When detectives questioned her about this, she was openly distraught. They arrested her and charged her with second-degree murder.
Book IX. Summer 1962
Chapter 32
CARMINE MARINO’S ARREST turned out to be the international incident that everyone involved with his trip to Cuba had feared.
The scope of what the CIA was trying to do in Cuba came as a shock to President Shea. Publicly, he made it clear that the United States would cooperate in any way it could to bring Marino, an Italian national, to justice (for its part, the Italian government said that it had several Carmine Marinos on record, but none matching the description of the notorious killer). Marino had been living in the United States for six years. The Cuban dictator said that he held President Shea personally responsible. The Soviet premier issued no public statement on the matter, but he did come to Havana for the double’s lavish funeral.
Privately, President Shea spent many long hours meeting with his national security team and screaming at his CIA director. But before the president got the chance to confront his father with his suspicions of the old man’s involvement in the matter, the Ambassador had a massive stroke. He’d live for several more years, but he’d had his last conversation.
Marino’s affiliation with what the newspapers had never stopped calling “the Corleone crime family” was easy enough to document. Even the papers still controlled by the Family had little choice but to follow suit with their competitors and investigate the many rumors that the young gangster had not acted alone.
In public, the attorney general scoffed at any notion of a connection between the federal government and what he was now calling “the Mafia.” In a private meeting with his staff, he unveiled an aggressive new plan to prosecute organized crime. Billy Van Arsdale was irreplaceable, he told them, but their efforts would be dedicated to his memory.
The FBI director had not forgotten his meeting with Tom Hagen many years before, when the future congressman had produced that grainy black-and-white image of the director on his knees, fellating his top assistant. His current situation gave grimly comic new meaning to being caught between a rock and a hard place. Still, the director had no choice, for now, but to go along with the attorney general’s bold initiative.
At the United Nations, the usual sorts of intermediaries-small countries with good educational systems and disbanded armies-were dispatched to conduct negotiations to deport or extradite Carmine Marino either to the supposed country of his birth or to the United States, where he’d been months away from becoming a citizen. At minimum, the negotiators wanted to ensure that Marino was given a swift and fair trial in Cuba. The Cuban government made a big show of meeting with these men, but Marino was of most use to Cuba where he was: safely imprisoned, the sword of justice suspended indefinitely over his bare neck.
Whether Marino was tortured remains to this day a matter that can spark debate. But by all accounts, he never told anyone anything.
Soon, other crises, including another, more ominous one between the United States and Cuba, shoved the assassination of the dictator’s double and its thorny aftermath off the pages of the world’s newspapers. It reemerged on the front page of the official state newspaper of Cuba when Carmine Marino tried to escape and was shot. Few American newspapers ran the story anywhere close to the front. It barely rated a mention on TV. In no case was the official story questioned.
Concealed in a tunnel underneath Madison Square Garden, two hours before Johnny Fontane’s sold-out concert, Michael Corleone, in a new but classically styled tuxedo, waited for his consigliere. Michael lit a cigarette with his brother’s old lighter. This was, he thought, the problem with being early. Waiting.
Michael’s return to New York had been rumored for months. The men in his and other Families wanted him back. And why not? Those who stayed on Michael’s good side got rich. But it wasn’t just those men who engaged in speculation about Michael’s next move. The public was just as intrigued. The rumors were reported by every newspaper in the city. He had, to his horror, become something of a folk hero. Hundreds of crimes were rumored to be his doing, and he’d never once been charged with any of them. Thugs like Louie Russo and Emilio Barzini were gone, and Michael was still kicking. Most of the Dons in America had been arrested in upstate New York, and Michael-who, common sense decreed, must have been there-wasn’t seen within a thousand miles of the place. Brilliant men in his own Family-Sally Tessio, Nick Geraci-had questioned his authority and were no longer around to question it further.
He had also, not incidentally, grown into his good looks. His suits were exquisitely tailored. His hair was as perfect and his teeth were as white as the president’s. He was a war hero. He flew his own airplane. If he said Jump, even an icon of cool like Johnny Fontane would say How high? He’d withstood the grief of losing his two likable brothers. He’d loved and lost, twice, and managed to go on. Barely a day went by without the newpapers mentioning or picturing the progress of his new romance with the glamorous Tony award-winning actress Marguerite Duvall. She lived in New York now. Only a matter of time before he did, too, right?
For savvy New Yorkers, there was another tantalizing matter, the legendary ability of people like Michael Corleone to make urban neighborhoods safer than small Lutheran towns in Iowa. All over the city, developers tried to figure out how to give away property to him, knowing they’d make it up when everything around it appreciated.
Michael heard Tom Hagen call his name.
Tom left his bodyguards with Michael’s and came down the tunnel alone. They embraced.
“You ready?”
Michael nodded. “It’s just dinner, right?”
“Just dinner,” Tom said. “Right. It’s this way.”
They headed toward what was ordinarily the locker room of the basketball team that would come to play the New York Knicks, where the heads of the Five Families of New York and their respective consiglieres were meeting for a catered, celebratory dinner. For the first time, all four of the other Dons-Black Tony, Leo the Milkman, Fat Paulie Fortunato, and the newest one, Ozzie Altobello, who’d taken over for the late Rico Tattaglia, who’d died of natural causes-were friends of the Corleones.
“C’mon, Mike.” Tom put an arm around him. “Everything’s going to be all right. You tried to do things that had never been done. You tried to do the impossible, and you almost did it. Damn close. You can’t kick yourself over it.”
“Do I look like I’m kicking myself over it?”
“Not to the untrained eye.” Tom squeezed his shoulder, in the same tender way Vito Corleone had when he was asking for a favor. “You’re the sort of man who only pays attention to what he doesn’t have. Which is what makes you a great man, but there comes a time when you have to step back and appreciate what you do have.”
Michael was tempted to say that there wasn’t anything he had that he really wanted. But that was wrong. He knew that. He had two great kids, a brother and a sister who loved him. The memories of a happy childhood. The will to regroup and try again. Untold riches, in the greatest country on earth, which practically demands that a person reinvent himself.
Tom let his arm drop. They were on the threshold of where the dinner would be.
“If he’s out there,” Tom said, “we’ll find him.” He did not say Geraci’s name. It was unspeakable now. “No one can hide forever.”
Michael said that he wasn’t so sure. They’d both heard stories of Mafiosi in Sicily who’d gone underground and weren’t heard from for twenty or even thirty years, and America was a lot bigger place than Sicily.