The Badger Game E-Book

William Norris

• Herausgeber: CamCat Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 376

Beschreibung

The Badger Game

Leseprobe

The Badger Game

William Norris

CamCat Publishing, LLC

Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

camcatpublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© 2020 by CamCat Publishing

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address 101 Creekside Crossing, Suite 280, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Trade Paperback ISBN 9780744300802

Large-Print Paperback ISBN 9780744300055

eBook ISBN 9780744300819

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935812

Cover design by Mimi Bark

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Contents

Also by William Norris

I. Book One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

II. Book Two

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

For Further Discussion

About the Author

More from William Norris

A Grave Too Many

Snowbird

A Talent to Deceive

CamCat Books

Also by William Norris

Fiction

A Grave Too Many

Make Mad the Guilty

Nonfiction

The Man Who Fell from the Sky

Snowbird

A Talent to Deceive

Willful Misconduct

badger game: a dishonest trick in which a person is lured into a compromising situation and then surprised and blackmailed

—Oxford American Dictionary

Part One

Book One

1996

One

Gregory Bartlett stared vacantly ahead as he nosed his shiny black Lincoln Town Car through the narrow entrance to the campus. A respectful salute from the pretty young college work-student on duty in the security gatehouse went unacknowledged.

“Up yours, then.” She leaned forward and extended an unladylike finger in the direction of the receding sedan. Bartlett, happening to glance in his mirror at that moment, saw the gesture and tightened his lips. Damned students. No respect for authority. No respect for anything, these days. He’d have to talk to the dean about that one.

The road curved past a palm-fringed pond with herons and wood storks sunning themselves solemnly along the banks, a solitary pelican circling above in search of lunch. In the branches of an overhanging bush, a cormorant stood with outstretched wings, drying them off before its next plunge beneath the smooth surface.

Bartlett registered the idyllic scene without a flicker of emotion. Once, long ago, the ambience of the Fulford campus had entranced him. The rampant greenery, the immaculate lawns, the abundant wildlife that thrived oblivious to the swarming students—all these had seemed to him the epitome of a liberal-arts college. Food for the soul to accompany a diet of higher learning. How long had it been since the gloss had worn away? Ten years? Fifteen? It seemed an age since he had first driven through those gates for his interview with the college trustees for the post of president.

Back then, Bartlett had been a trusting young administrator in his mid-thirties. A solid PhD in political science on his résumé, a few years of teaching at a prestigious Ivy League university, followed by a deanship at a respectable liberal-arts college in Oklahoma. The trustees, mostly prosperous businessmen with a smattering of clergy and lawyers, had been looking for a dynamic president to revive the flagging fortunes of Fulford—a college too young to have acquired a decent endowment but old enough to be in serious need of renewal. In Bartlett, they decided, they had found him.

Nor had he let them down. No one could accuse him of failure in those early days. Not that the bastards remembered that now, Bartlett thought glumly as he swung carelessly into his parking space and almost annihilated an oleander bush. He had raised the profile of the college, solicited funds from every philanthropist within a hundred-mile radius, increased the enrollment, and even produced a modest improvement in academic standards. Now, all they could think of was their stupid budget deficit. Two million dollars and climbing, and none of it his fault, goddamn it!

He slammed the door of the Town Car with unnecessary force and strode the few paces to the door of the Fitzwalter Administrative Building, named after a long-dead benefactor who had been in urgent need of a tax write-off at the time. Bartlett had been good at finding such people. The campus was littered with endowed classrooms and laboratories bearing names that meant less than nothing to faculty and students. The place sometimes reminded him of a graveyard with extra-large tombstones. All those pathetic efforts to translate ill-gotten gains into some form of lasting posterity, and all forgotten almost before the commemorative plaques had been affixed. Not that he was ungrateful. But for those donors, Fulford College would have sunk into oblivion long since, and his $150,000 salary would have followed it down the tubes.

Bartlett pushed open the front door and welcomed the blast of cold air that struck his face. Even the short walk from his air-conditioned car had made him sweat inside his habitual blue suit and his throat-strangling collar and tie. He envied the students and the casual young members of faculty who could dress in ways more appropriate for the Florida sunshine and humidity, but appearances had to be maintained. Bartlett was adamant about appearances.

His administrative assistant, Melissa Blunt, looked up from her keyboard as Bartlett clumped toward his office. She began to smile a polite greeting, tossing back blonde hair that framed a face fighting the years with gratifying success, then dropped her eyes. One look at Bartlett’s body language had convinced her that she would be wasting her time. Her boss was not in a good mood. But then he seldom was, these days.

