Anthony’s startled look was so much like Kay’s had been a few minutes before that Michael’s heart hurt. The kids on the carpet stood and ran away.

“ Thornton,” Michael said.

“I took the liberty of-”

“Forget it,” he said. “It’s fine.”

“Are we in lots and lots of trouble?” Anthony said.

The boy’s upper lip trembled, and his eyes were wide. Michael had spanked the boy maybe three times ever. Anyone who thinks he can explain everything human beings do can wise up simply by having a kid or two. “No, sport,” Michael said. “You’re not in trouble.” He picked Anthony up and gave him a hug. “You like that? That music?”

“I told Grandpa that we weren’t supposed-”

“It’s all right,” Michael said. “What was it you were listening to?”

“Tell him, Tony,” Thornton said, putting his thick black-rimmed glasses back on.

“It’s Puccini.”

“He’s an Italian,” Thornton said. “Or was one.” He chuckled. “Quite dead, of course.”

“I’m aware of that,” Michael said.

“Say again?”

Michael raised his voice. “Puccini’s dead. You eat? Want me to make you something?”

“Agnes has a casserole going,” Thornton said. “It involves beans.”

Michael smelled nothing. What could be baking that smelled like nothing?

“Puccini’s dead?” Anthony said, ashen.

Michael tousled his son’s hair. “He had a good life, Puccini,” Michael said, though he didn’t know a thing about Puccini’s life. He could feel his son relax. “Who are the other kids?”

“Your neighbors,” Thornton said. “Their backyard and yours touch. They seemed like they were already friends with Tony and Mary. C’mon, Tony. We should go. Sorry if I-”

Michael just gave his father-in-law a look, which proved to be more than enough. He set his son down, closed the door, and was alone.

The shower in the next room started. Kay. Michael got his tux. It was the one he’d been married in (he’d worn his other one last night), though the pants could stand to be let out. He sneaked a peek at Kay through the glass shower door and went back into his den to change.

Fredo had meant well, which probably someday ought to be his brother’s epitaph. That car, for example. It was a truly great car, with a golden grille and sabre-spoke wheels. Michael still thought Fredo was a bungler for buying such flashy cars, but look around: out West, would a plain black sedan have blended in better than the lovely, finned thing down in Michael’s driveway? Or this hi-fi rig. The same kind they used in recording studios, Fredo claimed. Took up a whole wall. Who needed this in his home? For all Michael knew it really was the coming thing, but he’d never been one to waste time listening to recorded music.

He sat down at his desk, fully aware of how exhausted he was. Two days in New York, a day in Detroit, then the time difference and the concentration for the flight to Lake Mead and back. And he still had what promised to be a long night in front of him: meetings at the Castle in the Sand, the impending news from Rattlesnake Island, an appearance at the Fontane show, and the thing after that. The ceremony. Michael ran a finger absently around the perimeter of that big ceramic ashtray with a mermaid on a ridged island in the middle. It had belonged to Pop. The crack where the ashtray had been glued back together was still visible. Michael lit a cigarette with his big table lighter, six inches tall and shaped like a lion. He drummed his fingers on that hideous blond desk and thought of golf. Golf was a brilliant idea, both a sport and a pastime, both a way to relax and a means of doing business. Custom clubs. Perfect.

He fell asleep so soundly he could have stayed like that, hunched over and dead to the world, for the rest of the night.

He snapped awake. “I’m not asleep,” he said.

It had been Kay’s hand on his shoulder. “I saw you peeking,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s when you stop peeking that I’ll worry.”

“So why’d you change? Where are you going?”

She frowned. “To see Johnny Fontane, of course. C’mon. Let’s go.”

“To see Fontane?”

“It’s like when you live in New York and can go up in the Statue of Liberty but never do. Johnny Fontane’s been singing at your casino-”

“We’re just partners in it.”

“-for weeks now. We could go anytime but we never do. Do you realize it’s been ten years since I heard him sing at your sister’s wedding? That was the first, last, and only time.”

Then she laughed.

“You should see your face,” she said. “Right, right, business, you have business. Go on, go. Go. I’m taking Mom and Dad and the kids to dinner at this steak place that just opened.”

“I thought your mother had a casserole going.”

“Have you tasted my mother’s casseroles?”

Michael kissed her. He thanked her for a great day and a great life, too. “Don’t wait up,” he said. “I’ll be late.”

“You always are.” Kay smiled as she said it, but they both knew it wasn’t a joke.

“Good fwight?” asked Hal Mitchell, dressed in golf clothes. Flight. The sarge had trouble with his l’s and r’s. He’d been razzed about it during the war, since most of the passwords had had l’s in them to trip up the Japs. The men loved him, though. No one ever called him Sergeant Fudd to his face.

“Uneventful,” Michael said, hugging his old brother in arms. “The best kind.”

Behind Mitchell, already there of course, was Tom Hagen. Hagen and the white-haired cowboy stood. The bald man in the wheelchair extended his hand to be shaken. Michael was the only one wearing a tux. It wasn’t sundown yet, but there’d be no real chance to change.

Mitchell’s office walls were covered with photos of celebrities, save a twelve-year-old snapshot of Sergeant Mitchell, PFC Corleone, and several Marines who never made it home, posing in front of a burned-out Jap tank on the beach at Guadalcanal. The office overlooked the main entrance to the Castle in the Sand. The marquee said WELCOME AMERICAN LABOR!; Fontane’s name would go back up tomorrow. On the stone plaza below, union officials arrived steadily for the convention that would start tomorrow, as did other friends of the Corleone Family.

Mitchell offered Michael the seat behind his desk, though Michael would have none of it. The man in the wheelchair was the president of a Las Vegas bank. The white-haired man in the cowboy hat was a lawyer, in private practice now after a term as state attorney general and then many years as the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party. On paper, these two men, Mitchell, and a real estate holding company controlled by Tom Hagen were the casino’s four biggest stockholders. Michael’s construction company was, on paper, sixth, behind his brother, Fredo, who-in a risk that had inspired much debate within the Corleone Family and the Nevada Gaming Commission alike-had used his own name. Fredo was also supposed to be here.

“Fredo Corleone sends his regrets,” Hagen said. “His flight was unavoidably delayed.”

Michael only nodded. There was nothing more to say, not in the presence of people outside the Family and most certainly not in this room, which was bugged.

The meeting lasted about an hour. It was not purely theater-neither the bank president nor the cowboy lawyer had any idea that law enforcement officials were listening in-and it didn’t differ in kind from any meeting of the top shareholders of any privately held corporation: purchasing matters, personnel matters, assessments of the effectiveness of current marketing and advertising efforts. There was discussion of Mitchell’s idea to hold A-bomb picnics on the roof. Privately, Michael wondered what kind of idiot would go up to the roof at some ungodly hour and pay ten bucks to hear a lounge act that was free downstairs, all to view a puff of smoke they could easily see from their rooms. But he didn’t say anything. His mind was on the next two meetings. The most spirited debate in this one concerned what to call the new casino in Lake Tahoe. Hal’s idea-Hal Mitchell’s Castle in the Clouds-emerged as the consensus choice.