The Godfather's Revenge (27 page)

The men the NYPD next assigned to the case were skilled and respected straight arrows well known to anyone on the New York crime beat: Detective John Siriani, one of the most decorated Italian-Americans on the force, and Detective Gary Evans, a brush-cut telegenic blond of no discernible ethnicity. From the beginning, though, there was something peculiar in the set of their jaws, some oddly glazed look about them, as if they were two proud star ballplayers stuck on a team that’s given up on the season. They were not men given to self-pity. If they ever asked
why me,
there is no record of it. They would have known full well that there were any number of reasons two homicide detectives with astronomically high clearance rates might get assigned to a case that, among other things, was preordained to bring that rate down.

It became possible, though, for even casual observers to see some of what was behind the deadened look in the detectives’ eyes. Every few days, some public official called some kind of press conference or made some statement about the case that was clearly calculated to make news; each time it happened, it must have driven home to the detectives what pawns they were. The coroner came to work every day with TV makeup on. The mayor and several members of the NYPD’s top brass—including Chief Phillips—were unshy about discussing the case and, more so, what it represented. The district attorney’s office installed a new bank of telephones for their friends in the press. The increasingly reclusive director of the FBI reversed field and discussed the case as part of an hour-long interview with the dean of the network-TV anchormen.

Attorney General Daniel Brendan Shea, of course, was engaged in his quest to go down in history as the man who brought down the Mafia, to destroy the sorts of men who’d made his family filthy rich, who’d helped fund his Ivy League education, and without whom his meteoric ascent to becoming the youngest attorney general in American history would never have been possible. It was therefore natural that in the speeches he made at college graduation ceremonies and in the proximity of the petty arrests his people were racking up, he might at least in passing mention this high-profile case with its supposed Mafia ties. He also spoke not once, not twice, but
three times
at fund-raising events for a lowly New York State Senate candidate—a man who just happened to be the prosecutor assigned to the case. On all three occasions, Danny Shea mentioned “the scourge of organized crime” in general and “the tragic events surrounding the death of Mrs. Buchanan” in particular. In the third, he actually used the term “hit men.”

MICHAEL CORLEONE MET WITH SID KLEIN OVER
lunch in the upstairs back room at Patsy’s, an old-school red-sauce Italian place on Fifty-sixth Street. Michael’s office was almost certainly free of wiretaps, by dint of Al Neri’s love of gadgetry, and Michael often cooked lunch himself for meetings there, but Rita Duvall was there with two nuns visiting from France. (She’d been raised in a convent after her mother shot her father and then herself.) The law prohibited wiretaps in lawyer’s offices, but Michael was wary of relying on that, as was Sid Klein—who, amazingly, had no office. He got by with a photographic memory and a file clerk who worked in a converted bank vault in Chinatown. Klein never took notes and rarely carried a briefcase.

They arrived separately, came in through the kitchen, and took the back stairs to their table. Patsy’s knew how to make things easy for important people who didn’t want their meals interrupted by the intrusion of the public.

Al Neri sat alone at the next table.

“He could join us,” Klein said.

“He’s fine,” Michael said.

“I should get a man like him,” Klein said. “A person can’t be too careful these days.”

“‘These days’?” Michael said. “When was it ever different?”

“Ah, a philosopher,” Klein said. “A history buff. I like you. Where’d you find him, anyway? Not through a service, I bet.”

Michael suspected Klein already knew the answer. “He was a cop,” Michael said.

“I thought people in your line of work hated the cops.”

Neri chuckled softly.

“What line of work would that be?” Michael said.

“You tell me,” Klein said. He held up his hands. “Or better yet, don’t.”

“You’re on retainer,” Michael said.

“That’s true,” Klein said. “But I only want to know what I want to know, and when I want to know it, I ask. Keeps my life simple.”

Michael lit a cigarette. What people never seemed to understand about him—even people who knew enough to know better—was how little of his time was taken up with things that might be considered criminal. A typical day in the life of Michael Corleone was indistinguishable from that of any other successful private investor and real estate developer. He was, in fact, a little bit of a history buff, though. He understood that while a man’s life is made up of typical days, it is only the atypical days that history can use.

Sid Klein opened his menu. Michael didn’t and wouldn’t. It was something he’d learned from his brother Sonny. Any fine restaurant will try to make you whatever you ask for. Just ask.

“This is what’s beautiful about the Italian people,” Klein said, jabbing a finger at the menu for emphasis. “At all your important discussions, you sit down, break bread. I shouldn’t say just
bread
. Great food and plenty of it.”

Michael ignored this.

“Enlighten me, counselor,” Michael said. “Isn’t there a rule of law that requires the police, the prosecutors, either one, to turn over evidence to you?”

“And who am I?”

Michael frowned.

“I’m nobody,” Klein said. “That’s who I am. I’m Tom Hagen’s lawyer, but he’s not charged with anything, he’s not indicted, nothing. So until there’s a real trial on the horizon somewhere—which I’m sure you don’t want that, a trial—but until that point in time they don’t have to give anybody anything. If you ask me, they’re playing this out the way they are because they
don’t
have anything.”

Which is one of the many points Sid Klein was making in the many interviews he was granting to what seemed like anyone who asked.

“So is that why you’re conducting so much of your business—which in this regard is often
my
business—on the front pages of the newspapers?”

“Ah, all right. I see.
That’s
why you asked me here. Though I have to wonder why you didn’t just ask Tom, or why you didn’t ask him to ask me.”

Michael Corleone’s smile was disconnected from anything happy or amusing. “I asked you here, as I thought I told you, because I got a call from the chef himself that said the veal would be good today.”

