Operation Bamboozle (34 page)

In fact Luis was on the phone to Nicky Zangara. “My compliments to Mr. DiLazzari,” he said. “Please tell him I would be obliged if he would call an Extraordinary General Meeting of our little group.” Nicky wanted to know why. “If I tell you
now,
it won't be a surprise
then,
will it?”

Julie gave Othello a piece of chocolate. He held it in his mouth. Did they think they could bribe him with this piece of shit? He spat it out. A dog had standards, for Chrissake.

Jerome Fantoni knew that he had been too long away from his organization. Leave your throne empty and somebody grabs it. Lot of dead kings discovered that the hard way. But he hated to fly home to an empty house and live there, grinding his teeth in his sleep, waiting for Stephanie to arrive. So he stretched his return by calling on his peers. First he visited Jimmy Lanza in San Francisco, then made a swing down to New Orleans to call on Carlos Marcello, after a couple of days moved to John Scalisi's outfit in Cleveland. From there to Buffalo and conversations with Stefano Magadinno. Jerome admired the wonderful colors of upper New York state in the fall and Magadinno agreed, fuckin' wonderful. Everyone was courteous and hospitable, but even the Mob had its limits and in the end Fantoni had to return where he belonged. The manservant opened the door and welcomed him home and said Miss Stephanie was in the billiard room.

Fantoni ran. He had no plan, only an impulse, a need to seize the reward for crossing America twice in search of his daughter. He flung the door open. Stevie was standing, naked, talking to a tall redhead who held a sketchbook. Too much. Suddenly Fantoni's mind was scrambled. “Get out!” he shouted at the redhead. She laughed. Why not? It was B-movie stuff. He grabbed her by the throat. Before he could squeeze, she battered his stomach, six fast punches, left-right, left-right left-right. He couldn't breathe, his legs were out to lunch, he sat on the floor. “You should of said please,” Princess told him. “In Sheboygan we always say please.” Fantoni wheezed. “He can't help it,” Stevie said. “Dad's old-fashioned. You ask me, guys like him shouldn't have the vote. They should move to Brooklyn and bitch about the Dodgers. That's all they're good for.” Fantoni tried to speak, made a noise like torn cardboard, gave up. And he'd had such high hopes of this day.

“I got a bad feeling about Bamboozle,” Nicky Zangara said. “The Ten is gettin' jumpy. He's gone three weeks now, suddenly he wants an Extraordinary Meeting.”

“Three weeks is nothing,” Vito said. “Not when you're undermining the richest province in the Soviet Union. Rome wasn't burned in a day.”

They were flying over LA in a Beechcraft seaplane. A new freeway was under construction and he wanted to see its potential. Also it was fun to take off and land on the water.

“Four hundred percent of two hundred grand, knockin' on a million bucks,” Nicky said. “Some of the Ten think they're pushin' their luck.”

“Gimme their names, I'll bury their worries,” Vito said. Nicky was silent. “And get it right. Say ‘The Ten
are,'
not ‘The Ten
is.'
A thing I learned at UCLA was grammar. Difference between plural and singular. You guys are plural. Me, I'm singular. Totally singular.” The plane dipped a wing and circled. “Look at that. Freshly poured concrete. Better than sex.”

“I still think we should have a man in Ukraine.”

“See over there? That's the campus. When Operation Bamboozle goes through I'm gonna fund a new department building with DiLazzari in letters three feet high. Part of my legacy. A man should leave a legacy.” Vito stretched his arms
and legs as if he'd just finished a hard day's work. He held his arms wide apart and pointed up with his fingers. “DiLazzari. Yeah.”

At first Nicky thought it was a joke, but Vito's boyish smile was sincere. “Department,” Nicky said. “Department of what?”

“Humanities,” Vito said. “Obviously.”

“Breaking news, comrades,” Vito said. “This just in. Hold the front page.” He stepped aside. The Extraordinary General Meeting was open.

