The Godfather's Revenge

by Mark Winegardner

  He didn’t mention Carlo Tramonti by name. And Charlotte didn’t ask for more details. It was something he loved about her.

  They had a magnificent meal at Galatoire’s and came back to their hotel with a bottle of red wine. Nick shaved his beard for her, unbidden. She seemed to appreciate the gesture. They talked deep into the night, catching up on the three years they could never really recover and easing back into bed together twice more, with demonstrably better results.

  The next morning, Charlotte Geraci sat up in bed, doing a crossword puzzle. Through a gap in the hotel curtains, a sliver of morning light cut across the bed. Beside her, in a white undershirt and blue silk pajama bottoms, Nick slept. Charlotte was naked and on top of the covers. Nick had clothes on and was under them. She was tanned, even though she was a natural blond and until a few days ago had been in New York—where, true, it had been a nice spring and she’d spent a lot of time sunning herself beside her heated pool. She was forty-four years old; her tan lines came from a bikini, in which she did not look at all foolish. Though Nick was Sicilian on both sides, he’d always been fair-haired enough to pass for Irish or English, and he was paler now than when Charlotte had last seen him, despite having spent the last two years in the tropics. The bottom part of his face was whiter yet. Without the beard he looked more like himself, though in truth only slightly so. The muscles of his face were slack from the Parkinson’s. He did not look only three years older than his wife.

  Nick woke. He reached over and softly traced the curve of his wife’s breast. It was a sight that, not unreasonably, he’d feared he would never see again. Her breast. But come to think of it, the crossword puzzles, too. She did them only when something was bothering her. It was one of the subtle delights of marriage, knowing a person this well, enduring long enough that quirks and strange habits go from intriguing to maddening and finally to oddly comforting. Nick could feel the heat of that shaft of sunlight through the sheets.

  “I hated you,” Charlotte said, not looking at him.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he said, pulling her to him.

  It was their first morning together in almost three years.

  “I understand that I should blame the people who did this to you,” she said. “And I do. But it’s hard. I don’t know the whole story. It’s hard not to just blame you for what this has done to our family.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Nick said. “Our family’s fine. The girls are strong. You’ve done a great job with those girls. We’ll all come out OK. I’ll make it up to you. To you, to them. I really am inching my way back, honey. You’ve got to believe this.”

  She tossed the crossword puzzle book aside and shrugged off his grasp. “Twice now, Nick. You disappeared on us twice now. You think some few-and-far-between phone calls and one long night on the town covers it? Some tapes of you talking on and on about jazz and world events and the books you’re reading? We haven’t been over it, Nick. We haven’t been over the half of it. The one-hundredth of it. I love you, I do, but I hated you, too. Listen to me. Understand this. I really don’t think—don’t look at me like that. I really don’t think you realize what it’s been like for me.”

  Whatever sort of disapproving look she thought he’d been giving her was probably a result of the Parkinson’s. He’d actually been studying her breasts, the tan line, thinking what a lucky guy he was, how good it would be when this all blew over. He was, on the other hand, concerned that she’d been wearing a bathing suit like that, that there might be another man. But he didn’t believe that. She wouldn’t dare, probably wouldn’t even want to. He held out his hand, conceding the floor. “I’m listening,” he said. “I’m all ears.”

  “I’m scared, and I’m alone, and I feel like I can’t control my own life,” she said. “I’m just a prop in this big production, Nick’s Wild Ride. I have to do everything, your jobs around the house and mine, too. You think the girls are fine, but they’re not fine. They need their father. Barb is angry, which I know you know. I know you think you’ll be coming back soon, that we’ll be coming back soon, but I hate to think of her alone in our house, waiting for me to come back, waiting for you, and just steaming in it. And Bev. Bev worships you—never a bad word, always defending you like her life depends on it. Bev’s the one I’m really worried about. Maybe you’ve been gone too long to know about the kind of things that go on in California these days, especially on the college campuses out there, but it’s terrifying to think about how she might be falling into some of those things. She’s staying with your dad for the summer, thank God, but after that she’ll be right back with the beatniks and the freethinkers and dope smokers and whatever else is there for her in Berkeley. I’m trying not to blame you for anything, but how could it not be a good thing for her, at her age, to have her father around, in her life more?”

