The Godfather Returns by Mark Winegardner Read Free Book Online

to open up—a Slavic woman who looked more like a masseuse than a manager or club pro—it was nine on the dot.
    Hagen grabbed a racquet, slapped two hundred dollars on the front counter, and told her to keep the change.
    “We don’t take cash,” she said. “You have to sign for it.”
    “Where do I sign?”
    “Are you a member? I don’t recognize you.”
    “I’m a guest of Ambassador Shea’s.”
    “He needs to be the one to sign for it. Him or a family member or his valet.” She pronounced it to rhyme with
mallet.
    Hagen took out another hundred and said that if she could find it in her heart to straighten all this out, there was more than enough money here for the racquet and her time.
    She looked at him the same way last night’s clerk had, but she took the money.
    Hagen thought his bladder would burst, but by now it was five after nine. He tore the cardboard off the racquet and broke into a dead sprint. Those exact words occurred to him
—dead sprint.
    When he got to Court 14, ten minutes late, there was no one there. He was so rarely late that he had no idea what to do. Had the Ambassador already been here and left? Was he late, too? How long should Hagen wait? Would it make sense to go take a leak and come back? He looked around. A lot of bushes, but this wasn’t the sort of place where a guy ought to be pissing in the bushes. So he stood there, hopping from foot to foot, holding it. Surely, the Ambassador had come and gone. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he ran to the nearest men’s room. When he got back to the Court 14, a note was pinned to the net.
Ambassador Shea—unable to play tennis this a.m. Late brunch? 2. Poolside. A man will pick you up.
    The note didn’t say where.
    Kay Corleone pointed back toward the road to the Las Vegas airport. “He missed our turn,” she said. “Michael, we missed our turn.”
    Next to her in the backseat of their new yellow Cadillac, Michael shook his head.
    Kay frowned. “We’re
driving
all the way to Los Angeles? Are you out of your mind?”
    It was their fifth anniversary. She and the kids and even her mother and Baptist pastor father had already been to Mass. Michael had business tonight, before, during, and after the private show Johnny Fontane was doing as a favor for the Teamsters. But he’d promised her that the whole day up until then would be one long date—like old times, only better.
    Michael shook his head. “We’re not driving. And we’re not going to Los Angeles.”
    Kay turned around in her seat, looking back toward the road not taken, then turned to her husband. Abruptly, she had what felt like a block of ice in her guts. “Michael,” she said. “Forgive me, but I think this marriage has withstood about all the surprises that—” She made circles with her hands, like a sports official signaling improper movement of some sort.
    He smiled. “This will be a good surprise,” he said. “I promise.”
    Soon they came to Lake Mead, near a dock with a seaplane moored to the end. The plane was registered to Johnny Fontane’s movie production company, though neither Fontane nor anyone who worked there knew anything about it.
    “Surprise number one,” Michael said, pointing to the plane.
    “Oh, brother,” she said. “ ‘Number one’? You’ve counted them up. You really should have become a mathematics professor.” The illicit thrill she’d once gotten from what he’d become instead had waned enough that she might actually have meant this.
    They got out of the car.
    “That’s counting,” he said. “At most
ac
counting. Not mathematics.” He held out his hand toward the dock. “M’lady.”
    Kay wanted to say she was afraid but did not, could not. She had no reason whatsoever to think that he might do her harm.
    “Surprise number two—”
    “Michael.”
    “—is that I’m flying.”
    Her eyes widened.
    “I started pilot training in the Marines,” he said, “before I was, you know.”
Sent to fight in