“You’re naive. Mexicans are worse. Geniuses, though, gotta admit.”
They didn’t need to leave until midafternoon, but Fausto Geraci was up the next morning at four, studying road maps and ministering to the pampered engine of his Olds 88. He insisted on driving, of course. Geraci’s usual driver-Donnie Bags, his third cousin-was just a guy who drove the car, but Nick Geraci’s father was a true wheel man. Someone looking at him behind the wheel and ignoring everything else would have said he drove like an old man: huge eyeglasses, head bent over the wheel, gloved hands at ten and two, radio off so he could concentrate on the road. But he’d always driven like that. Meanwhile, he weaved that Rocket 88 through traffic like the Formula One racer he should have been, swerving from lane to lane, cutting into spaces that seemed too small but never were. Except for the cars and trucks he’d wrecked on purpose and notwithstanding the stretch he did in Marion for vehicular homicide (a cover-up he participated in, loyally, after the Jew’s joyriding fourteen-year-old niece accidentally greased an old lady), Fausto Geraci had never had an accident. He had a sixth sense for where the cops were, too, and, on the rare occasions he was pulled over, could size up the officer and know instantly whether to hand him the badge indicating that he was a retired member of the Ohio Highway Patrol (the badge was real, picked up, crazily enough, at a yard sale) or whether to slip him the badge with a folded-up fifty underneath it. He kept one, prefolded, in the glove box, between the badge and the car’s registration. Once, when Nick was twelve, he took the money. His father gave him an epic beating: the motivation, in fact, for him to start calling himself “Nick” (until then he’d been “Junior” or “Faustino”) and to sign up for boxing lessons.
Nick waited his father out. Whatever the story was, he’d tell it when he was good and ready. Whatever it was, it was something big. He had an air about him like he’d finally been given the kind of job suitable for a man of his obvious talents.
Finally, as they got to the other side of the George Washington Bridge and whipped onto the shoulder to pass two semis, Fausto Geraci veered back onto the road, took a deep breath, and began to tell his son everything he’d learned-personally, by the way-from Vinnie Forlenza.
“You listening?”
“All ears,” Nick said, tugging his ears.
Apparently, Sal Narducci got tired of waiting around for the Jew to die. But even though Laughing Sal probably killed a stadium full of men in his time, he didn’t have the balls to kill his boss. What he did was, he tried to humiliate Forlenza into stepping down, first by getting someone to sabotage that plane-yes, that plane-and then by coming up with the idea of kidnapping Nick from the hospital and hiding him, which was supposed to make Forlenza look reckless and weak, and which probably at least to a point did the trick.
“But look, Ace,” Fausto said, using the nickname, as always, with an edge to his voice, “don’t go running to your boss, either, okay? That pezzonovante is behind the whole thing.”
Nick Geraci found this more than a little hard to believe.
“Why you think you’re alive, you big dummy?’ Fausto said. “You think they’d’ve kept you alive if they thought you fucked up? How many guys you know pulled a stunt like you did in the lake there and didn’t wind up taking two in the head, a meat hook up the ass, butta-beepa-da-boppa-da-boop?”
There were plenty of reasons. Michael needed him. “The crash was ruled an accident.”
Fausto sighed. “Everyone tells me what a genius son I got, can you believe it?”
It only then occurred to Nick that he had no idea what sort of men worked for the FAA, how easy it might or might not be to bribe them. Though there was always some underpaid, powerless shmoe you could get to: a diver, some assistant in the crime lab, somebody who’d lie about life-and-death matters for a little cash or a night with a classy hooker.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. He listened. His father went over it. Everything added up. There had been something dumped in those gas tanks. Don Forlenza had figured it out when he’d heard about a guy who’d gone to Las Vegas on vacation and disappeared. Guy was a mechanic but also a cugin’, wanted to be a qualified man with all his heart. Fausto laughed. “I can tell you personally, those people ain’t let nobody in since who knows fucking when.”
Fausto kept the car at a steady eighty-eight, as if the car’s model name decreed it.
“Anyway, the cugin’ don’t come back from Vegas, and this pal of his, another cugin’, he gets on his high horses, comes to the social club, trying to find out what happened. For the Jew, a light goes on. A mechanic. Missing, probably-” He made a gun with his hand, reached over, and pretended to blow his son’s brains out. “So Forlenza takes the pal in back for a talk. A question here, question there, butta-beepa-da-boppa-da-boop. The pal knew everything. The rest you can guess.”
“What do you mean, the rest I can guess? You mean like what’s left of the pal is underneath a freshly poured basement in Chagrin Falls?”
“Smart guy. Forget the pal. Long story short, your boss and Laughing Sal had this dead mechanic slip something in your fuel tank. Look in the glove box, smart guy.”
Nick gave him a look. “Go on,” Fausto said. “I won’t beat you.”
Thirty years ago, that beating was, and they’d neither one mentioned it since. Thirty years between a father and a son can work like that. In fact, it usually does.
Like the rest of the car, the glove box was immaculate: the badge, neatly stacked atop the fifty (which Nick was careful not to touch), the registration, two white envelopes, and the owner’s manual. One envelope contained service records for the car. “The other one,” Fausto said. “That one there.”
Inside it were six train tickets to Cleveland, for Nick and five of his men, which made it unlikely there’d be any kind of ambush there.
Fausto explained in detail about where to go and the security measures to take to meet with Don Forlenza, which would happen in a part of the Cleveland Art Museum that was in between exhibits and closed off to the public. “Probably you don’t remember that Polack Mike Zielinsky, used to run my old local?”
“You serious, Dad? Of course I remember.” That Polack Zielinsky had been a friend of the family for years. He was Nick’s sister’s godfather and one of Fausto’s best and only friends.
“Well, all right then. Get to the museum nine-fifteen sharp. You see that fat fuck standing out by that Thinker thing-”
“The sculpture?”
“Sculpture, statue. In front there.”
“I know it.”
“He’s there-the Polack, not the statue-you’ll know things are jake, go on in. No Polack, go back to the hotel, he’ll be in the lobby.”
For Nick Geraci, this whole matter had gone from hard to believe to hard to accept. But what could Michael’s motives have been? Why would he want to kill him?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Fausto shook his head. “You really are naive.”
“How you figure?”
“How long you been in this line of work?”
“Your point?”
“My point is,” said his father, “no point. Shit gets done for no reason that makes sense to anybody but the doer and the fellas he has do the shit for him. Most of the time they don’t know shit, either. They just do shit. It’s a miracle you didn’t die a long time ago, big shot.”
It was a good thing that the drive to Troy was so long and that his father wasn’t much of a talker. The long silences gave Nick Geraci time to figure out what to do. Even so, he struggled. He’d look into things, verifying what he could verify without sending up any flags. He’d move slowly. He’d learn more. He’d consider every move, from every angle.