Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

“But look, Ace, ” Fausto said, using the nickname, as always, with an edge to his voice, “don’t go running to your boss, either, okay? That pezzonovante is behind the whole thing.”

Nick Geraci found this more than a little hard to believe.

“Why you think you’re alive, you big dummy?’ Fausto said. “You think they’d’ve kept you alive if they thought you fucked up? How many guys you know pulled a stunt like you did in the lake there and didn’t wind up taking two in the head, a meat hook up the ass, butta-beepa-da-boppa-da-boop?”

There were plenty of reasons. Michael needed him. “The crash was ruled an accident.”

Fausto sighed. “Everyone tells me what a genius son I got, can you believe it?”

It only then occurred to Nick that he had no idea what sort of men worked for the FAA, how easy it might or might not be to bribe them. Though there was always some underpaid, powerless shmoe you could get to: a diver, some assistant in the crime lab, somebody who’d lie about life-and-death matters for a little cash or a night with a classy hooker.

He didn’t say anything for a long time. He listened. His father went over it. Everything added up. There had been something dumped in those gas tanks. Don Forlenza had figured it out when he’d heard about a guy who’d gone to Las Vegas on vacation and disappeared. Guy was a mechanic but also a cugin’, wanted to be a qualified man with all his heart. Fausto laughed. “I can tell you personally, those people ain’t let nobody in since who knows fucking when.”

Fausto kept the car at a steady eighty-eight, as if the car’s model name decreed it.

“Anyway, the cugin’ don’t come back from Vegas, and this pal of his, another cugin’, he gets on his high horses, comes to the social club, trying to find out what happened. For the Jew, a light goes on. A mechanic. Missing, probably-” He made a gun with his hand, reached over, and pretended to blow his son’s brains out. “So Forlenza takes the pal in back for a talk. A question here, question there, butta-beepa-da-boppa-da-boop. The pal knew everything. The rest you can guess.”

“What do you mean, the rest I can guess? You mean like what’s left of the pal is underneath a freshly poured basement in Chagrin Falls?”

“Smart guy. Forget the pal. Long story short, your boss and Laughing Sal had this dead mechanic slip something in your fuel tank. Look in the glove box, smart guy.”

Nick gave him a look. “Go on,” Fausto said. “I won’t beat you.”

Thirty years ago, that beating was, and they’d neither one mentioned it since. Thirty years between a father and a son can work like that. In fact, it usually does.

Like the rest of the car, the glove box was immaculate: the badge, neatly stacked atop the fifty (which Nick was careful not to touch), the registration, two white envelopes, and the owner’s manual. One envelope contained service records for the car. “The other one,” Fausto said. “That one there.”

Inside it were six train tickets to Cleveland, for Nick and five of his men, which made it unlikely there’d be any kind of ambush there.

Fausto explained in detail about where to go and the security measures to take to meet with Don Forlenza, which would happen in a part of the Cleveland Art Museum that was in between exhibits and closed off to the public. “Probably you don’t remember that Polack Mike Zielinsky, used to run my old local?”

“You serious, Dad? Of course I remember.” That Polack Zielinsky had been a friend of the family for years. He was Nick’s sister’s godfather and one of Fausto’s best and only friends.

“Well, all right then. Get to the museum nine-fifteen sharp. You see that fat fuck standing out by that Thinker thing-”

“The sculpture?”

“Sculpture, statue. In front there.”

“I know it.”

“He’s there-the Polack, not the statue-you’ll know things are jake, go on in. No Polack, go back to the hotel, he’ll be in the lobby.”

For Nick Geraci, this whole matter had gone from hard to believe to hard to accept. But what could Michael’s motives have been? Why would he want to kill him?

“I know what you’re thinking.” Fausto shook his head. “You really are naive.”

“How you figure?”

“How long you been in this line of work?”

“Your point?”

“My point is,” said his father, “ no point. Shit gets done for no reason that makes sense to anybody but the doer and the fellas he has do the shit for him. Most of the time they don’t know shit, either. They just do shit. It’s a miracle you didn’t die a long time ago, big shot.”

It was a good thing that the drive to Troy was so long and that his father wasn’t much of a talker. The long silences gave Nick Geraci time to figure out what to do. Even so, he struggled. He’d look into things, verifying what he could verify without sending up any flags. He’d move slowly. He’d learn more. He’d consider every move, from every angle.

One thing he knew for certain: if what his father said was indeed true, Nick Geraci would figure out how to do something to Michael Corleone that would do more harm than death.

They made it to Troy. The cockfights were in an old icehouse. The front of the place had been turned into a bar. There was a huge gravel parking lot behind the building and out of sight from the road.

“How’d you know about this place, Dad?”

Fausto Geraci rolled his eyes. “You know all the ins and outs and what-have-yous, right? But your old man, he don’t know his ass from his elbow.”

Nick let it go. They got out. His father complained about the cold. He’d been the toughest sonofabitch there was about the cold back in Cleveland.

“It’s March in New York, Dad.”

“Your blood thins.” He nonetheless stopped to light one of Charlotte ’s cigarettes, gave a little scornful chuckle, muttered something, and headed for the door.

“What’s that?”

“I said, ‘I can see that aerial warfare is actually scientific murder.’ ” He was moving pretty fast for an old guy.

“You can what now?”

“From your Eddie Rickenbacker book, genius,” Fausto said. “He said it. You left it. The book. Do me a favor, stop looking at me like you think I can’t read.”

Nick seemed to remember that the line had been on the book’s flyleaf.

Inside, men Nick didn’t know recognized him and made way for him. This happened a lot in New York, but it was nice to see it here, through his father’s eyes.

They went to the men’s room. “Last words on the subject,” Fausto whispered, his eyes on the wall above the urinal trough. “You want me to take care of you-know-who”-he let go of his dick, turned to his son, and snapped his fingers, both hands-“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Nick smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t take him lightly,” Fausto said, zipping up. “In his day he sent more men to meet the Devil than-”

“I won’t.” Nick washed his hands and held the door for his father. “First bet’s on me.”

He placed it with the same five his father had left under Charlotte ’s purse. It went on a big ugly Blueface stag, a ten-to-one underdog that they first saw in its pen, shitting all over itself. Fausto looked at the diarrhea and even stuck his finger into a gob that had fallen on the floor and smelled it. Thirty seconds in, the shit-tailed cock leapt up and hit the other bird’s carotid artery. As Fausto the Driver had guessed, the diarrhea had been a sham, induced with Epsom salts.

The Geracis were fifty to the good, playing it cool, trying to find the angles that would decide the next deadly fight, no matter how much rage beat in the hearts of the next two chickens.