The Godfather's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

reading his door,” the agent said. “‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead’—sounds like a sign my kids would hang on their tree house, right next to NO GIRLS ALLOWED .”
    Carlo sat up straight but did not answer. He shot a look at his brother. Augie was the kind of man who would take pleasure in humbling this nothing, this federal nobody, by answering the question. For a moment, though, he held his tongue.
    “Oh, I get it,” the agent said. “It’s some kind of knife-wielding-Guido manifesto.”
    “For your information ,” said Augie Tramonti, “the fella who said that there was none other than Mr. Benjamin Franklin. OK? Who I’m not surprised if you never heard of, since he’s one of the ones who signed the Constitution of Independence, which, with all due respect, it seems like you gentlemen aren’t familiar with, huh?”
    “Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.”
    Augie Tramonti shook his head in disagreement, Carlo in disapproval. “He signed ’em both,” Augie said. “Guarantee, hey? Grade school, you should have learned that, which is…how is it people say it? Shocking but not surprising.”
    “Enough.” Carlo rose unsteadily to his feet. One of the agents blew cigarette smoke in his face. Carlo swallowed hard and withstood it.
    The agents pushed Augie aside and led Carlo out into the fresh air, back to their plain black cars.
    “I am being kidnapped,” Carlo Tramonti said. It was a clear accusation, evenly leveled.
    The agents ignored him and kept moving.
    “This is America!” Carlo Tramonti hissed.
    “Correct,” said the agent in charge. He slammed the door.
    “This is not how people are treated in America!”
    “From here on out,” said the agent in charge, “for people like you, it sure as heck is.”
    As the three black cars drove away, Augie Tramonti, standing alongside Highway 61, pointed and stomped and screamed Sicilian curses.
     
    AT THE NEW ORLEANS AIRPORT, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL of the United States waited on the tarmac in a black limousine. An aide brought him word that the Whale was on his way. Outside, other aides were putting the finishing touches on a makeshift podium—Justice Department seal, American flags, sound check. They informed the network television crews it wouldn’t be long now. Daniel Brendan Shea looked amply ready for his close-up. He was an almost pretty man, black Irish with sharp cheekbones, long white teeth, and the kind of disproportionately large head the cameras love. In person, Danny Shea looked less like his brother than he did a Hollywood actor cast as President James Kavanaugh Shea, a taller man, whose handsome features were more recognizably human.
    Sirens drew closer. A jet airplane was parked nearby, engines running and crew on board.
    The A.G. stepped out of his limo and stood, alone, squinting and shading his eyes, facing the direction of the sirens. The cameramen and reporters shouted at him, but he either did not hear or pretended not to. As the three Chevy Biscaynes came speeding into view, escorted now by what looked like an endless string of state and local police cars, Danny Shea turned his face into the wind, folded his arms, and shook his head in a way that suggested hard-won victory. If this was only a pose, it was nonetheless an excellent one.
    What was Danny Shea thinking? He had to have known that this would never hold up in court. That this was just for show.
    Was the motivation revenge? Four years ago, he’d sat behind his then boss, Senator Theodore Preston Davies of New York, and been captured on TV getting increasingly angry as Carlo Tramonti took the Fifth Amendment again and again, reading it off a printed card his lawyer gave him. The more agitated Shea got, the more times he whispered in his boss’s ear, the more Tramonti seemed to be enjoying himself. It’s possible that this deportation was Danny Shea’s way of wiping the smug grin off Carlo Tramonti’s