BOOK II
Chapter 12
Johnny Fontane waved a casual dismissal to
the manservant and said, “See you in the
morning, Billy.”
The colored butler bowed his way out of the
huge dining room-living room with its view
of the Pacific Ocean.
It was a friendly-good-bye sort of bow, not
a servant’s bow, and given only because
Johnny Fontane had company for dinner.
Johnny’s company was a girl named Sharon
Moore, a New York City Greenwich Village girl
in Hollywood to try for a small part in a
movie being produced by an old flame who had
made the big time.
She had visited the set while Johnny was acting
in the Woltz movie.
Johnny had found her young and fresh and charming
and witty, and had asked her to come to his
place for dinner that evening.
His invitations to dinner were always famous
and had the force of royalty and of course
she said yes.
Sharon Moore obviously expected him to come
on very strong because of his reputation,
but Johnny hated the Hollywood “piece of
meat” approach.
He never slept with any girl unless there
was something about her he really liked.
Except, of course, sometimes when he was very
drunk and found himself in bed with a girl
he didn’t even remember meeting or seeing
before.
And now that he was thirty-five years old,
divorced once, estranged from his second wife,
with maybe a thousand pubic scalps dangling
from his belt, he simply wasn’t that eager.
But there was something about Sharon Moore
that aroused affection in him and so he had
invited her to dinner.
He never ate much but he knew young pretty
girls ambitiously starved themselves for pretty
clothes and were usually big eaters on a date
so there was plenty of food on the table.
There was also plenty of liquor; champagne
in a bucket, scotch, rye, brandy and liqueurs
on the sideboard.
Johnny served the drinks and the plates of
food already prepared.
When they had finished eating he led her into
the huge living room with its glass wall that
looked out onto the Pacific.
He put a stack of Ella Fitzgerald records
on the hi-fi and settled on the couch with
Sharon.
He made a little small talk with her, found
out about what she had been like as a kid,
whether she had been a tomboy or boy crazy,
whether she had been homely or pretty, lonely
or gay.
He always found these details touching, it
always evoked the tenderness he needed to
make love.
They nestled together on the sofa, very friendly,
very comfortable.
He kissed her on the lips, a cool friendly
kiss, and when she kept it that way he left
it that way.
Outside the huge picture window he could see
the dark blue sheet of the Pacific lying flat
beneath the moonlight.
“How come you’re not playing any of your
records?”
Sharon asked him.
Her voice was teasing.
Johnny smiled at her.
He was amused by her teasing him.
“I’m not that Hollywood,” he said.
“Play some for me,” she said.
“Or sing for me.
You know, like the movies.
I’ll bubble up and melt all over you just
like those girls do on the screen.”
Johnny laughed outright.
When he had been younger, he had done just
such things and the result had always been
stagy, the girls trying to look sexy and melting,
making their eyes swim with desire for an
imagined fantasy camera.
He would never dream of singing to a girl
now; for one thing, he hadn’t sung for months,
he didn’t trust his voice.
For another thing, amateurs didn’t realize
how much professionals depended on technical
help to sound as good as they did.
He could have played his records but he felt
the same shyness about hearing his youthful
passionate voice as an aging, balding man
running to fat feels about showing pictures
of himself as a youth in the full bloom of
manhood.
“My voice is out of shape,” he said.
“And honestly, I’m sick of hearing myself
sing.”
They both sipped their drinks.
“I hear you’re great in this picture,”
she said.
“Is it true you did it for nothing?”
“Just a token payment,” Johnny said.
He got up to give her a refill on her brandy
glass, gave her a gold-monogrammed cigarette
and flashed his lighter out to hold the light
for her.
She puffed on the cigarette and sipped her
drink and he sat down beside her again.
His glass had considerably more brandy in
it than hers, he needed it to warm himself,
to cheer himself, to charge himself up.
His situation was the reverse of the lover’s
usual one.
He had to get himself drunk instead of the
girl.
The girl was usually too willing where he
was not.
The last two years had been hell on his ego,
and he used this simple way to restore it,
sleeping with a young fresh girl for one night,
taking her to dinner a few times, giving her
an expensive present and then brushing her
off in the nicest way possible so that her
feelings wouldn’t be hurt.
And then they could always say they had had
a thing with the great Johnny Fontane.
It wasn’t true love, but you couldn’t
knock it if the girl was beautiful and genuinely
nice.
He hated the hard, bitchy ones, the ones who
screwed for him and then rushed off to tell
their friends that they’d screwed the great
Johnny Fontane, always adding that they’d
had better.
What amazed him more than anything else in
his career were the complaisant husbands who
almost told him to his face that they forgave
their wives since it was allowed for even
the most virtuous matron to be unfaithful
with a great singing and movie star like Johnny
Fontane.
That really floored him.
He loved Ella Fitzgerald on records.
He loved that kind of clean singing, that
kind of clean phrasing.
It was the only thing in life he really understood
and he knew he understood it better than anyone
else on earth.
Now lying back on the couch, the brandy warming
his throat, he felt a desire to sing, not
music, but to phrase with the records, yet
it was something impossible to do in front
of a stranger.
He put his free hand in Sharon’s lap, sipping
his drink from his other hand.
Without any slyness but with the sensualness
of a child seeking warmth, his hand in her
lap pulled up the silk of her dress to show
milky white thigh above the sheer netted gold
of her stockings and as always, despite all
the women, all the years, all the familiarity,
Johnny felt the fluid sticky warmness flooding
through his body at that sight.
The miracle still happened, and what would
he do when that failed him as his voice had?
He was ready now.
He put his drink down on the long inlaid cocktail
table and turned his body toward her.
He was very sure, very deliberate, and yet
tender.
There was nothing sly or lecherously lascivious
in his caresses.
He kissed her on the lips while his hands
rose to her breasts.
His hand fell to her warm thighs, the skin
so silky to his touch.
Her returning kiss was warm but not passionate
and he preferred it that way right now.
He hated girls who turned on all of a sudden
as if their bodies were motors galvanized
into erotic pumpings by the touching of a
hairy switch.
Then he did something he always did, something
that had never yet failed to arouse him.
Delicately and as lightly as it was possible
to do so and still feel something, he brushed
the tip of his middle finger deep down between
her thighs.
Some girls never even felt that initial move
toward lovemaking.
Some were distracted by it, not sure it was
a physical touch because at the same time
he always kissed them deeply on the mouth.
Still others seemed to suck in his finger
or gobble it up with a pelvic thrust.
And of course before he became famous, some
girls had slapped his face.
It was his whole technique and usually it
served him well enough.
Sharon’s reaction was unusual.
She accepted it all, the touch, the kiss,
then shifted her mouth off his, shifted her
body ever so slightly back along the couch
and picked up her drink.
It was a cool but definite refusal.
It happened sometimes.
Rarely; but it happened.
Johnny picked up his drink and lit a cigarette.
She was saying something very sweetly, very
lightly.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Johnny,
you’re much nicer than I thought you’d
be.
And it’s not because I’m not that kind
of a girl.
It’s just that I have to be turned on to
do it with a guy, you know what I mean?”
Johnny Fontane smiled at her.
He still liked her.
“And I don’t turn you on?”
She was a little embarrassed.
“Well, you know, when you were so great
singing and all, I was still a little kid.
I sort of just missed you, I was the next
generation.
Honest, it’s not that I’m goody-goody.
If you were a movie star I grew up on, I’d
have my panties off in a second.”
He didn’t like her quite so much now.
She was sweet, she was witty, she was intelligent.
She hadn’t fallen all over herself to screw
for him or try to hustle him because his connections
would help her in show biz.
She was really a straight kid.
But there was something else he recognized.
It had happened a few times before.
The girl who went on a date with her mind
all made up not to go to bed with him, no
matter how much she liked him, just so that
she could tell her friends, and even more,
herself, that she had turned down a chance
to screw for the great Johnny Fontane.
It was something he understood now that he
was older and he wasn’t angry.
He just didn’t like her quite that much
and he had really liked her a lot.
And now that he didn’t like her quite so
much, he relaxed more.
He sipped his drink and watched the Pacific
Ocean.
She said, “I hope you’re not sore, Johnny.
I guess I’m being square, I guess in Hollywood
a girl’s supposed to put out just as casually
as kissing a beau good night.
I just haven’t been around long enough.”
Johnny smiled at her and patted her cheek.
His hand fell down to pull her skirt discreetly
over her rounded silken knees.
“I’m not sore,” he said.
“It’s nice having an old-fashioned date.”
Not telling what he felt: the relief at not
having to prove himself a great lover, not
having to live up to his screened, godlike
image.
Not having to listen to the girl trying to
react as if he really had lived up to that
image, making more out of a very simple, routine
piece of ass than it really was.
They had another drink, shared a few more
cool kisses and then she decided to go.
Johnny said politely, “Can I call you for
dinner some night?”
She played it frank and honest to the end.
“I know you don’t want to waste your time
and then get disappointed,” she said.
“Thanks for a wonderful evening.
Someday I’ll tell my children I had supper
with the great Johnny Fontane all alone in
his apartment.”
He smiled at her.
“And that you didn’t give in,” he said.
They both laughed.
“They’ll never believe that,” she said.
And then Johnny, being a little phony in his
turn, said, “I’ll give it to you in writing,
want me to?”
She shook her head.
He continued on.
“Anybody doubts you, give me a buzz on the
phone, I’ll straighten them right out.
I’ll tell them how I chased you all around
the apartment but you kept your honor.
OK?”
He had, finally, been a little too cruel and
he felt stricken at the hurt on her young
face.
She understood that he was telling her that
he hadn’t tried too hard.
He had taken the sweetness of her victory
away from her.
Now she would feel that it had been her lack
of charm or attractiveness that had made her
the victor this night.
And being the girl she was, when she told
the story of how she resisted the great Johnny
Fontane, she would always have to add with
a wry little smile, “Of course, he didn’t
try very hard.”
So now taking pity on her, he said, “If
you ever feel real down, give me a ring.
OK?
I don’t have to shack up every girl I know.”
“I will,” she said.
She went out the door.
He was left with a long evening before him.
He could have used what Jack Woltz called
the “meat factory,” the stable of willing
starlets, but he wanted human companionship.
He wanted to talk like a human being.
He thought of his first wife, Virginia.
Now that the work on the picture was finished
he would have more time for the kids.
He wanted to become part of their life again.
And he worried about Virginia too.
She wasn’t equipped to handle the Hollywood
sharpies who might come after her just so
that they could brag about having screwed
Johnny Fontane’s first wife.
As far as he knew, nobody could say that yet.
Everybody could say it about his second wife
though, he thought wryly.
He picked up the phone.
He recognized her voice immediately and that
was not surprising.
He had heard it the first time when he was
ten years old and they had been in 4B together.
“Hi, Ginny,” he said, “you busy tonight?
Can I come over for a little while?”
“All right,” she said.
“The kids are sleeping though; I don’t
want to wake them up.”
“That’s OK,” he said.
“I just wanted to talk to you.”
Her voice hesitated slightly, then carefully
controlled not to show any concern, she asked,
“Is it anything serious, anything important?”
“No,” Johnny said.
“I finished the picture today and I thought
maybe I could just see you and talk to you.
Maybe I could take a look at the kids if you’re
sure they won’t wake up.”
“OK,” she said.
“I’m glad you got that part you wanted.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’ll see you in about a half hour.”
When he got to what had been his home in Beverly
Hills, Johnny Fontane sat in the car for a
moment staring at the house.
He remembered what his Godfather had said,
that he could make his own life what he wanted.
Great chance if you knew what you wanted.
But what did he want?
His first wife was waiting for him at the
door.
She was pretty, petite and brunette, a nice
Italian girl, the girl next door who would
never fool around with another man and that
had been important to him.
Did he still want her, he asked himself, and
the answer was no.
For one thing, he could no longer make love
to her, their affection had grown too old.
And there were some things, nothing to do
with sex, she could never forgive him.
But they were no longer enemies.
She made him coffee and served him homemade
cookies in the living room.
“Stretch out on the sofa,” she said, “you
look tired.”
He took off his jacket and his shoes and loosened
his tie while she sat in the chair opposite
him with a grave little smile on her face.
“It’s funny,” she said.
“What’s funny?” he asked her, sipping
coffee and spilling some of it on his shirt.
“The great Johnny Fontane stuck without
a date,” she said.
“The great Johnny Fontane is lucky if he
can even get it up anymore,” he said.
It was unusual for him to be so direct.
Ginny asked, “Is there something really
the matter?”
Johnny grinned at her.
“I had a date with a girl in my apartment
and she brushed me off.
And you know, I was relieved.”
To his surprise he saw a look of anger pass
over Ginny’s face.
“Don’t worry about those little tramps,”
she said.
“She must have thought that was the way
to get you interested in her.”
And Johnny realized with amusement that Ginny
was actually angry with the girl who had turned
him down.
“Ah, what the hell,” he said.
“I’m tired of that stuff.
I have to grow up sometime.
And now that I can’t sing anymore I guess
I’ll have a tough time with dames.
I never got in on my looks, you know.”
She said loyally, “You were always better
looking than you photographed.”
Johnny shook his head.
“I’m getting fat and I’m getting bald.
Hell, if this picture doesn’t make me big
again I better learn how to bake pizzas.
Or maybe we’ll put you in the movies, you
look great.”
She looked thirty-five.
A good thirty-five, but thirty-five.
And out here in Hollywood that might as well
be a hundred.
The young beautiful girls thronged through
the city like lemmings, lasting one year,
some two.
Some of them so beautiful they could make
a man’s heart almost stop beating until
they opened their mouths, until the greedy
hopes for success clouded the loveliness of
their eyes.
Ordinary women could never hope to compete
with them on a physical level.
And you could talk all you wanted to about
charm, about intelligence, about chic, about
poise, the raw beauty of these girls overpowered
everything else.
Perhaps if there were not so many of them
there might be a chance for an ordinary, nice-looking
woman.
And since Johnny Fontane could have all of
them, or nearly all of them, Ginny knew that
he was saying all this just to flatter her.
He had always been nice that way.
He had always been polite to women even at
the height of his fame, paying them compliments,
holding lights for their cigarettes, opening
doors.
And since all this was usually done for him,
it made it even more impressive to the girls
he went out with.
And he did it with all girls, even the one-night
stands, I-don’t-know-your-name girls.
She smiled at him, a friendly smile.
“You already made me, Johnny, remember?
For twelve years.
You don’t have to give me your line.”
He sighed and stretched out on the sofa.
“No kidding, Ginny, you look good.
I wish I looked that good.”
She didn’t answer him.
She could see he was depressed.
“Do you think the picture is OK?
Will it do you some good?” she asked.
Johnny nodded.
“Yeah.
It could bring me all the way back.
If I get the Academy thing and play my cards
right, I can make it big again even without
the singing.
Then maybe I can give you and the kids more
dough.”
“We have more than enough,” Ginny said.
“I wanta see more of the kids too,” Johnny
said.
“I want to settle down a little bit.
Why can’t I come every Friday night for
dinner here?
I swear I’ll never miss one Friday, I don’t
care how far away I am or how busy I am.
And then whenever I can I’ll spend weekends
or maybe the kids can spend some part of their
vacations with me.”
Ginny put an ashtray on his chest.
“It’s OK with me,” she said.
“I never got married because I wanted you
to keep being their father.”
She said this without any kind of emotion,
but Johnny Fontane, staring up at the ceiling,
knew she said it as an atonement for those
other things, the cruel things she had once
said to him when their marriage had broken
up, when his career had started going down
the drain.
“By the way, guess who called me,” she
said.
Johnny wouldn’t play that game, he never
did.
“Who?” he asked.
Ginny said, “You could take at least one
lousy guess.”
Johnny didn’t answer.
“Your Godfather,” she said.
Johnny was really surprised.
“He never talks to anybody on the phone.
What did he say to you?”
“He told me to help you,” Ginny said.
“He said you could be as big as you ever
were, that you were on your way back, but
that you needed people to believe in you.
I asked him why should I?
And he said because you’re the father of
my children.
He’s such a sweet old guy and they tell
such horrible stories about him.”
Virginia hated phones and she had had all
the extensions taken out except for the one
in her bedroom and one in the kitchen.
Now they could hear the kitchen phone ringing.
She went to answer it.
When she came back into the living room there
was a look of surprise on her face.
“It’s for you, Johnny,” she said.
“It’s Tom Hagen.
He says it’s important.”
Johnny went into the kitchen and picked up
the phone.
“Yeah, Tom,” he said.
Tom Hagen’s voice was cool.
“Johnny, the Godfather wants me to come
out and see you and set some things up that
can help you out now that the picture is finished.
He wants me to catch the morning plane.
Can you meet it in Los Angeles?
I have to fly back to New York the same night
so you won’t have to worry about keeping
your night free for me.”
“Sure, Tom,” Johnny said.
“And don’t worry about me losing a night.
Stay over and relax a bit.
I’ll throw a party and you can meet some
movie people.”
He always made that offer, he didn’t want
the folks from his old neighborhood to think
he was ashamed of them.
“Thanks,” Hagen said, “but I really
have to catch the early morning plane back.
OK, you’ll meet the eleven-thirty a.m. out
of New York?”
“Sure,” Johnny said.
“Stay in your car,” Hagen said.
“Send one of your people to meet me when
I get off the plane and bring me to you.”
“Right,” Johnny said.
He went back to the living room and Ginny
looked at him inquiringly.
“My Godfather has some plan for me, to help
me out,” Johnny said.
“He got me the part in the movie, I don’t
know how.
But I wish he’d stay out of the rest of
it.”
He went back onto the sofa.
He felt very tired.
Ginny said, “Why don’t you sleep in the
guest bedroom tonight instead of going home?
You can have breakfast with the kids and you
won’t have to drive home so late.
I hate to think of you all alone in that house
of yours anyway.
Don’t you get lonely?”
“I don’t stay home much,” Johnny said.
She laughed and said, “Then you haven’t
changed much.”
She paused and then said, “Shall I fix up
the other bedroom?”
Johnny said, “Why can’t I sleep in your
bedroom?”
She flushed.
“No,” she said.
She smiled at him and he smiled back.
They were still friends.
When Johnny woke up the next morning it was
late, he could tell by the sun coming in through
the drawn blinds.
It never came in that way unless it was in
the afternoon.
He yelled, “Hey, Ginny, do I still rate
breakfast?”
And far away he heard her voice call, “Just
a second.”
And it was just a second.
She must have had everything ready, hot in
the oven, the tray waiting to be loaded, because
as Johnny lit his first cigarette of the day,
the door of the bedroom opened and his two
small daughters came in wheeling the breakfast
cart.
They were so beautiful it broke his heart.
Their faces were shining and clear, their
eyes alive with curiosity and the eager desire
to run to him.
They wore their hair braided old-fashioned
in long pigtails and they wore old-fashioned
frocks and white patent-leather shoes.
They stood by the breakfast cart watching
him as he stubbed out his cigarette and waited
for him to call and hold his arms wide.
Then they came running to him.
He pressed his face between their two fresh
fragrant cheeks and scraped them with his
beard so that they shrieked.
Ginny appeared in the bedroom door and wheeled
the breakfast cart the rest of the way so
that he could eat in bed.
She sat beside him on the edge of the bed,
pouring his coffee, buttering his toast.
The two young daughters sat on the bedroom
couch watching him.
They were too old now for pillow fights or
to be tossed around.
They were already smoothing their mussed hair.
Oh, Christ, he thought, pretty soon they’ll
be all grown up, Hollywood punks will be out
after them.
He shared his toast and bacon with them as
he ate, gave them sips of coffee.
It was a habit left over from when he had
been singing with the band and rarely ate
with them so they liked to share his food
when he had his odd-hour meals like afternoon
breakfasts or morning suppers.
The change-around in food delighted them—to
eat steak and french fries at seven in the
morning, bacon and eggs in the afternoon.
Only Ginny and a few of his close friends
knew how much he idolized his daughters.
That had been the worst thing about the divorce
and leaving home.
The one thing he had fought about, and for,
was his position as a father to them.
In a very sly way he had made Ginny understand
he would not be pleased by her remarrying,
not because he was jealous of her, but because
he was jealous of his position as a father.
He had arranged the money to be paid to her
so it would be enormously to her advantage
financially not to remarry.
It was understood that she could have lovers
as long as they were not introduced into her
home life.
But on this score he had absolute faith in
her.
She had always been amazingly shy and old-fashioned
in sex.
The Hollywood gigolos had batted zero when
they started swarming around her, sniffing
for the financial settlement and the favors
they could get from her famous husband.
He had no fear that she expected a reconciliation
because he had wanted to sleep with her the
night before.
Neither one of them wanted to renew their
old marriage.
She understood his hunger for beauty, his
irresistible impulse toward young women far
more beautiful than she.
It was known that he always slept with his
movie co-stars at least once.
His boyish charm was irresistible to them,
as their beauty was to him.
“You’ll have to start getting dressed
pretty soon,” Ginny said.
“Tom’s plane will be getting in.”
She shooed the daughters out of the room.
“Yeah,” Johnny said.
“By the way, Ginny, you know I’m getting
divorced?
I’m gonna be a free man again.”
She watched him getting dressed.
He always kept fresh clothes at her house
ever since they had come to their new arrangement
after the wedding of Don Corleone’s daughter.
“Christmas is only two weeks away,” she
said.
“Shall I plan on you being here?”
It was the first time he had even thought
about the holidays.
When his voice was in shape, holidays were
lucrative singing dates but even then Christmas
was sacred.
If he missed this one, it would be the second
one.
Last year he had been courting his second
wife in Spain, trying to get her to marry
him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Christmas Eve and Christmas.”
He didn’t mention New Year’s Eve.
That would be one of the wild nights he needed
every once in a while, to get drunk with his
friends, and he didn’t want a wife along
then.
He didn’t feel guilty about it.
She helped him put on his jacket and brushed
it off.
He was always fastidiously neat.
She could see him frowning because the shirt
he had put on was not laundered to his taste,
the cuff links, a pair he had not worn for
some time, were a little too loud for the
way he liked to dress now.
She laughed softly and said, “Tom won’t
notice the difference.”
The three women of the family walked him to
the door and out on the driveway to his car.
The two little girls held his hands, one on
each side.
His wife walked a little behind him.
She was getting pleasure out of how happy
he looked.
When he reached his car he turned around and
swung each girl in turn high up in the air
and kissed her on the way down.
Then he kissed his wife and got into the car.
He never liked drawn-out good-byes.
ARRANGEMENTS HAD BEEN made by his PR man and
aide.
At his house a chauffeured car was waiting,
a rented car.
In it were the PR man and another member of
his entourage.
Johnny parked his car and hopped in and they
were on their way to the airport.
He waited inside the car while the PR man
went out to meet Tom Hagen’s plane.
When Tom got into the car they shook hands
and drove back to his house.
Finally he and Tom were alone in the living
room.
There was a coolness between them.
Johnny had never forgiven Hagen for acting
as a barrier to his getting in touch with
the Don when the Don was angry with him, in
those bad days before Connie’s wedding.
Hagen never made excuses for his actions.
He could not.
It was part of his job to act as a lightning
rod for resentments which people were too
awed to feel toward the Don himself though
he had earned them.
“Your Godfather sent me out here to give
you a hand on some things,” Hagen said.
“I wanted to get it out of the way before
Christmas.”
Johnny Fontane shrugged.
“The picture is finished.
The director was a square guy and treated
me right.
My scenes are too important to be left on
the cutting-room floor just for Woltz to pay
me off.
He can’t ruin a ten-million-dollar picture.
So now everything depends on how good people
think I am in the movie.”
Hagen said cautiously, “Is winning this
Academy Award so terribly important to an
actor’s career, or is it just the usual
publicity crap that really doesn’t mean
anything one way or the other?”
He paused and added hastily, “Except of
course the glory, everybody likes glory.”
Johnny Fontane grinned at him.
“Except my Godfather.
And you.
No, Tom, it’s not a lot of crap.
An Academy Award can make an actor for ten
years.
He can get his pick of roles.
The public goes to see him.
It’s not everything, but for an actor it’s
the most important thing in the business.
I’m counting on winning it.
Not because I’m such a great actor but because
I’m known primarily as a singer and the
part is foolproof.
And I’m pretty good too, no kidding.”
Tom Hagen shrugged and said, “Your Godfather
tells me that the way things stand now, you
don’t have a chance of winning the award.”
Johnny Fontane was angry.
“What the hell are you talking about?
The picture hasn’t even been cut yet, much
less shown.
And the Don isn’t even in the movie business.
Why the hell did you fly the three thousand
miles just to tell me that shit?”
He was so shaken he was almost in tears.
Hagen said worriedly, “Johnny, I don’t
know a damn thing about all this movie stuff.
Remember, I’m just a messenger boy for the
Don.
But we have discussed this whole business
of yours many times.
He worries about you, about your future.
He feels you still need his help and he wants
to settle your problem once and for all.
That’s why I’m here now, to get things
rolling.
But you have to start growing up, Johnny.
You have to stop thinking about yourself as
a singer or an actor.
You’ve got to start thinking about yourself
as a prime mover, as a guy with muscle.”
Johnny Fontane laughed and filled his glass.
“If I don’t win that Oscar I’ll have
as much muscle as one of my daughters.
My voice is gone; if I had that back I could
make some moves.
Oh, hell.
How does my Godfather know I won’t win it?
OK, I believe he knows.
He’s never been wrong.”
Hagen lit a thin cigar.
“We got the word that Jack Woltz won’t
spend studio money to support your candidacy.
In fact he’s sent the word out to everybody
who votes that he does not want you to win.
But holding back the money for ads and all
that may do it.
He’s also arranging to have one other guy
get as much of the opposition votes as he
can swing.
He’s using all sorts of bribes—jobs, money,
broads, everything.
And he’s trying to do it without hurting
the picture or hurting it as little as possible.”
Johnny Fontane shrugged.
He filled his glass with whiskey and downed
it.
“Then I’m dead.”
Hagen was watching him with his mouth curled
up with distaste.
“Drinking won’t help your voice,” he
said.
“Fuck you,” Johnny said.
Hagen’s face suddenly became smoothly impassive.
Then he said, “OK, I’ll keep this purely
business.”
Johnny Fontane put his drink down and went
over to stand in front of Hagen.
“I’m sorry I said that, Tom,” he said.
“Christ, I’m sorry.
I’m taking it out on you because I wanta
kill that bastard Jack Woltz and I’m afraid
to tell off my Godfather.
So I get sore at you.”
There were tears in his eyes.
He threw the empty whiskey glass against the
wall but so weakly that the heavy shot glass
did not even shatter and rolled along the
floor back to him so that he looked down at
it in baffled fury.
Then he laughed.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
He walked over to the other side of the room
and sat opposite Hagen.
“You know, I had everything my own way for
a long time.
Then I divorced Ginny and everything started
going sour.
I lost my voice.
My records stopped selling.
I didn’t get any more movie work.
And then my Godfather got sore at me and wouldn’t
talk to me on the phone or see me when I came
into New York.
You were always the guy barring the path and
I blamed you, but I knew you wouldn’t do
it without orders from the Don.
But you can’t get sore at him.
It’s like getting sore at God.
So I curse you.
But you’ve been right all along the line.
And to show you I mean my apology I’m taking
your advice.
No more booze until I get my voice back.
OK?”
The apology was sincere.
Hagen forgot his anger.
There must be something to this thirty-five-year-old
boy or the Don would not be so fond of him.
He said, “Forget it, Johnny.”
He was embarrassed at the depth of Johnny’s
feeling and embarrassed by the suspicion that
it might have been inspired by fear, fear
that he might turn the Don against him.
And of course the Don could never be turned
by anyone for any reason.
His affection was mutable only by himself.
“Things aren’t so bad,” he told Johnny.
“The Don says he can cancel out everything
Woltz does against you.
That you will almost certainly win the Award.
But he feels that won’t solve your problem.
He wants to know if you have the brains and
balls to become a producer on your own, make
your own movies from top to bottom.”
“How the hell is he going to get me the
Award?”
Johnny asked incredulously.
Hagen said sharply, “How do you find it
so easy to believe that Woltz can finagle
it and your Godfather can’t?
Now since it’s necessary to get your faith
for the other part of our deal I must tell
you this.
Just keep it to yourself.
Your Godfather is a much more powerful man
than Jack Woltz.
And he is much more powerful in areas far
more critical.
How can he swing the Award?
He controls, or controls the people who control,
all the labor unions in the industry, all
the people or nearly all the people who vote.
Of course you have to be good, you have to
be in contention on your own merits.
And your Godfather has more brains than Jack
Woltz.
He doesn’t go up to these people and put
a gun to their heads and say, ‘Vote for
Johnny Fontane or you are out of a job.’
He doesn’t strong-arm where strong-arm doesn’t
work or leaves too many hard feelings.
He’ll make those people vote for you because
they want to.
But they won’t want to unless he takes an
interest.
Now just take my word for it that he can get
you the Award.
And that if he doesn’t do it, you won’t
get it.”
“OK,” Johnny said.
“I believe you.
And I have the balls and brains to be a producer
but I don’t have the money.
No bank would finance me.
It takes millions to support a movie.”
Hagen said dryly, “When you get the Award,
start making plans to produce three of your
own movies.
Hire the best people in the business, the
best technicians, the best stars, whoever
you need.
Plan on three to five movies.”
“You’re crazy,” Johnny said.
“That many movies could mean twenty million
bucks.”
“When you need the money,” Hagen said,
“get in touch with me.
I’ll give you the name of the bank out here
in California to ask for financing.
Don’t worry, they finance movies all the
time.
Just ask them for the money in the ordinary
way, with the proper justifications, like
a regular business deal.
They will approve.
But first you have to see me and tell me the
figures and the plans.
OK?”
Johnny was silent for a long time.
Then he said quietly, “Is there anything
else?”
Hagen smiled.
“You mean, do you have to do any favors
in return for a loan of twenty million dollars?
Sure you will.”
He waited for Johnny to say something.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do anyway if the
Don asked you to do it for him.”
Johnny said, “The Don has to ask me himself
if it’s something serious, you know what
I mean?
I won’t take your word or Sonny’s for
it.”
Hagen was surprised by this good sense.
Fontane had some brains after all.
He had sense to know that the Don was too
fond of him, and too smart, to ask him to
do something foolishly dangerous, whereas
Sonny might.
He said to Johnny, “Let me reassure you
on one thing.
Your Godfather has given me and Sonny strict
instructions not to involve you in any way
in anything that might get you bad publicity
through our fault.
And he will never do that himself.
I guarantee you that any favor he asks of
you, you will offer to do before he requests
it.
OK?”
Johnny smiled.
“OK,” he said.
Hagen said, “Also he has faith in you.
He thinks you have brains and so he figures
the bank will make money on the investment,
which means he will make money on it.
So it’s really a business deal, never forget
that.
Don’t go screwing around with the money.
You may be his favorite godson but twenty
million bucks is a lot of dough.
He has to stick his neck out to make sure
you get it.”
“Tell him not to worry,” Johnny said.
“If a guy like Jack Woltz can be a big movie
genius, anybody can.”
“That’s what your Godfather figures,”
Hagen said.
“Can you have me driven back to the airport?
I’ve said all I have to say.
When you do start signing contracts for everything,
hire your own lawyers, I won’t be in on
it.
But I’d like to see everything before you
sign, if that’s OK with you.
Also, you’ll never have any labor troubles.
That will cut costs on your pictures to some
extent, so when the accountants lump some
of that in, disregard those figures.”
Johnny said cautiously, “Do I have to get
your OK on anything else, scripts, stars,
any of that?”
Hagen shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“It may happen that the Don would object
to something but he’ll object to you direct
if he does.
But I can’t imagine what that would be.
Movies don’t affect him at all, in any way,
so he has no interest.
And he doesn’t believe in meddling, that
I can tell you from experience.”
“Good,” Johnny said.
“I’ll drive you to the airport myself.
And thank the Godfather for me.
I’d call him up and thank him but he never
comes to the phone.
Why is that, by the way?”
Hagen shrugged.
“He hardly ever talks on the phone.
He doesn’t want his voice recorded, even
saying something perfectly innocent.
He’s afraid that they can splice the words
together so that it sounds as if he says something
else.
I think that’s what it is.
Anyway his only worry is that someday he’ll
be framed by the authorities.
So he doesn’t want to give them an edge.”
They got into Johnny’s car and drove to
the airport.
Hagen was thinking that Johnny was a better
guy than he figured.
He’d already learned something, just his
driving him personally to the airport proved
that.
The personal courtesy, something the Don himself
always believed in.
And the apology.
That had been sincere.
He had known Johnny a long time and he knew
the apology would never be made out of fear.
Johnny had always had guts.
That’s why he had always been in trouble,
with his movie bosses and with his women.
He was also one of the few people who was
not afraid of the Don.
Fontane and Michael were maybe the only two
men Hagen knew of whom this could be said.
So the apology was sincere, he would accept
it as such.
He and Johnny would have to see a lot of each
other in the next few years.
And Johnny would have to pass the next test,
which would prove how smart he was.
He would have to do something for the Don
that the Don would never ask him to do or
insist that he do as part of the agreement.
Hagen wondered if Johnny Fontane was smart
enough to figure out that part of the bargain.
AFTER JOHNNY DROPPED Hagen off at the airport
(Hagen insisted that Johnny not hang around
for his plane with him) he drove back to Ginny’s
house.
She was surprised to see him.
But he wanted to stay at her place so that
he would have time to think things out, to
make his plans.
He knew that what Hagen had told him was extremely
important, that his whole life was being changed.
He had once been a big star but now at the
young age of thirty-five he was washed up.
He didn’t kid himself about that.
Even if he won the Award as best actor, what
the hell could it mean at the most?
Nothing, if his voice didn’t come back.
He’d be just second-rate, with no real power,
no real juice.
Even that girl turning him down, she had been
nice and smart and acting sort of hip, but
would she have been so cool if he had really
been at the top?
