"Je me suis blessé les genous, je crois," I answered, flexing my knees carefully. I rubbed my head. "Et quelque chose bien solide m'a cogné la tête. Mais ce n'est pas grave."
He nodded, frowning but grinning at the same time. I guessed that his comprehension wasn't much better than his accent. He still had one hand on my arm. "Speak English?" he asked hopefully.
I nodded, amused.
"Great! Great!" He fairly bubbled with enthusiasm. "I just wanted to say that was the bravest thing I've ever seen. Fantastic! You moved so fast, so quick!" He was quite carried away by the whole thing.
I laughed. "Just reflex action, I guess." And it had been, of course.
"No!" he exclaimed. "It was courage. I mean, that was real guts, man!" He pulled an expensive cigarette case from his inside coat pocket, flipped it open and proferred it to me.
I took a cigarette, and bent to take a light from his eager fingers. I didn't quite know what he was after, but he was amusing.
"Those were the greatest reflexes I've ever seen." His eyes shone with excitement. "Are you a fighter or something? Or an acrobat? A pilot?"
I had to laugh. "No, I…" Let's see. What the hell was I? Right now, I was Nick Cartano, formerly of Palermo, more recently of the Foreign Legion, currently… currently available.
"No, I'm none of those things," I said I pushed through the throng that had gathered around the wrecked cab and the stunned driver and strode down the sidewalk. The little man scurried to keep pace.
In mid-stride, he stuck out his hand. "I'm Louie Lazaro," he said. "What's your name?"
I shook his hand unenthusiastically, still walking. "Nick Cartano. How do you do."
"Cartano? Hey, man, are you Italian, too?"
I shook my head. "Siciliano."
"Hey, great! I'm Sicilian, too. Or… I mean, my parents were from Sicily. I'm really American."
That hadn't been too hard to figure out. Then a thought struck me and I suddenly became more amiable. It was true that not every American of Sicilian background in Beirut would have a connection with the Mafia pipeline I was looking for, but it was equally true that almost any Sicilian in Beirut could possibly aim me in the right direction, either inadvertently — or intentionally. One Sicilian, it was reasonable to assume, could lead to another.
"No kidding!" I replied with my best look-at-me-I'm-a-delightful-guy smile. "I lived there a long time myself. New Orleans. Prescott, Arizona. Los Angeles. All over."
"Great! Great!"
This guy couldn't be for real.
"Jeez!" he said. "Two Sicilian-Americans in Beirut and we meet right in the middle of the street. It's a small goddamned world, you know?"
I nodded, grinning. "It sure is." I spotted the Mediterranean, the tiny little café on the corner of Almendares and Fuad, and gestured toward the beaded doorway. "What do you say we split a bottle of wine together?"
"Great!" he exclaimed. "In fact, I'll buy."
"Okay, man, you're on," I replied with make-believe enthusiasm.
Chapter 4
I'm not quite sure how we got to the subject, but we spent the next twenty minutes or so discussing Jerusalem. Louie had just returned from there, and T had once spent two weeks there, courtesy of Mr. Hawk's organization.
We toured the city conversationally, sightseeing in the Mosque of Omar and at the Wailing Wall, pausing at the Court of Pilate and Ruth's Well, following the stations of the cross up the Via Dolor and into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which still bears the carved initials of the Crusaders who built it in 1099. For all his effusiveness, Louie had a good grasp of history, a reasonably perceptive mind and a rather blasé attitude about the Mother Church. I was beginning to like him.
It took me a while to get the conversation going the way I wanted, but I finally managed it. "How long you going to be in Beirut, Louie?"
He laughed. Life, I was beginning to gather, was just one big lark to Louie. "I'm going back at the end of this week. Saturday, I guess. Sure had one hell of a time here, though."
"How long you been here?"
"Just three weeks. You know… a little business, a little fun." He waved expansively. "Mostly fun."
If he didn't mind answering questions, I didn't mind asking them. "What kind of business?"
"Olive oil. Importing olive oil. Franzini Olive Oil. Ever hear of it?"
I shook my head. "Nope. I'm a brandy-and-soda man myself. Can't stand olive oil."
Louie laughed at my weak joke. He was the type who would always make a poor joke seem worth a laugh. Good for the ego.
I pulled a crumpled pack of Galoise from my shirt pocket and lit one while I happily set about making unexpected plans to become buddy-buddy with Louie Lazaro, the laughing boy of the Western world.
I knew Franzini Olive Oil, all right. Or at least I knew who Joseph Franzini was. Joseph «Popeye» Franzini. A lot of people knew who he was. These days he was Don Joseph, head of the second largest Mafia famiglia in New York.
Before Joseph Franzini had become Don Joseph, he had been «Popeye» throughout the underworld on the Eastern seaboard. The «Popeye» came from his very legitimate olive oil importing and marketing business. He was respected because of his ruthless integrity, his ritual adherence to the Mafia law of omerta, and his efficient business methods.
When he was thirty years old, Popeye had been stricken by some disease — I couldn't remember at the moment just what — that had forced him off the streets and into the administrative end of organized crime. There, his fine head for business proved invaluable and in a very short time he was able to achieve a position of real power in the gambling and loan-shark rackets. He and his two brothers built their organization carefully and solidly, and with business acumen. Now, he was Don Joseph, aging, querulous, jealous of the rights he had worked so hard to attain.
It was Popeye Franzini — Don Joseph Franzini — who was behind the move to reinforce the American organization with young blood from Sicily.
I had gone looking for some kind of an entré into Sicilian circles in Beirut, and it looked as if I had hit the jackpot. Certainly, Beirut was a logical port of call for an olive oil dealer. A good bit of the world's supply comes from Lebanon and its neighbors, Syria and Jordan.
But the presence of Louie Lazaro of Franzini Olive Oil at the same time the Mafia was funneling its new recruits through Beirut stretched the coincidence ratio too far.
I had another thought, too. Louie Lazaro might be more than just the bon vivant he appeared to be. Anyone who represented Popeye Franzini would be competent and tough, even if — to judge by the verve with which Louie was attacking the bottle — he tended to drink too much.
I tilted back on the heels of the little wire chair I was sitting on and tilted my glass at my new amico. "Hey, Louie! Let's have another bottiglia di vino"
He roared delightedly, slapping the table with a flat palm. "Why not, compare! Let's show these Arabos how they do it in the old country." The Columbia University class ring on his right hand belied his nostalgic reference as he signaled for the waiter.
Three days with Louie Lazaro can be exhausting. We saw a soccer game at the American University, spent a day visiting the old Roman ruins at Baalbeck; we drank too much at the Black Cat Café and the Illustrious Arab, and made it to just about every other bistro in the city.
During those three hectic days, I learned quite a lot about Louie. I'd thought he had Mafia written all over him, and when I found how deeply it was etched, all the bells started ringing. Louie Lazaro was in Beirut on Franzini Olive Oil business, all right — representing his uncle Popeye. When Louie dropped that bombshell over a fourth carafe of wine, I prodded my wine-fogged memory for information on him. Popeye Franzini had raised his brother's son, I remembered from a report I'd read at one time. Was this that nephew? He probably was, and his different last name, then, was most likely a minor cosmetic change. I didn't press him for a reason why he was called Lazaro and not Franzini, figuring that if it was relevant, I'd find out soon enough.