The Piranhas (2 page)

The hearse and the flower cars were already gone. I went to Aunt Rosa and kissed her cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She nodded, her eyes still filled with tears. I shook hands with her sons-in-law, kissed the cheeks of my cousins, and waited until their limousine took off.

I turned to my car, where the two bodyguards were still waiting. One of them opened the car door for me deferentially. The Chairman’s quiet voice came from behind me. “I’ll take you into the city.”

I looked at him.

“We have many things to discuss,” he said.

I nodded and gestured to the bodyguards to go on. I followed the Chairman to his stretch limo. This was his own car, black all over and blackened windows in the passenger compartment. I followed him into the car. A dark-suited man closed the door behind me and got into the front seat next to the chauffeur. Slowly the automobile began to move.

The Chairman pressed a button and the blackened window between the passenger compartment and the front seat closed. “Now we can speak,” the Chairman said. “We are soundproofed. They cannot hear anything we say.”

I looked at him without speaking.

He smiled, his blue eyes crinkling. “If I may call you Jed, you may call me John.” He held out his hand.

I took his hand. It was firm and strong. “Fine, John. Now what do we have to talk about?”

“First, I want to tell you that I had much respect for your uncle. He was an honorable man and never went back on his word.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m also sorry about that stupid incident in the church. Salvatore Anselmo is an old man and hasn’t all his marbles. For thirty years he has been saying he would kill your uncle but never had the balls to try. Now it was too late. He couldn’t kill a dead man.”

“What was the vendetta about?” I asked.

“It happened so long ago I don’t think anyone remembers or knows.”

“What happens to him now?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said casually. “They’ll probably put him in the Bellevue psycho ward at first. Disturbing the peace or something. But no one will bother to press charges. They’ll send him home to his family.”

“Poor bastard,” I said.

John leaned forward and opened the bar behind the front seat. “I have a good scotch. Would you join me in a drink?”

I nodded. “With ice and water.”

Quickly he picked up a bottle of Glenlivet and poured it into two glasses. He added ice cubes and water from the small bottles of Evian lined up at the back of the small bar. We held up our glasses. “Cheers,” he said.

I nodded and sipped the drink. It was good. I hadn’t known how much I needed it. “Thank you,” I said.

He smiled. “Now down to business. Tomorrow the lawyers will inform you that you’re the executor of your uncle’s estate. That estate, except for several personal bequests to your aunt and her family, is placed into a foundation that will distribute to various charities. A grave responsibility. About two hundred million dollars.”

I was silent. I knew Uncle Rocco had a great deal of money but I didn’t realize it was that much.

“Your uncle didn’t think that he had to leave you any money because for one, you are rich in your own right, and two, as executor of the estate you will earn between five and ten percent of the distribution of the funds from the foundation as ordered by the probate court.”

“I don’t want any of the money,” I said.

“Your uncle said you would say that, but it is simply a matter of law,” John said.

I thought for a moment. “Okay,” I said. “Now how do you fit into this?”

“In his estate—nothing,” he said. “But there are other considerations. Fifteen years ago, when your uncle retired and moved to Atlantic City, he made an agreement with the De Longo family and the Anastasia family that they would give him Atlantic City as his territory. That was long before gambling had ever been thought of there. Since then, all the unions and various other businesses have been under your uncle’s control. Now they would like to take over that part of his business.”

I looked at him. “It’s a lot of money?”

He nodded.

“How much?” I asked.

“Fifteen, twenty million a year,” he said.

I sat silent.

John stared at me. “You’re not interested in taking it over?”

“No,” I said. “That’s not my game. But I feel they ought to contribute something to Uncle Rocco’s foundation—if for nothing other than respect for his memory. After all, as I understand it, Uncle Rocco took over those businesses when Atlantic City was nothing but a broken-down town, and helped it grow to its present importance.”

John smiled. “You’re not stupid. If you wanted to keep his organization you would be dead in a year.”

“Probably,” I answered. “But I have my own business to attend to and am not interested in Uncle Rocco’s affairs. But I do think that they should donate something to his foundation.”