Melissa was a fixture on the Fulford campus. Married to an extremely dull academic who had found himself a sinecure as a consultant to one of the local captains of industry, she had worked her way up from a junior position on the public-relations staff to become the most indispensable figure in the college administration. She had looks and she had brains. Most important of all, she knew where all the bodies were buried. As to her relationship with Gregory Bartlett, no one was quite sure. Rumor had it that they were secret lovers. Melissa had heard the scuttlebutt and done nothing to discourage it. She found the slander vaguely amusing, considering the fact that she hated Bartlett’s guts.

“Melissa!”

She took her time about answering, picking up her notebook and stretching her legs beneath her long cotton skirt before getting to her feet. They were good legs, much admired around the campus by lusty young professors and randy male students, any of whom she could have eaten for breakfast. Melissa liked to maintain an air of incipient promise with every man she met, though as far as anyone knew she had never fulfilled that promise with any of them. Those who knew her husband thought it was a great waste and a crying shame. Those who didn’t wondered what the man must have to keep such a gorgeous creature faithful between the sheets.

She put on her most bland expression and wandered in to face Gregory Bartlett across the bare expanse of his rosewood desk.

“What do you know about this?” He brandished a piece of paper at her. She took it between two fingers, as though it was something mildly disgusting, and turned it over to read the contents without really taking in the words.

She shrugged. “Nothing,” she said.

“Don’t play the innocent with me!” Jesus, he was in a bad mood this morning. She stood her ground, her lips firmly shut. “You know everything that goes on around this campus,” Bartlett raged. “Why didn’t you warn me that those old farts in Einstein House were about to lose their minds?”

“Nobody told me,” she said, reading the letter again with greater attention. “No reason why they should. The pensioners run their own affairs, you know that.”

“Hah hah!” Bartlett was at his most obnoxious, she thought, when he was trying to be ironic. “You’ve been reading too many of your own brochures, Melissa. They may think they run their own affairs, but you and I know different. We hold the purse strings, we provide them with their damn building, and they’ll jump when I tell them to jump!”

“Apparently not,” she said mildly. “It looks from this letter”—she waved it about to infuriate him further— “as though they’re making a unilateral declaration of independence. I must say, I didn’t think they had it in them.”

Bartlett fumed. He had always considered the pensioners to be one of the more brilliant strokes of his administration, conceived in a flash of genius more than ten years before. The elements of the idea had been simple: because Florida attracted vast numbers of elderly retirees every year, and because many of them were stinking rich, why not offer them something more constructive to do in their declining years than play golf and drink themselves to death? “Intergenerational learning” had been the key phrase. Convince the old folks that by coming on to campus and associating with the young they could recapture some of their own youth. Let them help out in the classrooms, passing on the dubious wisdom of their years, while letting the ebullience of the students rub off on them like an elixir.

The more Bartlett had thought about it, the stronger his enthusiasm had grown. The group would have to be exclusive—he would demand some extravagant qualification for membership such as “distinguished professional achievement in the arts, business, or sciences.” But as long as they had the money, something could always be arranged. There would be a four-figure fee for entry and fairly hefty annual dues, but for that (and he’d giggled at the thought) they would have the privilege of working as unpaid tutors. Even better, once they had become firmly bonded to the college, he was certain they could be persuaded to make generous contributions to the annual fund and, better yet, to remember Fulford in their wills.

Bartlett knew a potential cash cow when he saw one, and he had seen one then. Of course, he had realized that there might be minor problems with faculty. Those damned prima donnas were forever guarding the sanctity of their classrooms, and it seemed unlikely that they would welcome assistance from old dodderers who might, in some cases, know more about the subject under discussion than they did. They might even, because the pensioners would be volunteers, regard them as a threat to their jobs if the college ever came under financial stress. As for the students, the chance that they would want anything to do with a bunch of septuagenarians was slim to none. But they could like it or lump it.

And so, to the accompaniment of much fanfare, the Fulford College Universal Pensioners had been born. In the educational press, Fulford was hailed as one of the ten most innovative colleges in the land. What a splendid idea: to bring old and young together in the context of common learning. Bartlett had basked in the praise. Parents who came shopping for the safest place to put their fragile offspring were duly impressed that here was a campus with built-in grandparents who would surely help keep them on the straight and narrow. They enrolled them in droves. Under the pressure of demand, tuition fees rose steadily.