Now with the Don backing him with dough he
could be as big as anybody in Hollywood.
He could be a king.
Johnny smiled.
Hell.
He could even be a Don.
It would be nice living with Ginny again for
a few weeks, maybe longer.
He’d take the kids out every day, maybe
have a few friends over.
He’d stop drinking and smoking, really take
care of himself.
Maybe his voice would get strong again.
If that happened and with the Don’s money,
he’d be unbeatable.
He’d really be as close to an oldtime king
or emperor as it was possible to be in America.
And it wouldn’t depend on his voice holding
up or how long the public cared about him
as an actor.
It would be an empire rooted in money and
the most special, the most coveted kind of
power.
Ginny had the guest bedroom made up for him.
It was understood that he would not share
her room, that they would not live as man
and wife.
They could never have that relationship again.
And though the outside world of gossip columnists
and movie fans gave the blame for the failure
of their marriage solely to him, yet in a
curious way, between the two of them, they
both knew that she was even more to blame
for their divorce.
When Johnny Fontane became the most popular
singer and movie musical comedy star in motion
pictures, it had never occurred to him to
desert his wife and children.
He was too Italian, still too old-style.
Naturally he had been unfaithful.
That had been impossible to avoid in his business
and the temptations to which he was continually
exposed.
And despite being a skinny, delicate-looking
guy, he had the wiry horniness of many small-boned
Latin types.
And women delighted him in their surprises.
He loved going out with a demure sweet-faced
virginal-looking girl and then uncapping her
breasts to find them so unexpectedly slopingly
full and rich, lewdly heavy in contrast to
the cameo face.
He loved to find sexual shyness and timidity
in the sexy-looking girls who were all fake
motion like a shifty basketball player, vamping
as if they had slept with a hundred guys,
and then when he got them alone having to
battle for hours to get in and do the job
and finding out they were virgins.
And all these Hollywood guys laughed at his
fondness for virgins.
They called it an old guinea taste, square,
and look how long it took to make a virgin
give you a blow job with all the aggravation
and then they usually turned out to be a lousy
piece of ass.
But Johnny knew that it was how you handled
a young girl.
You had to come on to her the right way and
then what could be greater than a girl who
was tasting her first dick and loving it?
Ah, it was so great breaking them in.
It was so great having them wrap their legs
around you.
Their thighs were all different shapes, their
asses were different, their skins were all
different colors and shades of white and brown
and tan and when he had slept with that young
colored girl in Detroit, a good girl, not
a hustler, the young daughter of a jazz singer
on the same nightclub bill with him, she had
been one of the sweetest things he had ever
had.
Her lips had really tasted like warm honey
with pepper mixed in it, her dark brown skin
was rich, creamy, and she had been as sweet
as God had ever made any woman and she had
been a virgin.
And the other guys were always talking about
blow jobs, this and other variations, and
he really didn’t enjoy that stuff so much.
He never liked a girl that much after they
tried it that way, it just didn’t satisfy
him right.
He and his second wife had finally not got
along, because she preferred the old sixty-nine
too much to a point where she didn’t want
anything else and he had to fight to stick
it in.
She began making fun of him and calling him
a square and the word got around that he made
love like a kid.
Maybe that was why that girl last night had
turned him down.
Well, the hell with it, she wouldn’t be
too great in the sack anyway.
You could tell a girl who really liked to
fuck and they were always the best.
Especially the ones who hadn’t been at it
too long.
What he really hated were the ones who had
started screwing at twelve and were all fucked
out by the time they were twenty and just
going through the motions and some of them
were the prettiest of all and could fake you
out.
Ginny brought coffee and cake into his bedroom
and put it on the long table in the sitting
room part.
He told her simply that Hagen was helping
him put together the money credit for a producing
package and she was excited about that.
He would be important again.
But she had no idea of how powerful Don Corleone
really was so she didn’t understand the
significance of Hagen coming from New York.
He told her Hagen was also helping with legal
details.
When they had finished the coffee he told
her he was going to work that night, and make
phone calls and plans for the future.
“Half of all this will be in the kids’
names,” he told her.
She gave him a grateful smile and kissed him
good night before she left his room.
There was a glass dish full of his favorite
monogrammed cigarettes, a humidor with pencil-thin
black Cuban cigars on his writing desk.
Johnny tilted back and started making calls.
His brain was really whirring along.
He called the author of the book, the best-selling
novel, on which his new film was based.
The author was a guy his own age who had come
up the hard way and was now a celebrity in
the literary world.
He had come out to Hollywood expecting to
be treated like a wheel and, like most authors,
had been treated like shit.
Johnny had seen the humiliation of the author
one night at the Brown Derby.
The writer had been fixed up with a well-known
bosomy starlet for a date on the town and
a sure shack-up later.
But while they were at dinner the starlet
had deserted the famous author because a ratty-looking
movie comic had waggled his finger at her.
That had given the writer the right slant
on just who was who in the Hollywood pecking
order.
It didn’t matter that his book had made
him world famous.
A starlet would prefer the crummiest, the
rattiest, the phoniest movie wheel.
Now Johnny called the author at his New York
home to thank him for the great part he had
written in his book for him.
He flattered the shit out of the guy.
Then casually he asked him how he was doing
on his next novel and what it was all about.
He lit a cigar while the author told him about
a specially interesting chapter and then finally
said, “Gee, I’d like to read it when you’re
finished.
How about sending me a copy?
Maybe I can get you a good deal for it, better
than you got with Woltz.”
The eagerness in the author’s voice told
him that he had guessed right.
Woltz had chiseled the guy, given him peanuts
for the book.
Johnny mentioned that he might be in New York
right after the holidays and would the author
want to come and have dinner with some of
his friends.
“I know a few good-looking broads,” Johnny
said jokingly.
The author laughed and said OK.
Next Johnny called up the director and cameraman
on the film he had just finished to thank
them for having helped him in the film.
He told them confidentially that he knew Woltz
had been against him and he doubly appreciated
their help and that if there was ever anything
he could do for them they should just call.
Then he made the hardest call of all, the
one to Jack Woltz.
He thanked him for the part in the picture
and told him how happy he would be to work
for him anytime.
He did this merely to throw Woltz off the
track.
He had always been very square, very straight.
In a few days Woltz would find out about his
maneuvering and be astounded by the treachery
of this call, which was exactly what Johnny
Fontane wanted him to feel.
After that he sat at the desk and puffed at
his cigar.
There was whiskey on a side table but he had
made some sort of promise to himself and Hagen
that he wouldn’t drink.
He shouldn’t even be smoking.
It was foolish; whatever was wrong with his
voice probably wouldn’t be helped by knocking
off drinking and smoking.
Not too much, but what the hell, it might
help and he wanted all the percentages with
him, now that he had a fighting chance.
Now with the house quiet, his divorced wife
sleeping, his beloved daughters sleeping,
he could think back to that terrible time
in his life when he had deserted them.
Deserted them for a whore tramp of a bitch
who was his second wife.
But even now he smiled at the thought of her,
she was such a lovely broad in so many ways
and, besides, the only thing that saved his
life was the day that he had made up his mind
never to hate a woman or, more specifically,
the day he had decided he could not afford
to hate his first wife and his daughters,
his girl friends, his second wife, and the
girl friends after that, right up to Sharon
Moore brushing him off so that she could brag
about refusing to screw for the great Johnny
Fontane.
HE HAD TRAVELED with the band singing and
then he had become a radio star and a star
of the movie stage shows and then he had finally
made it in the movies.
And in all that time he had lived the way
he wanted to, screwed the women he wanted
to, but he had never let it affect his personal
life.
Then he had fallen for his soon to be second
wife, Margot Ashton; he had gone absolutely
crazy for her.
His career had gone to hell, his voice had
gone to hell, his family life had gone to
hell.
And there had come the day when he was left
without anything.
The thing was, he had always been generous
and fair.
He had given his first wife everything he
owned when he divorced her.
He had made sure his two daughters would get
a piece of everything he made, every record,
every movie, every club date.
And when he had been rich and famous he had
refused his first wife nothing.
He had helped out all her brothers and sisters,
her father and mother, the girl friends she
had gone to school with and their families.
He had never been a stuck-up celebrity.
He had sung at the weddings of his wife’s
two younger sisters, something he hated to
do.
He had never refused her anything except the
complete surrender of his own personality.
And then when he had touched bottom, when
he could no longer get movie work, when he
could no longer sing, when his second wife
had betrayed him, he had gone to spend a few
days with Ginny and his daughters.
He had more or less flung himself on her mercy
one night because he felt so lousy.
That day he had heard one of his recordings
and he had sounded so terrible that he accused
the sound technicians of sabotaging the record.
Until finally he had become convinced that
that was what his voice really sounded like.
He had smashed the master record and refused
to sing anymore.
He was so ashamed that he had not sung a note
except with Nino at Connie Corleone’s wedding.
He had never forgotten the look on Ginny’s
face when she found out about all his misfortunes.
It had passed over her face only for a second
but that was enough for him never to forget
it.
It was a look of savage and joyful satisfaction.
It was a look that could only make him believe
that she had contemptuously hated him all
these years.
She quickly recovered and offered him cool
but polite sympathy.
He had pretended to accept it.
During the next few days he had gone to see
three of the girls he had liked the most over
the years, girls he had remained friends with
and sometimes still slept with in a comradely
way, girls that he had done everything in
his power to help, girls to whom he had given
the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of
dollars in gifts or job opportunities.
On their faces he had caught that same fleeting
look of savage satisfaction.
It was during that time that he knew he had
to make a decision.
He could become like a great many other men
in Hollywood, successful producers, writers,
directors, actors, who preyed on beautiful
women with lustful hatred.
He could use power and monetary favors grudgingly,
always alert for treason, always believing
that women would betray and desert him, adversaries
to be bested.
Or he could refuse to hate women and continue
to believe in them.
He knew he could not afford not to love them,
that something of his spirit would die if
he did not continue to love women no matter
how treacherous and unfaithful they were.
It didn’t matter that the women he loved
most in the world were secretly glad to see
him crushed, humiliated, by a wayward fortune;
it did not matter that in the most awful way,
not sexually, they had been unfaithful to
him.
He had no choice.
He had to accept them.
And so he made love to all of them, gave them
presents, hid the hurt their enjoyment of
his misfortunes gave him.
He forgave them knowing he was being paid
back for having lived in the utmost freedom
from women and in the fullest flush of their
favor.
But now he never felt guilty about being untrue
to them.
He never felt guilty about how he treated
Ginny, insisting on remaining the sole father
of his children, yet never even considering
remarrying her, and letting her know that
too.
That was one thing he had salvaged out of
his fall from the top.
He had grown a thick skin about the hurts
he gave women.
He was tired and ready for bed but one note
of memory stuck with him: singing with Nino
Valenti.
And suddenly he knew what would please Don
Corleone more than anything else.
He picked up the phone and told the operator
to get him New York.
He called Sonny Corleone and asked him for
Nino Valenti’s number.
Then he called Nino.
Nino sounded a little drunk as usual.
“Hey, Nino, how’d you like to come out
here and work for me,” Johnny said.
“I need a guy I can trust.”
Nino, kidding around, said, “Gee, I don’t
know, Johnny, I got a good job on the truck,
boffing housewives along my route, picking
up a clear hundred-fifty every week.
What you got to offer?”
“I can start you at five hundred and get
you blind dates with movie stars, how’s
that?”
Johnny said.
“And maybe I’ll let you sing at my parties.”
“Yeah, OK, let me think about it,” Nino
said.
“Let me talk it over with my lawyer and
my accountant and my helper on the truck.”
“Hey, no kidding around, Nino,” Johnny
said.
“I need you out here.
I want you to fly out tomorrow morning and
sign a personal contract for five hundred
a week for a year.
Then if you steal one of my broads and I fire
you, you pick up at least a year’s salary.
OK?”
There was a long pause.
Nino’s voice was sober.
“Hey, Johnny, you kidding?”
Johnny said, “I’m serious, kid.
Go to my agent’s office in New York.
They’ll have your plane ticket and some
cash.
I’m gonna call them first thing in the morning.
So you go up there in the afternoon.
OK?
Then I’ll have somebody meet you at the
plane and bring you out to the house.”
Again there was a long pause and then Nino’s
voice, very subdued, uncertain, said, “OK,
Johnny.”
He didn’t sound drunk anymore.
Johnny hung up the phone and got ready for
bed.
He felt better than any time since he had
smashed that master record.
Chapter 13
Johnny Fontane sat in the huge recording studio
and figured costs on a yellow pad.
Musicians were filing in, all of them friends
he had known since he was a kid singer with
the bands.
The conductor, top man in the business of
pop accompaniment and a man who had been kind
to him when things went sour, was giving each
musician bundles of music and verbal instructions.
His name was Eddie Neils.
He had taken on this recording as a favor
to Johnny, though his schedule was crowded.
Nino Valenti was sitting at a piano fooling
around nervously with the keys.
He was also sipping from a huge glass of rye.
Johnny didn’t mind that.
He knew Nino sang just as well drunk as sober
and what they were doing today wouldn’t
require any real musicianship on Nino’s
part.
Eddie Neils had made special arrangements
of some old Italian and Sicilian songs, and
a special job on the duel-duet song that Nino
and Johnny had sung at Connie Corleone’s
wedding.
Johnny was making the record primarily because
he knew that the Don loved such songs and
it would be a perfect Christmas gift for him.
He also had a hunch that the record would
sell in the high numbers, not a million, of
course.
And he had figured out that helping Nino was
how the Don wanted his payoff.
Nino was, after all, another one of the Don’s
godchildren.
Johnny put his clipboard and yellow pad on
the folding chair beside him and got up to
stand beside the piano.
He said, “Hey, paisan,” and Nino glanced
up and tried to smile.
He looked a little sick.
Johnny leaned over and rubbed his shoulder
blades.
“Relax, kid,” he said.
“Do a good job today and I’ll fix you
up with the best and most famous piece of
ass in Hollywood.”
Nino took a gulp of whiskey.
“Who’s that, Lassie?”
Johnny laughed.
“No, Deanna Dunn.
I guarantee the goods.”
Nino was impressed but couldn’t help saying
with pseudohopefulness, “You can’t get
me Lassie?”
The orchestra swung into the opening song
of the medley.
Johnny Fontane listened intently.
Eddie Neils would play all the songs through
in their special arrangements.
Then would come the first take for the record.
As Johnny listened he made mental notes on
exactly how he would handle each phrase, how
he would come into each song.
He knew his voice wouldn’t last long, but
Nino would be doing most of the singing, Johnny
would be singing under him.
Except of course in the duet-duel song.
He would have to save himself for that.
He pulled Nino to his feet and they both stood
by their microphones.
Nino flubbed the opening, flubbed it again.
His face was beginning to get red with embarrassment.
Johnny kidded him, “Hey, you stalling for
overtime?”
“I don’t feel natural without my mandolin,”
Nino said.
Johnny thought that over for a moment.
“Hold that glass of booze in your hand,”
he said.
It seemed to do the trick.
Nino kept drinking from the glass as he sang
but he was doing fine.
Johnny sang easily, not straining, his voice
merely dancing around Nino’s main melody.
There was no emotional satisfaction in this
kind of singing but he was amazed at his own
technical skill.
Ten years of vocalizing had taught him something.
When they came to the duet-duel song that
ended the record, Johnny let his voice go
and when they finished his vocal cords ached.
The musicians had been carried away by the
last song, a rare thing for these callous
veterans.
They hammered down their instruments and stamped
their feet in approval as applause.
The drummer gave them a ruffle of drums.
With stops and conferences they worked nearly
four hours before they quit.
Eddie Neils came over to Johnny and said quietly,
“You sounded pretty good, kid.
Maybe you’re ready to do a record.
I have a new song that’s perfect for you.”
Johnny shook his head.
“Come on, Eddie, don’t kid me.
Besides, in a couple of hours I’ll be too
hoarse to even talk.
Do you think we’ll have to fix up much of
the stuff we did today?”
Eddie said thoughtfully, “Nino will have
to come into the studio tomorrow.
He made some mistakes.
But he’s much better than I thought he would
be.
As for your stuff, I’ll have the sound engineers
fix anything I don’t like.
OK?”
“OK,” Johnny said.
“When can I hear the pressing?”
“Tomorrow night,” Eddie Neils said.
“Your place?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said.
“Thanks, Eddie.
See you tomorrow.”
He took Nino by the arm and walked out of
the studio.
They went to his house instead of Ginny’s.
By this time it was late afternoon.
Nino was still more than half-drunk.
Johnny told him to get under the shower and
then take a snooze.
They had to be at a big party at eleven that
night.
When Nino woke up, Johnny briefed him.
“This party is a movie star Lonely Hearts
Club,” he said.
“These broads tonight are dames you’ve
seen in the movies as glamour queens millions
of guys would give their right arms to screw.
And the only reason they’ll be at the party
tonight is to find somebody to shack them
up.
Do you know why?
Because they are hungry for it, they are just
a little old.
And just like every dame, they want it with
a little bit of class.”
“What’s the matter with your voice?”
Nino asked.
Johnny had been speaking almost in a whisper.
“Every time after I sing a little bit that
happens.
I won’t be able to sing for a month now.
But I’ll get over the hoarseness in a couple
of days.”
Nino said thoughtfully, “Tough, huh?”
Johnny shrugged.
“Listen, Nino, don’t get too drunk tonight.
You have to show these Hollywood broads that
my paisan buddy ain’t weak in the poop.
You gotta come across.
Remember, some of these dames are very powerful
in movies, they can get you work.
It doesn’t hurt to be charming after you
knock off a piece.”
Nino was already pouring himself a drink.
“I’m always charming,” he said.
He drained the glass.
Grinning, he asked, “No kidding, can you
really get me close to Deanna Dunn?”
“Don’t be so anxious,” Johnny said.
“It’s not going to be like you think.”
THE HOLLYWOOD MOVIE Star Lonely Hearts Club
(so called by the young juvenile leads whose
attendance was mandatory) met every Friday
night at the palatial, studio-owned home of
Roy McElroy, press agent or rather public
relations counsel for the Woltz International
Film Corporation.
Actually, though it was McElroy’s open house
party, the idea had come from the practical
brain of Jack Woltz himself.
Some of his money-making movie stars were
getting older now.
Without the help of special lights and genius
makeup men they looked their age.
They were having problems.
They had also become, to some extent, desensitized
physically and mentally.
They could no longer “fall in love.”
They could no longer assume the role of hunted
women.
They had been made too imperious; by money,
by fame, by their former beauty.
Woltz gave his parties so that it would be
easier for them to pick up lovers, one-night
stands, who, if they had the stuff, could
graduate into full-time bed partners, and
so work their way upward.
Since the action sometimes degenerated into
brawls or sexual excess that led to trouble
with the police, Woltz decided to hold the
parties in the house of the public relations
counselor, who would be right there to fix
things up, pay off newsmen and police officers
and keep everything quiet.
For certain virile young male actors on the
studio payroll who had not yet achieved stardom
or featured roles, attendance at the Friday
night parties was not always pleasant duty.
This was explained by the fact that a new
film yet to be released by the studio would
be shown at the party.
In fact that was the excuse for the party
itself.
People would say, “Let’s go over to see
what the new picture so and so made is like.”
And so it was put in a professional context.
Young female starlets were forbidden to attend
the Friday night parties.
Or rather discouraged.
Most of them took the hint.
Screenings of the new movies took place at
midnight and Johnny and Nino arrived at eleven.
Roy McElroy proved to be, at first sight,
an enormously likable man, well-groomed, beautifully
dressed.
He greeted Johnny Fontane with a surprised
cry of delight.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he
said with genuine astonishment.
Johnny shook his hand.
“I’m showing my country cousin the sights.
Meet Nino.”
McElroy shook hands with Nino and gazed at
him appraisingly.
“They’ll eat him up alive,” he said
to Johnny.
He led them to the rear patio.
The rear patio was really a series of huge
rooms whose glass doors had been opened to
a garden and pool.
There were almost a hundred people milling
around, all with drinks in their hands.
The patio lighting was artfully arranged to
flatter feminine faces and skin.
These were women Nino had seen on the darkened
movie screens when he had been a teenager.
They had played their part in his erotic dreams
of adolescence.
But seeing them now in the flesh was like
seeing them in some horrible makeup.
Nothing could hide the tiredness of their
spirit and their flesh; time had eroded their
godhead.
They posed and moved as charmingly as he remembered
but they were like wax fruit, they could not
lubricate his glands.
Nino took two drinks, wandered to a table
where he could stand next to a nest of bottles.
Johnny moved with him.
They drank together until behind them came
the magic voice of Deanna Dunn.
Nino, like millions of other men, had that
voice imprinted on his brain forever.
Deanna Dunn had won two Academy Awards, had
been in the biggest movie grosser made in
Hollywood.
On the screen she had a feline feminine charm
that made her irresistible to all men.
But the words she was saying had never been
heard on the silver screen.
“Johnny, you bastard, I had to go to my
psychiatrist again because you gave me a one-night
stand.
How come you never came back for seconds?”
Johnny kissed her on her proffered cheek.
“You wore me out for a month,” he said.
“I want you to meet my cousin Nino.
A nice strong Italian boy.
Maybe he can keep up with you.”
Deanna Dunn turned to give Nino a cool look.
“Does he like to watch previews?”
Johnny laughed.
“I don’t think he’s ever had the chance.
Why don’t you break him in?”
Nino had to take a big drink when he was alone
with Deanna Dunn.
He was trying to be nonchalant but it was
hard.
Deanna Dunn had the upturned nose, the clean-cut
classical features of the Anglo-Saxon beauty.
And he knew her so well.
He had seen her alone in a bedroom, heart-broken,
weeping over her dead flier husband who had
left her with fatherless children.
He had seen her angry, hurt, humiliated, yet
with a shining dignity when a caddish Clark
Gable had taken advantage of her, then left
her for a sexpot.
(Deanna Dunn never played sexpots in the movies.)
He had seen her flushed with requited love,
writhing in the embrace of the man she adored
and he had seen her die beautifully at least
a half dozen times.
He had seen her and heard her and dreamed
about her and yet he was not prepared for
the first thing she said to him alone.
“Johnny is one of the few men with balls
in this town,” she said.
“The rest are all fags and sick morons who
couldn’t get it up with a broad if you pumped
a truckload of Spanish fly into their scrotums.”
She took Nino by the hand and led him into
a corner of the room, out of traffic and out
of competition.
Then still coolly charming, she asked him
about himself.
He saw through her.
He saw that she was playing the role of the
rich society girl who is being kind to the
stableboy or the chauffeur, but who in the
movie would either discourage his amatory
interest (if the part were played by Spencer
Tracy), or throw up everything in her mad
desire for him (if the part were played by
Clark Gable).
But it didn’t matter.
He found himself telling her about how he
and Johnny had grown up together in New York,
about how he and Johnny had sung together
on little club dates.
He found her marvelously sympathetic and interested.
Once she asked casually, “Do you know how
Johnny made that bastard Jack Woltz give him
the part?”
Nino froze and shook his head.
She didn’t pursue it.
The time had come to see the preview of a
new Woltz movie.
Deanna Dunn led Nino, her warm hand imprisoning
his, to an interior room of the mansion that
had no windows but was furnished with about
fifty small two-person couches scattered around
in such a way as to give each one a little
island of semiprivacy.
Nino saw there was a small table beside the
couch and on the table were an ice bowl, glasses
and bottles of liquor plus a tray of cigarettes.
He gave Deanna Dunn a cigarette, lit it and
then mixed them both drinks.
They didn’t speak to each other.
After a few minutes the lights went out.
He had been expecting something outrageous.
After all, he had heard the legends of Hollywood
depravity.
But he was not quite prepared for Deanna Dunn’s
voracious plummet on his sexual organ without
even a courteous and friendly word of preparation.
He kept sipping his drink and watching the
movie, but not tasting, not seeing.
He was excited in a way he had never been
before but part of it was because this woman
servicing him in the dark had been the object
of his adolescent dreams.
Yet in a way his masculinity was insulted.
So when the world-famous Deanna Dunn was sated
and had tidied him up, he very coolly fixed
her a fresh drink in the darkness and lit
her a fresh cigarette and said in the most
relaxed voice imaginable, “This looks like
a pretty good movie.”
He felt her stiffen beside him on the couch.
Could it be she was waiting for some sort
of compliment?
Nino poured his glass full from the nearest
bottle his hand touched in the darkness.
The hell with that.
She’d treated him like a goddamn male whore.
For some reason now he felt a cold anger at
all these women.
They watched the picture for another fifteen
minutes.
He leaned away from her so their bodies did
not touch.
Finally she said in a low harsh whisper, “Don’t
be such a snotty punk, you liked it.
You were as big as a house.”
Nino sipped his drink and said in his natural
off-hand manner, “That’s the way it always
is.
You should see it when I get excited.”
She laughed a little and kept quiet for the
rest of the picture.
Finally it was over and the lights went on.
Nino took a look around.
He could see there had been a ball here in
the darkness though oddly enough he hadn’t
heard a thing.
But some of the dames had that hard, shiny,
bright-eyed look of women who had just been
worked over real good.
They sauntered out of the projection room.
Deanna Dunn left him immediately to go over
and talk to an older man Nino recognized as
a famous featured player, only now, seeing
the guy in person, he realized that he was
a fag.
He sipped his drink thoughtfully.
Johnny Fontane came up beside him and said,
“Hi, old buddy, having a good time?”
Nino grinned.
“I don’t know.
It’s different.
Now when I go back to the old neighborhood
I can say Deanna Dunn had me.”
Johnny laughed.
“She can be better than that if she invites
you home with her.
Did she?”
Nino shook his head.
“I got too interested in the movie,” he
said.
But this time Johnny didn’t laugh.
“Get serious, kid,” he said.
“A dame like that can do you a lot of good.
And you used to boff anything.
Man, sometimes I still get nightmares when
I remember those ugly broads you used to bang.”
Nino waved his glass drunkenly and said very
loud, “Yeah, they were ugly but they were
women.”
Deanna Dunn, in the corner, turned her head
to look at them.
Nino waved his glass at her in greeting.
Johnny Fontane sighed.
“OK, you’re just a guinea peasant.”
“And I ain’t gonna change,” Nino said
with his charmingly drunken smile.
Johnny understood him perfectly.
He knew Nino was not as drunk as he pretended.
He knew that Nino was only pretending so that
he could say things which he felt were too
rude to say to his new Hollywood padrone when
sober.
He put his arm around Nino’s neck and said
affectionately, “You wise guy bum, you know
you got an ironclad contract for a year and
you can say and do anything you want and I
can’t fire you.”
“You can’t fire me?”
Nino said with drunken cunning.
“No,” Johnny said.
“Then fuck you,” Nino said.
For a moment Johnny was surprised into anger.
He saw the careless grin on Nino’s face.
But in the past few years he must have gotten
smarter, or his own descent from stardom had
made him more sensitive.
In that moment he understood Nino, why his
boyhood singing partner had never become successful,
why he was trying to destroy any chance of
success now.
That Nino was reacting away from all the prices
of success, that in some way he felt insulted
by everything that was being done for him.
Johnny took Nino by the arm and led him out
of the house.
Nino could barely walk now.
Johnny was talking to him soothingly.
“OK, kid, you just sing for me, I wanta
make dough on you.
I won’t try to run your life.
You do whatever you wanta do.
OK, paisan?
All you gotta do is sing for me and earn me
money now that I can’t sing anymore.
You got that, old buddy?”
Nino straightened up.
“I’ll sing for you, Johnny,” he said,
his voice slurring so that he could barely
be understood.
“I’m a better singer than you now.
I was always a better singer than you, you
know that?”
Johnny stood there thinking; so that was it.
He knew that when his voice was healthy Nino
simply wasn’t in the same league with him,
never had been in those years they had sung
together as kids.
He saw Nino was waiting for an answer, weaving
drunkenly in the California moonlight.
“Fuck you,” he said gently, and they both
laughed together like the old days when they
had both been equally young.
WHEN JOHNNY FONTANE got word about the shooting
of Don Corleone he not only worried about
his Godfather, but also wondered whether the
financing for his movie was still alive.
He had wanted to go to New York to pay his
respects to his Godfather in the hospital
but he had been told not to get any bad publicity,
that was the last thing Don Corleone would
want.
So he waited.
A week later a messenger came from Tom Hagen.
The financing was still on but for only one
picture at a time.
Meanwhile Johnny let Nino go his own way in
Hollywood and California, and Nino was doing
all right with the young starlets.
Sometimes Johnny called him up for a night
out together but never leaned on him.
When they talked about the Don getting shot,
Nino said to Johnny, “You know, once I asked
the Don for a job in his organization and
he wouldn’t give it to me.
I was tired of driving a truck and I wanted
to make a lot of dough.
You know what he told me?
He says every man has only one destiny and
that my destiny was to be an artist.
Meaning that I couldn’t be a racket guy.”
Johnny thought that one over.
The Godfather must be just about the smartest
guy in the world.
He’d known immediately that Nino could never
make a racket guy, would only get himself
in trouble or get killed.
Get killed with just one of his wisecracks.
But how did the Don know that he would be
an artist?
Because, goddamn it, he figured that someday
I’d help Nino.
And how did he figure that?
Because he would drop the word to me and I
would try to show my gratitude.
Of course he never asked me to do it.
He just let me know it would make him happy
if I did it.
Johnny Fontane sighed.
Now the Godfather was hurt, in trouble, and
he could kiss the Academy Award good-bye with
Woltz working against him and no help on his
side.
Only the Don had the personal contacts that
could apply pressure and the Corleone Family
had other things to think about.
Johnny had offered to help, Hagen had given
him a curt no.
Johnny was busy getting his own picture going.
The author of the book he had starred in had
finished his new novel and came west on Johnny’s
invitation, to talk it over without agents
or studios getting into the act.
The second book was perfect for what Johnny
wanted.
He wouldn’t have to sing, it had a good
gutsy story with plenty of dames and sex and
it had a part that Johnny instantly recognized
as tailor-made for Nino.
The character talked like Nino, acted like
him, even looked like him.
It was uncanny.
All Nino would have to do would be to get
up on the screen and be himself.
Johnny worked fast.
He found that he knew a lot more about production
than he thought he did, but he hired an executive
producer, a man who knew his stuff but had
trouble finding work because of the blacklist.
Johnny didn’t take advantage but gave the
man a fair contract.
“I expect you to save me more dough this
way,” he told the man frankly.
So he was surprised when the executive producer
came to him and told him the union rep had
to be taken care of to the tune of fifty thousand
dollars.
There were a lot of problems dealing with
overtime and hiring and the fifty thousand
dollars would be well spent.
Johnny debated whether the executive producer
was hustling him and then said, “Send the
union guy to me.”
The union guy was Billy Goff.
Johnny said to him, “I thought the union
stuff was fixed by my friends.
I was told not to worry about it.
At all.”
Goff said, “Who told you that?”
Johnny said, “You know goddamn well who
told me.
I won’t say his name but if he tells me
something that’s it.”
Goff said, “Things have changed.
Your friend is in trouble and his word don’t
go this far west anymore.”
Johnny shrugged.
“See me in a couple of days.
OK?”
Goff smiled.
“Sure, Johnny,” he said.
“But calling in New York ain’t going to
help you.”
But calling New York did help.
Johnny spoke to Hagen at his office.
Hagen told him bluntly not to pay.
“Your Godfather will be sore as hell if
you pay that bastard a dime,” he told Johnny.
“It will make the Don lose respect and right
now he can’t afford that.”
“Can I talk to the Don?”
Johnny asked.
“Will you talk to him?
I gotta get the picture rolling.”
“Nobody can talk to the Don right now,”
Hagen said.
“He’s too sick.
I’ll talk to Sonny about fixing things up.
But I’ll make the decision on this.
Don’t pay that smart bastard a dime.
If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
Annoyed, Johnny hung up.
Union trouble could add a fortune to making
the film and screw up the works generally.
For a moment he debated slipping Goff the
fifty grand on the quiet.
After all, the Don telling him something and
Hagen telling him something and giving him
orders were two different things.
But he decided to wait for a few days.
By waiting he saved fifty thousand dollars.
Two nights later, Goff was found shot to death
in his home in Glendale.
There was no more talk of union trouble.
Johnny was a little shaken by the killing.
It was the first time the long arm of the
Don had struck such a lethal blow so close
to him.
As the weeks went by and he became busier
and busier with getting the script ready,
casting the movie and working out production
details, Johnny Fontane forgot about his voice,
his not being able to sing.
Yet when the Academy Award nominations came
out and he found himself one of the candidates,
he was depressed because he was not asked
to sing one of the songs nominated for the
Oscar at the ceremony that would be televised
nationally.
But he shrugged it off and kept working.
He had no hope of winning the Academy Award
now that his Godfather was no longer able
to put pressure on, but getting the nomination
had some value.
The record he and Nino had cut, the one of
Italian songs, was selling much better than
anything he had cut lately, but he knew that
it was Nino’s success more than his.
He resigned himself to never being able to
again sing professionally.
Once a week he had dinner with Ginny and the
kids.
No matter how hectic things got he never skipped
that duty.
But he didn’t sleep with Ginny.
Meanwhile his second wife had finagled a Mexican
divorce and so he was a bachelor again.
Oddly enough he was not that frantic to bang
starlets who would have been easy meat.
He was too snobbish really.
He was hurt that none of the young stars,
the actresses who were still on top, ever
gave him a tumble.
But it was good to work hard.
Most nights he would go home alone, put his
old records on the player, have a drink and
hum along with them for a few bars.
He had been good, damn good.
He hadn’t realized how good he was.
Even aside from the special voice, which could
have happened to anybody, he was good.
He had been a real artist and never knew it,
and never knew how much he loved it.
He’d ruined his voice with booze and tobacco
and broads just when he really knew what it
was all about.
Sometimes Nino came over for a drink and listened
with him and Johnny would say to him scornfully,
“You guinea bastard, you never sang like
that in your life.”
