The Godfather returns Page 4

  Her mother, the controlling shrew, was driving them both. Driving! To New York! Thank God Francesca would get dropped off first. She honked again.

  “That’s very annoying,” said Kathy.

  “As if you’re really reading that book.”

  Kathy answered in what was either French or fake French.

  Francesca hadn’t taken a language and planned to evade the issue either by taking Italian-which, in truth, she didn’t know all that well-or by majoring in something with no language requirement. “We’re Italian,” Francesca said. “Why aren’t you learning Italian?”

  “Sei una fregna per sicuro,” Kathy answered.

  “Nice mouth.”

  Kathy shrugged.

  “You can swear in Italian,” Francesca said, “but you can’t read Italian.”

  “I can’t read at all unless you shut up.”

  Their mother was next door at their grandparents’ house, and had been there for ages, laying down last-minute care-and-feeding instructions for Francesca’s brothers, Frank, fifteen, and Chip, ten. Chip’s real name was Santino Jr., and, until he had come home from baseball practice one day this summer and announced that he would henceforth answer only to “Chip,” had been called Tino. Francesca could probably do that. She could go to college and take on another name. Fran Collins. Franny Taylor. Frances Wilson. She could, but she wouldn’t. They’d already Americanized the pronunciation, from Cor-le-o-nay to Cor-lee-own, and that was change enough. She was proud of her name, proud to be Italian. She was proud that her father had rebelled against his gangster father and brothers and become a legitimate businessman. Anyway, Francesca’s name would change in good time, when she found a husband.

  Francesca honked again. What was taking so long in there? Nonna and Poppa would ignore every word Francesca’s mother said. Those boys got away with murder, especially Frankie, especially once the football thing started. Francesca honked once more. “You’re making it much easier,” said Kathy, and Francesca finished the sentence: “-for you to leave. I know.” Kathy sighed as only an American girl can. Moments later, she stroked the back of Francesca’s hair, softly. The twins had never in their eighteen years spent a night apart.

  Hal Mitchell’s Castle in the Sand Hotel and Casino never closed. Neither, these days, did Johnny Fontane, who’d done his two shows (eight and midnight) and been up all night, showing the swells and pallies a good time, then, for luck (since he had a session today), to his suite, where there were two chicks. One was a blond French girl who danced at the casino across the way and said she’d had one line (“Gosh, look!”) in that Mickey Rooney picture they’d filmed here last year, the one where Mickey’s a prospector in the desert and there’s a bomb test and the dose of radiation he gets makes it so any slot machine he touches pays off (there’s no scene with wiseguys beating the shit out of Mickey Rooney). The other one was a luscious brunette with a C-section scar who was probably paid to be there (fine by him; by Johnny’s stars, the worthiest of human attainments was to be a professional). When he’d asked, a total gentleman about it, if either of them had a problem going to bed-y’know? all three of them?-they’d laughed and started to strip. The brunette, who’d said her name was Eve, had a flair for it, knowing just when it was the blonde’s turn to suck Johnny’s dick (when she saw the size of it, she grinned and whispered, “Gosh, look!”) or when it was her turn to do it up against that fountain in the middle of the room while the blonde rubbed his back. Eve knew the perfect time to push Johnny down on his back and maneuver the blonde onto his cock and for the first time in the whole deal to start pawing the blonde’s tits and kissing her, which sent Johnny off in a matter of seconds. It was a gift. A lot of women didn’t have it. The blonde-her name was Rita, short for Marguerite; he never forgot their names in the morning-was still there, asleep, when he’d left to come up here to the roof, to the pool. He hated men who tested the water with their pinky toe. He tossed off his heavy robe and jumped into the deep end. When the shock wore off, he went under again, holding his breath and counting to two hundred.

  His head pounded, and not from the depth of the water. He didn’t drink as much as people thought, at least not anymore. The secret? Go from table to table, joint to joint, leaving half-finished drinks everywhere, which no one notices, while at the same time accepting every new one that comes his way, which everyone notices. Any poor mook who tried to match him drink for drink got folded into the back of a cab and sent home, courtesy of Johnny Fontane. He controlled his drinking. He controlled what he did and who he did it with.

