The Godfather's Revenge

by Mark Winegardner

  JUDY BUCHANAN HAD BEEN GONE FOR LESS THAN fifteen minutes: fifteen anomalous minutes, at least from the two investigators’ perspective.

  They’d been inside her apartment for maybe five of those minutes when there was the sound of her key in the lock. A moment later she was inside.

  She grabbed the gun and cast off the purse.

  The brother-in-law, in the middle of putting a floor lamp back together, stood, cocked his head, and looked at the gun she’d drawn on him as if he didn’t know what such a thing was for. It was aimed at his crotch.

  Judy regarded him as if she wasn’t quite sure he was real, as if she were afraid he was a ghost brought to life by her darkest, most irrational fears.

  Dantzler had been in her bedroom, where he’d gone to attach a bug to the underside of a dresser drawer. He’d removed the drawer but had taken time to enjoy smelling her clothes. It was the one thing he’d yearned to know about her that surveillance hadn’t yielded. He heard the door open and came running. He wasn’t sure how he was going to talk his way out of this, only that he could.

  At the sight of a second man, Judy screamed, fired, then spun toward Dantzler and fired twice more.

  Dantzler, unscathed, dove toward her. As he tackled her, there was an explosion.

  She was dead before she hit the ground.

  Dantzler rolled off her, saw the pulpy mess that had just been what Judy Buchanan thought of as her good side, then turned away. A wave of nausea hit him, every bit as hard as he’d just slammed into her.

  Dantzler fought it off and sat up and looked at his brother-in-law. Blood streamed from a gash in his cheek. His right arm hung limply at his side. The smoking barrel of his odd gun looked big enough around for a deer slug. “Fuck’s that?” Dantzler said, meaning the gun. “Russian?”

  “Shit,” the brother-in-law said.

  “You could have killed me.”

  “Shit,” the brother-in-law said again.

  “Are you OK?” Dantzler said. “Your face is—”

  “I’m fine.” The brother-in-law touched his cheek where the bullet had grazed him and studied the blood on his fingers.

  Dantzler looked again at the dead woman. Tom Hagen might be a rat bastard who’d just used her, but there were other people out there who loved this woman. Dantzler had learned who they were. Judy’s mother, Ruth, a retired nurse living next to a canal in Florida, in a nice house trailer, its walls lined with pictures of Judy at all ages. Or Judy’s retarded son, Philip, who lit up with joy every time his mother visited him at that institution. Maybe even Dantzler himself. He had sympathized with her plight so deeply, seen her naked so often, yet only now, nauseated by the coppery smell of her blood and the flecks of pink brain that he tried not to look at, did he realize that he’d come to feel like her protector. He could not accept that it had been Judy Buchanan’s time.

  “Shit is right,” Dantzler said.

  He wasn’t thinking clearly. He needed to think clearly. They should take the body. Bodies found outdoors led to convictions half as often as those found indoors. “We’ll carry her down the back stairs,” he said.

  “Fuck you, Bob.” He raised the gun.

  “Oh, perfect,” Dantzler said. “Shoot me. That’s goddamned perfect. Drop the gun, numbnuts, before you hurt yourself.”

  The brother-in-law didn’t move. He’d killed people before, dozens of them, men and even—also accidentally—a few women. But not since Korea. He wished that Korea would go away, though he doubted that it ever would. Now this. The gun aimed at Bob Danztler had been taken off a dead man near Pusan. In the chamber there was one more of those supposedly untraceable shrapnel bullets he’d bought at the Holiday Inn in Paramus, New Jersey.

  “Drop it, you faggot,” Dantzler said.

  All that horseshit about destiny Dantzler always talked about? What if it was true? It wasn’t just Dantzler the brother-in-law was sick and tired of. He was sick and tired of pretty much everything. “I could kill you,” he said.

  Dantzler laughed at him. “A lot of things could happen, y’know? But it ain’t gonna happen,” he said, “now, is it?”

  The brother-in-law dropped his gun to the floor and began to cry.

  Family.

  Dantzler grabbed the big gun and snatched the bug from the lamp. They were wearing gloves already, so prints weren’t a problem. He briefly considered throwing the poor sap over his shoulder, fireman-style. But then there was the matter of the body.

  “Get up,” he said to the brother-in-law. “I ain’t carrying you.”

