The Godfather's Revenge

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The Godfather's Revenge Page 29

by Mark Winegardner


  “Don’t worry,” Woltz stage-whispered. “The projectionist isn’t right in the head. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t understand what he sees, he just knows how to run the projector.”

  “Sounds like quite a find,” Hagen said.

  Tamarkin chuckled. “If only you could have found a girl like that, huh, Jack? Doesn’t talk, doesn’t understand what she sees. Just someone who knows how to take it up her tight young ass.”

  Woltz, to Hagen’s astonishment, didn’t say a word.

  Hagen had supplied this copy of the film to Woltz, but he hadn’t seen it before, and he could have done without seeing it now. Pornography made him squeamish, and this was worse: a nauseating reminder of what had happened to Judy Buchanan and what had come from it.

  The film started, grainy black-and-white stock, single camera, fixed position, no sound, poor lighting. A large-breasted, dark-haired woman—no one noteworthy, it seemed, just an idle conquest—was sprawled on a huge bed in a dark-colored scoop-necked dress, looking over at the camera, vamping it up. She pulled the dress down and flashed a naked breast and laughed.

  A moment later, into the frame came the current president of the United States, naked only below the waist. He said something and the woman cracked up. He laughed, too. Instead of getting in bed, instead of taking off any more clothes, Jimmy Shea crossed the room and took a seat in a big armless chair, almost a throne. The camera was perfectly positioned to capture him in profile. He had a slight paunch that the cut of his suits hid. He seemed fully erect and normally endowed.

  The woman came over to him, still in her dress. She sank to her knees and got right to business. It was a remarkably energetic blowjob—clearly playing to the camera, Tom thought.

  Hagen started to object. Woltz shushed him. Hagen sighed, but let it play out. This reel was only a few minutes long. There were a couple hours of it in all. It had been Rita Duvall, Michael’s lady friend, who’d mentioned that the Shea brothers were fond of filming their bedroom escapades. She swore she’d never done so herself, during her brief fling with Jimmy Shea—that it was actually his desire to film it that brought an end to things. After a little digging, Tom Hagen had found that Johnny Fontane’s Negro valet had made a copy of some footage shot at Johnny’s house in Beverly Hills, back when the Sheas and Johnny were still close.

  Onscreen now, the woman, still on her knees, leaned back away from then-Governor Shea. He got to his feet and started jacking off right over her mostly covered breasts.

  “Enough,” Tamarkin said.

  “Lights,” Woltz said.

  The men sat in silence for a long time.

  “Where is that?” Tamarkin said. “Where was it filmed?”

  Hagen said he didn’t know.

  “So how did you happen to come into possession of an art film such as this?”

  “Attorney-client privilege,” Hagen said. Which was true. Though he’d paid Fontane’s valet for the films, he’d also had him give back a dollar, as a retainer.

  “I need to make a phone call,” Tamarkin said.

  “There’s a pay phone in the lobby,” Woltz said. “Long story.”

  “Two minutes,” Tamarkin said, and left.

  “So it’s true?” Hagen asked Woltz. “About the single phone call?”

  Jack Woltz put his head in his hands and didn’t answer.

  Some people called Tamarkin the Phantom. He was the ultimate fixer. He reported to a group of vastly wealthy men almost no one knew, and he himself, though more of a public figure, was rarely seen in public. He’d helped bring countless miracles to Southern California, including the Brooklyn Dodgers and a nearly limitless supply of water. It was often said that Ben Tamarkin could save the damned with a single phone call.

  Hagen had also turned up some evidence that Tamarkin’s power was derived from playing a dangerous game: feeding the FBI just enough information to keep himself out of trouble, but not enough to bring down the powerful men he served and protected. Hagen couldn’t get proof, but, to be on the safe side, he was proceeding on the presumption that it was all true.

  Exactly two minutes after he left, Tamarkin strode down the center aisle and returned to his seat.

  “My apologies,” he said. “Continue.”

