Probably all that was true. But it was also just the kind of reassurance a guy heard right before he got clipped.

Still, though Geraci would probably never like Michael Corleone, he did admire him. He had faith in him. Michael would save Nick Geraci, if for no other reason than that he needed him. He needed his loyalty, his ability to make money, his smarts. Michael wanted to transform an organization made up of violent peasant-criminals into a corporation that could take its place in the greatest legal gambling scam ever invented-the New York Stock Exchange. If he was going to succeed, he certainly couldn’t afford to lose a man like Geraci. In the scheme of things, Geraci knew, he was just some mook from Cleveland, a striver who took his lumps, worked hard, went to night school, and had a little success as a small-time attorney and businessman. But compared to most of the guys in this business, Nick Geraci was Albert Einstein.

Even so, Geraci had made mistakes. He should have stood up to Falcone and refused to fly in such weather. He shouldn’t have said he thought the plane had been sabotaged when he’d really had no idea. Crashing: also bad. He certainly shouldn’t have swum away from the wreck as if he were guilty of something. His mistakes had narrowed his options. He had no choice but to play out this hand.

This would be a very elaborate way to kill him, though that hardly ruled it out. He’d heard of more elaborate. He’d participated in more elaborate.

When he’d been forced to kill Tessio, Geraci couldn’t have been more angry at Michael Corleone. But from the moment he’d walked away from Tessio’s open grave site until that trip from the train to wherever he was really going, Geraci truly hadn’t given it another thought.

The hearse stopped. He was unloaded by men who didn’t say a word, which did not seem like a good sign.

Geraci’s head throbbed. He could hardly breathe. It’s not as if caskets have airholes. On the way here, he’d spent maybe one tenth this much time with the lid down. He was going to die choking on his own funk. They’d come to whack him, and he’d already have suffocated. Still, he’d do as he was told. He’d stay inside with the lid closed until Charlotte came to get him.

The men walked him across a cement floor and set him down on something. Definitely cement. This could very well be the back room of the Di Nardo Brothers Funeral Parlor. The night he killed Tessio, that crematory where they took the heads, it had a cement floor, didn’t it?

This could also be a warehouse. A meat locker. Somebody’s two-car garage. Anything.

He heard a door open. A person’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked as they drew near him. A polished cement floor. He held what was left of his breath.

The lid came open.

It was Charlotte.

He sat up and felt oxygen surge through him, tingling as it reached his hands and feet. He could feel air spread up his back and wash over his scalp. Charlotte looked tanned and happy. “You look so good!” she said. She seemed sincere. She did not react at all to his gasping. It slowed. Only then did he notice Barb and Bev standing together against the paneled back wall, obviously frightened, holding a pair of crutches waist high, parallel to the floor.

Charlotte gave him a quick kiss on the lips. It was like she was high on something. Geraci didn’t smell liquor. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks,” he said. Well, not home, but he knew what she meant. Upstairs, a funeral was going on. Muffled chanting. Some prayer or creed. “It’s good to be… back. How are you?”

Geraci held out his arms toward his daughters. They nodded at him but stayed put.

“Busy,” Charlotte said. “But fine.” Softly, she touched the knot on his head where he’d banged it.

Barb was eleven; Bev had just turned nine. Barb was a little blond replica of Charlotte, right down to the new suntan. Bev was a pale, hulking, dark-haired girl, tallest in her class (including the boys) and a full two inches taller than her big sister, who was also tall.

“They got to see a movie getting made out in the desert, and they’ve been talking about it ever since,” Charlotte said, waving the girls toward the casket. “C’mon, girls. Tell him.”

Bev let go of the crutches with one hand so she could point at him. “See?” she said to her sister. “You see? I told you Daddy’s not dead.”

“Not yet, maybe,” Barb said. “But he will be.”

Geraci motioned for Charlotte to help him climb out, but she was oblivious.

“Daddy won’t ever die,” Bev said.

“You’re stupid,” Barb said. “Everybody dies someday.”

“Now, girls,” Charlotte said. “Be nice.”

It was as if she didn’t see the first thing strange about this scene, being brought two thousand miles to the back of a funeral home to retrieve her missing husband from a casket. Upstairs, an organ, God knows why, started playing “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.”

“He will too die,” Barb said. “Everybody does.”

“Not Daddy,” Bev said. “He promised. Didn’t you, Daddy?”

Actually, he had, once. His father had always said that a promise is a debt. Ogni promessa è un debito. It had taken being a father himself-even more than his treacherous professional life-to drive the lesson home.

“Now you see what my days are like,” Charlotte said. She said it cheerfully, though. She didn’t sound like she was trying too hard. She smiled and took his bruised face in her hands and kissed it. Nothing needy or passionate, just an ordinary, slightly lingering marital kiss, the kind a man might enjoy one morning at the breakfast table. It was not the sort of kiss Geraci would ever have expected to receive while sitting in a casket with bandaged ribs and a broken leg-and, who knows, maybe a fresh concussion, too-while a chorus of muffled voices in the room upstairs sang an old Tin Pan Alley song at some poor stiff’s funeral. Though in fairness to Charlotte, perhaps there was no right sort of kiss for an occasion like this.

“Can you give me a hand?” he said. “Getting out?”

“Your dad’s waiting in the car,” she said. “Should I go get him?”

“No.” Naturally, his father couldn’t be bothered to come in and greet him. “I really just need a hand. We can do it.”

They did. The girls came forward, perfectly in step. They’d rehearsed this. They presented him with his crutches as if they were peasants bestowing a humble gift to the king.

Then they cracked up, and for a long time he didn’t do anything much but hold the girls’ embrace. At some point Bev whispered, “You did promise,” and he whispered, “So far, so good.”

“It’s nice to have you back,” Charlotte said.

Outside, the funeral home’s pebbled parking lot would have been big enough for a shopping center. Maybe fifty cars, but his father, Fausto, of course, had the best space, closest to the door. He’d probably come by yesterday, sized up the parking situation, then gotten here hours ago to make sure he got that space. He sat behind the wheel of his idling Oldsmobile, looking straight ahead and listening to Mexican music on the radio. He had the air-conditioner going full blast, probably for no other reason than to create a need for him to wear the old quilted jacket with his union local’s logo on the back. He waited for Nick to finish struggling with the crutches and get situated in the passenger seat even to turn to face him.

“Well, well, well,” said Fausto Geraci, “if it ain’t Eddie Rickenbacker.”

A team of local carpenters had been hired to make long maple tables especially for the peace talks. The tables were arranged in a big rectangle inside a ballroom that had once been the stable. The stain on the tables was dry but so fresh it still smelled. The odor wasn’t too bad until the room also filled with cigar and cigarette smoke. They opened all the windows, but the consigliere from Philly, who had emphysema, and Don Forlenza from Cleveland, who had just about every affliction under the sun, both had to listen from the next room. The temperature outside was forty. Other than Louie Russo, who must have been trying to prove something, the men conducted the entire meeting in their scarves and overcoats.