  The brother-in-law wouldn’t move.

  Blood pounded in Dantzler’s ears. He still wasn’t thinking clearly. They were running out of time. There was no time for the body. They had to get out of there. He pushed his brother-in-law into a chair and shoved the gun in the poor sap’s mouth. The brother-in-law offered no real resistance.

  “It’ll look like you killed her and then yourself,” Dantzler said. “Or, you can get up and haul ass.”

  The brother-in-law had stopped crying. “Aul aa,” he said, his mouth full of gun barrel.

  “Attaboy,” Dantzler said.

  Several blocks uptown, as soon as he was sure they hadn’t been followed, Dantzler pulled his car up to a phone booth. The brother-in-law stayed in the car and started crying again, this time without making any noise. It was spooky to see. Dantzler tried not to look.

  Her prints were on the gun. There was that. There was the brother-in-law’s blood, but with any luck he didn’t have one of the rare types. Otherwise, they hadn’t left behind anything that could be pinned on them. Dantzler was all but sure no one had seen them leave. They definitely weren’t followed out of the building, and his car had been parked far enough away that nobody who hadn’t followed them would have had any reason to write down the plates. It would be fine. Bob Dantzler took a deep breath and dialed.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Get out of town,” the detective barked into the phone. “And never come back.”

  “Just like that? It’s bad,” Dantzler said, “but it’s not—”

  “Look, it’s your funeral,” the detective said. “Do what you want. I got to go fix your mess, fucko.”

  The detective hung up, ran outside to the phone on the corner, and called a number that, according to phone company records, belonged to the rectory of a Catholic church in Brooklyn that didn’t exist.

  It actually rang upstairs in the Carroll Gardens Hunt Club.

  Momo the Roach answered it himself. They went through the security precautions he’d worked out with the detective, though there was no need. Momo was the only one around. Eddie Paradise had told him to stay there during the Commission meeting and quote-unquote watch the fort. Crazy little shitbird. Eddie had been awfully quick to fall this much in love with being in charge.

  “This something that happened,” Momo said, “she did it to herself, right?”

  “That’s not an explanation I’d use.”

  “We talking about a permanent condition?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “So you’re told,” Momo said. “You know how to pick ’em, don’t you? I told you: top men, price was no object. And you give me this? I’m disappointed in you. Very disappointed.”

  “It was an accident, all right?”

  “Accidents don’t happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult,” the Roach said. It was part of the code a made guy in the Corleone Family was expected to live by. The code the Roach had been taught by his uncle Sally.

  “Well, these ain’t those kind of people,” the detective said.

  “They the kind that does a job when you give it to ’em?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, do the geniuses you hired have photos or some such? Evidence. Understand? The job they were paid to do.”

  “Sure,” the detective said, though he couldn’t have known this for a fact. “Of course.”

  “They still got ’em, or they give ’em to you y
et?”

  “Still got ’em,” the detective said, “but I can get ’em.”

  “Witnesses?” Momo asked.

  “They weren’t sure,” said the detective. “We’ll have to see.”

  Momo stared at the phone. “OK. Get down there as fast as you can, and call me back from a pay phone the split second you do.”

  Because he wasn’t doing this on his own.

  Then he took a deep breath and called Nick Geraci.

  Making the call from there was a risk, but Momo was the one who took care of the phones, so it wasn’t much of one.

  IT WAS MIDDAY OUT IN ACAPULCO.

  Geraci’s speech sounded a little funny, though maybe that was just the connection. Even if the guy was punch-drunk—or whatever it was that his condition was called—Nick Geraci’s mind, the Roach marveled, was as sharp as ever. Momo didn’t have to repeat a thing, and Geraci, with no hesitation, figured out things his loyal soldier hadn’t, not fully. In fact, the first thing Geraci asked was if that Commission meeting was under way by now.

  “Yeah,” Momo said. “It started about an hour ago.”

  “We do have things that can tie him to her, right? Photographs, receipts, and so on?”

  “We do,” Momo said, hoping it was true.

  “No disrespect to that poor woman,” Geraci said, “but this has all the markers of a happy accident.”

  Momo wondered why Nick was worried about the respect due some scumbag’s filthy whore, but he kept it to himself. “Happy how?”

