“Want to see if we can make it across Manhattan before daylight?”
Jane said, “If we can.”
They crossed into Manhattan using the Holland Tunnel, and Bernie gave her directions. When they reached the intersection of Broome and Mott in Little Italy, Bernie said, “Stop here. Rita, give me the box. I want to do this one myself.”
Jane watched as Bernie walked to the mailbox and happily slid the letters into it, then deposited the cardboard carton in a public trash receptacle. He climbed back into the Explorer and smiled. “Take Delancey to the Williamsburg Bridge.”
She came off the bridge and onto the Queens Expressway, and Bernie said, “Now onto the Long Island Expressway.” Jane followed his instructions.
After a few minutes, Bernie said, “Stop in Manhasset.” When Jane had stopped the Explorer, Bernie got out and sat in the back seat. He handed Rita the last box. “Put this on your lap. The packets are in order. Just tell Jane what the next one is, and when she stops the car, get out and mail it. I’m going to get some rest.”
Within minutes, Jane could hear Bernie snoring again. Rita called out the stops: Great Neck, Port Washington, Glen Cove, Stony Brook, and Port Jefferson. Then Jane moved south across the island to Mastic, Center Moriches, Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southhampton, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor.
At each stop, Rita would jump out and mail the letters, then announce the next destination. It was late afternoon when she returned to the car with the last empty box. She found Bernie and Jane staring at each other over the seat.
“You don’t have to do it,” he said.
“It was part of our agreement,” Jane answered. “From the first day, this was the plan.”
“Things have changed since the first day. They found us in New Mexico, and they’ve got your picture now. They know what’s going on.”
“What?” asked Rita. “What are you talking about?”
Jane said, “Look around in the seats and things. Be sure every letter is gone.”
“I already did,” said Rita. “We did it. It’s over.”
“Not quite,” said Jane. “We’ll stop and get something to eat up here, and then see who’s up to driving the next leg of the trip while the others sleep.”
“Next leg of the trip?”
“We have just one more stop to make.”
“Where?”
“Marion, Illinois.”
32
Al Castananza sat in his booth at the Villa restaurant and waited for his dinner. He had learned as a child that letting people read on his face the contents of his mind was a bad idea. It had gotten him into so much trouble at school that education had been a brief experience and lingered as an incomprehensible memory after fifty years. After that, he had served the first of his prison terms, and he had learned quickly.
Tonight, he was feeling anxious and confused, but he knew that showing anything except his mask of imperturbability was about the same as putting a gun in his mouth. He sat staring at the poster of the Venice Biennale that hung on the wall across from him, and distracted himself by wondering what it was that happened in Venice every two years. It sounded like a car race, but he couldn’t imagine why anybody would have a car race in a city that was half flooded.
Saachi came in from the front dining room and sat beside him on his right, as he always did. Saachi wouldn’t end up eating anything until nearly midnight, after Castananza went home. He would sit there protecting Castananza’s weak side while Castananza ate. He would make payments from the roll of bills in his pocket and handle all the petty problems that people came in with so Castananza could swallow his food without getting agita.
Castananza always listened while he was eating, but if he didn’t have to gulp down a mouthful of unchewed food to say something, then he didn’t. If Saachi made a wrong decision, he never told him in front of anyone. He waited until they were alone, so Saachi could fix it himself.
Monday night’s special was veal scaloppine, and he felt happy. He could have gone into any restaurant anywhere and ordered the whole menu if he wanted, but he had lived a long life by never doing that. If he had asked Marone, the Villa’s owner, for a special meal made of rare and costly ingredients, Marone would have rushed around trying to make it, but the daily specials were what Castananza liked. If half the people in a restaurant were having the same meal, then it would be pretty damned hard to get a spoonful of rat poison on the right plate.
Saachi sat there for a second, then said, “Al, I’m glad I got here before the waiter.”
Castananza’s hopes fell. Saachi was telling him he wouldn’t want to hear this while he was eating. “Yeah?” he said. “What sort of problem have we got?”
“It’s this thing with Bernie.”
The owner of the restaurant himself walked toward the table, carrying a tray on which four plates of veal scaloppine were expertly wedged, so the edge of each plate sat on the edge of the next. Castananza gave his head a regretful little shake. Marone saw it and delivered the four plates to other, less distinguished diners without letting them suspect that Castananza had turned them down.
“So tell me.”
“I think maybe we should get out of here and talk in the car.”
Castananza looked at Saachi. His old friend’s face was concerned, the lines over his eyebrows all showing even in the soft light of the Villa, but the eyes weren’t scared. That would have required Castananza to behave differently. He had always been alert to signs that Saachi was scared, because that was the way he would look if he ever decided that being Castananza’s right hand was the same as being Castananza. He said, “Sure. Should we go out the back?”
“I got my car out there,” said Saachi.
The two men slid out of the booth and walked the few steps to the back of the restaurant, past the telephones Castananza’s people never used because they were tapped, and out to the little square of asphalt where the waiters parked their cars.
There were two men standing beside Saachi’s Continental, and Castananza acknowledged them. “Hi, Mike. Bobby, how are you?” He didn’t listen to their respectful mutterings as he got into the passenger seat. They were too much in awe of him to say anything he needed to hear.
Saachi started his car, and the two young men went around the building to another one, and drove up behind them. As Saachi crept down the alley to the street, he sighed to signify that he was ready.
“So?” asked Castananza.
“The two guys we sent to watch Albuquerque airport for Danny Spoleto and the girl—DiBiaggio and Lomarco. They called the other day and said they saw something strange.”
“What was it?”
“They saw some guys in the airport. I guess it was DiBiaggio who knew one of them, really. It was a made guy he remembered from the old Castiglione days. They got to talking, and when they got around to the subject of Spoleto, these two guys don’t have anything to say, just look at each other and kind of chuckle.”
“How?”
“Like they knew where he was. No, like they had him already. Like the game was over, and they already won. The two of them say, ‘Well, so long. Got to go.’ Lomarco keeps an eye on them, to see where they’re going. Maybe they’re changing flights to go someplace else, and he wonders where. But they just go to a restaurant in another part of the airport. Pretty soon a couple of other guys arrive on a different flight, and they all wait.”
“This doesn’t sound like a big deal,” said Castananza. “I would have been curious too, but what’s the big deal?”
“Over the next hour or so, they keep arriving. It goes on until there are like twelve of them. Then they leave.”
“Is that when Lomarco and DiBiaggio called you?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it didn’t seem like a big thing. I told them guys from a dozen
