The Godfather Returns (7 page)

“Should be,” Kay repeated.

He sighed. If this was what she was like as a teacher, her students had been both lucky and doomed. “I apologize for it not being one hundred percent certain. What in life is?”

“Family, right?”

Michael chose to take that as playful. “What else can I do? Walk away? Even if I could do that and not make a widow out of you, what then? Take a job selling shoes while I go to night school and finish college? People depend on me, Kay, and while you and the kids come first and always will, I have other people to consider, too. Fredo, Connie, my mother, and that’s just the immediate family, not the business. We sold the olive oil company because we needed a sizable and completely government-approved amount of cash, but even after that we still have controlling interests in all kinds of other completely legitimate businesses: factories, commercial real estate, dozens of restaurants and a chain of hamburger joints, various newspapers and radio stations and booking agencies, a movie studio, even a Wall Street investment firm. Our interests in gambling and lending money can all be operated where it’s legal. As for what we spend to help get politicians elected—that’s no different from what any big corporation or labor union does. I suppose I could stop and sit back and watch it all fall apart, watch us lose everything.
Or.
” He raised an index finger. “Or. Instead, I could take a few more calculated risks and try to bring about a plan that’s already, I would say, eighty percent implemented. You know I can’t tell you the specifics of it, but I will tell you this, Kay: if you can just have faith in me, five years from now, we’ll be sitting on this very spot, watching our kids—Mary and Anthony and maybe a couple more—swimming in the lake, and Tom Hagen, my brother Tom, will be two months away from getting himself elected governor of the great state of Nevada, and the name Corleone will have started to mean the same sort of thing to most Americans as the names Rockefeller and Carnegie. I want to do great things, Kay. Great things. And the main reason for that, first and foremost, is you and the kids.”

They gathered up their lunch. Michael whistled, and Tommy Neri came out of the woods. He said he and the guys had already eaten, but a snack would be great, thanks.

Michael showed Kay into the boathouse. Inside was a Chris-Craft, aquamarine with spruce panels. He extended an arm. Kay got in. She expected Tommy Neri to follow her, but he released the boat and stayed behind.

“I was wondering,” Michael said, backing the boat out into the lake. “What’s the traditional fifth-anniversary present, anyway?”

“Wood. Which reminds me.” She pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to him.

“Really?” he said. “Wood?”

“Really,” she said. “Open that.”

Michael smiled and pointed at the tree-lined banks of the lake. “Behold,” he said. “Wood.”

“Open the card,” she said.

When he did, a brochure tumbled out. He picked it up.

“Behold,” she said. “Woods.”

It was from the pro shop of a country club in Las Vegas.

“Woods and irons both. I got you a set of golf clubs,” she said. She squeezed his right bicep. “You have to go in to get measured for them.”

“Golf, huh?”

“You don’t like it? You don’t want to take it up?”

“I do,” he said, rubbing the side of his face. “It’s perfect. Golf. Like any all-American executive. I love it. I do.”

Michael put the boat into gear, and they started across the lake to town. Kay slid next to him on the bench seat, and he looped his arm around her. He opened the throttle all the way. She lay her head on his shoulder and kept it there for the twenty-minute trip.

“Thank you,” she said when they got to shore. “I love the lot. I love your plan.” She leaned toward him. “And—” She kissed him. Michael did not usually like to show his emotions in public, but something in her kiss shot right through him, and as she started to pull away he pulled her back toward him and kept kissing her, harder now.

When they finally separated, breathless, they heard applause. It was two teenage boys onshore. They were each with a girl. The girls apologized. “They’re retards,” one said.

“Can’t take them anywhere,” said the other.

They were all dressed as if they’d just come from church.

“No apologies necessary,” Michael said. “Say, is there a movie theater around here?”

There was, and they got directions. The boys lagged behind the girls, laughing and punching each other on the arm.

“I was going to say—” Kay said.

“You love me,” Michael said.

“You’re as bad as those boys,” she said. “And you love me, too.”

