The Godfather's Revenge (53 page)

It was getting dark. The restaurant was supposedly somewhere not far from the northeastern shore. He stopped a slim, almost-pretty woman, light brown hair but clearly Italian, probably about thirty, and asked for directions.

“Where
you
from?” she said, as if she expected the answer to involve some other planet.

“Cleveland,” he heard himself say. Why, he couldn’t have said.

“What are you doing here, Cleveland?” She had abnormally small eyes. Staten Island was already giving him the creeps. There was supposedly a dump someplace out here that was visible from space, just like the Great Wall of China. The Great Dump of Staten Island.

“It’s Open-Borders Week, right here in the USA,” Nick said. “It was in all the papers, lady.”

“Really?” she said.

“No,” he said. “You know where this joint is or not?”

“What difference does it make? They’re closed on Mondays, Cleveland. Hey, you got something wrong with your hand or what?”

He hadn’t noticed the tremors.

“Look,” he said, “I’m supposed to meet my wife outside this place.” A lie, but he figured the mention of a wife would shut down any part of this that the woman thought was flirtation. “She gave me directions, I lost ’em, and now I’m asking you nice and gentlemanly for your help, but—”

“Touchy, Cleveland,” she said.

He thought she might have meant
touché.

But she gave him the directions and—to his surprise, given the source—they got him there. Even by his standards, he was early: about an hour.

The door to Jerry’s Chop House was locked. But then again, it was Monday, he was early, and he wasn’t from here.

Spooked a little by what was striking him as this insular island world, Geraci did not want to call attention to himself, either by walking around and around the block or, worse, loitering outside the door of the restaurant—this seemed like precisely the sort of place they’d run you off to jail and charge you with mopery. There was a bar across the street, but its front was brick and glass blocks, and he wouldn’t have been able to see out, to know when either Frank Greco or the Sicilian bodyguard showed. There was a little bookstore, but he lost track of time and sometimes space in bookstores.

He headed down the block to find a phone booth and burn off some of the time that way. He’d been away from his family so punishingly long, it was second nature to travel with plenty of change, which he carried in a hand-tooled leather pouch he’d bought back in Taxco.

He went through the complicated ring pattern, and Charlotte picked up when she was supposed to.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “About what happened. About what it’s done to our family.”

“Is there anything wrong?”

The television was on in the background. It sounded like news or maybe bowling. He had not set foot in this, his house, since…He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about how soon he might be there again, either.

“No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.” He was afraid to say anything that was optimistic. He’d never been quite this close to it all being over before. He leaned his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. “It’s fine.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said. “I love you.”

“I’m not fishing for a compliment,” he said, “but
proud
?”

There was a long pause, and tinny music from the TV. A cigarette ad.

“It’s not about the adjectives,” Charlotte finally said.

She’d also said this when he’d finally let her read the first draft of
Fausto’s Bargain,
and she’d been right.

“Don’t be sorry, OK?” Charlotte said. “Do your work and come home, and the things that are messed up, we’ll fix. I’m fine. The girls are fine. We’re all in this together. We’ve had our setbacks, but in for a dime, in for a dollar. Isn’t that what people say?”

“It’s what they say,” Nick said, “but in most of life’s tough situations, it’s not what people generally do.”

“Well, your family isn’t quote-unquote people,” she said. “We’re just us.”

“Justice,” he whispered.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I love you, too,” he said. “I gotta go, but warm up my side of the bed, will you?”

He hung up and stared at the phone. He wasn’t up to any more calls. What he’d have liked to do was find a gym and pummel someone, some fast, cocky kid, maybe one who started out laughing at the shaky old man. Or better yet, one who reminded Nick of himself at that age.

Nick did not want to think about his father, dead, and how he died, and the funeral he hadn’t dared to attend. But he could not afford to forget it, either.

He found a Woolworth’s and he walked around the aisles and every few minutes he popped outside and looked down the street and when he didn’t see them, he went back inside, and every few times outside he’d walk back down and check the door at Jerry’s Chop House, which remained locked. The street was just commercial enough that nobody seemed to be noticing him.

First to arrive was the bodyguard. He and Nick exchanged subtle, prearranged hand signs to confirm to one another who they were. Then Nick signaled him to stay back, just a little, for now. The bodyguard, like Nick, was a light-skinned, light-haired Sicilian. He wore a trendy-looking suit and Cuban-heeled boots and, even though it was dark now, gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. The outline of a shoulder-holstered machine pistol was barely visible through the bodyguard’s sport coat. Nick would have bet the kid was aping the style of some movie star, but he couldn’t have said which one. He hadn’t been to a movie in years.

Frank Greco arrived moments later, just as Nick was yet again tugging on the door at Jerry’s Chop House.

“The door’s locked,” Greco said. He had his
consigliere
and a bodyguard with him.

“Amazing powers of observation you’ve been blessed with, friend.”

They introduced each other. The Roach had been right about Greco’s cologne.

“It’s supposed to be open,” Greco said. “You did call and check,” he asked his
consigliere,
“right?”

“You want to be a boss?” Greco muttered to Nick. “Welcome to the glamorous world of it.” Greco folded his arms and took a deep breath and nodded toward the bar across the street, the one with the glass-block front, and they all followed his lead.

Inside, the place was narrower than it looked. An ancient-looking carved oak bar ran almost the length of one wall. The only other seating was two round, cheap laminated four-tops toward the front, next to a jukebox, which was playing Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness?” The bartender, a fat man wearing a Yankees cap, had been the only person in the joint.

