Deacon King Kong

The novel’s point-of-view in this chapter shifts from the Cause characters to an Italian mobster in the same neighborhood named Thomas Elefante, known as “the Elephant.” Elefante lives with his mother in a house near the Cause Houses. A police officer comes to tell Elefante about Sportcoat shooting Deems, but he dismisses the news as irrelevant to himself.

As he goes back about his day, Elefante recalls a night two weeks before when an elderly Irishman showed up unexpectedly as Elefante and his gang were unloading smuggled cigarettes from a boxcar. The Irishman, who calls himself the Governor (though his real name is Driscoll Sturgess), tells Elefante he knew his father in prison decades before. He asks Elefante for his help selling a mysterious artifact that he calls the Venus of Willendorf, claiming it’s in a storage unit owned first by Elefante’s father and now by Elefante. Elefante points out that he doesn’t have access to the storage units—only the people renting them do.

Elefante initially believes that the Governor is delusional; however, Elefante remembers when his father, on his deathbed, began to tell Elefante about the man and the object. Because his father died before telling him what the object was, Elefante almost forgot about the incident.