Salut’, he thought, raising his glass toward the darkening sky, toasting whatever it was.
“WHAT ASSURANCES DO WE HAVE,” SAID THE CAMPAIGN chairman, “that even if we do agree to all this, these films won’t surface somewhere else when we least expect it?” He was a bald and florid man with pale, nearly invisible eyebrows and the gray pallor insomniacs get. His body seemed to be all curves and no angles.
“If I may?” Tom said.
Tamarkin shrugged. “Be my guest.”
“It’s impossible,” Tom said, “to prove that someone doesn’t have a thing, only that he does. Furthermore, who knows how many of these films there are out there, somewhere? I’m sure you’ve discussed this with the president and his brother. I’m sure they have some sense of how often the camera was rolling. What point would there be in us giving every frame of film we have? You probably won’t believe us. And there’s probably more of this material out there. Unfortunately, sir, we can give you no assurances at all,” Tom said, “beyond our word—which I’m sure you’ve checked out enough to know is a better bet than the sun coming up tomorrow.”
“Dick,” Geary said, “I can personally vouch for you that this is true.”
“If you don’t mind,” the bald man said. “I’ll take the sun and give the points.”
“Gambling man, are you?” said Ben Tamarkin.
“As little as possible,” the man said.
“What you’re really saying,” Tom said, “is why trust us? What’s in it for you? This is where this all makes such good sense. The films are just what got your attention, what got us to the table. I don’t see who’d ever print anything like that and show it to the public, and, while it would be a shame if they came into the possession of either the First Lady or the current A.G.’s lovely wife, for all we know, those women have made their peace a long time ago with their husbands’ proclivities.”
Tom glanced at Geary. The senator immediately leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
“So forget the films. There’s still more in this for the Sheas than anyone. You saw the response that Senator Geary got last night. If he runs as an independent—which I can assure you we can raise the funds for him to do—he’s not going to win, but he’s going to siphon off votes from the president. There are voters whose bigotry against Catholics, Jews, and colored people could make them vote for the other guy in November. Senator Geary can either work for you, a voice of moderation that would bring those votes back into the fold, or he can take them with him.”
“You’re prepared to do that, Pat? To betray the party that’s been your home for your whole life?”
“Cut the bullshit, Dick,” Geary said. “If it comes to that, it’ll be the party that’s betrayed me.”
“But,” Tom said, “if you appoint our friend here as your attorney general, everyone wins. Everybody. Senator Geary gets a platform to express and implement his passions.”
Geary nodded in assent.
“You get the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as your attorney general and all the experience and clout that goes with that. As a replacement for—if you’ll forgive me—that boy Danny Shea, whose main qualification for the job is that he’s the president’s brother. He has next to nothing to show for all his reckless, grandstanding initiatives. His so-called war against the so-called Mafia—just to cite one example—has resulted in how many convictions?”
“Ninety-one.”
Tamarkin and Geary both chuckled.
“I’m not talking about bookies and pimps,” Hagen said. “I mean the kind of big-time gangsters you see in the movies. How many of those people has Danny Shea sent to prison?”
The answer, as they all knew, was zero.
“I get your point.”
“Daniel Brendan Shea is in over his head,” Tom said, “and I’m sure you and the president agree with us on this count, delicate as that might be to express. But if he steps down now and announces that he’s going to run for the Senate in 1966, everyone would understand.”
“Because it looks like he’s parlaying his success into something else,” the bald man said. “I understand.”
“Parlaying?” Tamarkin said, his thick eyebrows arched impressively. “I don’t care what you say, you’re a gambler.”
“Naturally,” Hagen said, “we can’t give you any assurances that Danny Shea will win, but we do pledge to you that we won’t work against him. He’ll have a fair and square shot, which is all anyone can ask for, right?”
“Now maybe you should cut the bullshit, Mr. Hagen.”
“Call me Tom.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” said the bald man, “I’d rather not.”
