Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

Though that wasn’t the whole truth either.

He flopped on his back. He closed his eyes and hit his head with the heel of his hand, a half-dozen little staccato blows. With every fiber of his being, he hated himself.

Rita rolled onto her side and into a ball. Naturally, she started crying again.

He got up and went to the windows and threw the curtains open.

Better. He did love that neon light. It wouldn’t be dark much longer.

The phone rang again. He took it in the den. He told Figaro to keep his pants on, he’d be right up. Figaro said it was good they’d decided to drive up and not stay in L.A. because there was some news Fredo would probably want to hear about in person, and Fredo asked Figaro if he was deaf. He said he’d be right up, okay?

Fredo got another clean linen handkerchief, the best money could buy, and lay back down on the bed beside Rita. “Hey, darlin’,” he said. Like a cowboy. “Hey, beautiful.”

She blew her nose and was spooky quiet.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He checked his watch-a habit he’d gotten into as a kid-and managed to shower and shave in less than five minutes. He put on a robe so thick it always felt to him like football shoulder pads and came back out, and she was still there.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He could have done without that. He wanted her to leave, yes, and right away, but he didn’t want to feel like a shit about it. She wasn’t crying, though, which was something.

“That was sure fast,” she said. “The shower.”

“I know where everything is by now.” It was what he always said when people said that.

“I should go. I’m sorry. I know I should go.”

“Stay as long as you want,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell, but I’ve-”

“Got business,” she said. “I know. I’m sorry.” She dabbed her eyes and pointed to the bathroom. “I’ll hurry.”

She did not, at least, say tee-tee. While she was in there he threw on some clothes and called downstairs to arrange and pay for her cab.

Twelve excruciating minutes later she came out with her hair combed and her face pink from being scrubbed and her lipstick on and smelling of some kind of perfume that she must have had on when she got here. She wore it thick. There weren’t a lot of things he found more disgusting than thick perfume. He turned on the television and herded her into the hall.

“We got a deal, right?” he said as he pushed the button for the elevator.

“We do.” She held up her right palm. “I am,” she said grimly, “a girl of my word.” She forced a smile. “You’re presuming I wouldn’t say that anyway. Hands down.”

What the fuck was there to say about that? He thought he should probably ask her for her number, but usually that only made things worse.

The elevator showed up and put him out of the misery of his silence. He patted her back as she stepped on.

“Good luck,” she said, “with your business.” She blew him a kiss. “Cor-le-on-e.”

He watched the doors close. He looked at himself in the distortion of the buffed brass doors. There wasn’t much to see. He hit the button for the sixth floor, planted his hands against the cool of the metal, and hung his weary head. Who said life was easy? Yet here he stood. He’d made his mistakes, like anybody, and lived to tell about it, unlike a lot of people he knew.

The doors opened and he got in.

People thought of him as a nice enough guy who was also weak and a fuckup, he knew that. But how many guys could have withstood a day like today and held up any better than Frederico Corleone, eh? He’d woken up in the middle of a really bad decision he couldn’t let himself think any more about, not even knowing where he was, not even what fucking country. Yet he still managed by dawn’s early light to haul ass out of there, and by some miraculous instinct in the right direction, too. Okay, he left his gun behind, but in another country, so you had to think that was the end of that. He maybe fucked up a little bit at customs, but for Christ’s sake the oranges weren’t even his, and the drink he’d had was just an eye-opener, and dropping Joe Zaluchi’s name had been a calculated risk. Just as easily, it could have gotten Fredo waved through. But, okay, it hadn’t. That said, how many guys could have stayed as cool as he had after the pinch? He walked that white line like a champ. The rubes in customs were in awe of him. Two encores, perfect every time. He didn’t say anything he didn’t have to say, didn’t even call in some lawyer. Dumb clucks let him go still thinking he was Carl Frederick, assistant manager of the Castle in the Sand Trailer Park (which, on paper, he was; he’d driven by it but never been there).

In the end, the only reason people thought Mike was so brilliant and Fredo was such a fuckup was that Mike wanted to build some big empire and all Fredo wanted was to have a good time and to have a little piece of the business that was his alone. Something bigger than a trailer park but smaller than General Motors. What the hell was wrong with that, huh? Yet even that was more than Mike would give him. Instead, he gave Fredo a fucking title. Underboss. Sotto capo. Might as well have made him Court Jester. Tit on a Mule. Vice President.

He got off on the sixth floor and used his passkey to enter the dummy room. This whole arrangement here? Fredo’s idea. People loved it, and other people claimed to have thought of it. He’d heard that other casinos were copying it. Big deal. Who needs credit for shit? But still.

“A drink, sir?” asked the bartender on the secret landing.

“Nah,” Fredo said. “Just a cold beer, okay?”

Probably he should take the stairs. Chance to get the blood flowing. But he was beat and the beer felt good and cold in his hand and so he waited for this elevator to come, too.

When it did, Figaro and Capra and two of the new New York guys came rolling out. They did not look like men who had come from the happy event they’d come from. This couldn’t be attributed to Figaro learning that he’d missed out on his big night. This was the first one ever outside New York, so he’d have never guessed and nobody would have told him.

“Goddamn,” Figaro said. “We were about to send a search party. Actually, we are the search party. Where you been?”

“You call me in my room twenty times, you fucking want to know where I been?”

“No, I mean, what took so long? There were only a few people left when we got there, but now there’s nobody. Excepting Rocco. He’s waiting for you.”

The news Fredo was supposed to hear in person.

“My family?” Fredo said.

Figaro shook his head. “Nothin’ like that. You should really just go up and see Rocco.”

“Nobody nobody up there?” Fredo asked. “Or just not-so-many-guys nobody up there? Other than Rocco, I mean.”

Capra-whose real name was Gaetano Paternostro, which was too much of a mouthful and also too regal for this baby-faced country boy-stopped Figaro before he could answer and asked him what Fredo just said, which Fredo had had it up to here with. Fredo was fluent, and this fucking barber might as well have been some mayo-slurping yutz from Ohio. As a bookie, the barber might have been a good earner, but so far it was hard for Fredo to see what beyond that Mike saw in the guy.

“I asked our friend the barber of epic flatulence,” Fredo said in Sicilian dialect, “how many of our other friends remained upstairs in the banquet hall.”

Capra laughed. “Non lo so. Cinque o forse sei.”

Fredo nodded. He’d stop up anyway. What was the point of driving up tonight instead of flying up tomorrow if he didn’t even make an appearance? “Look,” he said to Figaro. “Why you think it took me so long?”