The Godfather returns

by Mark Winegardner

  The Ambassador finished his sandwich. Hagen asked about his family. The Ambassador went on and on about them, especially Danny (Daniel Brendan Shea, former law clerk to a U.S. Supreme Court justice and now the assistant attorney general of the state of New York) and Danny’s big brother, Jimmy (James Kavanaugh Shea, governor of New Jersey). Danny, whose wedding last year, to a direct descendant of Paul Revere, had been a highlight of the Newport social season, was screwing a TV star, the hostess of a puppet show Hagen ’s girls watched. And Jimmy. The governor. Though only in his first term, he was already inspiring talk about a run for the presidency. The Ambassador did not ask about Hagen ’s family.

  The Ambassador went on to ask about several of the men’s mutual associates and acquaintances. Hovering between and among their every chatty word were the recent events in New York. But neither man spoke the names of any of the dead-Tessio, Tattaglia, Barzini, nobody. Neither Hagen nor the Ambassador spoke specifically of those events, or had to.

  The Ambassador stood, knee deep on a step of the pool, and stretched. He was a tall man, a giant by the standards of men of his generation. He’d claimed to have licked Babe Ruth in a fistfight when they were kids; this was a lie, but with the Babe dead for years now and the Ambassador standing there in his aging, ropy-penised glory, the story contained its own sort of truth. The Ambassador dove forward and began swimming laps. After ten he stopped.

  “Fountain of youth, fella,” he said, not as breathless as Hagen would have thought. “Swear to you. Swear to fucking God.”

  Had it not been for the beating sun, his headache, his irritation at being trifled with by the Ambassador, and his need to get home tonight, Hagen might have let things drag out.

  “So, Mr. Ambassador. Do we have a deal?”

  “Ho ho! You get right to the point there, don’t you?”

  Hagen glanced at his watch. It was pushing four. “I’m like that.”

  The Ambassador got out of the pool. How the woman in the maid outfit knew to appear from out of nowhere with a towel and a thick robe, Hagen couldn’t imagine. Hagen followed the Ambassador into a glassed-in porch, which was, thank God, both dark and air-conditioned.

  “You flatter me. You and Mike do. Or rather you people flatter Danny.” He paused for Hagen to catch his implication. “I can’t really call off the investigation. You must know that. And Danny certainly can’t. Even if he could, it’s a local matter. New York City, not state.”

  All of which Hagen correctly understood to mean the opposite. What that little turn of phrase about Danny meant was that the Ambassador had rigged it so that nothing came directly from his office, nothing could be traced back to him.

  “We wouldn’t want anything called off,” Hagen said. “It’s important that justice be served. Moving forward, getting back to business without the disruption these false accusations have caused, that’s in the best interest of all involved.”

  “Hard to argue with that,” said the Ambassador, nodding. They had a deal, presuming Hagen had come through.

  “And you, sir, flatter me,” Hagen said. “Or rather, our business connections. As I’m sure you’re aware, many people have a say in choosing a person to give the nominating speech at the national convention next year. We’ve spoken to people, it’s true. The convention is set for Atlantic City. That’s definite now.”

  “Definite?”

  Hagen nodded.

  The old man shot a fist into the air, an oddly boyish gesture. This was terrific news for him, of course. Now, even if the more delicate aspects of this deal fell through, Governor Shea would, at minimum, be able to take credit for bringing the convention-and the conventioneers and their money-to his state.

  “The location is a helpful sign,” Hagen agreed. “Having the governor of the host state deliver the nominating speech will strike a lot of people as a good idea. After that, who knows?”

  After that, Hagen said, as if the speech were sure to happen, which the Ambassador now understood that it was.

  “Theoretically speaking,” the Ambassador said. “Once Jimmy gives the speech-”

  Hagen nodded. The list of ifs was long. “I’m a careful but optimistic man, sir. Let’s just call it a long haul to 1960.”

  Haul being the operative word. If the most important ifs went right, the labor unions the Corleones controlled would support James Kavanaugh Shea’s bid for the White House.