He had the kind of face it was impossible not to imagine punching.
Hagen took a deep breath, and it triggered a coughing fit. Geary shot to his feet and brought Tom a glass of water.
“Sorry,” Tom said. “I should switch brands of smokes, I guess.”
The bald man shook his head, slowly. “I’ve got you pegged as the sort of gent who’d rather fight than switch.”
It was an allusion to some advertisement. Hagen didn’t dignify it with a response.
“As for this November,” Tom said, “the union vote is very much up in the air, but we’ve shown that we can deliver that, and overwhelmingly so. There’s no third-party candidate to worry about, no scheming little brother looking over the president’s shoulder. What’s shaping up right now as a close election in November could very well become a landslide—a real mandate for the president. He’ll be the biggest, most literal winner in all this.” Tom smiled. “All in all,” he said, “it’s an offer you can’t refuse.”
The bald man rocked gently back and forth. Denial and anger must have happened before he arrived; he was keening his miserable way through bargaining and depression and toward acceptance.
Ben Tamarkin took out a briefcase. It was full of banded packs of thousand-dollar bills and a list of names and addresses of real people to whom its donation could be severally ascribed, should the campaign wish to go to the trouble.
“Whattaya say, Dick?” Tamarkin popped open the latches. “Friends?”
GEARY AND THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER HURRIED TO the convention center to go watch Vice President Payton’s speech, and Tamarkin joined Tom Hagen on the balcony for a celebratory Cuban cigar. Like his father, Michael Corleone insisted on hearing bad news right away. But good news, like a full-bodied red wine, needed to breathe for a while to be fully savored.
He’d done it.
He imagined that this was how a person must feel right after he realizes he’s been elected president but before he emerges from private to share this with the world.
Tamarkin, who’d been paid handsomely for the services he’d just rendered, made them two more drinks and proposed a toast.
It was dark now, but it still must have been ninety degrees outside.
“Here’s to the mercenaries,” he said. “To every soldier of fortune, every gun for hire, and every goddamned American lawyer who ever drew a breath.”
Tamarkin didn’t understand. Hagen was not a mercenary. It was too complicated to explain, though. But as he started to raise his glass, exhaustion hit him like a wave, like a wall of water, and he all but collapsed into a chair.
“You going to be all right?” Tamarkin said.
Tom shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Tamarkin cocked his head, dubious. “I should maybe call a doctor?”
“It’s not my heart, OK? Nothing like that. I’m fine. I’m just…” Happy? He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’ve just been burning the candle on both ends, that’s all.”
More than a year after he’d met with Joe Lucadello in the chapel of the Fontainebleau, here Tom Hagen was, just up the road. He’d made it through tough times before, but nothing like this. With Michael falling apart, with the government of the most powerful nation in the history of the world on his balls, Tom had come out the other side, a little the worse fo
r wear but in every important way unscathed. Nothing that just happened was a surprise to Tom—that was how he liked it, always, and he busted his ass so that things went like that—but there was a difference between anticipating a happy ending and experiencing it.
“You need to get your rest,” Tamarkin said. “Take a vacation, for Christ’s sake. The cemeteries are full of people who thought they were too busy to take a vacation.”
“I’m really OK.” And he was. He stood. He was steady on his feet now. His second scotch sat sweating on the table, untouched. His cigar had gone out. The cocktail of elation and fatigue surging through him was all he could handle. He’d call Michael from home. Tom wanted to be home, with his family. “But I think I’m going to shove off.”
Tamarkin patted him on the back. “Do that,” he said. “Call me tomorrow, though, about our emerging fiasco back in the old country.”
Hagen had forgotten. The Corleones’ takeover of Woltz International Pictures was, like everything all of a sudden, going just the way it was supposed to go. “Will do.”
He took the elevator down. He stared into the mirror, at the face of the gloriously happy fool grinning back at him.
