Puzo Mario. The Godfather

   It was Don Tommasino sitting on a chair near his bed, Michael could see him clearly now. Don Tommasino was saying, “Michael, Michael, can I talk to you? Do you want to rest?”
   It was easier to raise a hand to make a gesture and Michael did so and Don Tommasino said, “Did Fabrizzio bring the car from the garage?”
   Michael, without knowing he did so, smiled. It was in some strange way, a chilling smile, of assent. Don Tommasino said, “Fabrizzio has vanished. Listen to me, Michael. You’ve been unconscious for nearly a week. Do you understand? Everybody thinks you’re dead, so you’re safe now, they’ve stopped looking for you. I’ve sent messages to your father and he’s sent back instructions. It won’t be long now, you’ll be back in America. Meanwhile you’ll rest here quietly. You’re safe up in the mountains, in a special farmhouse I own. The Palermo people have made their peace with me now that you’re supposed to be dead, so it was you they were after all the time. They wanted to kill you while making people think it was me they were after. That’s something you should know. As for everything else, leave it all to me. You recover your strength and be tranquil.”
   Michael was remembering everything now. He knew his wife was dead, that Calo was dead. He thought of the old woman in the kitchen. He couldn’t remember if she had come outside with him. He whispered, “Filomena?” Don Tommasino said quietly, “She wasn’t hurt, just a bloody nose from the blast. Don’t worry about her.”
   Michael said, “Fabrizzio. Let your shepherds know that the one who gives me Fabrizzio will own the finest pastures in Sicily.”
   Both men seemed to sigh with relief. Don Tontmasino lifted a glass from a nearby table and drank from it an amber fluid that jolted his head up. Dr. Taza sat on the bed and said almost absently, “You know, you’re a widower. That’s rare in Sicily.” As if the distinction might comfort him.
   Michael motioned to Don Tommasino to lean closer. The Don sat on the bed and bent his head. “Tell my father to get me home,” Michael said. “Tell my father I wish to be his son.”
   But it was to be another month before Michael recovered from his injuries and another two months after that before all the necessary papers and arrangements were ready. Then he was flown from Palermo to Rome and from Rome to New York. In all that time no trace had been found of Fabrizzio.

Book Seven

Chapter 25

   When Kay Adams received her college degree, she took a job teaching grade school in her New Hampshire hometown. The first six months after Michael vanished she made weekly telephone calls to his mother asking about him. Mrs. Corleone was always friendly and always wound up saying, “You a very very nice girl. You forget about Mikey and find a nice husband.” Kay was not offended at her bluntness and understood that the mother spoke out of concern for her as a young girl in an impossible situation.
   When her first school term ended, she decided to go to New York to buy some decent clothes and see some old college girl friends. She thought also about looking for some sort of interesting job in New York. She had lived like a spinster for almost two years, reading and teaching, refusing dates, refusing to go out at all, even though she had given up making calls to Long Beach. She knew she couldn’t keep that up, she was becoming irritable and unhappy. But she had always believed Michael would write her or send her a message of some sort. That he had not done so humiliated her, it saddened her that he was so distrustful even of her.
   She took an early train and was checked into her hotel by midafternoon. Her girl friends worked and she didn’t want to bother them at their jobs, she planned to call them at night. And she didn’t really feel like going shopping after the exhausting train trip. Being alone in the hotel room, remembering all the times she and Michael had used hotel rooms to make love, gave her a feeling of desolation. It was that more than anything else that gave her the idea of calling Michael’s mother out in Long Beach.
   The phone was answered by a rough masculine voice with a typical, to her, New York accent. Kay asked to speak to Mrs. Corelone. There was a few minutes’ silence and then Kay heard the heavily accented voice asking who it was.
   Kay was a little embarrassed now. “This is Kay Adams, Mrs. Corleone,” she said. “Do you remember me?”
   “Sure, sure, I remember you,” Mrs. Corleone said. “How come you no call up no more? You get a married?”
   “Oh, no,” Kay said. “I’ve been busy.” She was surprised at the mother obviously being annoyed that she had stopped calling. “Have you heard anything from Michael? Is he all right”
   There was silence at the other end of the phone and then Mrs. Corleorie’s voice came strong. “Mikey is a home. He no call you up? He no see you?”