  He surfaced. He swam a couple laps to limber up, then took a deep breath and went under again. He repeated the drill three more times and got out. At the end of the deck, on the far edge of the roof, was a billboard: HAVE A BLAST! BEST VIEW OF THE BOMB IN LAS VEGAS! Underneath a painting of a purple-orange mushroom cloud, on movable letters, was a time, tomorrow morning. Early tomorrow morning. Johnny had heard they were going to set up a bar, a breakfast buffet, even crown some broad Miss Atomic Bombshell. What sort of sucker would get up at dawn to watch a bomb go off sixty miles away? Maybe they think they’ll start to glow and set off the slot machines. People want to pay to watch a bomb, they ought to go see Johnny’s last picture. He grabbed his robe and took the stairs two at a time, down to his room.

  She was gone. Rita. Good kid. The room still smelled like whiskey, smokes, and pussy. The statue of the naked lady in the fountain, whose outflung arm had seemed at the time like it was made to hold on to, needed repairs. He got dressed and-just to make sure he didn’t nod off on the way to L.A.-took one of the little green pills Dr. Jules Segal had prescribed.

  Johnny Fontane emerged into the brutal sunlight of the Castle’s VIP parking lot and did not flinch. He grabbed his lapels, so sharp they could cut meat, straightened his jacket, and climbed into his new red Thunderbird. The cops here knew this car. He had that ’Bird going over a hundred before he even left town. He checked his watch. In a couple hours, the musicians would start trickling into the studio. They’d spend an hour tuning and gassing, then for another hour or so Eddie Neils, his musical director this time out, would have them rehearsing. Johnny should make it in time. Lay down the first few tracks, get to the airport by six, hop on the charter along with Falcone and Gussie Cicero, and be back here in plenty of time for the private show he said he’d do for Michael Corleone.

  It wasn’t until four in the morning-after he arrived, exhausted, at the guest suites at the Vista del Mar Golf and Racquet Club-that Tom Hagen realized he’d forgotten his racquet. The pro shop didn’t open until nine, the same time Hagen was supposed to meet the Ambassador on Court 14. Hagen couldn’t bear to be late. He asked the desk clerk if he might borrow a racquet, and the clerk looked at him as though he’d tracked mud on the lobby’s white carpeting. He told the man he had an early court time and asked if there was any way to get in the pro shop now, and the clerk shook his head and said he didn’t have a key. Hagen asked if there was anything that could be done, either now or at some time before eight-thirty tomorrow, and the clerk apologized and said no. Hagen took out two hundred-dollar bills and told the clerk he’d be grateful if there was anything humanly possible that could be done, and the man just smirked.

  Hagen had begun yesterday in his own bed in Las Vegas, then, before dawn, flown with Michael Corleone to Detroit, first for a meeting with Joe Zaluchi on his daughter’s wedding day, then the wedding itself, an appearance at the reception, and finally a flight back to Vegas. Mike had been able to go home and go to sleep. Hagen went to the office for an hour of paperwork and then a quick stop home, to change and to kiss his sleeping daughter, Gianna, who’d just turned two, and his wife, Theresa, who’d become an art collector and was excited about a Jackson Pollock that had just arrived from her dealer in New York. His boys, Frank and Andrew, were teenagers, each behind a closed door in a bedroom strewn with science fiction paperbacks and records by Negroes, both of them unkissable now.

  As Tom Hagen packed
his tennis gear, Theresa walked around their new house holding the gorgeous, paint-splattered thing in front of various white walls. She’d taken advantage of the move to Las Vegas and the expanses of blank surfaces to go on a buying spree. The paintings were worth several times more than the house itself. He loved being married to a woman with taste. “What about opposite the red Rothko in the center hallway?” she called.

  “What about the bedroom?” he said.

  “You think?” she said.

