“ ‘Methinks thou dost protest too much.’ ”

“What the fuck?”

Geraci jerked his thumb toward where they came from. “Shakespeare. The garden back there made me think of it. You’re an actor now, Fredo. Maybe you should learn that stuff.”

“Don’t college-boy me, Mr. Just-a-mook-from-Cleveland. You think you’re better than me?”

“Easy,” Geraci said. “I don’t think anything. Shakespeare was just on my mind.”

“Because I’ve been to see Shakespeare. I’ve even seen Shakespeare in Italian.”

“Which ones? Which plays?”

“I don’t know which ones, right off. What are you, my fucking En-glish teacher? Don’t tell me what I need to learn. It may come as news to you that I got a lot of different things going on. I’m not sittin’ on my ass sipping sherry and making lists of all the plays I ever been to. I’ve been to plays. All right? Smart guy? Plays.”

“Fine,” Geraci said.

They kept walking. He gave Fredo time to calm down.

“Look,” Geraci finally said. “I’m edgy, all right? I don’t like to go behind Michael’s back even to take a leak.”

“Don’t worry about it. Our operation’s too big for any one man to be aware of every little thing or even want to.”

If Fredo really believed that, he certainly didn’t know his brother.

“Problem with Mike,” Fredo said, “he’s smart but he’s bad with people. He don’t understand, it’s natural for people to want to do things for themselves, create things. All I want is to have something that’s mine. My legacy, if you will. If you didn’t feel the same way-”

“This is getting us nowhere, Fredo. I’ve said what I have to say.” Geraci had been right. Fredo was a sweet guy but dumb enough to take his thirty pieces of silver and betray his brother without even knowing that was what he’d done. It was a sad moment. Despite everything, he really liked Fredo. “The next step is one hundred percent between you and Mike. End of story.”

Fredo shrugged, then looked down at his loafers. “I tell you what,” he said. “These sure aren’t the right shoes for this slop.”

“Should’ve worn your cowboy boots,” Geraci said.

“What cowboy boots?”

“I thought all you guys out there wore cowboy boots, carried six-shooters, the whole bit. Shoot up cars and little dogs.”

Fredo laughed. He usually took it well when you needled him, further proof what a good guy he really was. How sad using him as a pawn in all this was going to be. “If there were ever two cars that had it coming,” Fredo said, “those were it. Too bad about the dog, though.”

“True it took the head right off?”

Fredo raised his eyes in woe and lamentation. “Clean. I couldn’t have made that shot in a million years if I was trying.”

“We need to get going,” Geraci said, pointing toward the lot where they’d parked. “This is not a thing I’m going to be late to.”

“We’re a lot alike,” Fredo said, “you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Geraci said, looping an arm around him, cuffing him playfully, the way a brother or an old friend would.

They crossed a small wooden bridge across a barely frozen pond.

“You should see this place in the spring,” Geraci said. “Cherry blossoms like you can’t believe, pinker than pink.”

“I probably should.”

“You know,” Geraci said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

“Anything, my friend.”

“Tell me if I’m out of line for even asking, but what exactly are your responsibilities as sotto capo? What did Mike tell you they were?”

“Are you serious? What are you talkin’ about? What are you askin’ me here?”

“Because I don’t think it’s clear to anyone. To a lot of people, and here I confess that what I really mean is to me, but I’m not alone, no offense, but it seems mostly symbolic.”

“Symbolic? What the fuck you talking about, symbolic? I got a lot of different things I do. How is it that you don’t understand that there’s a bunch of it I can’t talk about?”

“That, I understand. It’s just that-”

“I imagine that, with Pete gone, I’ll even be going along with Mike to the meeting of the heads of all the Families, in upstate New York there.”

I imagine. Which meant, of course, that he had no idea. It was a shocking and pathetic thing even to be talking about, both because Pete wasn’t even in the ground yet and because this was not the sort of speculation Fredo should be making to anyone but his brother.

“It’s just that a lot of what’s going on with you,” Geraci said, “is awfully public.”

“Come on. Bit parts. Little local TV show. It’s nothin’. No harm in any of it, and maybe some help.”

“I don’t disagree,” Geraci said. “I see the value of it to the organization if the only aim is to get out of any businesses that might be considered crimes, victimless and otherwise. But there are other parts of the business to consider.”

They got back into the car.

“Don’t worry about nothin’,” Fredo said. “Me and Mike, we’ll work out the details.”

What Nick Geraci would like to know is this: If Michael wanted the organization to be more like a corporation, bigger than General Motors, in control of presidents and potentates, then why run it like some two-bit corner grocery store? Corleone amp; Sons. The Brothers Corleone. When Vito Corleone was shot, incapacitated, who took over? Not Tessio, Vito’s smartest and most experienced man. Sonny, who was a violent rockhead. Why? Because he was a Corleone. Fredo was too weak for anything important, yet even then, symbolic or not, Michael made that empty suit his underboss. Hagen was the consigliere even when he supposedly wasn’t, the only non-Italian consigliere in the country. Why? Because Michael grew up in the same house with him. Michael himself had all the ability in the world, but in the end he was the biggest joke of all. Vito, without even consulting his own caporegimes, made Mike the boss-a guy who never earned a red cent for anyone, who never ran a crew, who never proved himself at all except for the night he whacked two guys in a restaurant (every detail of which was arranged by the late, great Pete Clemenza). Only three people ever even got initiated into the Corleone Family without first proving themselves as earners. That would be, yes, the Brothers Corleone.

So now the whole organization was under the control of a guy who’d never done anything but think big thoughts and order people killed. Yes, he was smart, but didn’t anybody besides Sally Tessio, Nick Geraci, and possibly Tom Hagen realize that, as long as Michael thought he was smarter than everybody else, the whole organization was at the mercy of the guy’s ego?

True: Geraci had barely allowed himself to think these things before he learned that Michael Corleone had tried to kill him. Still. That didn’t mean that he was wrong.

Though no one could have known it at the time, Peter Clemenza’s was the last of the great Mafia funerals. The air inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral was almost unbreathably thick with the scent of the tens of thousands of flowers, blanketing the altar and spilling down the aisles, signed less cryptically than any such flowers would ever be again. In the pews, for the last time, were dozens of unself-conscious judges, businessmen, and politicians. To this day, singers and other entertainers show up at such funerals, but never in the numbers in evidence for Clemenza. Anyone in the know-and for now there were still very few such people-could have scanned the scores of mourners and put together a pretty impressive all-star team of New York wiseguys and assorted heavy people from out of town-including Sicily. Never again would a Don attend a funeral for a member of another Family. Never again would the presence of law enforcement be at such a manageable level. And only one more time, ever, would so many high-ranking figures in La Cosa Nostra gather in one place. All this, for an olive oil importer who’d shunned attention and barely known many of the most famous people who had convened to see him off. The most famous person he knew well-Johnny Fontane-wasn’t even there.