The Godfather's Revenge

by Mark Winegardner

  Outside the building where Tom Hagen lived, Al Neri stationed uniformed private security officers—off-duty or retired cops all. Despite this, the cul-de-sac was often clogged with curious civilians, both from the press and the public. Miles of TV footage were shot, nearly all of it featuring dark cars with tinted windows emerging from the building’s underground garage and driving uneventfully away. Even early in the morning, when Neri went out to get his roadwork in, there was always some clown looking up toward the building’s top floors and pointing.

  The case dragged on for months, spewing money, minting new minor-key celebrities, selling newspapers and magazines, garnering book deals and reliable TV ratings, and inspiring debates in barbershops and beauty shops from sea to shining sea. All this for a case that was yet to yield a single arrest.

  WHEN HE WAS INITIALLY BROUGHT IN FOR QUESTIONING, Tom Hagen had, of course, said nothing until his attorney showed up. The attorney he hired was Sid Klein, famous for his role as a congressional counsel during the anti-Communism investigations. Hagen had admired his work for years and had put him on retainer for a rainy day. There was no one, anywhere, who was more vicious, more zealous, more comfortable in the glare of a high-profile case. Defending those alleged to be connected with the so-called Mafia had actually become one of Sid Klein’s specialties. Both the Barzini Family and the Tattaglia Family—following Hagen’s lead—had Klein on retainer as well.

  It looked like the police didn’t have much. They seemed to want to make something of the .22 caliber pistol, a Ruger, that they’d found on the scene. It had recently been fired three times, and someone had wiped it clean. “We have evidence that shows the gun belongs to an ex-convict named Richard Antony Nobilio, Jr.,” one of the detectives said. Richie had done a stretch in Lewisburg for conspiring to violate federal narcotics laws.

  “Was it the murder weapon?” Klein said.

  “At this point, we’re not sure.”

  Meaning no, Klein and Hagen immediately understood.

  “Mr. Nobilio is an associate of yours, though, right?”

  Hagen and Sid Klein exchanged whispers, and Klein let him answer.

  “Yes. I do some legal work for Mr. Nobilio—who has, by the way, paid his debt to society and plays the organ at his church. I am an associate of his in a few investments. As for the pistol, I think I can save you some time. Mrs. Buchanan wanted to get a pistol for her protection—she travels frequently in connection with her job as a courier for some businesses I work for as well. I don’t know a thing about guns myself, so when she asked me what to get, I referred her to my dear friend Richard Nobilio, who’s something of a buff on the subject of firearms. He was supposed to drop by this afternoon and help her out. I’m not sure if the gun you found is the gun he got for her, but I do know that he thought she should get something smaller, easy to handle for a lady. A .22 is a gun like that, right?”

  “No man who took his woman’s safety seriously would set her up with just a .22.”

  Right, Hagen thought. Exactly. He started to answer, but Klein shut him down.

  “Questions, Detective,” Klein said. “Not statements.”

  “All right, question.” He sneered. “Would Mr. Nobilio have had any reason to harm Mrs. Buchanan?”

  “None,” said Hagen.

  Sid Klein laughed. “I don’t mean to tell you gents how to do your job—for which I thank you. I mean that. My father was actually a cop, as you may know, one of the few Jews on the force in those days, but maybe you knew that, too. At any rate, if the gun really is Mr. Nobilio’s, doesn’t that tell you something? Who’d leave a gun at a crime scene if it could be easily traced? That gun being there, don’t you think it rules Mr. Nobilio out as a suspect? And by extension, his associate Mr. Hagen as well? I think we can safely say that what you have there is either a plant or tampered evidence or both.”

  “Tampered evidence?” one of the detectives said. “Sweet Jesus Christ. This early in the game, you’re pulling out your cheap lawyer tricks.”

  “Cheap?” Klein said. An elongated beat later, he raised an eyebrow. It looked vaguely motorized. “I doubt that when Mr. Hagen gets my bill, he’ll agree that I’m cheap,” Klein said. “And I certainly don’t have to tell you that the laws of the land are not lawyer tricks.”

  Klein had struck a nerve, the way for which had been paved by preying on the detective’s anti-Semitism. Even under the circumstances, it was a pleasure for Hagen to watch Sid Klein work.

  Another detective started talking, but Klein interrupted him and turned to the first one.

  “That was her gun, probably, right? How could she have been in any position to wipe her prints off of it? Why would the killer have bothered?”

  “I don’t know,” the detective said, clearly working to put on a front. “You tell me.”

  Klein raised his palms. “I can’t! All I’m trying to say, those are some interesting questions. Food for thought, I guess would be the expression.”

  When the interview was over, the police let Hagen go, though he was asked to remain within the five boroughs of New York until further notice. He looked at Klein, and Klein closed his eyes and very slightly shook his head. Fighting that could wait.

  A pool of reporters were waiting for them. “Mr. Hagen!” one shouted. “Why would an innocent man need to hire Sid Klein?”