“Russians are a proud people,” Luis said. “They value courage, fortitude, loyalty. The general is a passionate man, and he feels passionately grateful for your confidence in him. He has sent this message which he wishes you to hear.” He turned a switch on the little recorder.

Vito and the Ten heard buzzing and what might have been a brief trumpet-call. Then a man began to speak. His voice was rich and deep and as busy as an acrobat and unintelligible. After about thirty seconds Luis stopped the machine. “Ukrainian is not an easy language,” he said. “My colleague will translate.”

Julie unfolded a paper. “Greetings from Kiev,” she said, “to our friends in America, recently allies in the Great Patriotic War against the cruel and inhuman Nazi invasion.”

Luis restarted the recorder and they listened to a few more yards of fluent mystery. He stopped it.

“This is a time for confidence,” Julie said. “Nothing is certain in this world except uncertainty, and nothing is more uncertain than the Ukrainian State Lottery.”

“I'm fairly sure that was a joke,” Luis said. He played some more. The room was beginning to show signs of restlessness. He stopped the machine.

“We have a saying in the KGB,” Julie said. “When the elephants fight, the jackal laughs.”

“How true,” Luis said.

“Not sure about that last verb,” she said. “Could mean ‘the jackal weeps.' Ukrainian words can be kind of ambiguous.”

“Laughs, weeps, who gives a shit?” Vito said.

“The general was trying to tell us something,” Luis said. He started the recorder. The voice made challenging sounds. Angry sounds. Then shots were fired—fierce explosions, close to the
microphone. Now nobody was bored. A pause. More shots. Silence. The general's voice returned, a little croaky. Luis switched it off. “Assassination attempt,” he said. “Rogue elements in the KGB. All dead now. Business as usual.”

One or two men laughed, and gradually everyone began to applaud; everyone except Nicky Zangara. The applause was like the reaction in a theater: crank up the tension, and the audience needs to respond. Luis smiled. He was smiling for the general far away who might have been dead but was very alive.

“There's more good news,” he said. “Harvests in the Ukraine have been surprisingly good. Bumper, in fact. The lottery—both lotteries—have performed equally well. So well, that Operation Bamboozle is pleased to announce a special one-off bonus dividend of five grand per investor. Congratulations.” He handed a fat bundle of envelopes to Vito. This time the applause was warm and immediate.

Vito passed the bundle to Nicky. “Okay, you bums can beat it now,” he said. He turned to Luis and Julie. “Not you.” He waited until the others had gone. “I got some ideas for how the White House can recognize the patriots behind Operation Bamboozle for helping defend America against the Soviet goddamn juggernaut etcetera.”

The ideas turned out to be a gold medal inscribed ‘For America's Freedom' with the recipient's name on the back, and a wall plaque with the gold medal and name etched on it. “At the bottom it says stuff like ‘Resolution, Courage, Sacrifice, Nobility,' all that crap,” Vito explained. “Plus there's a handwritten certificate spells out the achievement stuff, maybe signed and sealed by the President. Maybe has his picture. What you think?”

“It's stunning,” Luis said. “I'm stunned.”

“You got my vote,” Julie said.

“I was thinking rosewood for the plaque. Or cherrywood is nice. And a ribbon for a medal, so you can hang it round your neck. Lets everyone see.”

“The general would certainly agree,” Luis said. “The word he always uses when he speaks of you is ‘Maestro.' When we last met he said, ‘Give my regards to Maestro DiLazzari.' The general is a very good judge of men.”

“Yeah.” Vito strolled around the room. All Princess Chuckling Stream's nudes of Stevie were gone, replaced by color photographs of his mother. “This is not for me, I don't
need the kudos, but us Italian-Americans, we've had a raw deal. Time we got some recognition. The business of America is business, right? Well, we supply essential services that Government hasn't got the balls to touch. Not city, not state, not federal. Can you imagine anyone running for the Senate and saying he stands for sex, liquor and gambling? But that's what the people want. And that's what we give them. Why d'you think the FBI says we don't exist? Because they don't want to close us down! They know they'd have a riot on their hands. Worse yet—a civil war. Sex, liquor and gambling is the lifeblood of this great nation. We have a duty to keep that lifeblood pumping. Takes guts. Takes imagination. Takes
drive,
gotta keep movin', gotta take chances! Nicky Zangara can't understand that, the man is a disappointment to me.” Vito completed his tour of the room. “This special one-off bonus dividend of yours … Where's my share?”