The theater was closed. The picture they were showing was one produced by Johnny Fontane’s production company, which was sixty percent owned by a privately held Delaware-chartered corporation in which the stock was held by fronts for the Corleone Family. At some point, Michael would (for a purchase price of symbolic money) buy the whole shebang. That’s if there was anything worth buying. The company had once been fairly profitable. This picture, like most of the recent ones, did not star Johnny Fontane. Michael rapped on the window.

“It’s closed, Michael.”

He shook his head. He knocked harder. Before long, a bald man in a cowboy shirt and dungarees came into the lobby and mouthed that they were closed. Michael shook his head and knocked on the door again. The man came to the door. “Sorry, mister. Sundays all we got is the one show at seven-thirty.”

Michael motioned for the man to open the door, and he did.

“I understand,” Michael said. “It’s just that my wife and I are on a date, and this”—he turned and glanced at the movie poster—“Dirk Sanders, he’s just about her favorite movie star in the world, isn’t that right, honey?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.”

“Well, you can see it tonight. Seven-thirty.”

Michael looked at the man’s left hand. “You see, though, we need to be home by seven-thirty, and this, today, is our anniversary. Our fifth. You know how it is, right?”

“I’m the owner,” he said, “not a projectionist.”

“Which makes your time all the more worthwhile. I wouldn’t expect you to do a favor like this for a total stranger. You know how to operate the projector, though, am I right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Could I just have a word with you, then? Alone? Just for a second?”

The man rolled his eyes, but Kay could tell there was something in Michael’s cold stare that affected the man. He let Michael in. They exchanged some whispered words. Moments later, Michael and Kay sat in the middle of the theater as the movie started. “What did you say to him?”

“Turns out we have some mutual friends.”

A few minutes in, as the lead characters literally bumped into each other in a Technicolor soundstage version of Paris, the theater owner brought them two sodas and a bucket of fresh popcorn. The man and the woman in the movie took an instant dislike to each other, signaling the dull inevitability of their falling in love. Soon Kay and Michael began making out in the dark, like kids. They couldn’t leave, not after getting the owner to show the movie just for them. They kept at it. Things escalated. “Behold,” Kay whispered, grabbing his cock. “Wood.”

Michael burst out laughing.

“Shhh,” Kay said.

“We’re alone,” Michael said. “All alone.”

A year ago, one of the two men pacing near the ticket counter at Gate 10B of the Detroit City Airport was a barber on Court Street in Brooklyn who made book on the side, reporting to a guy who reported to a guy who reported to Pete Clemenza. The other one had been a goat farmer in Sicily, near Prizzi. In the intervening years, loyalty and battlefield promotions and a frank shortage of labor had caused them to come up through the ranks more swiftly than a person could in times of peace. The barber was third generation, with terrible Italian; the goatherd still struggled with English. Their flight to Las Vegas was boarding now. There was no sign of Fredo Corleone. The goatherd held a phantom telephone to his ear. The barber sighed and nodded. What choice did he have? He went to a pay phone and started dumping quarters into it.

“Service,” said the voice in Las Vegas. Rumor had it that the girls at the phone service, this one and the one in Brooklyn, were nieces of Rocco Lampone’s, all of them gorgeous, but no one ever saw them or knew for sure.

“This is Mr. Barber calling,” he said.

“Yes, sir. And your message, Mr. Barber?”

“Our luggage,” he said, “has been misplaced.” He almost said
lost,
but
lost
would have been taken as
killed.
“It won’t be on the scheduled flight.”

“Yes, sir. Is that all?”

Is that all?
When Don Corleone hears that Fredo’s new bodyguards lost him in a casino somewhere in the wilds of Detroit, yes, that’ll be all, all right. “Just say that me and Mr.—” The barber blanked.
Goat
in Italian was what? He put his hand over the phone. The goatherd was across the hall, getting coffee. “
Come si dice
‘goat’?”

“
La capra,
” said the goatherd, shaking his head.

As if, growing up on Court Street, the barber had ever seen a goat, had ever had an occasion to learn that fucking word. “Mr. Capra and me are looking for it. We hope to be on the next flight out, luggage and all.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Sandra Corleone parked her Roadmaster wagon on the grass near Francesca’s dormitory.

