Vantagio looked at him with feigned blank innocence.

“Come on,” said Heller. “They waived everything including having a head! How did you do it?”

Vantagio started laughing and sat down at his desk. “All right, kid, you got me. It was awfully late and I had an awful time getting hold of the university president last night but I did it. You see, at peak periods, we use some of the Barnyard College girls here. So I just told him that if you weren’t enrolled in full by 9:30 this morning, we’d cut off our student aid program.”

“I owe you,” said Heller.

“Oh, no, no,” said Vantagio. “You don’t get off that easy. You still have to do what I tell you. Right?”

“Right,” said Heller.

“Then get on that phone and call Babe and tell her you’re enrolled!”

Heller turned the desk speaker phone around to face him and Vantagio pushed the lease line button. Geovani in Bayonne transferred the call to Babe in the dining room.

“This is Jerome, Mrs. Corleone. I just wanted to tell you what a great job Vantagio did in getting me enrolled.”

“It’s all complete?” said Babe.

“Absolutely,” said Heller. But I noted he did not tell her, as he had not told Vantagio, that Miss Simmons had really set him up to fail. Heller was sneaky.

“Oh, I’m so glad. You know, you dear boy, you don’t want to grow up to be a bum like these other bums. Mama wants you to have class, kid, real class. Become president or something.”

“Well, I certainly do thank you,” said Heller.

“Now, there’s one more thing, Jerome,” said Babe, a little more severely. “You’ve got to promise me not to play hooky.”

That stopped Heller. He knew very well he would be missing in as many as two or three classes a day! Bless Miss Simmons!

Heller found his voice, “Not even one class, Mrs. Corleone?”

“Now, Jerome,” said Babe, her voice hardening, “I know it is a terrible job bringing up boys. I never did but I had brothers and I know! Let down your guard for one second and they’re off and away, free as birds, skylarking and breaking neighbors’ windows. So the answer is very plain. I give it to you absolutely straight. No hooky. Not even one class! Mama will be watching and Mama will spank! Now promise me, Jerome. And Vantagio, if you’re listening to this, which you are — I am sure you are as I can tell it’s the speaker phone on your desk — you look at his hands; no crossed fingers, no crossed feet. All right?”

Vantagio peered at Heller. “They aren’t crossed, mia capa”

Oh, what a spot Heller was in! With his nonsense Royal officer scruples about keeping his word, I knew he was suffering agonies. He couldn’t keep that promise so he wouldn’t make it. And I was sure that, to Babe Corleone, the phrase “Mama will spank” translated more truthfully into “concrete overcoat.”

“Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller. “I will be truthful with you.” Ah, here it came! “I promise you faithfully that, unless I get rubbed out, or unless something happens that closes the university, I will complete college on time and get my diploma.”

“Oh, you dear boy! That is even more than I asked! But nevertheless, Jerome, just remember, Mama will be watching. Bye-bye!”

Vantagio closed the circuit and sat there beaming at Heller.

“There’s one more thing,” said Heller. “Vantagio, could you get me the phone number of Bang-Bang Rimbombo. I want to call him from my suite.”

“Celebrating, are you?” said Vantagio. “I don’t blame you. As a matter of fact, he’s right here in Manhattan and the parole officer is riding his (bleep) off.” He wrote the number on a scrap of paper and handed it over. “Have fun, kid.”

It left me blinking. Vantagio might be smart but he hadn’t penetrated that one. Heller was full of surprises, (bleep) him. What was he going to pull? Blow up the university? That was the only way I could think of that would let him keep the promise he had just made to Babe Corleone.

About an hour later, Heller came out of his room. The tailors must have delivered something, for in the elevator mirrors I could see that he was dressed in a charcoal gray casual suit — the cloth must be some kind of summer cloth that was very thin and airy but looked thick and substantial. He had a white silk shirt with what appeared to be diamond cuff links and a dark blue tie. For a change he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap and in fact wore no hat at all. But when he crossed the lobby he was obviously still wearing spikes!

He clattered down the steps of a subway stop and caught a train. He got off at Times Square and was shortly clattering up Broadway past the porno shops. He turned into a cross street. I thought he must be going to a theater for he gave some attention to billboards of stage plays as he passed them.

Then he was looking up a flight of stairs. K.O. ATHLETIC CLUB, read the sign. He clattered on up and entered a room full of punching bags and helmeted boxers sparring around.

He was evidently expected. An attendant came over, “You Floyd?” and then beckoned. Heller followed him into a dressing room and the attendant pointed to a locker. Heller stripped and hung up his clothes. The attendant gave him a towel and shooed him through a door into a smoking haze of steam.

Heller groped around, fanned some steam out of the way and there was Bang-Bang Rimbombo, sitting on a ledge, streaming sweat and clutching a towel about him. The little Sicilian’s narrow face was just a diffused patch in the fog.

“How are you?” said Heller.

“Just terrible, kid. Awful. I couldn’t be worse. Sit down.”

Heller sat down and dabbed at his own face with a towel. The sweat started to pour off him, too. It must be awfully hot.

They sat in utter silence, steam geysering around them. Now and then Bang-Bang would take a gulp of water from a pitcher and then Heller would take a gulp.

After nearly an hour, Bang-Bang said, “I’m starting to feel human again. My headache is gone.”

“Did you take care of what I asked?” said Heller. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

“Oh, hell, that was easy. Hey, I can bend my neck. I haven’t taken a sober breath since I saw you last.” He was silent for a while and then apparently remembered what Heller had asked. “This time every week, Father Xavier goes down to Bayonne. He’s Babe’s confessor, knew her since she was a kid on the lower East Side. He has dinner with her and then hears her confession and then brings a load of hijacked birth control pills back to town. One of his stops is the Gracious Palms. So it wasn’t any trouble. You’ll have them later tonight. You don’t owe me nothing. They wasn’t no use.”

“Thank you very much,” said Heller.

“If all things was handled that easy,” said Bang-Bang, “life would be worth living. But just now it ain’t. You know, life can be pretty awful, kid.”

“What’s the matter? Maybe I can help.”

“I’m afraid it’s all beyond the help of God or man,” said Bang-Bang. “Up the river I go next Wednesday.”

“But why?” demanded Heller. “I thought you were out on parole.”

“Yeah. But, kid, that arrest was very irregular. A machine gun is a Federal crime but the late Oozopopolis rigged it to be found by the New York Police and they got me on the Sullivan Law or whatever they call illegal possession. I didn’t go to a Federal pen; they sent me up the river to Sing Sing.”

“That’s too bad,” said Heller.

“Yeah. They’re so crooked they can’t even send you to the right jail! So when I was paroled, I of course went home to New Jersey. And right away, the parole officer dug me up and said I was out of jurisdiction, that I couldn’t leave New York. So I come to New York and we don’t control New York like we used to before ‘Holy Joe’ got wasted. So Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty is leaning all over the parole officer to send me back to the pen to finish my time — they tell me now it’s eight months, kid. Eight dry months!”