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 attaché case, as usual. The cabdriver might look askance if he asked to put the attaché 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 Cassandro. The sonofabitch had always been arrogant, long before he’d made his bones and become a made man, and now he was fucking insufferable. Joe didn’t really understand why they had made the sonofabitch 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 asshole.
“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 Cassandro 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 wiseass, 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