Mark Winegardner: The Godfather returns

The man needed to call his wife. This had happened before. He’d said it was with a secretary, a woman. He’d promised his wife it wouldn’t happen again. He started to dial, then realized he’d need the clerk for an outside line. The clerk must have been off getting the candy.

The man had a good job, great wife, great kids, nice house. He was a newly initiated Rotarian. Yet here he was, after a night with some street tough, doing those things, waking up on a Sunday morning in a place like this.

He got up again to look for the oranges. No luck. He saw his pants but not his yellow shirt. He couldn’t find his porkpie hat. He didn’t know the name of the dive where he’d left his car. He’d have to take a cab home, shirtless, then have his wife drive him around seedy neighborhoods, looking for it. It’d be easier to just buy a new car.

He picked up the gun.

The Colt felt even heavier than it looked. He ran his finger along the barrel. He opened his mouth. He rested the end of the gun on his tongue and held it there.

He heard the squeal of tires outside. It was a big car, he could tell from the sound of the slamming door. It must be Troy. Coming back for him. Then a second car door slammed.

Two men.

They’d come all the way from Chicago. They weren’t coming for him, though the naked man didn’t know that. They’d been following him for hours, which he also didn’t know. The naked man pulled the Colt out of his mouth, stood, and trained it on the door. “See you in Hell,” he whispered. He’d heard someone say it in a movie. He wasn’t a tough guy, but with his fingers curled around the pearly butt of that six-shooter he sure as hell felt like it.

In Hollywood, Florida, under the carport of the coral-colored house where she’d lived since her father, Sonny, died in that car wreck (she had no reason to believe it was anything other than what she’d been told), Francesca Corleone honked the horn of her mother’s station wagon for a good ten seconds. “Stop it,” said her twin sister, Kathy, sprawled across the backseat, reading some French novel, in French. Kathy was headed off to Barnard. She wanted to be a surgeon. Francesca was going to Florida State, in Tallahassee, and wanted, mostly, to be on with it: out of the house, on her own. Though with all this horrible business in New York and how that side of the family had gotten the family name in the papers, even if it was all lies, this might not be the easiest time to start a new life. Kathy had wanted to go to school in New York, partially to be close to all their family up there. Now, of course, everyone had moved away except for Grandma Carmela and their horrible Aunt Connie. Apparently Uncle Carlo had simply disappeared-one of those jerks who went out for cigarettes and never came back: a lousy thing to do, even for a creep like him, but Francesca had to admit that anyone married to Aunt Connie would have had to consider it. Kathy, especially up there, would probably get asked every day, even by her professors, if she was any relation to those notorious gangsters, the Corleones. If the past few months in Hollywood were any indication, Francesca would have to be braced for this, too, even in Tallahassee.

Her mother, the controlling shrew, was driving them both. Driving! To New York! Thank God Francesca would get dropped off first. She honked again.

“That’s very annoying,” said Kathy.

“As if you’re really reading that book.”

Kathy answered in what was either French or fake French.

Francesca hadn’t taken a language and planned to evade the issue either by taking Italian-which, in truth, she didn’t know all that well-or by majoring in something with no language requirement. “We’re Italian,” Francesca said. “Why aren’t you learning Italian?”

“ Sei una fregna per sicuro, ” Kathy answered.

“Nice mouth.”

Kathy shrugged.

“You can swear in Italian,” Francesca said, “but you can’t read Italian.”

“I can’t read at all unless you shut up.”

Their mother was next door at their grandparents’ house, and had been there for ages, laying down last-minute care-and-feeding instructions for Francesca’s brothers, Frank, fifteen, and Chip, ten. Chip’s real name was Santino Jr., and, until he had come home from baseball practice one day this summer and announced that he would henceforth answer only to “Chip,” had been called Tino. Francesca could probably do that. She could go to college and take on another name. Fran Collins. Franny Taylor. Frances Wilson. She could, but she wouldn’t. They’d already Americanized the pronunciation, from Cor-le-o-nay to Cor-lee-own, and that was change enough. She was proud of her name, proud to be Italian. She was proud that her father had rebelled against his gangster father and brothers and become a legitimate businessman. Anyway, Francesca’s name would change in good time, when she found a husband.

Francesca honked again. What was taking so long in there? Nonna and Poppa would ignore every word Francesca’s mother said. Those boys got away with murder, especially Frankie, especially once the football thing started. Francesca honked once more. “You’re making it much easier,” said Kathy, and Francesca finished the sentence: “-for you to leave. I know.” Kathy sighed as only an American girl can. Moments later, she stroked the back of Francesca’s hair, softly. The twins had never in their eighteen years spent a night apart.

Hal Mitchell’s Castle in the Sand Hotel and Casino never closed. Neither, these days, did Johnny Fontane, who’d done his two shows (eight and midnight) and been up all night, showing the swells and pallies a good time, then, for luck (since he had a session today), to his suite, where there were two chicks. One was a blond French girl who danced at the casino across the way and said she’d had one line (“Gosh, look!”) in that Mickey Rooney picture they’d filmed here last year, the one where Mickey’s a prospector in the desert and there’s a bomb test and the dose of radiation he gets makes it so any slot machine he touches pays off (there’s no scene with wiseguys beating the shit out of Mickey Rooney). The other one was a luscious brunette with a C-section scar who was probably paid to be there (fine by him; by Johnny’s stars, the worthiest of human attainments was to be a professional). When he’d asked, a total gentleman about it, if either of them had a problem going to bed-y’know? all three of them?-they’d laughed and started to strip. The brunette, who’d said her name was Eve, had a flair for it, knowing just when it was the blonde’s turn to suck Johnny’s dick (when she saw the size of it, she grinned and whispered, “Gosh, look!”) or when it was her turn to do it up against that fountain in the middle of the room while the blonde rubbed his back. Eve knew the perfect time to push Johnny down on his back and maneuver the blonde onto his cock and for the first time in the whole deal to start pawing the blonde’s tits and kissing her, which sent Johnny off in a matter of seconds. It was a gift. A lot of women didn’t have it. The blonde-her name was Rita, short for Marguerite; he never forgot their names in the morning-was still there, asleep, when he’d left to come up here to the roof, to the pool. He hated men who tested the water with their pinky toe. He tossed off his heavy robe and jumped into the deep end. When the shock wore off, he went under again, holding his breath and counting to two hundred.

His head pounded, and not from the depth of the water. He didn’t drink as much as people thought, at least not anymore. The secret? Go from table to table, joint to joint, leaving half-finished drinks everywhere, which no one notices, while at the same time accepting every new one that comes his way, which everyone notices. Any poor mook who tried to match him drink for drink got folded into the back of a cab and sent home, courtesy of Johnny Fontane. He controlled his drinking. He controlled what he did and who he did it with.