“After all the bullshit Forlenza fed the Commission about Narducci’s activities in Sicily,” Hagen said, “I’m surprised he didn’t send his own men to do the job. Or at least to contact Don Cesare.”
“Forlenza will just say that Geraci’s from Cleveland-his godson, et cetera-and was going to Sicily on business anyway, which is true. It’s suspicious, but Don Forlenza made no secret of it. He told the Commission that this was how he was going to handle it. Brilliant. It looked like he had nothing to hide.”
“And you’re still certain they do have something to hide.” They meaning Forlenza, Geraci, and Russo.
“What in this life is certain?” Michael said. “I’m certain enough.”
“If it was anyone else,” Hagen said, “I’d say be careful.”
Michael smiled. “If it came from anyone else, I’d take offense.”
“I think I have an idea,” Tom said, “about how to handle things with Russo.”
He was interrupted by Connie banging the dinner gong as if she were seeking rescue, not serving up the evening meal.
When they got to the table, it was a bruised and chastised Victor who led them in grace.
Francesca Van Arsdale had spent all morning making a picnic lunch to surprise her husband, but when she and little Sonny showed up at his office, Billy grumbled about all the tourists on the Mall and how hot it was before he finally thanked her for the gesture and agreed to go. “It’s not as if I’m too busy to get away,” he said.
Billy had probably begun working at the Justice Department with unrealistically high hopes, although, after seven miserable months on the job, he still seemed unready to admit that to himself, much less to his wife. He was only two years out of law school, Francesca reminded him, but that only launched him on some litany of names she didn’t know-people who, like Billy, had been president of law review at Harvard and what glamorous and/or lucrative things those strangers were doing two years later.
“Exactly,” she said, “and someday some other, younger presidents of law review will have you on the same kind of list. ‘Do you know what Senator Van Arsdale-’”
“C’mon, Francie.”
“‘-was doing two years out of law school? Working for the United States Justice Department, that’s what, and not just under any attorney general. No! Under Daniel Brendan Shea! The greatest attorney general in American history and our, y’know, thirty-seventh president or whatever number he’d be.’”
Sonny was jumping around in the grass of the Mall doing the famous Monkey Dance from Jojo, Mrs. Cheese and Annie. Except for the gold football helmet bobbing on the boy’s head, it was a dead-on impression of Jojo. Tourists paused to watch.
“When did he learn to do that?” Billy whispered, spreading out the blanket.
“It’s from TV,” she said. Months ago was the answer. He frowned, either confused or disapproving, Francesca didn’t want to know which. Sonny finished, and bystanders applauded. Francesca firmly told him he couldn’t do an encore like Jojo, because it was time to eat.
They sat down as a family. Why couldn’t he appreciate this? she thought. Why couldn’t he accept this as the point of life and take pleasure in it? Between his unhappiness at work-which he talked about all the time-and their joint unhappiness about losing the baby-which they never really talked about-she was feeling more and more like they had to get out of this godforsaken city. Billy had been so good to her from the time she’d found out about the affair until the night they’d lost the baby, but he’d barely touched her since then. The only time they’d tried to make love, he couldn’t get hard and she was too fragile herself to make it happen for him. He rolled off her, onto his back, and used his hand. When he came, she started crying, though she was also strangely relieved. About half the nights since then, for no apparent reason, he’d spent the night on the couch with the TV test pattern on.
“You don’t understand, Francie,” Billy said. “It’s complicated.” He’d folded several napkins to sit on, even on top of the blanket, so he wouldn’t get his seersucker suit dirty. “All day I sit on my duff in the library,” he said, slapping said duff, “checking other people’s citations. Some of the lawyers who wrote those things are my age, and most of them wouldn’t know a decent English sentence from-I don’t know, the Monkey Dance, but-”
“Monkey Dance!” Sonny cast aide his bologna sandwich, grabbed his football helmet, and shot up, dancing. Billy didn’t even budge. Francesca got up, got Sonny under control, and, with the minor concession of allowing him to keep the helmet on, got him back to eating lunch.
“When I was on law review,” Billy said, “I had people doing this kind of job for me.”
It took her a second to realize he meant the work in the law library, not her efforts to subdue a four-year-old with a Monkey Dance fixation. Billy had people for that, too: her. A normal, healthy four-year-old boy was wearying enough without having to contend with a whiny husband, too. She’d only been eleven when her father died. She knew she’d probably built him up into someone who never existed, but she hadn’t even the vaguest memory of him whining to his wife, not once. “Well, you’re not on law review anymore,” Francesca said, “are you?”
“How can I talk to you about this? You didn’t even finish college. Nobody in your family ever did.”
“That’s ridiculous. Aunt Kay did, and so did Uncle Tom and Aunt Theresa.”
Billy laughed. “They’re not blood, though, are they? Other than Theresa, they’re not even Italian.”
Francesca would have let him have it-verbally, at least-if Sonny hadn’t been sitting right there. “My twin sister finished, and she’s getting her doctorate. My brother Frankie is doing great at Notre Dame, and-”
“Your brother Frankie plays football. What’s the toughest class he’s taking, Theory of Gym Class?”
“That’s low.” Frankie was in fact a phys ed major and had never been good in school. She was proud he was doing as well as he was, even in a gut major. “I’d have finished my degree, too, if you hadn’t-” Sonny was devouring his sandwich now, but Francesca didn’t want to risk saying anything in front of him. “You know.”
Billy shrugged. “Takes two to tango,” he said. “If you took exception to that, you had your chance to have it taken care of.”
A look of horror crossed his face; he immediately realized what he’d said.
“Taken care of!” she said.
“I’m sorry!” He reached out to her, and she pushed his arm away. He spent most of the rest of lunch apologizing. He was a talker. Eventually, he wore her down.
“It’s the job,” Billy said. “It’s gotten to the point that it’s affecting the way I am with you. I need to be making more of a difference in the world, and what it comes down to, I guess, is that I’m not going to be happy until I am. Can you understand that?”
She told him she did understand, as she’d told him before, and told him he really needed to talk to the attorney general and make his unhappiness known, as she’d been saying for weeks. She didn’t understand why he wouldn’t do it. She was raised to believe that if you had a problem, you went to the man at the top. Billy had been raised with all the advantages, so she’d have thought he’d believe in that, too. All she could figure was maybe he was intimidated by Daniel Brendan Shea, though that, too, mystified her. Danny Shea, a pale and scrawny version of his brother, possessed the startled, blinking manner of a man whose eyeglasses have just been yanked from his face, though in fact his eyesight, if not his vision, was perfect.
When they finished eating, he kissed Sonny and then told Francesca that he’d do it: if it was what she wanted, he’d march straight to the attorney general’s office and see if he could talk to Danny Shea.