Find Her a Grave Read Online Free PDF

invitation, Cella gestured to Bacardo’s half-empty glass.
    “Thanks. No more.”
    Cella refilled his own glass, sipped. Then: “So that takes care of the Tony G. thing. What I really wanted to tell you—what I want you to tell Carlo—is that I’ve got a proposition for him. A quid pro quo, the diplomats say.”
    Bacardo frowned. “Quid pro what?”
    Cella smiled, raised a slim, elegantly condescending hand. “A deal. Tell him a deal.”
    “A deal. Yeah.”
    “Tell him—” The final pause. “Tell him that I’ll support him, do everything I can to keep him in the top job. Remind him that we’ve never— never —had problems, Carlo and me.”
    “Well, that’s—”
    “But then,” Cella cut in, “when he goes—retires, whatever—then I expect his people to support me like I supported him. He’s got—what—ten years left, inside?”
    “Right. It was a fifteen-year sentence.”
    “Okay. Well, he’s doing a good job running things from inside. Genovese did it, and so did Charlie Lucky, from Italy. But something like the heart, you never know. So what I’m saying is, when Carlo’s out of it, one way or the other—then it’s my turn. Tell him that’s the deal.”
    Careful to show no emotion, no approval, no disapproval, Bacardo said, “I’ll tell him.”
    “Good.” Cella’s voice was brisk with finality. “So—” Smiling broadly now, he raised his glass. “So, to Don Carlo. Good health.”
    “Good health.”

1986

WEDNESDAY, MAY 14th
3:45 P.M., EDT
    I T BEGAN AS IT always did: the crushing weight in the upper chest, the shortness of breath. Then the pain: slivers at first. Daggers, thin and sharp. In moments, he knew, the pain would congeal into a solid mass, growing, spreading, reaching upward to the base of the neck, like strangler’s hands.
    From the pocket of his shirt Venezzio took the plain white envelope that was always there, quick to his hand, a reflex now: feel the pain, reach for the envelope, take out one tiny nitro pill, put it under the tongue. Secure the flap of the envelope with its life-or-death contents, carefully return the precious envelope to his pocket.
    And then, his latest doctor had said, relax. Lie down, close the eyes, breathe deeply. “Think of something pleasant,” the doctor had said. “Think of when you were a little boy.”
    A little boy …
    How old was the doctor, a specialist, flown in from New York? Forty? Dr. McCoy, the best in the business, according to Bacardo. Dr. McCoy, a tall, smooth-talking Ivy Leaguer, a scrubbed little kid from the suburbs, say shit when he stepped in it and get his mouth washed out with soap.
    “I’ll have to analyze the test results,” McCoy had said. “Then I’ll tell Mr. Bacardo. Will that be satisfactory?”
    Five days it had been before Bacardo had come. And then “inconclusive” was the best McCoy had made out of the tests.
    The first attack, almost ten months ago, hadn’t damaged the heart; the first doctors had said that much.
    But the second attack, eight months later—that one, McCoy said, was inconclusive. Meaning, Venezzio knew, that anything could happen—anytime.
    Think of when you were a little boy …
    Lying on his bunk, arms and legs limp, staring at the riveted metal of the cell’s ceiling, Venezzio drew a long, deep breath, then let his eyes slowly close. Yes, the nitro was doing the job; the pain was slowly fading, diffusing. From his chest, the weight was lifting. Five minutes more and he could sit up, stand, walk as well as ever. Thank you, nitroglycerin.
    A little boy …
    McCoy had said it because, for him, boyhood had meant sunshine and laughter, tennis lessons at the club, swimming parties, bike rides down golden lanes.
    Not trash littering the sidewalks. Not overflowing sewers. Not the shouts and screams and threats and clangor of the slums. Not the narrow cobblestone streets where the sun never shone, in perpetual shadows cast by the tall brick tenement walls.
    Genoa, in the twenties