On the way here, Mr. Cassandro had given some thought to how he was going to handle the situation if the place was full of plumbers, or Lanza’s mother, or whatever. He had what, after some reflection, seemed to be a pretty good idea.
Starting with the bill of sale for the Cadillac, all the paperwork involved in dealing with the cop had been Xeroxed. It was the businesslike thing to do, in case something should get lost, or fucked up, or whatever. Including the bill for the comped room at the Oaks and Pines, and the markers, both the ones he’d paid, and the ones he’d just signed.
The thing they had to do now was make the cop nervous. He thought he had figured out just how to do that.
I will just go in the cop’s house, and hand him the markers from last night. And tell him I want to talk to him, and why don’t you let me buy you a drink when you get off work, say in the bar in the Warwick. He probably won’t come, he wants to bang the broad, but he will wonder all fucking day what getting handed the markers is all about, and what I want to talk about. And if he don’t show up at the Warwick by say one o’clock, I know where to find the fucker. Rosselli and I will go to the broad’s apartment.
“Let me out of the car, Jimmy,” Mr. Cassandro said to his driver, “and then drive around the block until I come out.”
“You don’t want me to come with you?” Mr. Rosselli asked.
“I want you to drive around the block with Jimmy until I come out.”
“You will never believe who I just got a picture of getting out of a Jaguar and walking toward Lanza’s house,” Officer Howard Hansen said softly as he returned to the bar where Sergeant Bill Sanders was watching a quiz program on the television.
“Who?”
“Paulo Cassandro.”
“You sure?” Sergeant Sanders asked.
Hansen nodded.
“And, unless I’m mistaken, the guy driving the Jaguar was Jimmy Gnesci, ‘Jimmy the Knees,’ and—what the hell is his name?—Gian-Carlo Rosselli was in the back seat with Cassandro.”
“You get his picture, their pictures too?”
Hansen nodded.
“This is getting interesting,” Sanders said.
“I told you, I’ve been on the job with Wohl. He don’t go off half-cocked. ”
The fucking plumbers had just told Vito Lanza that it would be at least three days until there was cold water to flush the toilets, and probably a day more until there was hot water and he could take a bath and shave, when he heard somebody call, “Yo, Vito! You in here?” upstairs at the front door.
He went up the stairs and there was Paulo Cassandro standing there, just inside the open door. He was smiling.
“What the hell have you got going here, Vito? You really need all these plumbers?”
“Well, hello. How are you?”
Paulo Cassandro was the last person Vito expected to see inside his house, and for a moment there was concern that Paulo was there about the markers he had signed at the Oaks and Pines.
He shook Cassandro’s hand.
“You wouldn’t believe what they’re charging me,” Vito said.
“I would believe. There’s only two kinds of plumbers, good expensive plumbers and bad expensive plumbers. I’ve been through this.”
“So what can I do for you, Mr. Cassandro?”
“You can call me ‘Paulo’ for one thing,” Cassandro said. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood, I was down by Veteran’s Stadium, and I had these, and I thought, what the hell, I’ll see if Vito’s home and give them to him.”
He handed Vito the markers, four thousand dollars’ worth of markers, that he had signed early that morning at Oaks and Pines.
“To tell you the truth, Paulo, until I can get to the bank, I can’t cover these.”
I don’t have anywhere near enough money in the bank to cover those markers. My fucking luck has been really bad!
“Did I ask for money? I know you’re good for them. Take care of them at your convenience. But I had them, and I figured, what the hell, why carry them around and maybe lose them. You know what I mean?”
“Absolutely.”
“And we know where you live, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So I’ll see you around, Vito,” Paulo said, and started to leave, and then, as if it was a thought that had suddenly occurred to him, turned back to Vito. “What time do you get off?”