The Last Don - Mario Puzo [153]
Far off he could hear a tiny bell, then the snakelike rattling of the fax machine transmitting the box office receipts compiled in New York. The stuttering making a refrain for his failing heart.
The truth now. He had enough of life at its best. It was not his body that had ultimately betrayed him but his mind.
The truth now. He was disappointed in human beings. He had seen too many betrayals, too many pitiful weaknesses, too much greed for money and fame. The falseness between lovers, husbands, and wives, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters. Thank God for the films he had made that gave people hope and thank God for his grandchildren and thank God he would not see them grow up into the human condition.
The fax machine stilled its stutter, and Marrion could feel the fluttering of his failing heart. Early morning light filled his room. He saw the nurse flick off her lamp and close her book. It was so lonely to die with only this stranger in this room when he was loved by so many powerful people. Then the nurse was prying open his eyelids, putting her stethoscope to his chest. The huge doors to his hospital suite opened like the great door of some ancient temple and he could hear the rattling of dishes on the breakfast trays. . . .
Then the room filled with bright lights. He could feel fists thumping his chest and wondered why they were doing this to him. A cloud was forming in his brain, filling it with mist. Through that mist voices were screaming. A line from a movie penetrated his oxygen-starved brain. “Is this how the Gods die?”
He felt the electric shocks, the pummeling, the incision made to massage his heart with bare hands.
All of Hollywood would mourn but none more than the night duty nurse, Priscilla. She had done a double shift because she supported two small children, and it displeased her that Marrion had died on her shift. She prided herself on her reputation as one of the finest nurses in California. She hated death. But the book she had been reading had excited her and she had been planning how to talk with Marrion about making it into a movie. She would not be a nurse forever, she was a screenwriter on the side. Now she did not give up hope. This top floor of the hospital with its huge suites received the greatest men of Hollywood and she would stand guard for them against death forever.
But all this had happened in Marrion’s mind before he died, a mind saturated with thousands of movies he had watched.
In reality, the nurse had gone to his bed some fifteen minutes after he was dead, so quietly had he died. She debated for maybe thirty seconds about calling an alert to try to bring him back to life. She was an old hand with death and more merciful. Why try to revive him to all the torture of reclaiming life? She went to the window and watched the sun rise and the pigeons strutting lustfully on the stone ledges. Priscilla was the final power deciding Marrion’s fate . . . and his most merciful judge.
CHAPTER 13
SENATOR WAVVEN HAD great news, and it would cost the Clericuzio five million dollars. So said Giorgio’s courier. That demanded a mountain of paperwork. Cross would have to extract five million from the casino cage and leave a long record to account for its disappearance.
Cross also had a message from Claudia and Vail. They were in the Hotel occupying the same suite. They wanted to see him as soon as possible. It was urgent.
There was also a call from Lia Vazzi in the Hunting Lodge. He requested to see Cross personally as soon as possible. He did not have to say it was urgent, any request from him had to be urgent or he would not call, and he was already on his way.
Cross started on the paperwork for the transfer of the five million dollars to Senator Wavven. The cash itself would have too much bulk for a suitcase or large overnight bag. He called the Hotel gift shop; he remembered an antique Chinese trunk for sale that