Omerta - Mario Puzo [79]
“Do not count on the gratitude of deeds done for people in the past,” he remembered the Don lecturing him. “You must make them grateful for things you will do for them in the future.” The banks were the future for the Aprile family, Astorre, and his growing army of men. It was a future worth fighting for, no matter the cost.
Don Craxxi had supplied him with another six men he absolutely vouched for. And Astorre had turned his home into a fortress with these men and the latest security detection devices. He had also set up a safe house to disappear to, if the authorities wanted to grab him for whatever reason.
He did not use close bodyguards. Instead, he relied on his own quickness and used his guards as advance scouts on the routes he would take.
He would let Heskow sit for a time. Astorre wondered about Cilke’s reputation as an honorable man, as even Don Aprile had so described him.
“There are honorable men who spend all their lives preparing for a supreme act of treachery,” Pryor had said to him. But despite all this, Astorre felt confident. All he would have to do was to stay alive as the puzzle pieces fit together.
The real test would come from men like Heskow, Portella, Tulippa, and Cilke. He would personally have to get his hands bloody once again.
It took a month for Astorre to figure out exactly how to handle John Heskow. The man would be formidable, tricky, easy to kill but difficult to extract information from. Using his son as leverage was too dangerous—it would force Heskow to plot against him while pretending to cooperate. He decided that he would not let Heskow know that the Sturzo brothers had told him Heskow was the driver on the hit. That might scare him too much.
Meanwhile, he amassed the necessary information on Heskow’s daily habits. It seemed he was a temperate man whose primary love was growing flowers and selling them wholesale to florists and even personally from a roadside stand in the Hamptons. His only indulgence was attending the basketball games of his son’s team, and he followed Villanova’s basketball schedule religiously.
One Saturday night in January Heskow was going to the Villanova-Temple game at Madison Square Garden in New York. When he left his house he buttoned it up with his sophisticated alarm system. He was always careful in the everyday details of life, always confident that he had made provisions for every possible accident. And it was that confidence Astorre wanted to shatter at the very beginning of their interview.
John Heskow drove into the city and had a solitary dinner at a Chinese restaurant near the Garden. He always ate Chinese when he went out because it was the one thing he could not cook better at home. He liked the silver covers over each dish as if it contained some delightful surprise. He liked Chinese people. They minded their own business, didn’t make small talk or show obsequious familiarity. And never, ever, had he found a mistake in his bill, which he always checked carefully because he ordered numerous dishes.
Tonight he went all out. He was particularly fond of Peking duck and crayfish in Cantonese lobster sauce. There was a special white fried rice and of course a few fried dumplings and spicy spareribs. He finished off with green-tea ice cream, an acquired taste, but one that showed he was a gourmet of Eastern food.
When he arrived at the Garden, the arena was only half full, though Temple had a high-ranked team. Heskow took his choice seat, provided by his son, near the floor and middle of the court. This made him proud of Jocko.
The game was not exciting. Temple crushed Villanova, but Jocko was the high scorer in the game. Afterward Heskow went back to the locker room.
His son greeted him with a hug. “Hey, Dad, I’m glad you came. You want to come out and eat with us?”
Heskow was enormously gratified. His son was a true gentleman. Of course these kids didn’t want an old geezer like