The next one provoked a small explosion and a puff of white smoke. The first gawkers were showing up now.
“It’s rather late, Mr. Corleone. As you can see, several of the other guests-”
He put another bullet in the engine block.
“-have unfortunately been disturbed.”
Two more into the passenger side. His final bullet missed the car.
Behind him, a lady screamed and shouted shrill nonsense in what might have been French. When Fredo turned around, there was Matt Marshall-shirtless, barefoot, and in chinos, charging toward him, his blandly handsome face contorted in rage.
Fredo drew the other gun, too, and pointed them both at Marshall-who either was nuts or knew Fredo was out of bullets, because he kept coming. Fredo had never experienced a moment of such clarity. He stood his ground. Marshall lunged toward him, and Fredo dodged him, deftly as a matador. Marshall hit the pavement. He rose, bloodied, and charged again, head stupidly down. Fredo wanted to laugh but instead threw a roundhouse pistol-whip haymaker. It made a sound like dropping a roast from a tall building. Marshall crumpled.
As one-except for the shrieking French lady-the crowd that had gathered said, “Ooh.”
Fredo holstered the guns. “Self-defense,” he said, “pure and simple.”
It was Hagen who came to bail him out.
“You made good time,” Fredo said as they walked out of the police station. “You fly?”
“Only in a manner of speaking. Jesus, Fredo. I’m not sure anyone in that hotel ever managed to get themselves arrested.”
“Stray bullets,” he said. “It could happen to anyone. I feel rotten about that dog, though.”
The French lady was a deposed countess, out walking her toy poodle. One of the bullets had blown all but a few stringy remnants of its head off. The other problematic shot was one that had somehow passed through the Corvette and torn up the grille of the car behind it, a white DeSoto Adventurer, the pace car for the 1957 Indy 500. The winner of the race had made a mint selling it to Marshall, best known to moviegoers as the cocky gearhead with a heart of gold in Checkered Past, Checkered Flag. That asshole wasn’t fighting for Deanna or on her behalf. What set him off had been the acrid smoke coming from his precious car.
“It’s worse than stray bullets, Fredo. Those guns-”
“They’re clean. Neri said they were as clean as they come.”
“They better be, because the LAPD is bringing in the FBI to help check ’em out.”
“They’re clean.”
They got into Hagen ’s Buick-everyone in the Family was driving boring cars all of sudden-and they drove in silence to the Château Marmont. Not only hadn’t the management kicked Fredo out, but Hagen had taken a room there, too. There’s a lot to be said for a place with a discreet staff. There was also a lot to be said for tipping well, paying for one’s room in advance, and being married to a VIP. Hagen and Fredo took a walk together on the secluded tropical grounds.
“So what about those pills they found in your pocket?” Hagen said.
“Prescription. Segal gave ’em to me.” That was true, at least indirectly. He’d sent Figaro, his guy in Vegas, out to get the pills. Jules Segal, an old friend of the family, was head of surgery at the hospital the Corleones had built.
“They tell me they were in an aspirin bottle.”
“I dumped ’em in there and then took all the aspirin. There’s no law that says you gotta carry pills a certain way.”
“I don’t know. Segal got suspended once for that, a long time ago, and before he worked at our hospital. But now… well, the hospital makes us look good, and if-”
“Get a different doc at that hospital to say he prescribed it, then. Make it worth his while. You’ve fixed problems a hundred times worse than this. Jesus, Tommy. Pop always called you the most Sicilian one. What the fuck happened? They remove that from you with a special act of Congress? I told you what that guy did! It was my wife!”
“You told me on the phone. Which wasn’t smart, Fredo.”
Fredo shrugged, in concession. “ Marshall didn’t die or nothin’, did he?”
“No, thank God.” Hagen said. “He’ll be fine. His face is another matter, though.”
“Pretty bad, huh?”
