At that moment, Remo was rejecting an assignment and, because he was perfect, trying to do it in a nice way.
"Blow it out your ears," Remo said on the telephone to Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of CURE. "I don't care how many Mafia thugs are meeting in New York. You do something about them."
"Remo," Smith said, "I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm alerting you to stay ready in case something comes up on short notice. There hasn't been a meeting like this since Appalachia."
"Well, I don't like to deal with the Mafia anymore," Remo said.
"Why not, pray tell?" Smith asked, his voice even over the telephone a citric acid bath.
"Because I'm perfect and I don't like to dirty my hands on the unworthy."
And for the second time that day, someone laughed at Remo's claim to perfection.
"Funny, huh?" Remo said. "If that gives you a laugh, watch the TV news tonight about the Boston Marathon. I ran the course five times and still won. Let's see one of your dipwiddle computers do that."
"I'll call you when an assignment presents itself," Smith said in a resigned voice.
"Whatever makes you happy," Remo said breezily.
"I liked you better when you were imperfect," Smith said, but Remo did not hear him. He had already hung up and, still wearing his track clothes, trotted away from the street corner telephone booth and headed back toward his hotel.
CHAPTER THREE
Don Salvatore Massello was angry and disgusted with himself.
He sat in the back of his chauffeured limousine as it picked its way through Manhattan's late afternoon traffic, and hid himself behind clouds of cigar smoke and reflected that organized crime looked organized only because everything else in the country was so disorganized. How could one attach the label of "organized" to what had gone on this afternoon?
Massello had been sure of himself as he sat with the twenty-seven other leaders on the Mafia's ruling council in the string of suites in the Hotel Pierre, overlooking New York's Central Park.
And when it had come his turn, he had reported glowingly on the progress the organization was making in the Midwest, and then had turned his attention to the marvelous television invention he had learned about.
What he wanted, he explained, was authorization to spend "any amount of money" to obtain the machine and its inventor.
He had expected routine and immediate approval and was startled when Pietro Scubisci of the New York families, a seventy-five-year-old man with a rumpled collar and a grease-stained suit said, "What amount is any amount, Don Salvatore?"
Massello had shrugged, as if the amount was the least important of things. "Who knows?" he said. "I know it is important that we have the inventor with us, so that we and we alone control this new device. Any amount is a cheap amount, Don Pietro."
"I do not like people who spend their time watching television," Scubisci said. "Too many today, too much time looking at pictures."
The other men around the table had nodded, and Don Salvatore Massello had realized his proposal was in trouble and that he had made a mistake bringing it here to ask approval. He should just have gone ahead and bought the invention himself.
"You know who likes television?" said Fiavorante Pubescio of the Los Angeles family. "Your Arthur Grassione likes television."
"Arthur is a nice boy," said Scubisci with finality.
"He watches television," said Pubescio gingerly.
"Yes, but he is a nice boy," said Scubisci, defending his nephew. "Don Salvatore," he said, "you go ahead for us and try to buy that television picture machine. But any amount is too much. Five hundred thousand is enough for a college professor. And when you go there, take Arthur Grassione with you. He knows all about television." Scubisci looked at Pubescio. "Arthur watches television so he will know what people are saying about us," he said triumphantly.
"I know, Don Pietro," said Pubescio.
"And if your professor will not sell you his television set, well, then Arthur will take it from him," Scubisci told Don Salvatore Massello. The old man looked around the table. "Agreed?" he asked.
No one spoke, but twenty-six heads nodded toward him.
"Done," said Scubisci. "Who is next?"
And that had been that and now Don Salvatore Massello was headed downtown to meet a man he had met many years before and had detested immediately: Arthur Grassione, the chief enforcer for the national organization.
Felix the Cat had been the first. Mickey Mouse was originally supposed to be but there had been some last-minute problems with the Disney studios and the cat was brought in.
So, if not for some minor trouble in an office in Southern California, Mickey Mouse would not only have had his face plastered across a garden, decorated millions of wrist watches and made it with Minnie Mouse on dirty posters, but he would have been the first thing seen on national television for eight and one-half minutes at the New York Worlds' Fair in 1939.
Instead, it was Felix and at that time Felix had been a miracle.
All the people there had oohed and aahed and said "amazing" and "wonderful" and then forgot all about it. But 19-year-old Arthur Grassione had seen and understood and never forgot. And since then he had watched many other miracles.
At thirty, Arthur, a rising soldato in the New York crime families, watched Uncle Miltie in drag. At thirty-eight, Grassione, rising Mafia star, watched Your Show of Shows. At forty-one, he watched the live, unrehearsed murder of a Presidential assassin, and at forty-six, he watched the Vietnam war in thirty-minute slots with several sixty-minute segments. At fifty, he was the mob's number-one enforcer in the country and he watched men walk on the moon.
Television had been Arthur Grassione's major educational experience and through it he had learned that blacks were co-stars, Italians made great heroes, fat men were always funny, and Chinese were spies, servants, or gardeners except for Charlie Chan who was really Hawaiian.
And now the fifty-five-year-old Arthur Grassione was watching another miracle and he was not happy. He was watching the closing of another of Uncle Pietro's numbers rackets.
Grassione sat with his back to Vince Marino, his number-one flunky, and stared at the big Sony set as a sickly green announcer told of the major gambling bust by the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Grassione spun in his chair and stared at Marino, then pounded his fists on his huge oaken desk.
"You know that 154 chinks worked two hours each to make all the works in that frigging thing so I could see our own boys get arrested in living green and white?"
Marino noticed that the color contrast was moved all the way over to green. He got up and moved toward the set.
"The color dial, boss. It's a little off. I'll get it."
Grassione screamed at him. "Hands off. There's nothing wrong with the frigging set. The gooks made it that way. The gooks can't make anything right. Sit down."
During his tirade, a small bit of saliva had spiraled out of Grassione's mouth onto his left lapel. Grassione desperately tore at his jacket as if it were trying to eat him. He ripped it off and hurled it across the room.
As Marino slid back into his straight-backed chair, Grassione yelled, "Grease ball! Grease ball! Where the hell are you? Get in here!"
A door on the left hand side of the office opened slowly and a short, thin, pop-eyed Oriental shuffled in and stood still before Grassione, his eyes buried in the floor.
"Grease ball," Grassione cried again. His voice had the happy intensity of a Doberman pinscher chancing upon an injured bird. "About time you're here. Get my jacket and clean it."
The small Oriental began to turn toward the jacket heaped on the floor.
"And not…" Grassione began.
The Oriental turned.
"And not at your goddam Chink laundry either. Get it to an Italian Laundry. There you'll see clean. But you don't know what clean is, do you, you yellow slob?"