  “Just a thought,” he said. He met her gaze and cocked an eyebrow to indicate that it wasn’t the location of the painting he was talking about.

  She sighed. “Maybe you’re right.” She set down the painting and took his hand.

  Marriage.

  But he’d been far too tired, and things hadn’t gone particularly well.

  Hagen was no longer the Corleone consigliere, but with the death of Vito Corleone-who’d succeeded Hagen in the job-and with Tessio dead, too, and Clemenza in the process of taking over in New York, Michael needed an experienced hand. He was waiting to announce a new consigliere until he felt sure the war with the Barzinis and Tattaglias was definitely over. Michael had something up his sleeve, but all Hagen had been able to figure out was that it had something to do with Cleveland. In the meantime, Hagen was still doing his old job and trying to move on to his next thing, too. He was forty-five years old, older than either of his parents had been when they’d died and definitely too old for this shit.

  Now he rose to the knock of the room service he’d had the foresight to order before going to bed. He downed the first cup of coffee before the door closed behind the bellboy. Weak. The way it was everywhere out here. Hagen congratulated himself for guessing beforehand that he’d need two carafes. He took the first one out on the balcony. Eight A.M., the sun barely over the mountains, and already it was baking hot. Who needed a sauna? By the time Hagen finished the first pot of coffee-ten minutes, give or take-the robe that had come with the room was soaked.

  Hagen shaved, showered, dressed in his tennis clothes, and was standing outside the pro shop at eight-thirty, waiting for someone to arrive. After a few interminable minutes, he went back to the desk. A different clerk said that the manager was here now and he’d page him.

  Hagen went back outside the pro shop. The wait was excruciating. If there was one thing he’d learned from Vito Corleone-and what hadn’t he learned from him?-it was promptness. He paced back and forth and dared not go to the men’s room for fear he’d miss the manager or some other arriving employee. When finally someone came to open up-a Slavic woman who looked more like a masseuse than a manager or club pro-it was nine on the dot.

  Hagen grabbed a racquet, slapped two hundred dollars on the front counter, and told her to keep the change.

  “We don’t take cash,” she said. “You have to sign for it.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  “Are you a member? I don’t recognize you.”

  “I’m a guest of Ambassador Shea’s.”

  “He needs to be the one to sign for it. Him or a family member or his valet.” She pronounced it to rhyme with mallet.

  Hagen took out another hundred and said that if she could find it in her heart to straighten all this out, there was more than enough money here for the racquet and her time.

  She looked at him the same way last night’s clerk had, but she took the money.

  Hagen thought his bladder would burst, but by now it was five after nine. He tore the cardboard off the racquet and broke into a dead sprint. Those exact words occurred to him-dead sprint.

  When he got to Court 14, ten minutes late, there was no one there. He was so rarely late that he had no idea what to do. Had the Ambassador already been here and left? Was he late, too? How long should Hagen wait? Would it make sense to go take a leak and come back? He looked around. A lot of bushes, but this wasn’t the sort of place where a guy ought to be pissing in the bushes. So he stood there, hopping from foot to foot, holding it. Surely, the Ambassador had come and gone. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he ran to the nearest men’s room. When he got back to the Court 14, a note was pinned to the net. Ambassador Shea-unable to play tennis this a.m. Late brunch? 2. Poolside. A man will pick you up.

  The note didn’t say where.

  Kay Corleone pointed back toward the road to the Las Vegas airport. “He missed our turn,” she said. “Michael, we missed our turn.”

  Next to her in the backseat of their new yellow Cadillac, Michael shook his head.

  Kay frowned. “We’re driving all the way to Los Angeles? Are you out of your mind?”

  It was their fifth anniversary. She and the kids and even her mother and Baptist pastor father had already been to Mass. Michael had business tonight, before, during, and after the private show Johnny Fontane was doing as a favor for the Teamsters. But he’d promised her that the whole day up until then would be one long date-like old times, only better.

  Michael shook his head. “We’re not driving. And we’re not going to Los Angeles.”

