Read Online The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner - Free Book Online

he’d come up with it himself? Unseemly.
    “I heard it from Vito Corleone,” he said. An honorable lie, which Tom Hagen garnished with another: “My godfather.”

CHAPTER 3
    “W hat a great day.” Theresa Hagen didn’t sound sarcastic. More like she was trying to sell herself on the idea. They were alone in the hotel elevator, dressed for dinner, heading down. Because of the rain (and a behind-the-scenes tiff between Bud Payton and Jimmy Shea), President and Mrs. Shea had cut their visit short and were on their way back to Washington.
    “I’m sorry,” Tom said. His own day had been no picnic—one piece of good news, then a day’s worth of going downhill from there.
    “Don’t be,” Theresa said. “I’m serious.”
    “Hubba-hubba,” he said, bending to kiss the nape of her sleek neck.
    “Stop it.”
    “I can’t.” She had on a backless red dress. It was a dark, muted shade of red, but still: red. Her ass looked great in it. For better or worse, she’d lost most of the fleshiness she’d had when she was younger. You could squint and see her mother’s dried-up bony frame, but Theresa’s ass was still an onion-shaped wonder. “I’m powerless.”
    She blushed. What could be more lovely than a blushing, olive-skinned woman in her forties? The blushing gave Tom a glimpse of the bookish schoolgirl she’d once been—smart enough to see through everybody, too nice to use what she saw as a weapon—and of all the stages in between, too: the chain of life and circumstance that had produced this woman and somehow, via fate or chance, brought her here, with him, still weirdly vulnerable to flattery and maybe even that great nothing and everything, love.
    “Great how?” Tom said. “Your day.”
    They’d been together in the room for the past half hour, rushing around getting ready, speaking in little more than the familiar grunts and two-word sentences that sustain old, childbearing marriages. Behind you. No idea. Want coffee? Excuse me. Zip this.
    “Long story,” she said, straightening his bow tie, smoothing the lapels of his tux.
    “Tell me,” he said.
    “For starters,” Theresa said, “there was a monkey farm, I kid you not, three miles wide.”
    The elevator dinged. “This is your stop,” Tom said.
    “Are we really going to do this?”
    He grinned. “This is the main reason we came here, doll.”
    “ Doll ?”
    Tom shrugged. So what? Doll. Common endearment. “Go on and make your entrance.”
    She got out, one floor from the bottom. The door closed. Tom rode the last floor alone.
    The broad, curving stairway in the lobby of the Fontainebleau had no other purpose than this. The ladies get off first (earlier today, when he’d told this to his mistress, who was also staying here, she’d made an annoying and lascivious comment). Then their gentlemen ride down, take their positions in the lobby, and watch the ladies descend.
    As Theresa started to do this, Tom shot a look at the bellman, who threaded the crowd in the lobby and, as Tom dropped to one knee, deftly handed him a dozen roses. Perfect timing. Tom presented the bouquet to his wife. Here he’d put together this grand, romantic gesture, and nobody smiled or reacted, not even Theresa, who received the bouquet as nonchalantly as if it had been the afternoon paper.
    “You call the mother of your children doll ?” she said.
    “Don’t ruin the moment.” Tom stood up and gestured toward the dining room. “C’mon and tell me about the monkeys, OK?”
    “Sorry,” she said, stroking the flowers. “This is thoughtful. They’re really beautiful.”
    A billboard-size banner in the hangar-size ballroom read WELCOME PRESIDENT SHEA! The Hagens were among the first to arrive, which annoyed Tom (rigid punctuality was another lesson from Vito Corleone that now coursed through his blood) almost as much as looking around and seeing that most of the other men there were dressed in business suits, not formalwear, for a formal event. He shook