“How much?” John asked.

“Twenty million dollars would be about fair,” I said.

“Ten million,” John bargained.

“Fifteen and you have an agreement,” I said.

“Done.” He held out his hand. I shook it.

“The money has to be placed in the foundation before we go into probate,” I said.

“I understand,” he said. “The money will be transferred tomorrow.”

He refilled our glasses. “You are very much like your uncle,” he said. “How come you never did go into the family business?”

“My father didn’t like it,” I said. “And I had a touch of it when I was young and I realized it was not my game as well.”

“You might have been in my place,” he said.

I shook my head. “In that case, one of us would be dead.” I was silent for a moment and then nodded my head. “I was very young then,” I said, remembering going up the Amazon with my cousin Angelo, many years ago.

Book One

ANGELO AND ME

1

I WAS SWEATING
from every pore, even though it was supposed to be cooler in the late afternoon. I wiped myself with the soaking towel dipped in warm Amazon river water. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. It wasn’t the heat, it was the humidity. But this wasn’t humidity, this was wet. And hot. I stretched out on the shelf of the stern.

I had fucked myself. I never should have listened to my cousin Angelo. It was two months ago, June to be exact. We sat in the Pool Room of The Four Seasons in New York, at a poolside table. Just Angelo and me. I had just graduated from the Wharton School. “You don’t have to go to work right now,” Angelo said. “What you need is a vacation, an adventure.”

“You’re full of shit,” I said. “I have offers from two of the best stockbrokers on Wall Street. They want me right away.”

“What are they offering you?” he asked, finishing his vodka rocks and ordering another.

“Forty grand a year for starters.”

“Chicken shit,” Angelo said. “You can get that anytime.” He looked at me. “You hurtin’ for money?”

“No,” I said. He knew as well as I that my father had left me more than a million dollars.

“Then what’s the rush?” Angelo looked across the pool at a girl on the other side. “That’s class,” he said appreciatively.

I looked at her. I didn’t know what he was talking about. She was ordinary Radcliffe. Long brown hair, large eyeglasses making her eyes seem enormous, no brassiere, soft titties. I didn’t say anything.

He turned back to me. “I’m going to South America next month,” he said. “I would like you to come with me.”

“What the hell for?” I asked.

“Emeralds,” he said. “Worth more than diamonds in today’s market. And I have a line on a suitcaseful of them for pennies.”

“Illegal?” I asked.

“Shit, of course,” he said. “But I have arranged everything. Transportation. Customs. We walk through.”

“That’s not my game,” I said.

“We could split two million,” he said. “No hassle. The family’s covering me. Blanket all the way.”

“My father walked away from that many years ago. I don’t think I should go into it.”

“You’re not going into anything,” he said. “You’re just being company for me. You’re family. Anybody else I might take along might get some big ideas.” He looked across at the girl again. “You think it’s okay if I send a bottle of Dom Perignon to her?”

“Forget it,” I said. “I know that type. Cold ass.”

“That’s what I like. Warm them up and turn them on.” He laughed. He turned back to me. Serious. “Coming with me?”

I hesitated. “Let me think about it.” But even while I said that, I knew I would go with him. Burying my nose in books for the last few years wasn’t my idea of great living. It was fucking dull. Wharton was not excitement, no action. Not like it was in Vietnam.

My father was pissed off when I enlisted. I was nineteen and had just finished two years in college. I told him that the draft would get me even if I didn’t beat them to it. At least this way I had the choice of services. That’s what I thought, but that was not the army’s idea. They didn’t need PR men. There were enough people shoving bullshit to the media. What they wanted was grunts, and that was I. Grunt number 1. Asshole.

I took all four months of basic training. I jumped out of planes and helicopters, dug foxholes until I was sure that South Carolina was slipping into the ocean. Then to Saigon. Three whores and five million units of penicillin. Seventy pounds of armament: an automatic rifle, a Colt automatic .45-caliber pistol, a disassembled bazooka and six hand grenades.