As for the pensioners themselves, their numbers grew until they far outstripped the size of the faculty itself. Bartlett never ceased to be amazed at their endless generosity and selfless sense of service. He had provided something to fill the gap in their otherwise empty lives, and for that they were prepared to pay, and pay handsomely. It had been, at least until today, a supremely symbiotic relationship. In fact, the only thing he regretted was his choice of title for the organization. Student imaginations being what they were, the FCUP members had become instantly known as “the Fuckups.”

And now they wanted to go their own way. Bartlett reread the offending letter, inwardly fuming. Signed by the latest FCUP president, Luigi Manzini, it was courteous to the point of unction, but the meaning was very clear. Because his members were constantly being reminded, said Manzini, that their organization was being subsidized by the college, and because the college was demonstrably in financial trouble, he wished to offer a solution. If Fulford would permit the pensioners to hire their own staff and arrange their own affairs, granting them a long-term lease on Einstein House at a nominal rental, all subsidies could be removed. It was, suggested Manzini, an offer that the trustees could hardly refuse, especially because the pensioners would continue to give freely of their on-campus services.

Gregory Bartlett was hoisted on his own petard, and he knew it. For years, he had been pleading poverty to the FCUP members, urging them on to greater feats of giving with the pretense that their existence was costing Fulford College large sums of money. With hindsight, he wondered how he had gotten away with it for so long, considering the number of former CEOs, lawyers, and accountants who occupied Einstein House. He had habitually been salting away major donations from FCUP members into other accounts to which only he had access, while loading the organization’s budget with all manner of expenses to make it seem that it was being subsidized. True, there had sometimes been demands from some of the more curious pensioners for a peek at the books, but these had been firmly resisted. Under the FCUP bylaws, which he had drawn up with considerable care, FCUP members had certain privileges and many duties, but no rights that could not be overruled by the college authorities. Meaning him. And those rights most decidedly did not include a detailed investigation of the balance sheet.

Finally, it seemed, someone had been doing the math.

Bartlett looked up at Melissa, catching the vestige of a secret smile that she swiftly wiped from her face. “It’s not funny,” he said. “I told Johnson that he should have stymied the election of that wop Manzini to the presidency. Get him on the phone for me, will you?”

Melissa stifled the temptation to remind him that a telephone with a direct outside line stood ready to hand on his desk. It was all part of Bartlett’s power complex: getting the servants to do his menial work. Anyway, it gave her a chance to get out of his damned office. She turned on her heel and returned to her own desk to place the call.

Sydney Johnson, aka “Hissing Syd,” was a newcomer to the post of FCUP director. A failed Broadway actor, he had obtained the position by virtue of charming the knickers off Bartlett’s stagestruck wife. Johnson had been in the job for only six months but had already established himself as a pain in the ass. In contrast to his predecessor, an easygoing individual who managed the affairs of the pensioners with a lightness of touch that combined humor and efficiency in equal measure, he was proving to be a major control freak. His small secretarial staff was being driven to distraction by his constant interference, while the FCUP senate—twelve men and women who were theoretically in charge of the organization—were reduced to impotent frustration by his autocratic methods.

The members of the senate, who had been invited to interview a short list of candidates for their new director, had made an accurate assessment of Johnson at the time and voted against him. It was not simply his manner that caused their hackles to rise; the fact was that he bore a remarkable resemblance to the Democratic vice president of the United States. He was tall and slim, with patrician features and an infuriating air of unassailable virtue. Republicans all, the pensioners could not bear the thought of living with this doppelgänger in their declining years. It ruined their sensitive digestions just to look at the man.

In the end, however, they had been overruled by Gregory Bartlett, who was not about to suffer a domestic dispute by challenging his wife’s judgment. Bartlett was now beginning to regret his decision. He had thought that Johnson would bring some much-needed (in his view) energy into FCUP management—to drag the old codgers into the computerized world of the 1990s and spur them to greater feats of giving. Instead, he seemed to have sparked a revolution.

“Sydney?” Bartlett insisted on being on first-name terms with all his staff, no matter how unpleasant he intended to be to them.

Johnson recognized the voice instantly. “Greg. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me what that old fool Manzini thinks he’s playing at.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know what’s going on up there? I thought you had your finger on all the buttons. I’ve just had letter from him saying that the senate has decided that FCUP wants to become independent of the college. How come you don’t know about it? I thought you attended all their damn meetings.”

