Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

“Remind you of anybody?” Tom said.

Michael knew Tom must have meant either him or Fredo, but it didn’t seem like something either of them would have done. Also, neither he nor Tom ever spoke Fredo’s name. There were things that had to be done, and you did them, and you never talked about it. You didn’t try to justify them. They can’t be justified.

“You mean me?” Michael said. “When did I ever-”

Tom rolled his eyes. So this had been his attempt to talk about Fredo.

“When did… he ever take on you and Sonny?”

Tom shook his head, gravely. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m getting old.”

A few beats late, Michael realized that Tom hadn’t meant Fredo. He’d meant Carmela, who’d broken up more petty fights in their neighborhood than ten beat cops combined.

“Anyway,” Tom said, “getting Geraci out here’s going to take a while. He’ll have to drive or take a train.”

“I’m supposed to go see the kids the week after next.”

“If you’re going to do it at all,” Hagen said, “I think that’s when. But-”

“I’m going to do it.”

“It could be a trap. Especially in New York, I think.”

“It’s fine,” Michael said. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll be sure Al takes every precaution.”

“What’ll happen when they find out we had the job done on Narducci before they did?”

Sal Narducci hadn’t seemed like the sort of man who’d hold up well if he were tortured. It hadn’t been a chance Michael was willing to take. They could suspect whatever they wanted from Narducci, but they weren’t going to hear it from that horse’s ass’s mouth. “How would they find out?” Michael said. “We contacted the same man they did. Indelicato waited to hear from them, as we told him he would, and then he did the job to our specifications.”

“You’re that confident in Cesare Indelicato? This was the first time I’d ever met the man. He’s worked with Geraci for years.”

“He’s been in business with the Corleone Family for many more years,” Michael said. “If it hadn’t been for the help of my father during the war, Cesare Indelicato would still be hijacking tomato carts. Anyway, what incentive does he have to side with anyone but himself? He was contacted twice, received two tributes, all for one simple job. He won’t give the matter a second thought.”

“After all the bullshit Forlenza fed the Commission about Narducci’s activities in Sicily,” Hagen said, “I’m surprised he didn’t send his own men to do the job. Or at least to contact Don Cesare.”

“Forlenza will just say that Geraci’s from Cleveland-his godson, et cetera-and was going to Sicily on business anyway, which is true. It’s suspicious, but Don Forlenza made no secret of it. He told the Commission that this was how he was going to handle it. Brilliant. It looked like he had nothing to hide.”

“And you’re still certain they do have something to hide.” They meaning Forlenza, Geraci, and Russo.

“What in this life is certain?” Michael said. “I’m certain enough.”

“If it was anyone else,” Hagen said, “I’d say be careful.”

Michael smiled. “If it came from anyone else, I’d take offense.”

“I think I have an idea,” Tom said, “about how to handle things with Russo.”

He was interrupted by Connie banging the dinner gong as if she were seeking rescue, not serving up the evening meal.

When they got to the table, it was a bruised and chastised Victor who led them in grace.

Francesca Van Arsdale had spent all morning making a picnic lunch to surprise her husband, but when she and little Sonny showed up at his office, Billy grumbled about all the tourists on the Mall and how hot it was before he finally thanked her for the gesture and agreed to go. “It’s not as if I’m too busy to get away,” he said.

Billy had probably begun working at the Justice Department with unrealistically high hopes, although, after seven miserable months on the job, he still seemed unready to admit that to himself, much less to his wife. He was only two years out of law school, Francesca reminded him, but that only launched him on some litany of names she didn’t know-people who, like Billy, had been president of law review at Harvard and what glamorous and/or lucrative things those strangers were doing two years later.

“Exactly,” she said, “and someday some other, younger presidents of law review will have you on the same kind of list. ‘Do you know what Senator Van Arsdale-’”

“C’mon, Francie.”

“‘-was doing two years out of law school? Working for the United States Justice Department, that’s what, and not just under any attorney general. No! Under Daniel Brendan Shea! The greatest attorney general in American history and our, y’know, thirty-seventh president or whatever number he’d be.’”

Sonny was jumping around in the grass of the Mall doing the famous Monkey Dance from Jojo, Mrs. Cheese and Annie. Except for the gold football helmet bobbing on the boy’s head, it was a dead-on impression of Jojo. Tourists paused to watch.

“When did he learn to do that?” Billy whispered, spreading out the blanket.

“It’s from TV,” she said. Months ago was the answer. He frowned, either confused or disapproving, Francesca didn’t want to know which. Sonny finished, and bystanders applauded. Francesca firmly told him he couldn’t do an encore like Jojo, because it was time to eat.

They sat down as a family. Why couldn’t he appreciate this ? she thought. Why couldn’t he accept this as the point of life and take pleasure in it? Between his unhappiness at work-which he talked about all the time-and their joint unhappiness about losing the baby-which they never really talked about-she was feeling more and more like they had to get out of this godforsaken city. Billy had been so good to her from the time she’d found out about the affair until the night they’d lost the baby, but he’d barely touched her since then. The only time they’d tried to make love, he couldn’t get hard and she was too fragile herself to make it happen for him. He rolled off her, onto his back, and used his hand. When he came, she started crying, though she was also strangely relieved. About half the nights since then, for no apparent reason, he’d spent the night on the couch with the TV test pattern on.

“You don’t understand, Francie,” Billy said. “It’s complicated.” He’d folded several napkins to sit on, even on top of the blanket, so he wouldn’t get his seersucker suit dirty. “All day I sit on my duff in the library,” he said, slapping said duff, “checking other people’s citations. Some of the lawyers who wrote those things are my age, and most of them wouldn’t know a decent English sentence from-I don’t know, the Monkey Dance, but-”

“Monkey Dance!” Sonny cast aide his bologna sandwich, grabbed his football helmet, and shot up, dancing. Billy didn’t even budge. Francesca got up, got Sonny under control, and, with the minor concession of allowing him to keep the helmet on, got him back to eating lunch.

“When I was on law review,” Billy said, “I had people doing this kind of job for me. ”

It took her a second to realize he meant the work in the law library, not her efforts to subdue a four-year-old with a Monkey Dance fixation. Billy had people for that, too: her. A normal, healthy four-year-old boy was wearying enough without having to contend with a whiny husband, too. She’d only been eleven when her father died. She knew she’d probably built him up into someone who never existed, but she hadn’t even the vaguest memory of him whining to his wife, not once. “Well, you’re not on law review anymore,” Francesca said, “are you?”