The Godfather Returns (35 page)

“What I hear,” Fredo said, “is that maybe Pete’s heart attack was no heart attack.”

“The autopsy said heart attack,” Geraci said. “Making someone
have
a heart attack? Christ. Know what I think? People watch too much TV. Rots their brains. No offense.”

“None taken,” Fredo said. “Plus which you may be right.” The prevailing rumor was that the men who said they pulled Clemenza from the grill had actually pushed him onto it, that they were trying to burn him up and along with it, the diner, too, but lucked out: he had a heart attack, which streamlined things. There were men both inside and outside his own crew who were suspected of the killing, if there had been a killing, which was highly debatable.

That didn’t stop other rumors from flying. Many seemed to think Clemenza had been killed by Hyman Roth, the Jewish gang leader, if only because Roth was in the middle of negotiations with Michael Corleone for control of Cuba. Louie Russo’s Chicago outfit couldn’t be ruled out, either. If it
had
been murder, Geraci would have bet on the Rosato Brothers, a rogue element in Clemenza’s
regime
with ties to Don Rico Tattaglia. All that said, both Ockham’s razor and Clemenza’s diet pointed to an unadorned heart attack. An autopsy showed that his heart was twice the size of a normal man’s.

“Hagen said he thought that all the rumors were ridiculous, too,” Fredo said.

“What did the Don say?” asked Geraci.

“Mike agreed with Hagen,” Fredo said. “I talked to him personally about it.” He bounced on the balls of his feet as he said it.

A semi-illiterate reader of human beings could have guessed that this was a lie, though Geraci didn’t even have to guess. Fredo’s top bodyguard used to be Geraci’s barber. Everyone called him Figaro. Figaro’s cousin was a welder and fabricator—Geraci’s guy for tricking out storage spaces in cars and trucks to transport goods from the docks in Jersey. According to Figaro and the cousin, Fredo had barely said hello to Michael since Francesca’s wedding.

Fredo was shivering almost to the point of convulsion. He’d lived out west for twelve years and said he couldn’t handle the cold anymore. Pathetic. If he wanted to experience real cold, he ought to take the fucking train to Cleveland sometime. But out of pity, Geraci steered him into a greenhouse, full of orchids in full bloom and a troop of Girl Scouts.

“How’s your ma?” asked Geraci. “Doin’ all right?”

“She’s tough. The move was hard on her, though. Her place in Tahoe is a million times nicer than that house on the mall, but she and Pop built that place together. Lot of memories.”

“If she’s anything like my mother,” Geraci said, crossing himself and looking out at the falling snow, “the change of scenery might do her a world of good.”

“Not to mention the warmer weather,” Fredo said. “I never seen an orange orchid before,” he said, pointing.

The Girl Scouts left, and the two men were alone together in the greenhouse.

“Mike really wanted to come,” Fredo said, “but he’s all tied up with something big. He loved Pete like an uncle. Christ, we all did.”

Geraci nodded, willing his face into impassiveness. “I’m sure the Don knows what’s best.” Geraci presumed that the real reason Michael hadn’t come was that he didn’t want to be seen at the funeral by any New York reporters or the FBI. His mania to become quote-unquote legitimate overrode his loyalty to his father’s oldest friend, a man he himself had seemed to love—to the extent he was capable of love, or any other emotion. “Something big, huh?”

“To be honest with you,” Fredo said, “I don’t know much about it.”

That was probably true. But Geraci knew plenty. Michael and Roth were apparently unaware that their negotiations for control of Cuba were pointless, since the Batista government was doomed to fall, and had no real importance other than to make them cogs in a bigger wheel involving a coalition of the midwest Families, led by Chicago and Cleveland. Louie Russo had a deal worked out with the rebels. Even if Batista somehow stayed in power, Fredo’s weakness could be used to turn Roth and Michael against each other. All that would be left of their deal was the deal itself, the terms of which Russo and his associates were fully prepared to assume.

Geraci nodded toward the door. They had to keep moving.

He gave Fredo an update on the project they were calling Colma East. He’d worked out the turf issues in Jersey with the Straccis. He had a front, someone impossible to connect to the Corleone Family, who had a contract on a big swampy parcel of land. Also, since Geraci was already shipping most of his heroin from Sicily in between slabs of marble too heavy for customs inspectors to move, getting into the stonecutting business would be a snap. “What about on your end?”

“It’s in the bag. Me and Mike just need to sit down and hammer out a few particulars.”

