good looks empty, vain, a straw man for Mr. Prince, the real power behind his law firm. A soft man, not as sharp as they. A man who got along with everyone because he feared to offend anyone. A man who loved little children…
He was almost scrabbling for the phone, calling Charriti HHope, whose talent agency he had used for many years.
“Charriti? I need a blond female, about four foot six…”
Charriti HHope’s voice said, with a trace of asperity, “Short notice.” He almost heard a sigh over the phone. “How young does she have to be, sweetie?”
“About ten-if you have one who is… convincing.”
Charriti gave a throaty chuckle. “Pretty soon you’ll be telling me you want ’em for diaper commercials.”
St. John hung up, sat there unconsciously rubbing his hand forward and backward over the surface of his hand-rubbed antique desk. Contemplating the little girls wearing jumpers that rode up off their naked chubby thighs as they clung to his pommel playing Horsy. And how at the ultimate moment, just as he had planned to teach his beloved little five-year-old Molly to do on that magical afternoon bitch Gloria had ruined all those many years ago, they lowered their sweet little heads to…
What had become of them now?
He knew, only too well. When a bit shopworn, they were graduated to porn flicks, then were passed on for stable work in Miami or Vegas and, as their bloom faded, ended their useful days under fat, sluggishly thrusting government officials in one of the less appetizing hot countries to the south…
And Molly, Molly was dead. Oh God. Nothing in his life was going to work for him ever again. And if he wasn’t very, very careful, he might soon be dead himself.
Unless…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Martin Prince, like so many great football players in the NFL, had come out of one of the small, desperately poor steel-puddling towns of western Pennsylvania. He had been an Honorable Mention All-American in college, but had been too smart to go into the pros even if he had been heavy enough.
Now in his mid-fifties, Martin Prince was dynamic, corrupt, kept fit by massages, saunas, and heroic avoidance of the richly sauced pastas he loved. He had a wedge-shaped head, heavy jaws, and a chin that one could imagine jutting out over the thousands in Piazza Venezia. Prince’s rise had not been so meteoric as II Duce’s-but for the past five years, he had reigned supreme in Las Vegas.
It was to Martin Prince that the other capos came when they needed a neutral city in which to iron out their differences. They trusted him because he was quicker of mind, more decisive and more ruthless than they. Today he was cautious.
“Gideon, my good friend,” he said into the scrambler phone five minutes after he had hung up from Otto Kreiger, “how would you like a weekend in Vegas? We are opening our new golf course here at Xanadu and it would not be right if you didn’t hit the first ball down the fairway. Otto will also be here-I believe he wants to try to sell you one of those racehorses of his.”
“The man can always try,” Gideon chirped, then added before Prince could hang up, “You’ll like this one, Mr. Prince. This sexy young woman comes to a dinner party with this rich, ugly old man. She’s wearing this huge diamond, and the woman sitting next to her says it’s the most beautiful diamond she’s ever seen. So the sexy young woman says, ‘Yes, but this is the Plotnick diamond. It comes with a curse.’ The other woman says, ‘What’s the curse?’ and the sexy one looks over at her ugly companion and whispers, ‘Plotnick.’”
They shared a chuckle and hung up with mutual assurances of regard. Martin Prince was well pleased. He found Gideon, unlike the BB-eyed Nazi Kreiger, always Old Worldly and full of respect even if a bit boring.
As it should be. Respect. He beckoned, they came. Good men, strong men in their own right-but men who recognized him as the capo di tutti i capi — not that anyone believed in that Mustache Pete stuff anymore. Not in his organization. Though he had come up through the ranks in the traditional way, he had abandoned as many of the trappings of the Mafia as he could.
But he had never forgotten where he had come from and where his interests, talents, and allegiances lay. His old man had been a waiter in a wop restaurant, sweating and scrimping and saving for countless hours to send his kid first to parochial school and then to college; Prince had shown his appreciation for his education by murdering his first man for profit the night after he had thrown a winning touchdown pass against Penn State-who would suspect last night’s hero?
He had killed twice more, but only to show he had coglioni, quello! — big enough balls for the Pittsburgh underworld. After those three, he had never personally killed again, which meant his brains were as big as his balls. Martin Prince had never spent a night in jail, and had made a solemn vow to himself that he never would.
That was why he was phoning certain specific invitations for purposes having nothing to do with the mini crime summit he had decided St. John’s phone call demanded. Should the FBI be somehow listening this fine day, they would get nothing useful.
After speaking with Salvador Madrid, whom he had opposed for the council but had been overridden, his last call was to Enzo Garofano, one of the old-timers whose advice he valued and who still ran his own quadrant of the nation at the age of eighty-two. A little frail, perhaps, but only of body, not of mind or will.
Enzo’s passion was Italian opera, so Prince said, “Don Enzo, vi aspetta una cosa favolosa nel Showcase Lounge del casino, Abbiamo una nuova cantatrice.”
“Martin, io le cantatrici le sento ogni giorno.”
“Non come questa, vi assicuro. E meglio di Callas.”
“Meglio di Callas non c’e.”
But Martin Prince knew he had the old Mustache Pete in his pocket. Just in case the girl in the Showcase Lounge was as good a singer as Maria Callas the fiery Greek had been, Don Enzo would not be able to keep himself from coming to Vegas. Prince switched to English.
“That is why I implore you, Don Enzo, come and hear her for yourself. I insist on sending my jet to pick you up.”
Enzo agreed. Prince hung up and went to the window and looked out at his city. His city. Bugsy Siegel might have built it, but Martin Prince ran it-and would have called Bugsy “Bugsy” to his face if the stronzo had been around today.
Prince’s name had once carried extra syllables; after his father had somehow scraped up enough money to send little Marcantonio Princetti to St. Paddy’s across the river, rhymes with spaghetti had been the schoolyard taunt of the predominantly Irish lads at the school.
Sweeney.
Kiley.
O’Malley.
He’d never forgotten these ringleaders of the taunts during his formative years, so just about the time the extra syllables had been dropped to make Marcantonio Martin, faith an’ be jaysus, and those poor Irish boyos each had a wee drap o’ bad luck.
Martin Prince had never called to gloat. He’d never had to. They knew. At least Sweeney and Kiley did. O’Malley didn’t know much of anything anymore except how to piss down his pant leg. None of them could ever do anything about their misfortunes, but they would know.
Respect. Enzo Garofano still held his important meetings in the back room of an Italian restaurant, but he got respect. Martin Prince demanded it too. But on a much grander scale and with great personal pride in the safety measures that were his secret passion. He believed in careful evaluation and planning, and had a great deal invested in Atlas Entertainment; the company’s continued profitability depended on its connection with the Mafia remaining secret.
He met the four undercapos in the executive boardroom on the top floor of his Xanadu Enterprises hotel, casino, sports and entertainment complex. The three who were associated in greater or lesser degrees in the Atlas Entertainment affair, and the fourth, Spic Madrid, who was not involved but would serve as protective coloration
