Omerta - Mario Puzo [74]
In the dream he understood murder had become so rampant that laws had been set up with the help of the psychiatric community to develop a protocol of mental-health tests that could predict which twelve-year-olds would grow up to become murderers. Those who failed the test simply vanished. For medical science had proved that murderers killed for the pleasure of killing. That political crimes, rebellion, terrorism, jealousy, and stealing were simply the surface excuses. So it was only necessary to weed out these genetic murderers at an early age.
The dream jumped to his return home after the exam, and his mother hugged and kissed him. His uncles and cousins had prepared a huge celebration. Then he was alone in his bedroom shaking with fear. For he knew there had been a mistake. He should never have passed the exam, and now he would grow up to be a murderer.
The dream had occurred twice, and he did not mention it to his wife because he knew what the dream meant, or thought he did.
Cilke’s relationship with Timmona Portella was now over six years old. It had begun when Portella murdered an underling in a blind rage. Cilke had immediately seen the possibilities. He had made arrangements for Portella to be an informant on the Mafia in return for nonprosecution of the murder. The director had approved the plan, and the rest was history. With Portella’s help, Cilke had crushed the New York Mafia but had had to turn a blind eye to Portella’s operations, including his supervision of the drug trade.
But Cilke, with approval from the director, had plans to bring Portella down again. Portella was determined to acquire the use of the Aprile banks to launder the drug money. But Don Aprile had proved obstinate. At one fateful meeting Portella had asked Cilke, “Will the FBI be surveilling Don Aprile when he attends his grandson’s confirmation?” Cilke understood immediately, but he hesitated before he answered. Then he said slowly, “I guarantee that they will not be. But what about the NYPD?”
“That’s taken care of,” Portella said.
And Cilke knew he would be an accomplice to murder. But didn’t the Don deserve it? He had been a ruthless criminal most of his life. He had retired with enormous wealth, untouched by the law. And look at the gain. Portella would walk right into his trap by acquiring the Aprile banks. And of course, there was always Inzio in the background, with his dreams of his own nuclear arsenal. Cilke knew that with luck he could wrap it all up and the government could get ten billion dollars’ worth of Aprile banks under RICO, for there was no doubt that the Don’s heirs would sell the banks, make a deal with Portella’s secret emissaries. And ten or eleven billion dollars would be a powerful weapon against crime itself.
But Georgette would despise him, so she must never know. After all, she lived in a different world.
But now he had to meet with Portella again. There was the matter of his butchered German shepherds and who was behind it. He would start with Portella.
Timmona Portella was that rarity in Italian men of achievement: a bachelor in his fifties. But he was by no means celibate. Every Friday he spent most of the night with a beautiful woman from one of the escort services controlled by his underlings. The instructions were that the girl be young, not too long in the game, that she be beautiful and delicately featured. That she be jolly and upbeat but not a wise-ass. And that no kinkiness be proposed. Timmona was a straight-from-the-shoulder sex guy. He had his little quirks, but they were harmlessly avuncular. One of them being that the girls had to have a plain Anglo-Saxon name like Jane or Susan; he could cope with something like Tiffany or even Merle, but nothing with any ethnicity. Rarely did he have the same woman twice.
These assignations were always held in a relatively small East Side hotel owned by one of his companies, where he had the use of an entire floor, consisting of two interlocking suites. One had a fully stocked kitchen, for Portella was a gifted amateur chef, oddly