  “Give me a minute here,” Nick said, and went to go take a leak and brush his teeth.

  This was not like Charlotte. She kept things in. Last night, they’d talked at dinner and late into the night, too, in between making love again. But what they’d been talking about was mostly news, catching up on things, including all the details of Charlotte’s trip. She’d driven, by herself. She’d walked out the back door of the restaurant in a dark wig and walked across town to pick up her rental car, afraid to look over her shoulder the whole way. Once she’d gotten in the car, she kept looking in her rearview, scared out of her wits, for well over a thousand miles. She’d been afraid to stop, and her fear had kept her from needing to, other than for gas and Pepsi-Cola. But the way Charlotte was talking now was different. By Nick’s stars, it was fine. She was entitled. He had it coming. But it wasn’t like her. Nick’s mother had been a big talker, all the time yammering her complaints about Fausto and other emotional matters, talking to Nick like he was an adult, a confidante instead of just a boy. Nick was devoted to his mother until the end, but he thought she was a handful, too. He’d seen how his mother’s candor in public had hurt his father’s prospects with the Forlenza organization back in Cleveland. She’d turned Fausto’s own son against him, in his own house. She hadn’t meant to, Nick knew that. She had a good heart. She and Fausto had a terrific marriage, as such things go. Still, Nick had been determined to marry a woman as good-hearted as his mother and as smart, but with more control over what she said and where. He’d succeeded, too. Charlotte was just sore. More than that, she was scared, and she had every right to be. They were both struggling to act like themselves—they had been ever since she’d arrived. It would take time.

  “You’re right about the girls,” he said when he came back. “I know that. But, you know, I do talk to Bev, maybe more than you think. She’s the only one of you who still sends me those tapes. I still send ’em to her, too. If you’re on dope, it comes through in your voice. She’s not on dope, she’s doing well with her studies, and so forth. She’s been raised right, Char, and that’s because of you, too. A strong person doesn’t automatically become what she’s surrounded by. Castles are surrounded by moats, too, but it doesn’t mean the princess is drowning.”

  Charlotte considered this a moment and then laughed.

  Nick laughed, too. “OK, well, all I’m trying to say is that I’m not as in the dark as you seem to think.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Charlotte folded her arms across her chest. “The fact remains that Bev needs more of you than she’s getting. I’m never going to be able to get through to her the way you do, and that’s just how it is. The fact remains that over the past three years every time she and I went at it like cats and dogs, I hated you for it. I admit it. I hate myself for feeling like that, but who can I talk to? Not even Father DiTrilio in confession, since I’m supposed to be in mourning for you. I could confess that to him, too, I know, but I can’t. I wouldn’t. I’m supposed to be behaving to the whole world like you’re dead. I’ve had to do everything. Everything. I need a spider killed, no Nick. It’s me. Barb and Bev bring their boyfriends over, and I have to p
ull them aside and figure out their intentions, because there’s no Nick. My father dies, and I go to the funeral alone, because that’s the way I do everything. Not to mention the bills. Money’s very, very tight. Do you know that I’m cutting the grass myself now? I am. Don’t look at me like that, I said.”

  Again, he had been studying her tan lines, particularly the ones the bottom had left. Also the curve of her hips, the way her bush was much more sparse than he’d remembered. He shook his head.

  She apparently misinterpreted this as his dismay over her complaints about money. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “I’m not thinking anything,” he said. Because what could he say, that he was wondering if her bush was going bald? Did that happen to women? It occurred to him that she was the oldest woman he’d ever seen naked. “I’m listening. My undivided attention.”

