The Godfather's Revenge (52 page)

“You have to admit, though,” Geraci said. “Stranger things have happened.”

Stracci finished his coffee and handed his empty cup to his
consigliere,
who dutifully got up to refill it.

“I understand your frustration, Nicky,” the old man said. “But what I think you’re asking me to do, I cannot do.”

“This is the beautiful part,” Geraci said. “All I’m asking you to do is give Michael Corleone what he always wanted.”

Stracci fish-eyed him. “Go on.”

“Michael didn’t want to be in this thing of ours,” Geraci said, “so fine. He wants out, we let him out. He wants to be a legitimate businessman—how many times you heard that, huh? Enough to make you sick of hearing it, I bet. Here again, we give him what he wants. We let him be just that—and nothing more.”

“Meaning specifically what?” Stracci said.

“We retire him.”

He paused to let that sink in.

“Or, rather,” Geraci said, “the Commission does it. I take over as boss, which I can assure you I’ve already laid the groundwork to do. You’ve worked with me for twenty years: you know that the men in the street believe in me. In taking over, I give certain assurances. I pledge to the Commission that Michael Corleone will walk away from our thing a rich man, with full control over a few perfectly legal businesses, enough to provide for his family for decades if he can run them without the advantages of enforcement and connections he was handed on his silver platter by his father, may he rest in peace.”

Stracci raised his pastry heavenward in acknowledgment.

“If Michael Corleone agrees to this and goes peacefully, there will be no reprisals whatsoever from me or from the men who work for me. This I can guarantee.”

“And you want me to make this proposal on your behalf?”

Geraci nodded.

Stracci seemed to be pretending to think this over, but Geraci was certain he had him, and he let the barbs of the plan sink in.

“And what if I
do
make this proposal? What if others don’t agree?”

“If you do it, Don Stracci,” Geraci said, “others
will
agree. Enough others. Not counting Michael, of course, there are nine voting members. So the proposal needs five votes and—to be safe—one strong advocate. If you are that advocate, Don Stracci, it’s certain this would get six votes.”

Geraci broke it down. Three—and only three—Dons were blindly loyal to Michael: Ozzie Altobello and Leo Cuneo here, plus Joe Zaluchi from Detroit. Nick could promise the support of Tramonti and Drago, plus John Villone from Chicago, who Geraci knew from his Cleveland days and had met with personally. Villone, new on the Commission, saw the wisdom in the plan, but he understandably didn’t want to lead a charge like this. He’d pledged to keep as quiet as possible and vote to retire Michael so long as it looked like that was the side that was going to win. He and Nick had agreed that Don Stracci was the pivotal vote. Not only did he make a fourth vote for Geraci, his support delivered Frank Greco, too. Greco was new on the Commission and, though he had little stake in what happened in New York, as the boss of the Philly/South Jersey outfit, he had dealings with the Straccis every day. Frank the Greek had every incentive in the world to go along with the wishes of his older, wiser associate to the north.

“That makes it five to three,” Nick said. “Without even
considering
the Barzinis.”

Geraci enjoyed watching Nunziato and Stracci’s faces and seeing the gears turn.

For as long as anyone could remember, the peace between the Barzinis and the Corleones had been uneasy and fragile, with at least three outbreaks of what could be called outright war. While Fat Paulie Fortunato, the Don of the Barzinis now, was known to be a man disinclined to take the offensive, it was difficult to imagine what objection he would raise to the retirement of the last Corleone left in the Corleone Family. He’d be able to do so without initiating the idea himself
and
do so on his home turf in Staten Island
and
be the vote that would make Michael’s three loyalists see the handwriting on the wall and therefore, most likely, accede to the inevitable.

Geraci could practically see the lightbulb go on over Black Tony Stracci’s grotesque head.

“It could be unanimous,” Stracci said, a faint note of awe in his voice.

“That’s right,” Geraci said. “It most certainly could be.”

“And what do I tell my friend Michael as he sits there and we discuss all this? That it’s only business?”

Geraci smiled. “He understands that.”

Stracci nodded, seeming to warm even further to the idea. Nunziato came to his side and Stracci whispered something to him, and the
consigliere
nodded and whispered something in return.

