The men at his table showed no sign of being intimidated.

“Maybe so,” Lawrence said, “but we’ve looked into the details. The ordinances will be next to impossible to pass. Even if you do, the existing cemeteries and related businesses are sure to file suit to get any new laws overturned. I don’t know how things were done in San Francisco or why, but it doesn’t matter. Different state, different century. Today, you have to worry about the likes of Allen and me. The lawyers. If you want to go ahead with this, trust me, there’ll be plenty of… what’s the term you people use? Plenty of beaks to wet.”

“ ‘You people’?” Fredo said.

Lawrence shrugged. The women were making their way back to the table.

“There’s other problems,” Segal said. “Tell him, Allen.”

“Cemeteries,” Barclay said, “have to able to be maintained until the end of time with only the interest from a trust. In other words, you’re tying up a fortune up front, which from what I know about your business, I can’t imagine you’d want to do. Also, don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Corleone, but the money would need to be so clean you could eat off it.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Fredo said. He couldn’t believe they were going to keep talking about this in front of their dates. “I got all that covered.” Though he didn’t.

The women took their seats and kissed their dates.

“I won’t even get into all the problems you’d face,” Lawrence said, “trying to transport millions of dead bodies across state lines. Or the impossibility of sewing up any kind of monopoly on all this out in New Jersey.”

“Dead bodies!” said Lucy Mancini.

Fredo shot a look at the other men, who at least had enough sense not to explain things. The other women averted their eyes. Lucy flushed, redder than her fresh Singapore Sling. She’d been around long enough not to say a thing like that, and she obviously knew it.

Segal put an arm around Fredo and patted him on the shoulder. “As get-rich-quick schemes go,” Segal said, “this is the worst I’ve ever heard.”

Segal extended an arm toward his friends, and they told Fredo that Segal was right.

Fredo stood. He called out to their waitress to bring another round of drinks. “Ladies,” he said, “if you’ll excuse me?” He made it seem like he was just going to take a leak, but he had no intention of coming back to the table. It’d be a good way to ditch the bodyguards, too, and have a decent night on the town.

Across the room, Johnny Ola-Hyman Roth’s token Sicilian-rose and at a discreet distance followed him to the men’s room.

Maybe, Fredo thought, I’ll just go home. Although where was that? Home? He’d spent most of the last dozen or so years in hotel suites. His father was dead. His mother was in Tahoe, where Fredo had a house, too. But that wasn’t home. That was just a lake cottage in the country. A fishing cabin. Fredo Corleone was a city boy, stifled in Vegas, but Tahoe? Suffocating.

He saw Gussie Cicero and slipped him a Cleveland. For the tab. Gussie told Fredo his money wasn’t good here. “Aw, buy your wife flowers or something,” Fredo said. “Or put it in the offering plate at Mass tomorrow.”

“Mass tomorrow!” Gussie said, pocketing the thousand dollars. “You crack me up.”

At the urinal, he wondered what Deanna would do if she got back to the wreckage of their room before he did. It sent a chill through him. Though maybe it was just a piss shiver.

Fredo zipped up, spun around and slammed into Johnny Ola so hard Ola’s hat went flying and Fredo fell on his ass. The men’s room attendant rushed over to help, but Ola was already apologizing and helping Fredo to his feet.

“Did I do that?” Ola said, pointing to Fredo’s gashed cheek.

Fredo shook his head. “Cut myself shaving.”

“You’re Frederico Corleone, aren’t you? Johnny Ola,” he said, offering his hand. “We have some friends in common. I’ve been hoping to run into you. I didn’t expect it’d be so literal, you know?” He grinned. “We should talk. Sometime soon.”

Deanna was no doubt already there, had already seen what he’d done. If Fredo hadn’t balked at the thought of going to face up to that, it might have saved his life.

“No time like the present,” Fredo said.

Moments later, he was in his car, following Ola and Mortie White-shoes to Hollywood. They stopped at the Musso amp; Frank Grill. The place was packed, but one of those high-backed mahogany booths with the padded red leather seats miraculously opened up.

“My kind of place,” Fredo said. “Best martinis in L.A. if not the whole world. Stirred, not shaken, which, take it from an Italian, is the right way to make a martini.”

At a place with lesser martinis or less private booths, on a day that had gone better for Fredo than this one, who knows what might have happened? Fredo didn’t think of himself as a weak man, but he’d certainly look back on this as a weak moment. Ola and Whiteshoes explained that their boss and Fredo’s brother were involved in a big deal of some sort. They claimed not to know what it was about; Cuba wasn’t mentioned. Ola said that Michael was being unreasonable in the negotiations. On a better day, Fredo might have understood that was a fancy way of saying that Roth wanted Michael killed. All Fredo could think of at the time was that, when it came to his own big brother, Michael was unreasonable about everything. Fredo tried to poker-face it, but even under the best of circumstances, he was no good at that.

Ola said that if Fredo could help out with things-just some simple information that might help confirm things about the Family’s position and assets, nothing major-that there’d be something in it for him. They were open to talking about what that might be. A cash bonus, maybe.

That was when Whiteshoes chimed in and said that a little bird told him something about some kind of city of the dead Fredo was planning out in New Jersey. “I only know what my friend Jules Segal told me,” Mortie said, “but from the sound of it, I gotta say, I like the sound of it.”

(From The Fred Corleone Show, March 23, 1959 [final episode].)

FRED CORLEONE: Ladies and gentlemen, on our show tonight we were supposed to have a very special guest, but as you can see we don’t. We’re going to have a guest, that is, and I said the wrong thing in implying that this other guest-I’m getting ahead of myself. That the other one’s not special. He is. Great fella. I’m not… (Looks down; rubs his face with both hands.) I should keep this simple. Nobody wants me to make it complicated. Miss Deanna Dunn, who as you may know… What I mean to say is that despite what was in the newspaper there, our guest tonight is not Miss Deanna Dunn. (Looks offstage.) I don’t need to say more than that, do I?

VOICE OF DIRECTOR: (Inaudible)

FRED CORLEONE: Not really. (Turns back to face the camera.) Don’t worry, folks. With no further to-do, not to mention that there hasn’t been any to-do here in the first place, let’s welcome our first guest. Here he is, a fine actor who is now making a movie with Mr. Johnny Fontane and that whole crew, about robbing casinos, they tell me, which I can’t wait to hear more about, put your hands together for Mr. Robert Chadwick.

(Recorded applause. This is the only episode that used it, even though the show had dispensed with the live audience several episodes earlier.)

ROBERT CHADWICK (waving at the nonexistent audience): Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Freddie.

FRED CORLEONE: No, thank you, Bobby. You’re a lifesaver, comin’ in at the last minute.

ROBERT CHADWICK: Don’t mention it. Believe me, I’ve been second choice to movie stars a lot less legendary than Deanna Dunn.

FRED CORLEONE: You’re obviously being ironical, and I appreciate it. Though in seriousness, a good-lookin’ guy like you, leading-man material, classy British accent, I wouldn’t think that’d be the case. Most of the roles you get, you’re the first choice, right?