One of Ed Prizzi's lawyers got Charley away from the cops at ten o'clock that night. They had questioned him for over three hours but he had nothing to tell them and anyway his mind was deep into how to find Irene. Maerose had told him by the way she acted that she knew Irene well, but suppose she didn't? If she didn't then she was going to have to remember who introduced her to Irene, and no matter how far backward he had to go, he was going to come up with a way to find Irene again. When he left police headquarters he went to a phone booth in a drugstore and called Paulie at his hotel.
"I was just leaving for the airport," Paulie marveled. "It's a real freak thing. I am walking past the phone to go out to the airport and it rings." Paulie was a hysteric so he was in the movie business. He always made everything out as if God had designed it to happen only to him.
"Listen, Paulie," Charley said, "you remember the pictures I wanted of that girl and you gave me your card to hand to the guy?" Charley came over a telephone line like a talking brewery horse.
"Yeah?"
"The thing is how can I get it and put it on a cassette?"
"You want it, we'll do it."
"Great. Thanks, Paulie."
"Is the girl an actress? You think we'd be interested in looking at her?"
"You looked at her already. The girl in the church with the green-and-yellow dress."
"Oh, that one. Well, anyway. The thing is, you gotta look at the footage yourself, Charlie. Who else knows what you want?"
"When can I look at it?"
"Day after tomorrow. But at the studio. That's the only way."
"You got it. I'll fly out there the day after tomorrow. And I want to tell you something else, Paulie. I am glad you and me don't like the same kind of broads, because I don't like what you like, either."
"Charley!" Paulie said. "What did I say? I didn't say anything!" Charley hung up.
***
When he got back to the beach it was almost midnight. There was a message on the machine from Maerose. He called her. She sounded a little smashed so maybe she had gone to bed with pills.
"Charley, what is it with you?" she asked wearily. "You are something else, you know? I am pooped."
"Look, Mae, this is important or I wouldn't bother you. I got to know how I can get in touch with the girl, you know, Irene Walker."
"Charley, I only know her like an hour longer than you know her."
"Who introduced you?"
"Some people."
"Then, okay. Will you call those people who introduced you and run down where she lives?"
"I don't know, Charley."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
She sighed. "It's like cutting my own throat. It's pushing you further away."
"Who pushed who further away? Me? No, you. That's finished. That was almost ten years ago."
"Okay, okay. Ah shit. I had my shot but somebody bumped my arm."
"I'll appreciate it."
"I can't do it tonight, Charley."
"Okay. Tomorrow."
"I'll try."
"I can call you like noon tomorrow?"
"I'll call you. I don't know how I'm going to do on this."
After she had hung up she fell back on her bed, then turned over to stare at the wall. She had once had it made with Charley and her whole life, then they had that fight—some fight, she had made it a fight—and she went out of the joint with that guy and they wound up in Mexico City, drunk. She didn't know what to do so she stayed with the guy and they stayed drunk. Then one morning two of her father's people came in the door and beat the shit out of the guy while the fucking assistant manager just stood there. They made her get dressed and they never talked to her. They never said anything to her. They took her out of the hotel like a couple of cops and flew her back to New York. She sat in a room with her father and he stared at her until she wanted to yell at him. He looked at her like she was garbage. "You put shame on your family," he said. "You showed what you care about Prizzi honor. You were going to marry the son of your grandfather's oldest friend but you became a passeggiatrice instead. Thank God, your mother can never know what you did. She is safe from you with the angels. Listen to me! I am never going to talk to you again after this. Angelo Partanna says he forgives you, but Charley doesn't forgive you, you took his manhood from him. You can make believe you are a member of this family, make believe you are still my daughter, because that's the way your grandfather wants it, or you can get out—you are not in this family, you are not my daughter, and I am going to see to it that you stay an old maid for the rest of your life."
She didn't run into Charley for five months. He said, hello, how are you, just like nothing had happened. He wasn't even cold to her. She had lost him. She loved him and she had lost him and he never came near her again.
