Chapter 6
IT WOULD BE YEARS before anyone outside the Chicago outfit learned that Louie Russo had ordered a hit on Fredo Corleone. Russo had nothing against Fredo per se. It is a meaningless coincidence that the attempt to kill him came a few months after Russo’s estranged son (and namesake) moved to Paris and began his life as an openly gay man. That said, Russo Jr. did live in Las Vegas for a year, and he was the indirect source of his father’s intelligence on Fredo Corleone’s occasional proclivities. The killers were supposed to wait until they found Fredo in bed with another man-ideally near dawn, so it would seem more incriminating-then make it look as if Fredo had shot the other guy and then himself. This sordid scene would humiliate and weaken Michael Corleone-who’d just named his brother sotto capo, to the dismay of many in his own organization-without Chicago getting blamed for anything or having to fear any reprisals. It wasn’t only violent reprisals Russo was trying to avoid, either. He desperately wanted a seat on the Commission, La Cosa Nostra ’s ruling body-something that he’d never get if it became known that he’d killed a made member of another Family without first getting the Commission’s approval. It might have all worked, too, if, after slipping the phony suicide note under the windshield wiper of Fredo’s borrowed car, one of the killers hadn’t had a violent colon spasm and been forced to stop at a filling station men’s room.
Fredo Corleone would live another four years, though he never found out what happened. He might have figured it out if he hadn’t turned on the windshield wipers and mangled the phony note. The ink had bled, and all that was legible was “Forgive me, Fredo.” Fredo presumed the note had been from that desperate faggot salesman from last night, asking for forgiveness-which, in Fredo’s experience, those sick people were always doing.
As for the cops, they took him inside the white A-frame building alongside the customs booths, gave him a handwriting test, which he took, and started asking a lot of questions, which he refused to answer without a lawyer present. He mentioned that though he was from out of town, his good friend Mr. Joe Zaluchi could probably recommend an attorney. The handwriting didn’t match, and a police captain on Zaluchi’s payroll materialized and said he’d take everything from here. Everyone but the captain still thought they were dealing with an assistant trailer park manager from Nevada named Carl Frederick who was that rare drunk made more agile and articulate by a few stiff belts.
Fredo said he had to make a couple quick phone calls, and the captain told the other men they could go. Fredo took a seat behind a desk like he owned the place and called the airport to have them page his bodyguards, who would have expected him there an hour ago. The captain sat down at a desk across the room and started eating the confiscated oranges. There was a battered radio on the filing cabinet next to him, and he turned it on. A bouncy Perry Como song came blaring out and Fredo frowned and the captain turned it down and mouthed, “Sorry.”
Fredo kept waiting, but neither Figaro, which is what he called the barber, or the goatherd came to the phone. He hung up and had the operator connect him with Joe Zaluchi. There was no listing, of course. The captain was sipping coffee and going at those oranges like crazy, averting his eyes, giving Fredo his privacy.
“Sir?” Fredo said. “You don’t by any chance know how I can get in touch with Joe Z.?”
“No idea,” the captain said, winking. He’d loved the sir. “What do you need?”
“I borrowed a car from him. I already missed one flight. If I take time to drop the car off back in Grosse Pointe, I’ll never-”
The captain waved him off. “Leave it here. The airport’s on my way to where I’m going. I’ll give you a lift. I’ll take care of things with the car later.”
That would have been suspicious, except that the guy had been at the wedding yesterday.
“Thanks,” Fredo said, and tried the airport once more. Again, nothing. He called the phone service in Las Vegas. “It’s Mr. E.,” he said-short for “Mister Entertainment.” “Anybody asks, tell ’em I missed my plane but I’ll be on the next one, guaranteed, all right?”
Fredo would certainly have figured everything out if he hadn’t told the captain to turn down the radio. When the song finished, the news came on. Among the top stories: police were investigating a homicide at a motel in Windsor. A restaurant supply salesman from Dearborn claimed that the door to his room had been broken down by two armed intruders, both of whom he had shot with a Colt.45. One intruder had died; the other-Oscar Gionfriddo, age forty, a vending machine supplier from Joliet, Illinois -was in critical condition at Salvation Army Grace Hospital. The dead man’s identity had not yet been released. The shooter said that the gun belonged to a friend. “I never fired a gun before in my life,” the man said. His voice cracked. “I can’t believe my luck.” He came off more like a winner of the Irish Sweepstakes than someone who’d just killed one, maybe two men.
The captain, of course, had no reason to think anything of it, and the radio was far too soft for Fredo to hear from across the room.
The phone rang. The captain answered. It was the bodyguard, the barber. Figaro. Fredo told him he’d be right there.
“All set,” Fredo told the captain.
“You got everything? Well, except these.” His mouth was full of orange. “You can’t take these. A gun’s easier to bring into the country than a piece of fruit, isn’t that something?”
A gun.
Neri had said that the whole crate of Colt Peacemakers was untraceable. Still, it couldn’t be good, leaving the gun behind. It made Fredo look like a fool. Worse, he was left without a gun. He considered asking the captain for one but didn’t want to push his luck.
“I got everything,” Fredo said, heading toward the door.
They got into the captain’s unmarked car. The radio came on, full blast. “And now, more music!” The captain turned it down and again apologized. It was an old song: the big-band sound of Les Halley and His New Haven Ravens, featuring the vocal stylings of Johnny “ Memory Lane ” Fontane. One of their last sessions together, the deejay said, “before he left the world of platters for movieola matters.”
“My wife,” said the captain, pointing at the radio, “always used to love this record.”
Fredo nodded. “Everyone’s wife did. That’s how a lot of ’em got to be someone’s wife. Songs like this here.”
“Hard to imagine how much pussy a guy like that must get.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” Fredo said. “It doesn’t hurt that John’s a hell of a great guy, either.”
“You know Johnny Fontane?”
“Personal friends,” Fredo said, shrugging.
They didn’t say anything more until the song was over.
“Personal friends, huh?” asked the captain.
“Personal friends. Matter of fact, my dad was his godfather.”
“No shit.”
“No shit.”
“Let me ask you something, then,” said the captain. “Is it true he’s got a dick the size of your arm?”
“How the fuck would I know a thing like that?”
“I don’t know. Sauna or something. It’s just a rumor I heard, and I figured-”
“What are you,” Fredo asked, “a fruit?”
The captain rolled his eyes and turned on his siren. They drove the rest of the way to the airport like that, a hundred miles an hour and not talking.