  Kay turned around in her seat, looking back toward the road not taken, then turned to her husband. Abruptly, she had what felt like a block of ice in her guts. “Michael,” she said. “Forgive me, but I think this marriage has withstood about all the surprises that-” She made circles with her hands, like a sports official signaling improper movement of some sort.

  He smiled. “This will be a good surprise,” he said. “I promise.”

  Soon they came to Lake Mead, near a dock with a seaplane moored to the end. The plane was registered to Johnny Fontane’s movie production company, though neither Fontane nor anyone who worked there knew anything about it.

  “Surprise number one,” Michael said, pointing to the plane.

  “Oh, brother,” she said. “ ‘Number one’? You’ve counted them up. You really should have become a mathematics professor.” The illicit thrill she’d once gotten from what he’d become instead had waned enough that she might actually have meant this.

  They got out of the car.

  “That’s counting,” he said. “At most accounting. Not mathematics.” He held out his hand toward the dock. “M’lady.”

  Kay wanted to say she was afraid but did not, could not. She had no reason whatsoever to think that he might do her harm.

  “Surprise number two-”

  “Michael.”

  “-is that I’m flying.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I started pilot training in the Marines,” he said, “before I was, you know.” Sent to fight in 120-degree heat for tunnel-riddled coral islands ladled with a maggoty stew of mud and corpses. “For some reason flying relaxes me,” he said. “I’ve been taking lessons.”

  Kay exhaled. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. She hadn’t realized that, in all those unaccounted-for hours the past few weeks, she was afraid he was having an affair. That’s not true. What she was afraid of was worse. “It’s good you have a hobby,” she ventured. “Everyone needs a hobby. Your father had his garden. Other men have golf.”

  “Golf,” he said. “Hmm. You don’t have a hobby, do you?”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “There’s always golf.” He was wearing a tailored sport coat and a stark white shirt with no necktie. He hadn’t slicked his hair. A light wind tousled it.

  “Actually,” she said, “what would you think if I went back to teaching?”

  “That’s a job,” Michael said. “You don’t need a job. Who’d watch Mary and Anthony?”

  “I wouldn’t start until we’re settled. By then your mother will be here and she could do it. Carmela would be thrilled to do it.” Though Kay actually dreaded hearing what her mother-in-law would say about Kay working outside the home. “Really, all it would be is a hobby.”

  “Do you want a job?” Michael said.

  She looked away. A job wasn’t exactly the point.

  “Let me think about it.” His father wouldn’t have ap
proved, but he was not his father. Michael had once, like his father, been married to a nice Italian girl, but Kay did not know that and was not that girl. What concerned Michael was security, even though it was part of the code that the risks to her were slight. Michael put a hand on her arm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  Kay put her hand on top of his. She took a deep breath. “Well, look,” she said. “I’m not getting in that contraption. At least not until you tell me where we’re going.”

  Michael shrugged. “Tahoe,” he said. A grin flickered on his face. “ Lake Tahoe.” He gestured to the seaplane. “Obviously.”

  She’d told him once she’d love to go there. She hadn’t thought he’d been listening.

  He opened the door to the plane. Kay got in. As she did, her dress both hiked up and stretched taut across her ass. Michael felt a wild impulse to grab her hips from behind but instead just let his eyes linger. There was nothing better, nothing sexier, than looking at your wife like this without her knowing it.

  “Now, the only tricky part about floatplanes,” Michael said as he got in and started the engine, “is that they sometimes flip.”

  “Flip?!” Kay said.

  “Rarely.” He stuck out his lower lip, as if to indicate the lightning-strike unlikelihood of such a thing. “And if a floatplane flips, guess what? It floats.”

  Kay regarded him. “That’s comforting.”

  “I do love you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  She tried for the expressionlessness Michael had mastered all too well. “That’s also comforting.”

  Their takeoff was so smooth that Kay felt her every muscle relax. She hadn’t been aware that they were clenched. She had no idea for how long.