The Godfather's Revenge

by Mark Winegardner

  Bev flung the robe to the floor. She pulled off her swimming cap and let her matted hair fall. She looked up at him, squinting, then balled the cap up and held it in front of her face.

  Al thought of her glasses, upside down on the patio table. It broke his heart. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go get her glasses and tell her this was all a big mistake. Al had an image of those two girls in Harlem that pimp Wax Baines had cut up with a razor, right before Al had caved in Baines’s skull with the flashlight, which had gotten him kicked off the force. He thought again of that hooker in Fredo’s cathouse, blue and tangled up in cheap blood-soaked sheets, as Senator Geary sat on the edge of the bed, blubbering and bewildered, just as this poor girl was now. Baines, Geary: fair fucks to ’em. But never again, Al promised himself, was he going to come anywhere near a job where he’d have to watch an innocent girl bleed.

  “I’m sorry,” Al said, “about the…the pole. I didn’t want to hurt you. You didn’t do what I said, though, and you got hurt. Listen to me, sweetheart. Just do what we tell you, and you’ll be fine.” He tossed her his handkerchief for the blood. “You understand me?”

  Still blubbering, she looked up at him, squinting again, and nodded.

  “Your grandfather,” Al said, “I unfortunately can’t make promises about.”

  She dabbed at her head and kept crying. The blood was everywhere now, but the cut didn’t look too bad. With head wounds, you couldn’t go by how much blood you saw.

  “He’s just an old man,” Bev said to him. “Please.”

  “He’s done bad things,” Al said. “Which is unfortunate.”

  Bev Geraci wailed.

  “My associate is an animal,” Al said, though this was just for show. “He’s not as patient as I am, and I’m not always all that patient, as you’ve just unfortunately seen.”

  “I don’t know anything you can use,” she said. “I get calls from pay phones. I never know where they’re from. I just—”

  “Time out,” Al said. “Tell your story to my friend, all right?”

  “I will,” she said. “I want you to know, I’d never go to the police unless I had to.”

  Al closed the bedroom windows, though she had stopped screaming. He smiled. “I know that, sweetheart,” he said.

  Because what was she going to do? Give up information about her father, then give it up again to police? No. Lie to them, and then lie to the police about what she’d told him and Tommy? Maybe, but that caused her as many problems as it solved for her. The likeliest path was that she’d hear her grandfather’s screams and say what she knew to save him, then—if she did talk to the police, leave out the details about her father, to save him. Whether she went to the police or not wouldn’t matter anyway. Nothing she could tell the police could prove that he and Tommy had ever been here.

  “OK, Sport!” Al called to his nephew. “You’re all set. Bring me the old man.”

  He did, gun drawn, naturally, marching Fausto into his own house at the point of a pistol.

  As Al left Tommy with the girl, he bent toward his nephew and put his mouth flush against his ear. “Touch her and I’ll kill you,” Al whispered.

  Tommy Neri smirked. Al had, after all, just brained the young woman with a pool skimmer, but he still didn’t have to accept an attitude like this.

  Tommy handed his uncle the tam he’d left in the backyard.

  EVEN WHEN A PERSON HAS DUCT TAPE WRAPPED snugly around his head, when he says fuck you, over and over, it’s surprisingly easy to understand.

  Al pushed Fausto Geraci down into an orange chair in the guest bedroom and lashed him to it with the duct tape. He used the rest of the roll. Fausto’s arms were pinned to his sides now. He was fighting back tears, possibly tears of rage, possibly from the broken ribs. The bedroom walls were covered with pictures of Bev and Barb Geraci and various Mexicans who were presumably the wife’s people. There were none of Nick, Nick’s wife, or Nick’s sister, a dyke gym teacher who lived in Phoenix now. Another jigsaw puzzle hung over the bed, this one of Jesus on a straining donkey. Palm Sunday.

  The girl’s sobs were audible from across the hall.

  The doors to each of the bedrooms were closed. The idea here was to make them each hear the other one screaming and weeping, so that their love for each other would make them give up what they knew. The girl, being a girl, should be easy enough to scare so that she’d scream and cry without harming. Fausto Geraci was fair game.

