it’s a date. Oh. I’m such an idiot! You got me so excited talkin’ to you I almost forgot why I called. Mr Romano asked me to check on his bank balance. Would you give me that figure?’
‘You bet. No trouble at all.’
Ordinarily, Lester Torrance would have asked for a birth date or some form of identification from the caller, but in this case it was certainly not necessary. No, sir. ‘Hang on, Lureen,’ he said.
He walked over to the file, pulled out Joseph Romano’s sheet, and studied it in surprise. There had been an extraordinary number of deposits made to Romano’s acount in the past several days. Romano had never kept so much money in his account before. Lester Torrance wondered what was going on. Some big deal, obviously. When he had dinner with Lureen Hartford, he intended to pump her. A little inside information never hurt. He returned to the phone.
‘Your boss has been keeping us busy,’ he told Tracy. ‘He has just over three hundred thousand dollars in his current account.’
‘Oh, good. That’s the figure I have.’
‘Would he like us to transfer it to an investment account? It’s not drawing any interest sitting here, and I could –’
‘No. He wants it right where it is,’ Tracy assured him.
‘Okay.’
‘Thank you so much, Lester. You’re a darlin’.’
‘Wait a minute! Should I call you at the office about the arrangements for Tuesday?’
‘I’ll call you, honey,’ Tracy told him.
And the connection was broken.
The modern high-rise office building owned by Anthony Orsatti stood on Poydras Street between the riverfront and the gigantic Louisiana Superdrome, and the offices of the Pacific Import-Export Company occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. At one end of the suite were Orsatti’s offices, and at the other end, Joe Romano’s rooms. The space in between was occupied by four young receptionists who were available evenings to entertain Anthony Orsatti’s friends and business acquaintances. In front of Orsatti’s suite sat two very large men whose lives were devoted to guarding their boss. They also served as chauffeurs, masseurs and errand boys for the capo.
On this Thursday morning Orsatti was in his office checking out the previous day’s receipts from running numbers, book-making, prostitution, and a dozen other lucrative activities that the Pacific Import-Export Company controlled.
Anthony Orsatti was in his late sixties. He was a strangely built man with a large, heavy torso and short, bony legs that seemed to have been designed for a smaller man. Standing up he looked like a seated frog. He had a face crisscrossed with an erratic web of scars that could have been woven by a drunken spider, an oversized mouth and black, bulbous eyes. He had been totally bald from the age of fifteen after an attack of alopecia, and had worn a black wig ever since. It fitted him badly, but in all the years no one had dared mention it to his face. Orsatti’s cold eyes were gambler’s eyes, giving away nothing, and his face, except when he was with his five daughters, whom he adored, was expressionless. The only clue to Orsatti’s emotions was his voice. He had a hoarse, raspy voice, the result of a wire having been tightened around his throat on his twenty-first birthday, when he had been left for dead. The two men who had made that mistake had turned up in the morgue the following week. When Orsatti got really upset, his voice lowered to a strangled whisper that could barely be heard.
Anthony Orsatti was a king who ran his fiefdom with bribes, guns and blackmail. He ruled New Orleans, and it paid him obeisance in the form of untold riches. The capos of the other Families across the country respected him and constantly sought his advice.
At the moment, Anthony Orsatti was in a benevolent mood. He had had breakfast with his mistress, whom he kept in an block of flats he owned in Lake Vista. He visited her three times a week, and this morning’s visit had been particularly satisfactory. She did things to him in bed that other women never dreamed of, and Orsatti sincerely believed it was because she loved him so much. His organization was running smoothly. There were no problems, because Anthony Orsatti knew how to solve difficulties before they became problems. He had once explained his philosophy to Joe Romano: ‘Never let a little problem become a big problem, Joe, or it grows like a fuckin’ snowball. You got a precinct captain who thinks he oughta get a bigger cut – you melt him, see? No more snowball. You get some hot-shot from Chicago who asks permission to open up his own little operation here in New Orleans? You know that pretty soon that “little” operation is gonna turn into a big operation and start cuttin’ into your profits. So you say yes, and then when he gets here, you melt the son of a bitch. No more snowball. Get the picture?’
Joe Romano got the picture.
Anthony Orsatti loved Romano. He was like a son to him. Orsatti had picked him up when Romano was a punk kid rolling drunks in alleys. He himself had trained Romano, and now the kid could tap-dance his way around with the best of them. He was fast, he was smart and he was honest. In ten years Romano had risen to the rank of Anthony Orsatti’s chief lieutenant. He supervised all the Family’s operations and reported only to Orsatti.
Lucy, Orsatti’s private secretary, knocked and came into the office. She was twenty-four years old, a college graduate, with a face and figure that had won several local beauty contests. Orsatti enjoyed having beautiful young women around him.
He looked at the clock on his desk. It was 10:45. He had told Lucy he did not want any interruptions before noon. He scowled at her. ‘What?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Orsatti. There’s a Miss Gigi Dupres on the phone. She sounds hysterical, but she won’t tell me what she wants. She insists on speaking with you personally. I thought it might be important.’
Orsatti sat there, running the name through the computer in his brain. Gigi Dupres? One of the broads he had up in his suite his last time in Vegas? Gigi Dupres? Not that he could remember, and he prided himself on a mind that forgot nothing. Out of curiosity, Orsatti picked up the phone and waved a dismissal at Lucy.
‘Yeah? Who’s this?’
‘Is thees Mr Anthony Orsatti?’ She had a French accent.
‘So?’
‘Oh, thank God I got hold of you, Meester Orsatti!’
Lucy was right. The dame was hysterical. Anthony Orsatti was not interested. He started to hang up, when her voice went on.
‘You must stop him, please!’
‘Lady, I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about, and I’m busy –’
‘My Joe. Joe Romano. He promised to take me with him, comprenez vous?’
‘Hey, you got a beef with Joe, take it up with him. I ain’t his nursemaid.’
‘He lie to me! I just found out he is leave for Brazil without me. Half of that three hundred thousand dollars is mine.’
Anthony Orsatti suddenly found he was interested, after all. ‘What three hundred thousand you talkin’ about?’
‘The money Joe is hiding in his current account. The money – how you say? – skimmed.’
Anthony
