The Godfather 21 страница

phone clicked. Mrs. Corleone had hung up.

Kay could have called back and said she wasn't coming but she knew she had to see

Michael, to talk to him, even if it was just polite talk. If he was home now, openly, that

meant he was no longer in trouble, he could live normally. She jumped off the bed and

started to get ready to see him. She took a great deal of care with her makeup and

dress. When she was ready to leave she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Was she

better-looking than when Michael had disappeared? Or would he find her unattractively

older? Her figure had become more womanly, her hips rounder, her breasts fuller.

Italians liked that supposedly, though Michael had always said he loved her being so

thin. It didn't matter really, Michael obviously didn't want anything to do with her

anymore, otherwise he most certainly would have called in the six months he had been

home.

The taxi she hailed refused to take her to Long Beach until she gave him a pretty

smile and told him she would pay double the meter. It was nearly an hour's ride and the

mall in Long Beach had changed since she last saw it. There were iron fences around it

and an iron gate barred the mall entrance. A man wearing slacks and a white jacket

over a red shirt opened the gate, poked his head into the cab to read the meter and

gave the cab driver some bills. Then when Kay saw the driver was not protesting and

was happy with the money paid, she got out and walked across the mall to the central

house.

Mrs. Corleone herself opened the door and greeted Kay with a warm embrace that

surprised her. Then she surveyed Kay with an appraising eye. "You a beautiful girl," she

said flatly. "I have stupid sons." She pulled Kay inside the door and led her to the

kitchen, where a platter of food was already set out and a pot of coffee perked on the

stove. "Michael comes home pretty soon," she said. "You surprise him."

They sat down together and the old woman forced Kay to eat, meanwhile asking

questions with great curiosity. She was delighted that Kay was a schoolteacher and that

she had come to New York to visit old girl friends and that Kay was only twenty-four

years old. She kept nodding her head as if all the facts accorded with some private

specifications in her mind. Kay was so nervous that she just answered the questions,

never saying anything else.

She saw him first through the kitchen window. A car pulled up in front of the house

and the two other men got out. Then Michael. He straightened up to talk with one of the

other men. His profile, the left one, was exposed to her view. It was cracked, indented,

like the plastic face of a doll that a child has wantonly kicked. In a curious way it did not

mar his handsomeness in her eyes but moved her to tears. She saw him put a snow-

white handkerchief to his mouth and nose and hold it there for a moment while he

turned away to come into the house.

She heard the door open and his footsteps in the hall turning into the kitchen and then

he was in the open space, seeing her and his mother. He seemed impassive, and then

he smiled ever so slightly, the broken half of his face halting the widening of his mouth.

And Kay, who had meant just to say "Hello, how are you," in the coolest possible way,

slipped out of her seat to run into his arms, bury her face against his shoulder. He

kissed her wet cheek and held her until she finished weeping and then he walked her

out to his car, waved his bodyguard away and drove off with her beside him, she

repairing her makeup by simply wiping what was left of it away with her handkerchief.

"I never meant to do that," Kay said. "It's just that nobody told me how badly they hurt

you."

Michael laughed and touched the broken side of his face. "You mean this? That's

nothing. Just gives me sinus trouble. Now that I'm home I'll probably get it fixed, I

couldn't write you or anything," Michael said. "You have to understand that before

anything else."

"OK," she said.

"I've got a place in the city," Michael said. "Is it all right if we go there or should it be

dinner and drinks at a restaurant?"

"I'm not hungry," Kay said.

They drove toward New York in silence for a while. "Did you get your degree?" Michael

asked.

"Yes," Kay said. "I'm teaching grade school in my hometown now. Did they find the

man who really killed the policeman, is that why you were able to come home?"

For a moment Michael didn't answer. "Yes, they did," he said. "It was in all the New

York papers. Didn't you read about it?"

Kay laughed with the relief of him denying he was a murderer. "We only get The New

York Times up in our town," she said. "I guess it was buried back in page eighty-nine. If

I'd read about it I'd have called your mother sooner." She paused and then said, "It's

funny, the way your mother used to talk, I almost believed you had done it. And just

before you came, while we were drinking coffee, she told me about that crazy man who

confessed."

Michael said, "Maybe my mother did believe it at first."