And Nino would give him that curiously charming
smile and shake his head and say, “No, and
I never will,” in a sympathetic voice, as
if he knew what Johnny was thinking.
Finally, a week before shooting the new picture,
the Academy Award night rolled around.
Johnny invited Nino to come along but Nino
refused.
Johnny said, “Buddy, I never asked you a
favor, right?
Do me a favor tonight and come with me.
You’re the only guy who’ll really feel
sorry for me if I don’t win.”
For one moment Nino looked startled.
Then he said, “Sure, old buddy, I can make
it.”
He paused for a moment and said, “If you
don’t win, forget it.
Just get as drunk as you can get and I’ll
take care of you.
Hell, I won’t even drink myself tonight.
How about that for being a buddy?”
“Man,” Johnny Fontane said, “that’s
some buddy.”
The Academy Award night came and Nino kept
his promise.
He came to Johnny’s house dead sober and
they left for the presentation theater together.
Nino wondered why Johnny hadn’t invited
any of his girls or his ex-wives to the Award
dinner.
Especially Ginny.
Didn’t he think Ginny would root for him?
Nino wished he could have just one drink,
it looked like a long bad night.
Nino Valenti found the whole Academy Award
affair a bore until the winner of the best
male actor was announced.
When he heard the words “Johnny Fontane,”
he found himself jumping into the air and
applauding.
Johnny reached out a hand for him to shake
and Nino shook it.
He knew his buddy needed human contact with
someone he trusted and Nino felt an enormous
sadness that Johnny didn’t have anyone better
than himself to touch in his moment of glory.
What followed was an absolute nightmare.
Jack Woltz’s picture had swept all the major
awards and so the studio’s party was swamped
with newspaper people and all the on-the-make
hustlers, male and female.
Nino kept his promise to remain sober, and
he tried to watch over Johnny.
But the women of the party kept pulling Johnny
Fontane into bedrooms for a little chat and
Johnny kept getting drunker and drunker.
Meanwhile the woman who had won the Award
for the best actress was suffering the same
fate but loving it more and handling it better.
Nino turned her down, the only man at the
party to do so.
Finally somebody had a great idea.
The public mating of the two winners, everybody
else at the party to be spectators in the
stands.
The actress was stripped down and the other
women started to undress Johnny Fontane.
It was then that Nino, the only sober person
there, grabbed the half-clothed Johnny and
slung him over his shoulder and fought his
way out of the house and to their car.
As he drove Johnny home, Nino thought that
if that was success, he didn’t want it.
BOOK III
Chapter 14
The Don was a real man at the age of twelve.
Short, dark, slender, living in the strange
Moorish-looking village of Corleone in Sicily,
he had been born Vito Andolini, but when strange
men came to kill the son of the man they had
murdered, his mother sent the young boy to
America to stay with friends.
And in the new land he changed his name to
Corleone to preserve some tie with his native
village.
It was one of the few gestures of sentiment
he was ever to make.
In Sicily at the turn of the century the Mafia
was the second government, far more powerful
than the official one in Rome.
Vito Corleone’s father became involved in
a feud with another villager who took his
case to the Mafia.
The father refused to knuckle under and in
a public quarrel killed the local Mafia chief.
A week later he himself was found dead, his
body torn apart by lupara blasts.
A month after the funeral Mafia gunmen came
inquiring after the young boy, Vito.
They had decided that he was too close to
manhood, that he might try to avenge the death
of his father in the years to come.
The twelve-year-old Vito was hidden by relatives
and shipped to America.
There he was boarded with the Abbandandos,
whose son Genco was later to become Consigliere
to his Don.
Young Vito went to work in the Abbandando
grocery store on Ninth Avenue in New York’s
Hell’s Kitchen.
At the age of eighteen Vito married an Italian
girl freshly arrived from Sicily, a girl of
only sixteen but a skilled cook, a good housewife.
They settled down in a tenement on Tenth Avenue,
near 35th Street, only a few blocks from where
Vito worked, and two years later were blessed
with their first child, Santino, called by
all his friends Sonny because of his devotion
to his father.
In the neighborhood lived a man called Fanucci.
He was a heavy-set, fierce-looking Italian
who wore expensive light-colored suits and
a cream-colored fedora.
This man was reputed to be of the “Black
Hand,” an offshoot of the Mafia which extorted
money from families and storekeepers by threat
of physical violence.
However, since most of the inhabitants of
the neighborhood were violent themselves,
Fanucci’s threats of bodily harm were effective
only with elderly couples without male children
to defend them.
Some of the storekeepers paid him trifling
sums as a matter of convenience.
However, Fanucci was also a scavenger on fellow
criminals, people who illegally sold Italian
lottery or ran gambling games in their homes.
The Abbandando grocery gave him a small tribute,
this despite the protests of young Genco,
who told his father he would settle the Fanucci
hash.
His father forbade him.
Vito Corleone observed all this without feeling
in any way involved.
One day Fanucci was set upon by three young
men who cut his throat from ear to ear, not
deeply enough to kill him, but enough to frighten
him and make him bleed a great deal.
Vito saw Fanucci fleeing from his punishers,
the circular slash flowing red.
What he never forgot was Fanucci holding the
cream-colored fedora under his chin to catch
the dripping blood as he ran.
As if he did not want his suit soiled or did
not want to leave a shameful trail of carmine.
But this attack proved a blessing in disguise
for Fanucci.
The three young men were not murderers, merely
tough young boys determined to teach him a
lesson and stop him from scavenging.
Fanucci proved himself a murderer.
A few weeks later the knife-wielder was shot
to death and the families of the other two
young men paid an indemnity to Fanucci to
make him forswear his vengeance.
After that the tributes became higher and
Fanucci became a partner in the neighborhood
gambling games.
As for Vito Corleone, it was none of his affair.
He forgot about it immediately.
During World War I, when imported olive oil
became scarce, Fanucci acquired a part-interest
in the Abbandando grocery store by supplying
it not only with oil, but imported Italian
salami, hams and cheeses.
He then moved a nephew into the store and
Vito Corleone found himself out of a job.
By this time, the second child, Frederico,
had arrived and Vito Corleone had four mouths
to feed.
Up to this time he had been a quiet, very
contained young man who kept his thoughts
to himself.
The son of the grocery store owner, young
Genco Abbandando, was his closest friend,
and to the surprise of both of them, Vito
reproached his friend for his father’s deed.
Genco, flushed with shame, vowed to Vito that
he would not have to worry about food.
That he, Genco, would steal food from the
grocery to supply his friend’s needs.
This offer though was sternly refused by Vito
as too shameful, a son stealing from his father.
The young Vito, however, felt a cold anger
for the dreaded Fanucci.
He never showed this anger in any way but
bided his time.
He worked in the railroad for a few months
and then, when the war ended, work became
slow and he could earn only a few days’
pay a month.
Also, most of the foremen were Irish and American
and abused the workmen in the foulest language,
which Vito always bore stone-faced as if he
did not comprehend, though he understood English
very well despite his accent.
One evening as Vito was having supper with
his family there was a knock on the window
that led to the open air shaft that separated
them from the next building.
When Vito pulled aside the curtain he saw
to his astonishment one of the young men in
the neighborhood, Peter Clemenza, leaning
out from a window on the other side of the
air shaft.
He was extending a white-sheeted bundle.
“Hey, paisan,” Clemenza said.
“Hold these for me until I ask for them.
Hurry up.”
Automatically Vito reached over the empty
space of the air shaft and took the bundle.
Clemenza’s face was strained and urgent.
He was in some sort of trouble and Vito’s
helping action was instinctive.
But when he untied the bundle in his kitchen,
there were five oily guns staining the white
cloth.
He put them in his bedroom closet and waited.
He learned that Clemenza had been taken away
by the police.
They must have been knocking on his door when
he handed the guns over the air shaft.
Vito never said a word to anyone and of course
his terrified wife dared not open her lips
even in gossip for fear her own husband would
be sent to prison.
Two days later Peter Clemenza reappeared in
the neighborhood and asked Vito casually,
“Do you have my goods still?”
Vito nodded.
He was in the habit of talking little.
Clemenza came up to his tenement flat and
was given a glass of wine while Vito dug the
bundle out of his bedroom closet.
Clemenza drank his wine, his heavy good-natured
face alertly watching Vito.
“Did you look inside?”
Vito, his face impassive, shook his head.
“I’m not interested in things that don’t
concern me,” he said.
They drank wine together the rest of the evening.
They found each other congenial.
Clemenza was a storyteller; Vito Corleone
was a listener to storytellers.
They became casual friends.
A few days later Clemenza asked the wife of
Vito Corleone if she would like a fine rug
for her living room floor.
He took Vito with him to help carry the rug.
Clemenza led Vito to an apartment house with
two marble pillars and a white marble stoop.
He used a key to open the door and they were
inside a plush apartment.
Clemenza grunted, “Go on the other side
of the room and help me roll it up.”
The rug was a rich red wool.
Vito Corleone was astonished by Clemenza’s
generosity.
Together they rolled the rug into a pile and
Clemenza took one end while Vito took the
other.
They lifted it and started carrying it toward
the door.
At that moment the apartment bell rang.
Clemenza immediately dropped the rug and strode
to the window.
He pulled the drape aside slightly and what
he saw made him draw a gun from inside his
jacket.
It was only at that moment the astonished
Vito Corleone realized that they were stealing
the rug from some stranger’s apartment.
The apartment bell rang again.
Vito went up alongside Clemenza so that he
too could see what was happening.
At the door was a uniformed policeman.
As they watched, the policeman gave the doorbell
a final push, then shrugged and walked away
down the marble steps and down the street.
Clemenza grunted in a satisfied way and said,
“Come on, let’s go.”
He picked up his end of the rug and Vito picked
up the other end.
The policeman had barely turned the corner
before they were edging out the heavy oaken
door and into the street with the rug between
them.
Thirty minutes later they were cutting the
rug to fit the living room of Vito Corleone’s
apartment.
They had enough left over for the bedroom.
Clemenza was an expert workman, and from the
pockets of his wide, ill-fitting jacket (even
then he liked to wear loose clothes though
he was not so fat), he took the necessary
carpet-cutting tools.
Time went on, things did not improve.
The Corleone family could not eat the beautiful
rug.
Very well, there was no work, his wife and
children must starve.
Vito took some parcels of food from his friend
Genco while he thought things out.
Finally he was approached by Clemenza and
Tessio, another young tough of the neighborhood.
They were men who thought well of him, the
way he carried himself, and they knew he was
desperate.
They proposed to him that he become one of
their gang which specialized in hijacking
trucks of silk dresses after those trucks
were loaded up at the factory on 31st Street.
There was no risk.
The truck drivers were sensible working-men
who at the sight of a gun flopped on the sidewalk
like angels while the hijackers drove the
truck away to be unloaded at a friend’s
warehouse.
Some of the merchandise would be sold to an
Italian wholesaler, part of the loot would
be sold door-to-door in the Italian neighborhoods—Arthur
Avenue in the Bronx, Mulberry Street, and
the Chelsea district in Manhattan—all to
poor Italian families looking for a bargain,
whose daughters could never be able to afford
such fine apparel.
Clemenza and Tessio needed Vito to drive since
they knew he chauffeured the Abbandando grocery
store delivery truck.
In 1919, skilled automobile drivers were at
a premium.
Against his better judgment, Vito Corleone
accepted their offer.
The clinching argument was that he would clear
at least a thousand dollars for his share
of the job.
But his young companions struck him as rash,
the planning of the job haphazard, the distribution
of the loot foolhardy.
Their whole approach was too careless for
his taste.
But he thought them of good, sound character.
Peter Clemenza, already burly, inspired a
certain trust, and the lean saturnine Tessio
inspired confidence.
The job itself went off without a hitch.
Vito Corleone felt no fear, much to his astonishment,
when his two comrades flashed guns and made
the driver get out of the silk truck.
He was also impressed with the coolness of
Clemenza and Tessio.
They didn’t get excited but joked with the
driver, told him if he was a good lad they’d
send his wife a few dresses.
Because Vito thought it stupid to peddle dresses
himself and so gave his whole share of stock
to the fence, he made only seven hundred dollars.
But this was a considerable sum of money in
1919.
The next day on the street, Vito Corleone
was stopped by the cream-suited, white-fedoraed
Fanucci.
Fanucci was a brutal-looking man and he had
done nothing to disguise the circular scar
that stretched in a white semicircle from
ear to ear, looping under his chin.
He had heavy black brows and coarse features
which, when he smiled, were in some odd way
amiable.
He spoke with a very thick Sicilian accent.
“Ah, young fellow,” he said to Vito.
“People tell me you’re rich.
You and your two friends.
But don’t you think you’ve treated me
a little shabbily?
After all, this is my neighborhood and you
should let me wet my beak.”
He used the Sicilian phrase of the Mafia,
“Fari vagnari a pizzu.”
Pizzu means the beak of any small bird such
as a canary.
The phrase itself was a demand for part of
the loot.
As was his habit, Vito Corleone did not answer.
He understood the implication immediately
and was waiting for a definite demand.
Fanucci smiled at him, showing gold teeth
and stretching his noose-like scar tight around
his face.
He mopped his face with a handkerchief and
unbuttoned his jacket for a moment as if to
cool himself but really to show the gun he
carried stuck in the waistband of his comfortably
wide trousers.
Then he sighed and said, “Give me five hundred
dollars and I’ll forget the insult.
After all, young people don’t know the courtesies
due a man like myself.”
Vito Corleone smiled at him and even as a
young man still unblooded, there was something
so chilling in his smile that Fanucci hesitated
a moment before going on.
“Otherwise the police will come to see you,
your wife and children will be shamed and
destitute.
Of course if my information as to your gains
is incorrect I’ll dip my beak just a little.
But no less than three hundred dollars.
And don’t try to deceive me.”
For the first time Vito Corleone spoke.
His voice was reasonable, showed no anger.
It was courteous, as befitted a young man
speaking to an older man of Fanucci’s eminence.
He said softly, “My two friends have my
share of the money, I’ll have to speak to
them.”
Fanucci was reassured.
“You can tell your two friends that I expect
them to let me wet my beak in the same manner.
Don’t be afraid to tell them,” he added
reassuringly.
“Clemenza and I know each other well, he
understands these things.
Let yourself be guided by him.
He has more experience in these matters.”
Vito Corleone shrugged.
He tried to look a little embarrassed.
“Of course,” he said.
“You understand this is all new to me.
Thank you for speaking to me as a Godfather.”
Fanucci was impressed.
“You’re a good fellow,” he said.
He took Vito’s hand and clasped it in both
of his hairy ones.
“You have respect,” he said.
“A fine thing in the young.
Next time speak to me first, eh?
Perhaps I can help you in your plans.”
In later years Vito Corleone understood that
what had made him act in such a perfect, tactical
way with Fanucci was the death of his own
hot-tempered father who had been killed by
the Mafia in Sicily.
But at that time all he felt was an icy rage
that this man planned to rob him of the money
he had risked his life and freedom to earn.
He had not been afraid.
Indeed he thought, at that moment, that Fanucci
was a crazy fool.
From what he had seen of Clemenza, that burly
Sicilian would sooner give up his life than
a penny of his loot.
After all, Clemenza had been ready to kill
a policeman merely to steal a rug.
And the slender Tessio had the deadly air
of a viper.
But later that night, in Clemenza’s tenement
apartment across the air shaft, Vito Corleone
received another lesson in the education he
had just begun.
Clemenza cursed, Tessio scowled, but then
both men started talking about whether Fanucci
would be satisfied with two hundred dollars.
Tessio thought he might.
Clemenza was positive.
“No, that scarface bastard must have found
out what we made from the wholesaler who bought
the dresses.
Fanucci won’t take a dime less than three
hundred dollars.
We’ll have to pay.”
Vito was astonished but was careful not to
show his astonishment.
“Why do we have to pay him?
What can he do to the three of us?
We’re stronger than him.
We have guns.
Why do we have to hand over the money we earned?”
Clemenza explained patiently.
“Fanucci has friends, real brutes.
He has connections with the police.
He’d like us to tell him our plans because
he could set us up for the cops and earn their
gratitude.
Then they would owe him a favor.
That’s how he operates.
And he has a license from Maranzalla himself
to work this neighborhood.”
Maranzalla was a gangster often in the newspapers,
reputed to be the leader of a criminal ring
specializing in extortion, gambling and armed
robbery.
Clemenza served wine that he had made himself.
His wife, after putting a plate of salami,
olives and a loaf of Italian bread on the
table, went down to sit with her women cronies
in front of the building, carrying her chair
with her.
She was a young Italian girl only a few years
in the country and did not yet understand
English.
Vito Corleone sat with his two friends and
drank wine.
He had never used his intelligence before
as he was using it now.
He was surprised at how clearly he could think.
He recalled everything he knew about Fanucci.
He remembered the day the man had had his
throat cut and had run down the street holding
his fedora under his chin to catch the dripping
blood.
He remembered the murder of the man who had
wielded the knife and the other two having
their sentences removed by paying an indemnity.
And suddenly he was sure that Fanucci had
no great connections, could not possibly have.
Not a man who informed to the police.
Not a man who allowed his vengeance to be
bought off.
A real Mafioso chief would have had the other
two men killed also.
No.
Fanucci had got lucky and killed one man but
had known he could not kill the other two
after they were alerted.
And so he had allowed himself to be paid.
It was the personal brutal force of the man
that allowed him to levy tribute on the shopkeepers,
the gambling games that ran in the tenement
apartments.
But Vito Corleone knew of at least one gambling
game that had never paid Fanucci tributes
and nothing had ever happened to the man running
it.
And so it was Fanucci alone.
Or Fanucci with some gunmen hired for special
jobs on a strictly cash basis.
Which left Vito Corleone with another decision.
The course his own life must take.
It was from this experience came his oft-repeated
belief that every man has but one destiny.
On that night he could have paid Fanucci the
tribute and have become again a grocery clerk
with perhaps his own grocery store in the
years to come.
But destiny had decided that he was to become
a Don and had brought Fanucci to him to set
him on his destined path.
When they finished the bottle of wine, Vito
said cautiously to Clemenza and Tessio, “If
you like, why not give me two hundred dollars
each to pay to Fanucci?
I guarantee he will accept that amount from
me.
Then leave everything in my hands.
I’ll settle this problem to your satisfaction.”
At once Clemenza’s eyes gleamed with suspicion.
Vito said to him coldly, “I never lie to
people I have accepted as my friends.
Speak to Fanucci yourself tomorrow.
Let him ask you for the money.
But don’t pay him.
And don’t in any way quarrel with him.
Tell him you have to get the money and will
give it to me to give him.
Let him understand that you are willing to
pay what he asks.
Don’t bargain.
I’ll quarrel over the price with him.
There’s no point making him angry with us
if he’s as dangerous a man as you say he
is.”
They left it at that.
The next day Clemenza spoke with Fanucci to
make sure that Vito was not making up the
story.
Then Clemenza came to Vito’s apartment and
gave him the two hundred dollars.
He peered at Vito Corleone and said, “Fanucci
told me nothing below three hundred dollars,
how will you make him take less?”
Vito Corleone said reasonably, “Surely that’s
no concern of yours.
Just remember that I’ve done you a service.”
Tessio came later.
Tessio was more reserved than Clemenza, sharper,
more clever but with less force.
He sensed something amiss, something not quite
right.
He was a little worried.
He said to Vito Corleone, “Watch yourself
with that bastard of a Black Hand, he’s
tricky as a priest.
Do you want me to be here when you hand him
the money, as a witness?”
Vito Corleone shook his head.
He didn’t even bother to answer.
He merely said to Tessio, “Tell Fanucci
I’ll pay him the money here in my house
at nine o’clock tonight.
I’ll have to give him a glass of wine and
talk, reason with him to take the lesser sum.”
Tessio shook his head.
“You won’t have much luck.
Fanucci never retreats.”
“I’ll reason with him,” Vito Corleone
said.
It was to become a famous phrase in the years
to come.
It was to become the warning rattle before
a deadly strike.
When he became a Don and asked opponents to
sit down and reason with him, they understood
it was the last chance to resolve an affair
without bloodshed and murder.
Vito Corleone told his wife to take the two
children, Sonny and Fredo, down into the street
after supper and on no account to let them
come up to the house until he gave her permission.
She was to sit on guard at the tenement door.
He had some private business with Fanucci
that could not be interrupted.
He saw the look of fear on her face and was
angry.
He said to her quietly, “Do you think you’ve
married a fool?”
She didn’t answer.
She did not answer because she was frightened,
not of Fanucci now, but of her husband.
He was changing visibly before her eyes, hour
by hour, into a man who radiated some dangerous
force.
He had always been quiet, speaking little,
but always gentle, always reasonable, which
was extraordinary in a young Sicilian male.
What she was seeing was the shedding of his
protective coloration of a harmless nobody
now that he was ready to start on his destiny.
He had started late, he was twenty-five years
old, but he was to start with a flourish.
Vito Corleone had decided to murder Fanucci.
By doing so he would have an extra seven hundred
dollars in his bankroll.
The three hundred dollars he himself would
have to pay the Black Hand terrorist and the
two hundred dollars from Tessio and the two
hundred dollars from Clemenza.
If he did not kill Fanucci, he would have
to pay the man seven hundred dollars cold
cash.
Fanucci alive was not worth seven hundred
dollars to him.
He would not pay seven hundred dollars to
keep Fanucci alive.
If Fanucci needed seven hundred dollars for
an operation to save his life, he would not
give Fanucci seven hundred dollars for the
surgeon.
He owed Fanucci no personal debt of gratitude,
they were not blood relatives, he did not
love Fanucci.
Why, then, should he give Fanucci seven hundred
dollars?
And it followed inevitably, that since Fanucci
wished to take seven hundred dollars from
him by force, why should he not kill Fanucci?
Surely the world could do without such a person.
There were of course some practical reasons.
Fanucci might indeed have powerful friends
who would seek vengeance.
Fanucci himself was a dangerous man, not so
easily killed.
There were the police and the electric chair.
But Vito Corleone had lived under a sentence
of death since the murder of his father.
As a boy of twelve he had fled his executioners
and crossed the ocean into a strange land,
taking a strange name.
And years of quiet observation had convinced
him that he had more intelligence and more
courage than other men, though he had never
had the opportunity to use that intelligence
and courage.
And yet he hesitated before taking the first
step toward his destiny.
He even packed the seven hundred dollars in
a single fold of bills and put the money in
a convenient side pocket of his trousers.
But he put the money in the left side of his
trousers.
In the right-hand pocket he put the gun Clemenza
had given him to use in the hijacking of the
silk truck.
Fanucci came promptly at nine in the evening.
Vito Corleone set out a jug of homemade wine
that Clemenza had given him.
Fanucci put his white fedora on the table
beside the jug of wine.
He loosened his broad multiflowered tie, its
tomato stains camouflaged by the bright patterns.
The summer night was hot, the gaslight feeble.
It was very quiet in the apartment.
But Vito Corleone was icy.
To show his good faith he handed over the
roll of bills and watched carefully as Fanucci,
after counting it, took out a wide leather
wallet and stuffed the money inside.
Fanucci sipped his glass of wine and said,
“You still owe me two hundred dollars.”
His heavy-browed face was expressionless.
Vito Corleone said in his cool reasonable
voice, “I’m a little short, I’ve been
out of work.
Let me owe you the money for a few weeks.”
This was a permissible gambit.
Fanucci had the bulk of the money and would
wait.
He might even be persuaded to take nothing
more or to wait a little longer.
He chuckled over his wine and said, “Ah,
you’re a sharp young fellow.
How is it I’ve never noticed you before?
You’re too quiet a chap for your own interest.
I could find some work for you to do that
would be very profitable.”
Vito Corleone showed his interest with a polite
nod and filled up the man’s glass from the
purple jug.
But Fanucci thought better of what he was
going to say and rose from his chair and shook
Vito’s hand.
“Good night, young fellow,” he said.
“No hard feelings, eh?
If I can ever do you a service let me know.
You’ve done a good job for yourself tonight.”
Vito let Fanucci go down the stairs and out
the building.
The street was thronged with witnesses to
show that he had left the Corleone home safely.
Vito watched from the window.
He saw Fanucci turn the corner toward 11th
Avenue and knew he was headed toward his apartment,
probably to put away his loot before coming
out on the streets again.
Perhaps to put away his gun.
Vito Corleone left his apartment and ran up
the stairs to the roof.
He traveled over the square block of roofs
and descended down the steps of an empty loft
building fire escape that left him in the
back yard.
He kicked the back door open and went through
the front door.
Across the street was Fanucci’s tenement
apartment house.
The village of tenements extended only as
far west as Tenth Avenue.
Eleventh Avenue was mostly warehouses and
lofts rented by firms who shipped by New York
Central Railroad and wanted access to the
freight yards that honeycombed the area from
Eleventh Avenue to the Hudson River.
Fanucci’s apartment house was one of the
few left standing in this wilderness and was
occupied mostly by bachelor trainmen, yard
workers, and the cheapest prostitutes.
These people did not sit in the street and
gossip like honest Italians, they sat in beer
taverns guzzling their pay.
So Vito Corleone found it an easy matter to
slip across the deserted Eleventh Avenue and
into the vestibule of Fanucci’s apartment
house.
There he drew the gun he had never fired and
waited for Fanucci.
He watched through the glass door of the vestibule,
knowing Fanucci would come down from Tenth
Avenue.
Clemenza had showed him the safety on the
gun and he had triggered it empty.
But as a young boy in Sicily at the early
age of nine, he had often gone hunting with
his father, had often fired the heavy shotgun
called the lupara.
It was his skill with the lupara even as a
small boy that had brought the sentence of
death upon him by his father’s murderers.
Now waiting in the darkened hallway, he saw
the white blob of Fanucci crossing the street
toward the doorway.
Vito stepped back, shoulders pressed against
the inner door that led to the stairs.
He held his gun out to fire.
His extended hand was only two paces from
the outside door.
The door swung in.
Fanucci, white, broad, smelly, filled the
square of light.
Vito Corleone fired.
The open door let some of the sound escape
into the street, the rest of the gun’s explosion
shook the building.
Fanucci was holding on to the sides of the
door, trying to stand erect, trying to reach
for his gun.
The force of his struggle had torn the buttons
off his jacket and made it swing loose.
His gun was exposed but so was a spidery vein
of red on the white shirtfront of his stomach.
Very carefully, as if he were plunging a needle
into a vein, Vito Corleone fired his second
bullet into that red web.
Fanucci fell to his knees, propping the door
open.
He let out a terrible groan, the groan of
a man in great physical distress that was
almost comical.
He kept giving these groans; Vito remembered
hearing at least three of them before he put
the gun against Fanucci’s sweaty, suety
cheek and fired into his brain.
No more than five seconds had passed when
Fanucci slumped into death, jamming the door
open with his body.
Very carefully Vito took the wide wallet out
of the dead man’s jacket pocket and put
it inside his shirt.
Then he walked across the street into the
loft building, through that into the yard
and climbed the fire escape to the roof.
From there he surveyed the street.
Fanucci’s body was still lying in the doorway
but there was no sign of any other person.
Two windows had gone up in the tenement and
he could see dark heads poked out but since
he could not see their features they had certainly
not seen his.
And such men would not give information to
the police.
Fanucci might lie there until dawn or until
a patrolman making the rounds stumbled on
his body.
No person in that house would deliberately
expose himself to police suspicion or questioning.
They would lock their doors and pretend they
had heard nothing.
He could take his time.
He traveled over the rooftops to his own roof
door and down to his own flat.
He unlocked the door, went inside and then
locked the door behind him.
He rifled the dead man’s wallet.
Besides the seven hundred dollars he had given
Fanucci there were only some singles and a
five-dollar note.
Tucked inside the flap was an old five-dollar
gold piece, probably a luck token.
If Fanucci was a rich gangster, he certainly
did not carry his wealth with him.
This confirmed some of Vito’s suspicions.
He knew he had to get rid of the wallet and
the gun (knowing enough even then that he
must leave the gold piece in the wallet).
He went up on the roof again and traveled
over a few ledges.
He threw the wallet down one air shaft and
then he emptied the gun of bullets and smashed
its barrel against the roof ledge.
The barrel wouldn’t break.
He reversed it in his hand and smashed the
butt against the side of a chimney.
The butt split into two halves.
He smashed it again and the pistol broke into
barrel and handle, two separate pieces.
He used a separate air shaft for each.
They made no sound when they struck the earth
five stories below, but sank into the soft
hill of garbage that had accumulated there.
In the morning more garbage would be thrown
out of the windows and, with luck, would cover
everything.
Vito returned to his apartment.
He was trembling a little but was absolutely
under control.
He changed his clothes and fearful that some
blood might have splattered on them, he threw
them into a metal tub his wife used for washing.
He took lye and heavy brown laundry soap to
soak the clothes and scrubbed them with the
metal wash board beneath the sink.
Then he scoured tub and sink with lye and
soap.
He found a bundle of newly washed clothes
in the corner of the bedroom and mingled his
own clothes with these.
Then he put on a fresh shirt and trousers
and went down to join his wife and children
and neighbors in front of the tenement.
All these precautions proved to be unnecessary.
The police, after discovering the dead body
at dawn, never questioned Vito Corleone.
Indeed he was astonished that they never learned
about Fanucci’s visit to his home on the
night he was shot to death.
He had counted on that for an alibi, Fanucci
leaving the tenement alive.
He only learned later that the police had
been delighted with the murder of Fanucci
and not too anxious to pursue his killers.
They had assumed it was another gang execution,
and had questioned hoodlums with records in
the rackets and a history of strong-arm.
Since Vito had never been in trouble he never
came into the picture.
But if he had outwitted the police, his partners
were another matter.
Pete Clemenza and Tessio avoided him for the
next week, for the next two weeks, then they
came to call on him one evening.
They came with obvious respect.
Vito Corleone greeted them with impassive
courtesy and served them wine.
Clemenza spoke first.
He said softly, “Nobody is collecting from
the store owners on Ninth Avenue.
Nobody is collecting from the card games and
gambling in the neighborhood.”
Vito Corleone gazed at both men steadily but
did not reply.
Tessio spoke.
“We could take over Fanucci’s customers.
They would pay us.”
Vito Corleone shrugged.
“Why come to me?
I have no interest in such things.”
Clemenza laughed.
Even in his youth, before growing his enormous
belly, he had a fat man’s laugh.
He said now to Vito Corleone, “How about
that gun I gave you for the truck job?
Since you won’t need it anymore you can
give it back to me.”
Very slowly and deliberately Vito Corleone
took a wad of bills out of his side pocket
and peeled off five tens.
“Here, I’ll pay you.
I threw the gun away after the truck job.”
He smiled at the two men.
At that time Vito Corleone did not know the
effect of this smile.
It was chilling because it attempted no menace.
He smiled as if it was some private joke only
he himself could appreciate.
But since he smiled in that fashion only in
affairs that were lethal, and since the joke
was not really private and since his eyes
did not smile, and since his outward character
was usually so reasonable and quiet, the sudden
unmasking of his true self was frightening.
Clemenza shook his head.
“I don’t want the money,” he said.
Vito pocketed the bills.
He waited.
They all understood each other.
They knew he had killed Fanucci and though
they never spoke about it to anyone the whole
neighborhood, within a few weeks, also knew.
Vito Corleone was treated as a “man of respect”
by everyone.
But he made no attempt to take over the Fanucci
rackets and tributes.
What followed then was inevitable.
One night Vito’s wife brought a neighbor,
a widow, to the flat.
The woman was Italian and of unimpeachable
character.
She worked hard to keep a home for her fatherless
children.
Her sixteen-year-old son brought home his
pay envelope sealed, to hand over to her in
the old-country style; her seventeen-year-old
daughter, a dressmaker, did the same.
The whole family sewed buttons on cards at
night at slave labor piece rates.
The woman’s name was Signora Colombo.
Vito Corleone’s wife said, “The Signora
has a favor to ask of you.
She is having some trouble.”
Vito Corleone expected to be asked for money,
which he was ready to give.
But it seemed that Mrs. Colombo owned a dog
which her youngest son adored.
The landlord had received complaints on the
dog barking at night and had told Mrs. Colombo
to get rid of it.
She had pretended to do so.
The landlord had found out that she had deceived
him and had ordered her to vacate her apartment.
She had promised this time to truly get rid
of the dog and she had done so.
But the landlord was so angry that he would
not revoke his order.
She had to get out or the police would be
summoned to put her out.
And her poor little boy had cried so when
they had given the dog away to relatives who
lived in Long Island.
All for nothing, they would lose their home.
Vito Corleone asked her gently, “Why do
you ask me to help you?”
Mrs. Colombo nodded toward his wife.
“She told me to ask you.”
He was surprised.
His wife had never questioned him about the
clothes he had washed the night he had murdered
Fanucci.
Had never asked him where all the money came
from when he was not working.
Even now her face was impassive.
Vito said to Mrs. Colombo, “I can give you
some money to help you move, is that what
you want?”
The woman shook her head, she was in tears.
“All my friends are here, all the girls
I grew up with in Italy.
How can I move to another neighborhood with
strangers?
I want you to speak to the landlord to let
me stay.”
Vito nodded.
“It’s done then.
You won’t have to move.
I’ll speak to him tomorrow morning.”
His wife gave him a smile which he did not
acknowledge, but he felt pleased.
Mrs. Colombo looked a little uncertain.
“You’re sure he’ll say yes, the landlord?”
she asked.
“Signor Roberto?”
Vito said in a surprised voice.
“Of course he will.
He’s a good-hearted fellow.
Once I explain how things are with you he’ll
take pity on your misfortunes.
Now don’t let it trouble you anymore.
Don’t get so upset.
Guard your health, for the sake of your children.”
THE LANDLORD, MR.
ROBERTO, came to the neighborhood every day
to check on the row of five tenements that
he owned.
He was a padrone, a man who sold Italian laborers
just off the boat to the big corporations.
With his profits he had bought the tenements
one by one.