“Pretty bad. Matt Marshall makes a living with his cheekbones, one of which is now more of a liquid than a solid. Which would be bad enough, but as you know he’s in the middle of shooting a movie. They don’t seem to think they can finish it without him. It’s possible we can take care of things, but L.A. is a tough town for us anymore, with the Chicago -”
“We got peace with those guys. They know me, they like me. I can handle ’em.”
“At any rate, you’ve given me a lot of things to take care of.”
“C’mon, Tom. What would you have done if it had been Theresa?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Kill a car, a poodle, and a major motion picture?”
“At least you didn’t say it would never be Theresa.”
“It would never be Theresa.”
“Fuck you, you fucking holier-than-thou fuck.”
“How many pills you take today, Fredo?”
“None.” He didn’t think like that, about the number. “I only take ’em off and on.” He didn’t want to go by Bungalow 3, and he didn’t wasn’t to go by the pool. “Better view this way,” he said. “Of Sunset Boulevard and all.”
“I know,” Hagen said. “I’ve stayed here. I was the one who told you about this place.”
“So you know, then. Better view this way.”
They went that way.
“I been meaning to ask,” Fredo said. “Did Kay go nuts when you told her about the bugs?”
“She doesn’t know,” Hagen said.
Fredo had guessed right: Mike hadn’t even told her himself. He’d have Tom do it. There was some pilgrim who’d lost his woman. “Kay’s smart. She knows things. Even if she don’t know, sooner or later but probably sooner you’ll tell her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not saying you’re sweet on her or nothin’, but everyone knows she’s got a way of getting things out of you.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”
“You told me my idea about cornering the cemetery racket in New York like out in Colma was the most ridiculous thing you ever heard.”
“That cemetery idea? You’re still talking about that? Mike told you, it’s not a project we can get into now. We’re staying away from rackets of any sort. We don’t want to be beholden to the Straccis for anything. We’d need to call in favors from all kinds of politicians in New York, and the last thing we want to do right now is spend those kind of favors on a project like this-one that has a lot of holes in it, I might add.”
They rounded a corner and ran into Alfred Hitchcock, out for a walk along with Annie McGowan and her agent. Fredo introduced Hagen as “Congressman Hagen.” Annie asked Fredo if he was okay. Fredo said it was a long story and he’d give her a call later. No, Johnny wasn’t in town, Annie said. He was in Chicago. Hitchcock insisted he had to go, and they went.
“What holes?” Fredo said, again alone with Hagen.
“It’s got holes,” Hagen said. “Look, the way things are is this: The operation in New York is going to maintain things as is. The only new ventures have to be legitimate businesses.”
“That’s the beauty of my plan, Tom. It’s no racket. It’ll all be completely legal.”
“Fredo, you can’t have this both ways. You can’t on the one hand be in the public eye, married to a movie star, running the entertainment side of our hotels in Las Vegas, and starting up your own television show-which I hear went well, by the way.”
“Thanks. We try.”
“But you can’t do all that and at the same time be the force behind something like your cemetery plan. And you can’t do any of it if you don’t clean up your act. Wake up, huh?”
Waking up would be great, exc
ept that the cops had taken his fucking pills. “So let someone else take care of the dirty work,” Fredo said. “Rocco could do it. Or you know who’d be perfect? Nick Geraci. After it’s all legit, I’d be in charge. It was my idea, Tom.”
“Ideas,” Hagen said, “are shit. It’s knowing what to do with an idea that matters.”
“I know what to fucking do with my idea, okay? I know how to put it in place. I know how to run the fucking operation once it’s in place. My problem is, you won’t let me do it.”
Hagen started to say something.
“Say it,” Fredo said. “Say it’s not you stopping me, it’s Mike. Goddamn it, Tom, he takes advantage of you worse than he does me. We’re both older than him. We both got passed over, and why?”
Hagen frowned.
“You’re not Italian,” Fredo said, “and you’re not blood either, so fine, that complicates things, but not to the point of making you automatically into his errand boy.”
“I should have let you cool your heels in there, you ungrateful prick. Maybe you’d like it in jail.”
