Mr. Savarese nodded, and Mr. Baltazari went on.

"She struck up a conversation with this guy, like I told her, and come back and told me he's a corporal, working at the airport, and that he just come home from Vegas, where he won a lot of money ..."

"How much?"

"I don't know exactly, but he was talking about buying a Caddy, so I figure fifteen, twenty big ones, maybe a little more."

Mr. Savarese nodded his understanding again.

"So I figured this was one of those times when you have to do something right away, or forget it," Mr. Baltazari went on. "So I sent the lady back to the cop and told her to tell him she has an uncle who has a car lot who would give him a good deal."

"Is this police officer married?" Mr. Savarese asked.

"I don't know know, Mr. S. He told Antoinette he's a bachelor."

"It would be better, if he was married," Mr. Savarese said.

"I'll find out for sure and let you know, Mr. S. Anyway, I figured if this wasn't such a hot idea, no harm. So I called Joe, and told him....."

"What you should have done, Ricco," Mr. Savarese said, "was call me and let me talk to Joe."

"I wasn't sure if you would have time to talk with me today, Mr. S."

"Joe called me," Mr. Savarese said, "and asked exactly what was going on. I didn't know, and that was very embarra.s.sing. So I told him I would talk to you and get back to him."

"If I stepped out of line, Mr. S., I'm really sorry. But like I said, I figured no harm . . ."

Mr. Savarese interrupted Mr. Baltazari by holding up the hand with the fork in it.

"Gian-Carlo," he said. "Get on the phone to Joe. Tell him there was a slight misunderstanding. Tell him I have absolute faith in Ricco's judgment."

Mr. Rosselli laid down his knife and fork and pushed himself away from the table.

"There's a pay station in the candy store on the corner," Mr. Savarese said.

"Right, Mr. S.," Mr. Rosselli said.

When he had gone, Mr. Savarese laid his hand on that of Mr. Baltazari.

"Ricco," he said. "This may be more important than you know. This police officer works at the airport? You're sure of that?"

"That's what he told Antoinette."

"Do you recall reading, or seeing on the television, two months back, about the police officer who was killed in an auto accident on the way from the sh.o.r.e?"

"I seem to remember something about that, Mr. S."

"He was a friend of ours, Ricco."

"I didn't know that, Mr. S."

"And he worked at the airport. And now that he's gone, we don't have a friend at the airport. That's posing certain problems for us. Serious problems, right now."

"Oh."

"This police officer you found could be very useful to us, Ricco."

"I understand."

"Whatever is done with him has to be done very carefully, you understand. But at the same time, so long as we don't have a friend at the airport, the problems we are having there are not going to go away."

"I understand," Mr. Baltazari said, although he had no idea what Mr. S. had going at the airport.

"I want you to let me know what goes on, when it happens, Ricco. And while I trust your judgment, whenever there is any question at all in your mind about what to do, I want you to call me and we'll decide what to do together. You understand me, Ricco?"

"Absolutely, Mr. S."

"Why don't you go get us some coffee, Ricco?"

"Certainly, Mr. S."

Marion Claude Wheatley did not own an automobile, and had not for several years. He suspected, and then had proved by putting all the figures down on paper, that it was much cheaper, considering the price of automobiles and their required maintenance, and especially the price of insurance, to rent a car when he needed one.

And the inconveniences-particularly that of getting groceries from the supermarket checkout counter to the house-were overwhelmed by the elimination of annoyances not owning an automobile provided.

Paying his automobile insurance had especially annoyed him. There were, he was quite sure, actuarial reasons for the insurance company's cla.s.sifications of people they insured. They were, after all, a business, not a charitable organization. Statistically, it could be proved that an unmarried male between twenty-one and thirty-five living in Philadelphia could be expected to cost the insurance company far more in settling claims than a thirty-six-year-old who was married and lived, say, in New Hope or Paoli. But there was an exception to every rule, and they should have acknowledged that.

