The Godfather Returns (48 page)

BOOK VIII

1961–1962

Chapter 28

S
O IT WAS
that Michael Corleone and Nick Geraci began their final year in business together in a state of perfect Cold War stalemate.

They’d each attacked the other and thought, mistakenly, that the other didn’t know.

They were both frozen by a secret they thought they were harboring, wary at all times of tipping their hands.

They might have been eager to kill each other now, too, but they couldn’t.

It wasn’t safe for Geraci to make a move against Michael (or Russo, for that matter) without the blessings of the Commission, which would be essentially impossible without being
on
the Commission. Just as important, killing Michael Corleone might also mean killing the most powerful army of on-the-take politicians, judges, union officials, cops, fire marshals, building inspectors, coroners, newspaper and magazine editors, TV news producers, and strategically placed clerk-typists the world has ever known. No one but Michael and Hagen knew everyone the Family had on the payroll and everything about how that operation worked, and Hagen seemed incorruptible. Michael had toyed with Hagen’s dignity, but those two needed each other the way old married people do. Even if Geraci was wrong about this, he was right: the risk of trying to flip Hagen was too great. Maybe one chance in a thousand it’d work, nine hundred ninety-nine it’d get Geraci killed. Even if Geraci did get rid of Michael, it was hard to imagine Hagen—out in Nevada, not even Italian, no chance of taking over the operation—saying,
Okay, Nick, here’s how this thing works.
Even the indirect access Geraci now had to that machine of connections was too valuable to jeopardize.

As for Michael, he needed Geraci far too much to kill him. Who else could oversee this business in Cuba? Michael needed someone who’d pick the right men, get the job done, and yet after the job was done be disposable: Geraci to a T.

More important, who else would, during this transition phase, seem like a credible boss to the other Dons? Kill Geraci now, and Michael would kill any chance he had of keeping the pledge he’d made to his wife and his father.

His ex-wife. His dead father.

No matter. Divorce and death are terrible things, but a man who uses them to break a promise cannot consider himself a man of honor.

Nick Geraci hadn’t noticed his shaking problem until the day Michael Corleone told him he was the new Boss. It didn’t completely go away after that, but it was barely noticeable, easily explained away (chills, coffee jitters) until that summer, about the time he first went out to New Jersey with Joe Lucadello (whom he believed to be “Agent Ike Rosen”) to visit the swampy tract of land Geraci had found when he and Fredo had been planning Colma East. Whatever the merits of Fredo’s plan, the land had been a steal. Geraci had used the barn for various storage needs and otherwise sat on the property. Anytime he wanted to, he could sell it for twice what he paid.

They all drove there together, Donnie Bags at the wheel and Carmine Marino, the baby-faced zip, also up front. Rosen wore an eye patch and didn’t seem Jewish at all. He’d brought another agent, a tight-jawed WASP whose name was supposedly Doyle Flower. The same congressman who’d told Geraci that Michael never met with anyone on the presidential transition team had spoken about all this with Director Albert Soffet, who’d apparently confirmed that Rosen and Flower were indeed CIA field agents. Nonetheless, Geraci used a trail car, with Eddie Paradise and some muscle, just as a precaution.

They turned down the rutted, muddy road to the barn. Rogue garbage trucks and private citizens had for years been using this place as a dump. The property was pocked with stoves, toilets, and the rusting hulks of cars and farm machinery. That island of debris in the scum pond was a portion of what had once been Ebbets Field.

“Good place to plant your stiffs, I bet,” Rosen said.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Geraci said, which was true. Any recent bodies on the property would have been the work of civilians. Mob guys out here—Stracci’s people, for the most part—knew who owned the place and respected that. “We’re the best boogeyman the cops ever invented. Every time you guys find a body rolled up in a carpet, we get blamed.”

“We’re not cops,” Rosen said.

“My granny had one of those things,” Flower said, meaning Donnie’s colostomy bag.

“You get used to it,” Donnie said. “Probably like your friend’s pirate thing there.”

“Did you shit?” Rosen said. “It smells like shit in here.”

Donnie rounded a bend so hard a flume of mud shot up and was about to say something stupid when Carmine interrupted him. “Is not his shit, that smell. Is New Jersey.”