An educated man from the North of Italy, he
felt only contempt for these illiterate Southerners
from Sicily and Naples, who swarmed like vermin
through his buildings, who threw garbage down
the air shafts, who let cockroaches and rats
eat away his walls without lifting a hand
to preserve his property.
He was not a bad man, he was a good husband
and father, but constant worry about his investments,
about the money he earned, about the inevitable
expenses that came with being a man of property
had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he
was in a constant state of irritation.
When Vito Corleone stopped him on the street
to ask for a word, Mr. Roberto was brusque.
Not rude, since any one of these Southerners
might stick a knife into you if rubbed the
wrong way, though this young man looked like
a quiet fellow.
“Signor Roberto,” said Vito Corleone,
“the friend of my wife, a poor widow with
no man to protect her, tells me that for some
reason she has been ordered to move from her
apartment in your building.
She is in despair.
She has no money, she has no friends except
those that live here.
I told her that I would speak to you, that
you are a reasonable man who acted out of
some misunderstanding.
She has gotten rid of the animal that caused
all the trouble and so why shouldn’t she
stay?
As one Italian to another, I ask you the favor.”
Signor Roberto studied the young man in front
of him.
He saw a man of medium stature but strongly
built, a peasant but not a bandit, though
he so laughably dared to call himself an Italian.
Roberto shrugged.
“I have already rented the apartment to
another family for higher rent,” he said.
“I cannot disappoint them for the sake of
your friend.”
Vito Corleone nodded in agreeable understanding.
“How much more a month?” he asked.
“Five dollars,” Mr. Roberto said.
This was a lie.
The railway flat, four dark rooms, rented
for twelve dollars a month to the widow and
he had not been able to get more than that
from the new tenant.
Vito Corleone took a roll of bills out of
his pocket and peeled off three tens.
“Here is the six months’ increase in advance.
You needn’t speak to her about it, she’s
a proud woman.
See me again in another six months.
But of course you’ll let her keep her dog.”
“Like hell,” Mr. Roberto said.
“And who the hell are you to give me orders.
Watch your manners or you’ll be out on your
Sicilian ass in the street there.”
Vito Corleone raised his hands in surprise.
“I’m asking you a favor, only that.
One never knows when one might need a friend,
isn’t that true?
Here, take this money as a sign of my goodwill
and make your own decision.
I wouldn’t dare to quarrel with it.”
He thrust the money into Mr. Roberto’s hand.
“Do me this little favor, just take the
money and think things over.
Tomorrow morning if you want to give me the
money back by all means do so.
If you want the woman out of your house, how
can I stop you?
It’s your property, after all.
If you don’t want the dog in there, I can
understand.
I dislike animals myself.”
He patted Mr. Roberto on the shoulder.
“Do me this service, eh?
I won’t forget it.
Ask your friends in the neighborhood about
me, they’ll tell you I’m a man who believes
in showing his gratitude.”
But of course Mr. Roberto had already begun
to understand.
That evening he made inquiries about Vito
Corleone.
He did not wait until the next morning.
He knocked on the Corleone door that very
night, apologizing for the lateness of the
hour, and accepted a glass of wine from Signora
Corleone.
He assured Vito Corleone that it had all been
a dreadful misunderstanding, that of course
Signora Colombo could remain in the flat,
of course she could keep her dog.
Who were those miserable tenants to complain
about noise from a poor animal when they paid
such a low rent?
At the finish he threw the thirty dollars
Vito Corleone had given him on the table and
said in the most sincere fashion, “Your
good heart in helping this poor widow has
shamed me and I wish to show that I, too,
have some Christian charity.
Her rent will remain what it was.”
All concerned played this comedy prettily.
Vito poured wine, called for cakes, wrung
Mr. Roberto’s hand and praised his warm
heart.
Mr. Roberto sighed and said that having made
the acquaintance of such a man as Vito Corleone
restored his faith in human nature.
Finally they tore themselves away from each
other.
Mr. Roberto, his bones turned to jelly with
fear at his narrow escape, caught the streetcar
to his home in the Bronx and took to his bed.
He did not reappear in his tenements for three
days.
VITO CORLEONE WAS now a “man of respect”
in the neighborhood.
He was reputed to be a member of the Mafia
of Sicily.
One day a man who ran card games in a furnished
room came to him and voluntarily paid him
twenty dollars each week for his “friendship.”
He had only to visit the game once or twice
a week to let the players understand they
were under his protection.
Store owners who had problems with young hoodlums
asked him to intercede.
He did so and was properly rewarded.
Soon he had the enormous income for that time
and place of one hundred dollars a week.
Since Clemenza and Tessio were his friends,
his allies, he had to give them each part
of the money, but this he did without being
asked.
Finally he decided to go into the olive oil
importing business with his boyhood chum,
Genco Abbandando.
Genco would handle the business, the importing
of the olive oil from Italy, the buying at
the proper price, the storing in his father’s
warehouse.
Genco had the experience for this part of
the business.
Clemenza and Tessio would be the salesmen.
They would go to every Italian grocery store
in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then the Bronx,
to persuade store owners to stock Genco Pura
olive oil.
(With typical modesty, Vito Corleone refused
to name the brand after himself.)
Vito of course would be the head of the firm
since he was supplying most of the capital.
He also would be called in on special cases,
where store owners resisted the sales talks
of Clemenza and Tessio.
Then Vito Corleone would use his own formidable
powers of persuasion.
For the next few years Vito Corleone lived
that completely satisfying life of a small
businessman wholly devoted to building up
his commercial enterprise in a dynamic, expanding
economy.
He was a devoted father and husband but so
busy he could spare his family little of his
time.
As Genco Pura olive oil grew to become the
best-selling imported Italian oil in America,
his organization mushroomed.
Like any good salesman he came to understand
the benefits of undercutting his rivals in
price, barring them from distribution outlets
by persuading store owners to stock less of
their brands.
Like any good businessman he aimed at holding
a monopoly by forcing his rivals to abandon
the field or by merging with his own company.
However, since he had started off relatively
helpless, economically, since he did not believe
in advertising, relying on word of mouth and
since if truth be told, his olive oil was
no better than his competitors’, he could
not use the common strangleholds of legitimate
businessmen.
He had to rely on the force of his own personality
and his reputation as a “man of respect.”
Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became
known as a “man of reasonableness.”
He never uttered a threat.
He always used logic that proved to be irresistible.
He always made certain that the other fellow
got his share of profit.
Nobody lost.
He did this, of course, by obvious means.
Like many businessmen of genius he learned
that free competition was wasteful, monopoly
efficient.
And so he simply set about achieving that
efficient monopoly.
There were some oil wholesalers in Brooklyn,
men of fiery temper, headstrong, not amenable
to reason, who refused to see, to recognize,
the vision of Vito Corleone, even after he
had explained everything to them with the
utmost patience and detail.
With these men Vito Corleone threw up his
hands in despair and sent Tessio to Brooklyn
to set up a headquarters and solve the problem.
Warehouses were burned, truckloads of olive-green
oil were dumped to form lakes in the cobbled
waterfront streets.
One rash man, an arrogant Milanese with more
faith in the police than a saint has in Christ,
actually went to the authorities with a complaint
against his fellow Italians, breaking the
ten-century-old law of omerta.
But before the matter could progress any further
the wholesaler disappeared, never to be seen
again, leaving behind, deserted, his devoted
wife and three children, who, God be thanked,
were fully grown and capable of taking over
his business and coming to terms with the
Genco Pura Olive Oil Company.
But great men are not born great, they grow
great, and so it was with Vito Corleone.
When Prohibition came to pass and alcohol
forbidden to be sold, Vito Corleone made the
final step from a quite ordinary, somewhat
ruthless businessman to a great Don in the
world of criminal enterprise.
It did not happen in a day, it did not happen
in a year, but by the end of the Prohibition
period and the start of the Great Depression,
Vito Corleone had become the Godfather, the
Don, Don Corleone.
It started casually enough.
By this time the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company
had a fleet of six delivery trucks.
Through Clemenza, Vito Corleone was approached
by a group of Italian bootleggers who smuggled
alcohol and whiskey in from Canada.
They needed trucks and deliverymen to distribute
their produce over New York City.
They needed deliverymen who were reliable,
discreet and of a certain determination and
force.
They were willing to pay Vito Corleone for
his trucks and for his men.
The fee was so enormous that Vito Corleone
cut back drastically on his oil business to
use the trucks almost exclusively for the
service of the bootlegger-smugglers.
This despite the fact that these gentlemen
had accompanied their offer with a silky threat.
But even then Vito Corleone was so mature
a man that he did not take insult at a threat
or become angry and refuse a profitable offer
because of it.
He evaluated the threat, found it lacking
in conviction, and lowered his opinion of
his new partners because they had been so
stupid to use threats where none were needed.
This was useful information to be pondered
at its proper time.
Again he prospered.
But, more important, he acquired knowledge
and contacts and experience.
And he piled up good deeds as a banker piles
up securities.
For in the following years it became clear
that Vito Corleone was not only a man of talent
but, in his way, a genius.
He made himself the protector of the Italian
families who set themselves up as small speakeasies
in their homes, selling whiskey at fifteen
cents a glass to bachelor laborers.
He became Godfather to Mrs. Colombo’s youngest
son when the lad made his confirmation and
gave a handsome present of a twenty-dollar
gold piece.
Meanwhile, since it was inevitable that some
of his trucks be stopped by the police, Genco
Abbandando hired a fine lawyer with many contacts
in the Police Department and the judiciary.
A system of payoffs was set up and soon the
Corleone organization had a sizable “sheet,”
the list of officials entitled to a monthly
sum.
When the lawyer tried to keep this list down,
apologizing for the expense, Vito Corleone
reassured him.
“No, no,” he said.
“Get everyone on it even if they can’t
help us right now.
I believe in friendship and I am willing to
show my friendship first.”
As time went by the Corleone empire became
larger, more trucks were added, the “sheet”
grew longer.
Also the men working directly for Tessio and
Clemenza grew in number.
The whole thing was becoming unwieldy.
Finally Vito Corleone worked out a system
of organization.
He gave Clemenza and Tessio each the title
of Caporegime, or captain, and the men who
worked beneath them the rank of soldier.
He named Genco Abbandando his counselor, or
Consigliere.
He put layers of insulation between himself
and any operational act.
When he gave an order it was to Genco or to
one of the caporegimes alone.
Rarely did he have a witness to any order
he gave any particular one of them.
Then he split Tessio’s group and made it
responsible for Brooklyn.
He also split Tessio off from Clemenza and
made it clear over the years that he did not
want the two men to associate even socially
except when absolutely necessary.
He explained this to the more intelligent
Tessio, who caught his drift immediately,
though Vito explained it as a security measure
against the law.
Tessio understood that Vito did not want his
two caporegimes to have any opportunity to
conspire against him and he also understood
there was no ill will involved, merely a tactical
precaution.
In return Vito gave Tessio a free hand in
Brooklyn while he kept Clemenza’s Bronx
fief very much under his thumb.
Clemenza was the braver, more reckless, the
crueler man despite his outward jollity, and
needed a tighter rein.
The Great Depression increased the power of
Vito Corleone.
And indeed it was about that time he came
to be called Don Corleone.
Everywhere in the city, honest men begged
for honest work in vain.
Proud men demeaned themselves and their families
to accept official charity from a contemptuous
officialdom.
But the men of Don Corleone walked the streets
with their heads held high, their pockets
stuffed with silver and paper money.
With no fear of losing their jobs.
And even Don Corleone, that most modest of
men, could not help feeling a sense of pride.
He was taking care of his world, his people.
He had not failed those who depended on him
and gave him the sweat of their brows, risked
their freedom and their lives in his service.
And when an employee of his was arrested and
sent to prison by some mischance, that unfortunate
man’s family received a living allowance;
and not a miserly, beggarly, begrudging pittance
but the same amount the man earned when free.
This of course was not pure Christian charity.
Not his best friends would have called Don
Corleone a saint from heaven.
There was some self-interest in this generosity.
An employee sent to prison knew he had only
to keep his mouth shut and his wife and children
would be cared for.
He knew that if he did not inform to the police
a warm welcome would be his when he left prison.
There would be a party waiting in his home,
the best of food, homemade ravioli, wine,
pastries, with all his friends and relatives
gathered to rejoice in his freedom.
And sometime during the night the Consigliere,
Genco Abbandando, or perhaps even the Don
himself, would drop by to pay his respects
to such a stalwart, take a glass of wine in
his honor, and leave a handsome present of
money so that he could enjoy a week or two
of leisure with his family before returning
to his daily toil.
Such was the infinite sympathy and understanding
of Don Corleone.
It was at this time that the Don got the idea
that he ran his world far better than his
enemies ran the greater world which continually
obstructed his path.
And this feeling was nurtured by the poor
people of the neighborhood who constantly
came to him for help.
To get on the home relief, to get a young
boy a job or out of jail, to borrow a small
sum of money desperately needed, to intervene
with landlords who against all reason demanded
rent from jobless tenants.
Don Vito Corleone helped them all.
Not only that, he helped them with goodwill,
with encouraging words to take the bitter
sting out of the charity he gave them.
It was only natural then that when these Italians
were puzzled and confused on who to vote for
to represent them in the state legislature,
in the city offices, in the Congress, they
should ask the advice of their friend Don
Corleone, their Godfather.
And so he became a political power to be consulted
by practical party chiefs.
He consolidated this power with a far-seeing
statesmanlike intelligence; by helping brilliant
boys from poor Italian families through college,
boys who would later become lawyers, assistant
district attorneys, and even judges.
He planned for the future of his empire with
all the foresight of a great national leader.
The repeal of Prohibition dealt this empire
a crippling blow but again he had taken his
precautions.
In 1933 he sent emissaries to the man who
controlled all the gambling activities of
Manhattan, the crap games on the docks, the
shylocking that went with it as hot dogs go
with baseball games, the bookmaking on sports
and horses, the illicit gambling houses that
ran poker games, the policy or numbers racket
of Harlem.
This man’s name was Salvatore Maranzano
and he was one of the acknowledged pezzonovante,
.90 calibers, or big shots of the New York
underworld.
The Corleone emissaries proposed to Maranzano
an equal partnership beneficial to both parties.
Vito Corleone with his organization, his police
and political contacts, could give the Maranzano
operations a stout umbrella and the new strength
to expand into Brooklyn and the Bronx.
But Maranzano was a short-sighted man and
spurned the Corleone offer with contempt.
The great Al Capone was Maranzano’s friend
and he had his own organization, his own men,
plus a huge war chest.
He would not brook this upstart whose reputation
was more that of a Parliamentary debater than
a true Mafioso.
Maranzano’s refusal touched off the great
war of 1933 which was to change the whole
structure of the underworld in New York City.
At first glance it seemed an uneven match.
Salvatore Maranzano had a powerful organization
with strong enforcers.
He had a friendship with Capone in Chicago
and could call on help in that quarter.
He also had a good relationship with the Tattaglia
Family, which controlled prostitution in the
city and what there was of the thin drug traffic
at that time.
He also had political contacts with powerful
business leaders who used his enforcers to
terrorize the Jewish unionists in the garment
center and the Italian anarchist syndicates
in the building trades.
Against this, Don Corleone could throw two
small but superbly organized regimes led by
Clemenza and Tessio.
His political and police contacts were negated
by the business leaders who would support
Maranzano.
But in his favor was the enemy’s lack of
intelligence about his organization.
The underworld did not know the true strength
of his soldiers and even were deceived that
Tessio in Brooklyn was a separate and independent
operation.
And yet despite all this, it was an unequal
battle until Vito Corleone evened out the
odds with one master stroke.
Maranzano sent a call to Capone for his two
best gunmen to come to New York to eliminate
the upstart.
The Corleone Family had friends and intelligence
in Chicago who relayed the news that the two
gunmen were arriving by train.
Vito Corleone dispatched Luca Brasi to take
care of them with instructions that would
liberate the strange man’s most savage instincts.
Brasi and his people, four of them, received
the Chicago hoods at the railroad station.
One of Brasi’s men procured and drove a
taxicab for the purpose and the station porter
carrying the bags led the Capone men to this
cab.
When they got in, Brasi and another of his
men crowded in after them, guns ready, and
made the two Chicago boys lie on the floor.
The cab drove to a warehouse near the docks
that Brasi had prepared for them.
The two Capone men were bound hand and foot
and small bath towels were stuffed into their
mouths to keep them from crying out.
Then Brasi took an ax from its place against
the wall and started hacking at one of the
Capone men.
He chopped the man’s feet off, then the
legs at the knees, then the thighs where they
joined the torso.
Brasi was an extremely powerful man but it
took him many swings to accomplish his purpose.
By that time of course the victim had given
up the ghost and the floor of the warehouse
was slippery with the hacked fragments of
his flesh and the gouting of his blood.
When Brasi turned to his second victim he
found further effort unnecessary.
The second Capone gunman out of sheer terror
had, impossibly, swallowed the bath towel
in his mouth and suffocated.
The bath towel was found in the man’s stomach
when the police performed their autopsy to
determine the cause of death.
A few days later in Chicago the Capones received
a message from Vito Corleone.
It was to this effect: “You know now how
I deal with enemies.
Why does a Neapolitan interfere in a quarrel
between two Sicilians?
If you wish me to consider you as a friend
I owe you a service which I will pay on demand.
A man like yourself must know how much more
profitable it is to have a friend who, instead
of calling on you for help, takes care of
his own affairs and stands ever ready to help
you in some future time of trouble.
If you do not wish my friendship, so be it.
But then I must tell you that the climate
in this city is damp, unhealthy for Neapolitans,
and you are advised never to visit it.”
The arrogance of this letter was a calculated
one.
The Don held the Capones in small esteem as
stupid, obvious cutthroats.
His intelligence informed him that Capone
had forfeited all political influence because
of his public arrogance and the flaunting
of his criminal wealth.
The Don knew, in fact was positive, that without
political influence, without the camouflage
of society, Capone’s world, and others like
it, could be easily destroyed.
He knew Capone was on the path to destruction.
He also knew that Capone’s influence did
not extend beyond the boundaries of Chicago,
terrible and all-pervading as that influence
there might be.
The tactic was successful.
Not so much because of its ferocity but because
of the chilling swiftness, the quickness of
the Don’s reaction.
If his intelligence was so good, any further
moves would be fraught with danger.
It was better, far wiser, to accept the offer
of friendship with its implied payoff.
The Capones sent back word that they would
not interfere.
The odds were now equal.
And Vito Corleone had earned an enormous amount
of “respect” throughout the United States
underworld with his humiliation of the Capones.
For six months he out-generaled Maranzano.
He raided the crap games under that man’s
protection, located his biggest policy banker
in Harlem and had him relieved of a day’s
play not only in money but in records.
He engaged his enemies on all fronts.
Even in the garment centers he sent Clemenza
and his men to fight on the side of the unionists
against the enforcers on the payroll of Maranzano
and the owners of the dress firms.
And on all fronts his superior intelligence
and organization made him the victor.
Clemenza’s jolly ferocity, which Corleone
employed judiciously, also helped turn the
tide of battle.
And then Don Corleone sent the held-back reserve
of the Tessio regime after Maranzano himself.
By this time Maranzano had dispatched emissaries
suing for a peace.
Vito Corleone refused to see them, put them
off on one pretext or another.
The Maranzano soldiers were deserting their
leader, not wishing to die in a losing cause.
Bookmakers and shylocks were paying the Corleone
organization their protection money.
The war was all but over.
And then finally on New Year’s Eve of 1933,
Tessio got inside the defenses of Maranzano
himself.
The Maranzano lieutenants were anxious for
a deal and agreed to lead their chief to the
slaughter.
They told him that a meeting had been arranged
in a Brooklyn restaurant with Corleone and
they accompanied Maranzano as his bodyguards.
They left him sitting at a checkered table,
morosely munching a piece of bread, and fled
the restaurant as Tessio and four of his men
entered.
The execution was swift and sure.
Maranzano, his mouth full of half-chewed bread,
was riddled with bullets.
The war was over.
The Maranzano empire was incorporated into
the Corleone operation.
Don Corleone set up a system of tribute, allowing
all incumbents to remain in their bookmaking
and policy number spots.
As a bonus he had a foothold in the unions
of the garment center which in later years
was to prove extremely important.
And now that he had settled his business affairs
the Don found trouble at home.
Santino Corleone, Sonny, was sixteen years
old and grown to an astonishing six feet with
broad shoulders and a heavy face that was
sensual but by no means effeminate.
But where Fredo was a quiet boy, and Michael,
of course, a toddler, Santino was constantly
in trouble.
He got into fights, did badly in school and,
finally, Clemenza, who was the boy’s godfather
and had a duty to speak, came to Don Corleone
one evening and informed him that his son
had taken part in an armed robbery, a stupid
affair which could have gone very badly.
Sonny was obviously the ringleader, the two
other boys in the robbery his followers.
It was one of the very few times that Vito
Corleone lost his temper.
Tom Hagen had been living in his home for
three years and he asked Clemenza if the orphan
boy had been involved.
Clemenza shook his head.
Don Corleone had a car sent to bring Santino
to his offices in the Genco Pura Olive Oil
Company.
For the first time, the Don met defeat.
Alone with his son, he gave full vent to his
rage, cursing the hulking Sonny in Sicilian
dialect, a language so much more satisfying
than any other for expressing rage.
He ended up with a question.
“What gave you the right to commit such
an act?
What made you wish to commit such an act?”
Sonny stood there, angry, refusing to answer.
The Don said with contempt, “And so stupid.
What did you earn for that night’s work?
Fifty dollars each?
Twenty dollars?
You risked your life for twenty dollars, eh?”
As if he had not heard these last words, Sonny
said defiantly, “I saw you kill Fanucci.”
The Don said, “Ahhh,” and sank back in
his chair.
He waited.
Sonny said, “When Fanucci left the building,
Mama said I could go up to the house.
I saw you go up the roof and I followed you.
I saw everything you did.
I stayed up there and I saw you throw away
the wallet and the gun.”
The Don sighed.
“Well, then I can’t talk to you about
how you should behave.
Don’t you want to finish school, don’t
you want to be a lawyer?
Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase
than a thousand men with guns and masks.”
Sonny grinned at him and said slyly, “I
want to enter the family business.”
When he saw that the Don’s face remained
impassive, that he did not laugh at the joke,
he added hastily, “I can learn how to sell
olive oil.”
Still the Don did not answer.
Finally he shrugged.
“Every man has one destiny,” he said.
He did not add that the witnessing of Fanucci’s
murder had decided that of his son.
He merely turned away and added quietly, “Come
in tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.
Genco will show you what to do.”
But Genco Abbandando, with that shrewd insight
that a Consigliere must have, realized the
true wish of the Don and used Sonny mostly
as a bodyguard for his father, a position
in which he could also learn the subtleties
of being a Don.
And it brought out a professorial instinct
in the Don himself, who often gave lectures
on how to succeed for the benefit of his eldest
son.
Besides his oft-repeated theory that a man
has but one destiny, the Don constantly reproved
Sonny for that young man’s outbursts of
temper.
The Don considered a use of threats the most
foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of
anger without forethought as the most dangerous
indulgence.
No one had ever heard the Don utter a naked
threat, no one had ever seen him in an uncontrollable
rage.
It was unthinkable.
And so he tried to teach Sonny his own disciplines.
He claimed that there was no greater natural
advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate
your faults, unless it was to have a friend
underestimate your virtues.
The caporegime, Clemenza, took Sonny in hand
and taught him how to shoot and to wield a
garrote.
Sonny had no taste for the Italian rope, he
was too Americanized.
He preferred the simple, direct, impersonal
Anglo-Saxon gun, which saddened Clemenza.
But Sonny became a constant and welcome companion
to his father, driving his car, helping him
in little details.
For the next two years he seemed like the
usual son entering his father’s business,
not too bright, not too eager, content to
hold down a soft job.
Meanwhile his boyhood chum and semiadopted
brother Tom Hagen was going to college.
Fredo was still in high school; Michael, the
youngest brother, was in grammar school, and
baby sister Connie was a toddling girl of
four.
The family had long since moved to an apartment
house in the Bronx.
Don Corleone was considering buying a house
on Long Island, but he wanted to fit this
in with other plans he was formulating.
Vito Corleone was a man with vision.
All the great cities of America were being
torn by underworld strife.
Guerrilla wars by the dozen flared up, ambitious
hoodlums trying to carve themselves a bit
of empire; men like Corleone himself were
trying to keep their borders and rackets secure.
Don Corleone saw that the newspapers and government
agencies were using these killings to get
stricter and stricter laws, to use harsher
police methods.
He foresaw that public indignation might even
lead to a suspension of democratic procedures
which could be fatal to him and his people.
His own empire, internally, was secure.
He decided to bring peace to all the warring
factions in New York City and then in the
nation.
He had no illusions about the dangerousness
of his mission.
He spent the first year meeting with different
chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the groundwork,
sounding them out, proposing spheres of influence
that would be honored by a loosely bound confederated
council.
But there were too many factions, too many
special interests that conflicted.
Agreement was impossible.
Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history
Don Corleone decided that order and peace
were impossible until the number of reigning
states had been reduced to a manageable number.
There were five or six “Families” too
powerful to eliminate.
But the rest, the neighborhood Black Hand
terrorists, the free-lance shylocks, the strong-arm
bookmakers operating without the proper, that
is to say paid, protection of the legal authorities,
would have to go.
And so he mounted what was in effect a colonial
war against these people and threw all the
resources of the Corleone organization against
them.
The pacification of the New York area took
three years and had some unexpected rewards.
At first it took the form of bad luck.
A group of mad-dog Irish stickup artists the
Don had marked for extermination almost carried
the day with sheer Emerald Isle élan.
By chance, and with suicidal bravery, one
of these Irish gunmen pierced the Don’s
protective cordon and put a shot into his
chest.
The assassin was immediately riddled with
bullets but the damage was done.
However this gave Santino Corleone his chance.
With his father out of action, Sonny took
command of a troop, his own regime, with the
rank of caporegime, and like a young, untrumpeted
Napoleon, showed a genius for city warfare.
He also showed a merciless ruthlessness, the
lack of which had been Don Corleone’s only
fault as a conqueror.
From 1935 to 1937 Sonny Corleone made a reputation
as the most cunning and relentless executioner
the underworld had yet known.
Yet for sheer terror even he was eclipsed
by the awesome man named Luca Brasi.
It was Brasi who went after the rest of the
Irish gunmen and singlehandedly wiped them
out.
It was Brasi, operating alone when one of
the six powerful families tried to interfere
and become the protector of the independents,
who assassinated the head of the family as
a warning.
Shortly after, the Don recovered from his
wound and made peace with that particular
family.
By 1937 peace and harmony reigned in New York
City except for minor incidents, minor misunderstandings
which were, of course, sometimes fatal.
As the rulers of ancient cities always kept
an anxious eye on the barbarian tribes roving
around their walls, so Don Corleone kept an
eye on the affairs of the world outside his
world.
He noted the coming of Hitler, the fall of
Spain, Germany’s strong-arming of Britain
at Munich.
Unblinkered by that outside world, he saw
clearly the coming global war and he understood
the implications.
His own world would be more impregnable than
before.
Not only that, fortunes could be made in time
of war by alert, foresighted folk.
But to do so peace must reign in his domain
while war raged in the world outside.
Don Corleone carried his message through the
United States.
He conferred with compatriots in Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Miami, and Boston.
He was the underworld apostle of peace and,
by 1939, more successful than any Pope, he
had achieved a working agreement amongst the
most powerful underworld organizations in
the country.
Like the Constitution of the United States
this agreement respected fully the internal
authority of each member in his state or city.
The agreement covered only spheres of influence
and an agreement to enforce peace in the underworld.
And so when World War II broke out in 1939,
when the United States joined the conflict
in 1941, the world of Don Vito Corleone was
at peace, in order, fully prepared to reap
the golden harvest on equal terms with all
the other industries of a booming America.
The Corleone Family had a hand in supplying
black-market OPA food stamps, gasoline stamps,
even travel priorities.
It could help get war contracts and then help
get black-market materials for those garment
center clothing firms who were not given enough
raw material because they did not have government
contracts.
He could even get all the young men in his
organization, those eligible for Army draft,
excused from fighting in the foreign war.
He did this with the aid of doctors who advised
what drugs had to be taken before physical
examination, or by placing the men in draft-exempt
positions in the war industries.
And so the Don could take pride in his rule.
His world was safe for those who had sworn
loyalty to him; other men who believed in
law and order were dying by the millions.
The only fly in the ointment was that his
own son, Michael Corleone, refused to be helped,
insisted on volunteering to serve his own
country.
And to the Don’s astonishment, so did a
few of his other young men in the organization.
One of the men, trying to explain this to
his caporegime, said, “This country has
been good to me.”
Upon this story being relayed to the Don he
said angrily to the caporegime, “I have
been good to him.”
It might have gone badly for these people
but, as he had excused his son Michael, so
must he excuse other young men who so misunderstood
their duty to their Don and to themselves.
At the end of World War II Don Corleone knew
that again his world would have to change
its ways, that it would have to fit itself
more snugly into the ways of the other, larger
world.
He believed he could do this with no loss
of profit.
There was reason for this belief in his own
experience.
What had put him on the right track were two
personal affairs.
Early in his career the then-young Nazorine,
only a baker’s helper planning to get married,
had come to him for assistance.
He and his future bride, a good Italian girl,
had saved their money and had paid the enormous
sum of three hundred dollars to a wholesaler
of furniture recommended to them.
This wholesaler had let them pick out everything
they wanted to furnish their tenement apartment.
A fine sturdy bedroom set with two bureaus
and lamps.
Also the living room set of heavy stuffed
sofa and stuffed armchairs, all covered with
rich gold-threaded fabric.
Nazorine and his fiancée had spent a happy
day picking out what they wanted from the
huge warehouse crowded with furniture.
The wholesaler took their money, their three
hundred dollars wrung from the sweat of their
blood, and pocketed it and promised the furniture
to be delivered within the week to the already
rented flat.
The very next week however, the firm had gone
into bankruptcy.
The great warehouse stocked with furniture
had been sealed shut and attached for payment
of creditors.
The wholesaler had disappeared to give other
creditors time to unleash their anger on the
empty air.
Nazorine, one of these, went to his lawyer,
who told him nothing could be done until the
case was settled in court and all creditors
satisfied.
This might take three years and Nazorine would
be lucky to get back ten cents on the dollar.
Vito Corleone listened to this story with
amused disbelief.
It was not possible that the law could allow
such thievery.
The wholesaler owned his own palatial home,
an estate on Long Island, a luxurious automobile,
and was sending his children to college.
How could he keep the three hundred dollars
of the poor baker Nazorine and not give him
the furniture he had paid for?
But, to make sure, Vito Corleone had Genco
Abbandando check it out with the lawyers who
represented the Genco Pura company.
They verified the story of Nazorine.
The wholesaler had all his personal wealth
in his wife’s name.
His furniture business was incorporated and
he was not personally liable.
True, he had shown bad faith by taking the
money of Nazorine when he knew he was going
to file bankruptcy but this was a common practice.
Under law there was nothing to be done.
Of course the matter was easily adjusted.
Don Corleone sent his Consigliere, Genco Abbandando,
to speak to the wholesaler, and as was to
be expected, that wide-awake businessman caught
the drift immediately and arranged for Nazorine
to get his furniture.
But it was an interesting lesson for the young
Vito Corleone.
The second incident had more far-reaching
repercussions.
In 1939, Don Corleone had decided to move
his family out of the city.
Like any other parent he wanted his children
to go to better schools and mix with better
companions.
For his own personal reasons he wanted the
anonymity of suburban life where his reputation
was not known.
He bought the mall property in Long Beach,
which at that time had only four newly built
houses but with plenty of room for more.
Sonny was formally engaged to Sandra and would
soon marry, one of the houses would be for
him.
One of the houses was for the Don.
Another was for Genco Abbandando and his family.
The other was kept vacant at the time.
A week after the mall was occupied, a group
of three workmen came in all innocence with
their truck.
They claimed to be furnace inspectors for
the town of Long Beach.
One of the Don’s young bodyguards let the
men in and led them to the furnace in the
basement.
The Don, his wife and Sonny were in the garden
taking their ease and enjoying the salty sea
air.
Much to the Don’s annoyance he was summoned
into the house by his bodyguard.
The three workmen, all big burly fellows,
were grouped around the furnace.
They had taken it apart, it was strewn around
the cement basement floor.
Their leader, an authoritative man, said to
the Don in a gruff voice, “Your furnace
is in lousy shape.
If you want us to fix it and put it together
again, it’ll cost you one hundred fifty
dollars for labor and parts and then we’ll
pass you for county inspection.”
He took out a red paper label.
“We stamp this seal on it, see, then nobody
from the county bothers you again.”
The Don was amused.
It had been a boring, quiet week in which
he had had to neglect his business to take
care of such family details moving to a new
house entailed.
In more broken English than his usual slight
accent he asked, “If I don’t pay you,
what happens to my furnace?”
The leader of the three men shrugged.
“We just leave the furnace the way it is
now.”
He gestured at the metal parts strewn over
the floor.
The Don said meekly, “Wait, I’ll get you
your money.”
Then he went out into the garden and said
to Sonny, “Listen, there’s some men working
on the furnace, I don’t understand what
they want.
Go in and take care of the matter.”
It was not simply a joke; he was considering
making his son his underboss.
This was one of the tests a business executive
had to pass.
Sonny’s solution did not altogether please
his father.
It was too direct, too lacking in Sicilian
subtleness.
He was the Club, not the Rapier.
For as soon as Sonny heard the leader’s
demand he held the three men at gun-point
and had them thoroughly bastinadoed by the
bodyguards.
Then he made them put the furnace together
again and tidy up the basement.
He searched them and found that they actually
were employed by a house-improvement firm
with headquarters in Suffolk County.
He learned the name of the man who owned the
firm.
Then he kicked the three men to their truck.