"Your own mother?" Kay asked.

Michael grinned. "Mothers are like cops. They always believe the worst."

Michael parked the car in a garage on Mulberry Street where the owner seemed to

know him. He took Kay around the corner to what looked like a fairly decrepit

brownstone house which fitted into the rundown neighborhood. Michael had a key to the

front door and when they went inside Kay saw that it was as expensively and

comfortably furnished as a millionaire's town house. Michael led her to the upstairs

apartment which consisted of an enormous living room, a huge kitchen and door that

led to the bedroom. In one corner of the living room was a bar and Michael mixed them

both a drink. They sat on a sofa together and Michael said quietly, "We might as well go

into the bedroom." Kay took a long pull from her drink and smiled at him. "Yes," she said.

For Kay the lovemaking was almost like it had been before except that Michael was

rougher, more direct, not as tender as he had been. As if he were on guard against her.

But she didn't want to complain. It would wear off. In a funny way, men were more

sensitive in a situation like this, she thought. She had found making love to Michael after

a two-year absence the most natural thing in the world. It was as if he had never been

away.

"You could have written me, you could have trusted me," she said, nestling against his

body. "I would have practiced the New England omerta. Yankees are pretty

closemouthed too, you know."

Michael laughed softly in the darkness. "I never figured you to be waiting," he said. "I

never figured you to wait after what happened."

Kay said quickly, "I never believed you killed those two men. Except maybe when

your mother seemed to think so. But I never believed it in my heart. I know you too

well,"

She could hear Michael give a sigh. "It doesn't matter whether I did or not," he said.

"You have to understand that."

Kay was a little stunned by the coldness in his voice. She said, "So just tell me now,

did you or didn't you?"

Michael sat up on his pillow and in the darkness a light flared as he got a cigarette

going. "If I asked you to marry me, would I have to answer that question first before

you'd give me an answer to mine?"

Kay said, "I don't care, I love you, I don't care. If you loved me you wouldn't be afraid

to tell me the truth. You wouldn't be afraid I might tell the police. That's it, isn't it? You're

really a gangster then, isn't that so? But I really don't care. What I care about is that you

obviously don't love me. You didn't even call me up when you got back home."

Michael was puffing on his cigarette and some burning

ashes fell on Kay's bare back. She flinched a little and said jokingly, "Stop torturing me,

I won't talk."

Michael didn't laugh. His voice sounded absentminded. "You know, when I came

home I wasn't that glad when I saw my family, my father, my mother, my sister Connie,

and Tom. It was nice but I didn't really give a damn. Then I came home tonight and saw

you in the kitchen and I was glad. Is that what you mean by love?"

"That's close enough for me," Kay said.

They made love again for a while. Michael was more tender this time. And then he

went out to get them both a drink. When he came back he sat on an armchair facing the

bed. "Let's get serious," he said. "How do you feel about marrying me?" Kay smiled at

him and motioned him into the bed. Michael smiled back at her. "Be serious," he said. "I

can't tell you about anything that happened. I'm working for my father now. I'm being

trained to take over the family olive oil business. But you know my family has enemies,

my father has enemies. You might be a very young widow, there's a chance, not much

of one, but it could happen. And I won't be telling you what happened at the office every

day. I won't be telling you anything about my business. You'll be my wife but you won't

be my partner in life, as I think they say. Not an equal partner. That can't be."

Kay sat up in bed. She switched on a huge lamp standing on the night table and then

she lit a cigarette. She leaned back on the pillows and said quietly, "You're telling me

you're a gangster, isn't that it? You're telling me that you're responsible for people being

killed and other sundry crimes related to murder. And that I'm not ever to ask about that

part of your life, not even to think about it. Just like in the horror movies when the

monster asks the beautiful girl to marry him." Michael grinned, the cracked part of his

face turned toward her, and Kay said in contrition, "Oh, Mike, I don't even notice that

stupid thing, I swear I don't."

"I know," Michael said laughing. "I like having it now except that it makes the snot drip

out of my nose."

"You said be serious," Kay went on. "If we get married what kind of a life am I

supposed to lead? Like your mother, like an Italian housewife with just the kids and

home to take care of? And what about if something happens? I suppose you could wind

up in jail someday."

