The Roach nodded. “OK.”
“Who’s our representative for the security detail?”
“Not sure. Richie Two-Guns took care of that.”
“And still no word on who, if anybody, Michael’s going to have sit in as consigliere?”
“None.”
“It almost has to be Richie or Eddie, which means that they’ll be in the room when the other Dons hand down the order. Neither one of those men strikes me as an unrealistic man. On the contrary, Richie is a opportunist, which I mean as a compliment, and Eddie—”
“Lives in the present. I know. You got no idea how many times I’ve had to listen to him go on and on about what he don’t like about the past and the future.”
“Even if Michael wasn’t going to be blindsided by this—which from what you’re telling me, and from what I’m hearing elsewhere, is still the case—”
“It is.”
“—but even if he wasn’t, even worst-case scenario, how does Michael assemble a core of vigilantes numerous enough and powerful enough to go against the Commission’s orders? It’s impossible. If he tries that, it’s suicide.”
The Roach considered this and seemed to agree.
“If I was a betting man,” the Roach said, “I’d bet you that as soon as people hear about the decision that gets handed down at the meeting, the only people Michael’s going to have in his corner real strong are Al and maybe Tommy Neri.”
“An ex-cop hooked on pornography,” Geraci said, “and his nephew, Skippy the Dope Fiend. This we can take care of.”
He drew out a pause, using it to suss out the other sense of take care of.
“Pornography?” Momo asked.
“Remember that place downtown I had for a while? Neri was one of the regulars. Next time you see him, look him in the eyes and tell me that’s not the haggard masturbator of the century. And anyway,” Nick said, “unless you’ve found a miracle cure for your own vices, you are a betting man.”
“I’ve cut way back,” he said. “Not that I ever had a real problem with it or nothin’.”
“I’m not saying that you did,” Nick said. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
The Roach nodded in concession.
“All right,” Geraci said. “Much as I’d like to stay out here all day with my unbaited hook and watch the pretty sailboats go by, I’ve got business in the city I need to take care of. So, real quick, two things and then we need to head in. First, I wanted to make sure you haven’t told anybody else about this.”
“About you coming back? Yeah, I—”
“No. About using the Commission to retire that cocksucker.”
“Oh. No. Not a soul. Not Renzo, none of the zips, not my cousin Luddy, nobody.”
“Are you sure? Think about it a minute.”
Geraci wasn’t fishing for anything—he just wanted to be thorough. The Roach, bless his heart, was the sort of man who took orders seriously. Most people would interpret a minute as a few moments, but Momo gave it pretty much the full sixty ticks.
“Nobody,” he said. “I’m positive.”
“All right,” Geraci said. “So that’s how we’re doing this. Obviously, anybody with half a brain’s going to wonder if I initiated this, but keep ’em guessing. I don’t want anybody, beyond the people that I personally had to talk to, to be able to prove that this was anything other than an idea one of the other Dons came up with.”
“You’re going in there with no bodyguard?”
“I’m not even really going in there. It’s more like I’m waiting in the wings.”
Momo cleared his throat. “You want me to go along, either as your, uh…in my official capacity, or if you just want to bring along a man you know has got your back, it’d be my honor.”
Nick tried not to smile, for fear Momo would find it condescending, but it really was endearing how devoted the Roach had become.
“I appreciate it,” Nick said. “But we still have to keep you away from any hot situation until after Michael is sent packing. The second they figure out what you quarterbacked from the inside out, you’re a dead man.”
Momo’s shoulders sagged just a little, and he nodded. “Well, just take a bodyguard then. Because you never know.”
Nick thought about this.
In the shipping channel, there came a black-and-brown cargo ship, flying the Liberian flag, essentially similar to thousands of vessels Nick used to ship drugs and other profitable goods to America. For all he knew, this was one of them, steaming to a Stracci-controlled dock.
“Send a Sicilian,” Nick finally said. “The more just-off-the-boat, the better. Tell him nothing until the last minute. Have him meet me across the street from the restaurant. Give him the bare minimum information and, uh…give him a Beretta M12 as well. Anything goes wrong, that’ll even the odds a little.”
The M12 was a handsome machine pistol that shot ten rounds a second and was accurate to more than two hundred yards.
“Count on it,” Momo said. “And the second thing?”
“Oh, right. This Frank the Greek character. What do we know about him?”
“He’s a good man,” Momo said, “from what I was able to learn. Heavy on the flashy jewelry and the cologne, but when it comes to anything important, everybody speaks highly. And you was right about him and Black Tony. Everything they been involved in together, Greco’s followed the old man’s lead. He’s still too new on the Commission to pull anything clever, is my thinking. Plus, nobody’s going to plan nothing within a mile of whatchacallit, Jerry’s Chop House. Which I heard is good, as a quick off to the side. The food. But anyhow, I think why he wants to meet you is, he don’t want people to start thinking he’s Black Tony’s leccaculo.”
Momo, Geraci’s own leccaculo, said this with no apparent irony.
“Thank you, my friend,” Geraci said, “for a job well done.”
