The indirect results, however, were legion. When the newspapers with the stories about the raid hit the front stoops up and down Main Street, USA, it was the first time many people heard the words Mafia and La Cosa Nostra. The stories speculated about the heretofore undreamt of existence of an international crime syndicate. Many headlines used that word: syndicate. It is not a word that soothes the American ear. It sounds vaguely mathematical, and America is not a mathematical country.

A public outcry went up: Who are these men?

Before the raid, beat cops and precinct captains, beholden politicians, and writers for magazines like Manhunt and Thrilling Detective all knew more about the men in that white farmhouse-and about the uomini rispettati who worked for those men, and about the legion lesser street toughs who worked for those men-than did the FBI.

That time was about to end.

Today, twenty-three of those lovely, almost indestructible maple tables are crated and stacked in a warehouse at an undisclosed location in or near the District of Columbia. By rights, the twenty-fourth should be on permanent display in the Smithsonian. This table, the plaque would read, helped deliver the single most devastating blow ever dealt to organized crime in America. With a pig skull on top, alongside a scale model of the rusted house trailer.

Instead, the table was sent from one white house to another. Since 1961, it has been in constant use in or near the Oval Office.

Tom Hagen didn’t swoop in, of course. It only looked that way. When detectives asked how someone who lived in Nevada had gotten there so fast, Hagen said that he had already been in New York, that he often was, which was true.

Hagen was among the younger men there. He made it to the bottom of the hill and followed a rocky stream until he got to a town. He walked into a diner. No one was looking for anyone who looked like Tom Hagen, and the car he’d driven there, now parked behind the farmhouse, was registered to a ghost. He sat in a booth and calmly had lunch. Then he went to Woolworth’s, bought a suitcase, and got directions to the county court-house. It was in the next town over. He walked back to the diner and called a cab. Luggage in hand like any ordinary, unremarkable traveler, Hagen checked into a hotel in the county seat. He walked to the barbershop closest to the courthouse. By the time he paid the barber, Hagen had learned the broad outlines of what had happened. He called in to the phone service in Las Vegas. He went back to the hotel and took a nap. A few hours later, the phone woke him. It was Rocco Lampone, calling from Tahoe. Hagen took a taxi to the nearest state police barracks. Michael had not been among those arrested, but, as a goodwill gesture, Hagen provided legal assistance to a few friends of the Family.

In 1959, under oath and before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate, Michael Corleone testified that he had not been in that farmhouse. He denied having been among those who had escaped what was undoubtedly an illegal police action.

Strictly speaking, Michael Corleone was telling the truth.

He and Hagen had driven there separately, for various business and security reasons (though they did have the archaic and, in the face of a police raid, worthless insurance policy provided by holding a Bocchicchio hostage at a whorehouse in the desert). Had Michael been as punctual as his father, he’d surely have been among those who, dignity be damned, went scrambling down the hill. Yes, he had escaped from more harrowing situations, with the air full of bullets and bombs and Jap Zeros heading his way on a divine tailwind. But that was a dozen years and a hundred thousand cigarettes ago. Who knows if he’d have been able to run fast enough and far enough to elude capture?

He did not have to find out-only because, as per usual, he was late: so egregiously late, in fact, that they’d started their business without him. A split second before Michael flicked on his turn signal to go down the gravel drive, he glimpsed something yellow in the bushes, not far from that rusted trailer. He put his hand back on the wheel and kept going. He passed the drive and began to round a bend. In his rearview mirror, he saw two men-cops of some kind-dragging yellow sawhorses from those bushes.

The car he was using was a blue Dodge, a few years old, equipped with a police scanner (Al Neri had been a cop; both the bland car and the scanner were his idea). Michael found the frequency the ATF agents were using.

He pounded the steering wheel as hard as he could and let out an anguished roar.

This was supposed to have been Michael’s last appearance at a meeting of the Commission or of all the Families. He’d planned to negotiate his retirement. After today, after he nailed down the deal in Cuba, he’d have been a completely legitimate businessman. He hit the wheel once more.

Calm down, he thought. Think.

He lit a cigarette. He sat back in his seat, forcing himself to take long and even breaths, listening to the raid he had so narrowly escaped. It was the sound of a world coming to an end. He’d heard about Pearl Harbor on a radio, too.

Michael Corleone had no idea where this narrow, winding road would lead. The sun was straight overhead, and he couldn’t even tell what direction he was going. Still he kept driving, scrupulously observing the traffic laws and looking for signs. What choice did he have? He sure as hell couldn’t turn around and go back the way he came.

Fredo Corleone did not wake up thinking, This is the day that I betray my brother. He did not set out to do it, and, as Nick Geraci had predicted, Fredo didn’t know what he’d done even after he’d sealed his fate by doing it. His day began, instead, when, in the suite at the Château Marmont, Deanna Dunn got out of the shower and, still smelling of last night’s gin, slipped into bed beside her sleeping husband.

“C’mon, lover,” she purred, starting to tie his wrist to the bedpost with a hand towel.

Fredo jerked his arm free. “What are you doing?”

“Be a sport,” she said.

“What time is it? I had an hour’s sleep, tops.”

She frowned and tossed the towel aside. “You don’t want me to be hungry for love on my first day of work with a new costar, do you?”

He had it on good authority-Wally Morgan, who’d know-that Deanna’s costar was hardly the sort of man who’d want to lay a hand on her.

Fredo nonetheless gave her what she wanted.

“Try doing more than up-down, up-down,” she said.

He was on top. “That ain’t exactly music to a guy’s ears.” He tried giving her a little side-to-side, or whatever it was she wanted. “Not in the middle of things.”

“Want me to roll over?” Before he could answer, she’d already done it. That was how she was about everything. “Not in the ass, though.” She was on all fours. “Not first thing in the morning.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “Jesus.” Why did she keep bringing that up? Even with Wally Morgan, all Fredo usually did was get his dick sucked. Last night, for example, that was all he’d done. Fredo lost his erection. He threw himself down on the mattress, disgusted.

“Don’t be like that,” she said, reaching for his prick. “It’s nothing.”

Fredo slapped her hand away. “It’s something to me.”

“You’re just drinking too much,” she said.

“You should know,” he said.

They lay side by side, staring at themselves in the mirror she’d paid the hotel to install on the bedroom ceiling. After a while, Deanna took matters into her own hands. She was rough with herself. Fredo lit a cigarette and watched. The idea of it was dirty and excited him. He tried to keep his eyes off the round-bellied balding man in the mirror, whose limp prick lolled uselessly against his thigh. Deanna planted her feet on the bed, raised up her ass, and made a big show of bucking her hips and coming. It was like looking at a nature program on TV. Afterward, she kissed him. He rolled away. They lay there and rode out another long silence.