  Hagen stood to face the other two men. “As I’ve told Mr. Woltz, there is quite a bit more of this unsavory material,” he said. “Some of it involves the president’s brother as well, who, I’m told, indulges in a much wider variety of activities. The reel we had copied for Mr. Woltz is apparently a representative sample. I’d rather not know any more than I already do. I’d rather no one know. I’m confident few people have seen these, and it’s certainly our hope that this situation continues.”

  Tamarkin looked up at him, impassive. Even though Woltz was scheduled to introduce the president at a fund-raiser tomorrow night, Hagen realized that any meaningful change had to go through Tamarkin.

  “Gentlemen,” Tom said, “we are all three men who came from humble beginnings. All three of us were, for at least a little while, earning our keep while we were still boys. It’s easier for us to see certain things that someone who’s always been rich, like Danny Shea, cannot. For example, he fails to understand that the two union leaders he’s trying to prosecute have inarguably made things better for the dues-paying, blue-collar men they serve. Union politics can be a dirty business, and a man who’s able to get things done probably isn’t going to be a candidate for sainthood.”

  Woltz still had his head in his hands, but Hagen looked: he was still breathing. Tamarkin, in contrast, was focused on Hagen with laser-beam intensity.

  “By the same token,” Hagen continued, “many of the men with whom Michael Corleone does business are staunch opponents of this administration. It may simply be easier for Mr. Corleone, whose background is so similar to the president’s, to appreciate certain matters as well, things that those men, who can’t see past their differences with some of the administration’s policies, cannot. The strong economy, employment rate, the space program, the inspirational leadership, the ability to stare down the Communists: it’s a long list, as I think we all agree.”

  Tamarkin folded his arms now.

  “Michael Corleone,” said Hagen, “is not the demon that Danny Shea is making him and people like him out to be. He was involved in the president’s campaign in the last election and may have been instrumental in the outcome. He’d like to have that chance again—and would, gladly and aggressively, if this administration stopped treating him like an adversary.”

  Finally Woltz raised his large, bald head. “Let me get this straight,” Woltz said. “You want us to help you blackmail the president of the United States?”

  Tamarkin gave the old man a look of heavy-lidded contempt.

  “Absolutely not,” Hagen said. “How would we do that? What newspaper would print it? What TV station would broadcast it? Unless I’m missing something, which I suppose is possible,” he said, and let the pause linger, “this material is of no political value. On the other hand,” he said, pointing at the screen, “an honorable man keeps the secrets of his friends. What incentive is there to harbor the ruinous secrets of an enemy? It seems so…unnecessary, that the president would want us as adversaries when he can have us as friends—did have us as friends, until the recent unpleasantness his little brother provoked. Mr. Woltz, Mr. Tamarkin, we know that you’re on a friendly basis with the president and several of the men in his inner circle. We wouldn’t ask you to in any way compromise those friendships. I’m not asking you to be Mr. Corleone’s messenger. I’m not asking you anything at all, really, but to consider the situation, to consider it fully, and to do what you think is right.” He walked over and put his hand on Tamarkin’s shoulder, then bent down and faced Woltz. “All I’m suggesting is this,” Hagen said. “Let your conscience be your guide.”

  TOM DIDN’T RELISH THE IDEA OF STAYING OVERNIGHT in this ghastly house under the same roof with these loud and ghastly people, but it was on
e more price he had to pay to atone for the hundreds of enjoyable times he’d had putting his mind and body at ease alone with Judy Buchanan. Monogamy had to have been a woman’s invention, pious and unrealistic, an absurdity—like the need they think they have for all those expensive, cheaply made shoes. Monogamy, thought Tom Hagen, was the imposition of the way things ought to be onto the way they really were.

  The room they’d been given had twin beds and was, aside from the Degas sketches over those beds, plainly furnished. Tom and Theresa Hagen, in their bathrobes, pulled up a couple of chairs and sat by the window, sharing a bottle of red wine that had been waiting for them and looking out at the view of the spotlighted statue of Jack Woltz.

  “Woltz is a Jew, right?” Theresa asked.

  “Through and through. So what?”