“I’m getting the gnocchi, extra sauce.” He pronounced it
ga-no-chee.
“I love that stuff, can’t get it at home. I’ve had it here before, actually.”

Michael corrected his pronunciation.

“Are you sure?”

“How could I not be sure about a thing like that?”

“Let’s ask the waiter.”

“I only corrected you because you said you loved the stuff. I didn’t want you to embarrass yourself.”

“You’re aware of what I do for a living, right?” Klein said. “You think I’m real worried about embarrassing myself? Let’s ask the waiter.”

But when it came time to order, he neither asked the waiter nor mispronounced it.

“Is there anything I’m saying,” Klein said when they were alone again, “when those notebooks and microphones are in my face that isn’t positive for Tom and by extension you and your business? I hardly think so. They’re playing this whole thing out in the press, and if there’s never a trial, who’s going to be in a position to rebut all those false allegations? Nobody. As Tom’s lawyer, I’d have to forbid him from doing it, and if he did so, I’d have to resign. You can’t do it, either. Commenting at all would look like an admission of guilt. I’ll tell you what, the thing I’d really like to say is that this isn’t what a contract killing looks like. This isn’t how it works in the…in the line of work they’re talking about. Those men who killed her would have been Italian, for one thing, and—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry, I’d never say things like that in public. But it’s true that the public has very little idea about how all this works, the mechanics of it. Even the cops don’t understand it, but if I could just—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. So maybe you shouldn’t talk about it.”

Klein rubbed his chin. He looked over at Al Neri. Neri smiled, in the manner of a patient cat who knows it will eventually get its shot at the mouse. “All right,” Klein said to Michael. “You’re right. I was out of line.”

Michael lit another cigarette and took his time doing it.

“How sure are you,” Michael said, “that they aren’t going to charge Tom with this?”

“A good lawyer is careful to never be overly sure of anything,” Klein said. “As for
how
sure I am, I’m bad with odds-making, which I’m sure you’ve heard from some of your associates.”

Michael had, of course. Klein was a lousy gambler who bet often and fairly small and thus never had any trouble covering his losses. That the betting didn’t escalate, that he didn’t dig himself deeper by trying to make up everything he lost Saturday on Sunday’s games, did show unusual discipline, which Michael admired. Still, few habitual gamblers manage to maintain such discipline over time.

Michael excused himself to go wash his hands and to give Klein a chance to grow anxious over not really answering the question. Silence was a fine tool for working over a big talker. Al caught his eye as he passed. He’d seen the tactic before.

“Please don’t misunderstand, young man,” Klein said when Michael returned to the table. “I’m not being coy with you or…what’s the term? Busting your balls? I’m confident that there’s not a good case here, but they’re going to make sure it gets played for everything it’s worth and then some.”

“Curious: who’s
they
?”

“C’mon. Who do you think?”

“I want to hear your perspective. I’ve paid for it.”

“If they charge Tom Hagen with this horrible crime,” Klein said, going into an impression of James K. Shea’s phony Brahmin accent, “they shall suffer an ignominious defeat on the field of battle.” He sounded more like Morrie Streator, the Vegas comedian who’d popularized the impression, than he did a Shea brother. Klein shook his head in self-deprecation. “I’ll stop. But, see, if charges are never filed, they get to use this thing until they get bored with it. Sooner or later they’ll drop it—probably after the November election—but they’ll do it quietly, and therefore they’ll never look like they’ve suffered any sort of defeat—”

“Because the public’s memory is as short as a senile dog’s.”

Klein smiled. “Tom told me that little saying of yours. Catchy. Can’t say as I disagree.”

“So what right do the authorities have in telling Tom he can’t leave the area?”

“The five boroughs of New York?” Klein clarified. “No right whatsoever.”

“But if I sent him on an out-of-town business trip—”

“A business trip where?”

To meet with Jack Woltz in Los Angeles, for one thing. Michael had had to trust Johnny and some of his people out there to get the ball rolling, but it was a project that needed Tom’s touch. Or to meet with Pat Geary, the Nevada senator and their old friend, who was running against Jimmy Shea in the primaries, a glorified favorite-son candidate who appealed to voters in the South and the mountain West and other, more conservative elements in the party—a campaign that presumably was aimed less at winning than at being enough of a pain in the ass that he could make a speech at the convention and garner other, more substantial favors. “Why does it matter where?”

“I suppose it doesn’t. Go ahead. Feel free. Nothing will happen.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing legal,” Klein said. “But I’d think he’d be followed. Given the interest the Justice Department has shown in the case, I’d wager that those doing the following will be FBI.”

“Though, as you say, you have no talent with the odds,” Michael said.

“Sure, it’s true,” Klein said. “But in a wager like this, think of me as the house.”

“I have my own airplane,” Michael said. “I fly it myself, as kind of a hobby. If Tom and I took a business trip together, and I flew us—”

“What are you saying, that you’re going to take airborne evasive action against the FBI?”

“You watch too many war movies,” Michael said.

“You still have to file flight plans with someone, though, right?”

“If I fly from private airstrip to private airstrip in a private plane—me, a hired pilot, either way—who knows who the passengers are? What can the FBI do, take an airplane up, follow me in the air, and land right behind me—or my employees—on a privately owned airstrip? Is that legal?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m getting tired of you asking me questions when I want answers.”

Klein shrugged. “My apologies. You want opinions, ask a cabbie or a judge. I do two things for a living. I ask questions and I argue. I get my answers from other people.”