Omerta - Mario Puzo [73]
Stace lay on his bed worrying about Franky. They had taken the shot and lost. And it was the end of the story. But he could help Franky think they were only twenty points down.
“I’m OK with it now,” Stace said. “Make sure Franky doesn’t know what’s happening, OK?”
“I promise,” Astorre said. “But I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“No,” Stace said. “What’s the point? The broker is a guy named Heskow, and he lives in a town called Brightwaters, just past Babylon. He’s divorced, lives alone, and has a sixteen-year-old humongous kid who’s a terrific basketball player. Heskow’s hired us for some jobs over the years. We go back to when we were kids. The price was a million, but still me and Franky were leery about taking it. Too big a hit. We took it because he said we didn’t have to worry about the FBI and we didn’t have to worry about the police. That it was a great big fix. He also told us that the Don no longer had any juice connections. But he was obviously wrong on that. You’re here. It was just too big a payday to turn down.”
“That’s a lot of info to give a guy you think is full of shit,” Astorre said.
“I want to convince you I’m telling the truth,” Stace said. “I figured it out. The story is over. I don’t want Franky to know it.”
“Don’t worry,” Astorre said. “I believe you.”
He left the room and went down to the kitchen to give Monza his instructions. He wanted their IDs, licenses, credit cards, et cetera. He kept his word to Stace: Franky was to be shot in the back of the head without any warning. And Stace was also to be executed without pain.
Astorre left to drive back to New York. The snow had turned to rain, and it rinsed the countryside of snow.
. . .
It was rare that Monza disregarded an order, but as the executioner he felt he had the right to protect himself and his men. There would be no guns. He would use rope.
First he took four guards to help him strangle Stace. The man didn’t even try to resist. But with Franky it was different. For twenty minutes he tried to twist away from the rope. For a terrible twenty minutes Franky Sturzo knew he was being murdered.
Then the two bodies were wrapped in blankets and carried through the heavy glades as the rain changed back into snow. They were deposited in the forest behind the house. A hole in a very dense thicket was the hiding place, and they would not be discovered until spring, if ever. By that time the bodies would be so destroyed by nature that, Monza hoped, the cause of death could not be determined.
But it was not only for this practical reason that Monza had disobeyed his chief. For like Don Aprile, he felt deeply that mercy could only come from God. He despised the idea of any kind of mercy for men who hired themselves out as killers of other men. It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.
CHAPTER 9
KURT CILKE BELIEVED in the law, those rules man invented to live a peaceful life. He had always tried to avoid those compromises that undermine a fair society, and he fought without mercy against the enemies of the state. After twenty years of the struggle, he had lost a great deal of his faith.
Only his wife lived up to his expectations. The politicians were liars, the rich merciless in their greed for power, the poor vicious. And then there were the born con men, the swindlers, the brutes and murderers. The enforcers of the law were only slightly better, but he had believed with all his heart that the Bureau was the best of all.
Over the past year he’d had a recurring dream. In it he was a boy of twelve, and he had to take a crucial school exam that would last all day. When he left the house his mother was in tears, and in his dream he understood why. If he did not pass the exam, he would