“Don’t let me see you in Long Beach again,”
he told them.
“I’ll have your balls hanging from your
ears.”
It was typical of the young Santino, before
he became older and crueler, that he extended
his protection to the community he lived in.
Sonny paid a personal call to the home-improvement
firm owner and told him not to send any of
his men into the Long Beach area ever again.
As soon as the Corleone Family set up their
usual business liaison with the local police
force they were informed of all such complaints
and all crimes by professional criminals.
In less than a year Long Beach became the
most crime-free town of its size in the United
States.
Professional stickup artists and strong-arms
received one warning not to ply their trade
in the town.
They were allowed one offense.
When they committed a second they simply disappeared.
The flim-flam home-improvement gyp artists,
the door-to-door con men were politely warned
that they were not welcome in Long Beach.
Those confident con men who disregarded the
warning were beaten within an inch of their
lives.
Resident young punks who had no respect for
law and proper authority were advised in the
most fatherly fashion to run away from home.
Long Beach became a model city.
What impressed the Don was the legal validity
of these sales swindles.
Clearly there was a place for a man of his
talents in that other world which had been
closed to him as an honest youth.
He took appropriate steps to enter that world.
And so he lived happily on the mall in Long
Beach, consolidating and enlarging his empire,
until after the war was over, the Turk Sollozzo
broke the peace and plunged the Don’s world
into its own war, and brought him to his hospital
bed.
BOOK IV
Chapter 15
In the New Hampshire village, every foreign
phenomenon was properly noticed by housewives
peering from windows, storekeepers lounging
behind their doors.
And so when the black automobile bearing New
York license plates stopped in front of the
Adams home, every citizen knew about it in
a matter of minutes.
Kay Adams, really a small-town girl despite
her college education, was also peering from
her bedroom window.
She had been studying for her exams and preparing
to go downstairs for lunch when she spotted
the car coming up the street, and for some
reason she was not surprised when it rolled
to a halt in front of her lawn.
Two men got out, big burly men who looked
like gangsters in the movies to her eyes,
and she flew down the stairs to be the first
at the door.
She was sure they came from Michael or his
family and she didn’t want them talking
to her father and mother without any introduction.
It wasn’t that she was ashamed of any of
Mike’s friends, she thought; it was just
that her mother and father were old-fashioned
New England Yankees and wouldn’t understand
her even knowing such people.
She got to the door just as the bell rang
and she called to her mother, “I’ll get
it.”
She opened the door and the two big men stood
there.
One reached inside his breast pocket like
a gangster reaching for a gun and the move
so surprised Kay that she let out a little
gasp but the man had taken out a small leather
case which he flapped open to show an identification
card.
“I’m Detective John Phillips from the
New York Police Department,” he said.
He motioned to the other man, a dark-complexioned
man with very thick, very black eyebrows.
“This is my partner, Detective Siriani.
Are you Miss Kay Adams?”
Kay nodded.
Phillips said, “May we come in and talk
to you for a few minutes.
It’s about Michael Corleone.”
She stood aside to let them in.
At that moment her father appeared in the
small side hall that led to his study.
“Kay, what is it?” he asked.
Her father was a gray-haired, slender, distinguished-looking
man who not only was the pastor of the town
Baptist church but had a reputation in religious
circles as a scholar.
Kay really didn’t know her father well,
he puzzled her, but she knew he loved her
even if he gave the impression he found her
uninteresting as a person.
Though they had never been close, she trusted
him.
So she said simply, “These men are detectives
from New York.
They want to ask me questions about a boy
I know.”
Mr. Adams didn’t seem surprised.
“Why don’t we go into my study?” he
said.
Detective Phillips said gently, “We’d
rather talk to your daughter alone, Mr. Adams.”
Mr. Adams said courteously, “That depends
on Kay, I think.
My dear, would you rather speak to these gentlemen
alone or would you prefer to have me present?
Or perhaps your mother?”
Kay shook her head.
“I’ll talk to them alone.”
Mr. Adams said to Phillips, “You can use
my study.
Will you stay for lunch?”
The two men shook their heads.
Kay led them into the study.
They rested uncomfortably on the edge of the
couch as she sat in her father’s big leather
chair.
Detective Phillips opened the conversation
by saying, “Miss Adams, have you seen or
heard from Michael Corleone at any time in
the last three weeks?”
The one question was enough to warn her.
Three weeks ago she had read the Boston newspapers
with their headlines about the killing of
a New York police captain and a narcotics
smuggler named Virgil Sollozzo.
The newspaper had said it was part of the
gang war involving the Corleone Family.
Kay shook her head.
“No, the last time I saw him he was going
to see his father in the hospital.
That was perhaps a month ago.”
The other detective said in a harsh voice,
“We know all about that meeting.
Have you seen or heard from him since then?”
“No,” Kay said.
Detective Phillips said in a polite voice,
“If you do have contact with him we’d
like you to let us know.
It’s very important we get to talk to Michael
Corleone.
I must warn you that if you do have contact
with him you may be getting involved in a
very dangerous situation.
If you help him in any way, you may get yourself
in very serious trouble.”
Kay sat up very straight in the chair.
“Why shouldn’t I help him?” she asked.
“We’re going to be married, married people
help each other.”
It was Detective Siriani who answered her.
“If you help, you may be an accessory to
murder.
We’re looking for your boy friend because
he killed a police captain in New York plus
an informer the police officer was contacting.
We know Michael Corleone is the person who
did the shooting.”
Kay laughed.
Her laughter was so unaffected, so incredulous,
that the officers were impressed.
“Mike wouldn’t do anything like that,”
she said.
“He never had anything to do with his family.
When we went to his sister’s wedding it
was obvious that he was treated as an outsider,
almost as much as I was.
If he’s hiding now it’s just so that he
won’t get any publicity, so his name won’t
be dragged through all this.
Mike is not a gangster.
I know him better than you or anybody else
can know him.
He is too nice a man to do anything as despicable
as murder.
He is the most law-abiding person I know,
and I’ve never known him to lie.”
Detective Phillips asked gently, “How long
have you known him?”
“Over a year,” Kay said and was surprised
when the two men smiled.
“I think there are a few things you should
know,” Detective Phillips said.
“On the night he left you, he went to the
hospital.
When he came out he got into an argument with
a police captain who had come to the hospital
on official business.
He assaulted that police officer but got the
worst of it.
In fact he got a broken jaw and lost some
teeth.
His friends took him out to the Corleone Family
houses at Long Beach.
The following night the police captain he
had the fight with was gunned down and Michael
Corleone disappeared.
Vanished.
We have our contacts, our informers.
They all point the finger at Michael Corleone
but we have no evidence for a court of law.
The waiter who witnessed the shooting doesn’t
recognize a picture of Mike but he may recognize
him in person.
And we have Sollozzo’s driver, who refuses
to talk, but we might make him talk if we
have Michael Corleone in our hands.
So we have all our people looking for him,
the FBI is looking for him, everybody is looking
for him.
So far, no luck, so we thought you might be
able to give us a lead.”
Kay said coldly, “I don’t believe a word
of it.”
But she felt a bit sick knowing the part about
Mike getting his jaw broken must be true.
Not that that would make Mike commit murder.
“Will you let us know if Mike contacts you?”
Phillips asked.
Kay shook her head.
The other detective, Siriani, said roughly,
“We know you two have been shacking up together.
We have the hotel records and witnesses.
If we let that information slip to the newspapers
your father and mother would feel pretty lousy.
Real respectable people like them wouldn’t
think much of a daughter shacking up with
a gangster.
If you don’t come clean right now I’ll
call your old man in here and give it to him
straight.”
Kay looked at him with astonishment.
Then she got up and went to the door of the
study and opened it.
She could see her father standing at the living-room
window, sucking at his pipe.
She called out, “Dad, can you join us?”
He turned, smiled at her, and walked to the
study.
When he came through the door he put his arm
around his daughter’s waist and faced the
detectives and said, “Yes, gentlemen?”
When they didn’t answer, Kay said coolly
to Detective Siriani, “Give it to him straight,
Officer.”
Siriani flushed.
“Mr. Adams, I’m telling you this for your
daughter’s good.
She is mixed up with a hoodlum we have reason
to believe committed a murder on a police
officer.
I’m just telling her she can get into serious
trouble unless she cooperates with us.
But she doesn’t seem to realize how serious
this whole matter is.
Maybe you can talk to her.”
“That is quite incredible,” Mr. Adams
said politely.
Siriani jutted his jaw.
“Your daughter and Michael Corleone have
been going out together for over a year.
They have stayed overnight in hotels together
registered as man and wife.
Michael Corleone is wanted for questioning
in the murder of a police officer.
Your daughter refuses to give us any information
that may help us.
Those are the facts.
You can call them incredible but I can back
everything up.”
“I don’t doubt your word, sir,” Mr.
Adams said gently.
“What I find incredible is that my daughter
could be in serious trouble.
Unless you’re suggesting that she is a”—here
his face became one of scholarly doubt—“a
‘moll,’ I believe it’s called.”
Kay looked at her father in astonishment.
She knew he was being playful in his donnish
way and she was surprised that he could take
the whole affair so lightly.
Mr. Adams said firmly, “However, rest assured
that if the young man shows his face here
I shall immediately report his presence to
the authorities.
As will my daughter.
Now, if you will forgive us, our lunch is
growing cold.”
He ushered the men out of the house with every
courtesy and closed the door on their backs
gently but firmly.
He took Kay by the arm and led her toward
the kitchen far in the rear of the house.
“Come, my dear, your mother is waiting lunch
for us.”
By the time they reached the kitchen, Kay
was weeping silently, out of relief from strain,
at her father’s unquestioning affection.
In the kitchen her mother took no notice of
her weeping, and Kay realized that her father
must have told her about the two detectives.
She sat down at her place and her mother served
her silently.
When all three were at the table her father
said grace with bowed head.
Mrs. Adams was a short stout woman always
neatly dressed, hair always set.
Kay had never seen her in disarray.
Her mother too had always been a little disinterested
in her, holding her at arm’s length.
And she did so now.
“Kay, stop being so dramatic.
I’m sure it’s all a great deal of fuss
about nothing at all.
After all, the boy was a Dartmouth boy, he
couldn’t possibly be mixed up in anything
so sordid.”
Kay looked up in surprise.
“How did you know Mike went to Dartmouth?”
Her mother said complacently, “You young
people are so mysterious, you think you’re
so clever.
We’ve known about him all along, but of
course we couldn’t bring it up until you
did.”
“But how did you know?”
Kay asked.
She still couldn’t face her father now that
he knew about her and Mike sleeping together.
So she didn’t see the smile on his face
when he said, “We opened your mail, of course.”
Kay was horrified and angry.
Now she could face him.
What he had done was more shameful than her
own sin.
She could never believe it of him.
“Father, you didn’t, you couldn’t have.”
Mr. Adams smiled at her.
“I debated which was the greater sin, opening
your mail, or going in ignorance of some hazard
my only child might be incurring.
The choice was simple, and virtuous.”
Mrs. Adams said between mouthfuls of boiled
chicken, “After all, my dear, you are terribly
innocent for your age.
We had to be aware.
And you never spoke about him.”
For the first time Kay was grateful that Michael
was never affectionate in his letters.
She was grateful that her parents hadn’t
seen some of her letters.
“I never told you about him because I thought
you’d be horrified about his family.”
“We were,” Mr. Adams said cheerfully.
“By the way, has Michael gotten in touch
with you?”
Kay shook her head.
“I don’t believe he’s guilty of anything.”
She saw her parents exchange a glance over
the table.
Then Mr. Adams said gently, “If he’s not
guilty and he’s vanished, then perhaps something
else happened to him.”
At first Kay didn’t understand.
Then she got up from the table and ran to
her room.
THREE DAYS LATER Kay Adams got out of a taxi
in front of the Corleone mall in Long Beach.
She had phoned, she was expected.
Tom Hagen met her at the door and she was
disappointed that it was him.
She knew he would tell her nothing.
In the living room he gave her a drink.
She had seen a couple of other men lounging
around the house but not Sonny.
She asked Tom Hagen directly, “Do you know
where Mike is?
Do you know where I can get in touch with
him?”
Hagen said smoothly, “We know he’s all
right but we don’t know where he is right
now.
When he heard about that captain being shot
he was afraid they’d accuse him.
So he just decided to disappear.
He told me he’d get in touch in a few months.”
The story was not only false but meant to
be seen through, he was giving her that much.
“Did that captain really break his jaw?”
Kay asked.
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Tom said.
“But Mike was never a vindictive man.
I’m sure that had nothing to do with what
happened.”
Kay opened her purse and took out a letter.
“Will you deliver this to him if he gets
in touch with you?”
Hagen shook his head.
“If I accepted that letter and you told
a court of law I accepted that letter, it
might be interpreted as my having knowledge
of his whereabouts.
Why don’t you just wait a bit?
I’m sure Mike will get in touch.”
She finished her drink and got up to leave.
Hagen escorted her to the hall but as he opened
the door, a woman came in from outside.
A short, stout woman dressed in black.
Kay recognized her as Michael’s mother.
She held out her hand and said, “How are
you, Mrs. Corleone?”
The woman’s small black eyes darted at her
for a moment; then the wrinkled, leathery,
olive-skinned face broke into a small curt
smile of greeting that was yet in some curious
way truly friendly.
“Ah, you Mikey’s little girl,” Mrs.
Corleone said.
She had a heavy Italian accent, Kay could
barely understand her.
“You eat something?”
Kay said no, meaning she didn’t want anything
to eat, but Mrs. Corleone turned furiously
on Tom Hagen and berated him in Italian ending
with, “You don’t even give this poor girl
coffee, you disgrazia.”
She took Kay by the hand, the old woman’s
hand surprisingly warm and alive, and led
her into the kitchen.
“You have coffee and eat something; then
somebody drive you home.
A nice girl like you, I don’t want you to
take the train.”
She made Kay sit down and bustled around the
kitchen, tearing off her coat and hat and
draping them over a chair.
In a few seconds there was bread and cheese
and salami on the table and coffee perking
on the stove.
Kay said timidly, “I came to ask about Mike,
I haven’t heard from him.
Mr. Hagen said nobody knows where he is, that
he’ll turn up in a little while.”
Hagen spoke quickly.
“That’s all we can tell her now, Ma.”
Mrs. Corleone gave him a look of withering
contempt.
“Now you gonna tell me what to do?
My husband don’t tell me what to do, God
have mercy on him.”
She crossed herself.
“Is Mr. Corleone all right?”
Kay asked.
“Fine,” Mrs. Corleone said.
“Fine.
He’s getting old, he’s getting foolish
to let something like that happen.”
She tapped her head disrespectfully.
She poured the coffee and forced Kay to eat
some bread and cheese.
After they drank their coffee Mrs. Corleone
took one of Kay’s hands in her two brown
ones.
She said quietly, “Mikey no gonna write
you, you no gonna hear from Mikey.
He hide two—three years.
Maybe more, maybe much more.
You go home to your family and find a nice
young fellow and get married.”
Kay took the letter out of her purse.
“Will you send this to him?”
The old lady took the letter and patted Kay
on the cheek.
“Sure, sure,” she said.
Hagen started to protest and she screamed
at him in Italian.
Then she led Kay to the door.
There she kissed her on the cheek very quickly
and said, “You forget about Mikey, he no
the man for you anymore.”
There was a car waiting for her with two men
up front.
They drove her all the way to her hotel in
New York never saying a word.
Neither did Kay.
She was trying to get used to the fact that
the young man she had loved was a cold-blooded
murderer.
And that she had been told by the most unimpeachable
source: his mother.
Chapter 16
Carlo Rizzi was a punk sore at the world.
Once married into the Corleone Family, he’d
been shunted aside with a small bookmaker’s
business on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
He’d counted on one of the houses in the
mall on Long Beach, he knew the Don could
move retainer families out when he pleased
and he had been sure it would happen and he
would be on the inside of everything.
But the Don wasn’t treating him right.
The “Great Don,” he thought with scorn.
An old Moustache Pete who’d been caught
out on the street by gunmen like any dumb
small-time hood.
He hoped the old bastard croaked.
Sonny had been his friend once and if Sonny
became the head of the Family maybe he’d
get a break, get on the inside.
He watched his wife pour his coffee.
Christ, what a mess she turned out to be.
Five months of marriage and she was already
spreading, besides blowing up.
Real guinea broads all these Italians in the
East.
He reached out and felt Connie’s soft spreading
buttocks.
She smiled at him and he said contemptuously,
“You got more ham than a hog.”
It pleased him to see the hurt look on her
face, the tears springing into her eyes.
She might be a daughter of the Great Don but
she was his wife, she was his property now
and he could treat her as he pleased.
It made him feel powerful that one of the
Corleones was his doormat.
He had started her off just right.
She had tried to keep that purse full of money
presents for herself and he had given her
a nice black eye and taken the money from
her.
Never told her what he’d done with it, either.
That might have really caused some trouble.
Even now he felt just the slightest twinge
of remorse.
Christ, he’d blown nearly fifteen grand
on the track and show girl bimbos.
He could feel Connie watching his back and
so he flexed his muscles as he reached for
the plate of sweet buns on the other side
of the table.
He’d just polished off ham and eggs but
he was a big man and needed a big breakfast.
He was pleased with the picture he knew he
presented to his wife.
Not the usual greasy dark guinzo husband but
crew-cut blond, huge golden-haired forearms
and broad shoulders and thin waist.
And he knew he was physically stronger than
any of those so-called hard guys that worked
for the Family.
Guys like Clemenza, Tessio, Rocco Lampone,
and that guy Paulie that somebody had knocked
off.
He wondered what the story was about that.
Then for some reason he thought about Sonny.
Man to man he could take Sonny, he thought,
even though Sonny was a little bigger and
a little heavier.
But what scared him was Sonny’s rep, though
he himself had never seen Sonny anything but
good-natured and kidding around.
Yeah, Sonny was his buddy.
Maybe with the old Don gone, things would
open up.
He dawdled over his coffee.
He hated this apartment.
He was used to the bigger living quarters
of the West and in a little while he would
have to go crosstown to his “book” to
run the noontime action.
It was a Sunday, the heaviest action of the
week, what with baseball going already and
the tail end of basketball and the night trotters
starting up.
Gradually he became aware of Connie bustling
around behind him and he turned his head to
watch her.
She was getting dressed up in the real New
York City guinzo style that he hated.
A silk flowered-pattern dress with belt, showy
bracelet and earrings, flouncy sleeves.
She looked twenty years older.
“Where the hell are you going?” he asked.
She answered him coldly, “To see my father
out in Long Beach.
He still can’t get out of bed and he needs
company.”
Carlo was curious.
“Is Sonny still running the show?”
Connie gave him a bland look.
“What show?”
He was furious.
“You lousy little guinea bitch, don’t
talk to me like that or I’ll beat that kid
right out of your belly.”
She looked frightened and this enraged him
even more.
He sprang from his chair and slapped her across
the face, the blow leaving a red welt.
With quick precision he slapped her three
more times.
He saw her upper lip split bloody and puff
up.
That stopped him.
He didn’t want to leave a mark.
She ran into the bedroom and slammed the door
and he heard the key turning in the lock.
He laughed and returned to his coffee.
He smoked until it was time for him to dress.
He knocked on the door and said, “Open it
up before I kick it in.”
There was no answer.
“Come on, I gotta get dressed,” he said
in a loud voice.
He could hear her getting up off the bed and
coming toward the door; then the key turned
in the lock.
When he entered she had her back to him, walking
back toward the bed, lying down on it with
her face turned away to the wall.
He dressed quickly and then saw she was in
her slip.
He wanted her to go visit her father, he hoped
she would bring back information.
“What’s the matter, a few slaps take all
the energy out of you?”
She was a lazy slut.
“I don’t wanna go.”
Her voice was tearful, the words mumbled.
He reached out impatiently and pulled her
around to face him.
And then he saw why she didn’t want to go
and thought maybe it was just as well.
He must have slapped her harder than he figured.
Her left cheek was blown up, the cut upper
lip ballooned grotesquely puffy and white
beneath her nose.
“OK,” he said, “but I won’t be home
until late.
Sunday is my busy day.”
He left the apartment and found a parking
ticket on his car, a fifteen-dollar green
one.
He put it in the glove compartment with the
stack of others.
He was in a good humor.
Slapping the spoiled little bitch around always
made him feel good.
It dissolved some of the frustration he felt
at being treated so badly by the Corleones.
The first time he had marked her up, he’d
been a little worried.
She had gone right out to Long Beach to complain
to her mother and father and to show her black
eye.
He had really sweated it out.
But when she came back she had been surprisingly
meek, the dutiful little Italian wife.
He had made it a point to be the perfect husband
over the next few weeks, treating her well
in every way, being lovey and nice with her,
banging her every day, morning and night.
Finally she had told him what had happened
since she thought he would never act that
way again.
She had found her parents coolly unsympathetic
and curiously amused.
Her mother had had a little sympathy and had
even asked her father to speak to Carlo Rizzi.
Her father had refused.
“She is my daughter,” he had said, “but
now she belongs to her husband.
He knows his duties.
Even the King of Italy didn’t dare to meddle
with the relationship of husband and wife.
Go home and learn how to behave so that he
will not beat you.”
Connie had said angrily to her father, “Did
you ever hit your wife?”
She was his favorite and could speak to him
so impudently.
He had answered, “She never gave me reason
to beat her.”
And her mother had nodded and smiled.
She told them how her husband had taken the
wedding present money and never told her what
he did with it.
Her father had shrugged and said, “I would
have done the same if my wife had been as
presumptuous as you.”
And so she had returned home, a little bewildered,
a little frightened.
She had always been her father’s favorite
and she could not understand his coldness
now.
But the Don had not been so unsympathetic
as he pretended.
He made inquiries and found out what Carlo
Rizzi had done with the wedding present money.
He had men assigned to Carlo Rizzi’s bookmaking
operation who would report to Hagen everything
Rizzi did on the job.
But the Don could not interfere.
How could one expect a man to discharge his
husbandly duties to a wife whose family he
feared?
It was an impossible situation and he dared
not meddle.
Then when Connie became pregnant he was convinced
of the wisdom of his decision and felt he
never could interfere though Connie complained
to her mother about a few more beatings and
the mother finally became concerned enough
to mention it to the Don.
Connie even hinted that she might want a divorce.
For the first time in her life the Don was
angry with her.
“He is the father of your child.
What can a child come to in this world if
he has no father?” he said to Connie.
Learning all this, Carlo Rizzi grew confident.
He was perfectly safe.
In fact he bragged to his two “writers”
on the book, Sally Rags and Coach, about how
he bounced his wife around when she got snotty
and saw their looks of respect that he had
the guts to manhandle the daughter of the
great Don Corleone.
But Rizzi would not have felt so safe if he
had known that when Sonny Corleone learned
of the beatings he had flown into a murderous
rage and had been restrained only by the sternest
and most imperious command of the Don himself,
a command that even Sonny dared not disobey.
Which was why Sonny avoided Rizzi, not trusting
himself to control his temper.
So feeling perfectly safe on this beautiful
Sunday morning, Carlo Rizzi sped crosstown
on 96th Street to the East Side.
He did not see Sonny’s car coming the opposite
way toward his house.
SONNY CORLEONE HAD left the protection of
the mall and spent the night with Lucy Mancini
in town.
Now on the way home he was traveling with
four bodyguards, two in front and two behind.
He didn’t need guards right beside him,
he could take care of a single direct assault.
The other men traveled in their own cars and
had apartments on either side of Lucy’s
apartment.
It was safe to visit her as long as he didn’t
do it too often.
But now that he was in town he figured he
would pick up his sister Connie and take her
out to Long Beach.
He knew Carlo would be working at his book
and the cheap bastard wouldn’t get her a
car.
So he’d give his sister a lift out.
He waited for the two men in front to go into
the building and then followed them.
He saw the two men in back pull up behind
his car and get out to watch the streets.
He kept his own eyes open.
It was a million-to-one shot that the opposition
even knew he was in town but he was always
careful.
He had learned that in the 1930’s war.
He never used elevators.
They were death traps.
He climbed the eight flights to Connie’s
apartment, going fast.
He knocked on her door.
He had seen Carlo’s car go by and knew she
would be alone.
There was no answer.
He knocked again and then he heard his sister’s
voice, frightened, timid, asking, “Who is
it?”
The fright in the voice stunned him.
His kid sister had always been fresh and snotty,
tough as anybody in the family.
What the hell had happened to her?
He said, “It’s Sonny.”
The bolt inside slid back and the door opened
and Connie was in his arms sobbing.
He was so surprised he just stood there.
He pushed her away from him and saw her swollen
face and he understood what had happened.
He pulled away from her to run down the stairs
and go after her husband.
Rage flamed up in him, contorting his own
face.
Connie saw the rage and clung to him, not
letting him go, making him come into the apartment.
She was weeping out of terror now.
She knew her older brother’s temper and
feared it.
She had never complained to him about Carlo
for that reason.
Now she made him come into the apartment with
her.
“It was my fault,” she said.
“I started a fight with him and I tried
to hit him so he hit me.
He really didn’t try to hit me that hard.
I walked into it.”
Sonny’s heavy Cupid face was under control.
“You going to see the old man today?”
She didn’t answer, so he added, “I thought
you were, so I dropped over to give you a
lift.
I was in the city anyway.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t want them to see me this way.
I’ll come next week.”
“OK,” Sonny said.
He picked up her kitchen phone and dialed
a number.
“I’m getting a doctor to come over here
and take a look at you and fix you up.
In your condition you have to be careful.
How many months before you have the kid?”
“Two months,” Connie said.
“Sonny, please don’t do anything.
Please don’t.”
Sonny laughed.
His face was cruelly intent when he said,
“Don’t worry, I won’t make your kid
an orphan before he’s born.”
He left the apartment after kissing her lightly
on her uninjured cheek.
ON EAST 112TH Street a long line of cars was
double-parked in front of a candy store that
was the headquarters of Carlo Rizzi’s book.
On the sidewalk in front of the store, fathers
played catch with small children they had
taken for a Sunday morning ride and to keep
them company as they placed their bets.
When they saw Carlo Rizzi coming they stopped
playing ball and bought their kids ice cream
to keep them quiet.
Then they started studying the newspapers
that gave the starting pitchers, trying to
pick out winning baseball bets for the day.
Carlo went into the large room in the back
of the store.
His two “writers,” a small wiry man called
Sally Rags and a big husky fellow called Coach,
were already waiting for the action to start.
They had their huge, lined pads in front of
them ready to write down bets.
On a wooden stand was a blackboard with the
names of the sixteen big league baseball teams
chalked on it, paired to show who was playing
against who.
Against each pairing was a blocked-out square
to enter the odds.
Carlo asked Coach, “Is the store phone tapped
today?”
Coach shook his head.
“The tap is still off.”
Carlo went to the wall phone and dialed a
number.
Sally Rags and Coach watched him impassively
as he jotted down the “line,” the odds
on all the baseball games for that day.
They watched him as he hung up the phone and
walked over to the blackboard and chalked
up the odds against each game.
Though Carlo did not know it, they had already
gotten the line and were checking his work.
In the first week in his job Carlo had made
a mistake in transposing the odds onto the
blackboard and had created that dream of all
gamblers, a “middle.”
That is, by betting the odds with him and
then betting against the same team with another
bookmaker at the correct odds, the gambler
could not lose.
The only one who could lose was Carlo’s
book.
That mistake had caused a six-thousand-dollar
loss in the book for the week and confirmed
the Don’s judgment about his son-in-law.
He had given the word that all of Carlo’s
work was to be checked.
Normally the highly placed members of the
Corleone Family would never be concerned with
such an operational detail.
There was at least a five-layer insulation
to their level.
But since the book was being used as a testing
ground for the son-in-law, it had been placed
under the direct scrutiny of Tom Hagen, to
whom a report was sent every day.
Now with the line posted, the gamblers were
thronging into the back room of the candy
store to jot down the odds on their newspapers
next to the games printed there with probable
pitchers.
Some of them held their little children by
the hand as they looked up at the blackboard.
One guy who made big bets looked down at the
little girl he was holding by the hand and
said teasingly, “Who do you like today,
Honey, Giants or the Pirates?”
The little girl, fascinated by the colorful
names, said, “Are Giants stronger than Pirates?”
The father laughed.
A line began to form in front of the two writers.
When a writer filled one of his sheets he
tore it off, wrapped the money he had collected
in it and handed it to Carlo.
Carlo went out the back exit of the room and
up a flight of steps to an apartment which
housed the candy store owner’s family.
He called in the bets to his central exchange
and put the money in a small wall safe that
was hidden by an extended window drape.
Then he went back down into the candy store
after having first burned the bet sheet and
flushed its ashes down the toilet bowl.
None of the Sunday games started before two
p.m. because of the blue laws, so after the
first crowd of bettors, family men who had
to get their bets in and rush home to take
their families to the beach, came the trickling
of bachelor gamblers or the diehards who condemned
their families to Sundays in the hot city
apartments.
These bachelor bettors were the big gamblers,
they bet heavier and came back around four
o’clock to bet the second games of doubleheaders.
They were the ones who made Carlo’s Sundays
a full-time day with overtime, though some
married men called in from the beach to try
and recoup their losses.
By one-thirty the betting had trickled off
so that Carlo and Sally Rags could go out
and sit on the stoop beside the candy store
and get some fresh air.
They watched the stickball game the kids were
having.
A police car went by.
They ignored it.
This book had very heavy protection at the
precinct and couldn’t be touched on a local
level.
A raid would have to be ordered from the very
top and even then a warning would come through
in plenty of time.
Coach came out and sat beside them.
They gossiped awhile about baseball and women.
Carlo said laughingly, “I had to bat my
wife around again today, teach her who’s
boss.”
Coach said casually, “She’s knocked up
pretty big now, ain’t she?”
“Ahh, I just slapped her face a few times,”
Carlo said.
“I didn’t hurt her.”
He brooded for a moment.
“She thinks she can boss me around, I don’t
stand for that.”
There were still a few bettors hanging around
shooting the breeze, talking baseball, some
of them sitting on the steps above the two
writers and Carlo.
Suddenly the kids playing stickball in the
street scattered.
A car came screeching up the block and to
a halt in front of the candy store.
It stopped so abruptly that the tires screamed
and before it had stopped, almost, a man came
hurtling out of the driver’s seat, moving
so fast that everybody was paralyzed.
The man was Sonny Corleone.
His heavy Cupid-featured face with its thick,
curved mouth was an ugly mask of fury.
In a split second he was at the stoop and
had grabbed Carlo Rizzi by the throat.
He pulled Carlo away from the others, trying
to drag him into the street, but Carlo wrapped
his huge muscular arms around the iron railings
of the stoop and hung on.
He cringed away, trying to hide his head and
face in the hollow of his shoulders.
His shirt ripped away in Sonny’s hand.
What followed then was sickening.
Sonny began beating the cowering Carlo with
his fists, cursing him in a thick, rage-choked
voice.
Carlo, despite his tremendous physique, offered
no resistance, gave no cry for mercy or protest.
Coach and Sally Rags dared not interfere.
They thought Sonny meant to kill his brother-in-law
and had no desire to share his fate.
The kids playing stickball gathered to curse
the driver who had made them scatter, but
now were watching with awestruck interest.
They were tough kids but the sight of Sonny
in his rage silenced them.
Meanwhile another car had drawn up behind
Sonny’s and two of his bodyguards jumped
out.
When they saw what was happening they too
dared not interfere.
They stood alert, ready to protect their chief
if any bystanders had the stupidity to try
to help Carlo.
What made the sight sickening was Carlo’s
complete subjection, but it was perhaps this
that saved his life.
He clung to the iron railings with his hands
so that Sonny could not drag him into the
street and despite his obvious equal strength,
still refused to fight back.
He let the blows rain on his unprotected head
and neck until Sonny’s rage ebbed.
Finally, his chest heaving, Sonny looked down
at him and said, “You dirty bastard, you
ever beat up my sister again I’ll kill you.”
These words released the tension.
Because of course, if Sonny intended to kill
the man he would never have uttered the threat.
He uttered it in frustration because he could
not carry it out.
Carlo refused to look at Sonny.
He kept his head down and his hands and arms
entwined in the iron railing.
He stayed that way until the car roared off
and he heard Coach say in his curiously paternal
voice, “OK, Carlo, come on into the store.
Let’s get out of sight.”
It was only then that Carlo dared to get out
of his crouch against the stone steps of the
stoop and unlock his hands from the railing.
Standing up, he could see the kids look at
him with the staring, sickened faces of people
who had witnessed the degradation of a fellow
human being.
He was a little dizzy but it was more from
shock, the raw fear that had taken command
of his body; he was not badly hurt despite
the shower of heavy blows.
He let Coach lead him by the arm into the
back room of the candy store and put ice on
his face, which, though it was not cut or
bleeding, was lumpy with swelling bruises.
The fear was subsiding now and the humiliation
he had suffered made him sick to his stomach
so that he had to throw up.
Coach held his head over the sink, supported
him as if he were drunk, then helped him upstairs
to the apartment and made him lie down in
one of the bedrooms.
Carlo never noticed that Sally Rags had disappeared.
Sally Rags had walked down to Third Avenue
and called Rocco Lampone to report what had
happened.
Rocco took the news calmly and in his turn
called his caporegime, Pete Clemenza.
Clemenza groaned and said, “Oh, Christ,
that goddamn Sonny and his temper,” but
his finger had prudently clicked down on the
hook so that Rocco never heard his remark.
Clemenza called the house in Long Beach and
got Tom Hagen.
Hagen was silent for a moment and then he
said, “Send some of your people and cars
out on the road to Long Beach as soon as you
can, just in case Sonny gets held up by traffic
or an accident.
When he gets sore like that he doesn’t know
what the hell he’s doing.
Maybe some of our friends on the other side
will hear he was in town.
You never can tell.”
Clemenza said doubtfully, “By the time I
could get anybody on the road, Sonny will
be home.