“I do, Greg, you know I do. No one has said a word to me about this.” Thoroughly alarmed, Johnson spun around in his chair to see if he was being overheard. A flying elbow knocked his cup of coffee over the keyboard of his brand-new Pentium computer and he cursed fluently. Bartlett ignored the epithet.

“Well they wouldn’t, would they? One of the things they want is freedom to appoint their own staff, and it’s my bet that they want you out of there, Sydney. You’ve been ruffling too many old feathers.”

“But that was what you wanted me to do,” Johnson protested. “You told me to come in here and shake them up.”

“I didn’t tell you to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, dammit! The trustees are desperate to save every cent right now. If Manzini can convince them that making FCUP independent will get rid of their precious ‘subsidy’ they might just fall for it.”

“But they’re not being subsidized. Not really.”

“You know that, and I know that,” said Bartlett sourly. “But the trustees believe the balance sheet, and the balance sheet says they’re being subsidized up to their necks. If they get away with this—if they separate themselves from the college—you can bet your boots that all those donations and bequests are going to dry up overnight.”

“But they can’t fire me—I’ve got a contract.”

“You’ve got a contract with the college as FCUP director. If there’s no FCUP, at least not one affiliated to the college, there’s no job and no contract. Unless they want to pay you themselves, and from all I hear that’s unlikely.”

“What can I do?”

“You can get hold of Manzini and find out what’s behind this. Then you can contact every member of that damn senate and persuade them to change their minds. If this gets to the trustees and they find out we’ve been lying to them about those subsidies, and they want to know where the FCUP donations have been going to, I don’t give much for our chances.

“Why drag me into it? I haven’t been lying to the trustees.”

“Sink or swim together, Sydney. Sink or swim together. Now, get on with it!”

Bartlett replaced the receiver and sat heavy in thought. A few feet away, Melissa Blunt hugged herself with delight.

Two

From his business office on the top floor of an eighteen-story building some three miles from the campus, Luigi Manzini could see Fulford College laid out like a model town constructed of Lego bricks. The Blenkinsop Library, the Fitzwalter Administration Building, and various classrooms and laboratories formed a solid clump in the center, with dormitories scattered along the southern fringe. There were sports fields to the east and, tucked away in the western corner beyond a chapel of eccentric design and acoustical folly, Einstein House. The campus was bounded on three sides by sheltered water—bays and creeks running from the Gulf of Mexico where dolphins played and manatees snoozed, and where powerboats cut white furrows between sleepy sails. It was altogether perfect. Perfect for his purposes. Luigi Manzini had a lot of time and a great deal of money invested in Fulford College, and his investment was about to pay off.

Manzini had applied for membership of FCUP five years previously, when he was fifty-two years old. It was young to be a pensioner—in theory the minimum age for acceptance was fifty-five—and he was scarcely retired. In truth, those in Manzini’s occupation never retired, though this was not a fact that he disclosed on his meticulously prepared application form. He had studied the conditions for membership with care and had crafted his life story accordingly. He was, he said, an investment banker with a sterling record of public service: a patron of the arts, a pillar of his church, and an enthusiastic supporter of various charities devoted to the cause of youth. None of this was true, but the whole story was backed up, chapter and verse, by the five character references required by the FCUP bylaws. This was hardly surprising, because Manzini had dictated them all himself and had them typed on various pieces of prestigious notepaper purloined from across the country. Had he known as much about FCUP admission procedures as he now did, he need hardly have gone to the trouble: the production of one of his many bank statements would have been quite sufficient.

With great patience and a sense of wry amusement, Manzini had allowed himself to be squired around the various FCUP activities while the pensioners decided whether he was of suitable character to join their throng. Because Gregory Bartlett had already passed the word that there were to be no slipups in this application, this was strictly a matter of form, but form had to be observed. He attended discussion groups on philosophy, current affairs, poetry, painting, opera, and the art of aging gracefully. He even showed polite interest in becoming a mentor to the students, though he had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing. When the membership committee met some six weeks later, it was unanimously agreed that Luigi Manzini would be a splendid addition to the ranks of FCUP—a young man (by their standards) who would bring fresh vitality to the organization. The senate concurred, as it always did, and Manzini was in.

