“The gun Fredo was arrested with in L.A. when he killed that dog? Also a Colt with its serial number filed off. In the lab they were able to use acid and bring the number back up. Same with the gun from Windsor. They were both part of a shipment that our guy in Reno got and sold to nonexistent people. Thank God not to Gerald O’Malley. Oh, and one more thing.”

Geraci reached in his coat pocket for the closest thing he had to a concealed weapon-a cigarette lighter: jeweled, made in Milan, engraved CHRISTMAS 1954. He tossed it to Michael.

“Recognize this?”

Michael’s face reddened. He turned the lighter over in his small, perfectly manicured hand, then made a fist, covering it. Almost covering it.

“The salesman said it belonged to the other guy,” Geraci said. “Listen, Michael, I feel awful about this. If you want me to go after Russo, say the word and it’s done. I’ll come at him with everything we got.”

Michael turned to face the window. For several blocks he tapped the fist with the lighter in it against his chin.

Geraci was bluffing. He didn’t have anyone in the FBI. He’d heard those Colts all came from the same dealer and hoped that was right. He’d gotten the lighter from Russo, who’d gotten it from the salesman’s killer.

But Geraci was serious about going after Russo. He’d had peace in his regime for five years. He had a hell of a war chest. The last few years, Cesare Indelicato, the Sicilian capo di tutti capi, had been providing Geraci not only with heroin and other drugs but also personnel. Geraci had a whole crew of zips now, over in Bushwick, there on Knickerbocker Avenue, and he’d been setting up some of the legal immigrants with jobs in pizza parlors all over the Midwest, quietly tossing dough and making a little of it until the time may come for them to do Nick Geraci a favor. Men like that, living as law-abiding good neighbors for years in Kenosha, Cleveland Heights, or Youngstown, could go on “vacation,” do a job on somebody, come home, and nobody would ever in a million years connect them to some dead gangster eight hundred miles away. If Richie Two Guns was as good as he seemed, Geraci was confident the Corleones could cripple the Chicago outfit and make those animals answerable to the New York Families again. And, of course, Geraci could in the process cover his tracks for his role in manipulating Fredo to betray his brother. Better to do it on Michael’s say-so (with Michael having to answer to the Commission for it) than for Geraci to worry about whether to do it later.

“Thank you just the same,” Michael finally said. “But as I told you, I’m retired.”

The car stopped. They were back on First Avenue, in front of the Roach’s bar. Geraci wondered if Michael had really been thinking all that time or if he’d simply waited until the end of the drive to answer.

Nick Geraci held out his left hand, palm down, in front of his chest and held his right underneath, pointing at the bottom of his palm. “Qui sotto non ci piove.” Under here you won’t be rained on. “Un giorno avrai bisogno di me.” One day you’ll need me.

An old expression. Tessio would say it when pledging his protection, and Michael must have heard his father say it, too.

“I appreciate that, Fausto,” Michael said.

“Don’t mention it.”

Michael smiled. A chill went through Nick Geraci.

“You thought I was going to kill you,” Michael said, “didn’t you?”

“I think everyone’s trying to kill me all the fucking time,” Geraci said. “Force of habit.”

“That’s probably why you’re still alive.”

How did he mean that? That it was probably why no one had ever killed him or why Michael wasn’t killing him now? Geraci wasn’t about to ask for a clarification.

“Anyway, Michael, what reason would I have to think you were going to kill me?” Geraci said. “Like you said, you’re retired. Good luck to you in your new life.”

Michael still had the lighter in his fist.

They kissed and embraced, and Geraci watched the limo pull away. When he walked inside the bar, his men had somehow known to gather, a good thirty or forty of them. Shaking, Nick Geraci went upstairs and slumped in a big leather chair in the corner. His men followed. He slipped his wedding ring onto the little finger of his right hand, and his men lined up to kiss it.

Chapter 23

MR. FONTANE ! Have you been promised a job in the Shea administration?”

The lobby of Constitution Hall was full of reporters. Johnny Fontane was sitting behind a table on a crowded dais, flanked by a dozen stars of stage and screen. There would be many more onstage tomorrow. They were making history. No one he’d asked to perform at the inaugural ball for Jimmy Shea had said no. If the Russians dropped the bomb on Washington, there’d be little left of show business but school plays, rock music, and stag films. “A job?” Johnny said, in mock horror. “I became a saloon singer so I’d never have to have a job.”

This got a decent laugh. He wanted them to think the answer might be yes. The Ambassador had talked about setting Fontane up to run for office. Jimmy himself-at Fontane’s place in Vegas, on a break from going at it with Rita Duvall, who was also on the podium now-had suggested making Fontane the ambassador to Italy. Or how about some little tropical paradise with blue skies and limitless pussy? He and Johnny had both been pretty drunk at that point.

“What does it say about the Shea presidency,” a voice shouted, “that the inaugural ball is being produced by someone like yourself with reputed Mafia ties?”

Johnny couldn’t believe it. When was this shit going to stop?

The jerk-off who asked the question was with a paper in New York. Johnny had punched him out once. The out-of-court settlement had been ten grand and worth every cent.

Bobby Chadwick-the brother-in-law of the president-elect-leaned over his mike. “By someone like Johnny Fontane? Forgive me if you’re a correspondent from the planet Uranus and unfamiliar with our ways, but here on Earth, it’s safe to say there’s nobody like Johnny Fontane.”

He got a laugh, too, but the laughter subsided and the other reporters still looked at Johnny for an answer. If this had been a restaurant or a nightclub, Johnny could have merely arched an eyebrow and this jerk-off would have been out on his ass.

“Reputed is a word lazy reporters use so they can make things up,” Johnny said. “Let me give you some facts. There are more than five million Americans of Italian descent. According to a report the U.S. Senate put out two years ago, there are at most four thousand people associated with the quote-unquote Mafia. I’ll do the math for you, buddy-boy. That’s thirteen-hundred-to-one odds. You’re more likely to get eaten by a bear. Yet every time somebody whose name ends with a vowel gets ahead, bigots like you ask if we’re in the Mob.”

“Are you in the Mob?”

Well, he’d walked into that one. “I’m not even going to dignify a question that ignorant.”

“I could be wrong,” said Sir Oliver Smith-Christmas, the distinguished British actor, seated at the edge of the podium, “but aren’t you confusing the sort of gentlemen who oftentimes own American nightclubs with those like my friend Mr. Fontane, who simply perform in them? Where is a nightclub singer to perform if not in a nightclub?”

“Ollie makes a good point,” Johnny Fontane said. “Once the big-band era was over-”

“Isn’t it a fact that the late Vito Corleone was your godfather?” the reporter said.

Not that kind of godfather, you stupid fuck. “He stood for my baptism, yes. He was a friend of my parents.”

“Does President-elect Shea have ties to organized crime?” another reporter asked. “Michael Corleone, who was among those called to testify before the Senate two years ago, served as a member of the transition-”