Last Don Read online

  Don Clericuzio dismissed Ballazzo, but when the Don escorted Pippi to the door, he paused for a moment, thenpulled Pippi close to him and whispered in his ear, “Remem-ber, you and I have a secret. You must keep it a secret forever. I never gave you the order.”

  On the lawn outside the mansion, Rose Marie Clericuzio waited to speak to Pippi De Lena. She was a very young and very pretty widow, but black did not suit her. Mourning for her husband and brother suppressed the natural vivacity so necessary to her particular kind of looks. Her large brown eyes were too dark, her olive skin too sallow. Only her newly baptized blue-ribboned son, Dante, resting in her arms, gave her a splash of color. All through this day she had maintained a curious distance from her father, Don Clericuzio, and her three brothers, Giorgio, Vincent, and Petie. But now she was waiting to confront Pippi De Lena.

  They were cousins, Pippi ten years older, and when she was a teenager, she had been madly in love with him. But Pippi was always paternal, always off-putting. Though a man famous for his weakness of the flesh, he had been too prudent to indulge that weakness with the daughter of his Don.

  “Hello Pippi,” she said. “Congratulations.”

  Pippi smiled with a charm that made his brutal looks attractive. He bent down to kiss the infant’s forehead, noticing with surprise that the hair, which still held the faint smell of incense from the church, was thick for a child so young.

  “Dante Clericuzio, a beautiful name,” he said.

  It was not so innocent a compliment. Rose Marie had taken back her maiden name for herself and her fatherless child. The Don had convinced her to do this with an impeccable logic, but still she felt a certain guilt.

  Out of this guilt, Rose Marie said, “How did you convince your Protestant wife to have a Catholic ceremony and such a religious name?”

  Pippi smiled at her. “My wife loves me and wants to please me.”

  And it was true, Rose Marie thought. Pippi’s wife loved him because she did not know him. Not as she herself had known him and once loved him. “You named your son Croccifixio,” Rose Marie said. “You could have pleased her at least with an American name.”

  “I named him after your grandfather, to please your father,” Pippi said.

  “As we all must,” Rose Marie said. But her bitterness was masked by her smile, her bones structured in such a way that a smile appeared naturally on her face and gave her an air of sweetness that took the sting out of anything she said. She paused now, faltering. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  Pippi stared at her blankly for a moment, surprised, slightly apprehensive. Then he said softly, “You were never in any danger,” and he put his arm around her shoulder. “Believe me,” he said. “Don’t think about these things. Forget everything. We have happy lives ahead of us. Just forget the past.”

  Rose Marie dipped her head to kiss her infant but really to hide her face from Pippi. “I understand everything,” she said, knowing that he would repeat the conversation to her father and her brothers. “I have made peace with it.” She wanted her family to know that she loved them still and that she was content her infant had been received into the Family, sanctified now by Holy Water, and saved from everlasting Hell.

  At that moment Virginio Ballazzo gathered Rose Marie and Pippi up and swept them to the center of the lawn. Don Domenico Clericuzio emerged from the mansion, followed by his three sons.

  Men in formal dress, women in gowns, infants in satin, the Clericuzio Family formed a half circle for the photographer. The crowd of guests clapped and shouted congratulations, and the moment was frozen: the moment of peace, of victory, and of love.

  Later the picture was enlarged and framed and hung in the Don’s study room, next to the last portrait of his son Silvio, killed in the war against the Santadio.

  The Don watched the rest of the party festivities from the balcony of his bedroom.

  Rose Marie wheeled her baby carriage past the bowlers, and Pippi’s wife, Nalene, slim, tall, and elegant, came along the lawn carrying her infant, Croccifixio, in her arms. She put the child in the same carriage with Dante, and the two women gazed down lovingly.

  The Don felt a surge of joy that these two infants would grow up sheltered and safe and would never know the price that had been paid for their happy destiny.

