The Plastic Man

The Pastic Man, by David J. Gerrity
April, 1976  Signet Books

Well it took me seven years, but I’m finally getting back to the Cordolini trilogy David Gerrity began with The Never Contract. Once again sporting a generic photo cover and running to just a little over 180 pages, The Plastic Man follows its predecessor in that series protagonist Frank “The Wolf” Cordolini is sort of a guest star in his own book. Such a guest star that the dude’s family is killed off before the book begins, thus we don’t even get to see Cordolini’s reaction – mostly because he doesn’t stick around long enough in the narrative to make an impression on us.

But then, Cordolini is a legendary, almost mythic figure in the Mafia, so clearly Gerrity tries to recreate the experience for the reader. But it really ruins any good potential for reader empathy and all that jazz. At any rate the book opens with a pair of Mafia hoods staking out a funeral in the hopes of ambushing Cordolini. We only learn through vague dialog that the people being buried are Cordolini’s wife and young son, and these guys are here at the behest of their godfather, Don Genarro, “The Fat Man.” Long story short, and again something we only gradually learn: Genarro received a picture of the Virgin Mary shortly after the wife and kid were murdered, and the picture is Cordolini’s calling card – per the Mafia legend, if you receive such a picture it means the Wolf is coming for you. Cordolini clearly believes that Genarro was behind the hit on his family, but we readers will learn that Genarro was framed.

Thus these guys are here at the funeral in the hopes of nailing Cordolini before he can nail their capo. But they don’t see him and leave – and of course get blown away when they least expect it. This opening sequence gives us a taste of the novel to follow: it’s mostly comrpised of various Mafia types talking and plotting, the subject of their dialog mainly Cordolini…and Cordolini himself only briefly appears. This is also evident in the titular “Pastic Man,” a plastic explosives specialist named Jerry Doyle who hires out his skills for top-dollar assassination work. We meet him as he’s been flown in from Boston by Genarro, the Godfather putting up with the guy’s constant insults due to his underworld rep for always getting his target – even if it means blowing up the target’s entire family. 

Gerrity’s narrative style is completely different than his earlier, Spillane-influenced work, a la Dragon Hunt and The Hot Mods. Gone are the hardboiled-isms, replaced with your typical mid-‘70s Mafia crime thriller vibe: the word “fuck” appears about twice a page as various goombahs sit around and shoot the shit. The random sadism and sleaze of The Never Contract are gone, though, as is the Manson-esque hippie element. In fact, The Plastic Man is pretty static and, well, boring, save for the (too few) scenes with Cordolini and the colorful scenes with Jerry Doyle. Not to mention the completely unexpected eleventh hour twist, which adds an entirely different dimension to the novel, Gerrity pulling a narrative trick that is both outrageous and ridiculous.

A lot of the narrative is comprised of picking up the pieces from the fallout of the previous book, where Cordolini wiped out the forces of Don Vicari. Various Mafioso have moved in on his old territory, led by “The Old Man” as the main godfather, and Genarro handling New York. But while the novel opens with Genarro seeming like a worthy villain, as the narrative develops he’s revealed to be a screw-up, looked down on by his underlings and constantly disrespected by the Old Man. Even his consiglieri, Gino Friedman, plots behind his back, so we’re missing the loathsome villain we had last novel, where we spent the entire time just waiting to see the bastard get his comeuppance – and as mentioned in my review, a comeuppance Gerrity inexplicably sped through.

One person who really rakes Genarro over the coals is Jerry Doyle, who ridicules the Fat Man and his various goombahs from the moment he gets off the plane. Gerrity throws a curveball with an actual romantic subplot for this hired assassin: Genarro sets Doyle up with a live-in hooker named Brendine, and while Doyle initially rejects her he relents when the girl pleads that the Fat Man will kill her if she’s sent back to him. So Doyle, wondering why he’s going to the trouble, brings Brendine into his confidence, the author skillfully developing a romantic bond between the two – however the tomfoolery occurs entirely off-page. Sleaze is nonexistent in this one. Brendine it develops has been sent here to spy by Gino Friedman, who plots to wrest control from Don Genarro, but Doyle manages to talk Brendine into going back home in the country and getting away from all these mob killers – which has dire consequences for various characters.

But where is Cordolini, you may ask? If he’s not striking from the shadows, he’s talking with old Pasqual Scalise, a former Mafia buddy; this is the first the two have seen each other in a decade, and Pasqual can’t get over Cordolini’s new face, courtesy some plastic surgery (I can’t remember if this was established in the previous book or if it’s something that happened prior to this one). Pasqual shoots the breeze with Cordolini, but we readers soon learn that he has his own part in the plot, as he simmers that Don Genarro was given Vicari’s domain; he believes it rightfully should be his, and will go about various brutal actions to achieve his goal.

Spoiler warning: Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens. But anyway as mentioned Gerrity pulls a narrative trick that foreshadows Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club by a couple decades. We have motormouthed Jerry Doyle hired to kill Cordolini, but for the most part he just takes care of Brendine and mocks various mobsters…I mean we never see him actually planning anything. And we have Cordolini striking from the shadows as he wipes out various torpedos or intercepts a shipment of heroin Don Genarro is expecting. Well friends prepare yourself for this one – the novel ends with Genarro, The Old Man, and other high-level mobsters sequestered on a ship to discuss what to do, given current events. Then Doyle calls Genarro on the phone…and Genarro realizes that Doyle is really Cordolini! That’s right – Cordolini reveals that the real Jerry Doyle is “dead and buried” and he, Cordolini, has been posing as Doyle since his arrival in New York! Hence Cordolini really has been center stage throughout most of the novel, but no one – not even the reader – has been aware of it.

The Plastic Man ends with Genarro’s rule come to as decisive an end as Vicari’s did, but this time Cordolini also manages to take out the Old Man. Then there’s a final reckoning with the person who ordered the murder of Cordolini’s family – but Gerrity again squanders any potential for blood-soaked vengeance by casually informing us that the actual perpetrators of the murder were no doubt killed themselves, their bodies dumped somewhere. So then the reader must be content as Cordolini strangles the man who ordered the hit, his gray eyes “terrible to see” as he gets his revenge. This is where we leave Cordolini, and hopefully I’ll get to the concluding novel, The Numbers Man, a lot sooner than I did this one.