Mario Puzo - The Last Don

Pollard took three of his biggest and toughest men with him. With a guy like Skannet you never knew what might happen.

Skannet let them into his hotel suite. He was affable, greeted them with a smile, but did not offer any refreshment. Curiously enough, he was wearing a tie, shirt, and jacket, perhaps to show that after all he was still a banker. Pollard introduced himself and his three bodyguards, all three showing their Pacific Ocean Security IDs. Skannet grinned at them and said, «You guys are sure big. I'll bet a hundred bucks I can kick the shit out of any one of you in a fair fight.»

The three bodyguards, well-trained men, gave him small acknowledging smiles, but Pollard deliberately took offense. A calculated umbrage. «We're here to do business, Mr. Skannet,» he said. «Not to endure threats. LoddStone Studios is prepared to pay you fifty thousand down right now and twenty thousand a month for eight months. All you have to do is leave Los Angeles.» Pollard took the contracts and the big green-and-white check out of his briefcase.

Skannet studied them. «Very simple contract,» he said. «I don't even need a lawyer. But it's also very simple money. I was thinking a hundred grand in front and fifty thousand a month.»

«Too much,» Pollard said. «We have a judge's restraining order against you. You get within a block of Athena and you go to jail. We have security around Athena twenty-four hours a day. And I've set up surveillance teams to keep track of your movements. So for you this is found money.»

«I should have come to California sooner,» Skannet said. «The streets are paved with gold. Why pay me anything?»

«The studio wants to reassure Miss Aquitane,» Pollard said.

«She really is that big a star,» Skannet said musingly. «Well, she was always special. And to think I used to fuck her five times a day.» He grinned at the three men. «And brainy in the bargain.»

Pollard looked at the man with curiosity. The guy was handsome as the rugged Marlboro man in the cigarette ads, except that his skin was red with sun and booze and his body build was bulkier. He had that charming drawl of the South, which was both humorous and dangerous. A lot of women fell in love with such men. In New York there had been some cops with the same kind of looks, and they had scored like bandits. You sent them out on murder cases and in a week they were consoling the widows. Jim Losey was a cop like that, come to think of it. Pollard had never been so lucky.

«Let's just talk business,» Pollard said. He wanted Skannet to sign the contract and take the check in front of the witnesses, then maybe later if they had to, the Studio could make a case for extortion.

Skannet sat down at the table. «Have you got a pen?» he asked.

Pollard took his pen out of the briefcase and filled out the figures of twenty thousand a month. Skannet noted him doing so and said cheerfully, «So, I could have gotten more.» Then he signed the three copies. «When do I have to leave L.A.?»

«This very night,» Pollard said. «I'll take you to your plane.»

«No thanks,» Skannet said. «I think I'll drive to Las Vegas and gamble with this check.»

«I'll be watching,» Pollard said. Now was the time he felt he should show some muscle. «Let me warn you, if you show up in Los Angeles again, I'll have you arrested for extortion.»

Skannet's red face brimmed with glee. «I'd love that,» he said. «I'll be as famous as Athena.»

That night the surveillance team reported that Boz Skannet had left but only to move into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that he had deposited the fifty-thousand-dollar check in an account he had at the Bank of America. This indicated a number of things to Pollard. That Skannet had influence, because he had gotten into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that he didn't give a shit about the deal he had made. Pollard reported this to Bobby Bantz and asked for instructions. Bantz told him to keep his mouth shut. The contract had been shown to Athena to reassure her and persuade her to go back to work. He did not tell Pollard she had laughed in their faces.

«You can stop the check,» Pollard said.

«No,» Bantz said, «he cashes it and we got him in court on fraud, extortion, whatever. I just don't want Athena to know he's still in town.»

«I'll double the security on her,» Pollard said. «But if he's crazy, if he really wants to harm her, that won't help.»

«He's a bluffer,» Bantz said. «He didn't do it the first time, why would he do anything now?»

«I'll tell you why,» Pollard said. «We burglarized his room. Guess what we found? A container of real acid.»

«Oh shit,» Bantz said. «Can you tell the cops? Jim Losey maybe.»

Pollard said, «Having acid is not a crime. Burglary is. Skannet can put me in jail.»

«You never told me anything,» Bantz said. «We never had this conversation. And forget what you know.»

«Sure, Mr. Bantz,» Pollard said. «I won't even bill you for the information.»

«Thanks a lot,» Bantz said sarcastically. «Keep in touch.»

Claudia was briefed by Skippy Deere. And instructed as was proper to their roles as producer and writer on a picture.

«You have to absolutely kiss Athena's ass,» Deere said. «You have to grovel, you have to cry, you have to have a nervous breakdown. You have to remind her of everything you've ever done for her as an intimate and true friend and as a fellow professional. You must get Athena back on the picture.»

Claudia was used to Skippy. «Why me?» she said coolly. «You're the producer, Dita is the director, Bantz is president of LoddStone. You guys go kiss her ass. You've had more practice than me.»

«Because it was your project all the way,» Deere said. «You wrote the original screenplay on spec, you got me and you got Athena. If the project fails, your name will always be associated with that failure.»

When Deere left and she was alone in her office, Claudia knew Deere was right. In her desperation she thought of her brother, Cross. He was the only one who could help her, help make the problem of Boz disappear. She hated the thought of trading on her friendship with Athena, and knew Athena might refuse her but Cross never would. He never had.

She put in a call to the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas, but she was told that Cross would be in Quogue and would not be back until the next day. This brought back all the childhood memories she always tried to forget. She would never call her brother in Quogue. She never would voluntarily have anything to do with the Clericuzio again. She never wanted to remember her childhood again, never to think of her father or any of the Clericuzio.

THE CLERICUZIO FAMILY legend of ferocity had been established more than a hundred years ago in Sicily. There the Clericuzio had waged a twenty-year war with a rival family over the ownership of a piece of forest. The patriarch of the opposing clan, Don Pietro Forlenza, was on his deathbed, having survived eighty-five years of strife only to suffer a stroke, which his doctor predicted would end his life within a week. A member of the Clericuzio penetrated the sick man's bedchamber and stabbed him to death, shouting that the old man did not deserve a peaceful death.

Don Domenico Clericuzio often told this old story of murder to show how foolish were the old-fashioned ways, to point out that ferocity without selection was mere braggadocio. Ferocity was too precious a weapon to waste, it must always have an important purpose.

And indeed he had the proof, for it was ferocity that led the Clericuzio Family in Sicily to destruction. When Mussolini and his Fascists came to absolute power in Italy, they understood that the Mafia had to be destroyed. They did it by suspending due process of law and by using irresistible armed force. The Mafia was broken at the cost of thousands of innocent people going to jail or exile with them.