  “Rumor has it,” said the Ambassador, escorting Hagen though the house now and to the waiting golf cart, “you have political aspirations yourself.”

  “You know how it is, sir,” Hagen said. “This is America. Land of opportunity. Any boy can grow up to be president.”

  The Ambassador laughed like hell, handed him a cigar, and sent him on his way. “You’ll go far,” he shouted after him, as if Tom Hagen’s life up to now had been nothing, nowhere.

  Chapter 6

  I T WOULD BE YEARS before anyone outside the Chicago outfit learned that Louie Russo had ordered a hit on Fredo Corleone. Russo had nothing against Fredo per se. It is a meaningless coincidence that the attempt to kill him came a few months after Russo’s estranged son (and namesake) moved to Paris and began his life as an openly gay man. That said, Russo Jr. did live in Las Vegas for a year, and he was the indirect source of his father’s intelligence on Fredo Corleone’s occasional proclivities. The killers were supposed to wait until they found Fredo in bed with another man-ideally near dawn, so it would seem more incriminating-then make it look as if Fredo had shot the other guy and then himself. This sordid scene would humiliate and weaken Michael Corleone-who’d just named his brother sotto capo, to the dismay of many in his own organization-without Chicago getting blamed for anything or having to fear any reprisals. It wasn’t only violent reprisals Russo was trying to avoid, either. He desperately wanted a seat on the Commission, La Cosa Nostra ’s ruling body-something that he’d never get if it became known that he’d killed a made member of another Family without first getting the Commission’s approval. It might have all worked, too, if, after slipping the phony suicide note under the windshield wiper of Fredo’s borrowed car, one of the killers hadn’t had a violent colon spasm and been forced to stop at a filling station men’s room.

  Fredo Corleone would live another four years, though he never found out what happened. He might have figured it out if he hadn’t turned on the windshield wipers and mangled the phony note. The ink had bled, and all that was legible was “Forgive me, Fredo.” Fredo presumed the note had been from that desperate faggot salesman from last night, asking for forgiveness-which, in Fredo’s experience, those sick people were always doing.

  As for the cops, they took him inside the white A-frame building alongside the customs booths, gave him a handwriting test, which he took, and started asking a lot of questions, which he refused to answer without a lawyer present. He mentioned that though he was from out of town, his good friend Mr. Joe Zaluchi could probably recommend an attorney. The handwriting didn’t match, and a police captain on Zaluchi’s payroll materialized and said he’d take everything from here. Everyone but the captain still thought they were dealing with an assistant trailer park manager from Nevada named Carl Frederick who was that rare drunk made more agile and articulate by a few stiff belts.

  Fredo said he had to make a couple quick phone calls, and the captain told the other men they could go. Fredo took a seat behind a desk like he owned the place and called the airport to have them page his bodyguards, who would have expected him there an hour ago. The captain sat down at a desk across the room and started eating the confiscated oranges. There was a battered radio on the filing cabinet next to him, and he turned it on. A bouncy Perry Como song came blaring out and Fredo frowned and the captain turned it down and mouthed, “Sorry.”

  Fredo kept waiting, but neither Figaro, which is what he called the barber, or the goatherd came to the phone. He hung up and had the operator connect him with Joe Zaluchi. There was no listing, of course. The captain was sipping coffee an
d going at those oranges like crazy, averting his eyes, giving Fredo his privacy.

  “Sir?” Fredo said. “You don’t by any chance know how I can get in touch with Joe Z.?”

  “No idea,” the captain said, winking. He’d loved the sir. “What do you need?”

  “I borrowed a car from him. I already missed one flight. If I take time to drop the car off back in Grosse Pointe, I’ll never-”

  The captain waved him off. “Leave it here. The airport’s on my way to where I’m going. I’ll give you a lift. I’ll take care of things with the car later.”

  That would have been suspicious, except that the guy had been at the wedding yesterday.

