The Last Don - Mario Puzo [212]
For a flash he thought of Marlowe, a good nigger, really sweet, always so cheerful and cooperative. He had always liked Marlowe, and his murder was the one thing he felt sorry about.
Jim Losey still had hours to wait before the screening and the party. He could go gamble in the main casino, but gambling was a mug’s game. He decided against it. He had a big night ahead. First the movie and the party, then at three in the morning he would have to help Dante kill Cross De Lena and bury him in the desert.
Bobby Bantz invited the above-the-line principals of Messalina to his Villa for celebratory drinks at five that evening: Athena, Dita Tommey, Skippy Deere, and as a courtesy, Cross De Lena. Only Cross declined, claiming pressure of duties at the Hotel on this special night.
Bantz had brought his latest “conquest,” a seemingly fresh young girl named Johanna, discovered by a talent scout in a small town in Oregon. She was signed to a five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract for two years. Beautiful but completely untalented, she gave off such a virginal air that the innocence was a separate attraction. And yet with a shrewdness beyond her years, she had refused to sleep with Bobby Bantz until he promised to bring her to Vegas for the showing of Messalina.
Skippy Deere, with an adjoining apartment in Bantz’s Villa, chose to be a squatter in Bantz’s place, and so prevented Bantz from getting in a quick screw with Johanna, which made Bantz irritable. Skippy was pitching an idea for a feature film that he really was crazy about. Being crazy for a property was a legitimate part of a producer’s job.
Deere was telling Bantz about Jim Losey, the greatest hero cop in the LAPD, a big, handsome son of a bitch, who might even be able to play the title role himself, since it would be a story about his life. One of those great “true” life stories where you could invent anything bizarre.
Deere and Bantz both knew that Losey playing himself was a fantasy, invented to con Losey so that he would sell his story cheap, and also for public hype.
Skippy Deere outlined the story with great enthusiasm. Nobody could sell a nonexistent property better. In a moment of pure exhilaration, he picked up the phone and, before Bantz could protest, invited the detective to the five P.M. cocktail party. Losey asked if he could bring a friend, and Deere assured him he could, assuming it was a girlfriend. Skippy Deere, as a producer of films, liked to mix different worlds together. You never knew what miracle might emerge.
Cross De Lena and Lia Vazzi were in the Xanadu penthouse suite reviewing the details of what they would do that night.
“I have all the men in place,” Lia said. “I control the Villa compound. None of them know what you and I will do, they will have no part in that. But I have word that Dante has a crew from the Enclave digging your grave in the desert. We have to be careful tonight.”
“After tonight is what I worry about,” Cross said. “Then we have Don Clericuzio to deal with. Do you think he’ll buy the story?”
“Not really,” Lia said. “But that is our only hope.”
Cross shrugged. “I have no choice. Dante killed my father and so now he has to kill me.” He paused for a moment and then said, “I hope the Don was not on his side from the beginning. Then we have no chance.”
Lia said cautiously, “We could abort everything and lay our troubles in front of the Don. Let him decide and act.”
“No,” Cross said. “He can’t decide against his grandson.”
“You