  “So he’s got I would say twenty pieces of art in this place that were stolen from the Jews during the war and unaccounted for since. I’d have to have a closer look to be sure, but if I were a betting woman, I’d bet the over on twenty.”

  “How do you know a thing like that?”

  “What the over/under bet is?”

  “No,” Tom said. “The other.”

  “I joined a group down in Miami—Miami Beach, actually—mostly Jews themselves. They work to find significant works of art that are missing, be it from World War Two or otherwise, but they specialize in World War Two. There’s more of it than you’d think.”

  “What happens when they find something?” Tom asked.

  “They track down the rightful owner or his heirs and the courts do their magic after that. Or, I should say, the fear of the courts. The fear of getting publicly unmasked as a receiver of stolen goods from the Nazis is enough to get people to listen to the better angels of their nature. Even if the new owner doesn’t know provenance from Providence, Rhode Island, if all of his crimes are inadvertent, being an inadvertent Nazi collaborator is hardly something a person wants to have to answer for in court. People see the evidence, talk to their lawyers, and relent.”

  She poured him some more wine.

  “You’re not thinking about me,” she said, “my involvement in this group, anything interesting about the project. You’re just thinking about how you can use this information against Woltz.”

  She had always seemed to be able to read his mind, though it was something she rarely did anymore. “I was thinking about why it makes any difference that he’s a Jew. Just because he’s a Jew, he’s supposed to be a crusader to help all the other Jews? Start thinking like that, and where does it end?”

  “You’re an intelligent man, Tom Hagen, but when it comes to looking at the world through anyone else’s perspective, you can only do it when you want something. You’re all but incapable of empathy.”

  She wasn’t talking about Woltz, he realized.

  “It just kills me,” Theresa said, “and this is just one example, but it just kills me that you might think of me as the kind of wife who’s so naïve she doesn’t know what men do.”

  “I don’t understand,” he lied. “What do you mean?”

  “I know, all right?” she said. “I’m around artists all the time. Artists are outlaws. They live outside the law; they think that rules are for other people. You think that the conditions in your world are so secretive. You think they’re unique, which is a laugh. I can’t stand it that you might think of me as some poor Italian peasant girl who’s just going to accept that the signore is going to have his comare. Or that it would be a burden lifted off of me, a chore I don’t want to do, like hiring someone to come in and help with the cleaning.”

  “Theresa, that’s not—”

  “How can you possibly not understand that I’d like to do what you did. I like sex, in case you didn’t notice, and every reason you’d have for going and getting some strange pussy, I’d have for wanting to go get some strange hard cock. But I don’t do it. I would never do it. You know what bothers me the most?”

  Hagen’s hands were thrust into his robe pockets and balled into fists. “No.”

  “You’ll never figure it out.”

  “I imagine I won’t. You already said I can’t see the world through other people’s eyes.”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not mocking you.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Then Theresa poured herself more wine.

  “What bothers me the most,” she said, “is that you keep saying that it didn’t mean anything. That you didn’t love her, but my God, Tom, listen to yourself. Why did you rip your family apart over something that doesn’t mean anything? Why did you leave yourself vulnerable to whoever was behind the murder of that whore? If you had loved her, I could understand it. I’d have better understood why you’d run a risk like that. But more importantly, if you’d loved her, it would have shown me some passion in you.”

  Tom willed himself to relax, to open his fists and extend his fingers and take a deep breath. Most of the men he knew would have hit their wives by now. Tom had never laid a hand on her—her or any person—in anger. Like anyone else, he’d had the impulse. But even as a boy, Tom had the impulse control of an ascetic country priest.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Tom said. “I can promise you that you wouldn’t have thought any of this was any better if I’d loved her. Which, again, I didn’t.”

  “You have a tremendous life, Tom. You’ve done well for yourself. I’ve heard you say so yourself countless times, and I agree. Yet you’re incapable of taking pleasure in it. I feel sorry for you. Any warmth you have toward other people, any passion, any love, it’s all just an act.”

  “An act. You think I’m putting on an act?”

