Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

As he finished, he opened his eyes and saw Jackie Ping-Pong and Gussie Cicero standing inside the far door to the studio. How long they’d been there, Johnny had no idea.

Milner had already whipped out a pad of paper. As a conductor, he was laconic and fluid, but he wrote charts the way a stray dog eats a pork chop. He was oblivious to anything else in the studio, even the intern standing next to him with a bottle of soda and a fistful of pencils.

Johnny sat on his stool and lit a cigarette. “Mo-o-om! Da-a-ad!” Johnny called, looking first to Milner and then Ornstein, then pointing at Ping-Pong and Gussie. “My ride’s here. Don’t wait up!” His legs felt impossibly heavy. Finally he looked up and waved Gussie and Ping-Pong over.

“My friend!” Jackie said, waddling toward him. He was a hugely fat man, just an acquaintance, really. “You’re looking like a million bucks. You sound even better.”

Johnny knew he looked like death on toast. “What’s better than a million bucks?”

“A million bucks and a blow job,” said Gussie Cicero, a pally from way back.

“Wrong,” Johnny said. “If a chick knows you got a million, she’ll blow you for free.”

“Those free blow jobs are the most expensive kind.”

That cracked Johnny up. He slapped Cicero on the back. “Well, if I look like a million bucks,” Johnny said, “you two look like a shit I took this morning.”

Johnny stood and let Ping-Pong and Cicero embrace him. For years Johnny had assumed that Jackie’s nickname had come from his bulging eyes, but not long ago Frank Falcone told him Jackie’s eyes hadn’t done that until years after he got the nickname, which had actually come about because of his name, Ignazio Pignatelli. Gussie Cicero owned the swankiest supper club in L.A. Johnny hadn’t played there since the time his voice went out onstage and Variety wrote it up like it was an occasion for the whole staff to break out the Crown Royal and dance on Johnny’s fresh grave. Gussie and Johnny had remained friends, though.

“Frank Falcone sends his regards,” Gussie said. Gussie was said to be a made guy in the L.A. organization, which was connected somehow with Chicago.

“He’s not coming?” Johnny said.

“Mr. Falcone came down with something,” Ping-Pong said. His meaty fist clutched a new-looking satchel. He was Falcone’s underboss. Johnny couldn’t have said just what an underboss did. Johnny tried not to know more about that kind of thing than he had to. “Other than his regards, he also sends this.”

“Nice,” said Johnny.

“I’ll get you one,” Ping-Pong said, “quick as I can get it made and shipped over from Sicily. I got a guy there, works like a dog and makes ten of these a year. Virgin leather, best there is. Want me to send it to the Castle in the Sand? Your home? Which?”

Fontane had been working on some kind of joke on the virgin part of virgin leather, but he was just too frazzled. Nothing clicked. “This one isn’t mine?”

“I’ll get you one.”

“Kidding, Jack.”

“I’m not offering, I’m telling you. All right? But this one here,” he said, handing it to Johnny, “is for Mike Corleone, capisc’? ”

Meaning: Enough with the ragging and Whatever you do, kid, don’t fucking open it.

The bag, packed tight, was heavy as a bowling ball. Johnny gave it a little shake, like a kid at Christmas, then held it up to his ear, making a show of seeing if it was ticking.

“Funny guy.” Ping-Pong narrowed his eyes in his fat face and just stood there, apparently until he was satisfied that Johnny had gotten the message. “I must express my regrets also,” Ping-Pong finally said. “I have to see to some personal family matters.”

“No sweat,” Johnny said. So I’m your fucking bagman now? But he just stood there, absorbing the indignity like acid into cheap cement.

“It’s our loss, not seeing you,” Ping-Pong said. “You’re sounding great, John.”

Milner kept writing. The musicians filed out. Johnny said his good-byes and headed out with Gussie and Ping-Pong. A Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was idling by the back door.

“Where’s the queen?” Johnny said.

“Excuse me?” Ping-Pong frowned, as if he took it that he was being called a fag.

“He means of England, ” Gussie said. “He’s joking.”

Ping-Pong shook his head in a kids-today way that Johnny could have done without.

“The car’s mine, Johnny,” Gussie said.

A black Lincoln pulled up. Ping-Pong and his men got in and sped off.

As they did, Johnny caught a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye and jerked out of the way. He stumbled and fell against the side of the Rolls.

It hadn’t been a bullet.

Johnny wasn’t exactly sure why he’d thought it might be.

“Nice catch,” Gussie said. “You all right?”

Johnny reached down to pick up Cicero ’s car keys. “Long day,” Johnny said.

“All you had to say,” Gussie said, “was no thanks.”

“No thanks what?”

“No thanks you didn’t want to drive my fucking Rolls-Royce.”

Johnny tossed him his keys. “No thanks I don’t want to drive your fucking Rolls-Royce.”

“See? Is that so hard?”

“I didn’t hear you, okay? I’m bushed, brother.” The sun was about to set. Johnny couldn’t have said how long it had been since he’d had an honest-to-God night’s sleep.

Gussie gave Johnny a hug and said it had been a privilege to hear him sing. They got in and headed for the airport. Johnny started spinning the dial on Gussie’s radio, checking out the competition. All around the dial were fads. Rock and roll. Fast-talking disc jockeys. Mambo: another fad. Weepy girl singers: yet another. Johnny never once came across his own voice. Maybe the other record companies were right. Maybe the kind of record Johnny Fontane was trying to make didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance. He kept spinning the dial. Gussie must have picked up on how jangled Johnny’s nerves were and for most of the ride there had the decency not to say anything until they were getting off the freeway for the airport.

“What’s the difference,” Gussie said, “between Margot Ashton and a Rolls-Royce?”

Margot had been Fontane’s second wife, Gussie’s first. Fontane had left Ginny for Margot. It wasn’t enough that Margot stole his heart; she took everything, even his self-respect. One time, he showed up on the set of a movie she was doing and the director put him to work cooking spaghetti. Without a word of complaint Fontane tied on an apron and did it. Love. Fucking love. “Not everyone’s been inside a Rolls-Royce,” Johnny said.

“You heard that?”

“Everyone’s heard that. You know, with different fancy cars and different sluts.”

“Sluts don’t come much more different,” Gussie said, “than Margot Ashton.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, pal-o’-mine. A slut’s a slut.”

Gussie made a wrong turn, toward the commercial flights.

“You made a wrong turn,” Johnny said, pointing to the road to the private hangars.

Gussie shook his head. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not going either. Frank didn’t want you to be sore, but, you know, a whole airplane, just for one guy-”

He reached into his breast pocket, for a gun. But no, not a gun. Johnny was wrong. Gussie pulled out an envelope. “It’s commercial, but it’s first class.”

Johnny took the plane ticket. His flight left in fifteen minutes. “You’re really not going?”

“Actually,” Gussie said, “I was never invited.”

“Of course you’re invited. I’m inviting you.”

“It’s okay,” Gussie said. “Gina and I got plans.” Gina was the girl he’d married after he’d been dumped by Margot Ashton. Ashton had married an Arab sheik after that and already divorced him, too. “Our fifth anniversary, if you can believe it,” he said, stopping the car. Skycaps practically ran to help, seeing a Rolls, imagining big bags and bigger tips. “Next weekend, though, she and I got tickets to come up there and see you.”