"No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no."

Kay laughed at this confidence, it was a laugh that had a funny mixture of pride with

its amusement. "But how can you say that?" she said. "Really."

Michael sighed. "These are all the things I can't talk to you about, I don't want to talk

to you about."

Kay was silent for a long time. "Why do you want me to marry you after never calling

me all these months? Am I so good in bed?"

Michael nodded gravely. "Sure," he said. "But I'm getting it for nothing so why should I

marry you for that? Look, I don't want an answer now. We're going to keep seeing each

other. You can talk it over with your parents. I hear your father is a real tough guy in his

own way. Listen to his advice."

"You haven't answered why, why you want to marry me," Kay said.

Michael took a white handkerchief from the drawer of the night table and held it to his

nose. He blew into it and then wiped. "There's the best reason for not marrying me," he

said. "How would that be having a guy around who always has to blow his nose."

Kay said impatiently, "Come on, be serious, I asked you a question."

Michael held the handkerchief in his hand. "OK," he said, "this one time. You are the

only person I felt any affection for, that I care about. I didn't call you because it never

occurred to me that you'd still be interested in me after everything that's happened. Sure,

I could have chased you, I could have conned you, but I didn't want to do that. Now

here's something I'll trust you with and I don't want you to repeat it even to your father. If

everything goes right, the Corleone Family will be completely legitimate in about five

years. Some very tricky things have to be done to make that possible. That's when you

may become a wealthy widow. Now what do I want you for? Well, because I want you

and I want a family. I want kids; it's time. And I don't want those kids to be influenced by

me the way I was influenced by my father. I don't mean my father deliberately

influenced me. He never did. He never even wanted me in the family business. He

wanted me to become a professor or a doctor, something like that. But things went bad

and I had to fight for my Family. I had to fight because I love and admire my father. I

never knew a man more worthy of respect. He was a good husband and a good father

and a good friend to people who were not so fortunate in life. There's another side to

him, but that's not relevant to me as his son. Anyway I don't want that to happen to our

kids. I want them to be influenced by you. I want them to grow up to be All-American

kids, real All-American, the whole works. Maybe they or their grandchildren will go into

politics." Michael grinned. "Maybe one of them will be President of the United States.

Why the hell not? In my history course at Dartmouth we did some background on all the

Presidents and they had fathers and grandfathers who were lucky they didn't get

hanged. But I'll settle for my kids being doctors or musicians or teachers. They'll never

be in the Family business. By the time they are that old I'll be retired anyway. And you

and I will be part of some country club crowd, the good simple life of well-to-do

Americans. How does that strike you for a proposition?"

"Marvelous," Kay said. "But you sort of skipped over the widow part."

"There's not much chance of that. I just mentioned it to give a fair presentation."

Michael patted his nose with the handkerchief.

"I can't believe it, I can't believe you're a man like that, you're just not," Kay said. Her

face had a bewildered look. "I just don't understand the whole thing, how it could

possibly be."

"Well, I'm not giving any more explanations," Michael said gently. "You know, you

don't have to think about any of this stuff, it has nothing to do with you really, or with our

life together if we get married."

Kay shook her head. "How can you want to marry me, how can you hint that you love

me, you never say the word but you just now said you loved your father, you never said

you loved me, how could you if you distrust me so much you can't tell me about the

most important things in your life? How can you want to have a wife you can't trust?

Your father trusts your mother. I know that."

"Sure," Michael said. "But that doesn't mean he tells her everything. And, you know,

he has reason to trust her. Not because they got married and she's his wife. But she

bore him four children in times when it was not that safe to bear children. She nursed

and guarded him when people shot him. She believed in him. He was always her first

loyalty for forty years. After you do that maybe I'll tell you a few things you really don't

want to hear."

"Will we have to live in the mall?" Kay asked.

Michael nodded. "We'll have our own house, it won't be so bad. My parents don't

meddle. Our lives will be our own. But until everything gets straightened out, I have to

live in the mall."

"Because it's dangerous for you to live outside it," Kay said.

For the first time since she had come to know him, she saw Michael angry. It was cold

chilling anger that was not externalized in any gesture or change in voice. It was a

coldness that came off him like death and Kay knew that it was this coldness that would

make her decide not to marry him if she so decided.