Over the next two years, Manzini was seen frequently at FCUP social functions, of which there were many, and responded generously to each and every appeal for donations. His largest contributions, however, were always made directly to Gregory Bartlett, for he had a shrewd idea of their ultimate destination. As he was fond of saying, it took one to know one. His ready smile and smooth manners soon conquered any reservations his fellow pensioners might have had about his ethnic origins, and his election to the senate became a foregone conclusion. From there it was a short step to the presidency.

Not that it meant very much to be president of FCUP, especially now that Sydney Johnson was director. The job had prestige but no power and little influence. It did, however, have one vital attribute: access to the college trustees. So far as Manzini was concerned, that was its only attraction.

“We are ready to begin.” Manzini steepled his fingers and turned his deeply upholstered swivel chair away from the window. The five-carat-diamond stud of his tiepin flashed briefly as it caught the rays of the afternoon sun.

“About fucking time.” The only other occupant of the room champed impatiently on the butt of an illegally imported Cuban cigar. “I don’t wish to seem rude, Don Luigi, but this scheme of yours has been dragging on for years. It’s been costing the families a lot of money, and so far we haven’t seen one red cent in return.”

“Patience, my friend.” Manzini smiled, though the expression failed to reach his dark Mediterranean eyes. “The commission, yourself included, agreed that if this thing is to be done it has to be done properly. There must be no question of impropriety—nothing to arouse suspicion. If our young people are to have degrees, which is the only way we will penetrate those businesses we wish to control, then those degrees must be authentic. And authentic degrees come only from an accredited college. Correct?” His listener muttered assent.

“Very well. Before long, I promise you, we will have such a college of our very own. Its students will be taught by the finest dons, the most experienced consiglieri that our organization can provide. They will no longer learn their craft on the streets and in the jails. They will be professional criminals in the true sense of the word: educated, cultured, and highly trained. And they will have the parchment to prove it. They will have respect, Don Carlo. And respect is important, is it not?”

Don Carlo grunted. “I preferred the old days,” he said. “Back then a young man gained respect by making his bones, not by sitting in some fucking classroom. Fear—that’s what brought in the profits. People are afraid of you, people respect you. That’s the way it always was. And if you ask me, that’s the way it always will be. Degrees!” He gathered his mouth to spit, then remembered where he was and swallowed the phlegm instead.

Manzini sighed inwardly. This guy was a real Neanderthal. It was precisely because of people like Don Carlo—always living in the past, unwilling to adapt to the necessity of making crime respectable in the modern world—that he had conceived his masterstroke. Carlo was right about one thing: it had taken a long time, longer than he had anticipated, and he hoped that the majority of those on the commission were still behind him. If not, well, things could get awkward. He had the backing of the Sicilians, of that he was certain. His own family had seen too much violence to want to return to the old ways. The Jews, too, could see the potential for enormous profit in his idea. They would stick with him. But the Cubans were a different story, and so were the Jamaicans. Both groups had their noses so firmly entrenched in the drug trade that they could see no further than the next shipment from Colombia. As for the Irish . . . Manzini did not like to think about the Irish.

“I need your help, Don Carlo,” he said.

Manzini had chosen the candidate for this, his first serious bid for aid since the project began, with care. Don Carlo was head of the Abruzzi family, a long-established branch of the Mafia with its headquarters in New York and tentacles that stretched to Pittsburgh in the west and to Philadelphia in the south. The Abruzzis controlled most of the organized crime in the South Bronx and New Jersey, having built up solid connections in the labor unions over many years. Their income was estimated at anywhere between $3 billion and $5 billion a year, but Manzini had reason to believe it was diminishing. The family had failed to diversify, continuing to rely on the staple commodities of larceny, extortion, loan-sharking, casino gambling, and the numbers racket. They had mostly steered clear of the cocaine and heroin trade, with the result that Cubans and Jamaicans had moved in to fill the vacuum, making the streets so violent with their incessant turf wars that it was no longer safe for an Abruzzi soldier to operate in his own territory. The Abruzzis had other troubles, too. A succession of energetic attorneys general in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had been putting on the pressure. Don Carlo was the fourth capo to inherit the title in the past ten years, his three predecessors—his father and two uncles—having been put behind bars for extended sentences. Manzini calculated that it must be increasingly clear, even to the Mustache Petes, that change would be essential to survival.

