"My Johnny does crazy things today that come out smart tomorrow." When he hired the electronics experts, people hinted he was crazy. When he hired the funny Orientals, people whispered he was crazy. When he hired computer programmers, people said he was crazy. And each time, Don Guglielmo Balunta would answer that his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow. Even when the word got around about his strange dream and how he had young athletes try to climb up to an impossible-to-reach window in his home, even then Don Guglielmo told everyone his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow.
But when Johnny started ordering everyone to go to the mattresses when there was no enemy in sight, Don Guglielmo was instantly worried. He did not even have to send for Johnny Deuce. Johnny came himself, with no bodyguard and a very fat briefcase.
Johnny was paunchier now than in those early years when first the two had assumed control. His hair surrendered to shiny scalp along a thinning line of resistance. His face had lost the hard lines to a smothering layer of flesh but the dark eyes still shone with sharp fury.
Don Guglielmo, in a ruby smoking jacket, lounged on the edge of a plush green couch set on what appeared to be acres of marble flooring. Johnny Deuce sat on the edge of his chair, his feet planted forward, his knees together, refusing a glass of Strega, a piece of fruit, talk of weather and family. He told his don he was worried.
Over the years Don Guglielmo would listen very carefully but this time his hands raised and he said he would hear none of it.
"This time," said Balunta, "you listen to me. I am more worried than you. You listen. I talk. You go to the Miami Beach. You get the sun. You get the rest. You get yourself a girl with those nice titties that go up. You have wine. You eat the good food. You get sun. Then we talk."
"Patron, we face the most deadly enemy. Deadliest ever."
"Where?" said Balunta, his hands rising to the heavens. "Show me this enemy. Where is he?"
"He is on the horizon. I've done a lot of thinking. There's something going on in this country that eventually means the end of us all. All of us. The organization. Everything. Not just here but all over. It's not just that bad night I had. That was just the tip of an iceberg that's going to destroy us all."
Don Guglilmo leaped from the sofa and grabbed Johnny Deuce's head in his hands. Palms to ears, he raised Deussio's head so their eyes must meet.
"You get the rest. You get the rest now. No more talk. You listen to your don. You get the rest. No more talk. After you rest, we talk. Okay? Okay?"
"As you say," said Johnny Deuce.
"Atsa good. I worry for you," said Balunta.
And Johnny Deuce told his don he could use a drink but not the bought stuff. Good red wine made especially for the don. And wine was brought in in a large green gallon jug and placed on the slate-gray table top. Deussio placed a hand over his glass and did not raise it.
"You won't take the drink with your don?"
Johnny Deuce removed his hand from the cut crystal glass.
"The worries are in your head. You think your don would poison his right arm?" said Balunta. "Would I poison my heart? My brains? You are the legs of my throne. Never. Never." And to show his good faith, Balunta took the glass sitting before his Johnny and drank it all. Then he threw the glass toward the wall but it fell short, cracking on the marble floor.
"I knew you wouldn't poison me, Don Guglielmo," said Deussio.
"Then why you no drink the wine with your don?"
Guglielmo Balunta wanted to express himself with his hands. Wanted to throw them out wide to express his confusion. But they did not move very well. They felt icy and they stung gently as if immersed in fresh Vichy water. He felt giddy and light. When he stepped back to the couch the legs did not step with him. So he went back anyway and almost reached the couch. The fall seemed far away, not hurting as a collapse on marble usually did but rather a gentle laying down so that he was looking up at his beautiful ceiling. His Johnny was saying something. He kept talking about inevitabilities and rolled from his briefcase that funny long paper with the holes in it. Guglielmo Balunta did not care. He thought of a very white little rock he once had near Messina where he was born. He had thrown it down into the narrow straits that separated Sicily from Italy and told his friends: "I will live until the sea gives up that rock." He thought about his youth and then saw a vision of the straits of Messina. Something white was coming up through the waves. A speck. No. His rock.
Johnny Deuce did not know for sure if Don Guglielmo could hear him. Sally and the other men were already coming through the outside gate of the Balunta estate. Balunta's household men would be sent to a small regime in Detroit. They would not fight if the don were dead because there was no one left to fight for. However, if Johnny were alone and standing over the corpse, they might take out their rage of their own failure on him. So it would be quick. And in case his don could still hear him, he wanted him to know why he had to kill him.
"This sheet is the figuring of several years. Things are happening in this country that have no reason to happen. I saw it several years ago when Scubisci had his troubles in the east. We called this 'no reason' the X-factor. And we said this "no reason" is a reason. So all of a sudden a tight city becomes untight and politicians and police are going to jail all of a sudden with prosecutors having evidence they shouldn't have. Judges we've owned for years suddenly terrorized by some other force. That force is the X-factor, and if you look at it, you'll realize we're through. In ten or fifteen years, we're not going to be able to do business."
Sally was past the front doors with his own men and their weapons came out. There was murmuring in the hallway outside the vast marble-flooring living room and Johnny Deuce called everyone inside.
"Heart attack," he said, keeping the computer printouts concealed against his side, even though he knew the bodyguards would no more understand them than Balunta did.
"Yeah. Heart attack," said one of the house bodyguards and Johnny Deuce nodded for Sally to take them out of the room. On the way out, one of the guards whispered to Sally: "What is he, talking to a stiff?" And Sally cuffed him in the back of the head and the bodyguard understood that.
Deussio continued in the empty room. He told his dead don that the X-factor was a force that was making government work, not for those who tried to buy it but for those who voted for it. And this X-factor was growing stronger. Therefore every day an attack was delayed, the chances of overcoming X-factor grew smaller. By the time someone with Balunta's mentality had been ready to move, it would be too late.
The enforcer unit of this X-factor had brushed through St. Louis a few days before, just an edge of the iceberg. It was after something else at the time.
"We have one small advantage and I'm going to use it," said Deussio. "The X-factor does not know we understand it. See here. Look."
And he unfolded the long computer printout listing probabilities. Even if Don Guglielmo had been breathing, he would have understood it no better. Which was why he had to die. The strategist, John Vincent Deussio, knew he had to move now, even if others didn't. Which made him what he was. Which made him very dangerous. Unlike the others, he knew he was in a war for survival. So he felt very free to kill anyone who would not aid the cause.
He drank the unpoisoned wine Balunta had poured for himself, the wine into which Johnny had not dropped the poison pellet, and sat back on the sofa to prepare his attack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first Remo saw the rough sketch of himself was at the Ohio demonstration. The surrounding fields were green with corn and Fielding had explained that he also had to show the process worked in good, moderate climate soil as well as bad. The field was raised on a little hill surrounded by a chain-link fence.