That goes for the Tattaglias too.”
“I know,” Hagen said patiently.
“But if something out of the ordinary happens,
Sonny may be held up.
Do the best you can, Pete.”
Grudgingly Clemenza called Rocco Lampone and
told him to get a few people and cars and
cover the road to Long Beach.
He himself went out to his beloved Cadillac
and with three of the platoon of guards who
now garrisoned his home, started over the
Atlantic Beach Bridge, toward New York City.
One of the hangers-on around the candy store,
a small bettor on the payroll of the Tattaglia
Family as an informer, called the contact
he had with his people.
But the Tattaglia Family had not streamlined
itself for the war, the contact still had
to go all the way through the insulation layers
before he finally got to the caporegime who
contacted the Tattaglia chief.
By that time Sonny Corleone was safely back
in the mall, in his father’s house, in Long
Beach, about to face his father’s wrath.
Chapter 17
The war of 1947 between the Corleone Family
and the Five Families combined against them
proved to be expensive for both sides.
It was complicated by the police pressure
put on everybody to solve the murder of Captain
McCluskey.
It was rare that operating officials of the
Police Department ignored political muscle
that protected gambling and vice operations,
but in this case the politicians were as helpless
as the general staff of a rampaging, looting
army whose field officers refuse to follow
orders.
This lack of protection did not hurt the Corleone
Family as much as it did their opponents.
The Corleone group depended on gambling for
most of its income, and was hit especially
hard in its “numbers” or “policy”
branch of operations.
The runners who picked up the action were
swept into police nets and usually given a
medium shellacking before being booked.
Even some of the “banks” were located
and raided, with heavy financial loss.
The “bankers,” .90 calibers in their own
right, complained to the caporegimes, who
brought their complaints to the Family council
table.
But there was nothing to be done.
The bankers were told to go out of business.
Local Negro free-lancers were allowed to take
over the operation in Harlem, the richest
territory, and they operated in such scattered
fashion that the police found it hard to pin
them down.
After the death of Captain McCluskey, some
newspapers printed stories involving him with
Sollozzo.
They published proof that McCluskey had received
large sums of money in cash, shortly before
his death.
These stories had been planted by Hagen, the
information supplied by him.
The Police Department refused to confirm or
deny these stories, but they were taking effect.
The police force got the word through informers,
through police on the Family payroll, that
McCluskey had been a rogue cop.
Not that he had taken money or clean graft,
there was no rank-and-file onus to that.
But that he had taken the dirtiest of dirty
money; murder and drugs money.
And in the morality of policemen, this was
unforgivable.
Hagen understood that the policeman believes
in law and order in a curiously innocent way.
He believes in it more than does the public
he serves.
Law and order is, after all, the magic from
which he derives his power, individual power
which he cherishes as nearly all men cherish
individual power.
And yet there is always the smoldering resentment
against the public he serves.
They are at the same time his ward and his
prey.
As wards they are ungrateful, abusive and
demanding.
As prey they are slippery and dangerous, full
of guile.
As soon as one is in the policeman’s clutches
the mechanism of the society the policeman
defends marshals all its resources to cheat
him of his prize.
The fix is put in by politicians.
Judges give lenient suspended sentences to
the worst hoodlums.
Governors of the States and the President
of the United States himself give full pardons,
assuming that respected lawyers have not already
won his acquittal.
After a time the cop learns.
Why should he not collect the fees these hoodlums
are paying?
He needs it more.
His children, why should they not go to college?
Why shouldn’t his wife shop in more expensive
places?
Why shouldn’t he himself get the sun with
a winter vacation in Florida?
After all, he risks his life and that is no
joke.
But usually he draws the line against accepting
dirty graft.
He will take money to let a bookmaker operate.
He will take money from a man who hates getting
parking tickets or speeding tickets.
He will allow call girls and prostitutes to
ply their trade; for a consideration.
These are vices natural to a man.
But usually he will not take a payoff for
drugs, armed robberies, rape, murder and other
assorted perversions.
In his mind these attack the very core of
his personal authority and cannot be countenanced.
The murder of a police captain was comparable
to regicide.
But when it became known that McCluskey had
been killed while in the company of a notorious
narcotics peddler, when it became known that
he was suspected of conspiracy to murder,
the police desire for vengeance began to fade.
Also, after all, there were still mortgage
payments to be made, cars to be paid off,
children to be launched into the world.
Without their “sheet” money, policemen
had to scramble to make ends meet.
Unlicensed peddlers were good for lunch money.
Parking ticket payoffs came to nickels and
dimes.
Some of the more desperate even began shaking
down suspects (homosexuals, assaults and batteries)
in the precinct squad rooms.
Finally the brass relented.
They raised the prices and let the Families
operate.
Once again the payoff sheet was typed up by
the precinct bagman, listing every man assigned
to the local station and what his cut was
each month.
Some semblance of social order was restored.
IT HAD BEEN Hagen’s idea to use private
detectives to guard Don Corleone’s hospital
room.
These were, of course, supplemented by the
much more formidable soldiers of Tessio’s
regime.
But Sonny was not satisfied even with this.
By the middle of February, when the Don could
be moved without danger, he was taken by ambulance
to his home in the mall.
The house had been renovated so that his bedroom
was now a hospital room with all equipment
necessary for any emergency.
Nurses specially recruited and checked had
been hired for round-the-clock care, and Dr.
Kennedy, with the payment of a huge fee, had
been persuaded to become the physician in
residence to this private hospital.
At least until the Don would need only nursing
care.
The mall itself was made impregnable.
Button men were moved into the extra houses,
the tenants sent on vacations to their native
villages in Italy, all expenses paid.
Freddie Corleone had been sent to Las Vegas
to recuperate and also to scout out the ground
for a Family operation in the luxury hotel-gambling
casino complex that was springing up.
Las Vegas was part of the West Coast empire
still neutral and the Don of that empire had
guaranteed Freddie’s safety there.
The New York Five Families had no desire to
make more enemies by going into Vegas after
Freddie Corleone.
They had enough trouble on their hands in
New York.
Dr. Kennedy had forbidden any discussion of
business in front of the Don.
This edict was completely disregarded.
The Don insisted on the council of war being
held in his room.
Sonny, Tom Hagen, Pete Clemenza and Tessio
gathered there the very first night of his
homecoming.
Don Corleone was too weak to speak much but
he wished to listen and exercise veto powers.
When it was explained that Freddie had been
sent to Las Vegas to learn the gambling casino
business he nodded his head approvingly.
When he learned that Bruno Tattaglia had been
killed by Corleone button men he shook his
head and sighed.
But what distressed him most of all was learning
that Michael had killed Sollozzo and Captain
McCluskey and had then been forced to flee
to Sicily.
When he heard this he motioned them out and
they continued the conference in the corner
room that held the law library.
Sonny Corleone relaxed in the huge armchair
behind the desk.
“I think we’d better let the old man take
it easy for a couple of weeks, until the doc
says he can do business.”
He paused.
“I’d like to have it going again before
he gets better.
We have the go-ahead from the cops to operate.
The first thing is the policy banks in Harlem.
The black boys up there had their fun, now
we have to take it back.
They screwed up the works but good, just like
they usually do when they run things.
A lot of their runners didn’t pay off winners.
They drive up in Cadillacs and tell their
players they gotta wait for their dough or
maybe just pay them half what they win.
I don’t want any runner looking rich to
his players.
I don’t want them dressing too good.
I don’t want them driving new cars.
I don’t want them welching on paying a winner.
And I don’t want any free-lancers staying
in business, they give us a bad name.
Tom, let’s get that project moving right
away.
Everything else will fall in line as soon
as you send out the word that the lid is off.”
Hagen said, “There are some very tough boys
up in Harlem.
They got a taste of the big money.
They won’t go back to being runners or sub-bankers
again.”
Sonny shrugged.
“Just give their names to Clemenza.
That’s his job, straightening them out.”
Clemenza said to Hagen, “No problem.”
It was Tessio who brought up the most important
question.
“Once we start operating, the Five Families
start their raids.
They’ll hit our bankers in Harlem and our
bookmakers on the East Side.
They may even try to make things tough for
the garment center outfits we service.
This war is going to cost a lot of money.”
“Maybe they won’t,” Sonny said.
“They know we’ll hit them right back.
I’ve got peace feelers out and maybe we
can settle everything by paying an indemnity
for the Tattaglia kid.”
Hagen said, “We’re getting the cold shoulder
on those negotiations.
They lost a lot of dough the last few months
and they blame us for it.
With justice.
I think what they want is for us to agree
to come in on the narcotics trade, to use
the Family influence politically.
In other words, Sollozzo’s deal minus Sollozzo.
But they won’t broach that until they’ve
hurt us with some sort of combat action.
Then after we’ve been softened up they figure
we’ll listen to a proposition on narcotics.”
Sonny said curtly, “No deal on drugs.
The Don said no and it’s no until he changes
it.”
Hagen said briskly, “Then we’re faced
with a tactical problem.
Our money is out in the open.
Bookmaking and policy.
We can be hit.
But the Tattaglia Family has prostitution
and call girls and the dock unions.
How the hell are we going to hit them?
The other Families are in some gambling.
But most of them are in the construction trades,
shylocking, controlling the unions, getting
the government contracts.
They get a lot from strong-arm and other stuff
that involves innocent people.
Their money isn’t out in the street.
The Tattaglia nightclub is too famous to touch
it, it would cause too much of a stink.
And with the Don still out of action their
political influence matches ours.
So we’ve got a real problem here.”
“It’s my problem, Tom,” Sonny said.
“I’ll find the answer.
Keep the negotiation alive and follow through
on the other stuff.
Let’s go back into business and see what
happens.
Then we’ll take it from there.
Clemenza and Tessio have plenty of soldiers,
we can match the whole Five Families gun for
gun if that’s the way they want it.
We’ll just go to the mattresses.”
There was no problem getting the free-lance
Negro bankers out of business.
The police were informed and cracked down.
With a special effort.
At that time it was not possible for a Negro
to make a payoff to a high police or political
official to keep such an operation going.
This was due to racial prejudice and racial
distrust more than anything else.
But Harlem had always been considered a minor
problem, and its settlement was expected.
The Five Families struck in an unexpected
direction.
Two powerful officials in the garment unions
were killed, officials who were members of
the Corleone Family.
Then the Corleone Family shylocks were barred
from the waterfront piers as were the Corleone
Family bookmakers.
The longshoremen’s union locals had gone
over to the Five Families.
Corleone bookmakers all over the city were
threatened to persuade them to change their
allegiance.
The biggest numbers banker in Harlem, an old
friend and ally of the Corleone Family, was
brutally murdered.
There was no longer any option.
Sonny told his caporegimes to go to the mattresses.
Two apartments were set up in the city and
furnished with mattresses for the button men
to sleep on, a refrigerator for food, and
guns and ammunition.
Clemenza staffed one apartment and Tessio
the other.
All Family bookmakers were given bodyguard
teams.
The policy bankers in Harlem, however, had
gone over to the enemy and at the moment nothing
could be done about that.
All this cost the Corleone Family a great
deal of money and very little was coming in.
As the next few months went by, other things
became obvious.
The most important was that the Corleone Family
had overmatched itself.
There were reasons for this.
With the Don still too weak to take a part,
a great deal of the Family’s political strength
was neutralized.
Also, the last ten years of peace had seriously
eroded the fighting qualities of the two caporegimes,
Clemenza and Tessio.
Clemenza was still a competent executioner
and administrator but he no longer had the
energy or the youthful strength to lead troops.
Tessio had mellowed with age and was not ruthless
enough.
Tom Hagen, despite his abilities, was simply
not suited to be a Consigliere in a time of
war.
His main fault was that he was not a Sicilian.
Sonny Corleone recognized these weaknesses
in the Family’s wartime posture but could
not take any steps to remedy them.
He was not the Don and only the Don could
replace the caporegimes and the Consigliere.
And the very act of replacement would make
the situation more dangerous, might precipitate
some treachery.
At first, Sonny had thought of fighting a
holding action until the Don could become
well enough to take charge, but with the defection
of the policy bankers, the terrorization of
the bookmakers, the Family position was becoming
precarious.
He decided to strike back.
But he decided to strike right at the heart
of the enemy.
He planned the execution of the heads of the
Five Families in one grand tactical maneuver.
To that purpose he put into effect an elaborate
system of surveillance of these leaders.
But after a week the enemy chiefs promptly
dived underground and were seen no more in
public.
The Five Families and the Corleone Empire
were in stalemate.
Chapter 18
Amerigo Bonasera lived only a few blocks from
his undertaking establishment on Mulberry
Street and so always went home for supper.
Evenings he returned to his place of business,
dutifully joining those mourners paying their
respects to the dead who lay in state in his
somber parlors.
He always resented the jokes made about his
profession, the macabre technical details
which were so unimportant.
Of course none of his friends or family or
neighbors would make such jokes.
Any profession was worthy of respect to men
who for centuries earned bread by the sweat
of their brows.
Now at supper with his wife in their solidly
furnished apartment, gilt statues of the Virgin
Mary with their red-glassed candles flickering
on the sideboard, Bonasera lit a Camel cigarette
and took a relaxing glass of American whiskey.
His wife brought steaming plates of soup to
the table.
The two of them were alone now; he had sent
his daughter to live in Boston with her mother’s
sister, where she could forget her terrible
experience and her injuries at the hands of
the two ruffians Don Corleone had punished.
As they ate their soup his wife asked, “Are
you going back to work tonight?”
Amerigo Bonasera nodded.
His wife respected his work but did not understand
it.
She did not understand that the technical
part of his profession was the least important.
She thought, like most other people, that
he was paid for his skill in making the dead
look so lifelike in their coffins.
And indeed his skill in this was legendary.
But even more important, even more necessary
was his physical presence at the wake.
When the bereaved family came at night to
receive their blood relatives and their friends
beside the coffin of their loved one, they
needed Amerigo Bonasera with them.
For he was a strict chaperon to death.
His face always grave, yet strong and comforting,
his voice unwavering, yet muted to a low register,
he commanded the mourning ritual.
He could quiet grief that was too unseemly,
he could rebuke unruly children whose parents
had not the heart to chastise.
Never cloying in the tender of his condolences,
yet never was he off-hand.
Once a family used Amerigo Bonasera to speed
a loved one on, they came back to him again
and again.
And he never, never, deserted one of his clients
on that terrible last night above ground.
Usually he allowed himself a little nap after
supper.
Then he washed and shaved afresh, talcum powder
generously used to shroud the heavy black
beard.
A mouthwash always.
He respectfully changed into fresh linen,
white gleaming shirt, the black tie, a freshly
pressed dark suit, dull black shoes and black
socks.
And yet the effect was comforting instead
of somber.
He also kept his hair dyed black, an unheard-of
frivolity in an Italian male of his generation;
but not out of vanity.
Simply because his hair had turned a lively
pepper and salt, a color which struck him
as unseemly for his profession.
After he finished his soup, his wife placed
a small steak before him with a few forkfuls
of green spinach oozing yellow oil.
He was a light eater.
When he finished this he drank a cup of coffee
and smoked another Camel cigarette.
Over his coffee he thought about his poor
daughter.
She would never be the same.
Her outward beauty had been restored but there
was the look of a frightened animal in her
eyes that had made him unable to bear the
sight of her.
And so they had sent her to live in Boston
for a time.
Time would heal her wounds.
Pain and terror were not so final as death,
as he well knew.
His work made him an optimist.
He had just finished the coffee when his phone
in the living room rang.
His wife never answered it when he was home,
so he got up and drained his cup and stubbed
out his cigarette.
As he walked to the phone he pulled off his
tie and started to unbutton his shirt, getting
ready for his little nap.
Then he picked up the phone and said with
quiet courtesy, “Hello.”
The voice on the other end was harsh, strained.
“This is Tom Hagen,” it said.
“I’m calling for Don Corleone, at his
request.”
Amerigo Bonasera felt the coffee churning
sourly in his stomach, felt himself going
a little sick.
It was more than a year since he had put himself
in the debt of the Don to avenge his daughter’s
honor and in that time the knowledge that
he must pay that debt had receded.
He had been so grateful seeing the bloody
faces of those two ruffians that he would
have done anything for the Don.
But time erodes gratitude more quickly than
it does beauty.
Now Bonasera felt the sickness of a man faced
with disaster.
His voice faltered as he answered, “Yes,
I understand.
I’m listening.”
He was surprised at the coldness in Hagen’s
voice.
The Consigliere had always been a courteous
man, though not Italian, but now he was being
rudely brusque.
“You owe the Don a service,” Hagen said.
“He has no doubt that you will repay him.
That you will be happy to have this opportunity.
In one hour, not before, perhaps later, he
will be at your funeral parlor to ask for
your help.
Be there to greet him.
Don’t have any people who work for you there.
Send them home.
If you have any objections to this, speak
now and I’ll inform Don Corleone.
He has other friends who can do him this service.”
Amerigo Bonasera almost cried out in his fright,
“How can you think I would refuse the Godfather?
Of course I’ll do anything he wishes.
I haven’t forgotten my debt.
I’ll go to my business immediately, at once.”
Hagen’s voice was gentler now, but there
was something strange about it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“The Don never doubted you.
The question was mine.
Oblige him tonight and you can always come
to me in any trouble, you’ll earn my personal
friendship.”
This frightened Amerigo Bonasera even more.
He stuttered, “The Don himself is coming
to me tonight?”
“Yes,” Hagen said.
“Then he’s completely recovered from his
injuries, thank God,” Bonasera said.
His voice made it a question.
There was a pause at the other end of the
phone; then Hagen’s voice said very quietly,
“Yes.”
There was a click and the phone went dead.
Bonasera was sweating.
He went into the bedroom and changed his shirt
and rinsed his mouth.
But he didn’t shave or use a fresh tie.
He put on the same one he had used during
the day.
He called the funeral parlor and told his
assistant to stay with the bereaved family
using the front parlor that night.
He himself would be busy in the laboratory
working area of the building.
When the assistant started asking questions
Bonasera cut him off very curtly and told
him to follow orders exactly.
He put on his suit jacket and his wife, still
eating, looked up at him in surprise.
“I have work to do,” he said and she did
not dare question him because of the look
on his face.
Bonasera went out of the house and walked
the few blocks to his funeral parlor.
This building stood by itself on a large lot
with a white picket fence running all around
it.
There was a narrow roadway leading from the
street to the rear, just wide enough for ambulances
and hearses.
Bonasera unlocked the gate and left it open.
Then he walked to the rear of the building
and entered it through the wide door there.
As he did so he could see mourners already
entering the front door of the funeral parlor
to pay their respects to the current corpse.
Many years ago when Bonasera had bought this
building from an undertaker planning to retire,
there had been a stoop of about ten steps
that mourners had had to mount before entering
the funeral parlor.
This had posed a problem.
Old and crippled mourners determined to pay
their respects had found the steps almost
impossible to mount, so the former undertaker
had used the freight elevator for these people,
a small metal platform, that rose out of the
ground beside the building.
The elevator was for coffins and bodies.
It would descend underground, then rise into
the funeral parlor itself, so that a crippled
mourner would find himself rising through
the floor beside the coffin as other mourners
moved their black chairs aside to let the
elevator rise through the trapdoor.
Then when the crippled or aged mourner had
finished paying his respects, the elevator
would again come up through the polished floor
to take him down and out again.
Amerigo Bonasera had found this solution to
the problem unseemly and penny-pinching.
So he had had the front of the building remodeled,
the stoop done away with and a slightly inclining
walk put in its place.
But of course the elevator was still used
for coffins and corpses.
In the rear of the building, cut off from
the funeral parlor and reception rooms by
a massive soundproof door, were the business
office, the embalming room, a storeroom for
coffins, and a carefully locked closet holding
chemicals and the awful tools of his trade.
Bonasera went to the office, sat at his desk
and lit up a Camel, one of the few times he
had ever smoked in this building.
Then he waited for Don Corleone.
He waited with a feeling of the utmost despair.
For he had no doubt as to what services he
would be called upon to perform.
For the last year the Corleone Family had
waged war against the five great Mafia Families
of New York and the carnage had filled the
newspapers.
Many men on both sides had been killed.
Now the Corleone Family had killed somebody
so important that they wished to hide his
body, make it disappear, and what better way
than to have it officially buried by a registered
undertaker?
And Amerigo Bonasera had no illusions about
the act he was to commit.
He would be an accessory to murder.
If it came out, he would spend years in jail.
His daughter and wife would be disgraced,
his good name, the respected name of Amerigo
Bonasera, dragged through the bloody mud of
the Mafia war.
He indulged himself by smoking another Camel.
And then he thought of something even more
terrifying.
When the other Mafia Families found out that
he had aided the Corleones they would treat
him as an enemy.
They would murder him.
And now he cursed the day he had gone to the
Godfather and begged for his vengeance.
He cursed the day his wife and the wife of
Don Corleone had become friends.
He cursed his daughter and America and his
own success.
And then his optimism returned.
It could all go well.
Don Corleone was a clever man.
Certainly everything had been arranged to
keep the secret.
He had only to keep his nerve.
For of course the one thing more fatal than
any other was to earn the Don’s displeasure.
He heard tires on gravel.
His practiced ear told him a car was coming
through the narrow driveway and parking in
the back yard.
He opened the rear door to let them in.
The huge fat man, Clemenza, entered, followed
by two very rough-looking young fellows.
They searched the rooms without saying a word
to Bonasera; then Clemenza went out.
The two young men remained with the undertaker.
A few moments later Bonasera recognized the
sound of a heavy ambulance coming through
the narrow driveway.
Then Clemenza appeared in the doorway followed
by two men carrying a stretcher.
And Amerigo Bonasera’s worst fears were
realized.
On the stretcher was a corpse swaddled in
a gray blanket but with bare yellow feet sticking
out the end.
Clemenza motioned the stretcher-bearers into
the embalming room.
And then from the blackness of the yard another
man stepped into the lighted office room.
It was Don Corleone.
The Don had lost weight during his illness
and moved with a curious stiffness.
He was holding his hat in his hands and his
hair seemed thin over his massive skull.
He looked older, more shrunken than when Bonasera
had seen him at the wedding, but he still
radiated power.
Holding his hat against his chest, he said
to Bonasera, “Well, old friend, are you
ready to do me this service?”
Bonasera nodded.
The Don followed the stretcher into the embalming
room and Bonasera trailed after him.
The corpse was on one of the guttered tables.
Don Corleone made a tiny gesture with his
hat and the other men left the room.
Bonasera whispered, “What do you wish me
to do?”
Don Corleone was staring at the table.
“I want you to use all your powers, all
your skill, as you love me,” he said.
“I do not wish his mother to see him as
he is.”
He went to the table and drew down the gray
blanket.
Amerigo Bonasera against all his will, against
all his years of training and experience,
let out a gasp of horror.
On the embalming table was the bullet-smashed
face of Sonny Corleone.
The left eye drowned in blood had a star fracture
in its lens.
The bridge of his nose and left cheekbone
were hammered into pulp.
For one fraction of a second the Don put out
his hand to support himself against Bonasera’s
body.
“See how they have massacred my son,”
he said.
Chapter 19
Perhaps it was the stalemate that made Sonny
Corleone embark on the bloody course of attrition
that ended in his own death.
Perhaps it was his dark violent nature given
full rein.
In any case, that spring and summer he mounted
senseless raids on enemy auxiliaries.
Tattaglia Family pimps were shot to death
in Harlem, dock goons were massacred.
Union officials who owed allegiance to the
Five Families were warned to stay neutral,
and when the Corleone bookmakers and shylocks
were still barred from the docks, Sonny sent
Clemenza and his regime to wreak havoc upon
the long shore.
This slaughter was senseless because it could
not affect the outcome of the war.
Sonny was a brilliant tactician and won his
brilliant victories.
But what was needed was the strategical genius
of Don Corleone.
The whole thing degenerated into such a deadly
guerrilla war that both sides found themselves
losing a great deal of revenue and lives to
no purpose.
The Corleone Family was finally forced to
close down some of its most profitable bookmaking
stations, including the book given to son-in-law
Carlo Rizzi for his living.
Carlo took to drink and running with chorus
girls and giving his wife Connie a hard time.
Since his beating at the hands of Sonny he
had not dared to hit his wife again but he
had not slept with her.
Connie had thrown herself at his feet and
he had spurned her, as he thought, like a
Roman, with exquisite patrician pleasure.
He had sneered at her, “Go call your brother
and tell him I won’t screw you, maybe he’ll
beat me up until I get a hard on.”
But he was in deadly fear of Sonny though
they treated each other with cold politeness.
Carlo had the sense to realize that Sonny
would kill him, that Sonny was a man who could,
with the naturalness of an animal, kill another
man, while he himself would have to call up
all his courage, all his will, to commit murder.
It never occurred to Carlo that because of
this he was a better man than Sonny Corleone,
if such terms could be used; he envied Sonny
his awesome savagery, a savagery which was
now becoming a legend.
Tom Hagen, as the Consigliere, disapproved
of Sonny’s tactics and yet decided not to
protest to the Don simply because the tactics,
to some extent, worked.
The Five Families seemed to be cowed, finally,
as the attrition went on, and their counterblows
weakened and finally ceased altogether.
Hagen at first distrusted this seeming pacification
of the enemy but Sonny was jubilant.
“I’ll pour it on,” he told Hagen, “and
then those bastards will come begging for
a deal.”
Sonny was worried about other things.
His wife was giving him a hard time because
the rumors had gotten to her that Lucy Mancini
had bewitched her husband.
And though she joked publicly about her Sonny’s
equipment and technique, he had stayed away
from her too long and she missed him in her
bed, and she was making life miserable for
him with her nagging.
In addition to this Sonny was under the enormous
strain of being a marked man.
He had to be extraordinarily careful in all
his movements and he knew that his visits
to Lucy Mancini had been charted by the enemy.
But here he took elaborate precautions since
this was the traditional vulnerable spot.
He was safe there.
Though Lucy had not the slightest suspicion,
she was watched twenty-four hours a day by
men of the Santino regime and when an apartment
became vacant on her floor it was immediately
rented by one of the most reliable men of
that regime.
The Don was recovering and would soon be able
to resume command.
At that time the tide of battle must swing
to the Corleone Family.
This Sonny was sure of.
Meanwhile he would guard his Family’s empire,
earn the respect of his father, and, since
the position was not hereditary to an absolute
degree, cement his claim as heir to the Corleone
Empire.
But the enemy was making its plans.
They too had analyzed the situation and had
come to the conclusion that the only way to
stave off complete defeat was to kill Sonny
Corleone.
They understood the situation better now and
felt it was possible to negotiate with the
Don, known for his logical reasonableness.
They had come to hate Sonny for his bloodthirstiness,
which they considered barbaric.
Also not good business sense.
Nobody wanted the old days back again with
all its turmoil and trouble.
One evening Connie Corleone received an anonymous
phone call, a girl’s voice, asking for Carlo.
“Who is this?”
Connie asked.
The girl on the other end giggled and said,
“I’m a friend of Carlo’s.
I just wanted to tell him I can’t see him
tonight.
I have to go out of town.”
“You lousy bitch,” Connie Corleone said.
She screamed it again into the phone.
“You lousy tramp bitch.”
There was a click on the other end.
Carlo had gone to the track for that afternoon
and when he came home in the late evening
he was sore at losing and half drunk from
the bottle he always carried.
As soon as he stepped into the door, Connie
started screaming curses at him.
He ignored her and went in to take a shower.
When he came out he dried his naked body in
front of her and started dolling up to go
out.
Connie stood with hands on hips, her face
pointy and white with rage.
“You’re not going anyplace,” she said.
“Your girl friend called and said she can’t
make it tonight.
You lousy bastard, you have the nerve to give
your whores my phone number.
I’ll kill you, you bastard.”
She rushed at him, kicking and scratching.
He held her off with one muscular forearm.
“You’re crazy,” he said coldly.
But she could see he was worried, as if he
knew the crazy girl he was screwing would
actually pull such a stunt.
“She was kidding around, some nut,” Carlo
said.
Connie ducked around his arm and clawed at
his face.
She got a little bit of his cheek under her
fingernails.
With surprising patience he pushed her away.
She noticed he was careful because of her
pregnancy and that gave her the courage to
feed her rage.
She was also excited.
Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to do anything,
the doctor had said no sex for the last two
months and she wanted it, before the last
two months started.
Yet her wish to inflict a physical injury
on Carlo was very real too.
She followed him into the bedroom.
She could see he was scared and that filled
her with contemptuous delight.
“You’re staying home,” she said, “you’re
not going out.”
“OK, OK,” he said.
He was still undressed, only wearing his shorts.
He liked to go around the house like that,
he was proud of his V-shaped body, the golden
skin.
Connie looked at him hungrily.
He tried to laugh.
“You gonna give me something to eat at least?”
That mollified her, his calling on her duties,
one of them at least.
She was a good cook, she had learned that
from her mother.
She sauteed veal and peppers, preparing a
mixed salad while the pan simmered.
Meanwhile Carlo stretched out on his bed to
read the next day’s racing form.
He had a water glass full of whiskey beside
him which he kept sipping at.
Connie came into the bedroom.
She stood in the doorway as if she could not
come close to the bed without being invited.
“The food is on the table,” she said.
“I’m not hungry yet,” he said, still
reading the racing form.
“It’s on the table,” Connie said stubbornly.
“Stick it up your ass,” Carlo said.
He drank off the rest of the whiskey in the
water glass, tilted the bottle to fill it
again.
He paid no more attention to her.
Connie went into the kitchen, picked up the
plates filled with food and smashed them against
the sink.
The loud crashes brought Carlo in from the
bedroom.
He looked at the greasy veal and peppers splattered
all over the kitchen walls and his finicky
neatness was outraged.
“You filthy guinea spoiled brat,” he said
venomously.
“Clean that up right now or I’ll kick
the shit out of you.”
“Like hell I will,” Connie said.
She held her hands like claws ready to scratch
his bare chest to ribbons.
Carlo went back into the bedroom and when
he came out he was holding his belt doubled
in his hand.
“Clean it up,” he said and there was no
mistaking the menace in his voice.
She stood there not moving and he swung the
belt against her heavily padded hips, the
leather stinging but not really hurting.
Connie retreated to the kitchen cabinets and
her hand went into one of the drawers to haul
out the long bread knife.
She held it ready.
Carlo laughed.
“Even the female Corleones are murderers,”
he said.
He put the belt down on the kitchen table
and advanced toward her.
She tried a sudden lunge but her pregnant
heavy body made her slow and he eluded the
thrust she aimed at his groin in such deadly
earnest.
He disarmed her easily and then he started
to slap her face with a slow medium-heavy
stroke so as not to break the skin.
He hit her again and again as she retreated
around the kitchen table trying to escape
him and he pursued her into the bedroom.
She tried to bite his hand and he grabbed
her by the hair to lift her head up.
He slapped her face until she began to weep
like a little girl, with pain and humiliation.
Then he threw her contemptuously onto the
bed.
He drank from the bottle of whiskey still
on the night table.
He seemed very drunk now, his light blue eyes
had a crazy glint in them and finally Connie
was truly afraid.
Carlo straddled his legs apart and drank from
the bottle.
He reached down and grabbed a chunk of her
pregnant heavy thigh in his hand.
He squeezed very hard, hurting her and making
her beg for mercy.
“You’re fat as a pig,” he said with
disgust and walked out of the bedroom.
Thoroughly frightened and cowed, she lay in
the bed, not daring to see what her husband
was doing in the other room.
Finally she rose and went to the door to peer
into the living room.
Carlo had opened a fresh bottle of whiskey
and was sprawled on the sofa.
In a little while he would drink himself into
sodden sleep and she could sneak into the
kitchen and call her family in Long Beach.
She would tell her mother to send someone
out here to get her.
She just hoped Sonny didn’t answer the phone,
she knew it would be best to talk to Tom Hagen
or her mother.
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when
the kitchen phone in Don Corleone’s house
rang.
It was answered by one of the Don’s bodyguards
who dutifully turned the phone over to Connie’s
mother.
But Mrs. Corleone could hardly understand
what her daughter was saying, the girl was
hysterical yet trying to whisper so that her
husband in the next room would not hear her.
Also her face had become swollen because of
the slaps, and her puffy lips thickened her
speech.
Mrs. Corleone made a sign to the bodyguard
that he should call Sonny, who was in the
living room with Tom Hagen.
Sonny came into the kitchen and took the phone
from his mother.
“Yeah, Connie,” he said.
Connie was so frightened both of her husband
and of what her brother would do that her
speech became worse.
She babbled, “Sonny, just send a car to
bring me home, I’ll tell you then, it’s
nothing, Sonny.
Don’t you come.
Send Tom, please, Sonny.
It’s nothing, I just want to come home.”
By this time Hagen had come into the room.
The Don was already under a sedated sleep
in the bedroom above and Hagen wanted to keep
an eye on Sonny in all crises.
The two interior bodyguards were also in the
kitchen.
Everybody was watching Sonny as he listened
on the phone.
There was no question that the violence in
Sonny Corleone’s nature rose from some deep
mysterious physical well.
As they watched they could actually see the
blood rushing to his heavily corded neck,
could see the eyes film with hatred, the separate
features of his face tightening, growing pinched;
then his face took on the grayish hue of a
sick man fighting off some sort of death,
except that the adrenaline pumping through
his body made his hands tremble.
But his voice was controlled, pitched low,
as he told his sister, “You wait there.
You just wait there.”
He hung up the phone.
He stood there for a moment quite stunned
with his own rage; then he said, “The fucking
sonofabitch, the fucking sonofabitch.”
He ran out of the house.
Hagen knew the look on Sonny’s face, all
reasoning power had left him.
At this moment Sonny was capable of anything.
Hagen also knew that the ride into the city
would cool Sonny off, make him more rational.
But that rationality might make him even more
dangerous, though the rationality would enable
him to protect himself against the consequences
of his rage.
Hagen heard the car motor roaring into life
and he said to the two bodyguards, “Go after
him.”
