The Godfather's Revenge (46 page)

They walked away, together. Sonny looped an arm around Tom, and Tom did the same to Sonny. Sonny asked where Tom lived, and Tom just shook his head. Sonny asked Tom what was wrong with his eye, and Tom said it was some kind of infection, he didn’t know. His mother had had the same thing, and then she died. Sonny asked about Tom’s father, and Tom couldn’t even bring himself to say it, that his father had been torn up with grief over his mother’s death, and a few months later he’d successfully drunk himself to death.
Well, all right then,
Sonny said.
You and me. We’re brothers now.
Tom Hagen’s final living thought was of that huge blue bowl of spaghetti Mama Corleone, who was dead now, too, put before him that day: the aroma of her oily, rich tomato sauce, the sound of her voice, ordering him to eat.

“C
ome to bed.” Rita Duvall, in a nightgown and with a sleep mask pushed up in her mussed red hair, came padding into the darkened lobby of the inn. Michael was slumped in a wing chair he’d dragged over by the pay phone. “Tomorrow’s…well, it’s three in the morning, so I suppose that today is tomorrow. All the more reason you should come to bed, darling. Get some sleep.”

“I don’t think I could sleep,” Michael said.

“Come to bed, anyway,” she said.

“I don’t think I could do that, either.”

“I’m not suggesting you do anything,” she said, “except rest. C’mon. Let me just take care of you. I can do that, you know.”

“I just can’t.”

“I gather there’s no word.”

Michael shook his head.

“Did you call Theresa back?”

“I didn’t,” he said. It was so unlike Tom not to call when he said he would that when Michael called his home in Florida, he’d let it slip to Theresa that he’d been expecting to hear from Tom about an hour earlier. Given Tom and Theresa’s recent troubles, she’d jumped to the conclusion that this all had something to do with another woman. Michael had told her he hoped like hell that another woman was all they had to worry about. That sent Theresa on a screaming tirade. He’d had to hang up on her. “I’m giving it until at least dawn, I think.”

Better yet, he’d have Al Neri call her. He was on his way up here, driving.

“Sunrise is nearly an hour later down there, remember.”

“Yeah? How do you know that?”

“I am French,” she said.

“What does being French have to do with it?”

Her hands danced, making a kind of voilà gesture. “We are passionate about the sun and the sunrise. The promise of a new day, yes? And more to enjoy.”

“Yes.”

“Speaking of a new day, did you check your sugar? Because you’re not going to be any good to anyone tomorrow if—”

“It’s fine,” Michael said. He’d gotten better about keeping tabs on his diabetes. It had been a long time since he’d had any sort of incident.

“You don’t think we should go back to New York?” There was a heartbreaking mixture of fear and hopefulness in Rita’s voice. “Do you?”

Yes,
he thought. “No,” he said. “Of course we’re not going back.” He couldn’t.

She brightened.

Rita was pushing to get engaged, which Michael wasn’t even going to consider until she and his kids had a good relationship. More important, Michael had canceled so many other visits with Mary and Anthony at the last minute that he couldn’t bear the thought of coming all the way here to see them and then not seeing them. Also, he had presents to deliver, deliveries he was supposed to coordinate. So he had to see this through.

“There’s probably a logical explanation for why Tom didn’t call,” Michael said. “I may be overreacting. This is all probably nothing.”

“If it’s probably nothing,” she said, “then you should definitely come to bed.”

Michael looked at the telephone, as if he might be able to will it to ring.

Moments later, he lay in bed, staring up at the frilly canopy. For maybe two minutes, Rita rubbed her hand over his chest in consolation, then dropped off to sleep.

Michael lay still and awake until the sun came up, then got out of bed, showered, got dressed, and went to sit by the pay phone.

“SO WHAT DOES YOUR GUT TELL YOU?” MICHAEL
said.

“Three eggs over easy with sausage,” Al Neri told the waitress. Michael hadn’t noticed her. He wasn’t hungry, but he ordered the same thing and would force himself to eat it.

They were having coffee in a diner down the street from the inn. Rita was back in the room getting ready. Al looked reasonably rested. He’d had someone drive him up here, and he’d slept in the car. Michael had bags under his eyes and his white hair was disheveled. He could have passed for sixty.

