Prizzi's Honour [antikvár]

Chapter 1 Corrado Prizzi's granddaughter was being married before the baroque aUar of Santa Grazia di Traghetto, the lucky church of the Prizzi family. The bride shimmered in the exalting sounds of the choir and the chanting bishop. The groom, shorter but more Intense than the bride, was her cousin, Patsy Garrone, a member of the inner Prizzi family. The church was dressed with sensual shafts of light and the fur of holy music. Don Corrado Prizzi, eighty-four, sat on the aisle in the front pew, right side of the church. He was asleep, but even in repose his face was as subtly distorted and burnished as that of a giant crown of thorns starfish predator. Every few moments both small, sharp eyes, as merry as ice cubes, would open, make a reading, then close again. Beside Don Corrado sat his eldest son, Vincent, father of the bride, a cubically heavy man. He clutched his kneecaps with both hands, frowning and humming, very softly, "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Beside Vincent was his brother, Eduardo, and his third "natural" wife. Baby. Eduardo called his wives Baby, not to sound colloquially American, as he had once explained to his mother, but because Cristoforo Colombo had named his first