They packed the rods, and Momo revved the engine and started for shore. “One more question, though,” he shouted. “Michael Corleone killed your father, tried to kill you, on and on, and you’re not going to get satisfaction? You’re going to let him walk?”
Geraci put his arm around Momo Barone.
“What I promised,” Geraci said, “was if he goes in peace, I won’t whack him and neither will my men.”
“Right,” the Roach said. “Like I said.”
Geraci shook his head. “Big if,” he said. “And that’s just for starters.”
The Roach understood. “There are a lot of men in the world,” he said, “who don’t work for you.”
“And just from a purely statistical standpoint,” Geraci pointed out, “some of those men are surely going to be your accident-prone individuals—dangerous to themselves and others.”
Momo erupted in a high-pitched and almost girlish laugh that Nick had never heard before.
“This time tomorrow, eh?” the Roach said.
“Don’t worry,” Geraci said.
A QUARTER CENTURY AS A NEW YORKER AND YET Nick Geraci had never set foot on Staten Island. He was too impatient to ride that goddamned peasant-hauling, cheap-date-carting ferry if he didn’t have to, but the only other way was to cross over to New Jersey and drive down and then back over. A new double-decked bridge—the largest suspension bridge in the world—connected Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Staten Island; it looked done, but it wasn’t scheduled to open until next month. So Nick took the liberty of taking Momo Barone’s boat. Also, if anything went wrong, it seemed like a much better way to get the hell out of there than a roadblockable bridge to Jersey or that slow-moving, easily searched ferry.
It was harder to navigate his way there than he’d thought—in the water, the perspectives of New York are so profoundly different from the ones a person sees walking or driving around every day. But he hugged the shore and kept looking where the sun was and kept picturing a map of New York in his head, and soon he saw the towers of that suspension bridge, and he headed toward it. Before long he was sailing under it—the Verraza
no-Narrows Bridge, it was originally going to be called, after the Italian explorer, the first white man to sail through here and view New York Harbor (following a big petition drive and the backing of the mayor, it was apparently going to be named after the slain president instead). Now, Nick Geraci became the most recent Italian explorer to view the harbor. He gasped at its beauty—including a dead-ahead view of Lady Liberty, just as his own mother and father must have seen it when they sailed through here on their way to Ellis Island—and in no time he was tying up at a pier near what turned out to be Stapleton.
It was getting dark. The restaurant was supposedly somewhere not far from the northeastern shore. He stopped a slim, almost-pretty woman, light brown hair but clearly Italian, probably about thirty, and asked for directions.
“Where you from?” she said, as if she expected the answer to involve some other planet.
“Cleveland,” he heard himself say. Why, he couldn’t have said.
“What are you doing here, Cleveland?” She had abnormally small eyes. Staten Island was already giving him the creeps. There was supposedly a dump someplace out here that was visible from space, just like the Great Wall of China. The Great Dump of Staten Island.
“It’s Open-Borders Week, right here in the USA,” Nick said. “It was in all the papers, lady.”
“Really?” she said.
“No,” he said. “You know where this joint is or not?”
“What difference does it make? They’re closed on Mondays, Cleveland. Hey, you got something wrong with your hand or what?”
He hadn’t noticed the tremors.
“Look,” he said, “I’m supposed to meet my wife outside this place.” A lie, but he figured the mention of a wife would shut down any part of this that the woman thought was flirtation. “She gave me directions, I lost ’em, and now I’m asking you nice and gentlemanly for your help, but—”
“Touchy, Cleveland,” she said.
He thought she might have meant touché.
But she gave him the directions and—to his surprise, given the source—they got him there. Even by his standards, he was early: about an hour.
The door to Jerry’s Chop House was locked. But then again, it was Monday, he was early, and he wasn’t from here.
Spooked a little by what was striking him as this insular island world, Geraci did not want to call attention to himself, either by walking around and around the block or, worse, loitering outside the door of the restaurant—this seemed like precisely the sort of place they’d run you off to jail and charge you with mopery. There was a bar across the street, but its front was brick and glass blocks, and he wouldn’t have been able to see out, to know when either Frank Greco or the Sicilian bodyguard showed. There was a little bookstore, but he lost track of time and sometimes space in bookstores.
He headed down the block to find a phone booth and burn off some of the time that way. He’d been away from his family so punishingly long, it was second nature to travel with plenty of change, which he carried in a hand-tooled leather pouch he’d bought back in Taxco.
He went through the complicated ring pattern, and Charlotte picked up when she was supposed to.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “About what happened. About what it’s done to our family.”
“Is there anything wrong?”
The television was on in the background. It sounded like news or maybe bowling. He had not set foot in this, his house, since…He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about how soon he might be there again, either.
“No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.” He was afraid to say anything that was optimistic. He’d never been quite this close to it all being over before. He leaned his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. “It’s fine.”
“I’m proud of you,” she said. “I love you.”
“I’m not fishing for a compliment,” he said, “but proud?”
There was a long pause, and tinny music from the TV. A cigarette ad.
“It’s not about the adjectives,” Charlotte finally said.
She’d also said this when he’d finally let her read the first draft of Fausto’s Bargain, and she’d been right.