  Hagen started to answer, but Klein—almost like a third baseman cutting off a waiting shortstop—strode forward to field the question. “It is a sad fact,” Klein said, “that in this cruel and fallen world, only small children are innocent. There is no such thing as an innocent adult. It’s an oxymoron. However, not-guilty people hire me all the time for various matters, and I’m happy to announce that Congressman Hagen is among them.” Hagen had been Nevada’s lone congressman for less than six months, appointed to fill out the term of a man whose ranch was downwind of the nuclear testing ranges and who had died of cancer. Sid Klein’s use of the title was calculated. Every breath he took seemed calculated. His pregnant pauses, his gestures, even his eye blinks made him seem like a remarkably lifelike robot. “Congressman Hagen is merely here to be of service to the authorities,” Klein continued. “It is certainly our hope that those responsible for this reprehensible act are brought swiftly to justice. As you may know, Mrs. Buchanan was a valued employee of a company in which Congressman Hagen is a member of the board of directors, and she will be missed. Our sympathies and indeed our hearts go out to her family.” Klein took an unnecessarily deep bow. “Gentlemen.”

  Al Neri—who hadn’t been around this many cops since he was one himself—squared his shoulders like a football lineman and led the way to a waiting car. It sped away.

  Hagen showed no remorse.

  Why should he? He hadn’t had anything to do with the murder. And what could he do about it now? Nothing. Nothing, that is, except to swing into what he’d spent half his adult life doing: damage control (the other half had been spent on negotiation). Hagen did have some remorse, at some level, about various things—he was not a heartless man; quite the opposite, he believed—but it was nobody’s business but his own.

  Nobody said anything. When the car pulled up outside Klein’s building, Klein patted Hagen on the knee and got out. Hagen nodded his appreciation.

  Neri got in back with Hagen, and Hagen raised the partition so that the driver couldn’t hear. The car was not a limo, but Neri had had it tricked out with limousine details. It was also armored, of course. What used to be one of Momo Barone’s chop shops, over on Bergen Street, now did exclusively legal custom work, specializing in jobs like this.

  “How bad was it,” Hagen asked, “after I left?”

  Neri stuck out his lower lip. “Not so bad.”

  Meaning very, Tom understood. “The cops didn’t…”

  “Nah. They left when you did. Mike tried to conduct more business and wrap things up, but from what I understand, the other fellas, they was all excited and this and that, so there was various concerns ra
ised about the security, and everybody pretty much left after that. You didn’t miss nothin’, believe me. Unless you was of a mind to see the boss take Eddie Paradise aside and quietly rip him a variety of new assholes.”

  Hagen nodded.

  They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  She was dead. It didn’t seem possible. Gone. Just that afternoon, she’d been susceptible to the little death, at least twice, and thereby seemed breathtakingly alive. Tom couldn’t think about that. About her. About Judy Buchanan, who was dead. Murdered.

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to focus.

  Tom Hagen’s biggest fear now wasn’t that he’d get pinned with the murder itself. He had too much on his side, too many strings he could pull or have pulled, to get taken down by a crime he did not commit. His biggest fear was that the killing had had something to do with Theresa. That she’d somehow arranged it.

  In any event, some ugly things were bound to come to light. What and how and how much? That was still up in the air and might remain that way for a while. Obviously, Tom needed to have a long and difficult talk with his wife. He obviously needed to talk to Michael as well.

  When he got home and he and Al got into the elevator, Tom did not hesitate.

  “Penthouse,” he said.

  Al nodded.

  This thing of ours must come before your wife, your children, even your mother. Tom Hagen would never take the vows, but he knew them. No man was ever more faithful to them.

  “We have any idea who tipped off the cops?” Tom asked on the way up. “How they knew where I was?”

  Neri shook his head. “Unless somebody shows us his hand, I doubt we ever will.”

  “How you figure?” Tom said.

  “Too many possibilities,” Al said. “My first thought was that it was a cop. There are plenty of men on the force who’ll look the other way at a lot of the things we do but not when it comes to a murder, especially of a white woman. If it is a cop, we’ll probably never know who, and we’ll never be able to retaliate. But then I started considering all the people on the scene—almost forty, by my count. Who knows who they told about where they were going to be tonight? How many top men in various Families knew when and where the meeting was going to be? How many of those people might have some kind of ax to grind against you or Michael or our whole organization, who’d like to see us taken down a notch the way I guess it happened with the Cuneos? I’m not ruling out that it’s one of our people, either. And, yeah, it could be the disgraziato, too,” meaning Nick Geraci, “although, you ask me, that cocksucker gets credit for too much already.”

  “But if you had to bet?” Tom asked.

  “Cop,” the ex-cop said, shrugging. “And we’ll never know who.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  It was almost three in the morning, but the lights in Michael’s study still burned.

  WHAT TOM TOLD THERESA WAS THAT THERE WERE people who wanted to hurt the family, and that, rest assured, they would not succeed.

  They were in their bedroom, behind a locked door.

  She dissolved before his very eyes, wailing and sobbing. Theresa was a tough woman, and this, what he’d reduced her to, was hard for him to watch.

  When he lifted her up, she spit in his face and called him a filthy name. She was on the edge of hyperventilating.

  The look in her eyes was not Theresa. It was barely human. It was the look of a wounded and dangerous animal.