  Al took out a switchblade, which had actually been a Christmas gift from Tommy last year. He held it in front of the old man’s face long enough to inspire more cursing, then he pulled the tape away from Fausto’s cheek and sliced through the tape with the knife, just grazing the old man’s unshaven gray skin. Then Al grabbed one end of the tape and in one motion ripped the tape from Fausto’s head, hard and counterclockwise, taking a hank of bloodied hair from the back of his head and inspiring a scream so loud and piercing Al’s ears rang.

  Bev Geraci’s scream followed a moment later, calling out to her grandfather.

  Fausto clenched his eyes tightly shut for a few moments, fighting back pain.

  “I’m all right,” he called to her.

  Knowing she could hear him apparently put an end to his cursing. He began to beg and beg on his granddaughter’s behalf, claiming she knew nothing.

  “What about you?” Al said. “You tell us where your boy is, and we leave you alone. We know you talk to him.”

  “I don’t talk to him never, nothing. He don’t call, he don’t write. It’s the usual thing boys do to their old man once the mother is dead. He don’t like it that I got remarried. It’s hard for the kids when that happens. What can I do?”

  Al punched Fausto in the face—a hard right to the uncut cheek—and followed it with a little left jab to the already broken ribs. Fausto sent out a wail made even more anguished by the tough old bird’s determination not to show any pain at all.

  On cue, Bev Geraci called out to him once more.

  He did not call back that he was all right. Pain-sweat flowed freely. He was as drenched now as if he’d been in the pool, too.

  She was crying again. Al hadn’t heard anything that made him think Tommy had hit her.

  “He’s an animal,” Al said. “Which I’m sorry about, but there you have it. He’s what I got stuck with. The thing is this. Your son unfortunately is doomed either way. Sooner or later, we’ll find him. Like the man said, if history teaches you anything, it’s that we’ll find him. But, her, she’s innocent. Her, you can spare. You can give us some information, and we’ll go. Five minutes from now, this could be all over, capisce? We’ll walk away, and that’ll be that.”

  He shook his head. “Ah, va fa Napoli. Eh? We’re dead already.” The ribs were making it hard for him to get the breath to speak. “You’ll think. We can identify you.”

  “Actually, you can’t,” Al said. “We’re not here. There’s no record of it. We’re ghosts, is what we are. The real him and me, we’re nowhere near here. And the people we’re with right now will swear to it. Honest, hardworking people, strangers with no reason to lie, will remember seeing us. I tell you all this so you can rest easy. So that we can get this done and go on about our lives. Cigarette?”

  Fausto nodded his bloodied head.

  Al went out onto the patio to get them. He came back and tortured Fausto by smoking one in front of him.

  It was sad, Al thought, the attitudes men have about how they’ll stand up to pain. Done right, pain gets everybody. The holy trinity of pain—broken ribs, burns, hard blows to the balls—can bring any man to a crossroads. Resolve to give up and die. Or the main road, which is to talk. The problem is that the ones who talk almost always lie first. But between what Fausto said and what the girl said, he and Tommy ought to be able to walk out of there with something.

  “I don’t take no pleasure in none of this,” Al said. “You’re just an old man. So do us all a favor, huh? Where is he?”

  “I
got no idea. You probably know. Twice as much. As me. I admit I helped him. Get over there to Mexico. After that. All I know is. What he tells me. He don’t tell me sh—…Diddly-whatnot. Don’t hit me again. No jokin’. That’s how boys are. With their fathers. You got boys?”

  Al put a cigarette between Fausto’s lips and lit it. Fausto inhaled and worked it to the corner of his mouth. He closed his eyes, savoring the drag. Al admired Fausto for not wanting to curse within earshot of his granddaughter, but diddly-whatnot? Fucking Cleveland cafone. Al lit another cigarette for himself.

  “Again: where is he?”

  “We arrange calls to pay phones, you’re right, but what do I know about where he’s calling from, huh? It’s impossible. How you supposed to know a thing like that?”

  Al took the lit cigarette and screwed it into Fausto’s forearm. The old man’s screams brought on uncontrollable sobs from his granddaughter.

  Al relit it and did it again on the palm of Fausto’s hand.

