The Last Don - Mario Puzo [77]
Gronevelt decided to take the plunge. He said, “Governor, you are letting your family down, you are letting your friends down, and you are letting the people of Nevada down. You cannot go on like this.”
“Sure I can,” Walter Wavven said. “Fuck the people of Nevada. Who cares?”
Gronevelt said, “I do. I care about you. I’ll put the money together and you must run for senator in the next election.”
“Why the hell should I?” the governor said. “It doesn’t mean anything in this fucking country. I’m governor of the great state of Nevada and that little prick murders my daughter and goes free. And I have to take it. People make jokes about my dead kid and pray for the murderer. You know what I pray for? That an atom bomb wipes out this fucking country and especially the state of California.”
Pippi and Cross remained silent during all this. They were a little shaken by the governor’s intensity. Also, both understood Gronevelt was working to a purpose.
“You have to put all of that behind you,” Gronevelt said. “Don’t let this tragedy destroy your life.” His unctuousness would have irritated a saint.
The governor threw his baseball cap across the room and helped himself to another whiskey at the bar.
“I can’t forget,” he said. “I lie awake at night and dream about squeezing that little cocksucker’s eyes out of his head. I want to set him on fire, I want to cut off his hands and legs. And then I want him to be alive so I can do it again and again.” He smiled drunkenly at them, almost fell, they could see the yellow teeth and smell the decay in his mouth.
Wavven now seemed less drunk, his voice became quiet, he spoke almost conversationally. “Did you see how he stabbed her?” he asked. “He stabbed her through the eyes. The judge wouldn’t let the jury see the photos. Prejudicial. But I, her father, could see the photos. And so little Theo goes free, with that smirk on his face. He stabbed my daughter through the eyes but he gets up every morning and he sees the sun shining. Oh, I wish I could kill them all—the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, all of them.” He filled his glass and then walked around the room furiously, his speech a crazy ramble.
“I can’t go out there and bullshit about what I no longer believe. Not while the little bastard is alive. He sat at my dinner table, my wife and I treated him like a human being even though we disliked him. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. Never give anybody the benefit of the doubt. We took him into our home, gave him a bed to sleep in with our daughter and he was laughing at us all the time. He was saying, ‘Who gives a fuck if you’re the governor? Who gives a fuck if you have money? Who gives a fuck that you are civilized, decent human beings? I will kill your daughter whenever I like and there is nothing you can do. I’ll bring you all down. I’ll fuck your daughter, then I’ll kill her, and then I’ll stick it up your ass and go free.’ ” Wavven staggered and Cross quickly went to hold him. The governor looked up beyond Cross, to the high mural-decorated ceiling above, all pink angels and white-clad saints. “I want him dead,” the governor said and burst into tears. “I want him dead.”
Gronevelt said quietly, “Walter, it will all go away, give it time. File for senator. You have the best years of your life ahead of you, you can still do so much.”
Wavven shook himself away from Cross and said quite calmly to Gronevelt, “Don’t you see, I don’t believe in doing good anymore. I’m forbidden to tell anyone how I really feel, not even my wife. The hatred I feel. And I’ll tell you something else. The voting public has contempt for me, they perceive me as a weak fool. A man who lets his daughter get murdered, then can’t get him punished. Who would trust the welfare of the great state of Nevada to such a man?” He was sneering now. “That little fuck could get elected easier than me.” He paused for a moment. “Alfred, forget it. I’m not running for