Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

“ You talked to him? Before he talked to me? Or you talked to me?”

“He’s our contractor, too. For our house up there, too.”

“Does Michael know?”

“He does.”

She frowned and put her hands on her hips and stood in the doorway and did not invite him in. As of today, she’d realized she wasn’t pregnant. As of this moment, it was happy news.

“I didn’t actually talk to him,” Hagen said. “I left a message.”

“With Carmela ?”

“Of course not.” He left it at that. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Don’t bet on it.”

“We’re looking into things, okay?” he said. “But, you know, rigging up a lightning storm, you have to admit, that’s pretty much God’s territory.”

“And we know it was lightning?”

“We know it was lightning.”

“And how do we know it was lightning? Did anyone see it?”

“I know you’re upset, Kay. I’d be upset, too. I am upset, and so is everyone up there.”

“Did anyone see it?”

Behind her, Mary started crying. Anthony dropped to his knees, threw out his arms, and burst into a song first introduced to the world by a melancholy cartoon jalopy named Dudley.

S O WAS KAY SORE, ”Fredo asked, leaning across an empty seat, whispering into his brother’s ear, “when she found out about the bugs?”

Michael lit a cigarette. Kay and Deanna were across the banquet hall by now, on their way to the ladies’ room. Sonny’s daughter Francesca and that rich WASP asshole she’d just married were on the dance floor (the kid had broken his leg skiing or some other rich-boy thing and was hobbling around out there on his wedding day in a cast). Most of the other guests were dancing, too, including, amazingly enough, Carmela, who’d been at death’s door a couple months ago. She was twirling around with Sonny’s kid Frankie, the football star. Michael and Fredo were alone at their table. Fredo couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a moment alone with his brother, even one like this, in plain sight.

“She doesn’t know,” Michael finally said.

“Kay’s smarter than you think. She’ll figure it out.”

Michael exhaled. He smoked with the studied cool of someone who’d cultivated the habit from watching people smoke in the movies. He’d smoked this way from the time he’d started. Sonny used to give him the business about it, and in truth, at first he’d looked ridiculous, like a little boy playing dress-up. Somewhere along the line he’d grown into it.

“Fredo,” Michael said, “ you, of all people, should not be second-guessing me about how I handle things with my own wife.”

This was a crack about Deanna, of course, but Fredo let it go. “The bug situation,” Fredo said, meaning the listening devices someone had managed to embed in the very beams of Michael’s new house in Tahoe. Neri had used his gizmos to find them, and apparently Michael’s house was the only one of the buildings affected. “Is it-whaddayacallit with bugs? Fumigated. Is it fumigated? Do we-” He hesitated. What he wanted to know was who planted them. “Do we know what species of bugs they were?”

Michael narrowed his eyes.

“So the exterminator got called in, right?” Meaning, Did Neri take care of things?

“Clever doesn’t especially suit you, Fredo.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Why don’t you go dance?” Michael said. “She’d probably like that.”

Okay, so Mike didn’t want to be talking about this in public. Though it was mostly family and thus not really public. And anyway, it wasn’t something anyone listening in could have figured out. Bugs. People get bugs. They fumigate. They exterminate. Especially in Florida. The vermin a person sees down here, even in nice hotels? Forget about it. So who’s going to think twice about hearing a conversation about bugs in Miami Beach? C’mon.

“I’m sorry,” Fredo murmured.

Michael shook his head. “Ah, Fredo.”

“Don’t ‘Ah, Fredo’ me, all right? Whatever you do, don’t do that.”

“The situation is under control,” Michael said.

Fredo held out his hands, shaking them in frustration. Meaning what? Talk to me.

“You’re leaving when?” Michael said. “I have an early flight to Havana, but maybe we can have breakfast someplace. Just you and me. Or at least take a walk out by the beach.”

“God, that’d be great, Mikey. Really great. Our flight’s in the afternoon, I forget when.” Fredo had been trying to get in to see his own brother for months. Because of Deanna, Fredo spent half his time in L.A. Mike was gone half the time. Even when they were in the same town together, they never found time just to be brothers-to see a ball game, have a beer, go fishing. They hadn’t done any of that since before the war. And that wasn’t to mention business. Fredo needed to talk to Mike again about setting up a cemetery business in New Jersey, one like out in Colma. Fredo had looked into it some more. Nick Geraci had been a big help. Fredo was convinced he could make Mike reconsider.

“Kay’s not going to Havana with you?” Fredo said.

“I’m going on business, Fredo. You know that.”

“Right.” Fredo banged the heel of his hand against his head. “Sorry. How’s that going?” Fredo said. “ Havana, Hyman Roth, all that?”

Michael frowned. “Tomorrow,” he said. “At breakfast.”

Fredo’s vagueness was born of ignorance, not discretion. Roth had been an associate of Vito Corleone’s during Prohibition. Now he was the most powerful Jewish Mob boss in New York -and, by extension, Las Vegas and Havana, too. Fredo had no clear idea what Michael and Roth were cooking up in Cuba, only that Michael had been working on it for a long time and that it was big. “Breakfast’s great,” Fredo said. He’d waited this long to learn what was going on, he could wait until tomorrow morning, too. “Most important meal of the day.”

“When’s your television show start?” Michael asked.

“September. I got Fontane booked for the first one.” All the favors they’d done for Johnny Fontane, this was the least he could do. He’d said yes right away.

“That was a good idea,” Michael said.

“What-Fontane? Or the show?”

“Both, I guess. The show was what I meant.”

“Really?”

“We need to change people’s perceptions. For our businesses to grow the way we want them to, it’s valuable to show the public the Corleones are”-he gestured toward the groom’s side of the ballroom-“no different, in the end, than people like the Van Arsdales.”

“Thanks,” Fredo said.

They made arrangements to meet in the hotel lobby at six the next morning.

“You know, I never could tell them apart.” Michael nodded toward Francesca and Kathy.

“Francesca’s the one in the wedding dress.”

Michael laughed. “You don’t say?”

Fredo embraced his brother. They held it longer than Fredo could remember ever doing before, then pulled each other even closer. It was Sonny they were thinking about, which they both seemed to know without saying anything. His spirit had been there all day, more present than any live guest. Both Fredo and Mike had been on the edge of breaking down when they’d stood in line to hand Francesca their envelopes. Now, when they let go, the brothers’ faces were slick with unashamed tears. They patted each other on the shoulders and said no more.

It was a rough thing to handle, though. Who could blame a guy for wanting to drown his sorrows? Fredo knew even as it was happening that he was drinking too much, but under the circumstances it didn’t seem like a federal offense. Also, there was the matter of that priest at the ceremony-a dead ringer for Father Stefano, the priest who’d made Fredo want to be a priest: same lopsided smile, a plume of black hair combed just the same way, same slim-hipped build, like a long-distance runner’s. Fredo tried not to think about Father Stefano, and most of the time he succeeded-months passed without so much as a momentary image-but at those rare times he did think of him, Fredo wound up drinking too much.