  Fausto Geraci’s spirit was as visibly broken as his body. He summoned up his strength and called to her that he was going to tell them everything. Al picked up Fausto’s cigarette from the floor and replaced it between his lips. Fausto then gave Al Neri a list of places: someplace outside Cleveland, Taxco, some little town near Acapulco, then Mexico City, Veracruz, then someplace in Guatemala, then Panama City. Whether it was the one in Panama or the one in Florida, he didn’t know. It was the same list of places in the same order that the Corleones had received from Joe Lucadello, other than the inclusion of the town near Acapulco, which was news, and the possibility, however confused, that Nick Geraci might be hiding out in the wilds of the Florida Panhandle. If he really had been to all these places, it was an impressive itinerary for a man who wouldn’t fly.

  Fausto’s broken ribs made it hard for him to talk, but he seemed determined to get the information out, a good sign that he might be telling the truth. He claimed honestly not to know where Nick was now, but that if they wanted to go to the pay phone outside the Painted Pony Lounge tomorrow at noon, they could wait until the fifth ring and then ask him themselves.

  This could be a lie, Al knew, a trap, but there were ways of puzzling out what to do. It was something, anyway.

  “Also,” Fausto said. His breathing had become a sickening wheeze. “I got a birthday card. From him. On top of the TV. Stack of papers. Open, but. Still in the envelope.”

  As if Nick Geraci would show his tracks that brazenly. Al went to get it anyway.

  He found what seemed to be the envelope. It was typed. The return address on the birthday card read Wm. Shakespeare, London, England. Inside, there was a note in some kind of foreign language or code, also typed, maybe four or five sentences long. The only thing that wasn’t typed was a block-printed N at the bottom. The postmark was New York, New York. Al slipped it in his pocket.

  In the next room, the gun went off. Bev Geraci shrieked. Fausto called her name. The gun went off twice more.

  Al came running.

  When he got there, Tommy was frowning at him. Bev was sitting on the bed. She’d washed her face and head and, while she was still obviously terrified, she was in better shape than Al had left her in.

  “What the hell?” Al said.

  “What the hell nothing,” Tommy said. “It’s under control, Sport.”

  He was pushing his luck, this kid.

  “What are you shooting at?”

  “Nothing,” Tommy said. “Jesus.”

  He wagged his eyebrows. Al realized Tommy had just been firing the pistol to scare the girl and Fausto, too.

  “Not Jesus,” Al said, as calmly as possible, pointing to the new bullet hole in the jigsaw puzzle. “I think that might be Judas, which would be what you call it.”

  “Ironical,” Tommy said.

  “Apropos,” Al said, which was the word he was trying to remember. “Stay put,” Al said to Bev Geraci. “C’mere,” he said to Tommy. “Let me show you something.” He led Tommy into the hall and closed the door, leaving the girl there. Then he slapped his nephew on the back of the head and pointed to the door that led to the garage. Al held a finger to his lips, and, as quietly as they’d come, they walked out.

  Al didn’t want to seem to be in a hurry, but they needed to haul ass out of there. This was precisely the sort of neighborhood where some nosy old bat would hear those shots and summon Tucson’s finest.

  “So what do you think?” Tommy said, pulling out of the driveway.

  “Go,” Al said. “Don’t speed, but go.” He was twisted around in his seat, looking for anyone watching them, listening for the cops. He was glad now they’d taken the time to swing by the airport and boost the license plates off a car in the long-term lot. “You get a ticket, I’ll kill you.”

  Tommy turned the corner.

  “Go toward where the motels are,” Al said. “Semi-nice. Howard Johnson, Holiday Inn, shit like that.” Wholesome nowheres, perfect for their current situation. Tommy would have to go in to register for the room, though. Al had the blood of Nick Geraci’s father and daughter all over him. He silently cursed himself for not bringing the flashlight. How can something bring you good luck if you leave it in the goddamned rental car?

  “So what do you think?” Tommy repeated.

  “Think about what?” Al snapped at him.

  “You think we did any good back there?”

  Al looked at him. He might not be a dope fiend, but he was without a doubt a fucking dope. Al slapped him again on the back of the head.

  “Drive,” he said.

