman grimly, but Gordon didn’t hear; his brain was already fogged with steamy thoughts of remorse and revenge. Thus it was that William Gordon, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, was the only man in the room who missed the lead of the story; it was not the death of Jupiter but the murder of Pietro Spadafore that mattered.

A
l Grossman sat in the wood-paneled saloon of the Grand Central Oyster Bar and methodically ate his way through a bucket of steamers. A few blocks away, Velvel and the boys were having dinner, but Grossman hated Pupik Feinsilver’s cooking, and he wanted to spend some time alone, savoring the events of the past twenty-four hours. He knew it was a cliché, but he felt like a new man.

The more he recalled his meeting with Luigi Spadafore, the prouder he was of himself. He had faced the Don as an equal, carried out his plan and saved his son. No one, he thought, not Jerry Shulman, not even Max himself, could have done better.

Grossman had celebrated his triumph the night before with Bev. In bed he had performed like a teenager—twice during the evening, once again this morning. “Florida agrees with you,” she said.

He stayed with her until about noon, just lazing around the house in his pajamas. Then he got dressed, came into the city and spent the
rest of the day pampering himself—a svitz and rubdown at the New York Athletic Club, followed by a long nap; haircut, shampoo and manicure at the Waldorf barbershop; and now ice-cold martinis and steamers. After dinner he planned to stop by the apartment to say hello, and then go on to the Lakers game. Not bad for a seventy-year-old, he thought; who says you can’t live forever?

Grossman was too absorbed in his own thoughts to pay attention to his fellow diners. He did not notice the man with the broken nose and dirty-blond hair who sat at a table near the entrance staring at him. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to him; Albert Grossman had never seen Grady Rand before.

Rand kept his eyes on Grossman out of curiosity, not necessity. He wasn’t afraid that the old guy would try to give him the slip. Obviously Grossman had no idea that he was being followed.