CHAPTER 26
A few blocks away from the hotel, Hagen felt a cold gun barrel press against the back of his neck and nearly jumped out of his skin. There, in the rearview mirror, was Nick Geraci.
“That was a nice trick,” Geraci said, “duking that parking guy a hundred bucks.” He laughed. “Take a wild guess what two hundred bucks can do.”
Tom started to pull the car over.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Nick said. “Keep driving.”
The other man in the stairwell, Tom thought. The shuffling footsteps. It had been Geraci.
“So how long have you been following me?” Tom asked.
“Turn left up here,” Geraci said. Wherever he’d been all this time, he’d come back with a nice tan and bulging muscles.
“You’re making a huge mistake, Nick,” Tom said. “For a number of reasons.”
“Please don’t say You’ll never get away with this.”
“You do know I’ve got the FBI tailing me wherever I go, right?”
Hagen looked again in the rearview and tried to see around Nick’s big, square head, but there was no immediate sign of Agent Bianchi’s black Chevy.
“Gee, that’s funny,” Nick said. “I don’t see him, either. This is just a guess, but it might have something to do with one of those parking jockeys back at the hotel. You’ve seen the way they whip those cars around. I wouldn’t be surprised if every once in a while they hit something.” Geraci gave Hagen’s shoulder a squeeze, the way a pal would. “You want to take a guess at what a thousand bucks can buy, you cheap Irish prick?”
Tom couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He touched his neck. The pulse, oddly, didn’t seem much out of the ordinary. He took it as a good sign. “German-Irish,” he said.
“My apologies,” Geraci said. “You German-Irish prick.”
“I’m pulling over,” Tom said, but didn’t, yet.
He glanced in the mirror again. There was a bread truck right behind them. Maybe Nick was bluffing. Maybe Bianchi was behind that truck.
“Maybe you should drive,” Tom said.
“You’re doing fine.”
“I’m not going to do you the service of driving us to wherever you’ve decided to do this.”
“Decided to do what?” Geraci said.
“You were always a wiseass,” Hagen said. “But I was never amused. Cut the crap, huh?”
Tom kept driving. There was some way out of this mess, he thought. If he could figure out how to get the Justice Department off his ass, he could surely come up with something that would throw off a punch-drunk mook from Cleveland. He’ll still get to take a remorseless piss on Geraci’s grave. Maybe sooner rather than later.
“Hmm, let’s see,” Geraci said, mocking him. “You’re thinking maybe you could go for the gun, right? But then you remember what a pussy you are compared to me, so that’s out.”
Tom stared straight ahead. They were going through a neighborhood of nurseries, trailer parks, and tawdry little motels.
“Then you’re thinking,” Geraci said, “I’ll just convince this dumb cafone that we can bury the hatchet, and not in each other’s skulls. Where’s it all end, this cycle of revenge? Nick, we need you. Everyone but you and me and Mike: they’re morons. Let’s all make the music of beautiful business together. Sadly, that’s such a load of shit, even a lying bastard like you couldn’t keep a straight face.”
“You’re good,” Tom said, as dryly as he could. “It’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” Geraci said. “I’ve been on the lam with a traveling carnival, working as a mind reader. Turns out, I have a gift.”
Tom unconsciously started to shake his head at Geraci’s pathetic sense of humor. A split second later, when it provoked Nick to dig the gun barrel harder against the base of Tom’s neck, it became conscious.
“Bear right,” Nick said. “Right here.”
Tom obeyed. The bread truck turned right as well. It let Tom see what was behind it: a yellow convertible, top down, a girl in a bikini behind the wheel and a shirtless boy beside her. Definitely not FBI.
“By now,” Geraci said, “your mind is racing. Because, hey, you’re Tom Hagen! Let’s see…you could say you have to take a leak, and if I don’t tell you just to piss yourself, you can try something to or from the john. Or maybe we’ll pass a police station and you can just duck in there. Maybe that’ll work. You want me to be on the lookout for a police station?”