“My gut,” Neri said, “says he’s in custody.”

“Wouldn’t we have heard from Sid Klein by now?”

“Did you call Sid Klein?”

“I did. He hasn’t talked to Tom in weeks.”

“I’m not necessarily saying they have him for that thing that blew over,” Al said. Meaning Judy Buchanan. “I’ve got a bad feeling that maybe the Feds have some dirt on him. Tom mentioned he had his FBI tail when he talked to you, right? So that seems to rule out anyone making a move on Tom
except
them. Plus, we know that the FBI is getting some kind of information from that girl out in Arizona.” Meaning, Bev Geraci. “So that’s my feeling.”

“Just your feeling?”

“Maybe a little more than that. Tom goes to strike that deal and then,
poof,
he’s gone. Whether it’s bribery they got him on or whether it’s something unrelated, I don’t know. What I’m doing is answering your question. You asked me my gut, I’m telling you my gut.” Neri shrugged. “To tell the truth,” he whispered, “I’d be kind of relieved if it
wasn’t
custody.”

“Relieved?” Michael said. “Relieved how?”

“Look, Tom’s almost as much a brother to me as to you,” Al said, “but the fact remains he’s not Sicilian, not Italian even. I know of Irish gangsters who sold out their friends, but never one of us.”

“Tom is one of us.”

“I’m not saying he’s not, in that sense,” Al said. “But if it ever comes to pass that he’s looking at a long prison sentence of some kind, I, personally, would be nervous. Tom’s got loyalty in spades but no conscience. You know this better than anybody. Nothing he’s ever done has been for anything but the greater good of Tom Hagen. Loyalty to you and your family has been good for him, but if the time ever came that things changed…” Al blew on his coffee. “Let’s just hope we never get to that moment.”

Michael tapped his knife against the chipped Formica tabletop.

“Tom is my brother,” Michael said. “I’m going to try to forget you ever told me this.”

“Right,” Al said. “You’re right. If I overstepped, I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Their food came, and Michael gave it a try. Al’s was nearly gone before Michael had made it through his first rubbery egg.

“So,” Michael said. “We’re one hundred percent certain Tom got the deal done?”

“I talked to Geary and Tamarkin directly, and they both say yes,” Al said. “Ben Tamarkin swears Tom left the hotel at about nine. So that all checks out.”

“And the contributions were delivered?”

“They were,” Neri said. “I’m convinced that the deal was done. I even talked to some people we know in New Jersey.” He waggled his black sunglasses case to underscore that he was talking about Black Tony Stracci. “The ball’s rolling. The senate thing in ’66, all that.”

“Forget about New Jersey. Who are you talking to down in Miami? Which of our people?”

Neri shrugged hopelessly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Other than Tom, what do we got who does business down there? Richie Nobilio’s up to his eyeballs with business in New York, and the men he’s got running his Fort Lauderdale things are just low-level guys,” Al said. “Which is about all we got down there period. Nobody of consequence.”

“Are you sure?” Michael said. “Nobody?”

It took Al a few tortured moments to realize that Michael was referring to Nick Geraci. Or maybe Al was just preoccupied with the last few bites of his final sausage.

“I don’t think so,” Al finally said. “We can’t rule it out entirely, but even if he’s in the area, I don’t see how he’d get to Tom. Seems like that FBI tail rules it out.”

“And we can’t find out anything from the FBI?”

“This is your lack of sleep talking,” Al said. “How would we do that?”

Michael sighed. “It would be difficult,” he said, “but not impossible.”

“Well, if you want to send me out on that, give me the details. In the meantime, I got calls in to some friends of friends down in Miami,” Al said, signaling the waitress to bring more coffee. “Real subtle ones, so don’t worry about nobody figuring nothing out. Also, as a kind of just-in-case, Tommy’s driving down from Panama City as we speak. Tommy can be our man on the scene in Miami, if unfortunately there ends up being a scene.”

“Tommy,” Michael said. “You sent Tommy?”

“He was already in Florida.”

“Do you have any idea what a big state Florida is? That’s probably a ten-, twelve-hour drive. Anyone we flew down from New York would get there faster.”

“You want me to send someone else down, boss, say the word. And no offense if it’s because you don’t have enough faith in Tommy.”

