Michael frowned. Geraci had been shaking the last couple times Michael had seen him. “You found all that out, but you didn’t find him?”
“I found all that out on account of I pulled some strings and got a look at his medical files,” Tommy said. “A secretary. Very nice girl. I’m turning over every stone, so to speak.”
“So to speak.” Michael turned over his palms and made a Who’s to say? gesture. “But not actually.” Tommy started to stay something; Michael raised a hand to stop him. “Tommy, you’re doing a fine job,” he said, though his affectless voice made it sound like the opposite might also be true. “I’m a patient man. What matters is that it gets done and done right. I understand that, and I’m sure you do, too.”
Tommy nodded. “I’m grateful to hear it,” he said, clearly unsure whether he really was. “I’ll tell you what, though: I think it’s safe to say he’s not in FBI custody somewhere. And he’s sure not dead. My theory, which I mean no offense by and you can take it or you can leave it, is that whoever it is that’s feeding you information is jerking you around. Jerking us around, I should say. Tipping us off, as it were, and then tipping off you-know-who as well.”
“Why,” Tom Hagen said, “would anyone want to do that?”
“We were talking that over,” Nobilio said, jumping in. Visibly grateful, Tommy Neri stepped back from the desk to the wall. “I don’t know how or where you’re getting the tips that you’re getting,” Richie said. “I don’t want to know. I just think—we think, Tommy and me both—that whoever’s tipping you off, Mike, is either out to make you look bad—that’s theory number one. Theory number two is, there’s someone who your source knows, maybe his boss or something, who’s making sure we don’t find this cocksucker.”
Michael pursed his lips. He let the silence hang there, largely for effect. If the information they were getting from Joe Lucadello was tainted, so be it. Joe was a trusted old friend, but those are the most dangerous kind, perfectly positioned to betray you or be used against you. This was no longer anything that Michael found surprising. The worst part of this might be Hagen. He did not know Joe well and had always been suspicious of him. There seemed to be nothing in life that brought Tom Hagen more pleasure than earning the right to say I-told-you-so and then bathing in silent self-regard as he didn’t say it.
As for Nick Geraci, Michael could afford to be patient. He had an empire to run, thousands of people depending on him, directly or indirectly, for their livelihoods if not their very lives, and he was running it well. Geraci was just one pathetic man. He had no power, no life. Even though he wasn’t in the hole under Lake Erie anymore, or in Taxco, either, he was nonetheless trapped in some other rat-hole hell of his own devising. Every moment, he must feel the cold steel of the sword of justice pressing against the back of his neck. Even better, because of the surveillance on his family, Geraci had no realistic chance of seeing his wife or his children.
He did have some means of talking to them—some complicated system involving friends’ phones and pay phones and prearranged times to call, a system too well put together to crack. Geraci was too smart to leave any trail. While the old Sicilian code would have allowed for the intimidation of Geraci’s family and, under the right circumstances, even their execution, Vito Corleone—who often admitted to being sentimental about his family—had established a different code. For him, harming a man’s family was unthinkable. Michael had been trained both by his parents and the United States Marine Corps to live his life by a code. Violating that code was not an option—especially now, with Michael’s own children in Maine, protected by nothing stronger than Kay’s good intentions.
Finally, by way of dismissal, Michael nodded.
“Gentlemen,” Hagen said. “Let’s hope that the next time we all sit down together we’ll be discussing results and not theories.”
AT LAST, THE GUEST OF HONOR APPEARED ON THE rooftop, flanked by his consigliere and his most trusted caporegime. Richie Nobilio’s shiny new motorcycle jacket made him look like an appliance salesman auditioning to be a Shark or a Jet in a community theater production of West Side Story. Hagen wore a blue Brooks Brothers suit. Michael Corleone’s suit was black, custom-made, and from Milan. As he’d gotten older, he had the strange, oddly endearing ability to make expensive suits look off-the-rack.