“You haven’t done that yet?” Geraci said, pretending to be surprised. “Because this is as far as I can take this thing. Ordinances, rezoning, et cetera—those aren’t fields of the law I know about. I know
who
to ask, how to get all that rolling, but first you have to get the Don’s blessing. The politicians—again, his call and not mine. There’s also the matter of how the public might react to this, how to sell it to them. How to keep it off the ballot and so on. Fredo, I respect what you’re trying to do, but don’t you think that if the Don thought these problems were easy to fix, we’d probably be moving forward already?”

“Nah. The problem is the timing. Mike’s focus for the time being is on other things. Knowing you’re on board, though, that’ll get it done. From Mike’s way of thinking, me and you are perfect for a thing like this. His brother and the guy he’s got the highest opinion of.”

Geraci put his big hand on Fredo’s shoulder. “Mike never said that, Fredo.”

It was a show of disrespect, a calculated risk, but of course Geraci was right.

“Did I
say
he said that?” Fredo said. “What I said was what his way of thinking was.”

“I’m just a mook from Cleveland.” Geraci tightened his grip; Fredo flinched. “I do what I’m told, run my own things, spread the wealth, everybody’s happy. Here and there, I see an opportunity, and I take it. But don’t make me into more than I am. I’m not
on board,
either. You asked me to look into some things, and I looked. Period. We clear?”

Fredo nodded. Geraci let go of his shoulder. They started walking again. The sun came out, but the snow kept falling.

“I hate that,” Fredo said. “The snow and the sun. It’s unnatural. Like the bomb’s been dropped and the world’s gone screwy on us.”

“I need to be clear on something else, Fredo,” Geraci said. “I don’t want to get into the middle of things between you and your brother.”

“Things are fine between me and my brother.”

“Just so it’s understood. I’m not taking sides. Under no circumstances.”

“There’s no sides to take. C’mon. We’re on the same side about everything. Anybody says different, they don’t know me. They don’t know Mike.”

“ ‘Methinks thou dost protest too much.’ ”

“What the fuck?”

Geraci jerked his thumb toward where they came from. “Shakespeare. The garden back there made me think of it. You’re an actor now, Fredo. Maybe you should learn that stuff.”

“Don’t college-boy me, Mr. Just-a-mook-from-Cleveland. You think you’re
better
than me?”

“Easy,” Geraci said. “I don’t think anything. Shakespeare was just on my mind.”

“Because I’ve been to see Shakespeare. I’ve even seen Shakespeare in Italian.”

“Which ones? Which plays?”

“I don’t know which ones, right off. What are you, my fucking En-glish teacher? Don’t tell me what I need to
learn.
It may come as news to you that I got a lot of different things going on. I’m not sittin’ on my ass sipping sherry and making lists of all the plays I ever been to. I’ve been to plays. All right? Smart guy? Plays.”

“Fine,” Geraci said.

They kept walking. He gave Fredo time to calm down.

“Look,” Geraci finally said. “I’m edgy, all right? I don’t like to go behind Michael’s back even to take a leak.”

“Don’t worry about it. Our operation’s too big for any one man to be aware of every little thing or even want to.”

If Fredo really believed that, he certainly didn’t know his brother.

“Problem with Mike,” Fredo said, “he’s smart but he’s bad with people. He don’t understand, it’s natural for people to want to do things for themselves, create things. All I want is to have something that’s mine. My legacy, if you will. If you didn’t feel the same way—”

“This is getting us nowhere, Fredo. I’ve said what I have to say.” Geraci had been right. Fredo was a sweet guy but dumb enough to take his thirty pieces of silver and betray his brother without even knowing that was what he’d done. It was a sad moment. Despite everything, he really liked Fredo. “The next step is one hundred percent between you and Mike. End of story.”

Fredo shrugged, then looked down at his loafers. “I tell you what,” he said. “These sure aren’t the right shoes for this slop.”

“Should’ve worn your cowboy boots,” Geraci said.

“What cowboy boots?”

“I thought all you guys out there wore cowboy boots, carried six-shooters, the whole bit. Shoot up cars and little dogs.”

Fredo laughed. He usually took it well when you needled him, further proof what a good guy he really was. How sad using him as a pawn in all this was going to be. “If there were ever two cars that had it coming,” Fredo said, “those were it. Too bad about the dog, though.”

“True it took the head right off?”

Fredo raised his eyes in woe and lamentation. “Clean. I couldn’t have made that shot in a million years if I was trying.”

