“I’m sorry,” Fredo murmured.

Michael shook his head. “Ah, Fredo.”

“Don’t ‘Ah, Fredo’ me, all right? Whatever you do, don’t do that.”

“The situation is under control,” Michael said.

Fredo held out his hands, shaking them in frustration. Meaning what? Talk to me.

“You’re leaving when?” Michael said. “I have an early flight to Havana, but maybe we can have breakfast someplace. Just you and me. Or at least take a walk out by the beach.”

“God, that’d be great, Mikey. Really great. Our flight’s in the afternoon, I forget when.” Fredo had been trying to get in to see his own brother for months. Because of Deanna, Fredo spent half his time in L.A. Mike was gone half the time. Even when they were in the same town together, they never found time just to be brothers-to see a ball game, have a beer, go fishing. They hadn’t done any of that since before the war. And that wasn’t to mention business. Fredo needed to talk to Mike again about setting up a cemetery business in New Jersey, one like out in Colma. Fredo had looked into it some more. Nick Geraci had been a big help. Fredo was convinced he could make Mike reconsider.

“Kay’s not going to Havana with you?” Fredo said.

“I’m going on business, Fredo. You know that.”

“Right.” Fredo banged the heel of his hand against his head. “Sorry. How’s that going?” Fredo said. “ Havana, Hyman Roth, all that?”

Michael frowned. “Tomorrow,” he said. “At breakfast.”

Fredo’s vagueness was born of ignorance, not discretion. Roth had been an associate of Vito Corleone’s during Prohibition. Now he was the most powerful Jewish Mob boss in New York -and, by extension, Las Vegas and Havana, too. Fredo had no clear idea what Michael and Roth were cooking up in Cuba, only that Michael had been working on it for a long time and that it was big. “Breakfast’s great,” Fredo said. He’d waited this long to learn what was going on, he could wait until tomorrow morning, too. “Most important meal of the day.”

“When’s your television show start?” Michael asked.

“September. I got Fontane booked for the first one.” All the favors they’d done for Johnny Fontane, this was the least he could do. He’d said yes right away.

“That was a good idea,” Michael said.

“What-Fontane? Or the show?”

“Both, I guess. The show was what I meant.”

“Really?”

“We need to change people’s perceptions. For our businesses to grow the way we want them to, it’s valuable to show the public the Corleones are”-he gestured toward the groom’s side of the ballroom-“no different, in the end, than people like the Van Arsdales.”

“Thanks,” Fredo said.

They made arrangements to meet in the hotel lobby at six the next morning.

“You know, I never could tell them apart.” Michael nodded toward Francesca and Kathy.

“Francesca’s the one in the wedding dress.”

Michael laughed. “You don’t say?”

Fredo embraced his brother. They held it longer than Fredo could remember ever doing before, then pulled each other even closer. It was Sonny they were thinking about, which they both seemed to know without saying anything. His spirit had been there all day, more present than any live guest. Both Fredo and Mike had been on the edge of breaking down when they’d stood in line to hand Francesca their envelopes. Now, when they let go, the brothers’ faces were slick with unashamed tears. They patted each other on the shoulders and said no more.

It was a rough thing to handle, though. Who could blame a guy for wanting to drown his sorrows? Fredo knew even as it was happening that he was drinking too much, but under the circumstances it didn’t seem like a federal offense. Also, there was the matter of that priest at the ceremony-a dead ringer for Father Stefano, the priest who’d made Fredo want to be a priest: same lopsided smile, a plume of black hair combed just the same way, same slim-hipped build, like a long-distance runner’s. Fredo tried not to think about Father Stefano, and most of the time he succeeded-months passed without so much as a momentary image-but at those rare times he did think of him, Fredo wound up drinking too much.

If people everywhere didn’t drink to forget, half the songs on the radio and three fourths of the world’s distilleries would disappear. Fredo stayed at the wedding and didn’t make a scene and didn’t go out anywhere afterward. He and Deanna started dancing together to every song, and she did seem happy, though they were both too drunk for any emotion to be above suspicion.

Back in the room, he gave it to her in the ass, something he’d have never done sober, and she didn’t complain, which was also the doing of all that booze.

When he woke up the next morning, Fredo had no memory of how he’d gotten to his room. He lifted Deanna’s limp arm to look at her Cartier watch. His head pounded. He struggled to get his bleary eyes to focus. It was almost eleven. In a panic, Fredo called Michael’s room. “I’m sorry, sir,” said the operator. “Mr. Corleone and his entire family checked out hours ago.”

(The Fred Corleone Show aired irregularly, usually on Monday nights on a UHF station in Las Vegas, from 1957 until its host’s disappearance in 1959. It was broadcast from the lounge at the Castle in the Sand on a minimal set: a low round table flanked by the host and a guest on leopard-print chairs. On a board behind them, white lights spelled out “ FRED !” Behind the board was a dark curtain. The following is from the show’s debut on September 30, 1957 [transcript courtesy of the Nevada Museum of Radio and Television].)

FRED CORLEONE: This first show, I expect it to be real mothery. If you don’t know what that means, I guess call it a gasser. I see these other shows with everything-girls, jokes, little skits, whatnot. Music. So on and so forth. Sometimes these guys got so many guest stars they need a traffic cop in the wings, y’know? The fellas who do those shows are good men, but, personally, I think maybe they’re not sure they can grab you, so they keep throwing acts at you. More guests than they got folks at home watching. Tonight we’re takin’ a different road, and I hope you’ll sit back and join us. One guest, that’s it, but he’s a major leaguer: a star of stage and screen and of course a singer like none other, not to mention being a fellow paesano. Ladies and gents, Mr. John Fontane.

(Corleone stands and applauds. Fontane nods toward the audience. The men sit, and both take their time lighting cigarettes and getting started.)

FRED CORLEONE: They tell me Groovesville could wind up being the biggest long-player in history. The rock-and-roll fad is dying, and you’re on top, number one across the land.

JOHNNY FONTANE: Thank you. My recording career had a bad case of pavement rash for a while there, but I picked myself up and caught a few breaks. In all modesty, the records I’ve been fortunate enough to make with the genius Cy Milner-not just Groovesville but also The Last Lonely Midnight, Johnny Sings Hoagy, and starting with Fontane Blue-those may very well be the best records I’ve ever done.

FRED CORLEONE: Those are maybe the best sides anyone ever did.

JOHNNY FONTANE: You should have Cy on your show. He’s doing my next record, too, which is sort of a dream project for me, a duets record with Miss Ella Fitzgerald.

FRED CORLEONE: I’ll do that. (Looks offstage.) Somebody write that down. Cy Milner, genius, and, um, y’know. Book him on the show I guess is the good word.

JOHNNY FONTANE: You should have Ella on, also. Like the song says, she’s the top.

FRED CORLEONE: Sure.

JOHNNY FONTANE: I don’t use the word genius lightly.

FRED CORLEONE: The way Hollywood phonies do. I know. You don’t.

JOHNNY FONTANE: Any singer who works with Milner will tell you he’s a genius, for the simple reason that during his years as a ’bone man with the Les Halley Band, he-