  Charlotte sat up now, leaning toward him on the bed. “I know that you think I’m fixated on material things, that money’s what I think about all the time, but it’s not. I’ve been here almost twenty-four hours, and this is the first time I’ve mentioned money, OK? Think about it. All the times when we talked on the phone, when did I ask you about money if you didn’t bring it up first? Never. Not once. But I’ve got news for you. We’re broke, Nick. Our savings are gone. I’ve had to borrow money from my dad. I understand that people are watching me, that sending someone to the house with a big envelope every week isn’t—”

  “I don’t have anyone I can send,” Nick said. “Much less anything to put in those theoretical envelopes. I really thought it would work with the life insurance,” by which he meant getting him declared dead and collecting and then repaying it if he ever surfaced: it had seemed like the greatest interest-free-loan scam this side of the Teamsters’ pension fund. “But there are other things I can work out for us. There’s some stocks you can sell, or the girls can. I can get word to them how to do it. Plus, my dad can wire money to the girls, too.”

  “You’re going to throw this back in my face.” She grabbed the sheets and pulled them up to her throat, covering herself. “I can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”

  “When did I ever say that all you care about is money?”

  “Countless times.”

  “Honestly, I can’t think of a single time,” Nick said.

  “Please.”

  “Maybe a few times,” he said, “but not countless. But look. Get it straight. I didn’t disappear. Both times I was gone, you knew where I was, and if you didn’t know exactly where, it was for your own protection. I’m sorry for what was hard about this for you, I’ve told you that a million times, but none of this is a surprise to you, Char. There’s nothing about my life you didn’t know about long before we got married. I’m never going to become one of these hypocrites who think that instead of what they do they’re going to pretend they’re really J. Paul Getty or a black-sheep Rockefeller or something. You’re married to a soldier, end of discussion. I know you, Char. I know you’d rather be married to a soldier than some pencil-necked empty suit. And you know as well as I do that there are times a soldier’s going to be gone.”

  “You call what you’ve been through gone? It’s been beyond gone. You’re legally dead, or you would be, if people on Michael Corleone’s payroll hadn’t gummed up the process.”

  Nick asked if that was what her lawyer had said, if he had any specifics.

  “Not that he can pin on anyone. But he’s sure, and so am I. As you say, there’s nothing about your life I haven’t known for a long time.”

  Nick got up and ordered them room service. He ordered eggs Benedict for her without asking. It was what she’d ordered the first morning of their honeymoon. At a level just below conscious thought, he presumed this would all register with her—his taking charge, his remembering. It became conscious only when he hung up and she stood up and kissed him.

  “Whatever happened to retire?” she said, her voice thick with yearning. “That you’d retire? Key West, we talked about. Maybe Miami Beach. New Orleans, I don’t know about. But soldiers do retire, right?”

  “I’m forty-seven years old,” he said. “You want me to retire and do what? Mope around the house? Your father worked until he was what, ninety?”

  “Seventy-one. He was a master carpenter, Nick. A lot of them never really retire at all.”

  “Same in my line of work. Question: you don’t know about New Orleans why? What makes you so quick to judge New Orleans? You been here less than a day, Char. Keep an open mind. You’ll love it, believe me. The place grows on you.”

  “What, like mold? It’s damp here, everywhere. You’re not honestly thinking of staying here, are you? Permanently?”

  “It’s the damp season. Key West is damp, too, you know. I like this place better than Key West, I can tell you that.”

  “Key West is a different kind of damp than this. New Orleans seems like the proverbial great place to visit.”

  He laughed. “As opposed to home, right?”

  Charlotte used to joke that East Islip was a great place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there. “Exactly,” she said. “As opposed to home.”

  “Get dressed,” he said. He’d had her meet him here, but he was staying at a house Carlo Tramonti was letting him borrow and maybe even buy. “I got something I want to show you.”

  She brightened. “Really?” she said. “Can I read it?”

  “Read what?”

  “Your book.”