  “Even if nothing sticks to our lawyer friend,” Geraci said, “this still ought to do plenty of damage, both to him and to his, uh, his little brother. If it’s handled right, it might not even hurt the organization. At first, yes,” Geraci said. “But not in the end.”

  The Roach smiled. He knew immediately what Geraci meant. It was Nick’s path back. They’d weaken Michael, so that those close to him questioned his ability to be the boss, until—for the good of the Family—the time came to push him aside. Or to push him aside very, very hard.

  THEY’D FIRST DISCUSSED IT THIS SUMMER, WHEN Momo was stewing in resentment during his booby-prize trip to Acapulco, and Nick Geraci had materialized one night—as miraculously as any ghost, it must have seemed—on the terrace of the Roach’s private cliff-side casita.

  Geraci had to wait there for more than an hour. The Roach had gone out to dinner with a high-class American whore he’d been provided. From the sound of things when they came back, she was talented, too. Ordinarily, Geraci didn’t lie down with whores the way a lot of guys did, just because they could, but he’d been away from Char a long time now. It would have been tough to listen to Momo going at it if Nick hadn’t taken care of business a few times. Better with a whore, he’d reasoned, than with somebody he cared about. Plus, it would have aroused suspicion back at his hotel if he hadn’t accepted the hotel manager’s offer to send a girl to his room. He was an American, a little off the beaten track, staying alone. Three times now, another American had met him there, a man with a glass eye—once at the poolside bar and twice in his room. Bad enough to be in bed with a federal agency without it looking like he was literally in bed with a federal agent, too. So when the manager offered, Nick had accepted. The girl was heavy in the hips and thighs. She’d been clean, efficient, and professional, and now she came by once a week. It wasn’t hurting anyone. It was like taking a garaged sports car for a spin to keep the engine in good shape.

  When the Roach finally finished, he sent the woman on her way, pulled on a baggy pair of graying underpants, reslicked his hair, and went outside for a smoke.

  Geraci was sitting at a tile table. He had a .38 in the waistband of his gabardine slacks.

  Plainly startled, Momo Barone tried to play it cool. “Grew a beard, huh?” he said, touching his own face.

  Geraci poured more mineral water into a glass and took a sip.

  “Friend to friend,” Momo said, “it looks like shit.”

  “How are you, Roach?”

  “Madonn’. People think you’re dead, you know?”

  “People?”

  “Yeah, people,” Momo said. “The word is that either you’re dead or you’re doomed.”

  “What do people think about Dino DiMiceli?” Geraci said, expressionless. “What’s the word on Willie Binaggio?”

  The Roach took a long drag off his cigarette. “You really rig both of them jobs?”

  Geraci took another sip of water. Adrenaline reliably kept even his small tremors at bay.

  “Forget I asked,” Momo said. “Let me ask you this, though. How’d you know I’d be here? What makes you so sure I won’t kill you? What kind of place is this anyway, lets somebody like you into my room, just like you was I don’t know what? Huh?”

  Geraci smiled. “Clearly, you have a lot of questions, Roach. Have a seat. We’ll talk.”

  Momo tossed the mostly unsmoked cigarette off the balcony and remained standing. “What makes you so sure I won’t serve up your head on a silver platter? Y’know, to get ahead in the world?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Geraci said. Because if Momo had surprised Nick, that would have meant that Michael had sent him there to prove his loyalty. But the Roach had been in Acapulco for three days and hadn’t made the first move toward Nick Geraci. The Roach was a man of action. Geraci had set up shop, not in Acapulco proper—an open city but a stronghold for what was left of the Hyman Roth syndicate, a place that on any given day might be crawling with people who’d recognize him—but rather up the coast a few miles, in Pie de la Cuesta. If the Roach had known that, he certainly wouldn’t have waited three days to make a move. “Because we’re friends.”

  “Har-de-fuckin’-har-har. Friends? Fuck friends.”

  Meaning Eddie, Geraci rightly presumed. Geraci had known Momo since he was a boy. He’d always been this easy to read. It was a fine quality in a leccaculo.

  “So you here to kill me, Nick? Huh? Is that it?”

  “Sit down, all right?” Geraci fished two bottles of Tecate from a steel tub. He’d ordered the beer from room service while the Roach was out. “I think you’ll like what I have to say. I’m coming back, and you’re going to help me. I’ve got a few other guys in mind I think we can trust. Once everything plays out, you’ll be my consigliere.”

