The Last Don - Mario Puzo [102]
“No, no,” Cross said. “You should see Claudia. She’s much prettier now.”
“That’s good,” Pippi said. “She had such an ugly mug when she was a kid. Like me.”
“Why don’t you make up with her?” Cross asked.
“She wouldn’t let me go to my ex-wife’s funeral, and she doesn’t like me. So what’s the point? In fact, when I die I want you to bar her from my funeral. Fuck her.” He paused for a moment. “She was a ballsy little kid.”
“You should see her now,” Cross said.
“Remember,” Pippi said. “Don’t volunteer anything to the Don. This meeting is about something else.”
“How can you be sure?” Cross asked.
“Because he would have met with me first to see if I would give you away,” Pippi said.
As it turned out, Pippi was right.
At the mansion, Giorgio, Don Domenico, Vincent, Petie, and Dante waited to greet them in the garden by the fig trees. As was the custom they all had lunch together before they got down to business.
Giorgio laid it out. An investigation had shown that Rustler Snedden was fixing certain college games in the Midwest. That he possibly shaved points in the pro football and pro basketball games. He did this by bribing the officials and certain players, a very tricky and dangerous business. If this came out, it would cause a tremendous scandal and uproar that would give a near fatal blow to the Clericuzio Family’s effort to have sports gambling legalized in the United States. And it would eventually be found out.
“The cops throw more manpower into a sports fix than into a serial murder,” Giorgio said. “Why, I don’t know. What the hell difference does it make who wins or loses? It’s a crime that hurts nobody except the bookmakers and the cops hate them anyway. If the Rustler fixed all the Notre Dame games so that they always won, the whole country would be happy.”
Pippi said impatiently, “Why are we even talking about this? Just have somebody warn him off.”
Vincent said, “We already tried that. This guy is a special piece of work. He doesn’t know what fear is. He’s been warned, he still keeps doing it.”
Petie said, “They call him Big Tim, and they call him the Rustler, and he loves all that shit. He never pays his bills, he even stiffs the IRS, he fights with the California state authorities because he won’t pay the sales tax of the stores he owns in his malls. Hell, he even stiffs his ex-wife and his kids on support payments. He’s a thief in his heart. You cannot talk sense to him.”
Giorgio said, “Cross, you know him personally from his gambling in Vegas. What do you say?”
Cross considered. “He’s very late paying his markers. But he finally pays. He’s smart gambling, not degenerate. He’s one of those guys who is hard to like, but he’s very rich so he has lots of friends that he brings to Vegas. Actually even fixing the games and winning some of our money, he is a big plus for us. Just let it go.” As he said this he noticed Dante smiling, knowing something he didn’t know.
“We can’t let it go,” Giorgio said. “Because this Big Tim, this Rustler, is fucking nuts. He’s laying down some crazy scheme to fix the Super Bowl game.”
Don Domenico spoke for the first time and directly to Cross, “Nephew, is that possible?”
The question was a compliment. It was the Don acknowledging that Cross was the expert in the field.
“No,” Cross said to the Don. “You can’t fix the Super Bowl officials because no one knows who they will be. You can’t fix the players because the important ones make too much money. Also, you can never fix one game in any sport a one hundred percent sure thing. If you are a fixer you have to be able to fix fifty or a hundred games. That way if you lose three or four, you don’t get hurt. And so unless you can do a lot of them it’s not worth the risk.”
“Bravo,” the Don said. “Then why does this man, who is rich, want to do something so foolhardy?”
“He wants to be famous,” Cross said. “To fix the Super Bowl he would have to do something so risky he is sure to be found out. Something so crazy I can’t even think what it will be. The Rustler will think it clever.