Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

Four hours later, Hagen had nothing. No one by that name had ever worked for Eastern Airlines, flown for the RCAF, or been a member of the CCC. The Philly people had never heard of him. He’d never been fingerprinted anywhere in the United States. He’d never registered a car, a boat, a gun, or a legal complaint. He’d never paid federal income tax. Sure, the identity was probably a fake, but even a fake ID left more of a trace than this. As far as Hagen could tell, there was no Joe Lucadello. He’d played golf all morning with Casper the One-Eyed Ghost.

Just to have anything at all to show for his afternoon, he checked out the Ambassador’s story. All of it was true: he’d been at Johnny’s but left; he had in fact met with the people at the university, who were very eager to know if Mr. Shea seemed inclined to approve the building. “The Ambassador’s a hard man to read,” Hagen said. “Good luck to you, though.”

He looked at his watch again. He’d barely have time to change and make it to the opening at the art museum.

He sped to the hotel and ran around getting ready to go out for the night as if he were dreadfully late, but he arrived at the museum early, as usual. The opening didn’t start for twenty minutes. Theresa, the chairwoman of the museum’s acquisitions committee, was at the airport picking up the artist. The wizened docent minding the velvet rope wagged her finger at Hagen and told him to hold his horses, but the museum director rushed over and apologized profusely.

Tom had never heard of this artist, but he saw right away that the exhibit was Theresa’s idea of a compromise, garnished with a wicked joke. He couldn’t help but smile. She had a degree in art history, and her taste ran toward abstract painting. Many of the ladies on her committee were blue-haired ranchers’ wives who didn’t know art but knew what they liked. They liked lugubrious oil paintings of Indians. They liked Norman Rockwell. They liked some of Picasso’s early work. The show was called “Cats, Cars, and Comics: The Pop Art of Andy Warhol.” The cars looked like they’d been copied from magazine ads, with the same image of a sports car repeated in neat rows and many colors. The comics were blotchy enlargements of Popeye and Superman. The bluehairs loved the cats, though, even the green one with red eyes that gave Hagen the willies.

The rope came down. Still no Theresa. A sparse crowd began to gather.

“Nice car,” Michael said, pointing. He’d arrived along with a group of stockholders and fronts in their biggest real estate company, plus Al Neri and some other muscle. After this they were all going to a private dinner Enzo Arguello was serving up in the rotating ballroom at the Castle. “All those different colors make it hard to choose, though.”

“I think maybe that’s sort of the point,” Hagen said.

Finally, Theresa arrived with what had to be the artist, a frail, blank-faced young man with pinkish blond hair and red-lensed glasses. The bluehairs swarmed him.

“Your friend Joe seemed like a good man,” Hagen said.

“He is,” Michael said. “One of the best I’ve ever met.”

“Is that right?” Hagen said.

“You have a nice afternoon?” Michael said.

It was not said kindly.

How the hell could he have learned about that blackjack dealer in Bonanza Village? Hagen had taken every precaution. Had it been the flowers? A phone tap?

“You didn’t find a thing, did you?”

Lucadello. That’s what he was talking about. “I just made a few calls on him,” Tom said. “I had some other paperwork. But to answer your question, no. I didn’t.”

“If you wanted to know about my friend Joe, why didn’t you ask me?”

“I was just curious,” Hagen said.

Michael raised his wineglass and nodded toward the green cat. “To curiosity,” he said, but did not drink.

“Did something get back to you?”

“Nothing got back to me,” Michael said, switching to Sicilian. “I know how you think, Tom. I knew what you’d do. It’s who you are, why you’re such a good lawyer.”

“So what Family is he with?” Tom asked, in Sicilian, too. “I contacted Nunzio in Philly-”

“Why do you leap to the conclusion that Joe is a part of this thing of ours, Tom? Because he has an Italian name? I’m disappointed in you.”

“Not because he has an Italian name, no. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Look, it’s fine. Everything you want to know about Joe he’ll tell you himself.” Michael switched back to English. “Actually, more like everything you need to know. At any rate, we’re meeting with him at midnight in my suite.”

Theresa had escaped from the ring of people surrounding the artist and made a beeline over to her husband and Michael. “What do you think?”

“Great,” Michael said.

“Visionary,” Tom said.

She put her arm around him, as if they were still schoolkids.

“I hate it, too,” Theresa said. “But, believe me, it’ll be big. Him, too.”

“Late plane?” Tom asked, holding out his arms the way the sarge had, which did manage to get a smile out of Mike.

Theresa shook her head. “He made me stop so he could get out and walk down the Strip. He stared at one marquee, just stared without moving, for-God, I don’t know. Forever. He did it again at a gift shop window. He took every whorehouse leaflet he could get his hands on, too. Hundreds of them, for art purposes obviously, but who ended up carrying them? Moi. ”

“Obviously?” Tom said.

“I don’t think he likes girls,” Theresa stage-whispered.

Tom averted his eyes from Michael’s.

“Anyway,” Theresa said, “now he’s over there telling everybody that in the future, America will be Las Vegas. Not be like Vegas. Be Vegas. The man’s been here three hours.”

Michael shrugged. “Some people catch on quick.”

After the dinner meeting, when they got to Michael’s suite, Joe Lucadello was already there, shirtless, still in his orange pants, sitting at the bar and playing solitaire.

“Tom! What a treat. C’mon in.” As if it were his suite. “Mike tells me you were interested in getting to know me better. I’m flattered.”

Tom had been with Michael the entire time since the art museum. There would have been no time Michael could have told Joe anything.

Al and Tommy Neri had followed them in. Michael gave them a nod, and they headed to the adjoining room, closing the door behind them.

“Mike tells you that, huh?” Hagen looked around the room and realized why it seemed so familiar. The pool table. This was the same suite where Fredo had lived before he had been married. It had been redecorated, but the pool table was the same. Michael turned on the television, loud. The TV was also new. Fredo had kept the TV on all the time just for the sake of having noise around, but these days they turned it on to provide cover from possible wiretaps. The late show was on, some old picture with people in togas.

Joe raised an open bottle of Pernod in one hand, a sealed bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other, and arched his eyebrows. As he did, Hagen tried to see behind the eye patch, but no dice.

“I’ll pass,” Tom said. “Look, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I’ve had a long day, and it’s not over yet, so would you mind telling me what’s going on? Whoever you are.”

“He’s Joe Lucadello,” Michael said, racking the balls on the pool table. “That’s God’s honest truth.”

“Though I haven’t been Joe Lucadello in fifteen years,” Joe admitted.

“Oh yeah?” Hagen said. “So who are you?”

“Nobody. Anybody. Mike knows me as Joe Lucadello, which was who I was back when we first met. It still is who I am, of course, but as you took it upon yourself to learn, other than the hotel registration last night-which will disappear, by the way-there’s no record of me anywhere. A few people have memories of that young man, but that’s all.”