I jumped into the middle of the night, four hours away from Saigon. The night was quiet. Silent. Not a sound except for us assholes groaning as we hit the ground. I got up and looked for the lieutenant. He was nowhere to be found. The grunt in front of me turned around. “This is a cinch,” he said. “Ain’t nobody here.” Then he stepped into a field mine and pieces of him and shrapnel blew back in my face.

That was the end of my career in the army. Four months later, after I got out of the hospital where they fixed up my face, leaving only two small scars on either side of my chin, I walked into my father’s office.

He sat behind his big desk. He was a small man and he loved his big desk. He looked up at me. “You’re a hero,” he said without expression.

“I wasn’t a hero,” I said. “I was an asshole.”

“At least you’re admitting it. That’s a step in the right direction.” He rose from his desk. “Now what are you going to do?”

“I haven’t thought about it,’ I said.

“You had your turn, you went into the army.” He looked up at me. “Now it’s my turn.”

I didn’t answer.

“When I go, you’ll be rich,” he said. “Maybe a million or more. I want you to go to the Wharton School.”

“I haven’t the credits to get into it,” I said.

“I’ve already got you in,” he said. “You start in September. I figure that’s the place to learn how to handle your money.”

“There’s no rush, Dad,” I said. “You’re going to live a long time.”

“Nobody knows,” he said. “I thought your mother would live forever.”

It was six years since my mother had gone, but my father still hurt for her. “Mother’s cancer is not your fault,” I said. “Don’t be so Italian.”

“I’m not Italian, I’m Sicilian,” he said.

“They’re the same thing to me.”

“Don’t tell that to my brother,” he said.

I looked at him. “What’s happening to the Godfather?”

“He’s okay,” my father answered. “The Feds couldn’t lay a hand on him.”

“He’s something else,” I said.

“Yes,” my father said disapprovingly. When my father was young he split with the family. It was not his way of life. He went into the car-rental business and in a short while had thirty locations in airports around the country. It wasn’t Hertz or Avis, but it wasn’t bad. Twenty million gross a year. He hadn’t heard from his brother for years, and didn’t hear from him until my mother died. Then my uncle sent a roomful of flowers. My father threw them all out. My mother was Jewish and the Jews don’t have flowers at their funerals.

“Do you know what Angelo is doing?” I asked. Angelo was my first cousin, just a few years older than I.

“I hear he’s working for his father.”

“That figures,” I said. “Good Italian boys go into their father’s business.” I looked at him. “Do you expect me to go into your business?”

My father shook his head. “No, I’m selling out.”

“Why?” I was surprised.

“Too many years,” he said. “I thought I would travel around a little bit. I never saw anything of the world and I plan to start from where I was born. Sicily.”

“You got a girl to go with you?” I asked.

My father flushed. “I don’t need anyone to travel with me.”

“It would be good company,” I said.

“I’m too old,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl.”

“Find the right one and she will show you,” I said.

“Is that any way to talk to your father?” he asked indignantly.

*   *   *

IT HAPPENED. I
went off to Wharton and my father sold his business and went off to Sicily. But something went wrong. His car went off the curving, winding road coming down from Mount Trapani to Marsala.

My uncle called me before I left for Sicily to bring my father’s body home. “I’m going to send two bodyguards with you.”

“What for?” I asked. “Nobody’s going to bother me.”

“You don’t know,” he said heavily. “I loved your father. Maybe we didn’t agree but that doesn’t matter. Blood is blood. Besides, I heard that somebody has tampered with the brakes on your father’s car.”

I was silent for a moment. “Why? Everyone knows that he was straight.”

“That doesn’t mean anything in Sicily. They don’t know about those things, all they know is that he was family: my family. I don’t want them to get to you. You’re goin’ to have two bodyguards.”

“No way,” I said. “I can take care of myself. At least I learned that in the army.”

“You learned how to get your ass blown off,” he said.

“That was something else,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Then would you let Angelo go with you?”

“If I’m hot,” I said, “then he’ll be hotter. He’s your son.”

“But he knows the game, and besides that he speaks Sicilian. Anyway he wants to go with you. He loved your father too.”