Oli, I suspect that Tom was trying to conceal, or at least soft-pedal, that Fredo had called him as soon as he got to NY from Havana. I enlarged on it in a thread I started a while back. Don Cardi even imagined some dialog:
http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=977661&page=1Tom didn't say he didn't talk to Fredo, but he didn't admit he did. Two curious things about this interchange:
1. Michael easily could have seen right through Tom's circumlocution. Why didn't he confront Tom and press him for what else Fredo told him?
2. We saw that Michael was frantic to get Fredo on the plane that would take him out of Havana. But, in that hotel room, he simply tells Tom to "get word" to Fredo, when he could have had Fredo hauled out of NY and brought to him. He didn't summon Fredo until he learned that the subcommittee had Pentangeli. Why?
BTW: I've always believed that Tom had a soft spot for Fredo, perhaps because he believed that Fredo, like him, was being treated by Michael as an outsider, not as a brother. Even after Michael learned about Pentangeli's survival, Tom tells Michael: "Fredo says he knows nothing, and I believe him." As it happened, Fredo knew a lot--enough to have gotten Michael out of that perjury trap Roth and Questadt set for him, if Fredo'd done the right thing and voluntarily told Michael what he knew.