Then he went to the phone and made some calls.
He arranged for some men of Sonny’s regime
living in the city to go up to Carlo Rizzi’s
apartment and get Carlo out of there.
Other men would stay with Connie until Sonny
arrived.
He was taking a chance, thwarting Sonny, but
he knew the Don would back him up.
He was afraid that Sonny might kill Carlo
in front of witnesses.
He did not expect trouble from the enemy.
The Five Families had been quiet too long
and obviously were looking for peace of some
kind.
By the time Sonny roared out of the mall in
his Buick, he had already regained, partly,
his senses.
He noted the two bodyguards getting into a
car to follow him and approved.
He expected no danger, the Five Families had
quit counterattacking, were not really fighting
anymore.
He had grabbed his jacket in the foyer and
there was a gun in a secret dashboard compartment
of the car, the car registered in the name
of a member of his regime, so that he personally
could not get into any legal trouble.
But he did not anticipate needing any weapon.
He did not even know what he was going to
do with Carlo Rizzi.
Now that he had a chance to think, Sonny knew
he could not kill the father of an unborn
child, and that father his sister’s husband.
Not over a domestic spat.
Except that it was not just a domestic spat.
Carlo was a bad guy and Sonny felt responsible
that his sister had met the bastard through
him.
The paradox in Sonny’s violent nature was
that he could not hit a woman and had never
done so.
That he could not harm a child or anything
helpless.
When Carlo had refused to fight back against
him that day, it had kept Sonny from killing
him; complete submission disarmed his violence.
As a boy, he had been truly tenderhearted.
That he had become a murderer as a man was
simply his destiny.
But he would settle this thing once and for
all, Sonny thought, as he headed the Buick
toward the causeway that would take him over
the water from Long Beach to the parkways
on the other side of Jones Beach.
He always used this route when he went to
New York.
There was less traffic.
He decided he would send Connie home with
the bodyguards and then he would have a session
with his brother-in-law.
What would happen after that he didn’t know.
If the bastard had really hurt Connie, he’d
make a cripple out of the bastard.
But the wind coming over the causeway, the
salty freshness of the air, cooled his anger.
He put the window down all the way.
He had taken the Jones Beach Causeway, as
always, because it was usually deserted this
time of night, at this time of year, and he
could speed recklessly until he hit the parkways
on the other side.
And even there traffic would be light.
The release of driving very fast would help
dissipate what he knew was a dangerous tension.
He had already left his bodyguards’ car
far behind.
The causeway was badly lit, there was not
a single car.
Far ahead he saw the white cone of the manned
tollbooth.
There were other tollbooths beside it but
they were staffed only during the day, for
heavier traffic.
Sonny started braking the Buick and at the
same time searched his pockets for change.
He had none.
He reached for his wallet, flipped it open
with one hand and fingered out a bill.
He came within the arcade of light and he
saw to his mild surprise a car in the tollbooth
slot blocking it, the driver obviously asking
some sort of directions from the toll taker.
Sonny honked his horn and the other car obediently
rolled through to let his car slide into the
slot.
Sonny handed the toll taker the dollar bill
and waited for his change.
He was in a hurry now to close the window.
The Atlantic Ocean air had chilled the whole
car.
But the toll taker was fumbling with his change;
the dumb son of a bitch actually dropped it.
Head and body disappeared as the toll man
stooped down in his booth to pick up the money.
At that moment Sonny noticed that the other
car had not kept going but had parked a few
feet ahead, still blocking his way.
At that same moment his lateral vision caught
sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth
to his right.
But he did not have time to think about that
because two men came out of the car parked
in front and walked toward him.
The toll collector still had not appeared.
And then in the fraction of a second before
anything actually happened, Santino Corleone
knew he was a dead man.
And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained
of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally
real and present had purified him.
Even so, his huge body in a reflex for life
crashed against the Buick door, bursting its
lock.
The man in the darkened tollbooth opened fire
and the shots caught Sonny Corleone in the
head and neck as his massive frame spilled
out of the car.
The two men in front held up their guns now,
the man in the darkened tollbooth cut his
fire, and Sonny’s body sprawled on the asphalt
with the legs still partly inside.
The two men each fired shots into Sonny’s
body, then kicked him in the face to disfigure
his features even more, to show a mark made
by a more personal human power.
Seconds afterward, all four men, the three
actual assassins and the bogus toll collector,
were in their car and speeding toward the
Meadowbrook Parkway on the other side of Jones
Beach.
Their pursuit was blocked by Sonny’s car
and body in the tollgate slot but when Sonny’s
bodyguards pulled up a few minutes later and
saw his body lying there, they had no intention
to pursue.
They swung their car around in a huge arc
and returned to Long Beach.
At the first public phone off the causeway
one of them hopped out and called Tom Hagen.
He was very curt and very brisk.
“Sonny’s dead, they got him at the Jones
Beach toll.”
Hagen’s voice was perfectly calm.
“OK,” he said.
“Go to Clemenza’s house and tell him to
come here right away.
He’ll tell you what to do.”
Hagen had taken the call in the kitchen, with
Mama Corleone bustling around preparing a
snack for the arrival of her daughter.
He had kept his composure and the old woman
had not noticed anything amiss.
Not that she could not have, if she wanted
to, but in her life with the Don she had learned
it was far wiser not to perceive.
That if it was necessary to know something
painful, it would be told to her soon enough.
And if it was a pain that could be spared
her, she could do without.
She was quite content not to share the pain
of her men, after all did they share the pain
of women?
Impassively she boiled her coffee and set
the table with food.
In her experience pain and fear did not dull
physical hunger; in her experience the taking
of food dulled pain.
She would have been outraged if a doctor had
tried to sedate her with a drug, but coffee
and a crust of bread were another matter;
she came, of course, from a more primitive
culture.
And so she let Tom Hagen escape to his corner
conference room and once in that room, Hagen
began to tremble so violently he had to sit
down with his legs squeezed together, his
head hunched into his contracted shoulders,
hands clasped together between his knees as
if he were praying to the devil.
He was, he knew now, no fit Consigliere for
a Family at war.
He had been fooled, faked out, by the Five
Families and their seeming timidity.
They had remained quiet, laying their terrible
ambush.
They had planned and waited, holding their
bloody hands no matter what provocation they
had been given.
They had waited to land one terrible blow.
And they had.
Old Genco Abbandando would never have fallen
for it, he would have smelled a rat, he would
have smoked them out, tripled his precautions.
And through all this Hagen felt his grief.
Sonny had been his true brother, his savior;
his hero when they had been boys together.
Sonny had never been mean or bullying with
him, had always treated him with affection,
had taken him in his arms when Sollozzo had
turned him loose.
Sonny’s joy at that reunion had been real.
That he had grown up to be a cruel and violent
and bloody man was, for Hagen, not relevant.
He had walked out of the kitchen because he
knew he could never tell Mama Corleone about
her son’s death.
He had never thought of her as his mother
as he thought of the Don as his father and
Sonny as his brother.
His affection for her was like his affection
for Freddie and Michael and Connie.
The affection for someone who has been kind
but not loving.
But he could not tell her.
In a few short months she had lost all her
sons; Freddie exiled to Nevada, Michael hiding
for his life in Sicily, and now Santino dead.
Which of the three had she loved most of all?
She had never shown.
It was no more than a few minutes.
Hagen got control of himself again and picked
up the phone.
He called Connie’s number.
It rang for a long time before Connie answered
in a whisper.
Hagen spoke to her gently.
“Connie, this is Tom.
Wake your husband up, I have to talk to him.”
Connie said in a low frightened voice, “Tom,
is Sonny coming here?”
“No,” Hagen said.
“Sonny’s not coming there.
Don’t worry about that.
Just wake Carlo up and tell him it’s very
important I speak to him.”
Connie’s voice was weepy.
“Tom, he beat me up, I’m afraid he’ll
hurt me again if he knows I called home.”
Hagen said gently, “He won’t.
He’ll talk to me and I’ll straighten him
out.
Everything will be OK.
Tell him it’s very important, very, very
important he come to the phone.
OK?”
It was almost five minutes before Carlo’s
voice came over the phone, a voice half slurred
by whiskey and sleep.
Hagen spoke sharply to make him alert.
“Listen, Carlo,” he said, “I’m going
to tell you something very shocking.
Now prepare yourself because when I tell it
to you I want you to answer me very casually
as if it’s less than it is.
I told Connie it was important so you have
to give her a story.
Tell her the Family has decided to move you
both to one of the houses in the mall and
to give you a big job.
That the Don has finally decided to give you
a chance in the hope of making your home life
better.
You got that?”
There was a hopeful note in Carlo’s voice
as he answered, “Yeah, OK.”
Hagen went on, “In a few minutes a couple
of my men are going to knock on your door
to take you away with them.
Tell them I want them to call me first.
Just tell them that.
Don’t say anything else.
I’ll instruct them to leave you there with
Connie.
OK?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Carlo said.
His voice was excited.
The tension in Hagen’s voice seemed to have
finally alerted him that the news coming up
was going to be really important.
Hagen gave it to him straight.
“They killed Sonny tonight.
Don’t say anything.
Connie called him while you were asleep and
he was on his way over there, but I don’t
want her to know that, even if she guesses
it, I don’t want her to know it for sure.
She’ll start thinking it’s all her fault.
Now I want you to stay with her tonight and
not tell her anything.
I want you to make up with her.
I want you to be the perfect loving husband.
And I want you to stay that way until she
has her baby at least.
Tomorrow morning somebody, maybe you, maybe
the Don, maybe her mother, will tell Connie
that her brother got killed.
And I want you by her side.
Do me this favor and I’ll take care of you
in the times to come.
You got that?”
Carlo’s voice was a little shaky.
“Sure, Tom, sure.
Listen, me and you always got along.
I’m grateful.
Understand?”
“Yeah,” Hagen said.
“Nobody will blame your fight with Connie
for causing this; don’t worry about that.
I’ll take care of that.”
He paused and said softly, encouragingly,
“Go ahead now, take care of Connie.”
He broke the connection.
He had learned never to make a threat, the
Don had taught him that, but Carlo had gotten
the message all right: he was a hair away
from death.
Hagen made another call to Tessio, telling
him to come to the mall in Long Beach immediately.
He didn’t say why and Tessio did not ask.
Hagen sighed.
Now would come the part he dreaded.
He would have to waken the Don from his drugged
slumber.
He would have to tell the man he most loved
in the world that he had failed him, that
he had failed to guard his domain and the
life of his eldest son.
He would have to tell the Don everything was
lost unless the sick man himself could enter
the battle.
For Hagen did not delude himself.
Only the great Don himself could snatch even
a stalemate from this terrible defeat.
Hagen didn’t even bother checking with Don
Corleone’s doctors, it would be to no purpose.
No matter what the doctors ordered, even if
they told him that the Don could not rise
from his sickbed on pain of death, he must
tell his adoptive father and then follow him.
And of course there was no question about
what the Don would do.
The opinions of medical men were irrelevant
now, everything was irrelevant now.
The Don must be told and he must either take
command or order Hagen to surrender the Corleone
power to the Five Families.
And yet with all his heart, Hagen dreaded
the next hour.
He tried to prepare his own manner.
He would have to be in all ways strict with
his own guilt.
To reproach himself would only add to the
Don’s burden.
To show his own grief would only sharpen the
grief of the Don.
To point out his own shortcomings as a wartime
Consigliere would only make the Don reproach
himself for his own bad judgment for picking
such a man for such an important post.
He must, Hagen knew, tell the news, present
his analysis of what must be done to rectify
the situation and then keep silent.
His reactions thereafter must be the reactions
invited by his Don.
If the Don wanted him to show guilt, he would
show guilt; if the Don invited grief, he would
lay bare his genuine sorrow.
Hagen lifted his head at the sound of motors,
cars rolling up onto the mall.
The caporegimes were arriving.
He would brief them first and then he would
go up and wake Don Corleone.
He got up and went to the liquor cabinet by
the desk and took out a glass and bottle.
He stood there for a moment so unnerved he
could not pour the liquid from bottle to glass.
Behind him, he heard the door to the room
close softly and, turning, he saw, fully dressed
for the first time since he had been shot,
Don Corleone.
The Don walked across the room to his huge
leather armchair and sat down.
He walked a little stiffly, his clothes hung
a little loosely on his frame but to Hagen’s
eyes he looked the same as always.
It was almost as if by his will alone the
Don had discarded all external evidence of
his still weakened frame.
His face was sternly set with all its old
force and strength.
He sat straight in the armchair and he said
to Hagen, “Give me a drop of anisette.”
Hagen switched bottles and poured them both
a portion of the fiery, licorice-tasting alcohol.
It was peasant, homemade stuff, much stronger
than that sold in stores, the gift of an old
friend who every year presented the Don with
a small truckload.
“My wife was weeping before she fell asleep,”
Don Corleone said.
“Outside my window I saw my caporegimes
coming to the house and it is midnight.
So, Consigliere of mine, I think you should
tell your Don what everyone knows.”
Hagen said quietly, “I didn’t tell Mama
anything.
I was about to come up and wake you and tell
you the news myself.
In another moment I would have come to waken
you.”
Don Corleone said impassively, “But you
needed a drink first.”
“Yes,” Hagen said.
“You’ve had your drink,” the Don said.
“You can tell me now.”
There was just the faintest hint of reproach
for Hagen’s weakness.
“They shot Sonny on the causeway,” Hagen
said.
“He’s dead.”
Don Corleone blinked.
For just the fraction of a second the wall
of his will disintegrated and the draining
of his physical strength was plain on his
face.
Then he recovered.
He clasped his hands in front of him on top
of the desk and looked directly into Hagen’s
eyes.
“Tell me everything that happened,” he
said.
He held up one of his hands.
“No, wait until Clemenza and Tessio arrive
so you won’t have to tell it all again.”
It was only a few moments later that the two
caporegimes were escorted into the room by
a bodyguard.
They saw at once that the Don knew about his
son’s death because the Don stood up to
receive them.
They embraced him as old comrades were permitted
to do.
They all had a drink of anisette which Hagen
poured them before he told them the story
of that night.
Don Corleone asked only one question at the
end.
“Is it certain my son is dead?”
Clemenza answered.
“Yes,” he said.
“The bodyguards were of Santino’s regime
but picked by me.
I questioned them when they came to my house.
They saw his body in the light of the tollhouse.
He could not live with the wounds they saw.
They place their lives in forfeit for what
they say.”
Don Corleone accepted this final verdict without
any sign of emotion except for a few moments
of silence.
Then he said, “None of you are to concern
yourselves with this affair.
None of you are to commit any acts of vengeance,
none of you are to make any inquiries to track
down the murderers of my son without my express
command.
There will be no further acts of war against
the Five Families without my express and personal
wish.
Our Family will cease all business operations
and cease to protect any of our business operations
until after my son’s funeral.
Then we will meet here again and decide what
must be done.
Tonight we must do what we can for Santino,
we must bury him as a Christian.
I will have friends of mine arrange things
with the police and all other proper authorities.
Clemenza, you will remain with me at all times
as my bodyguard, you and the men of your regime.
Tessio, you will guard all other members of
my Family.
Tom, I want you to call Amerigo Bonasera and
tell him I will need his services at some
time during this night.
To wait for me at his establishment.
It may be an hour, two hours, three hours.
Do you all understand that?”
The three men nodded.
Don Corleone said, “Clemenza, get some men
and cars and wait for me.
I will be ready in a few minutes.
Tom, you did well.
In the morning I want Constanzia with her
mother.
Make arrangements for her and her husband
to live in the mall.
Have Sandra’s friends, the women, go to
her house to stay with her.
My wife will go there also when I have spoken
with her.
My wife will tell her the misfortune and the
women will arrange for the church to say their
masses and prayers for his soul.”
The Don got up from his leather armchair.
The other men rose with him and Clemenza and
Tessio embraced him again.
Hagen held the door open for the Don, who
paused to look at him for a moment.
Then the Don put his hand on Hagen’s cheek,
embraced him quickly, and said, in Italian,
“You’ve been a good son.
You comfort me.”
Telling Hagen that he had acted properly in
this terrible time.
The Don went up to his bedroom to speak to
his wife.
It was then that Hagen made the call to Amerigo
Bonasera for the undertaker to redeem the
favor he owed to the Corleones.
BOOK V
Chapter 20
The death of Santino Corleone sent shock waves
through the underworld of the nation.
And when it became known that Don Corleone
had risen from his sick bed to take charge
of the Family affairs, when spies at the funeral
reported that the Don seemed to be fully recovered,
the heads of the Five Families made frantic
efforts to prepare a defense against the bloody
retaliatory war that was sure to follow.
Nobody made the mistake of assuming that Don
Corleone could be held cheaply because of
his past misfortunes.
He was a man who had made only a few mistakes
in his career and had learned from every one
of them.
Only Hagen guessed the Don’s real intentions
and was not surprised when emissaries were
sent to the Five Families to propose a peace.
Not only to propose a peace but a meeting
of all the Families in the city and with invitations
to Families all over the United States to
attend.
Since the New York Families were the most
powerful in the country, it was understood
that their welfare affected the welfare of
the country as a whole.
At first there were suspicions.
Was Don Corleone preparing a trap?
Was he trying to throw his enemies off their
guard?
Was he attempting to prepare a wholesale massacre
to avenge his son?
But Don Corleone soon made it clear that he
was sincere.
Not only did he involve all the Families in
the country in this meeting, but made no move
to put his own people on a war footing or
to enlist allies.
And then he took the final irrevocable step
that established the authenticity of these
intentions and assured the safety of the grand
council to be assembled.
He called on the services of the Bocchicchio
Family.
The Bocchicchio Family was unique in that,
once a particularly ferocious branch of the
Mafia in Sicily, it had become an instrument
of peace in America.
Once a group of men who earned their living
by a savage determination, they now earned
their living in what perhaps could be called
a saintly fashion.
The Bocchicchios’ one asset was a closely
knit structure of blood relationships, a family
loyalty severe even for a society where family
loyalty came before loyalty to a wife.
The Bocchicchio Family, extending out to third
cousins, had once numbered nearly two hundred
when they ruled the particular economy of
a small section of southern Sicily.
The income for the entire Family then came
from four or five flour mills, by no means
owned communally, but assuring labor and bread
and a minimal security for all Family members.
This was enough, with intermarriages, for
them to present a common front against their
enemies.
No competing mill, no dam that would create
a water supply to their competitors or ruin
their own selling of water, was allowed to
be built in their corner of Sicily.
A powerful landowning baron once tried to
erect his own mill strictly for his personal
use.
The mill was burned down.
He called on the carabineri and higher authorities,
who arrested three of the Bocchicchio Family.
Even before the trial the manor house of the
baron was torched.
The indictment and accusations were withdrawn.
A few months later one of the highest functionaries
in the Italian government arrived in Sicily
and tried to solve the chronic water shortage
of that island by proposing a huge dam.
Engineers arrived from Rome to do surveys
while watched by grim natives, members of
the Bocchicchio clan.
Police flooded the area, housed in a specially
built barracks.
It looked like nothing could stop the dam
from being built and supplies and equipment
had actually been unloaded in Palermo.
That was as far as they got.
The Bocchicchios had contacted fellow Mafia
chiefs and extracted agreements for their
aid.
The heavy equipment was sabotaged, the lighter
equipment stolen.
Mafia deputies in the Italian Parliament launched
a bureaucratic counterattack against the planners.
This went on for several years and in that
time Mussolini came to power.
The dictator decreed that the dam must be
built.
It was not.
The dictator had known that the Mafia would
be a threat to his regime, forming what amounted
to a separate authority from his own.
He gave full powers to a high police official,
who promptly solved the problem by throwing
everybody into jail or deporting them to penal
work islands.
In a few short years he had broken the power
of the Mafia, simply by arbitrarily arresting
anyone even suspected of being a mafioso.
And so also brought ruin to a great many innocent
families.
The Bocchicchios had been rash enough to resort
to force against this unlimited power.
Half of the men were killed in armed combat,
the other half deported to penal island colonies.
There were only a handful left when arrangements
were made for them to emigrate to America
via the clandestine underground route of jumping
ship through Canada.
There were almost twenty immigrants and they
settled in a small town not far from New York
City, in the Hudson Valley, where by starting
at the very bottom they worked their way up
to owning a garbage hauling firm and their
own trucks.
They became prosperous because they had no
competition.
They had no competition because competitors
found their trucks burned and sabotaged.
One persistent fellow who undercut prices
was found buried in the garbage he had picked
up during the day, smothered to death.
But as the men married, to Sicilian girls,
needless to say, children came, and the garbage
business, though providing a living, was not
really enough to pay for the finer things
America had to offer.
And so, as a diversification, the Bocchicchio
Family became negotiators and hostages in
the peace efforts of warring Mafia families.
A strain of stupidity ran through the Bocchicchio
clan, or perhaps they were just primitive.
In any case they recognized their limitations
and knew they could not compete with other
Mafia families in the struggle to organize
and control more sophisticated business structures
like prostitution, gambling, dope and public
fraud.
They were straight-from-the-shoulder people
who could offer a gift to an ordinary patrolman
but did not know how to approach a political
bagman.
They had only two assets.
Their honor and their ferocity.
A Bocchicchio never lied, never committed
an act of treachery.
Such behavior was too complicated.
Also, a Bocchicchio never forgot an injury
and never left it unavenged no matter what
the cost.
And so by accident they stumbled into what
would prove to be their most lucrative profession.
When warring families wanted to make peace
and arrange a parley, the Bocchicchio clan
was contacted.
The head of the clan would handle the initial
negotiations and arrange for the necessary
hostages.
For instance, when Michael had gone to meet
Sollozzo, a Bocchicchio had been left with
the Corleone Family as surety for Michael’s
safety, the service paid for by Sollozzo.
If Michael were killed by Sollozzo, then the
Bocchicchio male hostage held by the Corleone
Family would be killed by the Corleones.
In this case the Bocchicchios would take their
vengeance on Sollozzo as the cause of their
clansman’s death.
Since the Bocchicchios were so primitive,
they never let anything, any kind of punishment,
stand in their way of vengeance.
They would give up their own lives and there
was no protection against them if they were
betrayed.
A Bocchicchio hostage was gilt-edged insurance.
And so now when Don Corleone employed the
Bocchicchios as negotiators and arranged for
them to supply hostages for all the Families
to come to the peace meeting, there could
be no question as to his sincerity.
There could be no question of treachery.
The meeting would be safe as a wedding.
Hostages given, the meeting took place in
the director’s conference room of a small
commercial bank whose president was indebted
to Don Corleone and indeed some of whose stock
belonged to Don Corleone though it was in
the president’s name.
The president always treasured that moment
when he had offered to give Don Corleone a
written document proving his ownership of
the shares, to preclude any treachery.
Don Corleone had been horrified.
“I would trust you with my whole fortune,”
he told the president.
“I would trust you with my life and the
welfare of my children.
It is inconceivable to me that you would ever
trick me or otherwise betray me.
My whole world, all my faith in my judgment
of human character would collapse.
Of course I have my own written records so
that if something should happen to me my heirs
would know that you hold something in trust
for them.
But I know that even if I were not here in
this world to guard the interests of my children,
you would be faithful to their needs.”
The president of the bank, though not Sicilian,
was a man of tender sensibilities.
He understood the Don perfectly.
Now the Godfather’s request was the president’s
command and so on a Saturday afternoon, the
executive suite of the bank, the conference
room with its deep leather chairs, its absolute
privacy, was made available to the Families.
Security at the bank was taken over by a small
army of handpicked men wearing bank guard
uniforms.
At ten o’clock on a Saturday morning the
conference room began to fill up.
Besides the Five Families of New York, there
were representatives from ten other Families
across the country, with the exception of
Chicago, that black sheep of their world.
They had given up trying to civilize Chicago,
and they saw no point in including those mad
dogs in this important conference.
A bar had been set up and a small buffet.
Each representative to the conference had
been allowed one aide.
Most of the Dons had brought their Consiglieres
as aides so there were comparatively few young
men in the room.
Tom Hagen was one of those young men and the
only one who was not Sicilian.
He was an object of curiosity, a freak.
Hagen knew his manners.
He did not speak, he did not smile.
He waited on his boss, Don Corleone, with
all the respect of a favorite earl waiting
on his king; bringing him a cold drink, lighting
his cigar, positioning his ashtray; with respect
but no obsequiousness.
Hagen was the only one in that room who knew
the identity of the portraits hanging on the
dark paneled walls.
They were mostly portraits of fabulous financial
figures done in rich oils.
One was of Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton.
Hagen could not help thinking that Hamilton
might have approved of this peace meeting
being held in a banking institution.
Nothing was more calming, more conducive to
pure reason, than the atmosphere of money.
The arrival time had been staggered for between
nine-thirty and ten a.m.
Don Corleone, in a sense the host since he
had initiated the peace talks, had been the
first to arrive; one of his many virtues was
punctuality.
The next to arrive was Carlo Tramonti, who
had made the southern part of the United States
his territory.
He was an impressively handsome middle-aged
man, tall for a Sicilian, with a very deep
sunburn, exquisitely tailored and barbered.
He did not look Italian, he looked more like
one of those pictures in the magazines of
millionaire fishermen lolling on their yachts.
The Tramonti Family earned its livelihood
from gambling, and no one meeting their Don
would ever guess with what ferocity he had
won his empire.
Emigrating from Sicily as a small boy, he
had settled in Florida and grown to manhood
there, employed by the American syndicate
of Southern small-town politicians who controlled
gambling.
These were very tough men backed up by very
tough police officials and they never suspected
that they could be overthrown by such a greenhorn
immigrant.
They were unprepared for his ferocity and
could not match it simply because the rewards
being fought over were not, to their minds,
worth so much bloodshed.
Tramonti won over the police with bigger shares
of the gross; he exterminated those redneck
hooligans who ran their operation with such
a complete lack of imagination.
It was Tramonti who opened ties with Cuba
and the Batista regime and eventually poured
money into the pleasure resorts of Havana
gambling houses, whorehouses, to lure gamblers
from the American mainland.
Tramonti was now a millionaire many times
over and owned one of the most luxurious hotels
in Miami Beach.
When he came into the conference room followed
by his aide, an equally sunburned Consigliere,
Tramonti embraced Don Corleone, made a face
of sympathy to show he sorrowed for the dead
son.
Other Dons were arriving.
They all knew each other, they had met over
the years, either socially or when in the
pursuit of their businesses.
They had always showed each other professional
courtesies and in their younger, leaner days
had done each other little services.
The second Don to arrive was Joseph Zaluchi
from Detroit.
The Zaluchi Family, under appropriate disguises
and covers, owned one of the horse-racing
tracks in the Detroit area.
They also owned a good part of the gambling.
Zaluchi was a moon-faced, amiable-looking
man who lived in a one-hundred-thousand-dollar
house in the fashionable Grosse Pointe section
of Detroit.
One of his sons had married into an old, well-known
American family.
Zaluchi, like Don Corleone, was sophisticated.
Detroit had the lowest incidence of physical
violence of any of the cities controlled by
the Families; there had been only two executions
in the last three years in that city.
He disapproved of traffic in drugs.
Zaluchi had brought his Consigliere with him
and both men came to Don Corleone to embrace
him.
Zaluchi had a booming American voice with
only the slightest trace of an accent.
He was conservatively dressed, very businessman,
and with a hearty goodwill to match.
He said to Don Corleone, “Only your voice
could have brought me here.”
Don Corleone bowed his head in thanks.
He could count on Zaluchi for support.
The next two Dons to arrive were from the
West Coast, motoring from there in the same
car since they worked together closely in
any case.
They were Frank Falcone and Anthony Molinari
and both were younger than any of the other
men who would come to the meeting; in their
early forties.
They were dressed a little more informally
than the others, there was a touch of Hollywood
in their style and they were a little more
friendly than necessary.
Frank Falcone controlled the movie unions
and the gambling at the studios plus a complex
of pipeline prostitution that supplied girls
to the whorehouses of the states in the Far
West.
It was not in the realm of possibility for
any Don to become “show biz” but Falcone
had just a touch.
His fellow Dons distrusted him accordingly.
Anthony Molinari controlled the waterfronts
of San Francisco and was preeminent in the
empire of sports gambling.
He came of Italian fishermen stock and owned
the best San Francisco sea food restaurant,
in which he took such pride that the legend
had it he lost money on the enterprise by
giving too good value for the prices charged.
He had the impassive face of the professional
gambler and it was known that he also had
something to do with dope smuggling over the
Mexican border and from the ships plying the
lanes of the oriental oceans.
Their aides were young, powerfully built men,
obviously not counselors but bodyguards, though
they would not dare to carry arms to this
meeting.
It was general knowledge that these bodyguards
knew karate, a fact that amused the other
Dons but did not alarm them in the slightest,
no more than if the California Dons had come
wearing amulets blessed by the Pope.
Though it must be noted that some of these
men were religious and believed in God.
Next arrived the representative from the Family
in Boston.
This was the only Don who did not have the
respect of his fellows.
He was known as a man who did not do right
by his “people,” who cheated them unmercifully.
This could be forgiven, each man measures
his own greed.
What could not be forgiven was that he could
not keep order in his empire.
The Boston area had too many murders, too
many petty wars for power, too many unsupported
free-lance activities; it flouted the law
too brazenly.
If the Chicago Mafia were savages, then the
Boston people were gavones, or uncouth louts;
ruffians.
The Boston Don’s name was Domenick Panza.
He was short, squat; as one Don put it, he
looked like a thief.
The Cleveland syndicate, perhaps the most
powerful of the strictly gambling operations
in the United States, was represented by a
sensitive-looking elderly man with gaunt features
and snow-white hair.
He was known, of course not to his face, as
“the Jew” because he had surrounded himself
with Jewish assistants rather than Sicilians.
It was even rumored that he would have named
a Jew as his Consigliere if he had dared.
In any case, as Don Corleone’s Family was
known as the Irish Gang because of Hagen’s
membership, so Don Vincent Forlenza’s Family
was known as the Jewish Family with somewhat
more accuracy.
But he ran an extremely efficient organization
and he was not known ever to have fainted
at the sight of blood, despite his sensitive
features.
He ruled with an iron hand in a velvet political
glove.
The representatives of the Five Families of
New York were the last to arrive and Tom Hagen
was struck by how much more imposing, impressive,
these five men were than the out-of-towners,
the hicks.
For one thing, the five New York Dons were
in the old Sicilian tradition, they were “men
with a belly” meaning, figuratively, power
and courage; and literally, physical flesh,
as if the two went together, as indeed they
seem to have done in Sicily.
The five New York Dons were stout, corpulent
men with massive leonine heads, features on
a large scale, fleshy imperial noses, thick
mouths, heavy folded cheeks.
They were not too well tailored or barbered;
they had the look of no-nonsense busy men
without vanity.
There was Anthony Stracci, who controlled
the New Jersey area and the shipping on the
West Side docks of Manhattan.
He ran the gambling in Jersey and was very
strong with the Democratic political machine.
He had a fleet of freight-hauling trucks that
made him a fortune primarily because his trucks
could travel with a heavy overload and not
be stopped and fined by highway weight inspectors.
These trucks helped ruin the highways and
then his road-building firm, with lucrative
state contracts, repaired the damage wrought.
It was the kind of operation that would warm
any man’s heart, business of itself creating
more business.
Stracci, too, was old-fashioned and never
dealt in prostitution, but because his business
was on the waterfront it was impossible for
him not to be involved in the drug-smuggling
traffic.
Of the five New York Families opposing the
Corleones his was the least powerful but the
most well disposed.
The Family that controlled upper New York
State, that arranged smuggling of Italian
immigrants from Canada, all upstate gambling
and exercised veto power on state licensing
of racing tracks, was headed by Ottilio Cuneo.
This was a completely disarming man with the
face of a jolly round peasant baker, whose
legitimate activity was one of the big milk
companies.
Cuneo was one of those men who loved children
and carried a pocket full of sweets in the
hopes of being able to pleasure one of his
many grandchildren or the small offspring
of his associates.
He wore a round fedora with the brim turned
down all the way round like a woman’s sun
hat, which broadened his already moon-shaped
face into the very mask of joviality.
He was one of the few Dons who had never been
arrested and whose true activities had never
even been suspected.
So much so that he had served on civic committees
and had been voted as “Businessman of the
Year for the State of New York” by the Chamber
of Commerce.
The closest ally to the Tattaglia Family was
Don Emilio Barzini.
He had some of the gambling in Brooklyn and
some in Queens.
He had some prostitution.
He had strong-arm.
He completely controlled Staten Island.
He had some of the sports betting in the Bronx
and Westchester.
He was in narcotics.
He had close ties to Cleveland and the West
Coast and he was one of the few men shrewd
enough to be interested in Las Vegas and Reno,
the open cities of Nevada.
He also had interests in Miami Beach and Cuba.
After the Corleone Family, his was perhaps
the strongest in New York and therefore in
the country.
His influence reached even to Sicily.
His hand was in every unlawful pie.
He was even rumored to have a toehold in Wall
Street.
He had supported the Tattaglia Family with
money and influence since the start of the
war.
It was his ambition to supplant Don Corleone
as the most powerful and respected Mafia leader
in the country and to take over part of the
Corleone empire.
He was a man much like Don Corleone, but more
modern, more sophisticated, more businesslike.
He could never be called an old Moustache
Pete and he had the confidence of the newer,
younger, brasher leaders on their way up.
He was a man of great personal force in a
cold way, with none of Don Corleone’s warmth
and he was perhaps at this moment the most
“respected” man in the group.
The last to arrive was Don Phillip Tattaglia,
the head of the Tattaglia Family that had
directly challenged the Corleone power by
supporting Sollozzo, and had so nearly succeeded.
And yet curiously enough he was held in a
slight contempt by the others.
For one thing, it was known that he had allowed
himself to be dominated by Sollozzo, had in
fact been led by the nose by that fine Turkish
hand.
He was held responsible for all this commotion,
this uproar that had so affected the conduct
of everyday business by the New York Families.