  “My what?”

  “Your book.”

  His mind had been on the house and whether she’d like it, and so at first he really hadn’t known what she was talking about. But it came back to him now. In a moment of weakness last night, under the cover of darkness and alcohol, he’d confessed to her that he was writing a book. He couldn’t recall what had prompted this. Probably it was because, when they first started dating, she’d been a secretary for a publishing company. Nick had gotten to know her indirectly, via her boss, who was having some financial problems. Charlotte had actually moved to New York from western Pennsylvania to become a writer herself, which was ironic because, unlike him, she barely read books anymore. Still, it was probably natural that when a man and a woman reunite or are having trouble or both, they hearken back to the time they fell in love.

  Maybe Nick had been trying to win her back, even though she was already here.

  More and more, it became apparent to him that he should stop drinking.

  “Well?” she said.

  “You can read it when it’s finished,” Nick said. “Which will be soon.”

  ONLY A FEW WEEKS EARLIER, NICK HAD SAILED TO Sicily, but he hadn’t stayed long. Charlotte had been to Sicily, too, but not recently. Nick had made sure that Lucadello knew where he was, so that, as per his orders from his superiors, he’d feel duty-bound to feed this information to the Corleones. In due time.

  The two snapshots of Charlotte had been taken during a family vacation three years ago. Over the course of Nick’s fugitive years, they’d become holy objects to him. He’d kept them pristine, and he’d have sacrificed them for little else but to help reunite him with her. The third photo was recent. The woman in the photo was wearing a blond wig to look like Charlotte. Her name was Gabriella. She’d met Nick at a café in Taormina, and they’d walked to the hotel together. The photographer was waiting for them. She tilted her face away from the camera. He made them walk to the door three times just to make sure he had what he needed. The photographer was a distant cousin on Nick’s father’s side, a wing of the family that Fausto had looked up when he’d last visited the island, the maneuver that sent Nick into hiding in the first place. Gabriella was his wife. No one else seemed to be watching them. She hurried into her brother’s car and shed the wig. She and her husband, whose name was Sebastiano D’Andrea, were staying in a hotel across town.

  Nick checked in and paid in advance for the room: a week, cash. He overtipped the bellman who carried his suitcase to his r
oom. For a couple days, Nick made a point of being seen around town, chatting up barmen and shopkeepers. He said he was an American businessman looking to buy a secluded vacation hideaway, and he went to see a few properties to make this look good.

  Sebastiano developed the photos himself, in the bathtub. Nick picked the one he liked best. Gabriella helped him with the note, to make sure it sounded like a native speaker. Sebastiano made some connections at Nick’s hotel with the bartender and the head chambermaid, then they all drove back to Palermo together. The next day, Nick sailed for America.

  Later, when Nick gave the word, Sebastiano had mailed the note. In short order, both the bartender and the chambermaid gave Sebastiano a description of the men who’d come around asking about a bearded American and his blond wife, flashing the same photo of Nick and Gabriella entering the hotel that Sebastiano had already shown them. The Calabrians were not guests there. The bartender and the maid owed them nothing.

  The Calabrians had been recommended for the job by a zip in Nobilio’s crew. What Tommy Neri hadn’t known was that, a few years earlier, these same Calabrians had killed the zip’s uncle. According to Momo Barone, the zip’s chance at revenge had been more important to him than any loyalty he owed to Michael Corleone.

  The zip’s father—the brother of the dead uncle—had the grim pleasure of overseeing the ambush and shipping pieces of them to America.

  WHAT NICK TOOK CHARLOTTE TO SEE WAS THEIR house, which also seemed to him the kind of place newlyweds would live: a modest shotgun affair on Dauphine Street, freshly painted and with a new screened-in porch and window air conditioners, a few blocks east of the French Quarter. “I have to admit,” Charlotte said, enchanted despite herself, it seemed, “that this seems like the very definition of a quiet little place away from it all. Or at least, away from all that.”