Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

The first ambulance was found the next day, a block from where it had been stolen. Vincent “the Jew” Forlenza was never seen again.

In the family section of the stadium, Tom and Theresa Hagen and their handsome son Andrew rose for the playing of the national anthem. Tom clamped his hand over his breast and found himself singing along.

“You usually just mutter,” Theresa said.

“This is such a great country,” Tom said. “No one should ever just mutter.”

Frankie Corleone was the smallest man on the entire Notre Dame defense, but on the first play from scrimmage, he shot through the line and hit the Syracuse Orangemen’s gigantic fullback so hard his head snapped back and his body followed. The crowd went wild, but Frankie jogged back to the huddle like he hadn’t done anything unusual.

“Frankie!” Andrew shouted.

“My nephew!” Theresa said.

Tom and Theresa hugged each other, and the fullback made it off the field without the need of a stretcher.

On the next play, Syracuse tried to pass. The receiver was wide open over the middle. Just as the ball got there, Frankie came out of nowhere and batted the ball away.

“Woo-hoo!” Theresa yelled. “Go, Frankie!”

“The Hit Man!” Tom shouted. It was his nephew’s nickname. He didn’t allow himself to give it a second thought.

“Aren’t you supposed to be cheering for Syracuse, Ma?” Andrew teased her.

It was a perfect November day for football, crisp and struggling to be sunny. Everyone should see a football game at Notre Dame. The Golden Dome. Touchdown Jesus.

“This is different,” she said. “This is family.”

In the Palermo harbor, Michael Corleone sat on the deck of a yacht belonging to his father’s old friend Cesare Indelicato. Michael had never traveled with as many men for security as he had on this trip, but Don Cesare had not taken offense. They were living in troubled times.

Michael settled in now, comfortable that he would not suffer a double cross, willing to risk the recklessness of being only a few hundred meters away from Geraci when he arrived in Sicily for the satisfaction of watching him taken from the boat by the best assassins in Sicily.

Michael would have to return to New York. Other than Hagen, the best people the Corleone Family had left posed unacceptable risks because of their ties to Geraci. The next best people were mediocrities like Eddie Paradise and the DiMiceli brothers. Michael would have to run the Family again, every aspect of it. He’d be able to make it look as if he were returning in triumph, he was certain-the elimination of Louie Russo and Vince Forlenza would see to that, at least in the eyes of the top men from the other New York Families. But so much of what Michael had wanted-legitimacy, peace, the love of his wife and children, a life different and better than the one his father lived-was now beyond his reach: for years, perhaps forever.

The terrible sting of this would not go away by killing Geraci. He knew that.

There was no pleasure to be taken from such a thing. He knew that, too.

Still.

As they waited, Don Cesare-in his brilliantly indirect Sicilian way-was discussing the benefits of membership in a Roman Masonic organization, the name of which, Propaganda Due, he did not utter but which was understood between these men. P2, as it was usually called (though Indelicato did not say this either), was a secret society rumored to be more powerful than the Mafia, the Vatican, the CIA, and the KGB put together. Michael was being proposed for membership, and if all went well, he would be the first American admitted. Not even his father had been considered for this. It was a sign that, even in the wake of the Carmine Marino debacle, the true powers understood that Michael Corleone was destined to resume this role as the most dominant force in the American underworld. Any other man in Michael’s position would have been flattered, and he gamely pretended to be just that.

Finally the ship came into view. Michael sipped a glass of ice water and kept his eyes on the men Indelicato had positioned at the foot of the pier.

The ship docked.

The passengers gradually disembarked.

There was no sign of Nick Geraci.

Indelicato nodded to a man on the roof of the yacht, who waved an orange flag, signaling the men on shore to board the ship and look for their target.

“They’ll find him,” said Don Cesare. “They’re good men, and he has nowhere to go.”

But soon the ship-to-shore radio crackled with bad news. Their target had apparently eluded them.

Enraged, Michael used the radio to call the United States.

He was unable to reach Joe Lucadello, but his assistant assured Michael that nothing had gone wrong. They’d had to use several layers of intermediaries to conceal the man’s identity, but the assistant assured him that, unless the guy jumped off somewhere in the Mediterranean, he was on that ship. “I assure you it was him,” the assistant said. “I have the paperwork right in front of me. Fausto Geraci. Passport, pictures, everything.”

Whistling a tune his Palermitan mother sang him as a little boy, Fausto Geraci, Sr., disappeared under the ancient stone arch near the dock, into what was once the walled city of Palermo.

Cesare Indelicato professed to be as flummoxed by the situation as Michael was.

M ICHAEL CORLEONE’Sphone rang in the middle of the night. He was still jet-lagged from the punishingly long trip home from Palermo.

“Sorry to wake you, Uncle Mike. It’s just… there’s been an accident.”

He could never tell Francesca and Kathy apart, on the phone or in person.

“Francie!” Kathy Corleone called from the kitchen. She had Billy’s typewriter and several neat piles of books set up on Francesca’s kitchen table-which, only hours after her train arrived in D.C., she’d already com-mandeered so she could work on her dissertation. “Phone!”

“Who is it?” Francesca asked. She was giving Sonny a haircut on a chair in the bathroom.

From Kathy’s lips came words Francesca and Billy had agreed would never be spoken in this apartment, the name of the tall blond whore from Floridians for Shea.

Francesca dropped her scissors. For a crazed moment, she was furious with her sister for this cruel joke, but of course it was no joke. Kathy didn’t even know Billy had had an affair. “Don’t move,” she told Sonny. “Stay right there.”

The boy must have heard something in his mother’s voice. He froze.

For most of their lives, Kathy and Francesca had known the most trivial details of each other’s lives. When had that changed? It wasn’t just going away to different colleges, Francesca thought, standing over the black telephone in her bedroom, blood roaring in her ears. Boys, she thought. Men. What of life’s biggest problems are caused by anything else? Francesca wanted to go back into the bathroom, lock the door, take her son in her arms, and hold him tight, willing him not to become one of those charming, selfish sociopaths.

Instead, she stopped stalling, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone.

“I’m sorry to call you at your home.” The voice of That Woman sounded as if she’d just stopped crying. It also didn’t sound long distance. “This isn’t easy for me.”

“Where are you?” Francesca said.

“Look, it would have been easier for me not to call than to call,” the woman said. “Much easier. I’m only trying to do what’s right.”

“You’re a little late for that, you whore,” Francesca said. “Don’t lie to me and tell me you’re not in Washington.”

“I have no intention of lying,” she said. “I wouldn’t put myself through this for anything but the truth.”