“I’ll speak with Frank Greco personally,” said Stracci. “You’ll have your answer within forty-eight hours.”

Black Tony Stracci stood. The men embraced again. As Nunziato showed Nick to the door, he offered him a doughnut for the road and Nick took it so as not to be rude.

“If you can content yourself with this resolution,” Stracci said, and Nick paused in the doorway and turned around, “I can only conclude two things. One, you, the new generation, are not as caught up in revenge as we have been, for which I congratulate you. And, two, that you must have had something to do with what happened to Tom Hagen.”

Geraci frowned. “What did happen to Tom Hagen? Was there news?”

“Very quick, young man,” Stracci said, wagging his bony finger. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Forty-eight hours,” Nick said. “Take as much of it as you need. And, from my heart, thank you, Don Stracci.”

“Prego.”

“By the way,” Nick said, backing away, “next time we talk, remind me to tell you about an investment opportunity in the cemetery business. Large-scale.”

“Welcome home, Nicky.”

T
he answer, delivered the next day via intermediaries, was yes.

Stracci sent word, however, that Frank Greco, since he and Geraci had never met, wanted to get together for a drink, right beforehand. Geraci sent word that he looked forward to it. The drinks were on him.

NICK HAD BEEN LIVING ON MOMO BARONE’S BOAT
, which the Roach bought from Eddie Paradise when Eddie got a new one. It was tied up at a small marina on Nicoll Bay—so close and yet so far away from his house in East Islip—rather than Sheepshead Bay or Canarsie, where most of the wiseguys Nick knew who had boats kept theirs. It had proven to be a perfect short-term hideout: close enough to the city that he could go meet with people he needed to meet with (including a few carefully arranged meetings with Charlotte), yet far enough out that it seemed pretty unlikely he’d run into any connected guys. For most of the people he was trying to avoid, New York City extended no farther east than the airports. The cabin downstairs was perfectly comfortable. He’d even set up his typewriter on a poker table belowdecks and managed to finish his book—all but the last chapter, which he felt like he needed to live before he could write about it. He had some notes, though.

“So how’s it going to work?” Momo asked him. It was the night before the meeting. They were out on the water, pretending to fish. “Michael’s going to this meeting without knowing what the agenda for it is?”

Geraci shook his head. “He’s going to it, thinking it’s something else. They’ve got the usual series of bullshit conflicts to hammer out, and the word from a couple of the other Dons is, Michael’s going to ask the Commission to sanction a hit on the yats.”

Momo brightened. “The New Orleans guys. What’s that going to accomplish?”

“He just wants a scapegoat,” Nick said, “in case the government’s investigation into the assassination of Jimmy Shea starts sniffing around, making trouble for friends of ours. Look, Roach, it’s academic. It’s moot. It doesn’t matter. Michael’s going to walk in there, he’s going to hear the sensible reasons he ought to retire, and with any luck at all, that’ll be that.”

“What about afterward?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Nick said.

“So you’re just going to go to this meeting and,
poof,
magically you’ll take over?”

“Something like that. What is it you’re worried about?”

“Jesus Christ, Nick. How long you known me? I’m worried about everything.”

Geraci laughed. It was all he could do not to muss the Roach’s cemented-down hair, or try to. “Why do you do that? I always meant to ask.”

“Do what?”

“With your hair.”

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon. What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing’s wrong with your hair. Forget about it.”

“OK, well, take the present moment, just for one example,” the Roach said. “Out on the water with the wind and such, but do I have a worry in the world about if I’m going to look like a bum when we’re done here?” He pointed to his hair with both hands. “No, I do not. It’s all in place. Shipshape, if you will. Just one example of why I do it. But, you know, when it comes to fashion-type choices, who knows? Why do some guys want their tailors to show a lot of cuff and some guys not so much?”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” Nick said.

“What the fuck, you know?” Momo said. “To be honest with you, it’s a trademark at this point, is all it is.”