“Oh, Ma,” Francesca said. She slipped into her stylish new raincoat. “You’re not going to park here, are you?”

All the other cars were squeezed onto the pavement of the street and the loading zone.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sandra said, turning off the car and reaching into the backseat to wake Kathy. As if on cue, two other cars followed her lead. “People have to park somewhere.”

They opened the gate of the wagon, and Kathy loaded Francesca and Sandra up with boxes, which were all from the liquor store her mother’s fiancé owned. Most of the other kids had moving company boxes or steamer trunks. Kathy took only a table fan and Francesca’s Bakelite radio. “Someone has to get the door,” she said.

The front doors were wide open. Kathy punched the elevator for them. Already, their mother was drenched in sweat. She set her boxes down in the elevator. “I’m fine,” she said, too winded to say anything more. She was thirty-seven, ancient, and had gained a lot of weight since they’d moved to Florida.

“I can’t believe you’re making Ma carry the heavy stuff,” Francesca said.

“I’m not feeling that great.” Kathy smirked. “I can’t believe you’re wearing a raincoat.”

“You never know when it might rain,” Francesca said. Kathy knew full well it was the dress code. Francesca was wearing Capri pants. Female students in anything other than a dress were required to cover themselves. Most, Francesca had been told during orientation, chose raincoats. The dress code probably didn’t apply on moving day, but Francesca wasn’t taking any chances. She was the kind of person who followed rules.

When they got to Francesca’s room, Kathy set down the fan and the radio, flopped down on the bare twin bed, curled up, grabbed her abdomen, and moaned.

Francesca rolled her eyes. Because she rarely got cramps, she was skeptical about her sister’s ongoing problems with them. But complaining about it was as useless as Kathy was.

“Where are the sheets?” Sandra said.

“On the other bed,” Francesca said.

“Not those.” She pulled out a nail file and started slicing open boxes. Francesca made a trip by herself. When she got back upstairs the bed was made with pink sheets, and Kathy was propped up on the pillows from both beds, the fan trained on her, her eyes closed, a wet washcloth draped on her forehead, sipping a Coke through a straw, listening to jazz on the radio.

“Where’d you get the soda?”

“The dorm mother came by with them,” Sandra said. “To welcome you.”

“I said I was you,” Kathy murmured.

Francesca was, for a split second, furious. But it probably wasn’t a bad idea. It was just a soda. And as for Kathy’s pretending to be Francesca, it was efficient and would hardly cause trouble in the long run. Just like Kathy herself. “Thanks,” Francesca said.

Kathy waved a hand. “Don’t mention it.”

“I won’t. You going to share that Coke?”

“That’s Charles Mingus there.”

“Wonderful. You going to share that Coke?”

Kathy handed it to her. “Charles Mingus plays bass. Wild, huh?”

Francesca took out the straw and drank as much of the soda as she could, hoping to finish it, but the fizz in her nose overcame her. She handed the bottle back to her sister.

On the next trip down, her mother stuck her head into the common living room, grabbed a delicate-looking wooden chair, and motioned Francesca down a dark hall to the side door. Classes didn’t start until Tuesday, and, thanks to her mother, Francesca had already broken two cardinal rules from orientation
—Never leave the side door open
and
Never take furniture from the living room.
Other girls and their parents immediately benefited from this, too, of course.

Her mother took three heavy boxes and could barely walk. Francesca set her load down on the steps to the side door, waiting for her mother to catch up.

“Why couldn’t you have gone to a girls’ school?” called Sandra Corleone, breathing heavily, pointing with her head toward the next building, where dozens of young men and their parents were moving in. Her mother was a loud talker. “Like your sister is?”

Her mother’s sundress was so drenched with sweat that in places Francesca could see her dark-colored bra and underpants. She was not a slim woman, but her underwear seemed unnecessarily gigantic. “How are you possibly going to unload Kathy’s stuff all by yourself?”

“Don’t worry about Kathy. She’ll be fine. You know, no one said the boys’ dormitory would be right next door.” Her voice grew even louder. “I don’t like the looks of that.”

People were looking, Francesca was sure. Francesca was tempted to correct her and say
men’s dormitory,
except that that would have made things worse.