“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Hagen closed his eyes. “Nothing.”
“What’s wrong, you afraid?”
Hagen didn’t say anything.
“I asked you a question, goddamnit.”
“Are you going to hit me, Fredo? Go ahead.”
“I know what you’re trying to say, Tom. Just say it. This is about that kid, the thief in San Fran.” Fredo hadn’t had to kill a guy to get initiated into the business. Dean the beatnik was the first person Fredo had ever killed. If only the kid hadn’t remembered that old photo of Fredo crying on the curb. Fredo had pretended not to know anything about it. He had the kind of face that looked like a lot of people, he’d told Dean. But the kid wouldn’t drop it. Fredo smothered the kid with a pillow, got him dressed, and beat up the corpse to make it look good. Nice kid, but the fact remained, he was a pervert. Not someone just messing around but a guy who thought of himself as a faggot. It was sick. At the time, Fredo had been in such a panic about being recognized that the whole business had been easy. Getting out of it had been harder, but that had come out all right, too. “Don’t keep looking at me like that. Say it.”
“I’m not trying to say a goddamned thing,” Hagen said. “ San Francisco, as far as I’m concerned, is ancient history.”
“You’re really starting to piss me off, Tom.”
“Starting?”
Fredo threw a punch. Tom caught it with his left hand, wrenched Fredo’s arm around, then buried his fist in Fredo’s gut with such force Fredo left his feet. Tom let go of the arm. Fredo staggered and then fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
“I fucking hate you, Tom,” Fredo finally said, still panting.
“You what?”
“The minute you walked in our house,” Fredo said, “you were Pop’s favorite.”
“C’mon, Fredo. How old are you?”
“Mike was Ma’s,” he said, his breathing slowing. “Sonny didn’t need nobody, and Connie’s a girl. You know, I was Pop’s favorite until you got there. Did you know that? You ever think of that? Did you ever care? What you took was mine.”
“This is a hell of a thing to say to the guy you’re counting on to fix the mess you made.”
“What’s it matter what I say?” Fredo said. “You’ll do it anyway. You’ll do whatever Mike tells you to.”
“I’m loyal to this family.”
“Bullshit. You’re just loyal to him.”
“Listen to yourself, Fredo.”
He stood up, then charged. Hagen ’s second punch caught Fredo square on the chin and dropped him flat on his back in a bed of Asian jasmine.
“Had enough?”
Fredo sat up and rubbed his hands over his gray, stubbly face. He took several deep breaths. “I haven’t slept,” he said, “y’know, really slept, for I don’t know. Days.”
Hagen took out a cigar and lit it. He got a good draw going and then extended his hand. Fredo, still kneeling, looked up at it for a long time, then finally took it.
“Cigar?” Hagen asked, reaching for his breast pocket.
“No thanks,” Fredo said.
Hagen nodded. “Go up and see your wife, Fredo.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. Anyway, she’s not up there.”
“Where else would she be? They’re not filming today.”
“She’s up there?”
Hagen patted Fredo on the shoulder. “I love you, Fredo. You know that, right?”
Fredo shrugged. “I love you, too, Tommy,” he said, “but at the same time-”
“We’ve been over that,” Tom said. “Forget about it.”
“I guess how could it be any other way, with brothers, huh?”
Hagen cocked his head in a way that indicated maybe, maybe not.
“Nice reflexes, by the way,” Fredo said. “Catching that punch.”
“Lots of coffee,” Hagen said.
“Oughta cut back on that stuff,” Fredo said. “It’ll kill you.”
“Just go. Rest up. Everything’s going to be fine.”
For a time, however briefly, Hagen was right.
Deanna greeted him at the door. She kissed him again and again and ran a hot bath in the huge tub. He soaked in it as she shaved him.
She was, yes, one of the most honored actresses of her generation, but Fredo was convinced that the ardor he’d sparked by standing up for her, by fighting for her, couldn’t be faked. In their whole time together, they’d never had a better time in bed.
“So how’d a bum like me wind up with you, huh?” he asked afterward.