  “I’m not saying you’re aware of it,” Theresa said. “I don’t think you are. I certainly hope you aren’t. Maybe the act—and I’m sure there’s a better word for it than act, I’m not a psychologist—but maybe it’s mostly something you put on for your own benefit. But any emotions you display are more acted out than experienced.”

  What he felt, suddenly, was a pang of indigestion. He tried to think of what he’d eaten that hadn’t agreed with him. It had been a long day. The pang increased, and he tried to even it out by taking a deep breath, which seemed to work. “Hold that thought,” he said, patting her hand and getting up to go chug some Pepto-Bismol. This was ulcer pain, he thought. They were coming back.

  He thought she might be sore at him for getting up like that, in the middle of a conversation, but as he walked back across the room to the window, carrying a glass of water for her, too, just in case, the look on her face was that of a grown woman, concerned and perversely smitten.

  “Are you all right?”

  “It’s the ulcers, I think. I’m fine, but I think they’re back.”

  If he hadn’t known better, he’d have taken her reaction to this as a cynical attempt to show him what empathy was. But she was surpassingly sincere, as she was in everything. What he felt for her now was love. He felt almost certain of it. He didn’t need a woman like her, he needed her. Theresa. Who told him the truth. “I know it’s the wrong answer here, Theresa, but I love you.”

  “Listen to yourself. I know it’s the wrong answer, but. It’s…” She shook her head. “I love you, too, Tom. All right? May God have mercy on my soul, but I do. I love your mind, your charm, your wit. I love being married to a man who’s not threatened by a woman who has a career—of sorts, anyway. Interests outside the home, as it were. I love how handsome you are. I love what we’ve built together, our family, the shared mission we’ve had as man and wife. But in the end, I can’t really explain it, why I love you. All those things explain it, and yet none of them do.”

  Tom nodded. He couldn’t talk. There was a pressure on his chest and a tingling feeling, and he had the crazy thought that maybe this was what people talked about when they talked about love.

  “What do you have a passion for, Tom? Name one thing.”

  “You,” he said. “The kids. Our family.”

&nb
sp; “Those are the right answers,” she said. “You answer questions that way, with what you think the other person thinks is the right answer. Not with anything you really feel. Because you don’t really feel anything.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  She turned to face him. She leaned over and gave him a chaste but tender kiss on his sloping forehead. “I hope so. I so very badly hope so.”

  About an hour later, in bed together with his wife, asleep, he was awakened by what he’d earlier thought of as love. This time, it hurt: a heavier feeling bearing down on Tom Hagen and some more tingling, too.

  Woltz’s private physician rode along with Hagen to the hospital in Palm Springs, did some tests there, and congratulated him. “It’s hard to say for certain, but I think it’s safe to say you had a little heart attack,” he said. “Lucky for you, your warning heart attack was just a cute little nothing. But, trust me, if you don’t watch yourself, these will get worse.”

  “Never,” Tom whispered, “trust anyone who says trust me.” A whisper was all he could manage.

  The doctor took it lightly, as a joke. “Get some rest,” he said.

  Theresa was standing beside the bed, her face sallow with wiped-off tears and no sleep. The doctor gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and then left them alone.

  She held Tom’s hand and took a deep breath and began. “All right,” she said. “Condition number one is we stay in Florida. This is nonnegotiable. The girls, you, me. The boys when they visit. Keep the place in New York if you have to for business reasons, but I’m not coming back there. I’m keeping our distance from all that. I’ll visit”—she sniffed—“for art’s sake only. But our home is in Florida.”

  Tom nodded, woozy. He imagined that his heart might have soared if it were up to such things. “Agreed.”

  A FEW MILES AWAY AND AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME, Francesca Corleone, gasping for breath and drunk for the first time in years, caught sight of her own naked body in the mirror over Johnny Fontane’s king-size bed, and somehow she couldn’t take her eyes away. She would have liked to. What she was doing could not be called making love. The bedding was wadded up and ravaged, and there was nothing to see but this animalistic act, committed on sweat-stained satin sheets, accompanied by bossa nova music and lit by recessed mood lighting Francesca should have thought to ask Johnny to turn off.

 

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