The Godfather's Revenge (54 page)

W
hen that suspension bridge was dedicated the next month, it would, after all, be named after Giovanni da Verrazano.

Thirteen years earlier, while the project was still on the drawing board, the Italian Historical Society of America approached the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority with the idea of honoring this explorer—not only because he was the first to sail these waters but also because the bridge connected two Italian-American enclaves, Bay Ridge and Staten Island. It would be a dignified way of combating those who had already begun to refer to the proposed bridge as the “guinea gangplank.” Robert Moses, Triborough’s emperor, fought the Verrazano name at every turn. He’d never heard of Verrazano, he repeatedly said. The name was too long, too foreign. Even after the new governor of New York had been convinced to champion and sign a law that named the bridge after the explorer, Moses kept fighting it. Most recently, he’d backed the petition drive to name the bridge after James K. Shea and then cited the importance of honoring the “will of the people” to anyone with a notebook or a microphone.

The Commission members in general and Paulie Fortunato in particular were pleased when Michael Corleone informed everyone that tomorrow, prior to Daniel Brendan Shea’s resignation, the outgoing attorney general would also release a statement citing his admiration for the accomplishments of that great Italian explorer and Danny’s wish that the bridge, as planned, be named not after his brother but after Verrazano. Michael thanked Don Stracci and Don Greco for their support as well. The offer of a New Jersey senate seat in 1966 had been one Danny Shea couldn’t refuse.

Not only that, Michael announced, Moses himself was finished. The New York governor was thrilled at the prospect of being the man who’d get credit for forcing the despot out.

In the context of a long and difficult series of issues, the Commission members enjoyed this bit of comic relief. They held their sides in laughter at the knowledge that they would remain in power after the supposedly most powerful man in New York fell, his final public-works project graced by the name of an Italian hero.

NICK GERACI’S BULLET-RIDDLED CORPSE WAS FOUND
on a boat cast adrift in New York Harbor, his shot-off leg wrapped in newspapers and tossed on board as an apparent afterthought. Authorities soon learned that the boat belonged to former Corleone
soldato
Cosimo “Momo the Roach” Barone, who was missing (and whose body, as it turned out, would never be found). This sensational news almost immediately shifted away from the Corleone Family, though. The special bipartisan investigation into the death of President Shea had already learned that Geraci was in Miami at the time of the assassination, and it had placed his name on the list of witnesses it wished to call. It had also learned that Geraci had spent the months leading up to the assassination in New Orleans, in the employ of underworld kingpin Carlo “the Whale” Tramonti—another name on the investigation’s list. In addition, photographs and eyewitness testimony showed Momo Barone meeting with Carlo Tramonti and his brother Agostino during a visit to New York the previous year. In both the media and in various court documents, Geraci and Barone were portrayed as defectors to the Tramonti syndicate—often, even members of it. If there
had
been a conspiracy to kill the president, common sense seemed to decree that Nick Geraci was at the center of it.

(And most people didn’t even know about Geraci’s involvement in the Carmine Marino affair, the still-classified attempts to kill the leader of Cuba.)

The bipartisan investigation would drag on for months. Its final report was more than four thousand pages long and ruled that Juan Carlos Santiago acted alone.

Still, many continued to believe that the assassin was sent to the Fountainebleau by the CIA. Or the FBI. Or the vice president. Or the Cuban government. Or the Mafia (if there was a Mafia). Or some combination of the above. Or all of the above.

The century would be buried long before this, its greatest mystery.

No hard evidence would ever come to light that the bipartisan investigation was a cover-up or less than scrupulously executed. No conclusive proof of any sort of conspiracy surfaced—either to kill the president or to cover up the truth behind the killing. Nonetheless, suspicion remained that the public had not learned—and might not ever learn—the whole story. This possibly paranoid notion—fostered over the years by a library-wing’s worth of books—was, from the outset, fed by the bizarre chain of coincidence that claimed the lives of so many of those who were allegedly involved, either directly or tangentially, with that great national tragedy. Even more suspiciously, many of these people died days, sometimes even hours, before testifying about what they knew.

For example, former CIA agent Joseph P. Lucadello died in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia, two days before his scheduled closed-door meeting with the bipartisan investigation. The death was ruled a suicide, but many found it hard to believe that a one-eyed man would choose to kill himself by ramming an ice pick through his remaining eye.

The most famous example was Carlo Tramonti. A week after he was subpoenaed and a week before he was scheduled to fly to Washington, Carlo the Whale turned up dead in the middle of Highway 61 in New Orleans, thrown from a moving car right outside the Pelican Motor Lodge. The cause of death was two shots to the back of the head, a classic gangland hit, and not the meat cleaver that had been rammed into his heart, which came after the shooting but which the authorities could never explain.

A less commonly known example was Carlo’s brother Agostino—Augie the Midget, who took over from his late brother. He was not called to testify before that first investigation, but a few years later, a maverick U.S. attorney in New Orleans sought to reopen the case. The night before Augie Tramonti was supposed to appear in court, he died in his country home—a newly renovated antebellum mansion, once part of a sugar and timber plantation west of New Orleans. The coroner attributed the death to “natural causes” and was no more specific than that. The police report, however, mentioned a suicide note. It did not say what the note said. The note, along with several other pieces of evidence related to the case, disappeared from the evidence room. It might have been stolen. It might have merely been misplaced. Either way, it was gone.