He had never had a traffic violation in his life, had never been involved in an accident, and did not use his automobile to commute to work. He drove it back and forth to the supermarket and every month to New Jersey to check on the farm. Sometimes, on rare occasions, such as when Hammersmith, or someone like him, felt obliged to have him to dinner, he drove it at night out to Bryn Mawr, or someplace.

But most of the time the car had sat in the garage, letting its battery discharge.

He had tried to make this point to his insurance broker, who had not only been unsympathetic to his reasoning but had practically laughed at him.

He had solved both problems by selling the car and changing insurance brokers. Marion believed that when you know something is right, you do it.

And he had learned that while renting a car wasn't as cheap as the rental companies advertising would have one believe, it was possible, by carefully reading the advertis.e.m.e.nts and taking advantage of discounts of one kind or another, to rent a car at perfectly reasonable figures.

When he returned to his office from having lunch with Hammersmith at the Union League, he spent the next forty-five minutes calling around and arranging a car for the weekend. The best price was offered, this time, by Hertz. If he picked up the car at the airport, not downtown, after six-thirty on Friday, and returned it not later than eleven-thirty on Sat.u.r.day, they would charge him for only one twenty-four-hour day, providing he did not add more than two hundred miles to the odometer. They would also provide him a "standard" size car, for the price of a "compact."

It averaged between 178.8 and 192.4 miles, round trip (he didn't really understand why there should be a difference, unless the odometers themselves were inaccurate) from the airport to the farm, so he would be within the 200-mile limitation. And since he was getting a standard-sized car, that meant he could conceal the equipment he was taking to the farm in the trunk.

Marion Claude Wheatley knew enough about explosives to know that the greater distance one can put between detonators and explosives the better. He didn't think the Lord would cause an accident now, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Marion knew that the Lord would probably not be at all forgiving, if through his own carelessness he had an accident, and hurt-or disintegrated- himself while having a test run of the demolition program for the Vice President at the farm.

The only risky part would be getting from the house to the airport in the taxicab to pick up the car. He would have to have the detonators, half a dozen of them, in his suit jacket breast pocket. They were getting pretty old now, and with age came instability. There were half a dozen ways in which they could be inadvertently set off. He would carry the Composition C-4 in his attache case, as usual. The cabdriver might look askance if he asked to put the attache case in the trunk, with the suitcases, particularly if it was a small taxi, and there would not be a lot of room.

The risk was that something would set off one of the detonators. If that happened, it was a certainty that the other five detonators would also detonate. The technical phrase was "sympathetic detonation. " If one detonator went off, and then, microseconds later, the other five, it was a possibility, even a likelihood, that the Composition C-4 would detonate sympathetically.

It was a risk that would have to be taken. The more he thought about it, the less worried he became. If something happened in the taxicab, the Lord, who knew everything, would understand that he had been doing the best he knew how. And if he permitted Marion to be disintegrated, who would be available to disintegrate the Vice President?

NINE.

Joe Fierello did not like Paulo Ca.s.sandro. The sonofab.i.t.c.h had always been arrogant, long before he'd made his bones and become a made man, and now he was f.u.c.king insufferable. Joe didn't really understand why they had made the sonofab.i.t.c.h a made man.

But that didn't matter. What was was, and you don't let a made man know that you think he's really an ignorant a.s.shole.

"Paulo!" Joe called happily when, around half past two, Paulo got out of the back seat of his Jaguar sedan and walked up to the office. "How are you, pal? What can I do for you?"

"A mutual friend wanted to make sure that nothing goes wrong when your niece comes in later."

"Nothing will, Paulo. I talked with Gian-Carlo not more than a hour ago."

"I just talked with Mr. S., and he suggested I come down here and explain exactly what has to be done."

Joe Fierello was more than a little curious about that. When Gian-Carlo Rosselli said something, you knew it was direct from Mr. S. So what was Paulo Ca.s.sandro doing here?

"Let me know what I can do," Joe said.

"You know this guy coming is a cop?"

Joe nodded.

"What Mr. S. wants you to do is sell him a really nice car . . ."

"I was going to."

"... at a special price. Like a thousand, fifteen hundred under Blue Book loan."

