A few years ago, Hagen had taken Andrew to FAO Schwartz to see Annie McGowan, back when Andrew was still little and her puppet show, Jojo, Mrs. Cheese amp; Annie, was just starting. Last year, about the time Annie left Danny Shea (who was married anyway) and she and Johnny Fontane became an item, she’d quit her TV show to become a singer.

Shea climbed down from the table, waving. Fontane and Annie stayed, belting out a show tune that originally had celebrated another state and now sported lyrics extolling the virtues of New Jersey.

Hagen pulled out the index card on which his chief of staff had-in tiny, perfect handwriting-listed what parties to attend tonight, including meticulous directions, names of people to see, even conversational prompts. Screw it. He’d seen enough, had enough. Hagen was going back to Asbury Park to see his family.

On his way out, he saw Fredo sitting in the lobby, talking with the two Chicago guys and a man in a plaid coat, Morty Whiteshoes, who worked mostly in Miami.

“You leaving, Tom?” Fredo called out.

Tom motioned for him to stay seated. “Catch you later tonight.”

“No, hold on,” Fredo said, excusing himself. “I’ll walk with you. Be right back, guys.”

Fredo fell in beside him on the crowded boardwalk. Hagen walked faster than he would have needed to.

“I need to ask you something.”

“It’s taken care of,” Hagen said, presuming this was about the mess last year in San Francisco. “Forgotten, okay? So forget it.”

“Look, did Mike ever say anything to you about this idea I had?” Fredo said. “This vision really, where we’d get a law passed so you couldn’t bury nobody in New York -any of the boroughs and Long Island, too?”

“Keep it down.” Instinctively Hagen looked around.

“I don’t mean that kind of body burying,” Fredo said. “I’m talking about regular, you know? Everybody. You get a zoning thing passed so that-”

“No,” Hagen said. “You know I’m out of that end of things. Listen, I really have to go.” He cut in front of Fredo and walked backward, hoping to put an end to this. “Tell Deanna I said hello, all right?”

Fredo stopped and looked puzzled. Though it might have been the sunglasses. Hagen couldn’t see his eyes.

“Deanna,” Hagen said. “Your wife. Ring any bells?”

Fredo nodded. “Tell Theresa and the kids I love them,” he said. “Don’t forget, okay?”

There was something about the way he said it that Hagen didn’t like. He pulled him aside, into an alley. “You okay, Fredo?”

Fredo looked down and shrugged, like one of Hagen ’s sulky teenage boys.

“Do you want to tell me more about what happened in San Francisco?”

Fredo looked up and took off his sunglasses. “Fuck you, okay? I’m not answerable to you, Tommy.”

“What sort of twisted Hollywood bullshit have you gotten yourself into, Fredo?”

“What did I just say? I don’t have to answer to you, all right?”

“Why the hell are all of Fontane’s friends either sleeping with women he used to sleep with or else used to sleep with the women he’s sleeping with?”

“Say what now?”

Hagen repeated himself.

“That’s low, Tommy.”

It was. “Forget it,” Hagen said.

“No, I know you,” Fredo said, closing in on Hagen, backing him against the wall of the alley. “You don’t forget jack shit. You’ll keep turning it over in your mind until you think you got a solution, even if there is no solution, or the solution’s so simple you couldn’t stand it because then you wouldn’t get to think about it over”-and here he jabbed Hagen in the breastbone-“and over”-again-“and over”-and again-“and over again.”

Hagen had his back against a sooty brick wall. Fredo had been a violent little kid for a while, and then that part of him just disappeared. Until he beat up that queer in San Francisco.

“I should go,” Hagen said. “All right? I need to go.”

“You think you’re so fucking smart.” He gave Hagan’s chest a little shove. “Don’t you?”

“C’mon, Fredo. Easy, huh?”

“Answer me.”

“Do you have a gun, Fredo?”

“What’s wrong, you afraid of me?”

“Always have been,” Hagen said.

Fredo laughed, low and mirthless. He reached up, open-handed, and gave Hagen ’s cheek something harder than a pat and softer than a slap. “Look, Tommy,” Fredo said. “It’s not complicated.”

What isn’t? Hagen pursed his lips and nodded. “It’s not, huh?”

“It’s not.” Fredo had onions and red wine on his breath. He’d missed a spot on his neck, shaving. “See, when you’re a pussy hound like Johnny? And all your friends are pussy hounds, too? It’s bound to happen. Believe me. There’s only so much quality pussy on Earth, and eventually the numbers catch up with a guy. You know?”

“In theory,” Hagen said, “yeah. Sure. I know.”

Fredo stepped backward and put his sunglasses back on. “Next time you talk to Mike,” he said, “tell him I got a few more of the details worked out on my idea, all right?”

“C’mon, Fredo. Like I said, I’m out-”

“Just go, goddamn it.” Fredo pointed vaguely toward the ocean. “You need to go, go.”

That night, when Tom Hagen got back to Theresa’s parents’ house in Asbury Park, his sons were rolling around on the tiny front yard, fighting.

He got out of the car. The fight was, apparently, about a girl, someone Andrew had liked first and Frank had kissed. Hagen let it go on for a while, but when he saw Theresa coming through the front door onto the porch he stuck his fingers in his mouth, whistled, then walked into the middle of the fight and separated them. He ordered them to get in the car and then went inside and got his watch. Gianna was watching a TV Western with her grandparents. He picked her up and piled everyone into the car to go get ice cream. “Mom and Dad have ice cream here,” Theresa said, but Tom shot her a look and she went along.

They got to the Dairy Duchess out by the highway just as it closed. Tom Hagen went around to the back door and slipped the owner a fifty, and a few moments later the Hagen family was sitting together at a sticky green picnic table under a yellow vapor light: a family. Gianna-nothing if not her father’s daughter-ate her cone as fastidiously as a charm-school headmistress, not spilling so much as a sprinkle. Theresa’s sundae melted as she dabbed at Andrew’s puffy face with a spit-dampened paper napkin. Andrew had something with a brownie inside. Frank wolfed down a banana split in a red plastic boat-shaped dish. Tom just had coffee.

When everyone had finished, Tom Hagen rose and stood at the head of the table and told them they were going to spend the rest of the summer in Washington, as a family. Before school started, they’d all drive back to Nevada together, as a family. When he lost the election to a dead man, as he felt fairly certain he would, they would confront that, too, and how?

Gianna’s hand shot up. “As a family!”

“Attagirl,” he said, kissing her on top of her red head. “I know this hasn’t been easy on any of you. I know that the papers have said some crazy things, and I know people have said things to your face that are worse. But we’re in this together. For now, I am a United States congressman. It’s an honor, a privilege, a miracle, really. An experience I want you all to remember for the rest of your lives. Our lives.”

His children turned to look at Theresa. She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “And I’m sorry I haven’t been-”

“No need,” Tom said, waving her off. “I understand completely.”

He didn’t so much forget to tell Theresa and the kids that Fredo loved them as he never found the right moment to do it.

The next day, they got in the car together and drove to D.C. By the time they got there, Ralph had moved Hagen ’s things into a bigger suite and drafted an intern to act as a tour guide. They saw every monument, got behind-the-scenes tours of the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. They went to every museum, and Theresa, who had an art history degree from Syracuse, seemed happier than she’d been in years. Tom and the boys played basketball at the congressional gym and got haircuts from the congressional barber.