Also he was a sixty-year-old dandy and woman-chaser.
And he had ample opportunity to indulge his
weakness.
For the Tattaglia Family dealt in women.
Its main business was prostitution.
It also controlled most of the nightclubs
in the United States and could place any talent
anywhere in the country.
Phillip Tattaglia was not above using strong-arm
to get control of promising singers and comics
and muscling in on record firms.
But prostitution was the main source of the
Family income.
His personality was unpleasant to these men.
He was a whiner, always complaining of the
costs in his Family business.
Laundry bills, all those towels, ate up the
profits (but he owned the laundry firm that
did the work).
The girls were lazy and unstable, running
off, committing suicide.
The pimps were treacherous and dishonest and
without a shred of loyalty.
Good help was hard to find.
Young lads of Sicilian blood turned up their
noses at such work, considered it beneath
their honor to traffic and abuse women; those
rascals who would slit a throat with a song
on their lips and the cross of an Easter palm
in the lapel of their jackets.
So Phillip Tattaglia would rant on to audiences
unsympathetic and contemptuous.
His biggest howl was reserved for authorities
who had it in their power to issue and cancel
liquor licenses for his nightclubs and cabarets.
He swore he had made more millionaires than
Wall Street with the money he had paid those
thieving guardians of official seals.
In a curious way his almost victorious war
against the Corleone Family had not won him
the respect it deserved.
They knew his strength had come first from
Sollozzo and then from the Barzini Family.
Also the fact that with the advantage of surprise
he had not won complete victory was evidence
against him.
If he had been more efficient, all this trouble
could have been avoided.
The death of Don Corleone would have meant
the end of the war.
It was proper, since they had both lost sons
in their war against each other, that Don
Corleone and Phillip Tattaglia should acknowledge
each other’s presence only with a formal
nod.
Don Corleone was the object of attention,
the other men studying him to see what mark
of weakness had been left on him by his wounds
and defeats.
The puzzling factor was why Don Corleone had
sued for peace after the death of his favorite
son.
It was an acknowledgment of defeat and would
almost surely lead to a lessening of his power.
But they would soon know.
There were greetings, there were drinks to
be served and almost another half hour went
by before Don Corleone took his seat at the
polished walnut table.
Unobtrusively, Hagen sat in the chair slightly
to the Don’s left and behind him.
This was the signal for the other Dons to
make their way to the table.
Their aides sat behind them, the Consiglieres
up close so that they could offer any advice
when needed.
Don Corleone was the first to speak and he
spoke as if nothing had happened.
As if he had not been grievously wounded and
his eldest son slain, his empire in a shambles,
his personal family scattered, Freddie in
the West and under the protection of the Molinari
Family and Michael secreted in the wastelands
of Sicily.
He spoke naturally, in Sicilian dialect.
“I want to thank you all for coming,”
he said.
“I consider it a service done to me personally
and I am in the debt of each and every one
of you.
And so I will say at the beginning that I
am here not to quarrel or convince, but only
to reason and as a reasonable man do everything
possible for us all to part friends here too.
I give my word on that, and some of you who
know me well know I do not give my word lightly.
Ah, well, let’s get down to business.
We are all honorable men here, we don’t
have to give each other assurances as if we
were lawyers.”
He paused.
None of the others spoke.
Some were smoking cigars, others sipping their
drinks.
All of these men were good listeners, patient
men.
They had one other thing in common.
They were those rarities, men who had refused
to accept the rule of organized society, men
who refused the dominion of other men.
There was no force, no mortal man who could
bend them to their will unless they wished
it.
They were men who guarded their free will
with wiles and murder.
Their wills could be subverted only by death.
Or the utmost reasonableness.
Don Corleone sighed.
“How did things ever go so far?” he asked
rhetorically.
“Well, no matter.
A lot of foolishness has come to pass.
It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary.
But let me tell what happened, as I see it.”
He paused to see if someone would object to
his telling his side of the story.
“Thank God my health has been restored and
maybe I can help set this affair aright.
Perhaps my son was too rash, too headstrong,
I don’t say no to that.
Anyway let me just say that Sollozzo came
to me with a business affair in which he asked
me for my money and my influence.
He said he had the interest of the Tattaglia
Family.
The affair involved drugs, in which I have
no interest.
I’m a quiet man and such endeavors are too
lively for my taste.
I explained this to Sollozzo, with all respect
for him and the Tattaglia Family.
I gave him my ‘no’ with all courtesy.
I told him his business would not interfere
with mine, that I had no objection to his
earning his living in this fashion.
He took it ill and brought misfortune down
on all our heads.
Well, that’s life.
Everyone here could tell his own tale of sorrow.
That’s not to my purpose.”
Don Corleone paused and motioned to Hagen
for a cold drink, which Hagen swiftly furnished
him.
Don Corleone wet his mouth.
“I’m willing to make the peace,” he
said.
“Tattaglia has lost a son, I have lost a
son.
We are quits.
What would the world come to if people kept
carrying grudges against all reason?
That has been the cross of Sicily, where men
are so busy with vendettas they have no time
to earn bread for their families.
It’s foolishness.
So I say now, let things be as they were before.
I have not taken any steps to learn who betrayed
and killed my son.
Given peace, I will not do so.
I have a son who cannot come home and I must
receive assurances that when I arrange matters
so that he can return safely that there will
be no interference, no danger from the authorities.
Once that’s settled maybe we can talk about
other matters that interest us and do ourselves,
all of us, a profitable service today.”
Corleone gestured expressively, submissively,
with his hands.
“That is all I want.”
It was very well done.
It was the Don Corleone of old.
Reasonable.
Pliant.
Soft-spoken.
But every man there had noted that he had
claimed good health, which meant he was a
man not to be held cheaply despite the misfortunes
of the Corleone Family.
It was noted that he had said the discussion
of other business was useless until the peace
he asked for was given.
It was noted that he had asked for the old
status quo, that he would lose nothing despite
his having got the worst of it over the past
year.
However, it was Emilio Barzini who answered
Don Corleone, not Tattaglia.
He was curt and to the point without being
rude or insulting.
“That is all true enough,” Barzini said.
“But there’s a little more.
Don Corleone is too modest.
The fact is that Sollozzo and the Tattaglias
could not go into their new business without
the assistance of Don Corleone.
In fact, his disapproval injured them.
That’s not his fault of course.
The fact remains that judges and politicians
who would accept favors from Don Corleone,
even on drugs, would not allow themselves
to be influenced by anybody else when it came
to narcotics.
Sollozzo couldn’t operate if he didn’t
have some insurance of his people being treated
gently.
We all know that.
We would all be poor men otherwise.
And now that they have increased the penalties
the judges and the prosecuting attorneys drive
a hard bargain when one of our people gets
in trouble with narcotics.
Even a Sicilian sentenced to twenty years
might break the omerta and talk his brains
out.
That can’t happen.
Don Corleone controls all that apparatus.
His refusal to let us use it is not the act
of a friend.
He takes the bread out of the mouths of our
families.
Times have changed, it’s not like the old
days where everyone can go his own way.
If Corleone had all the judges in New York,
then he must share them or let us others use
them.
Certainly he can present a bill for such services,
we’re not communists, after all.
But he has to let us draw water from the well.
It’s that simple.”
When Barzini had finished talking there was
a silence.
The lines were now drawn, there could be no
return to the old status quo.
What was more important was that Barzini by
speaking out was saying that if peace was
not made he would openly join the Tattaglia
in their war against the Corleones.
And he had scored a telling point.
Their lives and their fortunes depended upon
their doing each other services, the denial
of a favor asked by a friend was an act of
aggression.
Favors were not asked lightly and so could
not be lightly refused.
Don Corleone finally spoke to answer.
“My friends,” he said, “I didn’t refuse
out of spite.
You all know me.
When have I ever refused an accommodation?
That’s simply not in my nature.
But I had to refuse this time.
Why?
Because I think this drug business will destroy
us in the years to come.
There is too much strong feeling about such
traffic in this country.
It’s not like whiskey or gambling or even
women which most people want and are forbidden
them by the pezzonovante of the church and
the government.
But drugs are dangerous for everyone connected
with them.
It could jeopardize all other business.
And let me say I’m flattered by the belief
that I am so powerful with the judges and
law officials, I wish it were true.
I do have some influence but many of the people
who respect my counsel might lose this respect
if drugs become involved in our relationship.
They are afraid to be involved in such business
and they have strong feelings about it.
Even policemen who help us in gambling and
other things would refuse to help us in drugs.
So to ask me to perform a service in these
matters is to ask me to do a disservice to
myself.
But I’m willing to do even that if all of
you think it proper in order to adjust other
matters.”
When Don Corleone had finished speaking the
room became much more relaxed with more whisperings
and cross talk.
He had conceded the important point.
He would offer his protection to any organized
business venture in drugs.
He was, in effect, agreeing almost entirely
to Sollozzo’s original proposal if that
proposal was endorsed by the national group
gathered here.
It was understood that he would never participate
in the operational phase, nor would he invest
his money.
He would merely use his protective influence
with the legal apparatus.
But this was a formidable concession.
The Don of Los Angeles, Frank Falcone, spoke
to answer.
“There’s no way of stopping our people
from going into that business.
They go in on their own and they get in trouble.
There’s too much money in it to resist.
So it’s more dangerous if we don’t go
in.
At least if we control it we can cover it
better, organize it better, make sure it causes
less trouble.
Being in it is not so bad, there has to be
control, there has to be protection, there
has to be organization, we can’t have everybody
running around doing just what they please
like a bunch of anarchists.”
The Don of Detroit, more friendly to Corleone
than any of the others, also now spoke against
his friend’s position, in the interest of
reasonableness.
“I don’t believe in drugs,” he said.
“For years I paid my people extra so they
wouldn’t do that kind of business.
But it didn’t matter, it didn’t help.
Somebody comes to them and says, ‘I have
powders, if you put up the three-, four-thousand-dollar
investment we can make fifty thousand distributing.’
Who can resist such a profit?
And they are so busy with their little side
business they neglect the work I pay them
to do.
There’s more money in drugs.
It’s getting bigger all the time.
There’s no way to stop it so we have to
control the business and keep it respectable.
I don’t want any of it near schools, I don’t
want any of it sold to children.
That is an infamita.
In my city I would try to keep the traffic
in the dark people, the colored.
They are the best customers, the least troublesome
and they are animals anyway.
They have no respect for their wives or their
families or for themselves.
Let them lose their souls with drugs.
But something has to be done, we just can’t
let people do as they please and make trouble
for everyone.”
This speech of the Detroit Don was received
with loud murmurs of approval.
He had hit the nail on the head.
You couldn’t even pay people to stay out
of the drug traffic.
As for his remarks about children, that was
his well-known sensibility, his tenderheartedness
speaking.
After all, who would sell drugs to children?
Where would children get the money?
As for his remarks about the coloreds, that
was not even heard.
The Negroes were considered of absolutely
no account, of no force whatsoever.
That they had allowed society to grind them
into the dust proved them of no account and
his mentioning them in any way proved that
the Don of Detroit had a mind that always
wavered toward irrelevancies.
All the Dons spoke.
All of them deplored the traffic in drugs
as a bad thing that would cause trouble but
agreed there was no way to control it.
There was, simply, too much money to be made
in the business; therefore it followed that
there would be men who would dare anything
to dabble in it.
That was human nature.
It was finally agreed.
Drug traffic would be permitted and Don Corleone
must give it some legal protection in the
East.
It was understood that the Barzini and Tattaglia
Families would do most of the large-scale
operations.
With this out of the way the conference was
able to move on to other matters of a wider
interest.
There were many complex problems to be solved.
It was agreed that Las Vegas and Miami were
to be open cities where any of the Families
could operate.
They all recognized that these were the cities
of the future.
It was also agreed that no violence would
be permitted in these cities and that petty
criminals of all types were to be discouraged.
It was agreed that in momentous affairs, in
executions that were necessary but might cause
too much of a public outcry, the execution
must be approved by this council.
It was agreed that button men and other soldiers
were to be restrained from violent crimes
and acts of vengeance against each other on
personal matters.
It was agreed that Families would do each
other services when requested, such as providing
executioners, technical assistance in pursuing
certain courses of action such as bribing
jurors, which in some instances could be vital.
These discussions, informal, colloquial and
on a high level, took time and were broken
by lunch and drinks from the buffet bar.
Finally Don Barzini sought to bring the meeting
to an end.
“That’s the whole matter then,” he said.
“We have the peace and let me pay my respects
to Don Corleone, whom we all have known over
the years as a man of his word.
If there are any more differences we can meet
again, we need not become foolish again.
On my part the road is new and fresh.
I’m glad this is all settled.”
Only Phillip Tattaglia was a little worried
still.
The murder of Santino Corleone made him the
most vulnerable person in this group if war
broke out again.
He spoke at length for the first time.
“I’ve agreed to everything here, I’m
willing to forget my own misfortune.
But I would like to hear some strict assurances
from Corleone.
Will he attempt any individual vengeance?
When time goes by and his position perhaps
becomes stronger, will he forget that we have
sworn our friendship?
How am I to know that in three or four years
he won’t feel that he’s been ill served,
forced against his will to this agreement
and so free to break it?
Will we have to guard against each other all
the time?
Or can we truly go in peace with peace of
mind?
Would Corleone give us all his assurances
as I now give mine?”
It was then that Don Corleone gave the speech
that would be long remembered, and that reaffirmed
his position as the most far-seeing statesman
among them, so full of common sense, so direct
from the heart, and to the heart of the matter.
In it he coined a phrase that was to become
as famous in its way as Churchill’s Iron
Curtain, though not public knowledge until
more than ten years later.
For the first time he stood up to address
the council.
He was short and a little thin from his “illness,”
perhaps his sixty years showed a bit more
but there was no question that he had regained
all his former strength, and had all his wits.
“What manner of men are we then, if we do
not have our reason,” he said.
“We are all no better than beasts in a jungle
if that were the case.
But we have reason, we can reason with each
other and we can reason with ourselves.
To what purpose would I start all these troubles
again, the violence and the turmoil?
My son is dead and that is a misfortune and
I must bear it, not make the innocent world
around me suffer with me.
And so I say, I give my honor, that I will
never seek vengeance, I will never seek knowledge
of the deeds that have been done in the past.
I will leave here with a pure heart.
“Let me say that we must always look to
our interests.
We are all men who have refused to be fools,
who have refused to be puppets dancing on
a string pulled by the men on high.
We have been fortunate here in this country.
Already most of our children have found a
better life.
Some of you have sons who are professors,
scientists, musicians, and you are fortunate.
Perhaps your grandchildren will become the
new pezzonovanti.
None of us here want to see our children follow
in our footsteps, it’s too hard a life.
They can be as others, their position and
security won by our courage.
I have grandchildren now and I hope their
children may someday, who knows, be a governor,
a President, nothing’s impossible here in
America.
But we have to progress with the times.
The time is past for guns and killings and
massacres.
We have to be cunning like the business people,
there’s more money in it and it’s better
for our children and our grandchildren.
“As for our own deeds, we are not responsible
to the .90 calibers, the pezzonovanti who
take it upon themselves to decide what we
shall do with our lives, who declare wars
they wish us to fight in to protect what they
own.
Who is to say we should obey the laws they
make for their own interest and to our hurt?
And who are they then to meddle when we look
after our own interests?
Sonna cosa nostra,” Don Corleone said, “these
are our own affairs.
We will manage our world for ourselves because
it is our world, cosa nostra.
And so we have to stick together to guard
against outside meddlers.
Otherwise they will put the ring in our nose
as they have put the ring in the nose of all
the millions of Neapolitans and other Italians
in this country.
“For this reason I forgo my vengeance for
my dead son, for the common good.
I swear now that as long as I am responsible
for the actions of my Family there will not
be one finger lifted against any man here
without just cause and utmost provocation.
I am willing to sacrifice my commercial interests
for the common good.
This is my word, this is my honor, there are
those of you here who know I have never betrayed
either.
“But I have a selfish interest.
My youngest son had to flee, accused of Sollozzo’s
murder and that of a police captain.
I must now make arrangements so that he can
come home with safety, cleared of all those
false charges.
That is my affair and I will make those arrangements.
I must find the real culprits perhaps, or
perhaps I must convince the authorities of
his innocence, perhaps the witnesses and informants
will recant their lies.
But again I say that this is my affair and
I believe I will be able to bring my son home.
“But let me say this.
I am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing
but I must confess it here.
And so if some unlucky accident should befall
my youngest son, if some police officer should
accidentally shoot him, if he should hang
himself in his cell, if new witnesses appear
to testify to his guilt, my superstition will
make me feel that it was the result of the
ill will still borne me by some people here.
Let me go further.
If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning
I will blame some of the people here.
If his plane should fall into the sea or his
ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean,
if he should catch a mortal fever, if his
automobile should be struck by a train, such
is my superstition that I would blame the
ill will felt by people here.
Gentlemen, that ill will, that bad luck, I
could never forgive.
But aside from that let me swear by the souls
of my grandchildren that I will never break
the peace we have made.
After all, are we or are we not better men
than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless
millions of men in our lifetimes?”
With this Don Corleone stepped from his place
and went down the table to where Don Phillip
Tattaglia was sitting.
Tattaglia rose to greet him and the two men
embraced, kissing each other’s cheeks.
The other Dons in the room applauded and rose
to shake hands with everybody in sight and
to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia
on their new friendship.
It was not perhaps the warmest friendship
in the world, they would not send each other
Christmas gift greetings, but they would not
murder each other.
That was friendship enough in this world,
all that was needed.
Since his son Freddie was under the protection
of the Molinari Family in the West, Don Corleone
lingered with the San Francisco Don after
the meeting to thank him.
Molinari said enough for Don Corleone to gather
that Freddie had found his niche out there,
was happy and had become something of a ladies’
man.
He had a genius for running a hotel, it seemed.
Don Corleone shook his head in wonder, as
many fathers do when told of undreamed-of
talents in their children.
Wasn’t it true that sometimes the greatest
misfortunes brought unforeseen rewards?
They both agreed that this was so.
Meanwhile Corleone made it clear to the San
Francisco Don that he was in his debt for
the great service done in protecting Freddie.
He let it be known that his influence would
be exerted so that the important racing wires
would always be available to his people no
matter what changes occurred in the power
structure in the years to come, an important
guarantee since the struggle over this facility
was a constant open wound complicated by the
fact that the Chicago people had their heavy
hand in it.
But Don Corleone was not without influence
even in that land of barbarians and so his
promise was a gift of gold.
It was evening before Don Corleone, Tom Hagen
and the bodyguard-chauffeur, who happened
to be Rocco Lampone, arrived at the mall in
Long Beach.
When they went into the house the Don said
to Hagen, “Our driver, that man Lampone,
keep an eye on him.
He’s a fellow worth something better, I
think.”
Hagen wondered at this remark.
Lampone had not said a word all day, had not
even glanced at the two men in the back seat.
He had opened the door for the Don, the car
had been in front of the bank when they emerged,
he had done everything correctly but no more
than any well-trained chauffeur might do.
Evidently the Don’s eye had seen something
he had not seen.
The Don dismissed Hagen and told him to come
back to the house after supper.
But to take his time and rest a little since
they would put in a long night of discussion.
He also told Hagen to have Clemenza and Tessio
present.
They should come at ten p.m. not before.
Hagen was to brief Clemenza and Tessio on
what had happened at the meeting that afternoon.
At ten the Don was waiting for the three men
in his office, the corner room of the house
with its law library and special phone.
There was a tray with whiskey bottles, ice
and soda water.
The Don gave his instructions.
“We made the peace this afternoon,” he
said.
“I gave my word and my honor and that should
be enough for all of you.
But our friends are not so trustworthy so
let’s all be on our guard still.
We don’t want any more nasty little surprises.”
The Don turned to Hagen.
“You’ve let the Bocchicchio hostages go?”
Hagen nodded.
“I called Clemenza as soon as I got home.”
Don Corleone turned to the massive Clemenza.
The caporegime nodded.
“I released them.
Tell me, Godfather, is it possible for a Sicilian
to be as dumb as the Bocchicchios pretend
to be?”
Don Corleone smiled a little.
“They are clever enough to make a good living.
Why is it so necessary to be more clever than
that?
It’s not the Bocchicchios who cause the
troubles of this world.
But it’s true, they haven’t got the Sicilian
head.”
They were all in a relaxed mood, now that
the war was over.
Don Corleone himself mixed drinks and brought
one to each man.
The Don sipped his carefully and lit up a
cigar.
“I want nothing set forth to discover what
happened to Sonny, that’s done with and
to be forgotten.
I want all cooperation with the other Families
even if they become a little greedy and we
don’t get our proper share in things.
I want nothing to break this peace no matter
what the provocation until we’ve found a
way to bring Michael home.
And I want that to be first thing on your
minds.
Remember this, when he comes back he must
come back in absolute safety.
I don’t mean from the Tattaglias or the
Barzinis.
What I’m concerned about are the police.
Sure, we can get rid of the real evidence
against him; that waiter won’t testify,
nor that spectator or gunman or whatever he
was.
The real evidence is the least of our worries
since we know about it.
What we have to worry about is the police
framing false evidence because their informers
have assured them that Michael Corleone is
the man who killed their captain.
Very well.
We have to demand that the Five Families do
everything in their power to correct this
belief of the police.
All their informers who work with the police
must come up with new stories.
I think after my speech this afternoon they
will understand it is to their interest to
do so.
But that’s not enough.
We have to come up with something special
so Michael won’t ever have to worry about
that again.
Otherwise there’s no point in him coming
back to this country.
So let’s all think about that.
That’s the most important matter.
“Now, any man should be allowed one foolishness
in his life.
I have had mine.
I want all the land around the mall bought,
the houses bought.
I don’t want any man able to look out his
window into my garden even if it’s a mile
away.
I want a fence around the mall and I want
the mall to be on full protection all the
time.
I want a gate in that fence.
In short, I wish now to live in a fortress.
Let me say to you now that I will never go
into the city to work again.
I will be semiretired.
I feel an urge to work in the garden, to make
a little wine when the grapes are in season.
I want to live in my house.
The only time I’ll leave is to go on a little
vacation or to see someone on important business
and then I want all precautions taken.
Now don’t take this amiss.
I’m not preparing anything.
I’m being prudent, I’ve always been a
prudent man, there is nothing I find so little
to my taste as carelessness in life.
Women and children can afford to be careless,
men cannot.
Be leisurely in all these things, no frantic
preparations to alarm our friends.
It can be done in such a way as to seem natural.
“Now I’m going to leave things more and
more up to each of you three.
I want the Santino regime disbanded and the
men placed in your regimes.
That should reassure our friends and show
that I mean peace.
Tom, I want you to put together a group of
men who will go to Las Vegas and give me a
full report on what is going on out there.
Tell me about Fredo, what is really happening
out there, I hear I wouldn’t recognize my
own son.
It seems he’s a cook now, that he amuses
himself with young girls more than a grown
man should.
Well, he was always too serious when he was
young and he was never the man for Family
business.
But let’s find out what really can be done
out there.”
Hagen said quietly, “Should we send your
son-in-law?
After all, Carlo is a native of Nevada, he
knows his way around.”
Don Corleone shook his head.
“No, my wife is lonely here without any
of her children.
I want Constanzia and her husband moved into
one of the houses on the mall.
I want Carlo given a responsible job, maybe
I’ve been too harsh on him, and”—Don
Corleone made a grimace—“I’m short of
sons.
Take him out of the gambling and put him in
with the unions where he can do some paper
work and a lot of talking.
He’s a good talker.”
There was the tiniest note of contempt in
the Don’s voice.
Hagen nodded.
“OK, Clemenza and I will go over all the
people and put together a group to do the
Vegas job.
Do you want me to call Freddie home for a
few days?”
The Don shook his head.
He said cruelly, “What for?
My wife can still cook our meals.
Let him stay out there.”
The three men shifted uneasily in their seats.
They had not realized Freddie was in such
severe disfavor with his father and they suspected
it must be because of something they did not
know.
Don Corleone sighed.
“I hope to grow some good green peppers
and tomatoes in the garden this year, more
than we can eat.
I’ll make you presents of them.
I want a little peace, a little quiet and
tranquillity for my old age.
Well, that’s all.
Have another drink if you like.”
It was a dismissal.
The men rose.
Hagen accompanied Clemenza and Tessio to their
cars and arranged meetings with them to thrash
out the operational details that would accomplish
the stated desires of their Don.
Then he went back into the house where he
knew Don Corleone would be waiting for him.
The Don had taken off his jacket and tie and
was lying down on the couch.
His stern face was relaxed into lines of fatigue.
He waved Hagen into a chair and said, “Well,
Consigliere, do you disapprove of any of my
deeds today?”
Hagen took his time answering.
“No,” he said.
“But I don’t find it consistent, nor true
to your nature.
You say you don’t want to find out how Santino
was killed or want vengeance for it.
I don’t believe that.
You gave your word for peace and so you’ll
keep the peace but I can’t believe you will
give your enemies the victory they seem to
have won today.
You’ve constructed a magnificent riddle
that I can’t solve, so how can I approve
or disapprove?”
A look of content came over the Don’s face.
“Well, you know me better than anyone else.
Even though you’re not a Sicilian, I made
you one.
Everything you say is true, but there’s
a solution and you’ll comprehend it before
it spins out to the end.
You agree everyone has to take my word and
I’ll keep my word.
And I want my orders obeyed exactly.
But, Tom, the most important thing is we have
to get Michael home as soon as possible.
Make that first in your mind and in your work.
Explore all the legal alleys, I don’t care
how much money you have to spend.
It has to be foolproof when he comes home.
Consult the best lawyers on criminal law.
I’ll give you the names of some judges who
will give you a private audience.
Until that time we have to guard against all
treacheries.”
Hagen said, “Like you, I’m not worried
so much about the real evidence as the evidence
they will manufacture.
Also some police friend may kill Michael after
he’s arrested.
They may kill him in his cell or have one
of the prisoners do it.
As I see it, we can’t even afford to have
him arrested or accused.”
Don Corleone sighed.
“I know, I know.
That’s the difficulty.
But we can’t take too long.
There are troubles in Sicily.
The young fellows over there don’t listen
to their elders anymore and a lot of the men
deported from America are just too much for
the old-fashioned Dons to handle.
Michael could get caught in between.
I’ve taken some precautions against that
and he’s still got a good cover but that
cover won’t last forever.
That’s one of the reasons I had to make
the peace.
Barzini has friends in Sicily and they were
beginning to sniff Michael’s trail.
That gives you one of the answers to your
riddle.
I had to make the peace to insure my son’s
safety.
There was nothing else to do.”
Hagen didn’t bother asking the Don how he
had gotten this information.
He was not even surprised, and it was true
that this solved part of the riddle.
“When I meet with Tattaglia’s people to
firm up the details, should I insist that
all his drug middlemen be clean?
The judges will be a little skittish about
giving light sentences to a man with a record.”
Don Corleone shrugged.
“They should be smart enough to figure that
out themselves.
Mention it, don’t insist.
We’ll do our best but if they use a real
snowbird and he gets caught, we won’t lift
a finger.
We’ll just tell them nothing can be done.
But Barzini is a man who will know that without
being told.
You notice how he never committed himself
in this affair.
One might never have known he was in any way
concerned.
That is a man who doesn’t get caught on
the losing side.”
Hagen was startled.
“You mean he was behind Sollozzo and Tattaglia
all the time?”
Don Corleone sighed.
“Tattaglia is a pimp.
He could never have out-fought Santino.
That’s why I don’t have to know about
what happened.
It’s enough to know that Barzini had a hand
in it.”
Hagen let this sink in.
The Don was giving him clues but there was
something very important left out.
Hagen knew what it was but he knew it was
not his place to ask.
He said good night and turned to go.
The Don had a last word for him.
“Remember, use all your wits for a plan
to bring Michael home,” the Don said.
“And one other thing.
Arrange with the telephone man so that every
month I get a list of all the telephone calls,
made and received, by Clemenza and Tessio.
I suspect them of nothing.
I would swear they would never betray me.
But there’s no harm in knowing any little
thing that may help us before the event.”
Hagen nodded and went out.
He wondered if the Don was keeping a check
on him also in some way and then was ashamed
of his suspicion.
But now he was sure that in the subtle and
complex mind of the Godfather a far-ranging
plan of action was being initiated that made
the day’s happenings no more than a tactical
retreat.
And there was that one dark fact that no one
mentioned, that he himself had not dared to
ask, that Don Corleone ignored.
All pointed to a day of reckoning in the future.
Chapter 21
But it was to be nearly another year before
Don Corleone could arrange for his son Michael
to be smuggled back into the United States.
During that time the whole Family racked their
brains for suitable schemes.
Even Carlo Rizzi was listened to now that
he was living in the mall with Connie.
(During that time they had a second child,
a boy.)
But none of the schemes met with the Don’s
approval.
Finally it was the Bocchicchio Family who
through a misfortune of its own solved the
problem.
There was one Bocchicchio, a young cousin
of no more than twenty-five years of age,
named Felix, who was born in America and with
more brains than anyone in the clan had ever
had before.
He had refused to be drawn into the Family
garbage-hauling business and married a nice
American girl of English stock to further
his split from the clan.
He went to school at night, to become a lawyer,
and worked during the day as a civil service
post office clerk.
During that time he had three children but
his wife was a prudent manager and they lived
on his salary until he got his law degree.
Now Felix Bocchicchio, like many young men,
thought that having struggled to complete
his education and master the tools of his
profession, his virtue would automatically
be rewarded and he would earn a decent living.
This proved not to be the case.
Still proud, he refused all help from his
clan.
But a lawyer friend of his, a young man well
connected and with a budding career in a big
law firm, talked Felix into doing him a little
favor.
It was very complicated, seemingly legal,
and had to do with a bankruptcy fraud.
It was a million-to-one shot against its being
found out.
Felix Bocchicchio took the chance.
Since the fraud involved using the legal skills
he had learned in a university, it seemed
not so reprehensible, and, in an odd way,
not even criminal.
To make a foolish story short, the fraud was
discovered.
The lawyer friend refused to help Felix in
any manner, refused to even answer his telephone
calls.
The two principals in the fraud, shrewd middle-aged
businessmen who furiously blamed Felix Bocchicchio’s
legal clumsiness for the plan going awry,
pleaded guilty and cooperated with the state,
naming Felix Bocchicchio as the ringleader
of the fraud and claiming he had used threats
of violence to control their business and
force them to cooperate with him in his fraudulent
schemes.
Testimony was given that linked Felix with
uncles and cousins in the Bocchicchio clan
who had criminal records for strong-arm, and
this evidence was damning.
The two businessmen got off with suspended
sentences.
Felix Bocchicchio was given a sentence of
one to five years and served three of them.
The clan did not ask help from any of the
Families or Don Corleone because Felix had
refused to ask their help and had to be taught
a lesson: that mercy comes only from the Family,
that the Family is more loyal and more to
be trusted than society.
In any case, Felix Bocchicchio was released
from prison after serving three years, went
home and kissed his wife and three children
and lived peacefully for a year, and then
showed that he was of the Bocchicchio clan
after all.
Without any attempt to conceal his guilt,
he procured a weapon, a pistol, and shot his
lawyer friend to death.
He then searched out the two businessmen and
calmly shot them both through the head as
they came out of a luncheonette.
He left the bodies lying in the street and
went into the luncheonette and ordered a cup
of coffee which he drank while he waited for
the police to come and arrest him.
His trial was swift and his judgment merciless.
A member of the criminal underworld had cold-bloodedly
murdered state witnesses who had sent him
to the prison he richly deserved.
It was a flagrant flouting of society and
for once the public, the press, the structure
of society and even soft-headed and soft-hearted
humanitarians were united in their desire
to see Felix Bocchicchio in the electric chair.
The governor of the state would no more grant
him clemency than the officials of the pound
spare a mad dog, which was the phrase of one
of the governor’s closest political aides.
The Bocchicchio clan of course would spend
whatever money was needed for appeals to higher
courts, they were proud of him now, but the
conclusion was certain.
After the legal folderol, which might take
a little time, Felix Bocchicchio would die
in the electric chair.
It was Hagen who brought this case to the
attention of the Don at the request of one
of the Bocchicchios who hoped that something
could be done for the young man.
Don Corleone curtly refused.
He was not a magician.
People asked him the impossible.
But the next day the Don called Hagen into
his office and had him go over the case in
the most intimate detail.
When Hagen was finished, Don Corleone told
him to summon the head of the Bocchicchio
clan to the mall for a meeting.
What happened next had the simplicity of genius.
Don Corleone guaranteed to the head of the
Bocchicchio clan that the wife and children
of Felix Bocchicchio would be rewarded with
a handsome pension.
The money for this would be handed over to
the Bocchicchio clan immediately.
In turn, Felix must confess to the murder
of Sollozzo and the police captain McCluskey.
There were many details to be arranged.
Felix Bocchicchio would have to confess convincingly,
that is, he would have to know some of the
true details to confess to.
Also he must implicate the police captain
in narcotics.
Then the waiter at the Luna Restaurant must
be persuaded to identify Felix Bocchicchio
as the murderer.
This would take some courage, as the description
would change radically, Felix Bocchicchio
being much shorter and heavier.
But Don Corleone would attend to that.
Also since the condemned man had been a great
believer in higher education and a college
graduate, he would want his children to go
to college.
And so a sum of money would have to be paid
by Don Corleone that would take care of the
children’s college.
Then the Bocchicchio clan had to be reassured
that there was no hope for clemency on the
original murders.
The new confession of course would seal the
man’s already almost certain doom.
Everything was arranged, the money paid and
suitable contact made with the condemned man
so that he could be instructed and advised.
Finally the plan was sprung and the confession
made headlines in all the newspapers.
The whole thing was a huge success.
But Don Corleone, cautious as always, waited
until Felix Bocchicchio was actually executed
four months later before finally giving the
command that Michael Corleone could return
home.