The Blue Book was a small, shirt-pocket-size listing of recent automobile transactions, published for the automotive trade. It listed the average retail sale price of an automobile, the average amount of money a bank or finance company had loaned for an installment purchase, and the average price dealers had paid as a trade-in.

"You got it."

"And he wants you to pay him at least a grand more for his trade-in than it's worth."

"Any friend of Mr. S.'s ..."

"Don't be a wisea.s.s, Joe. This is business."

"Sorry."

"Yeah. You got a Xerox machine, right?"

"Sure."

"We're going to make up a little file on this cop. In it will be copies of this week's Blue Book showing what his trade is worth, and what the car you're going to sell him is worth. And then, on Tuesday, when you run his trade-in through the auction, where you will give it away, we want a Xerox of that too."

"This has all been explained to me, Paulo," Joe said.

"Yeah, well, Mr. S. obviously figured somebody better explain it again, so there would be no mistakes, which is why I'm here, okay?"

"Absolutely."

"And in addition to everything else you're going to do nice for this cop," Paulo went on, "you're going to give him this."

He handed him a printed form. Joe looked at it without understanding. It bore the logotype of the Oaks and Pines Resort Lodge in the Poconos, and it said that the Bearer was ent.i.tled to have a room and all meals, plus unlimited free tennis and two rounds of golf.

"What is this?"

"It's what they call a comp," Paulo explained. "This place is owned by a friend of Mr. S.'s. Let's say, for example, they buy a case of soap to wash the dishes. Or two cases, something worth a couple of hundred bucks. Instead of paying them cash, the lodge people give them one of these. Retail Retail, it's worth more than the two hundred. Cost-wise Cost-wise maybe a hundred. So the guy who came up with the soap gets more than the soap is worth, and the lodge people get the soap for less than the guy wanted. maybe a hundred. So the guy who came up with the soap gets more than the soap is worth, and the lodge people get the soap for less than the guy wanted. Capisce? Capisce?"

"I seen a comp coupon before, Paulo," Joe said. "What I was asking was, is this cop gonna be a tennis player? Or a golf player?"

"He gets to take the girl to a hotel," Paulo said. "He don't give a f.u.c.k about golf."

Joe still looked confused, and Paulo took pity on him.

"There's a story going around, I personally don't know if it's true or not, that in some of these lodge places in the Poconos you can gamble in the back room."

Joe now nodded his understanding.

"You tell this guy you shoot a little c.r.a.ps at this place from time to time, and they sent you the comp coupon, and you can't use it, so he can have it."

"Right."

"Don't f.u.c.k this up, Joe. Mr. S. is personally interested in this."

"You tell Mr. S. not to worry."

"He's not worrying. I'm not worrying. You should be the one that's worrying."

Antoinette Marie Wolinski Schermer had moved back in with her parents when Eddie, that sonofab.i.t.c.h, had moved out on her and Brian, which was all she could do, suspecting correctly that getting child support out of Eddie was going to be like pulling teeth.

That hadn't worked out. Her mother, especially, and her father were Catholic and didn't believe in divorce no matter what a sonofab.i.t.c.h you were married to, no matter if he slapped you around whenever he had two beers in him. What they expected her to do was go to work, save her money, and wait around the house for the time when she could straighten things out with Eddie.

No going out, in other words.

She had met Ricco Baltazari in the Reading Terminal Market on Market Street. She had gone there for lunch, and so had he. She decided later, when she found out that he owned Ristorante Alfredo, which was before she found out that he was connected with the Mob, that he had probably got bored with the fancy food in his restaurant and wanted a hot Italian sausage with onions and peppers, which was what she was having when she saw him looking at her.

She had noticed him too, saw that he was a really good-looking guy, that he was dressed real nice, and that when he paid for his sausage and pepper and onions, he had a wad of fifties and hundreds as thick as his thumb.

It probably had something to do, too, with what people said about opposites attracting. She was blonde (she only had to touch it up to keep it light, not dye it, the way most blondes had to) and fair-skinned, and he was sort of dark olive-skinned with really black hair.

The first time she noticed him, she wondered what it would be like doing it with him, never suspecting that she would find out that same night.