   Kay felt her stomach go weak from shock and a humiliating desire to weep. Her voice broke a little when she asked, “How long has he been home?”
   Mrs. Corleone said, “Six months.”
   “Oh, I see,” Kay said. And she did. She felt hot waves of shame that Michael’s mother knew he was treating her so cheaply. And then she was angry. Angry at Michael, at his mother, angry at all foreigners, Italians who didn’t have the common courtesy to keep up a decent show of friendship even if a love affair was over. Didn’t Michael know she would be concerned for him as a friend even if he no longer wanted her for a bed companion, even if he no longer wanted to marry her? Did he think she was one of those poor benighted Italian girls who would commit suicide or make a scene after giving up her virginity and then being thrown over? But she kept her voice as cool as possible. “I see, thank you very much,” she said. “I’m glad Michael is home again and all right. I just wanted to know. I won’t call you again.”
   Mrs. Corleone’s voice came impatiently over the phone as if she had heard nothing that Kay had said. “You wanta see Mikey, you come out here now. Give him a nice surprise. You take a taxi, and I tell the man at the gate to pay the taxi for you. You tell the taxi man he gets two times his clock, otherwise he no come way out the Long Beach. But don’t you pay. My husband’s man at the gate pay the taxi.”
   “I couldn’t do that, Mrs. Corleone,” Kay said coldly. “If Michael wanted to see me, he would have called me at home before this. Obviously, he doesn’t want to resume our relationship.”
   Mrs. Corleone’s voice came briskly over the phone. “You a very nice girl, you gotta nice legs, but you no gotta much brains.” She chuckled. “You come out to see me, not Mikey. I wanta talk to you. You come right now. An’ no pay the taxi. I wait for you.” The 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 nee 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 want 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 l 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 dote that strike you for a proposition?”
   “Marvelous,” Kay said. “But you sort of skipped ones 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 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 bgcause 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 where 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 exeept wilt 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 vote 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 pleated 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 daps from the built-in racks before him. In not more than fire 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 ail 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?”
   The pit boss shrugged. “He went early tonight. The first time we got the house doc and he fixed Mr. Valenti up with something and gave him some sort of lecture. Then Nino told us that we shouldn’t call the doc when that happened, just put him to bed and he’d be OK in the morning. So that’s what we do. He’s pretty lucky, he was a winner again tonight, almost three grand.”
   Johnny Fontane said, “Well, let’s get the house doc up here tonight. OK? Page the casino floor if you have to.”
   It was almost fifteen minutes before Jules Segal came into the suite. Johnny noted with irritation that this guy never looked like a doctor. Tonight he was wearing a blue loose-knit polo shirt with white trim, some sort of white suede shoes and no socks. He looked funny as hell carrying the traditional black doctor’s bag.
   Johnny said, “You oughta figure out a way to carry your stuff in a cut-down golf bag.”
   Jules grinned understandingly, “Yeah, this medical school carryall is a real drag. Scares the hell out of people. They should change the color anyway.”
   He went over to where Nino was lying in bed. As he opened his bag he said to Johnny. “Thanks for that check you sent me as a consultant. It was excessive. I didn’t do that much.”
   “Like hell you didn’t,” Johnny said. “Anyway, forget that, that was a long time ago. What’s with Nino?”
   Jules was making a quick examination of heartbeat, pulse and blood pressure. He took a needle out of his bag and shoved it casually into Nino’s arm and pressed the plunger. Nino’s sleeping face lost its waxy paleness, color came into the cheeks, as if the blood had started pumping faster.
   “Very simple diagnosis,” Jules said briskly. “I had a chance to examine him and run some tests when he first came here and fainted. I had him moved to the hospital before he regained consciousness. He’s got diabetes, mild adult stabile, which is no problem if you take care of it with medication and diet and so forth. He insists on ignoring it. Also he is firmly determined to drink himself to death. His liver is going and his brain will go. Right now he’s in a mild diabetic coma. My advice is to have him put away.”