  Tom forced himself not to react. He greeted her passions by turning his to stone.

  He was, in fact, relieved.

  There was nothing at all in the way she was handling this to suggest she’d had anything to do with it. She could have never been so purely angry if at the same time she’d been worried about her involvement in a murder.

  Tom told Theresa the accusations were lies, each and every one of them.

  Hope flickered across her face. But then she slapped him, then told him to leave her alone. He did, optimistic that she’d come around, that everything would be fine.

  The accusations were not all lies, of course. Just the criminal ones. It was an overstatement he soon came to regret. He’d been paying more attention to her reaction than to his presentation.

  Hagen’s fingerprints turned up all over both the apartment where Judy Buchanan had been killed and her apartment in Las Vegas as well. This looked bad, but it meant nothing to the case. In the court of public opinion a person could be found guilty of adultery and thus convicted of murder, but in actual court, that was a tough one. In court, going up against Sid Klein, forget it.

  But it wasn’t just the public who found the fingerprints meaningful. Theresa took their two daughters and their dog—a collie named Elvis—and went to stay with her parents in New Jersey. She’d done that before, though never over another woman.

  Tom wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he understood and supported her decision.

  Soon after that, a “police spokesman” cited a “vast cache” of evidence they had come upon that corroborated the illicit nature of Mr. Hagen and Mrs. Buchanan’s relationship.

  An incriminating photograph had also been mailed, anonymously, to one of the New York tabloids and had been reprinted in newspapers and magazines across the country.

  Not long after that, Theresa had taken nearly all her things and all the girls’ things, too, and moved to the house she’d bought in Florida. She enrolled the girls in school there. She begged Tom not to be in contact with her, told him she hoped he rotted in hell.

  “I’m sure I will,” he said.

  She laughed at him and hung up.

  It made him think of the girl he had married, that laugh. That girl didn’t have it in her to laugh like that. Tom had to face up to it: the bitterness in that laugh, the anger and the cynicism, the loss of innocence, had been his doing.

  He’d work this out, he told himself. He was sure of it.

  His heart started revving, but as these episodes went, it was a mild one. He stayed at his kitchen table, staring at the phone, alone in his huge white apartment, sipping Crown Royal on the rocks from a misshapen coffee mug little Gianna had made for him. He got up to get more ice, then picked up the phone and called his son Frank in New Haven. He let it ring for a long time, but there was no answer. He called his younger son, Andrew, at Notre Dame, but when he heard the boy’s voice he couldn’t think of what to say.

  “Dad?” Andrew said.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Nobody else calls me and doesn’t talk.”

  “When else did I ever do that?”

  “How are you, Dad?”

  “Have you talked to your mother?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Every day. He was Theresa’s secret favorite, which probably only Theresa thought of as a secret. “Mom said you’d call. Have you been drinking?”

  How was it possible at that age to be such a prig? “What are you, my father?”

  “No,” he said. “Your father died from drinking too much.”

  “God willing, you’ll live long enough to see that things aren’t so black and white as how I think you see the world.”

  “God, huh?”

  “How’s school?”

  Andrew humored him and talked about it for a while.

  “You know that what’s going on here,” Tom said, “it’s a crock, all right? It’s just harassment.”

  “I believe you, Dad.”

  He said it in a way that sounded reassuring, like absolution. When Andrew first said he was considering the priesthood, Tom was afraid it was because he was such a mama’s boy and worried that she’d loved him so much it had turned him into a fairy, the way Carmela had done to poor Fredo. Now Tom was thinking it was something else. That Andrew thought he needed to atone for the proverbial sins of the father.

  “This is all going to blow over,” Tom said. “This is all going to work out, believe me. Things aren’t what they seem.”

  “‘There are more thi
ngs in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

  “Is that right?”

  “It’s from Hamlet, Dad.”

  “That’s the problem with education. You learn something new and you forget that other people sat at that same desk before you got there.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “Good luck with those exams,” Tom said.

  He hung up. He rubbed his face, then poured the last of the bottle into the mug. Tom missed them, Theresa and the girls, and his sons, too. It was clouding his judgment, making him sentimental.

  Tom realized now that he’d been mistaken. What had happened to Theresa—that hardness that he’d heard in her laugh—was something that happened to everybody. It was the goddamned human condition. Sid Klein was right. There are no innocent adults.

  THE FIRST BIG BREAK IN THE CASE SEEMED TO COME when, canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses, the homicide detective who’d first taken the reins of the case found a woman who’d seen the killers leave. She would have come forward sooner, but she’d heard that the killers were “Mafia hit men” and she was afraid. On the night of the murder, she said, she’d been out walking her dog and had seen two men run out of Judy Buchanan’s building, one carrying a big gun. The woman hid behind a parked car. The men got into a late-model Plymouth and drove away. As they did, the woman got a look at their license number, which she had committed to memory. The woman was a musician and good at memorizing things, which were the only clues the public had about her identity. There were various rumors about the woman and how the detective knew her. There also seemed to be some holes in her story. Until such time as a trial, though, her identity was being protected. Even the breed of her dog was confidential.