“I don’t have
any
faith in Tommy. For all I know, Tommy’s our traitor. It would explain why the rat he’s chased all this time has never bitten him.”

“Tommy’s not the traitor,” Al said, “and if he is, I’d be the first to take care of him.”

“You say that as if you’d have any choice in the matter.”

“I wouldn’t
want
a choice in the matter. If it came to that.”

Michael nodded. Good old Al. For better or for worse, they’d be together forever.

“Tommy’s fine,” Michael said. “For now anyway.”

He pushed his plate away. He’d eaten maybe half his food.

“Tell me this, though,” Michael said. “Geary is a known commodity, but tell me why we should trust Ben Tamarkin?”

“Don’t take this wrong,” Al said, “but I’m starting to worry about you. What would it benefit Ben Tamarkin to do anything to Tom?”

Michael took a long pull from his coffee. “I don’t know,” he said. “But, right now, we can’t take anything for granted.”

“When would I ever do that?” Al said.

Michael reached across the booth and gave his old friend a pat on the shoulder.

IN LIGHT OF THE SITUATION WITH HAGEN, AL AND
his driver—Donnie Bags, who’d proven himself loyal in the months he’d been reporting to Tommy—opted to stay in Maine as long as Michael did. When it came time to go pick up the kids, they took Al’s car—a black Coupe de Ville—since it was bigger. Donnie Bags stayed behind at the inn. Al drove. Rita prattled on, sweetly vulnerable, about not knowing how to behave around kids. He’d told her before that all she needed to know came from having been a kid herself, but now he just let her talk. The trick with women is knowing when to just let them talk.

Soon they were coming up the winding, tree-lined road to the Trask Academy. Not far behind were a delivery van and two pickup trucks, one towing a boat, the other a trailer. Kay taught in the middle school here, and she and the kids lived on a lake, in one of the old stone houses supplied to faculty. Every time he visited this place, Michael Corleone couldn’t shake the feeling that he was coming home. Kay and his children were having exactly the life Michael had planned for them, except that Michael found himself standing outside it. He could trace the events that had made this happen. Explaining it was another matter.

Back when he was in college, he’d hoped to someday teach mathematics, either at a university or at a prep school like this. When Michael had been in the Civilian Conservation Corps—and, later, when he’d lived in the Sicilian countryside outside the town of Corleone—he’d vowed that he’d raise his children in the fresh air, away from the literal and the metaphoric filth of the cities. Kay was from New Hampshire, and after an initial period of excitement over living in New York, she’d gotten her fill of it and had come to share this dream with him. And they’d tried. The house on Lake Tahoe had come close. There were times at Lake Tahoe he’d looked around and thought that—despite the difficulties—he was living his dream. And maybe, for a time, he really was.

But there were other times. The worst times of all. The machine guns that opened fire on him and his family. What Fredo allowed to happen to himself. The bloody and intricate nightmares that lay behind those things.

This place, though, was the genuine article. Ordinarily, Michael hated himself for second-guessing any of his decisions, business or personal. In his world, that was a defect that could get a man killed. But the Trask Academy was—to paraphrase a line from a short story often taught here—a summons to all his foolish blood: perched on a wide, sloping hill, surrounded by a lush Maine woods and yet only an hour away from the beach, featuring such other attractive qualities as finely coached athletic teams and the opportunity to grow up alongside boys and girls from America’s ruling-class families.

Now he was coming here as a guest, to try to get reacquainted with his children and to introduce them to the woman he was dating, who’d gotten it in her head that maybe someday he’d consider marrying her. Despite her background in the entertainment business, Rita was a lovely person in every sense of the word. He was very fond of her. He was accustomed to her. She was easy to be with. It was possible that he loved her.

But at the first glimpse of Kay on the white porch of her stone house, Michael knew that he could never be married to anyone else.

Like most intelligent women, Kay was getting better-looking as she grew older. Her hair was drawn back, pleasantly askew in the summer breeze off the lake. Her arms were bare, and she had a deep tan a half-shade lighter than her blouse. Her cream-colored slacks had a 1940s-style drape that couldn’t help but remind him of when they’d first met, but there was so much more to her now: fuller-hipped, her arms toned from swimming and playing tennis, her girlishness conquered and replaced by what looked like serenity.