The party guests broke into polite applause.
“Open your presents!” shrieked Little Sonny, which cracked everyone up.
The Don crossed the garden the way royalty would, hands clasped at the small of his back, the guests beaming in his presence. There was a tiny, preening bounce in each step, an unconscious habit. His broad smile was at odds with the dark circles under his eyes, the permanent furrow in his brow. He muttered niceties about how everyone shouldn’t have.
Everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” and as they finished the doors of the thirty-ninth-floor elevator parted and Johnny Fontane sprang out, arms spread, Jolson-parodic, singing, “And many mooooooore!”
Michael Corleone closed his eyes, made a wish that would have surprised everybody there, and blew out his candle.
“Johneee!” squealed Connie Corleone. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, nearly knocking him off his feet. She managed to press herself against him in a way that wasn’t quite brazen but did allow her to brush her thigh against Johnny’s legendary cazzo. She’d never seen it, but ever since she’d had her first independent confirmation of its existence, when he’d danced with her at her first wedding, the thought of it had gotten her through some lonely nights.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Johnny said, recovering his balance. Some of the same men who wouldn’t be seen with him at the parade stood with him now on this rooftop. He winked. “I thought it was your nephew who was the big football star. How’s he doin’, anyway?”
“It’s his knee,” she said. Frankie, the twins’ brother, had played linebacker at Notre Dame. Undersize even in college, he’d gone to play in Canada and gotten hurt in training camp. “His football days may be over. It’s breaking his heart.”
Connie grabbed Johnny’s arm to indicate empathy for Frankie’s plight, though that was just a cover. Johnny was between marriages. He was in the gossip columns all the time with different starlets, but most of those items, Connie knew, were planted by someone’s publicist.
“Tough break,” Johnny said. “That Frankie played with as much heart as anybody I ever saw. It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, like they say.”
She nodded absently, which provoked Johnny to explain the whole cliché. Connie had heard it, though. Her first husband, Carlo, used to use a version of it in the bedroom. It ain’t the size of the dong in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dong. Carlo had the yapping toy poodle of pricks. Johnny’s was supposedly more of an Italian wolfhound. His tailor, who made suits for Michael and Tom, too, had confided to her that Johnny’s pants needed to be tailored to accommodate it. Connie shuddered. “Football’s so violent,” she said, thinking quickly to cover that erotic throb. “I have a hard time watching it.”
Michael Corleone bent over and whispered to Little Sonny that he could open the gifts for him. The boy whooped and headed for the presents.
As the wrapping paper flew, Michael muttered his thanks, slipped out, and went back upstairs. Hagen whispered something to Richie Nobilio, and Nobilio waved him off, like whatever Hagen wanted was amply covered. Nobilio and his men headed for the elevator. Hagen went back upstairs, too.
“What about these tough hombres, eh?” Johnny Fontane said, tousling the hair of Connie’s sons. “They look like they could do some good on the ol’ gridiron.”
Victor and Little Mike seemed instantly to adore him.
“Let me introduce you,” Connie said, “to Frankie’s big sisters.”
Johnny rubbed his eyes. “I’m seeing double.”
Kathy laughed, as taken in as Connie. Francesca rolled her eyes—at the cheesy witticism and more so her sister’s appalling reaction to it
. “Believe it or not,” Francesca said, “we’ve actually never heard that one before.”
Johnny cocked his head.
“I’m kidding,” Francesca said.
“I got it,” Johnny said. It was something other than confusion she’d sparked.
Connie grasped Johnny’s elbow but followed through with the introductions.
Johnny eluded Connie’s possessive grip and kissed each twin’s hand in turn.
Most women have had their hand kissed, but invariably the man doing the kissing is being self-conscious, mock gallant. Johnny Fontane knew how to kiss a woman’s hand with the pure gentlemanly ardor of a Sicilian prince.
Kathy giggled, perhaps for the first time since grade school.
But it sent a shiver through Francesca.
