Molinari burst out laughing. Amazingly, a beat later, from the floor, so did Falcone. The bodyguards stopped. Geraci didn’t move.

“Kindergarten,” Molinari said. “That’s pretty funny.”

Falcone stood, rubbing his jaw. “Nice punch, O’Malley. Sittin’ down. Wow.”

“Instinct,” Geraci said. Narducci didn’t even say thank you. “Sorry. You all right?”

Falcone shrugged. “Forget about it.”

“What were you going to do,” Molinari said, “beat up an old man?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Falcone said, and now everyone laughed. Geraci took his seat, and the bodyguards took theirs. “I don’t give a fuck,” said Falcone. “Take it.”

The two visibly grateful waiters rushed to obey. The one with the dyed moustache even had the poise to return a moment later and refill everyone’s water glass.

“Blow their head off with what, Frank?” Forlenza asked.

“Figure of speech,” said Falcone, which got another big laugh.

Geraci had been looking for an opening, a chance to say what he’d come there to say, and this seemed like the time. He made eye contact with his godfather.

Forlenza nodded.

Again he cleared his throat as a call to order, and in the pause this created took a regally unhurried drink of water.

“Gentlemen,” Forlenza said. “Our guest unfortunately needs to go.” By which, everyone understood, he meant, should leave before certain things are discussed, not has somewhere else to be. “But he has come a long, long way, and before he leaves, he’d like to say a few words.”

Geraci, in addressing his superiors, stood. He thanked Don Forlenza and promised that his words would be few. “Though I am flattered to have been allowed at this table,” Geraci said, “Don Falcone is correct. This is not my place. As you point out”-indicating Falcone and thinking of Tessio, who always stressed the natural advantages of being underestimated-“I’m just someone’s wet-behind-the-ears soldato.” A lie, but one Falcone had initiated.

Narducci’s echolalia had grown so faint that this time Geraci couldn’t guess at what he said.

“The Corleone organization,” Geraci said, “is not, I assure you, a threat to any of you. Michael Corleone wants peace. He’s determined that this cease-fire become permanent and has taken measures to achieve it. He never had any intention of running Las Vegas. After three or four years in this interim location, the Corleone Family will relocate to Lake Tahoe. Actually, it will cease to exist. Our New York operation will continue in some form, but everything in Lake Tahoe will be run by Michael Corleone like the affairs of any American business magnate-Carnegie, Ford, Hughes, whomever.”

“Law school,” Narducci said, presumably triggered by whomever.

“The Corleone Family,” said Geraci, “will not in the future initiate any more members.” Tonight, in other words, to be construed as the pres-ent. “Michael Corleone will retire from our way of life, and he will do so in a manner that will both be respectful of other organizations and, if anyone chooses, also provide a model for any of us who wishes to take a similar path.” He pushed his chair in. “Gentlemen, unless you have any questions or concerns…?”

He waited a moment. Falcone and Forlenza both looked at Molinari, who ever so slowly blinked. A known friend of the Corleones, he was prepared to elaborate and the more appropriate person to do so.

“In that case,” Geraci said, “I’m going to go check on the weather, in case we-”

“Fuck the weather,” Falcone said. He had a hundred grand on the fight. “When it’s time to go, hotshot, we’re going.”

Narducci muttered something that sounded like “acts of God.”

“Fuck God,” Falcone said. “Don’t take this wrong, Vincent, but I’m not getting stuck-”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Geraci said, and left.

Tom Hagen went back to his room to wait. He tossed his unused three-hundred-dollar tennis racquet onto the bed. He kept on his tennis shirt and changed from shorts into chinos, from sneakers into loafers. On the two different golf courses he could see from the air-conditioned splendor of his room, foursomes of brightly dressed men laughed and drank cocktails on the vast expanse of green where a few decades earlier there had been only cactus and sand, where anyone out there at midday would have been roasting, starving, dying of thirst, gleeful buzzards circling overhead. Instead, servants on golf carts bore cold beer and fresh towels. It reminded Hagen of the stories he’d read about ancient Rome, where the emperors cooled their palaces in the summertime by having slaves haul untold tons of heavy, melting snow down from the mountaintops. More slaves stood beside the mounds of snow night and day, drenched in sweat and waving big papyrus fans. For a king, no corner of the earth is inhospitable.

Hagen told the front desk to call him whenever a car came for him. He left a wake-up call for 1:45.

It came. He awoke famished. Hagen hated late lunches. Two o’clock came and went. Hagen called down and was told, “No, sir, there still hasn’t been anyone asking for you.”

He hung up the phone and stared at it, willing it to ring. Like a stupid kid waiting for his sweetheart to call. He picked up the phone again and had the operator connect him with Mike’s office. No answer. He tried Mike’s home number. If the meeting with the Ambassador were about anything of lesser stakes, Hagen would already have been on a plane home. Kay’s father answered. Michael and Kay had gone out for their anniversary lunch. Hagen had forgotten. He’d catch up with Mike later. Then he called home to say he’d gotten in okay and everything was fine, and Theresa was crying because Garbanzo, their arthritic dachshund, had run away. The kids had made flyers and posted them in the neighborhood and now were out looking for their pet. What if the dog wandered out into the desert? Think of all the ways it could die then: coyotes, cougars, snakes, thirst. There was an atomic bomb test tomorrow; think of that. Hagen tried to calm her down. He reassured her that an arthritic dachshund probably couldn’t have made it out of the subdivision, much less the sixty-some miles to that test site.

Hagen looked at the racquet, available for twenty bucks at any hardware store and not nearly as good as the one he had at home. In his mind’s eye, he saw his brother Sonny, outraged at this show of disrespect, ordering everything on the room service menu, eating what he wanted and pissing over all the rest, then smashing up the racquet and the room, too, sticking the Ambassador with the damages-we don’t take cash, you have to sign for it-and heading home. Hagen ’s stomach growled. He smiled. He missed Sonny.

The phone rang. His driver was here.

Hagen went down, but there was no car there. He asked the parking attendant. No cars for a while now, he said. Hagen ’s head pounded. He’d forgotten his sunglasses. Squinting was painful. Back in the lobby, he saw a Negro in a tuxedo. He’d pulled up on the other side of the building, in an optic-white-roofed, six-seater golf cart. It was after two-thirty.

“This may be the biggest golf cart I’ve ever seen.” Hagen shielded his eyes from the glare off the vehicle’s white skin.

“Thank you, sir,” said the driver, clearly someone who’d been told in his training not to make eye contact with his employers or their associates except when spoken to.

The ride across the golf course, through a maze of tennis courts, and across another golf course took about fifteen minutes, during which each of them averted his eyes from the other.

When the Ambassador had first gone into business with Vito Corleone, his name had been Mickey Shea. Now he was known in the newspapers as M. Corbett Shea. No one called him Mickey. Close friends and family, even his wife, called him Corbett. To everyone else, he was the Ambassador. His father had left County Cork, settled in Baltimore, and opened a saloon across the street from the one Babe Ruth’s dad owned. The oldest of six children, Mickey Shea grew up working hard-scrubbing floors, lugging boxes, shoveling manure from the street and snow from the alley. But his life, especially compared to other Irish kids’ in the neighborhood, was a comfortable one. Soon, though, his parents began sampling too much of their own wares. They lost everything. His mother became the rare woman who chooses a gun to kill herself, opening wide to wrap her mouth around the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun taken from the shelf under the cash register. Mickey, snow shovel in hand, was the one who discovered her near-headless body in the alley behind the bar. His father just kept drinking until that, too, did the job.