The Last Don - Mario Puzo [80]
Pippi grinned at him. “This job is for Gronevelt. You saw him with the governor. Well, we’re going to give him his wish. Gronevelt had to get the OK from Giorgio. And I said you would help me out.”
Far away on one of the greens, Cross could see a foursome of two women and two men shimmering cartoonlike in the desert sun. “I have to make my bones,” he said to his father. He knew he had to agree or live a completely different life. And he loved the life he led, working for his father, hanging out at the Xanadu, the direction of Gronevelt, the beautiful showgirls, the easy money, the sense of power. And once he did so he should never be subject to the fates of ordinary men.
“I’ll do all the planning,” Pippi said. “I’ll be with you all the way. There’s no danger. But you have to be the shooter.”
Cross rose from the bench. He could see the flags on the seven Villas flapping, though there was no breeze on the golf course. For the first time in his young life he felt the ache of a world that was to be lost. “I’m with you,” he said.
In the three weeks that followed, Pippi gave Cross an indoctrination. He explained that they were waiting for a surveillance team report on Theo, his movements, his habits, recent photos. Also, an operations team of six men from the Enclave in New York were moving into place in Los Angeles where Theo was still living. The whole operation plan would be based on the report of the surveillance team. Then Pippi lectured Cross on the philosophy.
“This is a business,” he said. “You take all the precautions to prevent the downside. Anybody can knock somebody off. The trick is never to get caught. That is the sin. And never think of the personalities involved. When the head of General Motors throws fifty thousand people out of work, that’s business. He can’t help wrecking their lives, he has to do it. Cigarettes kill thousands of people, but what can you do? People want to smoke and you can’t ban a business that generates billions of dollars. Same with guns, everybody has a gun, everybody kills everybody, but it’s a billion-dollar industry, you can’t get rid of it. What can you do? People must earn a living, that comes first. All the time. You don’t believe that, go live in the shit.”
The Clericuzio Family was very strict, Pippi told Cross. “You have to get their OK. You can’t go around killing people because they spit on your shoe. The Family has to be with you because they can make you jailproof.”
Cross listened. He only asked one question. “Giorgio wants it to look like an accident? How do we do that?”
Pippi laughed. “Never let anybody tell you how to run your operation. They can go fuck themselves. They tell me their maximum expectations. I do what is best for me. And the best is to be simple. Very, very simple. And when you have to get fancy, get very, very fancy.”
When the surveillance reports came, Pippi made Cross study all the data. There were some photos of Theo, photos of his car showing its license plates. A map of the road he traveled from Brentwood up to Oxnard to visit a girlfriend. Cross said to his father, “He can still get a girlfriend?”
“You don’t know women,” Pippi said. “If they like you, you can piss in the sink. If they don’t like you, you can make them the Queen of England and they’ll shit on you.”
Pippi flew into L.A. to set up his operations team. He came back two days later and told Cross, “Tomorrow night.”
The next day, before dawn, to escape the heat of the desert, they drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Driving across the desert, Pippi told Cross to relax. Cross was mesmerized by the glorious sunrise that seemed to melt the desert sand into a deep river of gold lapping at the foot of the distant Sierra Nevadas. He felt anxious. He wanted to get the job done.
They arrived in a Family house in the Pacific Palisades where the six-man