"The trouble is all that damn trash in the movies and in the newspapers," Michael said.

"You've got the wrong idea of my father and the Corleone Family. I'll make a final

explanation and this one will be really final. My father is a businessman trying to provide

for his wife and children and those friends he might need someday in a time of trouble.

He doesn't accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would have

condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force

and character. What you have to understand is that he considers himself the equal of all

those great men like Presidents and Prime Ministers and Supreme Court Justices and

Governors of the States. He refuses to live by rules set up by others, rules which

condemn him to a defeated life. But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a

certain power since society doesn't really protect its members who do not have their

own individual power. In the meantime he operates on a code of ethics he considers far

superior to the legal structures of society."

Kay was looking at him incredulously. "But that's ridiculous," she said. "What if

everybody felt the same way? How could society ever function, we'd be back in the

times of the cavemen. Mike, you don't believe what you're saying, do you?"

Michael grinned at her. "I'm just telling you what my father believes. I just want you to

understand that whatever else he is, he's not irresponsible, or at least not in the society

which he has created. He's not a crazy machine-gunning mobster as you seem to think.

He's a responsible man in his own way."

"And what do you believe?" Kay asked quietly.

Michael shrugged. "I believe in my family," he said. "I believe in you and the family we

may have. I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the

hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to

vote for them. But that's for now. My father's time is done. The things he did can no

longer be done except with a great deal of risk. Whether we like it or not the Corleone

Family has to join that society. But when they do I'd like us to join it with plenty of our

own power; that is, money and ownership of other valuables. I'd like to make my

children as secure as possible before they join that general destiny."

"But you volunteered to fight for your country, you were a war hero," Kay said. "What

happened to make you change?"

Michael said, "This is really getting us no place. But maybe I'm just one of those real

old-fashioned conservatives they grow up in your hometown. I take care of myself,

individual. Governments really don't do much for their people, that's what it comes down

to, but that's not it really. All I can say, I have to help my father, I have to be on his side.

And you have to make your decision about being on my side," He smiled at her. "I

guess getting married was a bad idea."

Kay patted the bed. "I don't know about marrying, but I've gone without a man for two

years and I'm not letting you off so easy now. Come on in here."

When they were in bed together, the light out, she whispered to him, "Do you believe

me about not having a man since you left?"

"I believe you," Michael said.

"Did you?" she whispered in a softer voice.

"Yes," Michael said. He felt her stiffen a little. "But not in the last six months." It was

true. Kay was the first woman he had made love to since the death of Apollonia.

Chapter 26

The garish suite overlooked the fake fairyland grounds in the rear of the hotel;

transplanted palm trees lit up by climbers of orange lights, two huge swimming pools

shimmering dark blue by the light of the desert stars. On the horizon were the sand and

stone mountains that ringed Las Vegas nestling in its neon valley. Johnny Fontane let

the heavy, richly embroidered gray drape fall and turned back to the room.

A special detail of four men, a pit boss, a dealer, extra relief man, and a cocktail

waitress in her scanty nightclub costume were getting things ready for private action.

Nino Valenti was lying on the sofa in the living room part of the suite, a water glass of

whiskey in his hand. He watched the people from the casino setting up the blackjack

table with the proper six padded chairs around its horseshoe outer rim. "That's great,

that's great," he said in a slurred voice that was not quite drunken. "Johnny, come on

and gamble with me against these bastards. I got the luck. We'll beat their crullers in."

Johnny sat on a footstool opposite the couch: "You know I don't gamble," he said.

"How you feeling, Nino?"

Nino Valenti grinned at him. "Great. I got broads coming up at midnight, then some

supper, then back to the blackjack table. You know I got the house beat for almost fifty

grand and they've been grinding me for a week?"

"Yeah," Johnny Fontane said. "Who do you want to leave it to when you croak?"

Nino drained his glass empty. "Johnny, where the hell did you get your rep as a

swinger? You're a deadhead, Johnny. Christ, the tourists in this town have more fun

than you do."

Johnny said, "Yeah. You want a lift to that blackjack table?"