   Johnny felt a sense of relief. It couldn’t be too serious, all Nino had to do was take care of himself. “You mean in one of those joints where they dry you out?” Johnny asked.
   Jules went over to the bar in the far corner of the room and made himself a drink. “No,” he said. “I mean committed. You know, the crazy house.”
   “Don’t be funny,” Johnny said.
   “I’m not joking,” Jules said. “I’m not up on all the psychiatric jazz but I know something about it, part of my trade. Your friend Nino can be put back into fairly good shape unless the liver damage has gone too far, which we can’t know until an autopsy really. But the real disease is in his head. In essence he doesn’t care if he dies, maybe he even wants to kill himself. Until that is cured there’s so hope for him. That’s why I say, have him committed and then he can undergo the necessary psychiatric treatment.”
   There was a knock on the door and Johnny went to answer it. It was Lucy Mancini. She came into Johnny’s arms and kissed him. “Oh, Johnny, it’s so good to see you,” she said.
   “It’s been a long time,” Johnny Fontane said. He noticed that Lucy had changed. She had gotten much slimmer, her clothes were a hell of a lot better and she wore them better. Her hair style fitted her face in a sort of boyish cut. She looked younger and better than he had ever seen her and the thought crossed his mind that she could keep him company here is Vegas. It would be a pleasure hanging out with a real broad. But before he could turn on the charm he remembered she was the doc’s girl. So it was out. He made his smile just friendly and said, “What are you doing coming to Nino’s apartment at night, eh?”
   She punched him in the shoulder. “I heard Nino was sick and that Jules came up. I just wanted to see if I could help. Nino’s OK, isn’t he?”
   “Sure,” Johnny said. “He’ll be fine.”
   Jules Segal had sprawled out on the couch. “Like hell he is,” Jules said. “I suggest we all sit here and wait for Nino to come to. And then we all talk him into committing himself. Lucy, he likes you, maybe you can help. Johnny, if you’re a real friend of his you’ll go along. Otherwise old Nino’s liver will shortly be exhibit A in some university medical lab.”
   Johnny was offended by the doctor’s flippant attitude. Who the hell did he think he was? He started to say so but Nino’s voice came from the bed, “Hey, old buddy, how, about a drink.
   Nino was sitting up in bed. He grinned at Lucy and said, “Hey, baby, come to old Nino.” He held his arms wide-open. Lucy sat on the edge of the bed and gave him a hug. Oddly enough Nino didn’t look bad at all now, almost normal.
   Nino snapped his fingers. “Come on, Johnny, gimme a drink. The night’s young yet. Where the hell’s my blackjack table?”
   Jules took a long slug from his own glass and said to Nino, “You can’t have a think. Your doctor forbids it.”
   Nino scowled. “Screw my actor.” Then a play-acting look of contrition came on his face. “Hey, Julie, that’s you. You’re my doctor, right? I don’t mean you, old buddy. Johnny, get me a drink or I get up out of bed sad get it myself.”
   Johnny shrugged and moved toward the bar. Jules said indifferently, “I’m saying he shouldn’t have it.”
   Johnny knew why Jules irritated him. The doctor’s voice was always cool, the words never stressed so matter how dire, the voice always low and controlled. If he gave a warning the warning was in the words alone, the voice itself was neutral, as if uncaring. It was this that made Johnny sore enough to bring Nino his water glass of whiskey. Before he handed it over he said to Jules, “This won’t kill him, right?”
   “No, it won’t kill him,” Jules said calmly. Lucy gave him an anxious glance, started to say something, then kept still. Meanwhile Nino had taken the whiskey and poured it down his throat.
   Johnny was smiling down at Nino; they had shown the punk doctor. Suddenly Nino gasped, his face seemed to turn blue, he couldn’t catch his breath and was choking for air. His body leaped upward like a fish, his face was gorged with blood, his eyes bulging. Jules appeared on the other side of the bed facing Johnny and Lucy. He took Nino by the neck and held him still and plunged the needle into the shoulder near where it joined the neck. Nino went limp in his hands, the heaves of his body subsided, and after a moment he slumped down back onto his pillow. His eyes closed in sleep.