The only other person Francesca had ever met who had this kind of magnetism was the president, who was also a man who knew how to take a woman’s hand. Perhaps because of that experience, Francesca told herself that the shiver meant nothing. The kiss, the shiver: merely the parlor tricks of a domesticated wolf. Also, it was getting colder up here, by the minute, it seemed. But Francesca was not tempted to go get a sweater.
Johnny somehow—more tricks!—remembered that Kathy was a college professor, and he told her that nothing would have made her grandfather happier. Kathy thanked him, clearly awed that he knew who she was.
“And you,” he said to Francesca, “I hear good things about your work for the foundation.”
She smoothed her dress. A part of Francesca suspected that Johnny had heard nothing at all, but that wasn’t the part of her that was, at present, in charge. “Thank you, Mr. Fontane,” she said. She smirked. “We try.”
“No, no, no, please,” he said. “Call me Johnny, sweetheart.”
“OK, Johnny Sweetheart,” Francesca blurted. She stifled the urge to put her hand over her mouth.
“Good one,” Johnny said. “You do more than try, is what I hear. I hear you get things done.” He smiled. “That’s what I like,” he said. “I live my life around people who talk, talk, talk. I’m guilty of it, too, God knows, right? But I like people who do things.”
“That’s deep,” Francesca said. It was the kind of caustic remark Kathy would have said. Kathy, for her part, was mooning about, seemingly struck dumb. “That’s what I like,” Francesca said. “People who are deep.”
Francesca couldn’t stop herself.
Connie backhanded Francesca’s shoulder.
But Johnny laughed like hell.
Francesca felt herself go weak in the knees, and she hated herself for it. There was, however, no denying that in that moment Johnny Fontane didn’t seem like a big movie star or a big recording star. What he seemed like—enjoying a joke at his own expense, the center of attention, filthy with charm—was her father.
Behind her, Little Sonny was asking if there were any more presents to open.
“Don’t mind her, John,” Connie said, widening her eyes at Francesca in disapproval. “She’s been sick.” She again took Johnny by the arm. “C’mon, let me get you some of my fudge cake. You had it once before. Maybe you remember?”
Johnny kept those famous eyes on Francesca. The rest of him had stopped laughing well before the eyes did. “You see right through me, don’t you?”
Connie frowned. She didn’t let go of Johnny’s arm.
Francesca tried to do just that, to look through him.
When a person is blessed with that thing, whatever it is, it ordinarily does its miraculous work at a distance—from the pulpit, the stage, the screen, the ring, the podium, even the head of a long family table. At close range, the results are more unpredictable. It might not work on such an intimate scale. It might be so remarkably unlike recognizable human behavior as to provoke pity. Then again, it might be so strong as to strike fear into the hearts of the righteous.
“Eat some of Aunt Connie’s cake,” said Kathy, breaking the silence. “It’ll make it so nobody can see through you.”
“See?” Connie erupted in a piercing, mirthless chortle: a madwoman’s laugh. “Despite their different figures, they really are twins. Everybody’s a critic, right, Johnny?”
“You better believe it,” Johnny said.
“Sorry,” Kathy said.
“It’s actually really good, the cake,” Francesca said. She smoothed her dress again, unsure whether to feel like the betrayed or the betrayer.
“Rich but good,” said Kathy.
Just like me, Francesca almost said, but this time, she curbed the impulse. “Excuse me,” she said, and went to keep her little boy from making any more of a scene. He was now dancing around on the table, draped in a robe someone had given her uncle, shouting that he was the champion of the world.
Connie crooked her arm in Johnny’s and followed.
“Hey there, champ,” Johnny said to Sonny.
“Undefeated!” Sonny said, arms raised in victory. “And untied!”
The guests were getting a kick out of all this and so, apparently, was Johnny. With her free arm, Connie Corleone started cutting the cake.
“Get down,” Francesca said to Sonny. “Now.”
