The 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.
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.
Nick heaved a sigh and sat.
Eddie Paradise took his place against the wall, between the bodyguards and the bar. He folded his arms, exasperated-looking, like a man dragged along while his wife shopped for clothes.
Michael clasped his hands behind his back again and walked very slowly over to Geraci’s table. The Don had been hit in the face all those years ago by that police captain, and in certain half-light the plastic surgery he’d had to repair his cheek and jaw seemed to be sagging, almost falling away.
Geraci was nearly a foot taller than Michael. Seated, he wasn’t all that much shorter. Nick could grab him. Dive at him, tackle him. The bodyguards couldn’t open fire. They couldn’t be sure they’d hit Nick and not Michael.
“You were close, Fausto,” Michael said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I mean, you really almost did it. Years in caves and hovels, on the run, and yet against all goddamned odds, my former friend, you almost did it. I bet you could almost taste it.”
He paced back and forth past Geraci, but Nick ruled out grabbing him. What would that accomplish, in the end? He could punch the guy a couple times, but eventually they’d get separated, and that would be the end of things. Like most touchy situations, there was no way to get out of this with physical violence.
Michael stopped pacing and faced him now. “I can only imagine how painful this must be for you, Fausto. It’s tragic, to come this close to regaining everything you’ve lost and in the same maneuver gaining everything you ever wanted. And have it all come down to this.”
Momo still wouldn’t look up. He’d been brought here to prove his loyalty by killing Nick—just as Nick had had to kill Tessio. But the Roach couldn’t have looked more like a guilty man. He was already blowing any chance he had of proving himself.
Neri was breathing hard and looked eager to see the killing start.
Eddie looked at his watch.
The bodyguards looked willing.
“For all our differences, Don Michael,” Nick said, “I had a higher opinion of you than this. You’re acting with your emotions and not your intellect. What I negotiated for you with our friends on the Commission gives you exactly what you’ve always said you wanted, to the letter, and it comes with a pledge from me to the other Dons that no harm will come to you or your family. It made me sick to give up on having my revenge against you, but I did so, because it’s the best thing for everybody. Nobody loses, nobody dies, nobody’s dealing with messy murder cases that might be surprisingly easy to pin on you. Or friends of yours. I’m not some bloodthirsty feudal lord, Michael, and neither are you. We’re modern men, modern businessmen. You’ll walk away from this thing a millionaire, Michael, a perfectly legitimate American millionaire. And when the dust settles, I will personally put a million dollars of my own money into the charity that bears your father’s name.”
Michael remained standing before Nick Geraci, silent and still, regarding the most talented man he’d ever had in his employ—the most talented, it would turn out, that he’d ever have.
“If you kill me,” Nick said, “everything you’ve ever wanted is a lie. You’ll be choosing revenge over what you’ve yearned for. Kill me, and you’ll never get out of this thing of ours. Even as you stand here, you know I’m right. If you don’t take this way out, the path I made for you, then from this day forward, every time you think you’re out, you’ll hear my voice in your head, telling you that you blew it. Kill me, and at your very core, you’re a liar and a hypocrite. And it doesn’t matter if anyone outside this room ever knows that, because you’ll know. In just a single puff of gunsmoke, your whole life will be reduced to one big fucking lie.”
Michael shook his head in what seemed like wonder. “You don’t understand,” he said.
Geraci waited out a long pause. “All right,” he said. “Enlighten me.”
“Your friend in New Orleans,” Michael said, “is in the process of setting you up as the fall guy in the plot to assassinate President Shea. There are pictures of you with Juan Carlos Santiago in New Orleans, evidence placing you both in Louisiana and in Miami at incriminating times and in incriminating places. I don’t know all the details, but I do know one thing: the government’s whole case is leading to you.”
This was, Geraci was all but certain, a bluff. “That’s going to be pretty easy to get out of,” Geraci said. “Since none of it is true.”
“I had a higher opinion of you,” Michael said, “than this. You’ve got half a law degree. The truth, as you must know, bows down before what the government can prove in court.”
Momo Barone lurched off his barstool, and Al Neri punched him in the face, and the Roach sat back down.
Eddie looked over as if what happened was a mother giving a misbehaving brat a flat-palmed swat to the bottom.
The bodyguards shifted from foot to foot but kept their guns pointed directly at Nick Geraci’s heart.