The bodyguards stopped right inside the doorway.

“You got a back room or something?” asked Frank the Greek.

The bartender gestured expansively toward all the unoccupied tables and chairs. “It’s fucking Monday,” he said. “Sit wherever.”

“Watch your mouth, asshole,” said the bodyguard with Greco.

Geraci’s mod Sicilian looked over the top of his sunglasses, and Geraci shook his head. No need to overreact. Or react at all. It’s just a bartender, some hapless civilian.

The
consigliere
said he’d go make some calls about the situation across the street and left.

“No back room at all?” Greco asked.

“We got a john,” the bartender said, shrugging.

“We’ll just have a cocktail, how about?” Geraci said to Greco. “Then soon as they open Jerry’s, we’ll zip over there.”

“
Jerry’s
?” the bartender said. “Where you from? Jerry’s ain’t open on Mondays.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Geraci said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Greco looked slightly alarmed and ordered a scotch and soda.

Geraci got a red wine and took a seat over by the jukebox. Greco joined him.

Sam Cooke’s “Havin’ a Party” came on. It wasn’t either man’s favorite kind of music, but they had their minds on weightier matters. And it did provide some cover from eavesdroppers, electronic or otherwise.

Greco raised his glass.
“Salut’,”
he said.

“Salut’,”
Geraci said.

“Nick Geraci,” Greco said. “The man, the myth. At
my
table.”

The bodyguards had taken seats now, too, and seemed relaxed. Momo had been smart to push Nick to bring a man with him. And that M12 gave them the chance to shoot their way out of anything.

“Me, on the other hand…” Greco said, shaking his head. He pointed at his own reflection in a mirror on the wall. “Look at that old man,” he said. “When I was young I looked like a Greek god.” He took a sip of his drink. “Now I just look like a goddamned Greek.”

Geraci laughed politely. He and Frank Greco were about the same age.

“All the times I been to New York,” Greco said, “I’ve never been to Staten Island.”

“Nobody’s ever been here.”

“They will once that suspension bridge opens, though, right?” Greco said. He pointed vaguely in its direction. The towers would have been visible from here if the front had been plate glass instead of glass blocks.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Geraci said.

Next on the jukebox was Rufus Thomas’s “Walkin’ the Dog.”

“Eh,” Greco shrugged. “You never know. Tell you what, lot of history for us here, the Italians. Meucci invented the telephone here. In school, they teach you it was Alexander Graham Bell, but—”

“I know the story,” Nick said.

Greco looked surprised. “What are you, a reader?”

Nick took a deep breath, trying not to lose his patience. “I just know the story.”

Greco nodded. “Well, did you know Meucci and Garibaldi lived together? Not like faggots or nothing. Meucci was married, and Garibaldi apparently really liked going to the whores when he was here. But Garibaldi was between revolutions, or something, and came here for some reason. Because of his friend, I suppose.”

“Amazing,” Geraci said, his voice flat enough to cover the sarcasm. He’d read everything he could get his hands on about those two great, sad men, but they were hardly the topic of the day. “Look, let me cut to the last reel here. You wanted to see me about Don Stracci’s proposal?”

“I did,” he said. “I do.” He winced, as if from a stab of pain.

“You all right?” Nick said.

Frank the Greek rose and grabbed his crotch. “I have to take a leak,” he said, and headed toward the dark hallway in the back.

Nick glanced over and saw that at some point the bartender had slipped out.

Things started happening so fast, they started happening more slowly.

Geraci’s mod Sicilian stood up.

As if following his lead, the other bodyguard stood, too.

The needle dropped on “Night Train,” by James Brown and the Famous Flames.

Nick heard Greco’s cackling laughter. There was a glint of light down that dark hallway, and Nick got a glimpse of Greco heading not into the men’s room but outside into an alley.

Miami, Florida,
screamed James Brown.

A split second later, over the honking saxophones, Geraci heard the front door opening. He leaped to his feet, and as he was spinning around he saw that his Sicilian, who should have been guarding that door, who maybe even should have locked it, had pulled out the M12. The other bodyguard had a plain old .38 special drawn. Nick found himself looking down the silencers screwed onto both weapons. It was the man he’d brought as his own bodyguard who shouted at Nick Geraci to freeze.

And he did.

Dear God, don’t let me die in Staten Island,
Nick thought.
Dear God, don’t let me wind up in the goddamned biggest fucking landfill in this, our fallen world.

Through the door staggered Momo Barone, with a gun shoved in his back, and behind the gun was Al Neri.

Behind Neri was Eddie Paradise, who locked the front door behind them.

Footsteps came from the dark hallway in the back. Michael Corleone emerged into the light, his hands clasped behind him. He looked like a disappointed officer reviewing his troops.

Philadelphia!
screamed James Brown.
New York City, take me home!

“Hello, Fausto,” Michael said. He was the only man alive who called Nick by his given name.

“Hello, Don Corleone.”

And don’t forget New Orleans, the home of the blues.

Michael walked over to the jukebox and unplugged it.

Then he turned toward Nick and smiled. “Sit down, Fausto.”

Nick Geraci glanced at the M12 and the resolute body language of the young man training it on him. That, alone, pretty much ruled out making a run for it. Geraci’s mind raced for a solution. Under no circumstances would he beg or show weakness.