“I re-invested it for you,” Luis said. “Knowing your taste for adventure, risk and patriotism, I knew that's what you'd want.”

“Reinvested. Where?”

“In Bulgaria. We're moving in on the Bulgarian National Lottery. It's absurdly rich. It will pay one thousand percent a year.”

Vito stared, and thought, and finally shrugged. “You should of asked me first. But … what the hell, it's another blow struck in the fight for freedom. Yeah. Do it. Listen: these dividends. Tax-free, right?”

Luis placed his hand on his heart. “On my honor.”

“A nation breathes through its loopholes,” Julie said, simply but seriously.

“Hey! That's good,” Vito said. “I like that. I gotta tell Nicky that. He's too stiff for his own good.”

Surely to heaven Father Reilly would be back at St. Nicholas of Tolentino by now. But no, he wasn't, he was still in Rome. “What in God's name is he doing there?” Jerome Fantoni asked.

“Investigating alleged miracles, in God's name. I am Father Martineau. Can I help you?”

He was tallish, youngish, face like a Roman emperor with red hair and a broken nose. One thing in his favor: he wasn't that sonofabitch Father Fletcher. “I'm not here for confession, Father,” Fantoni said. “Just looking for advice. It's my daughter. First she walks out on me, moves to California, gets engaged. I go to the wedding, which never happens because she broke it off, we don't even meet. I get back here, she's living in the house already with another woman. Stephanie's twenty-six, the other's older. Low thirties.”

“And the problem?” Martineau had a voice like rich gravy.

“Well … she treats home like a hotel. No respect for her father. And this other woman paints pictures of her. Naked.”

Martineau glanced at Fantoni's suit, shoes, necktie. Not schlock. “Are they a financial burden?”

“No. Hell, no. It's the nude painting I can't …” Fantoni shook his head. “I grind my teeth in my sleep, Father. Honest to God.”

“Yes. And perhaps honest to Freud.” Martineau stroked his chin. “The good doctor turned over a lot of rocks in our sleep. Have you read his
Die Traumdeutung?
The Interpretation of Dreams? I could lend you my copy.”

Fantoni waved the offer away. “Freud never had a daughter like mine. She
flaunts
her body. Hasn't the Church got an opinion about nudity?”

“You mean, should we put a figleaf over it?” Martineau chuckled. “The Middle Ages are a long time gone. You've seen Michelangelo's statue of David, in Florence? A masterpiece. The Pope is not about to declare it obscene. The glory of the naked human body is celebrated in half the paintings of the Renaissance. Do you consider your body obscene?”

“That's not the point.” Fantoni glared. “Would you want nudes of your daughter … all right, your
sister,
all over your house?”

“I'd have to see them first. Are they good paintings? Who is the artist?”

“Calls herself Princess Chuckling Stream. Claims to be Comanche.”

Martineau thought about that. “Some Native American art is excellent. Vigorous and uninhibited.”

“You know a lot about it, for a priest.”

“Oh, my first degree was in the history of art. That was at Yale.”

“I went to Princeton.”

“Ah. Princeton.” Martineau nodded sympathetically. “I'm told the plumbing is very good.”

Fantoni hunched his shoulders. “Lucky you're a priest,” he muttered.

“Or what? You would break my legs? Is that your normal solution to problems?” No answer. “The confessional is open to you at any time. Now, for instance.” Fantoni was heading for the door. Nobody understood him. He was alone. Very well: alone he would be.

“I'm not going to Istanbul,” Luis said. They were driving back to Konigsberg. “My guess is that's where Vito expects me to go. Operational headquarters. Close to Ukraine.”