  Then the Don saw Petie slip a baby bottle of milk into the carriage and everyone laughed as the two babies fought for it. Rose Marie raised her son Dante from the carriage, and the Don remembered her as she was just a few short years before. The Don sighed. There is nothing so beautiful as a woman in love, nor so heartbreaking as when she is made a widow, he thought with regret.

  Rose Marie was the child he had most loved, she had been so radiant, so full of cheer. But Rose Marie had changed. The loss of her brother and her husband was too great. Yet, in the Don’s experience, true lovers would always love again and widows grew tired of black weeds. And now she had an infant to cherish.

  The Don looked back on his life and marveled it had come to such glorious fruition. Certainly he had made monstrous decisions to achieve power and wealth, but he felt little regret. And it all had been necessary and proved correct. Let other men groan over their sins, Don Clericuzio accepted them and placed his faith in the God he knew would forgive him.

  Now Pippi was playing boccie with three soldiers from the Bronx Enclave, men older than him, who had solid business shops in the Enclave, but who were in awe of Pippi. Pippi with his usual high spirits and skill was still the center of attention. He was a legend, he had played boccie against the Santadio.

  Pippi was exuberant, shouting with joy when his ball jostled the opposing ball away from the target bowl. What a man Pippi was, the Don thought. A faithful soldier, a warm companion. Strong and quick, cunning and withholding.

  His dear friend Virginio Ballazzo had appeared on the boccie court, the only man who could rival Pippi’s skill. Ballazzo gave a great flourish as he let his ball go, and there was a loud cheer as he made the successful hit. He raised his hand to the balcony in triumph, and the Don clapped. He felt a sense of pride that such men flowered and prospered under his rule, as had all the people who had gathered together on this Palm Sunday in Quogue. And that his foresight would protect them in the difficult years to come.

  What the Don could not foresee were the seeds of evil in as yet unformed human minds.

  BOOK I

  Hollywood

  Las Vegas 1990

  CHAPTER 1

  BOZ SKANNET’S RED cap of hair was sprayed by the lemon-colored sunlight of California spring. His taut, muscular body throbbed to enter a great battle. His whole being was elated that his deed would be seen by more than a billion people all over the world.

  In the elastic waistband of Skannet’s tennis slacks was a small pistol, concealed by the zippered jacket pulled down to his crotch. That white jacket blazed with vertical red lightning bolts. A blue-dotted scarlet bandana bound his hair.

  In his right hand he held a huge, silvery Evian bottle. Boz Skannet presented himself perfectly to the showbiz world he was about to enter.

  That world was a huge crowd in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, a crowd awaiting the arrival of movie stars to the Academy Awards ceremony. Specially erected grandstands held the spectators, the street itself was filled with TV cameras and reporters who would send iconic images all over the world. Tonight people would see their great movie stars in the flesh, shed of their manufactured mythic skins, subject to real-life losing and winning.

  Uniformed security guards with shiny brown batons tucked neatly in holsters formed a perimeter to keep the spectators in check.

  Boz Skannet didn’t worry about them. He was bigger, faster, and tougher than those men, and he had the element of surprise. He was wary of the TV reporters and cameramen who fearlessly staked out territory to intercept the celebrities. But they would be more eager to record than prevent.

  A white limousine pulled up to the entrance of the Pavilion, and
Skannet saw Athena Aquitane, “the most beautiful woman in the world,” according to various magazines. As she emerged, the crowd pressed against the barriers, shouting her name. Cameras surrounded her and charged her beauty to the far corners of the earth. She waved.

  Skannet vaulted over the grandstand fence. He zigzagged through the traffic barriers, saw the brown shirts of the security guards start to converge, the pattern familiar. They didn’t have the right angle. He slipped past them as easily as he had the tacklers on the football field years before. And he arrived at exactly the right second. There was Athena talking into the microphone, head tilted to show her best side to the cameras. Three men were standing beside her. Skannet made sure that the camera had him, and then he threw the liquid from the bottle into Athena Aquitane’s face.

  He shouted, “Here’s some acid, you bitch.” Then he looked directly into the camera, his face composed, serious, and dignified. “She deserved it,” he said. He was covered by a wave of brown-shirted men with their batons at the ready. He knelt on the ground.