“We need to get going,” Geraci said, pointing toward the lot where they’d parked. “This is not a thing I’m going to be late to.”

“We’re a lot alike,” Fredo said, “you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Geraci said, looping an arm around him, cuffing him playfully, the way a brother or an old friend would.

They crossed a small wooden bridge across a barely frozen pond.

“You should see this place in the spring,” Geraci said. “Cherry blossoms like you can’t believe, pinker than pink.”

“I probably should.”

“You know,” Geraci said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

“Anything, my friend.”

“Tell me if I’m out of line for even asking, but what exactly are your responsibilities as
sotto cap
o
? What did Mike tell you they were?”

“Are you serious? What are you talkin’ about? What are you askin’ me here?”

“Because I don’t think it’s clear to anyone. To a lot of people, and here I confess that what I really mean is
to me,
but I’m not alone, no offense, but it seems mostly symbolic.”

“Symbolic? What the fuck you talking about, symbolic? I got a lot of different things I do. How is it that you don’t understand that there’s a bunch of it I can’t talk about?”

“That, I understand. It’s just that—”

“I imagine that, with Pete gone, I’ll even be going along with Mike to the meeting of the heads of all the Families, in upstate New York there.”

I imagine.
Which meant, of course, that he had no idea. It was a shocking and pathetic thing even to be talking about, both because Pete wasn’t even in the ground yet and because this was not the sort of speculation Fredo should be making to anyone but his brother.

“It’s just that a lot of what’s going on with you,” Geraci said, “is awfully public.”

“Come on. Bit parts. Little local TV show. It’s nothin’. No harm in any of it, and maybe some help.”

“I don’t disagree,” Geraci said. “I see the value of it to the organization if the only aim is to get out of any businesses that might be considered crimes, victimless and otherwise. But there are other parts of the business to consider.”

They got back into the car.

“Don’t worry about nothin’,” Fredo said. “Me and Mike, we’ll work out the details.”

What Nick Geraci would like to know is this: If Michael wanted the organization to be more like a corporation, bigger than General Motors, in control of presidents and potentates, then why run it like some two-bit corner grocery store? Corleone & Sons. The Brothers Corleone. When Vito Corleone was shot, incapacitated, who took over? Not Tessio, Vito’s smartest and most experienced man. Sonny, who was a violent rockhead. Why? Because he was a Corleone. Fredo was too weak for anything important, yet even then, symbolic or not, Michael made that empty suit his underboss. Hagen was the
consigliere
even when he supposedly wasn’t, the only non-Italian
consigliere
in the country. Why? Because Michael grew up in the same house with him. Michael himself had all the ability in the world, but in the end he was the biggest joke of all. Vito, without even consulting his own
caporegimes,
made Mike the
boss
—a guy who never earned a red cent for anyone, who never ran a crew, who never proved himself at all except for the night he whacked two guys in a restaurant (every detail of which was arranged by the late, great Pete Clemenza). Only three people ever even got initiated into the Corleone Family without first proving themselves as earners. That would be, yes, the Brothers Corleone.

So now the whole organization was under the control of a guy who’d never done anything but think big thoughts and order people killed. Yes, he was smart, but didn’t anybody besides Sally Tessio, Nick Geraci, and possibly Tom Hagen realize that, as long as Michael thought he was smarter than everybody else, the whole organization was at the mercy of the guy’s ego?

True: Geraci had barely allowed himself to think these things before he learned that Michael Corleone had tried to kill him. Still. That didn’t mean that he was wrong.

Though no one could have known it at the time, Peter Clemenza’s was the last of the great Mafia funerals. The air inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral was almost unbreathably thick with the scent of the tens of thousands of flowers, blanketing the altar and spilling down the aisles, signed less cryptically than any such flowers would ever be again. In the pews, for the last time, were dozens of unself-conscious judges, businessmen, and politicians. To this day, singers and other entertainers show up at such funerals, but never in the numbers in evidence for Clemenza. Anyone in the know—and for now there were still very few such people—could have scanned the scores of mourners and put together a pretty impressive all-star team of New York wiseguys and assorted heavy people from out of town—including Sicily. Never again would a Don attend a funeral for a member of another Family. Never again would the presence of law enforcement be at such a manageable level. And only one more time, ever, would so many high-ranking figures in La Cosa Nostra gather in one place. All this, for an olive oil importer who’d shunned attention and barely known many of the most famous people who had convened to see him off. The most famous person he knew well—Johnny Fontane—wasn’t even there.