Omerta - Mario Puzo [57]
“I’d just like to try it by myself,” Franky said again. “Just for a little while.”
“Sure,” Stace said. “I’m the older brother, I have to watch out for you.” It was their favorite joke, and indeed it always did seem Stace was a few years older than Franky instead of ten minutes.
“But you know she’ll be wise to you in two seconds,” Stace said. “Rosie is smart. She’ll know you’re in love with her.”
Franky looked at his brother with astonishment. “I’m in love with her?” he said. “Is that it? Jesus fucking Christ.” And they both laughed.
Now the car was out of the city and rolling through the farmland of Westchester County. Franky broke the silence. “I never saw so much snow in my life,” he said. “How the hell can people live here?”
“Because it’s cheap,” Rosie said.
Stace asked, “How much longer?”
“About an hour and a half,” Rosie said. “You guys need to stop?”
“No,” Franky said, “let’s get there.”
“Unless you have to stop,” Stace said to Rosie.
Rosie shook her head. She looked very determined, hands tight on the wheel, peering intently at the slow-falling snow-flakes.
About an hour later they went through a small town, and Rosie said, “Just another fifteen minutes.”
The car went up a steep incline, and on top of a small hill was a house, gray as an elephant, surrounded by snow-covered fields, the snow absolutely pure white and unmarked, no foot-prints, no car tracks.
Rosie pulled to a stop at the front-porch entrance, and they got out. She loaded them down with suitcases and the Christmas boxes. “Go on in,” she said. “The door is open. We don’t lock up out here.”
Franky and Stace crunched up the steps of the porch and opened the door. They were in an enormous living room decorated with animal heads on the walls, and there was a huge fire in a hearth as big as a cave.
Outside suddenly, they could hear the roar of the Cadillac’s motor, and at that moment six men appeared from the two entryways of the house. They were holding guns, and the leader, a huge man with a great mustache, said in a slightly accented voice, “Don’t move. Don’t drop the packages.” Then the guns were pressed against their bodies.
Stace understood at once, but Franky was worried about Rosie. It took him about thirty seconds to put it together—the roar of the engine and Rosie not being there. Then with the worst feeling he had ever had in his life, he realized the truth. Rosie was bait.
CHAPTER 7
ON THE NIGHT before Christmas Eve Astorre attended a party given by Nicole at her apartment. She had invited professional colleagues and members of her pro bono groups, including her favorite, the Campaign Against the Death Penalty.
Astorre liked parties. He loved to chat with people he would never see again and who were so different from him. Sometimes he met interesting women with whom he had brief affairs. And he always hoped to fall in love; he missed it. Tonight Nicole had reminded him of their teenage romance, not coy or flirting but with good humor.
“You broke my heart when you obeyed my father and went to Europe,” she said.
“Sure,” Astorre said. “But that didn’t stop you from meeting other guys.”
For some reason Nicole was very fond of him tonight. She held his hand in an intimate schoolgirl way, she kissed him on the lips, she clung to him as if she knew that he was about to escape her once again.
This confused him because all his old tenderness was aroused, but he understood starting up again with Nicole would be a terrible mistake at this junction of his life. Not with the decisions he had to make. Finally she led him to a group of people and introduced him.
Tonight there was a live band, and Nicole asked Astorre to sing in his now gravelly but warm lilting voice, which he always loved doing. They sang an old Italian love ballad together.
When he serenaded Nicole, she clung to him and looked into his eyes searching for something in his soul. Then, with a final sorrowful kiss, she let him go.
Afterward Nicole had a surprise for him.