  At the last moment Athena Aquitane had seen his face. She heard his shout and turned her head so that the liquid struck her cheek and ear.

  A billion TV people saw it all. The lovely face of Athena, the silvery liquid on her cheek, the shock and the horror, the recognition when she saw her attacker; a look of true fear that for a second destroyed all her imperious beauty.

  The one billion people around the world watched as the police dragged Skannet off. He looked like a movie star himself as he raised his shackled hands in a victory salute, only to collapse as an enraged police officer, finding the gun in his waistband, gave him a short, terrible blow to the kidney.

  Athena Aquitane, still reeling from shock, automatically brushed the liquid from her cheek. She felt no burning. The liquid drops on her hand began to dissolve. People were crashing all around her, to protect her, to carry her away.

  She pulled loose and said to them calmly, “It’s only water.” She licked the drops off her hand to be sure. Then she tried to smile. “Typical of my husband,” she said.

  Athena, showing the great courage that helped make her a legend, walked quickly into the Pavilion of the Academy Awards. When she won the Oscar for best actress, the audience rose and clapped for what seemed like forever.

  In the chilled penthouse suite of the Xanadu Casino Hotel of Las Vegas, the eighty-five-year-old owner lay dying. But on this spring day, he thought he could hear, from sixteen floors below, an ivory ball clacking through red and black slots of roulette wheels, the distant surf of crapshooters hoarsely imploring tumbling dice, the whirring of thousands of slot machines devouring silver coins.

  Alfred Gronevelt was as happy as any man could be while dying. He had spent nearly ninety years as a hustler, dilettante pimp, gambler, accessory to murder, political fixer, and finally as the strict but kindly lord of the Xanadu Casino Hotel. For fear of betrayal, he had never fully loved any human being, but he had been kind to many. He felt no regrets. Now, he looked forward to the tiny little treats left in his life. Like his afternoon journey through the Casino.

  Croccifixio “Cross” De Lena, his right-hand man for the last five years, came into the bedroom and said, “Ready Alfred?” And Gronevelt smiled at him and nodded.

  Cross picked him up and put him in the wheelchair, the nurse tucked the old man in blankets, the male attendant took his post to wheel. The nurse handed Cross a pillbox and opened the door of the penthouse. She would remain behind. Gronevelt could not abide her on these afternoon jaunts.

  The wheelchair rolled easily over the false green turf of the penthouse garden and entered the special express elevator that descended the sixteen floors to the Casino.

  Gronevelt sat straight in his chair, looking right and left. This was his pleasure, to see men and women who battled against him with the odds forever on his side. The wheelchair made a leisurely tour through the blackjack and roulette area, the baccarat pit, the jungle of crap tables. The gamblers barely noticed the old man in the wheelchair, his alert eyes, the bemused smile on his skeletal face. Wheelchair gamblers were common in Vegas. They thought fate owed them some debt of luck for their misfortune.

  Finally the chair rolled into the coffee shop/dining room. The attendant deposited him at their reserved booth and then retired to another table to await their signal to leave.

  Gronevelt could see through the glass wall to the huge swimming pool, the water burning a hot blue in the Nevada sun, young women with small children studding its surface like colored toys. He felt a tiny rush of pleasure that all this was his creation.

  “Alfred, eat a little something,” Cross De Lena said.

  Gronevelt smiled at him. He loved the way Cross looked, the man was so handsome in a way that appealed to both men and women, and he was one of the few people that Gronevelt had almost trusted during his lifetime.

  “I love this business,” Gronevelt said. “Cross, you’ll inherit my points in the Hotel and I know you’ll have to deal with our partners in New York. But never leave Xanadu.”

  Cross patted the old man’s hand, all gristle beneath the skin. “I won’t,” he said.

  Gronevelt felt the glass wall baking the sunlight into his blood. “Cross,” he said, “I’ve taught you everything. We’ve done some hard things, really hard to do. Never look back. You know percentages work in different ways. Do as many good deeds as you can. That pays off too. I’m not talking about falling in love or indulging in hatred. Those are very bad percentage moves.”