“How much?” demanded Don Carlo. He relit the soggy stump of his cigar and peered at Manzini through the fragrant cloud of smoke. In Carlo’s opinion, Manzini was too clever by half, a smart-ass lawyer who had wormed his way to the top of Miami’s Gonzago family with a combination of smooth talking and sheer luck. Rumor had it that the guy hadn’t even made his bones. If the three Gonzago brothers hadn’t bought the farm together back in ’ninety-one, when their speedboat blew up off Palm Beach, Manzini would still be shuffling papers in downtown Miami. On second thought, Carlo pondered as he stared hard at the dapper, gray-suited figure across the desk, perhaps the guy had made his bones. No one had ever been fingered for placing the bomb on that boat. He felt a growing twinge of respect.

“It depends,” Manzini replied.

“Depends on what?”

“Depends on how many shares you want to buy.”

“Shares?” Don Carlo mouthed the word as if it came from a foreign language. What’s this crap about shares? The Abruzzis don’t mess with stuff like that. We’re in or we’re out. And if we’re in, we want our cut of the profits. Finito.”

Manzini concealed his impatience. “You don’t understand, Don Carlo,” he said. “This isn’t some ordinary shakedown operation. This is legitimate business. Well”—he corrected himself— “almost legitimate. You’ve got to look at the long-term bottom line on this thing. What we’re buying into is a nonprofit corporation. That means there aren’t going to be any profits as such.”

“You’re pulling my pisser!” Don Carlo’s jaw dropped in astonishment. He started to get to his feet. “You drag me all the way to Florida to get me to invest in some cockamamie scheme that ain’t going to show no profit? You need your fucking head tested. I’m outta here.”

“Hold it, Carlo, you stupid wop.” Manzini’s tone was etched in steel. Don Carlo froze. Nobody, but nobody, talked to the head of the Abruzzi family like that. His hand flew instinctively to the inside of his jacket, before he remembered he had left his gun at home. He laid a small curse on airport security.

Manzini, whose own hand was already inside his desk drawer, pretended not to notice. But his voice became conciliatory. “Let me spell it out for you, Don Carlo. Like I said, you’ve got to look at the long-term potential of this thing. We’re talking about your kids’ future, and their kids, and their kids after them. We’re talking about the Abruzzi family controlling every major corporation in New York before the middle of the twenty-first century. Billions upon billions in profits, and all of it legitimate. All of it respectable. No more turf wars, no more killing, no more harassment by the law.”

“No more fun,” interjected Don Carlo.

“You want fun? You’ve got your father and two uncles in Sing Sing for the rest of their natural lives. You think they’re having fun? Is that the kind of fun you want? Get real, Carlo. Those days are over. Right now, all the really successful crooks are in the boardrooms, laughing up their sleeves at all you petty uneducated crooks and your penny-ante rackets. Some of those guys make more in a day than you make in six months, and they die fat and happy, not locked up in some stinking cell.”

Despite himself, Don Carlo began to show interest. “So how do we join this fucking magic circle?”

“I already told you,” Manzini said patiently. “You don’t join it—your kids do. They join it, and they get to run it, because they’re going to be educated. They’re going to be educated at our very own college, that college”—he gestured at the window behind him— “and they’re going to be taught stuff that will blow those Harvard MBAs right out of their socks.”

“So what’s all this about shares?” Don Carlo sat back down and showed signs of interest. Manzini smiled. He had him.

“It works like this,” he said. “I’m going to capitalize this venture at three hundred million, split up into shares of one million each. That’s three hundred shares.”

“Don’t patronize me, Manzini,” growled Don Carlo. “I’m not that fucking ignorant. I can add up.”

Manzini ignored the interruption. “These shares will be offered to each of the six families: your own, mine, and the guys in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Orleans. For every share you get a scholarship to send one of your brightest and best youngsters to the college for a four-year degree course, tuition, full board, and books, all included.”

“A million bucks?” Don Carlo frowned. “Shit, I could send my kids to Yale or Harvard for a fraction of that.”

“You think Harvard would take them? And if they did, do you think they’d get taught the stuff we want them to learn? We’re talking exclusive here, Carlo. The finest, the most exclusive, the only all-round criminal education available in the United States. The question is, do you want to be part of it or not? Do you want the kids from all the other families bringing their diplomas to New York and eventually taking over the corporations that might have been yours?”

Don Carlo relapsed into deep thought. Christ, thought Manzini, you can almost hear the wheels grinding inside that bald head.

“We’ve got a lot of kids in the family,” he said at length. “All the time we wait for Il Papa to relax the rules on birth control, and all the time we wait, the babies keep coming. This could be one very expensive proposition.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t need to send them all to college,” Manzini said encouragingly.