  “Consigliere?”

  “Consigliere.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, all right?”

  “Roach.” Geraci was, in fact, sincere. He held out his arms in a What more can I say? gesture. The Roach seemed to accept this. He broke into a smile. And just like that, Cosimo Barone was so deep in Nick Geraci’s pocket he was munching the lint.

  “Can I go get a robe or something?” the Roach asked. “I’m freezin’ my nuts off out here.”

  Geraci stood and patted him on his hairy back. “After you,” he said, and followed Momo inside. The Roach put on the terry-cloth job the hotel provided. He raised his eyebrows to indicate that Nick could check the pockets if he wanted. Geraci shrugged and did so. The Roach shrugged to indicate that he’d have expected nothing less.

  As with most miracles, Geraci’s apparition on that terrace seemed miraculous only if a person didn’t think it through. Geraci had known, of course, that Michael would see to it that Momo got shipped off to Las Brisas when he got out of jail, because everybody who pulled a stretch and kept his mouth shut got a trip there as a token of the Family’s appreciation. It had been Fredo’s idea—he loved the famous people who stayed at Las Brisas and also the pink Jeeps that took you down to the beach. Nobody in the Family talked about Fredo, but the things he’d set up that worked had become traditions, utterly cast in stone. When he first came here from Taxco, Geraci had merely gone into Acapulco at eight in the morning (when no self-respecting wiseguy would be up and around), given the bell captain at Las Brisas Cosimo Barone’s name, a description, and fifty dollars for his trouble. Then he went back to his hotel in Pie de la Cuesta and waited for the inevitable phone call. After it came,
he waited two days for Momo to come kill him. When that didn’t happen, he’d gotten up early again and spent a nerve-fraying day following Momo around to see if anybody else they knew was with him or keeping an eye on him. They didn’t seem to be. When Momo had left with that whore to go get dinner, all Geraci had to do to get into the room was duke the bell captain another fifty.

  Guessing that Michael would elevate that loyal coglione Eddie Paradise to capo while Momo was upstate wasn’t a giant intuitive leap, either.

  Back out on the balcony the Roach opened the beer bottles. They clinked them together and drank.

  Nonchalantly, Geraci pulled out his gun and set it on the table in front of him and out of Momo’s reach. It was a snub-nose, the kind issued to cops.

  The Roach did not react.

  The men exchanged what news each could impart, though most of it had to do with goings-on in New York. It went without saying that Nick wasn’t going to explain the ins and outs of how he’d stayed alive the last year, and Momo didn’t press him on anything.

  Nick’s wife and kids, according to the Roach, were doing great. The girls were off at school, getting good grades and all. Momo and his wife had gone to see Charlotte a few days ago, and she seemed to be keeping her head about her.

  Geraci didn’t put too much stock in this—he had other sources for staying in contact with his family and knowing how they were doing. Charlotte was getting close to her breaking point; if he wanted to save his marriage, Nick needed to get back to her soon. His older daughter, Barb, didn’t want to talk to him, and his younger daughter, Bev, was a wreck. Still, it would be good to have the Roach there to keep an eye on them, as best he could.

  Momo seemed to be working hard not to look at the gun, but he continued to be more or less successful.

  “It’s Tommy Scootch they put in charge of finding you,” Momo said. “Believe that?”

  This was news to him.

  “Tommy Neri? Not Al?”

  “Tommy.”

  Geraci shook his head and considered this. Tommy Scootch had grown up as Tommy Palumbo. Neri was the maiden name of his mother, Al’s older sister. Tommy had taken his uncle’s name to get ahead (though also, to be fair, to distance himself from a series of pickpocket arrests and other petty-theft convictions, which is where the nickname had came from: scucire—to unstitch, to steal). He left Sing Sing as Tommy Palumbo (Al had personally contacted Geraci, who’d pulled some strings himself to get the boy out early) and got on an airplane to Nevada as Tommy Neri. In no time flat, he became a top muscle guy, working directly under Rocco Lampone, who was then a capo out there, and Fredo Corleone, the nominal underboss (and thus, by Nick Geraci’s stars, the epitome of nepotism run amok). “Dino and Willie B., I can see, but, honestly, how can Michael really be serious about finding me until he puts someone like you on the job?”