Inherit the Mob
By Zev Chafets
Random House, 272 pages, $19
In Zev Chafets` novel ”Inherit the Mob,” foreign correspondent William Gordon`s well-ordered life begins to unravel when his gangster uncle, Max Grossman, dies and leaves him a fortune but with a catch: He must claim the loot from his uncle`s partner, the notorious Mafia Don, Luigi Spadafore.
At first, Gordon considers the inheritance to be the equivalent of a legacy of Confederate money. Long ago he shunned his family`s mob connections, changing his name and forging a career as a journalist. But Gordon has other problems.
He learns that his two Pulitzer Prizes are shams, bought by his father and uncle. His girlfriend, the beautiful actress Jupiter Evans, is bisexual and cannot commit to his gender, much less to him. Another arrow in the heart of his self-esteem. Finally, his father, retired mobster Al Grossman, tells Gordon he doesn`t have what it takes to mix it up with the mob.
In Hollywood, where this highly cinematic tale apparently is headed, that`s called the hero`s motivation. Slay the dragon, win the girl and prove something to Dad, all in 110 minutes. And that is the quest in Chafets`
improbable but often hilarious fable of journalist versus the mob.
Not that the bedraggled hero-an Abbie Hoffman look-alike-goes it alone. He`s assisted by John ”Mad Dog” Farrell, a hard-drinking Irish deputy city editor who insults the Mafia Don by inviting him to dinner and serving take-out pizza. Then there are Gordon`s bodyguards, a group of retired Jewish gangsters who once controlled the lower East Side and now are holed up in Florida retirement homes.
As is customary in mob comedies, the villains are more ludicrous than dangerous. Luigi Spadafore, for example, models his life after Brando`s Godfather, or is it the other way around?
Peering at life through hooded eyes, Spadafore revels in the archaic traditions of gang royalty. At their first meeting, Gordon get a ceremonial kiss from the Don, complete with a whiff of anchovies and dental paste. There are midnight candlelit dinners in Spadafore`s Brooklyn mansion, a Sicilian consigliere educated at English boarding schools and Harvard Law and two Spadafore sons considered dolts by the Don.
When Gordon approaches Spadafore to claim his inheritance, he gets an offer he can but doesn`t refuse: a chance to make millions by bringing together foreign government leaders and the Mafia. While it requires a willful suspension of disbelief to accept the premise that organized crime needs a reporter to befriend a bureaucrat from Uruguay, it does pass muster in this easygoing genre. It`s also the starting point for a fanciful romp about honor, family and nostalgia for the supposedly good-hearted gangsters of yesteryear. A journalist himself and author of the non-fiction ”Devil`s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit,” in his first novel Chafets spoofs the Mafia in the tradition of Jimmy Breslin`s ”The Gang that Couldn`t Shoot Straight” and Richard Condon`s ”Prizzi`s Honor.” You want realism, read ”Wiseguys.”
”Inherit the Mob” is just for fun.
The story moves with the alacrity of a screenplay. Picture, for example, the cinematic possibilities of the scene in which Gordon orders 419 large pepperoni pizzas from 281 pizza parlors throughout New York and has them delivered to Spadafore`s mansion in order to humiliate the proud Don. On the soundtrack we hear horns honking; then, in closeup, we see a single pizza delivery truck, before the camera pulls back to reveal scores of pizza trucks locked in a massive traffic jam as Uzi-toting hoods stand paralyzed behind the mansion`s iron gate.
When things turns nasty, Gordon is aided by his father`s old gangster pals-a gang straight out of ”Guys and Dolls.” When this crew goes to the mattresses, nobody slices garlic for the spaghetti sauce. Instead, Pupik Feinsilver whips up a kugel.
Though usually crisp, the dialogue occasionally sinks into cliches, as when Gordon warns Farrell of the dangers in dealing with the Spadafore family: ”Maybe these guys aren`t as dangerous as I thought, but they`re not Boy Scouts, either, and it`s their ball we`re playing with. You and I have to be on the same wavelength . . . especially in the beginning when we don`t know the rules of the game.”
Chafets` game is lively entertainment, however, and the rules are simple: Good guys win, bad guys lose, and fathers and sons have more in common than they know.