“To answer your original question,” Nick said. “Retiring a guy this big, against his will, hasn’t been done since Charlie Lucky got put out to pasture, which was years ago, so there’s not exactly much of a playbook for us to follow. The night of the meeting, you go to your social club, stick close to there so I know where to find you afterward, but I really don’t think there’s going to be trouble. To use Michael’s way of looking at things, it’ll be no different from when the board of directors of a company fires the company president.”

“Maybe,” the Roach said. “Only, up to now, his family has
been
the company. So, it’d be more like the board at Getty Oil shitcanning J. Paul Getty.”

Geraci arched his eyebrows.

“What?” Momo said. “You know, just because I’m not allowed to touch fucking Crazy Eddie’s newspapers before he does don’t mean I don’t read ’em at some point. If I’m going to be a good
consigliere,
I—”

“No need to be defensive,” Nick said, making a
Halt!
sign with his hands. “You’ve already got the job, OK?”

The Roach nodded. “OK.”

“Who’s our representative for the security detail?”

“Not sure. Richie Two-Guns took care of that.”

“And still no word on who, if anybody, Michael’s going to have sit in as
consigliere
?”

“None.”

“It almost has to be Richie or Eddie, which means that they’ll be in the room when the other Dons hand down the order. Neither one of those men strikes me as an unrealistic man. On the contrary, Richie is a opportunist, which I mean as a compliment, and Eddie—”

“Lives in the present. I know. You got no idea how many times I’ve had to listen to him go on and on about what he don’t like about the past and the future.”

“Even if Michael wasn’t going to be blindsided by this—which from what you’re telling me, and from what I’m hearing elsewhere, is still the case—”

“It is.”

“—but even if he wasn’t, even worst-case scenario, how does Michael assemble a core of vigilantes numerous enough and powerful enough to go against the Commission’s orders? It’s impossible. If he tries that, it’s suicide.”

The Roach considered this and seemed to agree.

“If I was a betting man,” the Roach said, “I’d bet you that as soon as people hear about the decision that gets handed down at the meeting, the only people Michael’s going to have in his corner real strong are Al and maybe Tommy Neri.”

“An ex-cop hooked on pornography,” Geraci said, “and his nephew, Skippy the Dope Fiend. This we can take care of.”

He drew out a pause, using it to suss out the other sense of
take care of.

“Pornography?” Momo asked.

“Remember that place downtown I had for a while? Neri was one of the regulars. Next time you see him, look him in the eyes and tell me that’s not the haggard masturbator of the century. And anyway,” Nick said, “unless you’ve found a miracle cure for your own vices, you
are
a betting man.”

“I’ve cut way back,” he said. “Not that I ever had a real problem with it or nothin’.”

“I’m not saying that you did,” Nick said. “Don’t be so sensitive.”

The Roach nodded in concession.

“All right,” Geraci said. “Much as I’d like to stay out here all day with my unbaited hook and watch the pretty sailboats go by, I’ve got business in the city I need to take care of. So, real quick, two things and then we need to head in. First, I wanted to make sure you haven’t told anybody else about this.”

“About you coming back? Yeah, I—”

“No. About using the Commission to retire that cocksucker.”

“Oh. No. Not a soul. Not Renzo, none of the zips, not my cousin Luddy, nobody.”

“Are you sure? Think about it a minute.”

Geraci wasn’t fishing for anything—he just wanted to be thorough. The Roach, bless his heart, was the sort of man who took orders seriously. Most people would interpret
a minute
as
a few moments,
but Momo gave it pretty much the full sixty ticks.

“Nobody,” he said. “I’m positive.”

“All right,” Geraci said. “So that’s how we’re doing this. Obviously, anybody with half a brain’s going to wonder if I initiated this, but keep ’em guessing. I don’t want anybody, beyond the people that I personally had to talk to, to be able to prove that this was anything other than an idea one of the other Dons came up with.”

“You’re going in there with no bodyguard?”

“I’m not even really going in there. It’s more like I’m waiting in the wings.”

Momo cleared his throat. “You want me to go along, either as your, uh…in my official capacity, or if you just want to bring along a man you know has got your back, it’d be my honor.”

Nick tried not to smile, for fear Momo would find it condescending, but it really was endearing how devoted the Roach had become.

