Ten minutes later they were in an isolated area of new high-rises and on a quiet street. Here was 136 Crystal Parkway, a very splendid building. A new condo.

Heller repaired the torn fifty and paid the driver off. “I don’t know if I will ever find my way home,” mourned the cabby.

Heller added a twenty. “Hire a native guide,” he said.

The driver drove off.

All this time, I had been cudgeling my brains to remember where I had heard that address.

Heller walked in through a plush entrance. There were several elevators. One of them said:

He pushed the call button.

Expecting an automatic elevator, I was a bit surprised to see the door opened by a man. He was not an elevator operator. He wore a double-breasted coat and a hat pulled down. I could see the bulge of a shoulder-holstered gun. He was very dark, very Sicilian.

“Yeah?” he said noncommittally.

“I would like to see Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller.

I freaked! He was calling on the head of the New Jersey Mafia!

“Yeah?”

“I saw Jimmy ‘The Gutter’ Tavilnasty recently,” said Heller.

Then it all came to me with a flash. That meeting in Afyon when Jimmy, in the dark, had mistaken him for a DEA man! Well, they’d soon see through that! And I didn’t have the platen!

“I.D.,” demanded the gangster and Heller showed it to him.

The hood was on the elevator telephone. It was in a felt-lined box. You couldn’t hear what was being said.

With a slit-eyed look at Heller, the hood frisked him lightly, inspected his bag and then gestured for him to get in.

They rode up to the top. It was a one-stop elevator, penthouse only. The hood opened the door and pushed Heller out ahead of him. With little punches from behind he directed him down a beautifully decorated hallway. He opened a door at the end and shoved Heller in.

It was a gorgeous room, all done in modern gold and beige. A vast picture window looked out over a vast park and a bay.

A woman was seated comfortably on a couch. She was wearing beige lounging pajamas of silk. She was blond with blue eyes. Her corn silk hair was in coiled braids that wound around the top of her head to make a sort of crown. She was about forty.

She laid down a glossy style magazine she had been reading and stood up.

My Gods, she was tall!

She looked at Heller and then walked across the room to him. She was at least four inches taller than Heller! An Amazon!

She was smiling. “And so you are a friend of dear Jimmy’s,” she said. “Don’t be shy. He has often spoken of his friends in the younger street gangs. But you don’t look like one of those.” She had a sort of cooing, affected voice and a fake Park Avenue accent.

“I’m going to college,” said Heller.

“Oh,” she said in sudden understanding. “That is the smart thing to do these days. Do sit down. Jimmy’s friends are always welcome here. Would you like something to drink?”

“It’s a hot day,” said Heller. “How about some beer?”

She wagged a finger at him, kittenishly. “Naughty. Really naughty. You realize that would be against the law.” Then she raised her head and bellowed, “Gregorio!”

Almost instantly, a white-coated, very dark Italian popped in.

“Get the young gentleman some milk and bring me some seltzer water.”

Gregorio was taken aback. “Milk? We ain’t got any milk, Babe.”

“Well, get out and get some God (bleeped) milk!” roared Babe Corleone. Then she ensconced herself again on the couch. In her sweet, cooing, affected Park Avenue voice she said, “And how is dear Jimmy?”

Heller only sat down when she did. He now had his cap on his knee. The courteous Fleet officer!

“He was just fine a few days ago,” said Heller. “Seemed to be right on the job.”

“Oh, that is so nice to hear,” cooed Babe. “And nice of him to send word.”

“And how is the family?” said Heller.

Ouch, I thought. The (bleeped) fool thought a “family” was a real family. In that country, on this planet, it means a Mafia mob!

She looked sad. “Not too well, I’m afraid. You see, dear ‘Holy Joe’ — how I miss him — was a man of tradition. He used to say, ‘What was good enough for my father is good enough for me.’ And he stuck with good, honest bootlegging and smuggling and such. And, of course, we have to respect that. And drugs are no good anyway.”

“They sure aren’t!” said Heller with conviction.

She looked at him with approval. Then she continued. “Since Faustino ‘The Noose’ Narcotici has gotten so much backing from upstairs, there’s no holding him. He has been muscling in on our New York interests and is even trying to push his way into New Jersey. When they wasted dear ‘Holy Joe,’ that was just the beginning of it. But,” she looked up with sad bravery, “we are trying to carry on.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll succeed,” said Heller politely.

“That’s very nice of you to say so, Jerome. I can call you Jerome, can’t I? Everyone calls me Babe.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller. Fleet manners. And then, for a moment, I thought he’d blown it. “Mrs. Corleone, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Go ahead,” she said. Was she a trifle wary?

“Are you a Caucasian?”

Oh, my Gods! Here he went on that (bleeped) fool Prince Caucalsia kick! She had blond hair, she was as tall as some women around Atalanta, Manco.

“What makes you ask?”

“It’s your head,” said Heller. “It is very beautiful and it has a long skull structure.”

“Oh!” she said. “Are you interested in genealogy?”

“I’ve studied it a bit.”

“Ah! College, of course!” And she rushed over to an ornate desk, opened it and got out a large chart and some papers. She pulled up a chair beside Heller and spread the papers out. “These,” she said impressively, “were specially drawn up for me by Professor Stringer! He is the world’s foremost expert on genealogy and family trees!”

Aha! I knew already about the fixation American women have on family trees! And this Stringer was probably making a fortune out of the racket.

She gestured at Heller. She had the Italian habit of talking with her hands, head and body. “You have no idea how prejudiced some people are! I was a famous actress at the Roxy Theater when dear Joe married me.” The memory broke her train of thought for a moment and her eyes went moist.

Oho! I spotted her now. One of the Roxy chorus girls! A chorus line is composed of girls that are six feet six.

She recovered. “A capo is supposed to marry a Sicilian girl and the old cats carped and meowed and criticized. Particularly the mayor’s wife. So dear Joe had this drawn up. And did it put them in their places! I keep it around to make the (bleepches) stay there!”

She spread out the chart. It was all scrolls and swirls and illuminated with little pictures. It was in the shape of a tree.

“Now,” lectured Babe impressively, “as a student you are undoubtedly aware of all this but I will go over it anyway. Reviewing one’s studies is a good thing. Now, the Nordic race is composed of the Caspian, Mediterranean and Proto-Negroid types…”

“Caspian?” said Heller. “That’s the sea over by the Caucasus.”

“Oh, right,” she said vaguely and then plunged on with energy. “Now, you can see here how the Germanic races came out of Asia and migrated. The Goths, via Germany, came down into Northern Italy in the fifth century and the Lombards in the sixth century. These are the dolichocephalic — means long-headed, which is to say, smart — elements in the Italian population. They are blond and tall.” My Gods, had somebody rehearsed her! She was probably quoting Professor Stringer, word for word!

“Trace this line here. These are the Franks. From Germany, they came down and took over France, which is named after them. That was in the fifth century. Now, one branch — trace this — the Salians, took over northern Italy. One of the Salians, in the ninth century, was emperor of all the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor besides. He was named, you see here, Carolus Magnus, which, in American, means Charles the Great. In history books he is called Charlemagne. He was the emperor of the whole God (bleeped) world!”