A FEW MONTHS AFTER SHE BURIED HER HUSBAND
, Charlotte Geraci boxed up the carbon copy of Nick’s manuscript and went into Manhattan to meet with her old boss, at the publishing house where she’d worked before she and Nick got married. How much of it she wrote or rewrote herself is debatable. Her claim would always be that Nick had given it to her to retype the day before he was killed. She did at least that much. Her daughters came home to help her. Charlotte claimed to have put the original in a safe-deposit box and the pages Nick gave her in a different one. To this day, Charlotte and her daughters (Barbara Kennedy, now a Maryland attorney, and Moonflower®, now a San Francisco performance artist) have never released more than a Xeroxed copy of a brief excerpt of Nick Geraci’s original.

The publisher, initially skeptical, agreed to read it. He was amazed by the manuscript’s raw power, dismayed by its crude craftsmanship. But that, he thought, could be fixed.

He called up a struggling novelist he’d published and invited him to lunch. Sergio Lupo was then best known for
An Immigrant’s Tale
, based on the life of his mother, which had been a
New York Times
Notable Book. It had also sold about a thousand copies. Lupo’s next novel, the autobiographical
Trimalchio Rex
, had done even worse. Since then, he’d been trying to make a go of it in Hollywood, with little success. He was back in New York, visiting his family. He was not in a position to turn down a free lunch.

Neither was he in a position to turn down the rewriting of
Fausto’s Bargain
.

At first, though, he did. Lucrative as the offer was, it seemed like work that was beneath him. “It’s a sellout,” he said.

“I say this as a friend,” the publisher said, “but don’t you think maybe it’s time to grow up?”

“Fuck off,” Lupo said. He was forty-one years old.

“It’s only a sellout,” the publisher said, “if you write it that way.”

Lupo thought about this for a few moments and then shrugged.

“Do me two favors,” the publisher said. “One—read the thing.” He slid the manuscript across the table. “Two—let me read you this.”

He pulled out a copy of
Trimalchio Rex
and flipped to the last page.

“‘I would love to be evil,’” the publisher read, “‘to rob banks, commit murder and mayhem, have everyone fear me because I’m a tough guy. I’d love to be unfaithful to my wife, shoot kangaroos, the works. But I can’t. And you know why? Because I’m timid. I’m shy. I’m afraid I’d hurt somebody’s feelings.’”

“That’s a goddamned novel,” Lupo said. “That’s a fictional character talking.”

“Sure it is,” the publisher said. He rapped his knuckles on the manuscript. “Just read it, OK?”

Two years later, Lupo’s reworking of the book was finished.
Fausto’s Bargain
hit the bestseller list the first week out and stayed there for three years. It would go on to sell more than twenty million copies worldwide. The three films it inspired neither used the word “Mafia” nor mentioned any real member of the Corleone Family by name (other than Nick Geraci). The first one earned Johnny Fontane his second Academy Award. The first two—often credited with putting Woltz International Pictures back in the black for the first time since
The Discovery of America
debacle—are considered classics.

THE WEDDING OF JOHNNY FONTANE AND FRANCESCA
Corleone Van Arsdale was a quiet affair, right on the beach in the Bahamas, under a makeshift arch of palm fronds.
The Discovery of America
had wrapped a week earlier, and they’d stayed on Grand Bahama Island, making plans for the festivities, executing an elaborate (and ultimately successful) ruse to keep the press away, and waiting for their closest family members to arrive.

Johnny wore a white tux. Francesca wore a pink, batik dress made right on the island. The weather was idyllic: a cloudless blue sky and a breeze.

As Michael Corleone walked his niece down the boardwalk that functioned as an aisle, he was unashamed to find himself in tears.

He and Johnny made eye contact.

Johnny winked.

Michael tried to smile. He truly was happy for them both.

After the ceremony, Michael Corleone and his sister Connie went for a walk on the beach.

Connie reached out her hand to him, and he took it. They had not walked this way since they were little kids, since he was walking her to school.

“What a great couple,” Connie said. The breeze whipped her hair away from her face. She looked like a woman in a heroic painting. “You wouldn’t think so, but look at what a success the Nino Valenti Fund is already, so obviously they work together well. That’s important. And look how happy they look. Their kids get along. Everything looks…” Connie shook her head. “What a great couple,” she repeated, more softly this time.

“I know this must be difficult for you,” Michael said.

“Difficult?” she said. “Why would this be difficult?”

Michael just squeezed her hand, and they kept walking.

Finally Connie gave a dry little laugh. “Believe me,” she said. “I’m over it. I had a crush on him, sure, but so did a million girls. I’m a grown woman. I know what love is worth. I’m happy for them.”

Michael nodded.

“Speaking of love,” she said, “I was sorry to hear about you and Rita.”

“Don’t be,” Michael said. “I’m over that, too.”

They walked for a long time in silence. At the next hotel up the beach, they stopped at the bar for a drink. Connie got a piña colada, and Michael got ice water. They took their drinks and sat under an umbrella beside the pool. The only people swimming were children.

“So,” Connie said. “Did she ever tell you?”

“Did who ever tell me what?”

“Did Rita ever tell you she had a baby?” Connie said. “A son. It was Fredo’s. She was still a dancer out in Las Vegas then, and she went away to have the baby, to a convent out in California. Fredo paid for everything. Usually, the girls he got in trouble had it…taken care of. But Rita…well, of course, Rita wasn’t like that. She couldn’t do that. She had it put up for adoption. I’ve tried everything I can imagine to find out who the boy is, where he is, but it’s the Church I’m up against, and I’m pretty sure it’s hopeless. I thought she might have told you. I’m sorry.”

“She told
you
all that?”

Connie shook her head. “Fredo did.”

“When?”

“At the time,” Connie said. “You know, I can keep secrets as well as any of the men in this family.” She turned to face him. “Are you OK? Maybe you should get something to eat.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You look like you…” she said. “I don’t know. You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” Michael said again. His sugar was fine, he was sure. He went back to the bar and got something stronger to drink.