Flower and Geraci both laughed, which cooled things off. Carmine was a born leader. He was almost thirty but looked ten years younger. He was related to the Bocchicchios on his mother’s side and was also a godson of Cesare Indelicato, the Palermitan Don who’d been Geraci’s partner in the narcotics business from the beginning. The kid had originally come over to be a hostage during the first meeting of all the Families. Five years later, and he was already running a crew of fellow zips over on Knickerbocker Avenue.

Two cars were parked behind the barn. It was broad daylight, but they were both bobbing with illicit coitus.

“The only real problem we have out here,” Geraci said, “as far as the locals go, is this.”

The trail car pulled up behind them. Only Eddie Paradise got out.

“You’re shaking as much as those cars are,” Rosen said. “You okay?”

“Donnie and his fucking air-conditioning,” Geraci said, though it hadn’t been particularly cold in the car. He got out of the car. Moving around helped make the shaking stop.

Carmine got out, too. In one fluid motion, he drew a pistol from the waistband of his pants and fired three hollow-point slugs into the barn siding.

The trespassing cars began to lurch in place; inside, the terrified fornicators clawed at their strewn-about clothing. Carmine fired another shot.

“Four in a row into the broad side of a barn,” Flower said. “Impressive start, friend. I should warn you, though. The tests do get harder.”

Carmine waved as the cars sped away.

They all had a good laugh, even the agents. Geraci’s shaking had stopped.

“Last time he did that,” Donnie said, “the fuckers got stuck in the mud. We went to give ’em a push, but they got out and ran. That was one of the cars getting chopped when a friend of ours got pinched, which I don’t know if you can call a car abandoned by sex perverts stolen.”

Momo the Roach had happened to be in his chop shop when it got raided. He was now doing a stretch for grand theft.

“Tits on that girl in the Ford like no tomorrow,” Agent Flower said.

“Tits like that, and tomorrow can go fuck itself,” Carmine said, by way of agreement.

Rosen nodded, a faraway look in his eyes, muttering, “Not bad, not bad,” and it took Geraci a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about the redhead’s tits but rather sizing up the property.

“How’s it look?” Geraci said.

Rosen kept nodding, too lost in thought to answer. Geraci showed them into the barn. Rosen grunted in appreciation. It only looked dilapidated from the outside. Inside, the building had been fortified by the guy who fabricated armored cars for the Corleone Family.

“Anyone have any paper?” Rosen asked. He held up a pencil.

Flower pulled out a little pad of paper from his shirt pocket.

“Bigger.” Rosen drummed the pencil in midair with a speed Buddy Rich might envy.

“We got a bakery box,” Eddie Paradise said.

Rosen frowned. When he did, you could practically see in there, whatever was behind the patch. “Needs to be
paper.
”

“Sorry,” Eddie said. “I don’t write things down. That way I don’t lose nothin’.”

Geraci looked in the car and found Bev’s biology notebook. “How’s this?”

Rosen thanked him. He sat on the floor of the barn and drew plans to convert the inside into a gymnasium. He seemed to draw as fast as he could move his hand. He went back outside, found a spot where a barracks could go, and he drew those plans, too. Inspired no doubt by the sight of Carmine and Donnie Bags on the ridge above the scum pond, shooting seagulls and rats, Rosen walked off some measurements and sketched a rifle range.

Donnie was missing everything, but Carmine looked like Buffalo Bill out there, vaporizing gulls in explosions of blood-pinked feathers. Other than those who’d been cops or in the war, most of the men in this business, Geraci included, really couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. The shooting that needed to be done got done at close range. Geraci had never even heard of anyone who’d been killed with a rifle, which was probably what this job down in Cuba would take. Who ever heard of a Mob sniper? That said, who better to go down to Cuba and whack an avowed enemy of freedom than Carmine Marino?

“Damnedest thing you ever saw, eh?” Flower said, elbowing Geraci and nodding at his partner’s manic drawing style.

Rosen handed him Bev’s notebook. The drawings were miraculously neat, given how fast he’d done them. They were easily good enough to build from. The design of the barracks was simple and clean.

“I’m a frustrated architect,” Rosen said, as if in apology.

Geraci said he had a crew that could knock this job out in three days. Rosen frowned and said it was a lot more complicated than that. It turned out there were all kinds of government regulations that made that impossible, for money reasons (Geraci could get it done, but he had the right to make a buck in the process) just as much as security.