  “Thanks,” Fredo said, and tried the airport once more. Again, nothing. He called the phone service in Las Vegas. “It’s Mr. E.,” he said-short for “Mister Entertainment.” “Anybody asks, tell ’em I missed my plane but I’ll be on the next one, guaranteed, all right?”

  Fredo would certainly have figured everything out if he hadn’t told the captain to turn down the radio. When the song finished, the news came on. Among the top stories: police were investigating a homicide at a motel in Windsor. A restaurant supply salesman from Dearborn claimed that the door to his room had been broken down by two armed intruders, both of whom he had shot with a Colt.45. One intruder had died; the other-Oscar Gionfriddo, age forty, a vending machine supplier from Joliet, Illinois -was in critical condition at Salvation Army Grace Hospital. The dead man’s identity had not yet been released. The shooter said that the gun belonged to a friend. “I never fired a gun before in my life,” the man said. His voice cracked. “I can’t believe my luck.” He came off more like a winner of the Irish Sweepstakes than someone who’d just killed one, maybe two men.

  The captain, of course, had no reason to think anything of it, and the radio was far too soft for Fredo to hear from across the room.

  The phone rang. The captain answered. It was the bodyguard, the barber. Figaro. Fredo told him he’d be right there.

  “All set,” Fredo told the captain.

  “You got everything? Well, except these.” His mouth was full of orange. “You can’t take these. A gun’s easier to bring into the country than a piece of fruit, isn’t that something?”

  A gun.

  Neri had said that the whole crate of Colt Peacemakers was untraceable. Still, it couldn’t be good, leaving the gun behind. It made Fredo look like a fool. Worse, he was left without a gun. He considered asking the captain for one but didn’t want to push his luck.

  “I got everything,” Fredo said, heading toward the door.

  They got into the captain’s unmarked car. The radio came on, full blast. “And now, more music!” The captain turned it down and again apologized. It was an old song: the big-band sound of Les Halley and His New Haven Ravens, featuring the vocal stylings of Johnny “ Memory Lane ” Fontane. One of their last sessions together, the deejay said, “before he left the world of platters for movieola matters.”

  “My wife,” said the captain, pointing at the radio, “always used to love this record.”

  Fredo nodded. “Everyone’s wife did. That’s how a lot of ’em got to be someone’s wife. Songs like this here.”

  “Hard to imagine how much pussy a guy like that must get.”

  “Oh, I can imagine,” Fredo said. “It doesn’t hurt that John’s a hell of a great guy, either.”

  “You know Johnny Fontane?”

  “Personal friends,” Fredo said, shrugging.

  They didn’t say anything more until the song was over.

  “Personal friends, huh?” asked the captain.

  “Personal friends. Matter of fact, my dad was his godfather.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit.”

  “Let me ask you something, then,” said the captain. “Is it true he’s got a dick the size of your arm?”

  “How the fuck would I know a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. Sauna or something. It’s just a rumor I heard, and I figured-”

  “What are you,” Fredo asked, “a fruit?”

  The captain rolled his eyes and turned on his siren. They drove the rest of the way to the airport like that, a hundred miles an hour and not talking.

  Chapter 7

  P HIL ORNSTEIN’S corner office on the forty-first floor was lined with gold records and pictures of Philly’s frankly unattractive family but none of famous people, which was either an affectation or a reason to love the guy. He ushered Johnny Fontane behind his stainless steel desk. “Take as long as you’d like,” he said, though he couldn’t have meant that. Milner was getting the band squared away for the next number. Johnny dialed the number to his old house.

  Halfway through, he stopped. Ginny and the girls had no idea he was in L.A. If he didn’t call, they’d be none the wiser. He was calling to apologize for not seeing them while he was in town, but the only thing that made the call necessary was the call itself.

  He took out the pep pills, considered the label, then took one out and swallowed it dry.

  Shit. What was he, some schoolboy segaiolo, afraid to ask out the prom queen? He’d known Ginny, his ex, ever since they were ten. The literal girl next door. He redialed.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Hello, my life,” Ginny said. She managed to say that in a way that was sweet and sarcastic at the same time. There’s nothing like a Brooklyn girl. “Where are you?”

