Omerta - Mario Puzo [41]
The conference had been arranged to plan a strategy to control the Aprile banks. This was of the utmost importance in order to launder the billions of dollars of black-market money from drugs and also to acquire power in the financial world of New York. And for Inzio Tulippa, it was crucial not only to launder his drug money but to finance his nuclear arsenal. It would also make his role as the Vaccinator safer.
They all met at the Peruvian consulate, which was security-proof in addition to supplying the cloak of diplomatic immunity. The consul general, Marriano Rubio, was a generous host. Since he received a cut of all their revenues and he would head their legitimate interests in the States, he was full of goodwill.
Gathered around the small oval table, they made an interesting scene.
Grazziella looked like an undertaker in his black shiny suit, white shirt, and thin black tie, for he was still in mourning for his mother, who had died six months before. He spoke in a low, doleful voice with a thick accent, but he was clearly understood. He seemed such a shy, polite man to have been responsible for the death of a hundred Sicilian law-enforcement officials.
Timmona Portella, the only one of the four whose native tongue was English, spoke in a loud bellow, as if all the others were deaf. His attire too seemed to shout: He wore a gray suit and lime green shirt with a shiny blue silk tie. The perfectly tailored jacket would have hidden his huge belly if it was not unbuttoned to show blue suspenders.
Inzio Tulippa looked classically South American, with a white, loose-draped silk shirt and scarlet handkerchief around his neck. He carried his yellow Panama hat in his hand reverently. He spoke a lilting accented English, and his voice had the charm of a nightingale. But today he had a forbidding frown on his sharp Indian face; he was a man not pleased with the world.
Marriano Rubio was the only man who seemed pleased. His affability charmed them all. His voice was well bred in the English style, and he was dressed in a style he called en pantoufle: pajamas of green silk and a bathrobe of a darker forest green. He wore soft brown slippers lined with white wool fur. After all, it was his building and he could relax.
Tulippa opened the discussion, speaking directly to Portella with a deadly politeness. “Timmona, my friend,” he said, “I paid handsomely to get the Don out of the way, and we still do not own the banks. This after waiting almost a year.”
The consul general spoke in his lubricating, calming way. “My dear Inzio,” he said, “I tried to buy the banks. Portella tried to buy the banks. But we have an obstacle we did not foresee. This Astorre Viola, the Don’s nephew. He has been left in control, and he refuses to sell.”
“So?” Inzio said. “Why is he still alive?”
Portella laughed, a huge bellow. “Because he is not so easy to kill,” he said. “I put a four-man surveillance team on his house, and they disappeared. Now I don’t know where the hell he is, and he has a cloud of bodyguards whenever he moves.”
“Nobody is that hard to kill,” Tulippa said, the charming lilt of his voice delivering the words like a lyric to a popular song.
Grazziella spoke for the first time. “We knew Astorre back in Sicily, years ago. He is a very lucky man, but then, he is also extremely Qualified. We shot him in Sicily and thought him dead. If we strike again, we must be sure. He is a dangerous man.”
Tulippa said to Portella, “You claim you have an FBI man on the payroll? Use him, for the sake of God.”
“He’s not that bent,” Portella said. “The FBI is classier than the NYPD. They would never do a straight-out hit job.”
“OK,” Tulippa said. “So we snatch one of the Don’s kids and use them to bargain with Astorre. Marriano, you know his daughter.” He winked. “You can set her up.”
Rubio did not warm to this proposal. He puffed on his thin after-breakfast cigar and then said stormily, without courtesy,