   Johnny, Lucy and Jules went back into the living room part of the suite and sat around the huge solid coffee table. Lucy picked up one of the aquamarine phones and ordered coffee and some food to be sent up. Johnny had gone over to the bar and mixed himself a drink.
   “Did you know he would have that reaction from the whiskey?” Johnny asked.
   Jules shrugged. “I was pretty sure he would.”
   Johnny said sharply, “Then why didn’t you warn me?”
   “I warned you,” Jules said.
   “You didn’t warn me right,” Johnny said with cold anger. “You are really one hell of a doctor. You don’t give a shit. You tell me to get Nino in a crazy house, you don’t bother to use a nice word like sanitorium. You really like to stick it to people, right?”
   Lucy was staring down in her lap. Jules kept smiling at Fontane. “Nothing was going to stop you from giving Nino that drink. You had to show you didn’t have to accept my warnings, my orders. Remember when you offered me a job as your personal physician after that throat business? I turned you down because I knew we could never get along. A doctor thinks he’s God, he’s the high priest in modern society, that’s one of his rewards. But you would never treat me that way. I’d be a flunky God to you. Like those doctors you guys have in Hollywood. Where do you get those people from anyway? Christ, don’t they know anything or don’t they just care? They must know what’s happening to Nino but they just give him all kinds of drugs to keep him going. They wear those silk suits and they kiss your ass because you’re a power movie man and so you think they are great doctors. Show biz, docs, you gotta have heart? Right? But they don’t give a fuck if you live or die. Well, my little hobby, unforgivable as it is, is to keep people alive. I let you give Nino that drink to show you what could happen to him.” Jules leaned toward Johnny Fontane, his voice still calm, unemotional. “Your friend is almost terminal. Do you understand that? He hasn’t got a chance without therapy and strict medical care. His blood pressure and diabetes and bad habits can cause a cerebral hemorrhage in this very next instant. His brain will blow itself apart. Is that vivid enough for you? Sure, I said crazy house. I want you to understand what’s needed. Or you won’t make a move. I’ll put it to you straight. You can save your buddy’s life by having him committed. Otherwise kiss him good-bye.”
   Lucy murmured, “Jules, darling, lutes, don’t be so tough. Just tell him.”
   Jules stood up. His usual cool was gone, Johnny Fontane noticed with satisfaction. His voice too had lost its quiet unaccented monotone.
   “Do you think this is the first time I’ve had to talk to people like you in a situation like this?” Jules said. “I did it every day. Lucy says don’t be so tough, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You know, I used to tell people, “Don’t eat go much or you’ll die, don’t smoke so much or you’ll die, don’t work so much or you’ll die, don’t drink so much or you’ll die.’ Nobody listens. You know why? Because I don’t say, `You will die tomorrow.’ Well, I can tell you that Nino may very well die tomorrow.”
   Jules went over to the bar and mixed himself another drink. “How about it, Johnny, are you going to get Nino committed?”
   Johnny said, “I don’t know.”
   Jules took a quick drink at the bar and filled his glass again. “You know, it’s a funny thing, you can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death and even eat yourself to death. But that’s all acceptable. The only thing you can’t do medically is screw yourself to death and yet that’s where they put all the obstacles.” He paused to finish his drink. “But even that’s trouble, for women anyway. I used to have women who weren’t supposed to have any more babies. ‘It’s dangerous,’ I’d tell them. ‘You could die,’ I’d tell them. And a month later they pop in, their faces all rosy, and say, ‘Doctor, I think I’m pregnant,’ and sure enough they’d kill the rabbit. ‘But it’s dangerous,’ I’d tell them. My voice used to have expression in those days. And they’d smile at me and say, ‘But my husband and I are very strict Catholics,’ they’d say.”
   There was a knock on the door and two waiters wheeled in a cart covered with food and silver service coffeepots. They took a portable table from the bottom of the cart and set it up. Then Johnny dismissed them.
   They sat at the table and ate the hot sandwiches Lucy had ordered and drank the coffee. Johnny leaned back and lit up a cigarette. “So you save lives. How come you became an abortionist?”