Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

They did.

The older men would have noted the absence of a third law, sworn in every initiation Vito Corleone had performed: You must never get involved in the narcotics trade. No one said anything about this, not even a murmur.

“You come in alive,” Michael said, “and you go out dead.”

The day I asked you to marry me, Kay, I said our businesses would be legitimate in five years.

Michael approached Tommy Neri. “The instruments by which you live and die are the gun”-here Michael bit down on the cigar and picked up the Colt with one hand-“and the knife.” He picked up the dagger with the other. He set the weapons back down in front of Tommy, crossed over each other.

“Do you agree,” Michael said, “that, when called upon, you will use the gun and the knife to help this Family?”

“Yes, Godfather.”

Michael took a puff on his cigar and used it to light Tommy Neri’s votive candle. Then he pointed to Tommy’s right hand. Tommy extended it. Michael picked up the dagger, pricked Tommy’s trigger finger, folded it into his palm, and squeezed his fist hard, careful to apply the pressure away from the wound and thus increase the amount of blood.

One by one, the other twelve men gave the same answer and submitted to the same ritual.

Michael returned to the end of the table. He tapped Tommy’s closed fist. Tommy opened it, then brought both hands together, the bloody right and the clean left, turned his palms up and cupped them. Michael picked up the holy card of Saint Leolucas, lit it with the votive candle, and dropped it into Tommy Neri’s hands. “Back and forth,” he whispered.

Tommy juggled the flaming saint from hand to hand.

“If you ever betray your friends,” Michael said, “you will burn.” He blew a small puff of cigar smoke into Tommy’s unflinching face. “Like the picture of our beloved patron saint now burns your bloodied palm. Do you agree to this?”

“Yes, Godfather.”

Michael watched the card turn fully to ash. Then, tenderly as a lover, he rubbed the ash into Tommy’s palms, then kissed him, softly, on each cheek.

One by one, the other twelve men submitted to the same ritual and gave the same answer.

“You are now qualified men,” Michael finally said, “ Gli uomini qualificati. Gentlemen, please introduce yourself to your brothers.”

The room exploded in a cacophony of congratulations, popping champagne corks, Italian toasts and benedictions. The men in the outer circle maintained their positions to ensure that the new members did in fact dutifully go around the room introducing themselves, kissing the cheeks of every man in the outer circle, missing no one. Michael had already kissed them. He ducked out the back door and down the stairs. He knew that what might greet him at home was news of the escalation of his troubles. But there was a chance his day was over. There was a chance he could get some rest and fight his fights with a clear head tomorrow. Already, he felt better, getting out of that room, away from the smoke and the liquor fumes. The only kisses he wanted were from his wife, his son, his daughter.

You go out dead.

He made it to the car. While he waited for Al Neri to collect the empty pistols and catch up to him, Michael felt his stomach lurch. For a moment he fought it. Then he dropped to his knees and vomited. It all came up-the strega, the whiskey, the food Enzo had prepared so lovingly, everything from the picnic, and what looked like every last kernel of the movie popcorn.

“You okay, boss?” The pistols clanked against one another in the pillowcase Neri was using to carry them, like Jacob Marley’s chains in the production of A Christmas Carol Michael had been in as a kid. Neri was the chief of security here, but humping down fifteen flights of stairs and through various lobbies and hallways with a pillowcase full of thirteen pistols? Christ.

“Oh, yeah,” Michael said. He was drenched in sweat. He managed, however unsteadily, to stand up. He’d ripped the knee of his tux pants. “I’m perfect. Let’s go.”

The daggers that had been used to cut the men’s trigger fingers were theirs to keep. They were dazzling, jewel-handled things that had cost the Family nothing. Nick Geraci had a guy.

F REDO CORLEONEwhipped his rented Chevrolet up the drive and slammed on the brakes under the valet parking overhang. In back, Figaro woke up cursing in English, Capra in Sicilian. “See you up there, fellas,” Fredo said, hopping out. He peeled off a twenty for the valet, then saw that he was a regular and paused. “Just curious. What’s the biggest tip you ever got?”

The man looked at him funny. “A hundred,” he said. “Once.”

Fontane, Fredo thought. He just knew it. He peeled off two hundred. “Find me a good spot, okay, and get those bums out of the back first. So whose record did I break?”

“Yours, sir,” the valet said. “Just last week.”

Fredo laughed, went inside, and broke into a jog. Three in the morning, but inside the Castle in the Sand about the only way a person would know it wasn’t a more decent hour was the presence of hypnotized women in housecoats and curlers, cigarettes dangling from the corners of their grim, unmade mouths, feeding coins into the slot machines as if it were a part of making supper for an ungrateful family. Not a lot of people run through casinos, but none of those dames, and no one at the blackjack tables either, so much as looked up. The pit bosses looked, of course, and so did the eye in the sky if there was anyone up there, but these were men who’d seen Fredo Corleone hurry past them before, which is another way of saying that if anyone not associated with the security cameras or the Nevada Gaming Commission asked them if they’d seen Mr. Corleone go by, they’d have frowned and said “Who?”

He lived in a suite on the third floor-five rooms, including a den with a bar and a tournament-sized pool table. He’d been gone for two weeks, attending to business in New York and trying to help his mother get squared away for the move west. As soon as he opened the door, he knew in his gut that something was wrong. The first concrete thing he noticed was that the curtains were drawn and the place was inky dark. Fredo never closed his curtains, and he never turned off his television set, even when it went to the test pattern, even when he left town. When he slept during the day, he used one of those masks. He jumped back into the hall, out of the line of fire, and reached into his jacket for his gun.

No gun. That gorgeous Colt Peacemaker, the gun that had brought down ten thousand desperadoes in a thousand dusty movies, lost somewhere in the wilds of greater Detroit.

At the other end of the hall a door opened and some old frump in a hairnet and a housecoat came out, carrying a tin cup full of coins and an actual horseshoe. Behind her trailed some milquetoast in an undershirt, Bermuda shorts, and a shiny white cowboy hat he must have bought earlier that day. Fredo froze. There was no noise at all from his room. The frump must have seen Fredo crouching outside a door down the hall, but she kept her head down and headed straight for the stairs. The husband waved, his face contorted into a desperate rictus.

The stairwell door closed.

Fredo counted to ten. “Hello?” he called. “Who’s in there?”

He should have gone and gotten security. But he was exhausted and not thinking straight. He just wanted to grab a quick shower and get up to the ballroom. He did not want to be the candyass who called hotel security because some new maid hadn’t been told never to shut Mr. Corleone’s curtains or turn off his television set.