  They sipped coffee together. Gronevelt ate only a flaky strudel pastry. Cross had orange juice with his coffee.

  “One thing,” Gronevelt said. “Don’t ever give a Villa to anyone who doesn’t make a million drop. Never forget that. The Villas are legendary. They are very important.”

  Cross patted Gronevelt’s hand, let his hand rest on the old man’s. His affection was genuine. In some ways he loved Gronevelt more than his father.

  “Don’t worry,” Cross said. “The Villas are sacred. Anything else?”

  Gronevelt’s eyes were opaque, cataracts dimming their old fire. “Be careful,” he said. “Always be very careful.”

  “I will,” Cross said. And then, to distract the old man from his coming death, he said, “When are you going to tell me about the great Santadio War? You worked with them then. Nobody ever talks about it.”

  Gronevelt gave an old man’s sigh, barely a whisper, almost emotionless. “I know time’s getting short,” he said. “But I can’t talk to you yet. Ask your father.”

  “I’ve asked Pippi,” Cross said. “But he won’t talk.”

  “What’s past is past,” Gronevelt said. “Never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.”

  Back in the penthouse suite, the nurse gave Gronevelt his afternoon bath and took his vital signs. She frowned and Gronevelt said, “It’s only the percentages.”

  That night he slept fitfully, and as dawn broke he told the nurse to help him to the balcony. She settled him in the huge chair and wrapped him in blankets. Then she sat beside him and took his hand to check his pulse. When she tried to take her hand back, Gronevelt continued to hold it. She permitted it and they both watched the sun rise above the desert.

  The sun was a red ball that turned the air from blue-black to dark orange. Gronevelt could see the tennis courts, the golf course, the swimming pool, the seven Villas gleaming like Versailles and all flying the Xanadu Hotel flag: forest green field with white doves. And beyond, the desert of endless sand.

  I created all this, Gronevelt thought. I built pleasure domes in a wasteland. And I made myself a happy life. Out of nothing. I tried to be as good a man as possible in this world. Should I be judged? His mind wandered back to his childhood, he and his chums, fourteen-year-old philosophers, discussing God and moral values as boys did then.

  “If you could have a million dollars by pushing a button and killing a million
Chinamen,” his chum said triumphantly, as if posing some great, impossible moral riddle, “would you do it?” And after a long discussion they all agreed they would not. Except Gronevelt.

  And now he thought, he had been right. Not because of his successful life but because that great riddle could not even be posed anymore. It was no longer a dilemma. You could pose it only one way.

  “Would you push the button to kill ten million China-men”—why Chinamen?—“for a thousand dollars?” That was now the question.

  The world was turning crimson with light, and Gronevelt squeezed his nurse’s hand to keep his balance. He could look directly into the sun, his cataracts a shield. He drowsily thought of certain women he had known and loved and certain actions he had taken. And of men he had to defeat pitilessly, and the mercies he had shown. He thought of Cross as a son and pitied him and all of the Santadio and the Cleri-cuzio. And he was happy he was leaving it all behind. After all, was it better to live a happy life or a moral life? And did you have to be a Chinaman to decide?

  That last confusion destroyed his mind utterly. The nurse, holding his hand, felt it grow cold, the muscles tense. She leaned over and checked his vital signs. There was no doubt he was no more.

  Cross De Lena, heir and successor, arranged the state funeral of Gronevelt. All the luminaries of Las Vegas, all the top gamblers, all of Gronevelt’s women friends, all the staff of the Hotel, had to be invited and notified. For Alfred Gronevelt had been the acknowledged genius of gambling in Las Vegas.

  He had spurred and contributed funds to build the churches of all denominations, for as he often said, “People who believe in religion and gamble deserve some reward for their faith.” He had forbidden the building of slums, he had built first-rate hospitals and top-notch schools. Always, he claimed, as a matter of self-interest. He despised Atlantic City, where under the guidance of the state they pocketed all the money and did nothing for the social infrastructure.