Pappas.
“Papa?” Stella said. “You came?”
The plump widow’s voice was tremulous, grieving, yet there was a flash in her eyes as she looked at her father, an anger a lot like Charley’s. Her delicate face was swollen with crying, the bereaved “Mama” of the dead Papa, but there was something of the self-possession of the independent American woman, too. In black she seemed somehow younger, at home in the simple black of an Italian matron, less awkward. As if she had adopted, even wanted, the old-world wife role. But she was an American girl, and less subdued in her own home.
A perpetual conflict inside her, the American woman versus the Mafia wife? Or an act? The old-world wife only a facade for the world, for Andy? Not really subdued at all? The way her eyes flashed at John Albano as Charley stepped aside and let Albano go to her. Charley saved, for now, because the widow was paramount at such a time. Funerals belonged to the women.
“You could have come to the Mass, Papa. A prayer for him.”
“Are you all right?” John Albano said.
“Not even to his grave? You hated him that much?”
“I came for you, Stella, nothing else.”
“But no tears even for me, Papa?”
“I told you how it would end twenty-five years ago,” John Albano said. “And I told you what you’d live with.”
“They were good years!” Stella Pappas cried.
A rumble of anger in the big room, a stirring. John Albano didn’t appear to notice. There wasn’t anyone in the room worth his notice. Except one person. Mia Morgan stepped closer to her mother, her dark eyes reflecting the black of her dress.
“Were they, Mother? With him? The things he did to people? Fear and extortion? A man who died in bed with-”
Stella Pappas jumped up, her hand raised to slap Mia the way she had earlier. Her arm never moved forward. A hand caught her wrist, slowly sat her down again. I hadn’t seen Levi Stern. Tall as he was, the gaunt-ugly face, he had a way of melting into the background.
“I have asked you not to slap Mia,” he said.
Stella Pappas shook off his hand, but didn’t try to get up again. “Her own father! She hated him. Hired men to spy. For me? Who knows for what? Who else did she hire?”
“Mama!” Mia said. “I never-”
Charley Albano took Mia’s arm. “Get out. Take your friend, and the old man, and-”
Levi Stern pushed Charley away. They stood facing each other. Stern, tall and whiplike, towering over the short, dapper Charley. Almost touching, like two elk with locked horns, Charley’s cat face tilted up in pinch-nosed fury. What happened next only I saw.
Levi Stern stood with his back to the rear wall, no one behind him. Charley had his back to the room. I stood alone to one side. The Mafia men waited for the fight.
It didn’t come.
Charley Albano stood with his hands at his sides. Levi Stern spoke in a quiet voice that carried through the room.
“I do not want Mia touched by anyone here, given orders, or accused. You won’t bother her, Mr. Albano.”
“No,” Charley said, his voice oddly thin.
“Mia does not belong here. We will go. Mia?”
A short old man in formal clothes came out of a side room. About the same age as John Albano, he looked older, and the Mafia people parted before him like water rolling back. He came to where Levi Stern and Charley Albano were still standing face to face. He glanced at John Albano.
“What goes on here?” the old man asked.
“Mia and I are leaving now,” Levi Stern said.
“Then leave,” the old man said.
He moved his hand, palm flat down. An order to everyone in the room to do nothing. Stern took Mia’s arm, and they walked through the crowd and out. The room began to buzz, half in anger and half in contempt for Charley Albano, who had been faced down.
Only I had seen the knife.
A thin knife that had appeared like magic in Levi Stern’s bony hand. From his sleeve. One moment they had been chest to chest, the next moment the knife had been under Charley’s chin, hidden from everyone but me. The knife against Charley’s jugular all the while Stern talked, then vanishing as it had appeared.
I watched Charley sit down. His hands shook. The old man in formal clothes watched Charley, too, turned to John Albano.
“Charley took it, the insult? Why?”
I told him. His thick gray eyebrows went up, and he looked toward the door where Stern and Mia had gone out.
“A dangerous man, the Jew,” he said. “I have thought about Andy, how the police say it happened. To come up the stairs, shoot the boy in the hall with an automatic rifle, break in the door, line up Andy and the woman, shoot many times very loud, and escape unseen? Max Bagnio must have been very slow.”
“Unless Bagnio did it himself,” I said.
“Yes, Max would be an answer. Charley says Max was angry. Still-?” He waved his hand. “But this is not talk for now. So, Giovanni, you come to visit? Good.”
“My family, Vicente,” John Albano said.
“Sure, sure. But old friends can talk, eh? Come.”
He took John Albano’s arm, guided him to the side room. I followed. The contrast between the old men was sharp. Only gray-haired, Vicente had a slow step, the sagging face of age.
“Sit, sit,” he said in the small side room.
John Albano sat. I stood. A guard closed the door, stood against it. Another guard stood silent in front of the windows.
CHAPTER 21
Vicente sat behind the desk in the small room. Not his desk, and not his house, and yet both his. Any house in the brotherhood was his. I hadn’t had to be introduced, I knew who he was-Don Vicente Campagna. Andy Pappas had been a boss, Don Vicente was higher. How much higher no one knew for sure, not even inside the brotherhood itself.
One of the Council, as Andy Pappas had been, but a senior member. At the Council level, as in any government, it was a matter of checks and balances, of sometimes hidden power, unofficial. The prime minister isn’t always the most powerful minister. A matter of arrangements and alliances, skills and reputation, influence and loyalties. Officially, Don Vicente was retired, but in the shadowy nation of the Mafia a prince remains a prince, and his rank is determined by how many will listen and act when he speaks.
Don Vicente spoke. “Fortune got to be with you, Giovanni? Old-time talk, it’ll bore him, eh?”
“Your guards have to be with you?” John Albano said.
Don Vicente spread his hands again. “What does an old man do, Giovanni? They say I must be protected. Who listens to me?”
“Still the smooth talk, the Italian-English, Vinnie?” John Albano said. “We were Mulberry Street, not Palermo.”
Don Vicente shrugged. “Okay, Johnny.. So, you look good. Seventy, like me. How the hell you do it?”
“I sleep nights.”
“So? Got what you want?” Almost a sneer.
“Not yet, still working. What I want is hard, Vinnie. It doesn’t come easy, keeps a man young trying.”
