Joe Gores - Menaced Assassin

“This is a badly frightened man,” chirped Gid finally.

“Too frightened,” said Kreiger.

“On the other hand,” said Prince, “he called me when Stagnaro came to see him. He told me that Stagnaro told him we had been instrumental in his daughter’s death. It takes a certain strength of character to make such a call.”

“Or cunning,” said Spic, who’d had a brandy and felt himself an expert on cunning. With a sudden dazzling certainty, he knew that someday he would own this whole thing that was Prince’s. “He knew we’d hear one way or another about Stagnaro asking him questions.”

“But perhaps too frightened to handle our affairs?” persisted Kreiger. His tone was deferential, but he wanted to establish his position as contrary to Prince’s, without doing so strongly enough to make it obvious that was what he was doing. Prince caught the subterfuge, but said nothing.

“This guy is too frightened to live, perhaps?” suggested Spic Madrid.

“First the daughter, then the father? Both associated with Atlas Entertainment?” Enzo Garofano shook his aged head.

Fortunately, thought Martin Prince, Enzo didn’t know about that troubling hit on their bought policeman, Lenington. Also, indirectly, associated with Atlas.

Garofano continued, “And with this organized crime cop, what’s his name, turncoat wop bastard, Stagnaro, with him snooping about…”

“Yeah, what about doing him?” asked Madrid. “He’s the guy who’s scaring this St. John and pressuring Gounaris.”

“Hit a policeman? Very chancy,” said Garofano.

“I think we are going astray here,” said Prince.

“How’d the woman find out about it in the first place?” asked Spic. “This Gounaris was fuckin’ her, was he stupid?”

“She was a computer whiz,” said Gid very quickly but with a relaxed chuckle. This was dangerous ground for Kosta, he wanted to deflect the attention. “As we have been able to piece it together, she was looking not so much for something in the computer as for the space where she thought something should be in the computer if there was anything illegal going on.” He looked around the room. “If that makes sense to any of you.

“It made sense to my computer man, that’s good enough for me,” said Martin Prince. He held up a hand to forestall further discussion. “Our immediate problem is the demoralization of Skeffington St. John, which I do not believe to be acute. He has been a very fine attorney for this organization. He set up the Atlas Entertainment deal in the first place. He got an injunction that stopped the pressure Stagnaro was putting on Gounaris.”

“He’s a sexual degenerate of the worst kind,” broke in Kreiger. Prince knew he didn’t really care if St. John was a deviate, he was cautiously stalking out a position counter to Prince’s. “That makes him susceptible to the pressures a man like Stagnaro can bring. Promises of immunity…”

Otto was getting hungry, looking for a way to move up. Probably seeing Prince’s stud farm for the first time had done it. So much better than Otto’s, his horses of such better bloodlines. Not that he cared much about horses himself. Martin Prince tapped on the side of his water glass with his pen. Everyone fell silent.

“Let’s put to a vote whether Skeffington St. John is still a reliable part of this organization. Any seconds?”

“Second the motion,” said Enzo Garofano.

“Thank you. I believe a show of hands will suffice.”

But then Otto Kreiger came out into the open. “I would also like a show of hands on the question of the policeman Dante Stagnaro.”

“Second,” said Spic Madrid quickly.

Bene. These two lusted after Martin Prince’s domain, and might align themselves together against him. Martin Prince was stimulated by the challenge. He smiled benignly.

“One motion at a time, gentlemen, please,” he said. After the vote, he signaled Enzo Garofano to stay on after the others had left. “You heard, Don Enzo?”

“The tinkle of a distant goat bell.”

“It will get louder.”

Garofano nodded judiciously. “Perhaps send a message… Si! We can trust Eddie Ucelli to take his time in finding the right moment. He will do it right. He and I go a long way back, I will call myself.”

Martin Prince bowed his respect and admiration.

“La cantatrice — she is waiting in your room to discuss her career, Don Enzo.”

Garofano nodded in turn, a sudden lustful gleam in his faded octogenarian eye.

That same evening, out in San Francisco, Dante Stagnaro was having a high old time of his own. He had taken Rosa out for pizza on Columbus Ave a few blocks from the small bungalow in the steeply slanted 500 block of Greenwich Street where he had been brought up. Theirs now, his parents had moved down to the Valley near Modesto to raise walnuts. Dante and Rosa always went out for pizza when they wanted to celebrate something. Often, like tonight, the celebration was just Dante being willing to take a night off, and them being alive, and together, and still in love.

When Dante had fallen in love with Rosa Benvenuto, he had been nineteen and in his first year at community college, she had been seventeen and a high school senior. A thin quick Italian girl with a round face and great dark flashing eyes and clouds of curly black hair down her back. Pert, proud breasts under soft sweaters, a tiny waist, sweet flanks under tight jeans. He had asked her to marry him after his return from Vietnam two years later, on the day he had entered the police academy.

Motherhood and the relentless tug of gravity had made the breasts heavier, the years had thickened that tiny waist, good Italian cooking had widened those sweet flanks. But to Dante, she was only more beautiful now than she had been on the day he had taken her down the aisle at Saints Peter and Paul two blocks from the house he took her home to-Joe DiMaggio’s church, some of the old-timers still called it.

The thickening and softening of the body, the laugh lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth were to be treasured, for they spoke of living, of two wonderful children borne and being raised, of hard work and the wisdom only women can attain.

Rosa was not feeling wise tonight. She was feeling, truth be told, giddy from the wine-it didn’t take very much. She hated to admit it, it was such a cliche-like an African-American who loved watermelon-but a sausage/pepperoni with extra cheese and a bottle of Chianti in a straw basket were Rosa’s idea of absolute gastronomic heaven. Dante knew it, and whenever he was feeling really good he took her out for such a feast. And afterward, when they got home…

Right now he was regaling her with memories of pizza joints once known-when he was a tiny kid, to be exact.

“There were these two brothers down the Peninsula, Monte and Renato. Monte’s place was on the old Bayshore before it was a freeway, just across from Moffett Field in Mountain View when the Navy still had it Just called Monte’s. Renato had his place in Redwood City on El Camino Real, called himself ‘Renato, King of the Pizza.’”

He started to laugh at the memories the very names evoked, and she loved him passionately at that moment, his fine Italian eyes squinched up with laughing. He took a big gulp of Chianti.

“Thing was, they wouldn’t speak to each other. Family picnics, holidays, like that-one in each end of the room. It was wonderful!”

“What’s so funny about a brother-brother feud?” asked Rosa, but also laughing just because he was.

“The feud was about pizza crusts! Monte was a thick crust man, Renato was thin crust. Each thought the other was a fool, a charlatan, an imposter!”

They laughed together over this, ate pizza, drank wine. Finally he got down to his interview with Skeffington St. John.