“No? You try telling one Mafia wife why her kid can’t get this education, while the kid of some soldier’s wife down the block is having a million bucks spent on him. I tell you, Luigi, they’d cut off my balls.”

“So . . . how many shares?” Manzini decided it was time to bring this thing to a conclusion.

Don Carlo did a rapid calculation. “Okay,” he said. “Put me down for fifty for starters, and keep me posted on how much the other capos are investing, okay?”

Manzini nodded.

“You take a check?”

“I’d prefer cash,” said Luigi Manzini.

Three

Six days later Luigi Manzini sat at ease in Gregory Bartlett’s office, feeling rather pleased with himself. His Jewish associates, who now ran the operation in Las Vegas, had been quick to see the potential of his scheme and subscribe for seventy-five places. Their only conditions had been the building of a small synagogue on the campus grounds, which they were willing to finance separately, and some assurance that the curriculum would include a course on the Holocaust. Luigi had raised no objection, though he found the latter request somewhat odd. The Cohen family were not mafiosi, of course, in the strict sense of the term, but he had found over the years that their principles were much the same.

The Chicago mob, pleading poverty, had only paid for thirty-five students but had agreed to take an option on a further fifteen scholarships for the sophomore year. New Orleans and Los Angeles had each taken up forty shares, which, with his own allocation of fifty for the Gonzago family, left him only ten freshmen shy of his initial goal. He now had $280 million, all in hard cash, sitting in safe-deposit boxes in a dozen different banks around the city. All in all, Manzini decided, he had good reason to feel satisfied.

Thankfully, there had been no need to approach the Cubans, the Jamaicans, or the Irish. No doubt they would become aware of the operation in due course and might pressure him to join in, but he would face that problem if and when it arose.

Bartlett, he noted, had gotten his letter in front of him and was glaring malevolently across the space between them. Good.

“Sydney said you wanted to see me,” Manzini said mildly.

“I did.” Bartlett gestured at the letter on his desk. “Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“I would have thought it was plain enough. The FCUP senate has decided to do the college a favor and become self-supporting. It has been very kind of the trustees to subsidize us for so long, but we are big boys and girls now. With a few adjustments, we think that our subscriptions are quite sufficient to run the organization.”

“What adjustments?”

“Well, for a start, we don’t really need your director, Mr. Johnson. That should save about eighty thousand dollars a year from our operating costs. I’m just guessing, of course, because you’ve never deigned to tell us what you pay him, but that seems a reasonable estimate.”

“But you have to have a director. It’s in the bylaws,” Bartlett protested. “FCUP can’t possibly work without one.”

“You’re forgetting something, Greg,” Manzini said. “All our members are highly talented people with distinguished careers in their past. You insisted on it. Do you really think they’re not capable of running their own affairs? As for the bylaws, if you read them carefully you’ll find that they can be altered at any time with the consent of the trustees, and the necessary amendments have already been drafted, ready for their meeting next week.”

For a moment, Manzini thought that the college president was about to explode.

Bartlett struggled to contain his anger. “You’re presenting me with a fait accompli,” he said.

“That’s right, I am. But why should you be so worried? With the budget situation being what it is, I would have thought you would have welcomed my proposal to get some of the red ink off your balance sheet. I know the trustees will. I think I can guarantee that I’m about to make them an offer they can’t refuse. And really, you know, this won’t make any difference as far as Fulford is concerned. The intergenerational learning program will go on just the same. In fact, with the help of some new members I have in mind, we’re even thinking of expanding it.”

“What about your donations to the college?” Bartlett demanded between gritted teeth.

“Donations?” Manzini feigned innocence. “Oh, you mean those small sums that my colleagues and I are urged to give you from time to time. They can’t be so important, can they? I mean, they never seem to count toward reducing our subsidies, in fact they never appear on the accounts at all. We really don’t know what happens to them, so I’m sure they won’t be missed. Once we’re independent, of course, we’ll need that sort of contribution to keep ourselves afloat. As you’re always telling us, FCUP is a very expensive thing to run.” He produced a seraphic smile.

