Prizzi's Honor by Richard Condon Read Free Book Online Page B

he had made some terrible mistake.
    “I can’t even remember my mother.”
    “But that’s the scientific part. Your head still knows what you think you needed from your mother whether you can remember your mother or not. That’s whatyou need and it’s a deep thing, an emotional thing, so when you think you see that in somebody that they can bring to you what you know you needed from your mother—that’s what falling in love is. The magazine was very clear on that. A doctor wrote it.”
    “But, Charley, I can’t suppose that what I wanted from my mother was that she be six foot two with a voice like a taxicab and an appetite for pasta like the entire Boy Scouts of Italy.”
    “No, not that. Not what you can see with your eyes. It’s what you sense—like someone who will always protect you and take care of you, someone who will be kind to you and won’t yell at you, someone who doesn’t want any body else but you. It’s possible, the theory.”
    “All I know is, whether I think I know it or know I know it, I have to know when I’m going to see you again.”
    “This weekend. Absolutely. I have to know that also. We have to be together this weekend.”
    He got to bed at eleven o’clock. He fell asleep thinking about how he had to get some hot airline blank-ticket stock from Ed Prizzi to set himself and Irene with plenty of back-and-forth transportation. At a quarter to twelve, the phone rang. It was Pop.
    “Cholly?”
    “Yeah, Pop.”
    “Vincent wants to see you.”
    “Tonight?”
    “Tomorrow. Two o’clock.”
    “Okay.”
    “Not at the laundry. At Ben’s.”
    Ben Sestero’s house was where Corrado Prizzi lived.
    “What the hell is this, Pop?”
    “Whatever it is,” Pop said, “it hit the fan tonight.”

Chapter Six
    Corrado Prizzi lived with his favorite child, Amalia Sestero, who took care of him as she took care of all of her children, her kitchen, her church, and her family’s life. The house, as befitted a business executive who could expect rewards that matched his responsibilities, was in Brooklyn Heights with a magnificent view of lower Manhattan island, which could have been a foreign country to Don Corrado.
    Neither the don nor his son Vincent owned anything. Houses, cars, furniture, jewelry, and equipment were all held in the names of various companies. As traditional men of respect they felt that it was more important to observe the rules of humility and austerity—and, perhaps to give the Internal Revenue Service no reason to assume that they could afford such luxuries, which would have required more than their meager incomes.
    Amalia answered the door serenely, as if the armed doorkeeper were not there, and kissed Charley on both cheeks. “I got some gelu i muluni for you, Charley,” she said softly in Sicilian, “for when after Poppa goes to bed.”
    She led the way to two sliding oak doors and knocked softly. A muffled voice inside told her to come in. She slid open the doors, Charley entered,and she slid them closed again behind him. The room was paneled in dark wood. The furnishings were heavy and somber because it was a room for serious things—eating and meeting. The curtains had been closed. The wax fruit, in the basket at the center of the table, gleamed dully in the light falling from a central lamp, which had a red silk shade with peach-colored fringes, and only half-illuminated faces whose owners, as far as their business meetings were concerned, preferred shadows or darkness.
    Vincent Prizzi and Pop sat at the bare dining room table. They were two elderly Italian-American businessmen in black suits, ties, white shirts and shined shoes. Their permanent expressions—pleasant, deferential, and courteous—had tightened into a grimness underscoring the respect paid to them throughout their communities. These included Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Miami, Vegas, Atlantic City, Phoenix and LA, the District of Columbia, London, Sicily, Turkey, Iran, Laos, Colombia,