  “God, it’s great to hear your voice,” Johnny said. “What are you doing?”

  They’d just gotten back from May Company, she told him. His oldest daughter had purchased her first brassiere.

  “You can’t be serious,” Johnny said.

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” Ginny said.

  He’d had good-paying gigs in Atlantic City and at private clubs in the Jersey Palisades and the one Louie Russo had outside Chicago. He’d done a picture on location in New Orleans. The early scenes of it were shot here, on soundstages. Probably then. “Memorial Day?”

  “Rhetorical question,” she said. “So where are you now?”

  “Remember that one Labor Day, I don’t know what year,” he said. “We rented that place at Cape May, and we all went to that clambake?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re kidding,” he said. He could hear his girls in the background, arguing.

  “Of course I’m kidding. Those were the times of my life. Back when I didn’t exist.”

  Les Halley had insisted that Johnny pretend he was single so that the bobby-soxers would all keep screaming. “That was never my idea,” he said.

  “And you had your floozy across town so that every time you went out for cigarettes-”

  “Remember when I burnt my hands trying to cook that corn and-”

  “And then burnt them again on those firecrackers.”

  “True.” He had to laugh.

  “There’s a block party tomorrow,” she said. “We have to make pie. You want to come?”

  “To the party?”

  “You’re in town, right? You sound so close.”

  He cradled the phone against his shoulder and covered his eyes with both hands. “No,” he said. “I’m not. It’s just a good connection.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Your loss. I’m making chicken scarpariello, too. Same recipe your ma showed me. Actually, the girls are. If they don’t kill each other first. They’re at that age.”

  Johnny loved them, but as far as he could tell they’d always been at that age.

  She asked if he wanted to talk to them. He said he did, but only his younger daughter would get on the phone. Philly came in, tapping his watch.

  “Tell your mother,” Johnny said, “that I’ll do my best to make it to the party tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” she said. She’d convey the message-she was that kind of kid-but there was a note in her voice that made it clear she knew he’d never show.

  The green pills had been prescribed by Jules Segal,
the same doctor who’d diagnosed the warts on Johnny’s vocal cords and referred him to the specialist who shaved them off, an operation that made it possible for Johnny to get back into good voice and into the studio, a diagnosis two specialists had missed. Point being, there were a thousand Hollywood quacks whose interest in the human body had dwindled to the fleshy parts of their starlets du jour and the finer points of their own backswings, getting rich by handing out pills and taking care of girls in trouble, and then there was Segal, who had the same kind of rep but turned out to be a first-rate doctor, good enough to be chief of surgery at the new hospital the Corleones were building in Las Vegas. So why was it that every time Johnny popped another of those pills-still in line with the dosage recommended on the side of the bottle, never more-he went off by himself?

  Johnny shook it off, like a dog with an itch in its ear. He’d be fine, really. Both under control and not. Which was okay, which suited the task at hand. He was getting by on four pills, twenty cups of tea, a pot of coffee, a ham sandwich, and no sleep. In the space between his scalp and skull, microscopic ants danced some hepcat thing like the hucklebuck. The aching in the big muscles on top of his thighs, whatever they were called, sharpened almost by the minute. But Johnny stayed on his feet, too spent even to fall to the floor for a nap. At the same time, he had too much energy. He couldn’t help but take each piece of barely perceptible direction he got from that brilliant lummox Milner and do his level best to put it in play.

  He’d have given anything to stop.

  He’d have given anything to make this feeling last forever.

  He’d come here thinking he’d lay down half a long-playing record. A few minutes into the session, he realized he’d be doing well to finish one song to both his and Cy Milner’s satisfaction. Yet, minutes before he’d have to catch a plane back to Vegas, he found himself doing the third song of the day so well he got to the end without stopping or being stopped.

  As he finished, he opened his eyes and saw Jackie Ping-Pong and Gussie Cicero standing inside the far door to the studio. How long they’d been there, Johnny had no idea.