That was when Geraci felt sure this whole thing was for real. These clowns really did work for the government.

Rosen took the notebook back and paged through it like a spinster fogging the window of a bridal shop. “I don’t know, though,” Rosen said. “If only the locals weren’t such a problem.”

“Problem how?” Geraci said.

“Taking away the place people shitcan their most inconvenient trash or go to fuck their babysitters,” Flower answered, “definitely gets noticed in a community.”

“Especially in New Jersey,” said Carmine. He’d come back to the car to get more ammo.

“I’m
from
New Jersey, sir,” Rosen said.

“So then you know,” Carmine said, shrugging and slamming the trunk shut.

“I like you,” Flower said, patting Carmine on the back. “Just the kind of man we need.”

“My back?” Carmine said. “Don’t touch it no more.”

“He’s funny about that,” Geraci said. “The back patting.”

“Funny,” Carmine said. “Many dead men are laughing about this, I think.”

“Now I’m even more sure,” Flower said. “Mr. Marino, you’re at the very top of my list. Between all those dead rats and your attitude, you’re going to be hard to beat.”

Carmine smiled broadly and slapped Flower on the back, and Flower feinted a return slap that stopped short, and they both laughed like hell.

“Only Italian I ever saw who had a thing about being touched,” Rosen muttered, which made Geraci wonder if he was really Italian or if that was what someone who wasn’t Italian would say.

“The locals won’t be a problem,” Geraci said. “Trust me.”

The next day, a sign went up out by the highway, announcing an exclusive new subdivision.
DELUXE LOTS ON SALE JUNE
1962
! it read underneath. A year away. This should turn whatever curiosity the locals had into a plus. The anticipation might make it worth really developing the place—draining it, hiring lawyers and architects, bribing the planning commission: the usual subdivision drill, no different for a Mafia Don than anybody else.

That night at dinner Nick Geraci started shaking, enough to scare Barb and Bev. Charlotte wanted to call an ambulance. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Coffee jitters.” She said she thought he’d stopped. “That’s the problem,” he said. “I had an espresso at the club this afternoon.” Which he hadn’t. He concentrated on the movement of his hands and jaw as he ate, and the shaking stopped. But when it happened again in the morning, Char said if he didn’t go see a doctor she’d get a knife and stab him in the leg so he wouldn’t have any choice. He said he was fine, it’d pass. She went and got the biggest knife in the kitchen. He smiled and told her he loved her. She wagged it and said she was serious. “Me, too,” he said. He was. He held up his quavering hands. “Be a doll and dial him for me, huh?” Though the moment she set the phone back down he was fine.

His regular doctor prodded him with tools and questions, but he was stumped.

“I wonder if maybe it’s in your head,” he said. “Are you having a tough time at work? Pressure, stress, that sort of thing? Or at home, things okay there?”

“You think I’m a fucking nut, is that what you’re saying?”

He referred Geraci to a specialist.

“If
specialist
is just another word for shrink, I’ll be back, only not as a patient.”

The doctor said he certainly understood that.

The specialist was supposedly a world-famous neurologist and tiny, barely five feet tall. He diagnosed Geraci with a mild form of Parkinson’s disease, related to getting hit in the head all those times as a boxer and triggered by a serious concussion.

“I didn’t get hit in the head all that often,” Geraci said.

“You boxers are all the same,” the doctor said. “All you remember is what the other guy looked like. Tell me about that concussion, though. Pretty recent, right?”

Geraci hadn’t told the doctor a thing about the plane crash that had nearly killed him. “I guess so,” Geraci said. “If six years ago qualifies as recent.”

“What happened six years ago?”

“I fell down,” Geraci said. “Knocked myself cold. Damnedest thing.”

The doctor looked into Geraci’s eyes with his flashlight gizmo. “Fell down from where?” he asked. “The Empire State Building?”

“Something like that,” Geraci said.

From an upstairs window of the Antica Focacceria, Nick Geraci watched a wiry, moustached man—his friend and business partner Cesare Indelicato—cross the Piazza San Francesco, theoretically alone. The piazza was an oasis of light tucked deeply in a neighborhood of dark, narrow streets in the oldest part of Palermo.