She sighed in a way that sounded happy. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” she said.
“What about here?” he said.
“Definitely look there. Get close and take a good lick around. I mean look.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right,” she purred, hands pressed firmly against the back of his head. “I don’t.”
Chapter 18
T HAT MARCH, Nick Geraci’s father came to New York -the first time he’d been there since Nick moved from Cleveland. Naturally, he drove. All however many thousand miles from Arizona, which he somehow did alone and in three days. To the end, he’d be Fausto the Driver.
When he first arrived, he seemed content to simmer in the self-contained cocoon of his own sulky regret, staring out at his son’s swimming pool. He ran out of Chesterfield Kings. Charlotte offered him a carton of hers, which he said would be fine. They were a ladies’ brand, but he said a friend of his smoked this kind and he was used to them, in a pinch. Nick winked and asked if that meant Miss Conchita Cruz. “Shut up about things you don’t know nothin’ about, eh? You want money for these?” He reached for his money clip.
“It’s fine, Dad. No.”
“You’re a big shot, but I pay my own way, understood?”
“We just want you to have a good time, okay?”
“That’s a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “Why don’t you all just mind your own business? And take the money, unless my money’s no good.”
“It’s no good in this house, Dad,” Nick said. “You’re our guest.”
“Guest?” he scoffed. “Don’t be stupid, you big stupid. I’m family.”
“It’s nice to see you,” Nick said, still refusing the money and embracing his father, who did in fact embrace him back, and they kissed each other’s cheeks.
In the morning, there were five bucks under Charlotte ’s purse.
The next day, unseasonably warm for New York in March, they went as a family for lunch at Patsy’s, Geraci’s favorite Italian restaurant in the city, where he practically had his own table upstairs, and then for a cruise on the Circle Line, which had been Charlotte’s idea. It offered views of New York that even a native like her never got to see otherwise, plus it seemed like a congenial afternoon for a man who spent every day brooding and staring at the water. Nick and Charlo
tte had taken the cruise on an early date, but their girls had never done it before. Barb was a freshman in high school now and could barely go anywhere without her friends, a squadron of whom met her at the pier. Bev, though, who looked as old as Barb but was only eleven, stayed next to her grandfather, asking him things about Ellis Island-which, as a little boy, was the last time Fausto had been to New York. By the time they got to Roosevelt Island, she’d somehow gotten him to give her lessons in Sicilian dialect.
After they’d passed the Polo Grounds but before the desolation of the northern tip of Manhattan had segued from hard to believe to deathly boring, Fausto, his spirits as buoyant as they got, took his son aside and said that he’d actually come to New York on business.
Nick frowned and cocked his head.
“Message from the Jew,” he said, meaning Vince Forlenza. “Long story. This ain’t the place. How far are we from Troy?”
“ Troy what? Troy, New York?” Nick Geraci was pretty sure his father had never told him a long story of any kind.
“No, big shot. Troy with Helen and the big fuckin’ horse. Yes, Troy, New York.”
“We need to go to Troy for you to tell me what you need to tell me?”
“We don’t need to go to Troy at all. We could do what we need to do at your house or at your precious Henry Hudson Political Club, any place we can talk that’s-”
“Patrick Henry,” Nick corrected. His headquarters in Brooklyn. His office.
“Wherever. Let me tell you something. I want to go to Troy. All right? Think you can begrudge a dying old man that one little thing?”
“Since when are you dying?”
“Since the day I was born.”
“I thought you were going to say since the day I was born.”
“You give yourself too much credit, hotshot.”
Turned out, Fausto had heard that there were cockfights in Troy, supposedly the top place in the country. It was upstate, and thus presumably under the direct or indirect control of the Cuneo Family. Fausto had always been a fan of cockfights and over the years had dropped enough money at a joint in Youngstown that by rights his name should have been on the deed. Tucson had cockfights, but they were run by Mexicans, and Fausto thought they were crooked.
The Godfather returns Page 33