  THE MEXICAN AT THE CAR RENTAL LOT MUST HAVE been done with his shift. Behind the counter was a leather-skinned white man in a white shirt with metal snaps instead of buttons. He looked Al and Tommy Neri over, then looked at the paperwork with their fake names on it.

  “Short trip,” he noted.

  “Best kind,” Al said.

  “Amen, brother,” the man said.

  He’d most likely forgotten them before they got out the door.

  They walked back down the blacktopped sidewalk to the airstrip.

  Al Neri had changed clothes back at the motel, but he still had on the tam. The clean clothes were similar to the ones he’d shit-canned, though he hadn’t brought a second Windbreaker. He’d scrubbed all the blood off his skin with a bar of pumice soap that he carried in his travel bag for times like this. Experience had also taught him, during his years in Nevada, that most trailer parks had their own incinerators, and most boondocks towns had trailer parks galore. In the first incinerator they found, he dumped a pillowcase containing the bloody gloves and clothes and the license plates. In the second, Tommy tossed in the Walther. They drove around a while and didn’t see a third, so Al just went into a men’s room at a gas station. The trash can was predictably full. He wiped Fausto Geraci’s .38 clean, wrapped it in paper towels, shoved it halfway down, washed his hands, and left. Back at the motel, Al and Tommy sat around comparing notes about what they’d learned, taking a futile stab at breaking the code on the birthday card and trying to figure out someone they could call who either would go to the Painted Pony tomorrow at noon and answer the phone or at the very least park nearby and see who did. They’d come up with nothing. Too risky, all the way around.

  Later, they would learn that, in this regard at least, they’d made the right decision. Fausto Geraci didn’t show up for the call. Bev Geraci did, though, her head bandaged, and she took it on the fifth ring. The Arizona State Police had driven her there. The FBI listened in.

  Fausto Geraci had passed out in the guest bedroom. When Bev Geraci got to him, he was still alive. She called an ambulance. A few hours later, in the hospital, with Bev and Conchita at his side, his heart gave out, at just about the time Al and Tommy Neri boarded their plane.

  Their pilot was ready for them, engine running. “So how was it?” he asked, grinning as he closed the door.

  Tommy looked at Al. Al shrugged. Too late now. “How was what?”

  The pi
lot belted himself in. “How was it up the whale’s ass?”

  “Same as usual,” Al answered. “Thank you.”

  BOOK V

  CHAPTER 25

  The heat was almost unbearable. August in South Florida. Dressed in a perfectly tailored summer-weight suit, Tom Hagen stood in the shade of a magnolia tree in the backyard of his house in Florida, smoking a cigar, watching an alligator sun itself on the banks of the canal, no more than forty feet away. His daughter Christina, who was eleven, sat under an umbrella beside the fenced-in pool, reading Gone with the Wind. Gianna, who was six, was inside with Theresa and her aunt Sandra, helping to get dinner together. The air-conditioning had conked out, and all the windows were open. Tom could hear the drone of the televised convention coverage all the way out here. Over it, he could hear Gianna singing a song she’d learned that helped her set the table correctly. Their old collie, Elvis, barked on cue each time she finished a place setting. Tom smiled. He was a lucky man. He was, in his way, happy.

  He looked at his watch. Almost six; the president’s plane would be landing about now.

  Frankie Corleone was grilling sausages while his new girlfriend sat in a lawn chair in a short summer dress and watched, almost worshipful. Frankie had his own place—he’d been set up with a beer distributorship, a joint venture with Sandra’s perpetual fiancé Stan Kogut—but he still ate nearly every meal at his mother’s house or here, though he, unlike Stan (who no doubt was on the couch watching TV), often helped cook. “You get used to it,” Frankie said.

  “Used to what?” Tom said, squinting into the late afternoon sun.

  “Gators. Guarantee you that little fella’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

  “That’s true,” said the girlfriend. She was a lithe brunette whose name Tom had learned moments before and forgotten. All he recalled was that she’d competed in the Miss Florida pageant. “Alligators have primitive fight/flight impulses. When they’re afraid, they freeze.”

  “That one’s little?” Tom said. “He must be twenty feet long.”