“Believe what you want,” Geraci said. “You’re just saying what you’re saying so that if what happens here gets out, you’ll sound noble. You’ll sound like you didn’t have any choice.” Nick forced a smile. “And that’s fine. Because in your heart you’ll always know otherwise.”
Michael closed his eyes and let out a long breath and looked like he was about to speak but did not. Instead, he looked over at Neri.
Neri handed the pistol to Momo the Roach, butt first, then pulled out that old steel flashlight and used it to shove the Roach up to the table. Momo, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth, aimed the gun—a .44—at Nick’s head.
“Good-bye, Fausto,” Michael said. “By the way, would you like to hazard a guess,” he asked, “what his last name is?”
“Whose?” Nick said.
Michael headed for the door and pointed toward the mod Sicilian with the M12.
“This loyal man in my employ,” Michael said, “who was sent here at your request.” He glanced back at Momo. “You and a friend of yours.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nick said.
Michael unlocked the door, shook his head, and then extended an arm, cuing the young Sicilian.
“My name,” he said, “it is Italo Bocchicchio.”
Geraci told himself that the shiver that went through him was just a tremor, and he regained his composure as swiftly as he’d lost it.
“Pleased to meet you,” Geraci said. “Call me Nick. Everyone does.” He smiled. “Everyone except the brother-murdering cocksucker you’ve chosen to work for.”
Michael slammed the door behind him.
The other bodyguard—presumably, not Greco’s man but rather a part of the Corleone Family as well—again clicked the dead bolt.
“In the face,” said Al Neri.
Sweat was pouring from Momo’s helmet of hair. His eyes shone with fear and self-pity, and his hands were shaking.
In this same situation, Sally Tessio had dropped to his knees and called Nick a pussy—a kindness, trying to make it easier for him to shoot. But the Roach had already screwed up. He had already shown weakness, and he thus was already believed to be the traitor. For all Nick knew, he’d already confessed. With utter clarity, Nick saw his way out of this.
“On your knees,” Neri said.
Nick obeyed.
The Roach pressed the gun unsteadily against Geraci’s forehead.
Why bring this Bocchicchio into this at all unless the presumption was that Momo wouldn’t have the nerve to do it? Unless he’d been promised he could do the job when the Roach failed?
Nick looked up from the gun barrel between his eyes and at Momo Barone’s bleeding face. “Roach,” he whispered. “Give me the gun, Roach.”
Momo was almost imperceptibly taken aback, but enough so that Nick was able to throw a quick left jab to the gut. The Roach gasped and doubled over, and Nick grabbed the .44 away with his right hand and fumbled with it and started firing, blindly in the general direction of the two bodyguards, and the air was filled with the sound of silenced bullets, and there was a burning in Nick’s leg and throat, and he could feel the warmth of his own hot blood on his skin.
He managed to stand.
As Al Neri was winding up to swing the flashlight, Geraci fired the .44 into Neri’s chest, and the ex-cop flew backward as if he’d been shot from a cannon.
Nick turned toward the bodyguards. The one with the .38 was hit in the hip, not dead but down. The Sicilian was shot but getting up now, swiveling the gun in Nick’s direction. The Sicilian let fly a few seconds of fire, but the .44 caught him in the throat and he was dead.
Nick Geraci crumpled to the floor, disoriented and in agonizing pain, aware of his vision blurring, the cold tile floor, willing himself to fight off unconsciousness, to fight off the darkness, and he tried to push up with his right leg, but there was nothing there, he had no right leg, it had been shot off, and the shard of thighbone buckled as he tried to plant it against something and white pain hit him like boiling water everywhere.
“Why me?” he heard Eddie Paradise say. “Why does this fucking shit always happen to me?”
Someone—it must have been Eddie—walked out from what must have been behind the bar, and Nick heard the Roach crying and Eddie sigh. “Ah, shit,” Eddie said, and fired.
There was no more crying.
Geraci took a deep breath and gritted his teeth and tried to see past the white light and the dizziness and managed to prop himself up very slightly on one arm. His eyes couldn’t focus on anything.
“Nothing personal, pally,” Eddie said.
“They’ll never,” Nick said, “give you. An even break.”
“Ain’t that what they say not to give a sucker?” Eddie said.
The pain was too much, but Nick clenched his eyes closed and took a breath and held it. And he could feel the darkness and the cold coming over him now, like a soft hood.
“That’s my point, Ed,” Nick said, collapsing backward, to the floor. “To them. You’ll always just be—”
“Aw, shut up,” Eddie said, and fired.