James Murchison, chair of the Fulford College board of trustees, frowned as he looked up from his agenda and surveyed the row of faces on either side of the boardroom table. They were all present: twelve wealthy men plus two widowed women who had inherited their late husbands’ seats on the board along with their moral obligations. For thirty-two years they and their predecessors had sat around this and earlier, more humble tables, making decisions that affected the lives of young people whom most of them would never meet. They were volunteers—dedicated altruists who had seen their pet project grow from a minuscule college in rented premises, hardly worthy of the name, into a prestigious institution charging top-dollar tuition to children of parents from all over the country and overseas. They were justifiably proud of their achievement and now worried, with equal justification, that their dream was about to fall apart.

At the far end of the table sat the two ex officio members of the board: Gregory Bartlett and Luigi Manzini. It was Manzini’s first meeting, and Murchison felt obliged to welcome him before getting down to business. Privately he wondered how on earth the FCUP senate had come to elect such a fellow as their president. The fellow was all flash, no class about him. A foreigner, too. Probably no more than second generation at best. Murchison, who could trace his own ancestry back to the Revolutionary War, supposed he had money, but it took more than wealth to give a man distinction.

Having read his papers before the meeting, he was well aware that this upstart was proposing a radical change in the status of FCUP, which he regarded as one of the jewels in the Fulford crown. The man had damned nerve! To make matters worse Murchison was only too well aware, the financial situation being what it was, that he might well have to accede to the demand. The thought rankled.

He tapped his gavel to still the low buzz of conversation.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Murchison cleared his throat. “I need hardly tell you that this college is in trouble. This is not your fault; your contributions have been most generous. Nor is it the fault of our president, Mr. Bartlett, who has given us so many years of loyal and selfless service.” Bartlett permitted himself a minor smirk. “Nonetheless, we find ourselves in the position of so many independent colleges these days: times are hard, and parents simply cannot afford the twenty thousand dollars a year that we are forced to charge for tuition. Many of them, I am sure with reluctance, are being compelled to send their children to subsidized state institutions, with which we simply cannot compete in monetary terms. Nor can we afford, with our small endowment, to offer the same level of scholarships as our competitors. We are competing for a diminishing pool of students, and we do not have the weapons with which to fight the battle. As a result, I have to tell you that applications for next year’s freshman class are down by almost thirty percent, which means a loss to the college of more than two million dollars.”

Murchison paused to let the full import of his words sink in. The faces around the table were grave. All, that is, except that of Luigi Manzini, whom Murchison was disgusted to see was smiling. Smug bastard, he thought. He’d better get his business out of the way quickly.

“I’d welcome your suggestions on how we might cope with this crisis,” Murchison continued. “It seems to me our options are limited. Our new friend Mr. Manzini”—he nodded in Don Luigi’s direction— “has kindly offered to make FCUP financially independent of the college, thus saving the annual subsidy of one hundred thousand dollars a year.” There was a smattering of applause. Manzini bowed his head in acknowledgment.

"I am sure we are all very grateful,” Murchison said, “but I am equally sure Mr. Manzini realizes that one hundred thousand is a drop in the bucket compared to the size of our problem, and the importance of FCUP’s link to the college is such that we really cannot—”

He was interrupted by an attractive gray-haired woman on his left. “Mr. Chair, I’d like to make a motion!”

“Mrs. Whittaker?”

“I propose that this board accept Mr. Manzini’s offer with thanks. I have spoken to him on this matter, and he assures me that FCUP’s participation in the classroom will in no way be diminished. In fact, I have reason to believe”—she turned to smile coyly at Don Luigi— “that he has plans to increase it quite substantially.”

Interfering old bitch, thought Gregory Bartlett. He had had a quiet word in Murchison’s ear before the meeting and got his assurance that Manzini’s offer would be rejected.

“A motion has been proposed. Do I have a seconder?” Murchison hardly paused to draw breath. “If there is no seconder—”

“Seconded.” The patrician trustee seated next to Elaine Whittaker raised his hand, which had been resting on her knee, to emphasize his point.

“Seconded by Mr. Silverstein,” Murchison said with reluctance. “The motion has been proposed and seconded. Is there any discussion?”

“Mr. Chair, might I say a few words?”

They all turned to look at Don Luigi.

“Mr. Chair, I will not disguise the fact that my members have been somewhat restive of late. With the appointment of our new director, Mr. Johnson, they have felt less in control of their own affairs than they would like. They are an able and distinguished group of men and women, as I’m sure you will agree, and they find themselves, to put it bluntly, being treated like schoolchildren. That is the background to this bid for independence. The fact that it comes about when the college is in financial need is a happy coincidence.” He spread his hands.