The Love Killers
no point in playing games. ‘Listen, you want the job—it’s yours. You get your own room, decent food, and a coupla nights off a week. Okay?’
    She nodded. Was it all going to be as easy as this? ‘Can I see the children?’ she asked.
    â€˜Sure. Hey—Anna Maria.’ He pulled his wife forward, a shy, dark girl with puffy features and a huge belly. ‘You take—uh—what’s your name again?’
    â€˜Beth.’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah. Beth, meet Mrs. Bassalino—my wife. She don’t talk much English—maybe you can teach her, too. She’ll take you to see the kids, show you around. Any problems, you come to me. Just remember, I’m a busy man, so make sure there ain’t too many problems. Got it? When can you start?’
    Her heart was pounding. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, hiding her excitement.
    â€˜Good girl. Anna Maria’s about to pop any time now. Some help around here is just what we need.’
    He gave Anna Maria a shove in her direction, looked Beth over one more time, and left.

CHAPTER TEN
    Angelo Bassalino had been sent to London after the trouble. It was only a temporary move, a discreet way of getting rid of him until the Camparo family calmed down. Gina Camparo was to be married soon, and after the ceremony—a few months, perhaps—the whole incident would be forgotten, and Angelo could be brought safely home.
    Enzio had been somewhat amused by the whole affair. Angelo was his true son, a boy who let nothing stand in the way of his fine upstanding Bassalino prick.
    It had been a touchy situation, and if Angelo had not been Enzio’s son, he might have found himself lodging inside a block of cement at the bottom of the East River. To screw a girl was one thing, but not at her engagement party to another man, and not where her brother and fiancé could discover you. And not when the girl was the daughter of a powerful rival—albeit a friendly one.
    So Angelo was dispatched to London. There were gambling interests he could take care of there, and without too much effort Enzio arranged everything.
    Angelo was not up to his expectations businesswise. The boy had none of the Bassalino drive or ambition. He had no hard core of toughness to call upon when dealing with people.
    Enzio reasoned that Angelo was only twenty-four, a baby; he had plenty of time to wise up. But he also remembered himself at twenty-four, a veteran of six successful hits, already Crazy Marco’s right-hand man, a man with a big future ahead of him.
    In New York, Angelo had worked for Frank.
    â€˜He’s a lazy little punk,’ Frank constantly complained. ‘You send him to a joint to shake loose some tight cash, and you hafta send another guy chasing
him
’cos he’s shacked up with some broad. Cooze, that’s all he’s got on his mind.’
    Enzio tried sending him out to the coast to work for Nick, but that was even worse. Angelo fell for a sexy starlet and ended up getting his ass beaten off by her ‘producer.’
    â€˜You’d better get yourself together in London,’ Enzio warned him. ‘A Bassalino should command respect. Screw around all you want, but you gotta remember—
work
is the important thing—an’
money.
There’s solid opportunities for setting up over there, an’ one of these days I wanna see you control our end of it. To begin with, you work with the Stevesto organization—they’ll show you around.’
    Angelo had shrugged. He didn’t care about making money—as long as there was plenty in the family, why did he have to work his butt off scoring more? It didn’t make sense. Let Frank and Nick keep the Bassalino respect going—they enjoyed it, he didn’t.
    He didn’t argue with his father. Nobody argued with Enzio. There had been a time when he had expressed a wish not to go into the family ‘business.’ He’d wanted to be an actor,

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