No. He’d keep it simple. He’d stop in a well-lit place, with as many people around as possible. That’s all it would take.
“I guess this is why we never found you. Because you’re such a mind reader.”
“No,” Geraci said. “You never found me because that fucking CIA shitbird you and Mike went into business with was playing us all for fools. You never found me because he was protecting you. Kill me, and the FBI would have nailed you guys for murder. He was ordered to tell you where I was, and he followed those orders. It’s just that he took it on his own initiative to tip me off right before he told you. Not for my benefit, but for yours. This is your federal tax dollars at work, Tom. These are the people who think they’re the good guys.”
There had to be a bargain he could strike with Geraci. But Hagen was drawing a blank.
“Pull over, if you want,” Geraci said. “Ideally, someplace brightly lit and with a lot of people. We’re going to pass a dog track pretty soon. That’d be just the ticket, huh?”
Tom had to fight off any feelings of anxiety—any feelings at all.
Geraci pulled the gun very slightly back, then started tapping it against Tom’s head, no harder than someone might tap a person’s shoulder to get his attention.
“You think you’ve got this all figured out,” Geraci said, “don’t you?”
Hagen made eye contact in the mirror. Both yes and no seemed like the wrong thing so say. Nick’s face was slack and unreadable, unnaturally so, a symptom of his Parkinson’s that was exaggerated by the pale glow from the streetlights. “Why isn’t your hand shaking?” Tom said. “Isn’t that part of what’s wrong with you?”
“Thank you for your concern,” Geraci said. “Those things come and go. I have a theory that it helps to be active. I go to a gym a little bit, and, you know, even when I’m on my way there, thinking about hitting the speed bag or some ugly sonofabitch such as yourself? The tremors—poof. They’re just gone. Magic. Hey, where’s my manners? How are you? Take a left up there, by the way. At the light.”
The street they were on had become brighter and more commercial, flanked on both sides by retail stores and storefront offices, all of them closed. It was a little after ten. Fucking Florida.
“Your manners?” Tom said.
“I heard about your heart attack. How are you doing with that?”
“How did you hear ab
out that?”
“You’re an important man,” Geraci said. “People talk about important men.”
As Tom got in the left lane, the light turned red. From the sheer force of habit, he stopped. It didn’t matter. Even if he’d gunned it, there were no cops around to pull him over.
“Nobody outside my family knows about that,” Tom said. “The doctor actually said he didn’t know for sure that it even was a heart attack.”
“That’s great,” Geraci said. “That’s good news. But I’ve been watching you awhile now. A person should really take better care of himself. Eat better, maybe cut down on the smoking and such.”
“Thank you, Dr. Geraci.”
“Scoff if you want,” Nick said, “but you know, my father died of a heart attack.”
Geraci pulled the gun away, and Hagen glanced up at the mirror in time to see the bread truck behind them and the butt of the gun coming down toward him.
Then everything exploded into white light.
WHEN TOM CAME TO, HIS HEAD WAS POUNDING, PAIN so blinding he could hardly bear to open his eyes. He was tied up. There was something wrong with his hearing, too, as if he were in a cave under a waterfall.
But he was still in his Buick, he realized, still in the front seat, tied to it, upright. He could barely see. There was a yellow haze from his headlights but no other light he could see. He tried to shake the wooziness out of his head. It hurt so bad that it was almost like getting hit again. It was the pain and the wooziness that kept him from immediately feeling the water or hearing the splashing.
He wasn’t under a waterfall. He was in water, fetid and brown, rushing into the car. He was underwater. All four windows were open. He couldn’t have been here long. And he wouldn’t have long. He wasn’t tied up with rope. It was duct tape. He was encased in it from his waist to his shoulders. His ankles and knees were taped together, too.
Tom felt the tires of his car sinking into the muck. The water was warmer than his blood.
He began to shout and to thrash against the tape, which made the pain in his head even more agonizing. The water was above the seats now. Above his navel. Above his heart.
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