“I appreciate it,” Nick said. “But we still have to keep you away from any hot situation until after Michael is sent packing. The second they figure out what you quarterbacked from the inside out, you’re a dead man.”

Momo’s shoulders sagged just a little, and he nodded. “Well, just take a bodyguard then. Because you never know.”

Nick thought about this.

In the shipping channel, there came a black-and-brown cargo ship, flying the Liberian flag, essentially similar to thousands of vessels Nick used to ship drugs and other profitable goods to America. For all he knew, this was one of them, steaming to a Stracci-controlled dock.

“Send a Sicilian,” Nick finally said. “The more just-off-the-boat, the better. Tell him nothing until the last minute. Have him meet me across the street from the restaurant. Give him the bare minimum information and, uh…give him a Beretta M12 as well. Anything goes wrong, that’ll even the odds a little.”

The M12 was a handsome machine pistol that shot ten rounds a second and was accurate to more than two hundred yards.

“Count on it,” Momo said. “And the second thing?”

“Oh, right. This Frank the Greek character. What do we know about him?”

“He’s a good man,” Momo said, “from what I was able to learn. Heavy on the flashy jewelry and the cologne, but when it comes to anything important, everybody speaks highly. And you was right about him and Black Tony. Everything they been involved in together, Greco’s followed the old man’s lead. He’s still too new on the Commission to pull anything clever, is my thinking. Plus, nobody’s going to plan nothing within a mile of whatchacallit, Jerry’s Chop House. Which I heard is good, as a quick off to the side. The food. But anyhow, I think why he wants to meet you is, he don’t want people to start thinking he’s Black Tony’s
leccaculo.
”

Momo, Geraci’s own
leccaculo,
said this with no apparent irony.

“Thank you, my friend,” Geraci said, “for a job well done.”

They packed the rods, and Momo revved the engine and started for shore. “One more question, though,” he shouted. “Michael Corleone killed your father, tried to kill you, on and on, and you’re not going to get satisfaction? You’re going to let him walk?”

Geraci put his arm around Momo Barone.

“What I promised,” Geraci said, “was
if
he goes in peace, I won’t whack him and neither will my men.”

“Right,” the Roach said. “Like I said.”

Geraci shook his head. “Big
if,
” he said. “And that’s just for starters.”

The Roach understood. “There are a lot of men in the world,” he said, “who don’t work for you.”

“And just from a purely statistical standpoint,” Geraci pointed out, “some of those men are surely going to be your accident-prone individuals—dangerous to themselves and others.”

Momo erupted in a high-pitched and almost girlish laugh that Nick had never heard before.

“This time tomorrow, eh?” the Roach said.

“Don’t worry,” Geraci said.

A QUARTER CENTURY AS A NEW YORKER AND YET
Nick Geraci had never set foot on Staten Island. He was too impatient to ride that goddamned peasant-hauling, cheap-date-carting ferry if he didn’t have to, but the only other way was to cross over to New Jersey and drive down and then back over. A new double-decked bridge—the largest suspension bridge in the world—connected Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Staten Island; it looked done, but it wasn’t scheduled to open until next month. So Nick took the liberty of taking Momo Barone’s boat. Also, if anything went wrong, it seemed like a much better way to get the hell out of there than a roadblockable bridge to Jersey or that slow-moving, easily searched ferry.

It was harder to navigate his way there than he’d thought—in the water, the perspectives of New York are so profoundly different from the ones a person sees walking or driving around every day. But he hugged the shore and kept looking where the sun was and kept picturing a map of New York in his head, and soon he saw the towers of that suspension bridge, and he headed toward it. Before long he was sailing under it—the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, it was originally going to be called, after the Italian explorer, the first white man to sail through here and view New York Harbor (following a big petition drive and the backing of the mayor, it was apparently going to be named after the slain president instead). Now, Nick Geraci became the most recent Italian explorer to view the harbor. He gasped at its beauty—including a dead-ahead view of Lady Liberty, just as his own mother and father must have seen it when they sailed through here on their way to Ellis Island—and in no time he was tying up at a pier near what turned out to be Stapleton.