Nino struggled erect on the sofa and planted his feet firmly on the rug. "I can make it,"

he said. He let the glass slip to the floor and got up and walked quite steadily to where

the blackjack table had been set up. The dealer was ready. The pit boss stood behind

the dealer watching. The relief dealer sat on a chair away from the table. The cocktail

waitress sat on another chair in a line of vision so that she could see any of Nino

Valenti's gestures.

Nino rapped on the green baize with his knuckles. "Chips," he said.

The pit boss took a pad from his pocket and filled out a slip and put it in front of Nino

with a small fountain pen. "Here you are, Mr. Valenti," he said. "The usual five thousand

to start." Nino scrawled his signature on the bottom of the slip and the pit boss put it in

his pocket. He nodded to the dealer.

The dealer with incredibly deft fingers took stacks of black and gold one-hundred-

dollar chips from the built-in racks before him. In not more than five seconds Nino had

five even stacks of one-hundred-dollar chips before him, each stack had ten chips.

There were six squares a little larger than playing card, shapes etched in white on the

green baize, each square placed to correspond to where a player would sit. Now Nino

was placing bets on three of these squares, single chips, and so playing three hands

each for a hundred dollars. He refused to take a hit on all three hands because the

dealer had a six up, a bust card, and the dealer did bust. Nino raked in his chips and

turned to Johnny Fontane. "That's how to start the night, huh, Johnny?"

Johnny smiled. It was unusual for a gambler like Nino to have to sign a chit while

gambling. A word was usually good enough for the high rollers. Maybe they were afraid

Nino wouldn't remember his take-out because of his drinking. They didn't know that

Nino remembered everything.

Nino kept winning and after the third round lifted a finger at the cocktail waitress. She

went to the bar at the end of the room and brought him his usual rye in a water glass.

Nino took the drink, switched it to his other hand so he could put an arm around the

waitress. "Sit with me, honey, play a few hands; bring me luck."

The cocktail waitress was a very beautiful girl, but Johnny could see she was all cold

hustle, no real personality, though she worked at it. She was giving Nino a big smile but

her tongue was hanging out for one of those black and gold chips. What the hell,

Johnny thought, why shouldn't she get some of it? He just regretted that Nino wasn't

getting something better for his money.

Nino let the waitress play his hands for a few rounds and then gave her one of the

chips and a pat on the behind to send her away from the table. Johnny motioned to her

to bring him a drink. She did so but she did it as if she were playing the most dramatic

moment in the most dramatic movie ever made. She turned all her charm on the great

Johnny Fontane. She made her eyes sparkle with invitation, her walk was the sexiest

walk ever walked, her mouth was very slightly parted as if she were ready to bite the

nearest object of her obvious passion. She resembled nothing so much as a female

animal in heat, but it was a deliberate act. Johnny Fontane thought, oh, Christ, one of

them. It was the most popular approach of women who wanted to take him to bed. It

only worked when he was very drunk and he wasn't drunk now. He gave the girl one of

his famous grins and said, "Thank you, honey." The girl looked at him and parted her

lips in a thank-you smile, her eyes went all smoky, her body tensed with the torso

leaning slightly back from the long tapering legs in their mesh stockings. An enormous

tension seemed to be building up in her body, her breasts seemed to grow fuller and

swell burstingly against her thin scantily cut blouse. Then her whole body gave a slight

quiver that almost let off a sexual twang. The whole impression was one of a woman

having an orgasm simply because Johnny Fontane had smiled at her and said, "Thank

you, honey." It was very well done. It was done better than Johnny had ever seen it

done before. But by now he knew it was fake. And the odds were always good that the

broads who did it were a lousy lay.

He watched her go back to her chair and nursed his drink slowly. He didn't want to

see that little trick again. He wasn't in the mood for it tonight.

It was an hour before Nino Valenti began to go. He started leaning first, wavered back,

and then plunged off the chair straight to the floor. But the pit boss and the relief dealer

had been alerted by the first weave and caught him before he hit the ground. They lifted

him and carried him through the parted drapes that led to the bedroom of the suite.

Johnny kept watching as the cocktail waitress helped the other two men undress Nino

and shove him under the bed covers. The pit boss was counting Nino's chips and

making a note on his pad of chits, then guarding the table with its dealer's chips. Johnny

said to him, "How long has that been going on?"