Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

He stood there, staring at the bag.

Money was an illusion. The leather of the bag had more inherent value than the thousands of little slips of paper inside it. “Money” is nothing more than thousands of markers, drawn up by a government that couldn’t cover one percent of what it had out on the street. Best racket in the world: the government puts out all the markers it wants and passes laws so they can never be called in. From what Geraci understood, those slips of paper represented a month’s worth of the skim from a Las Vegas casino in which both the Corleones and Forlenza had points, along with a sizable gift in consideration of Don Forlenza’s hospitality and influence. Those stacks of bills represented the labors of hundreds of men, reduced to scrip, to wampum, exchanged for the negotiating power of a few, the actions of fewer yet. Worthless paper that Don Forlenza would accept unthinkingly. Just markers.

Minchionaggine, his father would say. You think too much.

Fredo rolled down the window and handed the customs agent his driver’s license. “Nothing to declare.”

“Are those oranges?”

“Are what oranges?”

“In the backseat. On the floor there.”

Sure enough, there they were: a mesh bag of Van Arsdale oranges. They weren’t his oranges per se. Fredo wouldn’t eat an orange if it were the last fucking morsel of food on earth.

“Sir, could you just pull your vehicle over to that lane there? Next to that man in the white uniform?”

“You can have the oranges. Keep ’em, toss ’em, I don’t care. They’re not mine.” His father had been buying oranges the day Fredo saw him get shot. One of the bullets pulverized an orange on the way into the old man’s gut. A lot of things from that day were fuzzy. Fredo remembered fumbling with his gun. He remembered watching the men run away up Ninth Avenue, leaving Fredo unfired upon, too insignificant for even a single bullet. He remembered that orange. He did not remember failing to check to see if his father was dead and instead sitting on the curb weeping, even though the picture of him doing so had won the photographer all kinds of prizes. “I forgot they were even there.”

“Mr. Frederick.” The agent was studying Fredo’s driver’s license. It was under a fake name, Carl Frederick, but it was real, right from the Nevada DMV. “How much have you had to drink this morning?”

Fredo shook his head. “Over there, huh? By that guy?”

“Yes, sir. If you will, please.”

Two men dressed like Detroit cops were making their way toward the man in white. Fredo pulled over and reached around to the backseat, grabbing the yellow shirt and draping it over the whiskey bottle. The man in white asked him to please step away from the car.

This was more or less exactly how it had happened to his brother Sonny. If this was a setup and they were there to kill him, the only chance he had was to reach under the seat, right now, get his gun, and come out of the car shooting. But what if they were for real? In which case he’d have killed a cop or two and might as well be dead. Though Mike had gotten away with it.

Think.

“Sir,” said the man. “Now, please.”

If they were for real and they found the gun there, he’d get arrested. Which someone, probably Zaluchi, could fix. No way to get rid of the gun now anyway.

Fredo palmed one of the oranges. He opened the door and got out slowly. No sudden moves. He flipped the orange to the man in white and braced himself for death. The man just stepped aside. The cops grabbed Fredo by the arms before the orange hit the ground.

“Shouldn’t you fellas be Mounties?” Fredo’s eyes darted, looking for the men with tommy guns.

“You’re coming into the United States, sir. Please come this way.”

“You know, that car?” Fredo said. “It’s Mr. Joe Zaluchi’s, who as you probably know is a pretty important businessman in Detroit.”

Their grip loosened, but only a little. They took him behind the roadside A-frame customs building. Fredo’s heart knocked against his rib cage. He kept looking around for the men with guns, listening for the sounds of cocking hammers, inserted clips. He considered shaking himself free and making a run for it. Just as he was about to, the men pointed to a line on the ground and asked him to walk it.

They were real. They weren’t going to kill him. Probably.

“Mr. Zaluchi is kind of eager to get his car back,” Fredo said.

“With your arms out like this, sir,” said one of the cops. He said out in that funny Canadian way. That accent always struck Fredo as comical.

“Sure you’re not a Mountie?” Fredo asked, but he did as he was told.

So far as he could tell, he walked the line perfectly, but these jokers were unimpressed. They had him recite the alphabet backward, which he did perfectly. He looked at his watch.

“If you fellas give me your names,” he said, “I’m sure Mr. Zaluchi would be happy to make a donation to your retirement fund or something. Whatever he does, I’ll do, too.”

Each man cocked his head, the way dogs do.

Fredo was getting the giggles.

“Is something funny, Mr. Frederick?”

Fredo shook his head. Betrayed by his own nerves, he tried, literally, to wipe the smile from his face. Nothing was funny.

“I apologize if I misunderstood, sir,” one of them said. “Did you offer us a bribe?”

He frowned. “Wasn’t the word I used donation ?”

“That was the word all right,” said the other one. “I think Bob thought you were proposing a sort of quid pro quo.”

A cop learns some lawyer words, he gets assigned to cream puff duty at the border. Cream puff duty: the thought forced the corners of his mouth up, though he was furious at himself, not amused. Cream puff. Not Fredo Corleone, who’d knocked up half the showgirls in Vegas and was on his way back there to take care of the other half. He took a deep breath. He was not going to laugh. “I don’t want no trouble. I don’t want to assume anything, but”-and here he had to fight the giggles again-“did I pass the test or not?”

They exchanged a look.

The man in white came around the corner of the building. Here it comes, Fredo thought. But he wasn’t carrying Fredo’s gun. Instead, he had that wet, mangled piece of paper, the handbill, spread out on a clipboard, dabbing at it with a handkerchief. “Mr. Frederick?” he said. “Can you explain this?”

“What’s that?” Fredo said. Which was when he remembered: he’d left his gun back in the room. “I never seen that.”

The man put his face close to the note. “It’s signed ‘Forgive me, Fredo,’ ” he read. “Who’s Fredo?”

Which he pronounced to rhyme with guido.

Which caused Fredo, finally, to erupt in laughter.

The warm-ups his doctor had prescribed took half an hour, tops, but Johnny Fontane was taking no chances. He started them in the desert, stopped in Barstow for a steaming mug of tea with honey and lemon, and was going through the regimen of humming and ululations for maybe the fiftieth time when he blew through a red light a couple blocks from the National Records Tower. An LAPD motorcycle cop swung behind him. They came to a stop together, near the back entrance of the building. Phil Ornstein-second in command at National-stood alone at the curb, pacing, smoking.

Johnny ran his fingers through his thinning hair, grabbed his hat from the seat beside him, and got out of the car. “Take care of this,” Johnny said, jerking a thumb toward the cop. “Will ya, Philly?”

“Got that right.” Phil put out his cigarette. “We thought you were driving down here after your midnight show. There’s a room at the Ambassador Hotel we paid for and you never checked into.”