“Yours?” Johnny said.
Francesca turned around. “I could be wrong,” she said, pointing, “but I think the honor of your presence is requested.”
Tom Hagen was now standing at the foot of the staircase to the top floor, his finger crooked, beckoning. He was making no effort to conceal his impatience. Johnny made eye contact with him, then broke from Connie’s grasp, backing away.
“Listen,” he said to Francesca. “Don’t go anywhere, OK? I wasn’t just…” He kept backing away. “All I’m trying to say is that I have an idea you can maybe help me with.”
“Where would I go?” Francesca said. “I live here.”
“Great,” Johnny said, and jogged toward Hagen with the same gait he used when he trotted back onstage for an encore.
“I’ll save you some chocolate cake, Johnny!” Connie called after him.
Francesca took her son off the table, set him down, then removed and folded up the robe. She turned around, and her eyes met Kathy’s. A look passed between the twins. Ordinary people would have taken an hour to say as much.
CHAPTER 11
At the granite wet bar near his floor-to-ceiling living-room window, Michael Corleone lined up three cordial glasses and filled two of them with Strega. Michael’s own glass was mostly water, with just enough of the liqueur to be vaguely yellow.
Tom ushered Johnny into the room.
“Michael!” Johnny said, his arms extended in supplication. “I’m sorry as hell if I upstaged—”
Michael set the bottle down sharply enough to cut Johnny off. “Upstaged? This is your big day, John.”
He said it so flatly it would have been impossible to read anything into it and, therefore, impossible not to.
The men embraced.
Michael shook his head. “If it weren’t for my family, I’d probably forget my own birthday, as any grown man would. But you? This honor? I’m the one who owes you an apology.”
“Apology for what?”
Michael’s self-deprecating shrug had become a spooky echo of his father’s. “I wanted to go, to watch the parade, but I’ve been tied up in business meetings all day. On a Saturday. Terrible.” He patted Johnny on the back. “No rest for the wicked, right?”
Johnny Fontane strode to the window. “Nice view.” He circled the gleaming room like a man who’d never been in a penthouse.
“You’d never know from the street,” Johnny said, “that there’s a view up here like this.”
Hagen folded his arms and watched this performance through narrowed eyes. He had a low opinion of show business people in general and Fontane in particular. Go to the opera any night of the week, and you’ll hear better singers. Any night of the week, you could go see an off-Broadway play where every actor in the cast had more talent than Johnny. Dancing, telling jokes? Hagen’s little girls, in his
opinion, were almost as good on both counts. Johnny was a punk, an irresponsible child whose problems were solved by others—too often by Hagen himself (it was Hagen who, on Don Vito’s orders, had made certain investments that got Fontane his Academy Award). Yet for reasons that escaped Tom Hagen, everybody treated Johnny Fontane as if he were an important man. Even Michael seemed to have a weak spot for the guy.
Michael handed out the glasses.
“My father would be proud of you, Johnny,” Michael said. “Cent’anni.”
They all three clinked glasses and drank.
Michael and Johnny asked about each other’s families. They were divorced fathers—common enough in Johnny’s circles but practically unknown in Michael’s. Divorced Catholic fathers. “How often do you get to see them?” Johnny said. “Anthony and Mary, right?”
“Often,” Michael said automatically. “I go up there as often as I can. They come here for school holidays.”
They hadn’t been here since the Fourth of July. Michael had his own airplane and yet had not flown himself to Maine in a month, since he’d gone to watch Anthony sing in a middle-school production of Flower Drum Song. And he’d been late for that.
“That’s good,” Johnny said. “Because a man who doesn’t spend time…” He stopped himself, gave his head a quick scratch and screwed up his face at this difficult situation. “The thing I’ve learned—from painful experience—is that if you aren’t around, you miss a lot. As you know. I’m not presuming to tell you anything, but I will say this: it gets better, if that’s any consolation. My daughter’s going to school in the city here and just last—”
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