361 - Donald E. Westlake [49]
It was a water-glass, half full. He downed it in three swallows, and tossed it empty, underhand, across the room to the chauffeur in the doorway. Nick Rovito said, low, “Get on with it, Eddie.”
“That was the ceremony, Nick. The christening. Gents, I want you to meet my boy. My son, goes by the name of Ray Kelly.” Then he pointed the cigar at face after face in a counterclockwise circle around the room, and called off the name of every man there.
I watched for the first seven, my blank face and their blank faces, and then the hell with it. I drank the House of Lords from eight to twenty-one, turned and put down the empty glass on a table from twenty-two to twenty-four, lit a cigarette till thirty-three, and watched the last five. “And that, Nick,” he finished, “was the introduction.”
Nick didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
Kapp inhaled cigar smoke and blew it out again. “They said liquor was illegal,” he said, talking to the smoke this time, “and then they said it wasn’t. But a lot of money was made while it was. Now, who knows what else they may decide is legal? How about Mary Jane? Ray, what do they call it now? Marijuana.”
“Pot,” I said.
“Ugly. All right, what about it? No after-effects, less habit-forming than tobacco or liquor. Maybe we’ll wake up one morning and it’s legal.”
A guy to the left muttered, “They better not.” A few others laughed.
Kapp nodded at him. “Yeah, Sal, I know what you mean. The same with off-track horse betting, huh? Or all of gambling, like Nevada. All over the country. Maybe so, some day. Or whores in ghettos, like they tried in Galveston and some other places.”
Little Irving said, “What’s the point, Eddie?”
“The point? I don’t see why we shouldn’t figure it all legal right now, that’s the point. Retroactive, you know what I mean? Like their stinking income taxes. You see what I mean?”
They grinned and nodded and shifted around in their chairs, relaxing, puffing on their stogies, grinning at one another. Nick grinned, too. He said, “And that was the joke, huh, Eddie?”
Kapp said, “Right you are, Nick. And now we get to the pie.”
They quieted again. Kapp said, “Let’s get the size of the pie straight. It isn’t the country. It isn’t the east. It’s New York City. And the stuff around it, Jersey City and Long Island and the rest.”
Somebody said, “Greater New York.”
“That’s the word.”
Somebody else said, “Why so modest, Eddie?”
Kapp said, “You tell them, Irving.”
Baumheiler cleared his throat and took his thumb out of his vest pocket. He said, “I mention to you gentlemen five names. Arnold Greenglass. Salvatore Abbadarindi. Edward Wiley. Sean Auchinachie. Vito Petrone. These gentlemen are old friends of ours, of most of ours. They are our contemporaries, more fortunate than we in not having had their careers interrupted in the late thirties or early forties. They would still be considered our friends. They, and others of our friends, are now operative at the national and regional levels. They agree with us that we deserve Greater New York more than the group that now has it, contingent of course on our proving our ability by taking it from the incumbents. National and regional organizations, as well as local organizations from other centers, will not interfere in the struggle. We have their assurances on this point. This is based on our own assurances that we harbor no ambitions beyond Greater New York.”
“For the moment,” said the guy who’d spoken up before.
Baumheiler looked severely at him. “For ever,” he said. “We are not, and will not be, a rival organization. We are part of the existent organization, and shall continue to be so.”
Little Irving Stein said to the ambitious one, “You ought to know better, Kenny.”
Kenny, who was at least as old as Stein and twice the size, shifted uneasily in his chair. “I just wanted to get it straight,” he said.
Kapp said, “If we made a move like we wanted a bigger pie, they’d stop us from getting any pie at all. And they could, any time they wanted. Right, Nick?”
Nick nodded heavily. “That’s right,” he said. “My people understood