“Don’t be sorry, OK?” Charlotte said. “Do your work and come home, and the things that are messed up, we’ll fix. I’m fine. The girls are fine. We’re all in this together. We’ve had our setbacks, but in for a dime, in for a dollar. Isn’t that what people say?”
“It’s what they say,” Nick said, “but in most of life’s tough situations, it’s not what people generally do.”
“Well, your family isn’t quote-unquote people,” she said. “We’re just us.”
“Justice,” he whispered.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I love you, too,” he said. “I gotta go, but warm up my side of the bed, will you?”
He hung up and stared at the phone. He wasn’t up to any more calls. What he’d have liked to do was find a gym and pummel someone, some fast, cocky kid, maybe one who started out laughing at the shaky old man. Or better yet, one who reminded Nick of himself at that age.
Nick did not want to think about his father, dead, and how he died, and the funeral he hadn’t dared to attend. But he could not afford to forget it, either.
He found a Woolworth’s and he walked around the aisles and every few minutes he popped outside and looked down the street and when he didn’t see them, he went back inside, and every few times outside he’d walk back down and check the door at Jerry’s Chop House, which remained locked. The street was just commercial enough that nobody seemed to be noticing him.
First to arrive was the bodyguard. He and Nick exchanged subtle, prearranged hand signs to confirm to one another who they were. Then Nick signaled him to stay back, just a little, for now. The bodyguard, like Nick, was a light-skinned, light-haired Sicilian. He wore a trendy-looking suit and Cuban-heeled boots and, even though it was dark now, gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. The outline of a shoulder-holstered machine pistol was barely visible through the bodyguard’s sport coat. Nick would have bet the kid was aping the style of some movie star, but he couldn’t have said which one. He hadn’t been to a movie in years.
Frank Greco arrived moments later, just as Nick was yet again tugging on the door at Jerry’s Chop House.
“The door’s locked,” Greco said. He had his consigliere and a bodyguard with him.
“Amazing powers of observation you’ve been blessed with, friend.”
They introduced each other. The Roach had been right about Greco’s cologne.
“It’s supposed to be open,” Greco said. “You did call and check,” he asked his consigliere, “right?”
“You want to be a boss?” Greco muttered to Nick. “Welcome to the glamorous world of it.” Greco folded his arms and took a deep breath and nodded toward the bar across the street, the one with the glass-block front, and they all followed his lead.
Inside, the place was narrower than it looked. An ancient-looking carved oak bar ran almost the length of one wall. The only other seating was two round, cheap laminated four-tops toward the front, next to a jukebox, which was playing Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness?” The bartender, a fat man wearing a Yankees cap, had been the only person in the joint.
The bodyguards stopped right inside the doorway.
“You got a back room or something?” asked Frank the Greek.
The bartender gestured expansively toward all the unoccupied tables and chairs. “It’s fucking Monday,” he said. “Sit wherever.”
“Watch your mouth, asshole,” said the bodyguard with Greco.
Geraci’s mod Sicilian looked over the top of his sunglasses, and Geraci shook his head. No need to overreact. Or react at all. It’s just a bartender, some hapless civilian.
The consigliere said he’d go make some calls about the situation across the street and lef
t.
“No back room at all?” Greco asked.
“We got a john,” the bartender said, shrugging.
“We’ll just have a cocktail, how about?” Geraci said to Greco. “Then soon as they open Jerry’s, we’ll zip over there.”
“Jerry’s?” the bartender said. “Where you from? Jerry’s ain’t open on Mondays.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Geraci said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Greco looked slightly alarmed and ordered a scotch and soda.
Geraci got a red wine and took a seat over by the jukebox. Greco joined him.
Sam Cooke’s “Havin’ a Party” came on. It wasn’t either man’s favorite kind of music, but they had their minds on weightier matters. And it did provide some cover from eavesdroppers, electronic or otherwise.
Greco raised his glass. “Salut’,” he said.
“Salut’,” Geraci said.
“Nick Geraci,” Greco said. “The man, the myth. At my table.”
The bodyguards had taken seats now, too, and seemed relaxed. Momo had been smart to push Nick to bring a man with him. And that M12 gave them the chance to shoot their way out of anything.
“Me, on the other hand…” Greco said, shaking his head. He pointed at his own reflection in a mirror on the wall. “Look at that old man,” he said. “When I was young I looked like a Greek god.” He took a sip of his drink. “Now I just look like a goddamned Greek.”
Geraci laughed politely. He and Frank Greco were about the same age.
“All the times I been to New York,” Greco said, “I’ve never been to Staten Island.”
“Nobody’s ever been here.”
“They will once that suspension bridge opens, though, right?” Greco said. He pointed vaguely in its direction. The towers would have been visible from here if the front had been plate glass instead of glass blocks.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Geraci said.
Next on the jukebox was Rufus Thomas’s “Walkin’ the Dog.”
“Eh,” Greco shrugged. “You never know. Tell you what, lot of history for us here, the Italians. Meucci invented the telephone here. In school, they teach you it was Alexander Graham Bell, but—”
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