I raised my glass to her and then took a swallow. “I am getting a little sick of being leaned on,” I said. “I am also getting a little sick of the Lozupones and the Coles and the Calleses. But I’m especially sick of Angelo Sacchetti and that’s why I’m going to Singapore. So I can stop being sick of Sacchetti. If you want to tag along, you can. If you don’t, you can always take Tony with you. He should be good at keeping track of the passports and the luggage.”
Carla Lozupone looked at me thoughtfully. “Why do you think I’m going to Singapore?” she said.
“To patch up a busted romance, I understand.”
She laughed and she put a certain amount of bitterness into it. “With Angelo? Don’t be stupid. I can’t stand him and he can’t stand me. We never could, even when we were kids.”
“You weren’t kids together,” I said. “Angelo’s at least ten years older than you are.”
“Nine,” she said. “But he was around when I was twelve and he was twenty-one. I spent a very unpleasant Saturday afternoon with Angelo when I was twelve.”
“I can imagine.”
“I doubt that you can,” she said.
“Then why did you go through with the engagement and the rest of the act?”
She drained her glass. “Mix me another one.”
When I made no move, she added: “Please.”
I rose and picked up her glass. “I thought they must have taught you something at Wellesley. What are you drinking?”
“Vodka and tonic.”
I mixed her drink and handed it to her. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Do you get The New York Times out here?” she said.
“Not any more. We have to make do with the local product.”
“Than you don’t get a chance to read much about my father.”
“I know who he is.”
“I get to read about him all the time,” she said. “The nicest thing that they call him is a criminal. He’s supposed to be the nation’s number-one gangster. How would you like to read that about your old man?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s dead.”
She paused and lighted a cigarette. Then she blew some smoke at her glass. “I suppose he is,” she said in a low voice.
“What?”
“America’s number-one gangster. But he’s still my father and I like him. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he likes me and he’s been good to me. He’s been very good to me.”
“That’s a reason.”
“And now he’s in trouble.”
“Your father?” I said.
“He’s in the middle of it and it’s all about Charles Cole.”
“From what I’ve heard,” I said, “your father started it.”
“Then you heard it wrong. They forced him to and now Angelo’s just providing the excuse.”
“Do you always talk like this?” I said.
“Like what?”
“In fragments. You know, bits and pieces. Why don’t you just spell it all out? Start with the beginning. That’s a good place; then go through the middle, and wind up at the end. With luck, I can follow you.”
She took a deep breath and pushed the top of her dress out in an interesting manner. “Okay,” she said. “From the beginning. It all started several years ago. I was a sophomore at Wellesley and I’d come home for a weekend. It was a Saturday afternoon and they were in my father’s den.”
“Who?”
“My father and his friends. Or associates or whatever you want to call them. There were four or five of them.”
“All right,” I said.
“I eavesdropped. I was curious, so I eavesdropped.”
“All right,” I said again.
“The door to the den was open. It opens into the living room and they didn’t know I was there. Sometimes they talked in Italian and sometimes in English.”
“About what?”
“About Charles Cole or Uncle Charlie. They were telling my father that he should be eliminated. Killed or murdered is more accurate.”
She paused and took a long swallow of her drink. “I’d read about it. I had read everything I could find about it and about my father, but I’d never heard them talk like that. I couldn’t help but listen.”
“To what?”
She took another deep breath. “Those who wanted Cole out of the way said that he had too much power, that he’d become too expensive, and that he was producing too little. My father argued against them and it got rough. I mean really rough. I didn’t know my father could talk like that. They didn’t reach any decision that night, but I could tell my old man was worried. He had argued that Charles Cole knew too much; that there were too many documents in his possession. If he were to die, those documents might get in the wrong hands. His associates didn’t want to listen to him.”
“But they had to?” I said.
She nodded. “He’s number one, I guess you could call it. They had to listen to him, at least for a while. But then, about six months later, my old man drove up to Wellesley for parents’ day.” She paused and stared into her drink. “That was funny.”
“What?”
“My father in his Mercedes 600 driving up to Wellesley with Tony here. They all knew who he was, of course.”
“Who?”
“My friends at school.”
“How’d they react?”
“How do you expect?”
“You were snubbed?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Just the opposite. I was made. All they had for fathers were stockbrokers and lawyers and corporation presidents. I was the only one who had a real live gangster with a certified hood for a chauffeur. There was my father, a little round man without too much hair, an eighth grade education, and a noticeable accent. And there were all the young girls making over him as if he were their favorite poet-politician. He liked it. He liked it very much.”
“But he didn’t drive up just for parents’ day,” I said.
“No. He came up to ask me to become engaged to Angelo. He had never asked me to do anything before. Nothing for him anyway. So I asked him why and he told me. It was the first time that he’d ever really talked to me. You know, as if I were an adult.”
“What were his reasons?”
She looked at me then. “How much do you know about all this?”
“More than I should probably, but it seems to be a different version.”
She nodded at that and said, “You may as well have the right one.”
The right one, it seemed, was that Joe Lozupone asked his daughter to become engaged to the godson of Charles Cole for one reason only, and it wasn’t because he was overly fond of Angelo’ Sacchetti, as Charles Cole had claimed. The five New York families were divided, three to two against Cole. Lozupone felt that if his daughter became engaged to Sacchetti it would provide him with the excuse that he needed to side with Cole. There would be a blood tie, or at least something that was close to a blood tie. Carla Lozupone agreed. The engagement was announced, the party was held, and the rest was much as Charles Cole had told me, except for one thing. Lozupone could now hold out no longer against the three families after it was learned that Angelo Sacchetti was still alive, but had not returned to marry the daughter. He was forced to announce his opposition to Cole.
“I kept up with it all,” Carla said. “I even went into mourning when Angelo was reported dead. And then when they discovered that he was alive, I told people I was going to Singapore to marry him. I did all this without consulting my old man. It’s given him time. Now he and the rest of them have run out of time. But as long as they think there’s a chance of my marrying Angelo, my old man can stall, and Charles Cole will stay alive.”
“And if you don’t marry him?”
She shrugged and it was a fatalistic, resigned expression. “My father will have to vote yes on Charles Cole’s death and when he does, he’ll also be voting for his own death because he’s certain that enough evidence will turn up in Cole’s files to convict him. He has a bad heart; a prison sentence would kill him.”