This day, he noted that government mail trucks were carrying tubers. Which was odd, because there must be better ways to ship carrots than by first class mail. He tried to explain that to his superior, but he was a new man who showed large areas of ignorance when it came to agriculture. But then politics was politics and sometimes it was whom you knew, not what you knew.
How many blinks per truck? his superior asked.
"About fifty. I don't know. I didn't think pumpkin pies or what have you were that important."
Thank you, Mr. Pulmetter, that will be all.
Soon after, a postal supervisor was also reassured of governmental stupidity when he was ordered to let the Department of Agriculture check all outgoing mail through a special machine.
The reports all finally reached a lemon-faced man with eyeglasses, sitting behind a desk in Folcroft Sanatorium in Rye, New York, the Long Island Sound magnificent in the dawn sunlight behind him.
The reports showed a clear pattern to Dr. Harold W. Smith's studied eyes. The heroin was still hidden. But the outlets were sealed off. The buyers had been screaming for it, and now attempts were being made to smuggle out small amounts through the mail, by personal carriers-what have you.
But the buyers were angry and they confirmed a suspicion. It was all Mafia and the capo Mafioso was Dominic Verillio. A solid confirmation. No doubt about it.
Harold Smith picked up his special phone and dialled. The phone rang and then was answered. There was squawking. Remo was either having trouble or playing games with the scrambler again. Almost by the month, the man showed signs of psychological deterioration.
Remo did not know it but CURE had twice tried to get men as standbys. Same method. But the drug that simulated death had produced death. Twice. The laboratories examined it and came back with the report that indeed it was a deadly poison.
"Could a man take it and live?"
"Doubtful. And if he did live, you'd have a vegetable," was the answer.
Smith never revealed this to Remo and especially not to Remo's trainer, Chiun. The old man already babbled on too much about Oriental gods taking the bodies of dead people and seeking revenge on evildoers.
Remo was a typical, overemotional, spiritually self-indulgent, American wise guy. Nothing Oriental about him. The only communing he did was with his stomach, sex organ and ego. He had all the calm Eastern spirituality of a hamburger and coke, to go.
A click on the phone and then a voice.
"Yeah. Whaddya want?"
"It's Verillio. He's definitely the Mafia man."
"It's 7:30 a.m."
"Well, I didn't want to miss you."
"Well, you didn't."
Click.
CHAPTER TEN
Don Dominic Verillio arrived at his office early that morning. He did not say hello to his secretary. He walked into his office, shut the door and without taking off his straw hat, sat down behind his desk and began drawing diagrams and plans, with arrows and boxes, much as he had learned in Officer's Candidate School during the Second World War. He had refined his strategy much since being mustered out in 1945 as a major with three battle citations.
He was going to play it smart. He would hold back Gaetano Gasso for the writer, Remo Barry. Barry knew something, was responsible for something, or belonged to something or someone. Gaetano Gasso would find out exactly what.
The winner, however, is usually he who commits his reserves last. That would mean sending in lightweight people first against Remo Barry's old Oriental servant. They would seize him, have him phone Barry. The gook's life for information from Remo Barry.
And if that did not pry out the information, then Gasso would take it out of Remo Barry's flesh. In pieces. So much for that.
To the other capos, he would say, wait. Yes, there had been trouble with delivery. There would be a new, better method of delivery shortly. Hold on. Your money is safe. So much for the capos.
He picked up the phone and dialled, apologized for the break in procedure and asked for an appointment because of an urgent matter. His voice was tender and respectful.
"I'll tell you everything when I get there. Yes. Well, I don't know. Okay, I'll meet you there."
On his way to his car, Don Dominic Verillio met Willie the Plumber Palumbo at a prearranged corner. Willie stood there coughing, next to his car.
Don Dominic explained what he wanted done, what Gaetano Gasso should do, what the other men would do.
"I'd like to go after the little gook myself," said Willie the Plumber when he heard that Mr. Gasso would not be going.
"No, I need you here."
Willie the Plumber bowed to Don Dominic Verillio and walked dizzily around the front of his car, to begin to deliver the messages. His footing was never good at this time of the day because of what he called "the mornings."
For a while he had asked people if they suffered from "the mornings" also-this to prove that losing consciousness when walking during the morning was a normal occurrence. When he received negative responses and advice that he should see a doctor, Willie the Plumber Palumbo stopped asking people if they, too, had "the mornings."
Verillio watched Willie the Plumber drive away, then continued walking to his own car. He drove off to the western side of the city, then through a large set of stone gates and parked his four-door gray Lincoln Continental Mark II before a crypt with a winged statue in marble.
He waited, then saw the familiar black car pull up behind his. He got out, walked around and sat in the passenger's seat.
His conference took only minutes. Then he strolled back to his car, opened the door and eased himself into the soft leather cushioning. He picked up the telephone, as he watched the black car move away in his rear-view mirror. He dialed his office number.
"Hello, Joan. I will be seeing this morning the editor of the Tribune, Chief Dugan and Mayor Hansen. If anyone phones, I will return their calls this afternoon."
He hung up and drove through the city to the back of the Tribune building, where trucks were loading the first edition. It was his city. His numbers, his whores and his narcotics. And he wasn't going to give it up because a few little things went wrong.
The brain would straighten out everything and then it would be his country, just as this was his city. He could count on that brilliant mind to do it. Even if that mind were not qualified for membership in the Sicilian Brotherhood.
But then he was not Capo Mafioso because he listened to the old pistol Petes and their hand kissing and vendettas, codes of this and codes of that, and all the hogwash imported from Sicily.
America still had the best killing systems and America had the best organizing systems. One should use them. And that way one could become the youngest Capo Mafioso ever. Only fifty-one and he was number one.
Well, that one person was above him but that person didn't count, not having the qualifications for the Sicilian Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Willie the Plumber spotted a meek looking man with a funny tubular device standing inside a truck and pointing the device at people.
Willie decided he didn't like the meek little man pointing that thing at his blue Eldorado. Maybe it would do something to the paint or something.
Willie the Plumber pulled up in front of the truck and parked so that the truck could not move. Then, rocking through another attack of "the mornings," he got out of the car and walked back to the man in the truck.
"Hey, whaddya doing in the truck with that thing?" asked Willie the Plumber.
"Department of Agriculture. Tuber survey."