Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

A look passed between Billy and Michael, then Billy turned the other way. The only other time they’d seen each other had been at the wedding; Billy had acted funny then, too. She knew it had to do with how her family’s past might affect his political future. Every marriage has taboo conversations, she thought, and this, really, was their only one. They were lucky.

“Just for the night,” Michael said. “Next time I’m in town, maybe. The work with the transition team is over, obviously, but I should still be back here on business fairly often.”

Billy extended his hand to the bodyguard. “Billy Van Arsdale.”

“We met,” Al Neri said. But that was all he said.

“C’mon, Uncle Mike,” Francesca said. “You sure you don’t have time for a home-cooked breakfast?”

“Yeah, are you sure?” Mary said. “Mommy says breakfast is the most importantest meal of the day.”

“All you eat for breakfast is cheese,” Tony said.

“That’s from a song, ” Mary scoffed. “I eat everything. Please, Daddy? Can we go?”

Marguerite Duvall took the stage with ten women in red lingerie and ten slim men in tight-fitting simulated chaps, to re-create the big production number from Cattle Call, complete with the burning bordello and her famous risqué-but-classy finish. Rita played the French madam, the best friend of the sheriff. It was a small role, but this number had helped get her a Tony award nomination (that and the rumor that she was sleeping with the man who was now president).

Johnny Fontane stood in the wings, dressed in a white cape with a purple satin lining and a striped swallowtail tuxedo designed especially for tonight’s event by the best designer in Milan. He was sipping what looked like bourbon but was really tea and honey in a rocks glass.

“The lovely and talented Miss Done-’Em-All Duvall,” said Buzz Fratello, shaking his head in admiration. He and Dotty were on next. “I hear she’s fucking Fuckface, too.”

Johnny had introduced her to both Jimmy Shea and Louie Russo. But Fontane had included Rita in the inaugural ball on his own, with no word from either of them. The talent roster had been his call. The Ambassador made some suggestions, but Johnny ignored him. Rita might not be the biggest star here, but she’d been nominated for a Tony award, for Christ’s sake. For Fontane, she was a good luck charm. He’d met her when Hal Mitchell rounded her up-back when she was just some struggling French showgirl-for a threesome the night before the first sessions on Fontane Blue. Ever since then, Johnny Fontane’s life had been mostly Saturday nights. Even when things had gone south with Annie McGowan, a week in Acapulco with Rita and a Golden Globe for that picture about the alkie detective, and everything was so jake it was jacob.

The fake bawdy house was in flames now. The audience seemed to be eating it up.

“Look at him,” Fratello said, meaning the president: front and center, holding hands with his wife and beaming at the taut-legged, high-kicking ersatz hookers. “I’ll sleep a lot better tonight knowing the leader of the free world is a man who appreciates fine pussy,” he said.

“Relaxes the hand that’s on the button,” Johnny agreed.

Buzz made his inimitable leering noises. “Which button we talkin’ about?” Buzz asked, which cracked Johnny up.

“Let me ask you something, Buzz,” Johnny said. “You’re a paesano. You sing in all the same joints I do. You know the same guys I know. Why don’t they ask you that Mafia shit?”

“You know the definition of dirty Guinea ? An Italian gentleman who just left the room.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m funny,” Buzz said. “Who ever heard of a funny gangster?”

“I got news for you, pally. You’re not that funny.”

“I love you, too, you wop bastard.”

Not a lot of other people could talk to him this way, but from Buzz it was different.

“C’mon. You own a part of a casino, Johnny. Who else owns casinos but wiseguys?”

“A lot of people, and you know it.”

“I know it, but that’s not how people see it,” Buzz said. “Look, I hear it, too. What you said to that reporter yesterday, you were right.”

“I never read that about you.”

“You probably sold more records since we been talkin’ than I will all year. Crook your little finger, and any chick alive follows you home. And you’re a movie star. If that ain’t enough, you got your pussy-chasing partner there elected president, and he owes you. When you’re on top of the world, my dago friend, little people sit home at night, dreaming about knockin’ you down. Forget it. You’ll live longer.”

Jimmy Shea was a man of vision who’d inspired the country and gotten the most votes. Nobody got him elected. Johnny had worked hard to help him, but so had a lot of people. Still, he was proud Jimmy had won, and he had high hopes for what it would be like to be one of the best friends of the president. He’d already redone his estate in Las Vegas, expanding the main house and building bungalows for guests and Secret Service. There was a second pool now and even a helicopter pad. Jimmy had said it would be his western White House.

Now came the big finish. The stage was full of fake smoke, and Rita tore off her dress. She was wearing a body suit. The squares in the cheap seats might have sworn they saw her bird, but from where Johnny Fontane stood, it was pure cornball, not to mention a lousy substitute for Rita in the genuine altogether.

“You know the other reason they don’t ask me as often if I’m in the Mafia?”

“What’s that?” Johnny was backing away, ready to take the stage.

“Because I’m not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Buzz lowered his head. “I am sorry if I have displeased you.” He dropped to his knees, grabbed Johnny Fontane’s right hand, and kissed the signet ring Annie McGowan had given him during their brief marriage. “Forgive me, Godfather.”

Only once did Billy Van Arsdale ask Francesca Corleone if her family was in the Mafia. It was the day before his graduation from Florida State. His parents had taken them to dinner at the Governor’s Club, gotten into a noisy, drunken argument, and left separately. “I love your family,” she’d said, deadpan, hoping to lighten the mood. It had come out wrong.

“At least,” he said, “they’re not in the Mafia.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” she said.

“I don’t know.” He brightened, as if he’d been waiting to ask the question from the time they’d met and finally had his opening. “ Is your family in the Mafia?”

“That’s what you think, isn’t it? That all Italians are in the Mafia? That we eat-a the pizza, we squeeze-a the tomatoes, and we-”

“Not all Italians,” he said. “I’m only asking about the male members of your family.”

“Of course not.” She threw down her napkin. She stood up, punched him in the mouth, and stormed out.

She knew that her family was in the Mafia-Kathy had convinced her-but Francesca hadn’t meant to lie. What she’d heard was her own anxiety, the anxiety that lurked behind his question: the fear that Billy was with her only because she seemed exotic. He was always looking for something new and different: foreign movies, the latest records, beat poetry in a coffeehouse in Frenchtown, the Negro neighborhood in Tallahassee. Once, they had driven six hours to the Seminole Reservation so he could learn to wrestle alligators. Every few weeks, it seemed, he started some new hobby. Every haircut was a little different than the one before it.

Can’t you see Billy’s just here, Kathy had said, to experience a gen-u-ine Mafia Christmas?