When they finished, Mitchell said he hoped he’d see everyone and their wives at the Fontane VIP show. Johnny was their new partner, after all, with a ten percent share in the Castle in the Clouds. The other men said they wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Hagen waited for them to leave and then made a quick phone call to Louie Russo.
“Don Russo is on his way to the Chuckwagon now,” Hagen said to Michael.
They started down the back stairs.
“What’s the deal with Fredo?” Michael said.
“He’ll get in early tomorrow,” Hagen said. “He’s fine. There’s two good men with him.”
“You mean to tell me that barber and that kid off the boat, the goat farmer-”
“Right.”
Michael shook his head. The barber was supposed to get straightened out tonight, after the Fontane show. It was to be a surprise-that’s how initiations were done-but he was on tap. “So why’d Fredo miss the plane, huh?”
“I don’t know. People miss planes, I guess.”
“You don’t.”
“I actually did,” he said. “Today, in fact.”
“Yet here you are, on time.”
Hagen didn’t say anything. He’d always been soft on Fredo.
“So how’d that go?” Michael said. “ Palm Springs.”
“Just what you and I discussed. We’re on target there.”
They crossed the lobby to a café, the Chuckwagon, that was open only for breakfast. Michael had a key. He and Hagen took a seat at a table in the corner. Moments later, one of Hal Mitchell’s assistants let Russo and two of his men into the café and relocked the door behind them. Russo was a pale man with a bad rug, gigantic sunglasses, and tiny hands. He made a beeline to the wall switches and turned off all the lights. His men closed the curtains.
“Hey, you brought your Mick consigliere.” He had a high, girlish voice. “That’s cute.”
“Welcome to the Castle in the Sand, Don Russo.” Hagen stood, his overly wide smile the only trace of his insincerity.
Michael didn’t say anything until Russo’s men retreated across the room and sat down on stools at the counter.
“I assure you, Don Russo,” Michael said, pointing at the light fixture above him, “we’ve paid our electric bill.”
“The dark’s better,” Russo said, tapping his sunglasses, the size of which made his nose seem even more like a penis than it might have otherwise. “Some punk tried to shoot me through the window of a candy store. The glass cut my eyes. I can see good, but most of the time, the light’s still painful.”
“Of course,” Michael said. “We only want you to be comfortable.”
“I can tell it bothers you,” Russo said, taking a seat at the table, “that I turned all the lights off and closed the curtains without sayin’ nothin’. Right? So now you know how it feels.”
“How what feels?” Hagen said.
“C’mon, Irish. You know what I mean, and your boss does, too. You New Yorkers are all alike. You people made a deal. Everything west of Chicago is Chicago. Soon as you realize there is anything west of Chicago, you backpedal. Capone gets what’s coming to him, and you think that syphilitic Neapolitan shitweasel is Chicago. The rest of us? We’re nothing. You put together that Commission, and are we a part of it? No. Moe Greene takes all that New York money and builds up Las Vegas. We’re not consulted. You just up and call this an open city. Which you know what I think? I think great. Open works in Miami. Works in Havana, and I hope to God it stays that way. And it’s workin’ maybe best of all here. But why does it have to be so disrespectful? We weren’t so much as asked. That’s my point. Yet we went along with it. We weren’t in no position to argue. We had a few years where, forget about it, nothin’ was organized good. What happened was-I don’t want to say you took advantage, but we lost out. Fine. Vegas is working out perfect as is. In Chicago, everything’s under control. In New York, for a while you had blood running in the streets and all that bit, but from what I hear you got peace again. I pray that’s true. My point is this. During your troubles, did I think, Hey, time to take advantage of my friends in New York ? No. I stayed out of it. I don’t want you to hold a parade for me or nothin’, but Christ. What do I get for the respect I gave you during your hour of need? You move the headquarters of your whole thing here. Here! Which is supposed to be open and, if you want to be technical about it, is rightly ours. I’m not stupid, all right? But I’m not a lawyer like Irish here, and I didn’t go to no fucking Ivy League school neither. So help me out. Tell me why I should stand for this.”
Louie Russo supposedly had an IQ of 90, but he was a genius at reading people. The glasses made it difficult to read him in return.
“I appreciate your candor, Don Russo,” Michael said. “There’s nothing I appreciate more than an honest man.”
Russo grunted.
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information,” Michael said, “but it’s not true. We have no plans to run Las Vegas. We’re only here temporarily. I have land on Lake Tahoe, and once we complete some construction there, that’s where we’ll go, permanently.”
“Last I checked,” Russo said, “Tahoe’s west of Chicago, too.”
Michael shrugged. “When the time comes, that won’t be of any concern to you.”
“It’s of concern to me now.”
“It doesn’t need to be,” Michael said. “In the future, we won’t be initiating any more members. I’m gradually splitting off from everything we had in New York. The businesses I’ll be running here will be legal. I look forward to your cooperation-or at least your lack of interference-as we get things to that point. As you know-you mention my time at Dartmouth -I never planned to take part in my father’s business. It’s not what he wanted either. As I say, it’s only temporary. We’ll be opening a new casino in Lake Tahoe, and we’re planning on running it so clean that an army of cops, IRS agents, and Gaming Commission men could live there night and day.”
Russo laughed. “Good fucking luck!”
“I’ll have to take that as sincerity,” Michael said, standing, “because we need to go. My apologies. It’s our pleasure to have you as our guests. We look forward to seeing you tonight.”
Tom Hagen opened the door to the basement office of Enzo Aguello, an old friend of the Corleone Family and now the casino’s head pastry chef. All three men inside-the two established capos, Rocco Lampone and Pete Clemenza, as well as the head of protection, Al Neri-had been together yesterday in Detroit, at Pete’s son’s wedding. Every eye in the room was bloodshot. Lampone was only thirty but looked ten years older. He’d used a cane ever since he’d been shipped home from North Africa with a Purple Heart and no left kneecap. Clemenza gasped from the effort of getting out of his chair. Hagen always thought of him as one of those ageless fat men, but now he just looked old. He must have been about seventy.
They could have met in a suite upstairs, but Enzo’s office had the advantages of being humble, close to the food, and one hundred percent secure-a cinder-block bunker that, with the best equipment money could buy, Neri had swept for bugs. Neri took his place in the hall, closing the door behind him.
“Where’s Fredo?” Clemenza said.
Mike shook his head.
“He’s fine,” Hagen said. “His plane’s late. Storms in Detroit. He’ll be in tomorrow.”
Clemenza and Lampone looked at each other. They sat down on hard metal folding chairs around Enzo’s gunmetal gray desk.
“I wasn’t gonna say nothin’,” Clemenza said, “but I hear weird fucking things about Fredo, I hate to say.” Fredo’s new bodyguards had come from Clemenza’s regime.
“What do you mean?” Mike said.
Clemenza waved him off. “Believe me, it’s too flaky and ridiculous to talk about, and from what I hear it comes from junkies and niggers, so you can ignore ninety-nine percent of it right there. But the thing is, we all know he’s-” Clemenza grimaced, as if he were enduring a gas pang. “Well, I ain’t one to preach the abstemious life, but he’s got a problem with the juice.”