“I’m tellin’ you,” Clemenza said. “I don’t think I ever seen your old man so-”

Michael nodded.

“Waterworks,” Clemenza said. “Only time in all the years I ever saw him like that.”

Clemenza had been the one who’d brought Michael to be straightened out, a few weeks after he returned to America from his exile in Sicily. The killings of Sollozzo and McCluskey, which had served to make his bones, had happened three years earlier. Clemenza had had tickets to a Dodgers game he’d gotten from a friend he had with the team. Second row, right behind the plate. It was the first game Michael had seen since they started letting Negroes play. He’d had no idea that this had happened, or when. He’d spent seven of the last eight years away from America, fighting and killing and in constant danger of being killed. He’d missed things. He hadn’t even been to his brother’s funeral. The Dodgers beat Chicago, 4-1.

On the way home, they stopped at what, when Michael left the country, had been the offices of a daily newspaper. One of Clemenza’s shylocks had, for the usual reasons, found himself in possession of the building. Clemenza said he needed to take a look at the place to figure out whether to rent it, sell it, or torch it. All of which was true.

When they entered the huge empty room where the printing press had been, there, in the pale late-summer light, sitting behind a long table, its blue paint peeling, were Tessio and Michael’s father. On the table were a tapered candle, a holy card, a pistol, and a knife. Michael knew what was coming: they were initiating him into the Family. After all that had happened, this was just a formality. It had been Michael’s own idea to kill those men-the man who’d arranged the hit on Vito Corleone and the crooked cop who, when he came to the hospital to finish the job, had had to settle for smashing Michael’s face. It had been his brother Sonny’s job, as acting Don, to okay those killings (Tessio had objected, saying it would be like “bringing a guy up from the minors to pitch in the World Series”). Later, Vito claimed he’d never wanted this life for Michael, but it had always been obvious he thought no one else could ever be good enough. At Michael’s initiation, his father mumbled a few unintelligible words before his shoulders started heaving. He began to sob. Clemenza followed suit. Tessio finished the job, in a combination of Sicilian and English, with saturnine eloquence. Afterward, they killed two bottles of Chianti. Vito couldn’t stop weeping. The smell of ink and grease registered on Michael, but somehow not the intensity of it. The next day, his clothes stank so badly they had to go in the trash. A week later, the building burned to the ground. Lightning, ruled the fire marshal. A month after that, the guy quit the fire department and moved to Florida. Now he fronted money-laundering operations down there-liquor stores, vending machines, real estate-and was engaged to Sonny’s widow, Sandra.

The elevator doors opened. Michael and Pete boarded it and rode it together to the top.

“Forlenza’d never clip his own godson.” Clemenza-who, on Michael’s orders, had killed Carlo Rizzi, the father of Michael’s own godson-sucked three olives off his toothpick and kept the pick in the corner of his mouth. “I also don’t think it’s possible a guy from another outfit could set foot on that fucking island without the Jew knowing about it,” Clemenza said. “I say accident.”

The best information Hagen had been able to get was that there had been one survivor. This had not been confirmed. If the survivor was one of the two Dons or one of their men, it would look better. If it was Geraci, what would happen next was hard to figure. It might or might not be possible to pass him off as some private pilot named O’Malley with no connection to the Corleone Family. Also, it was going to be nearly impossible to learn what he knew or had been able to figure out. And then there was the matter of the thunderstorm. The storm might take the blame for everything, which would keep the crash from having its full effect. But Michael was already plotting how he might use any uncertainty over the cause of the crash to his advantage. “Accidents don’t happen,” Michael said, “to people who take accidents as a personal insult.”

“So sabotage?”

“I don’t know. I agree, Don Forlenza wouldn’t kill his own godson, even if he had a reason to. As far as we know, he didn’t have a reason. But I’m not so sure it’s impossible to sneak onto that island somehow.”

“If not Forlenza-”

Michael shrugged and arched an eyebrow and kept his eyes fixed on Pete’s.

“La testa di cazzo.” Clemenza pulled out the elevator’s emergency stop knob with one hand, pounding the wall with the other. “Russo.”

Michael nodded, as if in thought. “One airplane,” he said, “and who gets hurt? They hit us, they hit Molinari, they hit their own guy Falcone, a reckless man who maybe they thought had stepped too far out on his own, and it all looks like Forlenza ordered it. Their four biggest competitors not just here, in Las Vegas, but in the western half of the country.”

“ ‘Everything west of Chicago is Chicago,’ ” Clemenza said, mocking. “Quello stronzo.”

“If you’re right,” Michael said, “turd only scratches the surface of what that guy is.” He shook his head in a way he was sure looked sincerely rueful.

Clemenza filled his fat cheeks with air, exhaled slowly, then pushed the button in. When the elevator doors opened, a few dozen people were already there, scattered throughout the ballroom. Clemenza patted Michael on the back. “Don’t let that shit ruin this thing here,” he whispered. “Enjoy it, okay? You went to all that trouble to have your face fixed where that cop fucked it up. Show it off a little. Smile.”

Michael had lied.

Not lied exactly. More like: he’d led a horse to water, and Pete Clemenza had bent over and drunk. If Pete blamed Russo that fast, he wouldn’t be alone.

The truth was that Michael Corleone had sought to hurt all four of his biggest rivals in the West. That was the easy part. The hard part had been to do it without taking the blame. By orchestrating the incident so that not another living soul knew all of what he’d done (not Hagen, not Pete, nobody), he might have done that, too.

Frank Falcone was a menace. Ever since Michael had had Moe Greene killed, Falcone had been the biggest roadblock to the Corleones’ expansion into Las Vegas. Pignatelli would be more obedient to Chicago than Falcone was, yet because of his business relationship with the Corleones-both his involvement in the Castle in the Clouds and the satchel of cash he’d had Johnny Fontane deliver as a tribute for killing Falcone-he posed no threat.

Tony Molinari was a longtime ally, true, but his increasing wariness about Michael’s setting up a base of operations in Lake Tahoe, a couple hundred miles from San Francisco, was a problem destined to escalate. Unfortunately, he’d become a cancer best removed now.

Forlenza was an old man. Disgracing him while he was still alive was better than killing him. He’d been bragging to the other Dons for years about his little island fortress. He’d get all or part of the blame for the crash. Even if no one came after him for revenge, there would be pressure from his own men for him to step down. Sal Narducci-who’d struck a deal with Michael Corleone and overseen the sabotage of the plane-would become Don. After waiting for the job for twenty years, he was a good bet to keep his mouth shut about how he finally got it. Installing Narducci as Don would also sever Cleveland ’s ties to the Barzinis.

The best part of the plan was what it would do to Chicago. It would be impossible to prove that Russo had been behind it and equally impossible to disprove it. But once Michael let the members of the Commission know that the dead pilot O’Malley had really been his new capo, all the right people would consider who’d had the most to gain.