should the feds belatedly realize these men were in Vegas for more than pleasure. Others might meet in a drafty warehouse or upstairs over a pizza joint; Martin Prince had flown in an interior decorator from Via del Babvino to furnish the suite with exquisite appurtenances from declining Roman estates and a lighting system developed in Cine Citta.
Prince had imported San Francisco’s most famous private detective to oversee the security arrangements. The place was swept twice daily for bugs, and waves of electronic vibrations washed inaudibly across the surfaces of the windows during meetings, so the latest laser mikes couldn’t pick up voice-shimmers off the glass and turn them back into human speech through a complicated electronic process.
“Enzo, mio caro amico. La cantatrice e brava, no?”
The old man nodded his seamed and shrunken head. Even in Las Vegas he wore a wool suit, vest, tie, polished shoes.
“Maria Callas- mai! But a good opera singer…” He shrugged and made a gesture of approval with the fingers of his hand pinched together at the tips. “You should encourage her.”
“Perhaps, Don Enzo, you would like to tell her personally how much you enjoyed her singing…”
By the look on Don Enzo’s face, he knew he had made the perfect suggestion. He would make a couple of suggestions to the cantatrice, too. What the hell, he owned her contract.
He turned to Salvador “Spic” Madrid, who controlled street drug sales in four upper Midwest states and had recently been elevated to the board after winning a rather messy internecine war on his own cold northern turf.
“Salvador-you find the floor shows pleasing?”
Spic couldn’t quite keep the gleam out of his eyes.
“Magnifico!” he exclaimed. “Last night… there was one blond showgirl… she looked seven feet tall…”
They all carefully laughed with him, not at him. Martin Prince nodded sagely. “I believe she might be waiting in your suite when this meeting is over.”
Spic tried to look man-of-the-world, but his eyes had gone round at the prospect of feasting on a woman two feet taller than he, one who outweighed him by fifty pounds and carried no extra flesh at all except where it counted.
To give Spic time to recover his poise without anyone seeming to be overtly aware he had lost it, Gid Abramson chirped up, bright as a bird.
“Martin, that golf course! It is a dream, a treasure! I almost had a hole in one on my first round!”
“And your stud farm is impeccable,” said Otto Kreiger. He sincerely meant it-and lusted after it. If Martin should ever stumble, Kreiger would pick up the pieces. If he stuck out a foot for Prince to trip over, Kreiger wondered, would he have any allies on the board to help him take over?
After the waiters had brought drinks and had departed, Martin Prince pushed a button to play back his phone conversation with Skeffington St. John.
“Mr…..Mr. Prince, this is Skeffington St. John-”
“Skeffington! Always a pleasure.”
“I thought I should notify you-that policeman from San Francisco was here yesterday. Dante Stagnaro. Trying perhaps to enlist me by suggesting that the Organization might be involved with Atlas Entertainment and also… also with… Molly’s, ah… my daughter’s, ah…”
“With the death of your daughter? My God, man, I felt about Molly just as I do about my own daughter!”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Prince, I understand that totally! But I felt you should know so appropriate actions could be taken.”
“Well, Skeffington, I want to thank you, and tell you again how keenly I feel for you in your loss. I hope to get you over here to Vegas soon, cheer you up a bit.”
“Then you don’t think-”
“That this Stagnaro is anything to worry about?” Martin Prince chuckled. “He knows Gounaris is connected to Atlas Entertainment, and he knows you are. But he doesn’t know any of you are connected to us. And he won’t know.”
“But the things he said about my daughter-”
“He’s just manipulating you, Skeffington. Shaking the box to see if anything rattles.” He added, with malice too delicate to be identified, “Unless you can think of something in your personal life that makes you vulnerable…”
“Oh, no, no, there’s nothing like that, Mr. Prince.”
“Then don’t give him another thought,” said Prince heartily. The tape clicked off. There was a long silence.
“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
