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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
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Eden.
He had planned to walk to the coastal village of Mazara, and
then take a bus back to Corleone in the evening, and so tire himself out and be
able to sleep. The two shepherds wore rucksacks filled with bread and cheese
they could eat on the way. They carried their luparas quite openly as if out
for a day’s hunting.
It was a most beautiful morning. Michael felt as he had felt
when as a child he had gone out early on a summer day to play ball. Then each
day had been freshly washed, freshly painted. And so it was now. Sicily was
carpeted is gaudy flowers, the scent of orange and lemon blossoms so heavy that
even with his facial injury which pressed on the sinuses, he could smell it.
The smashing on the left site of his face had completely
healed but the bone had formed improperly and the pressure on his sinuses made
his left eye hurt. It also made his nose run continually, he filled up
handkerchiefs with mucus and often blew his nose out onto the ground as the
local peasants did, a habit that had disgusted him when he was a boy and had
seen old Italians, disdaining handkerchiefs as English foppery, blow out their
noses in the asphalt gutters.
His face too felt “heavy.” Dr. Taza had told him that this
was due to the pressure on his sinuses caused by the badly healed fracture. Dr.
Taza called it an eggshell fracture of the zygoma; that if it had been treated
before the bones knitted, it could have been easily remedied by a minor
surgical procedure using an instrument like a spoon to push out the bone to its
proper shape. Now, however, said the dootor, he would have to check into a
Palermo hospital and undergo a major procedure called maxillo-facial surgery
where the bone would be broken again. That was enough for Michael. He refused.
And yet more than the pain, more than the nose dripping, he was bothered by the
feeling of heaviness in his face.
He never reached the coast that day. After going about
fifteen miles he and his shepherds stopped in the cool green watery shade of an
orange grove to eat lunch and drink their wine. Fabrizzio was chattering about
how he would someday get to America. After drinking and eating they lolled in
the shade and Fabrizzio unbuttoned his shirt and contracted his stomach muscles
to make the tattoo come alive. The naked couple on his chest writhed in a
lover’s agony and the dagger thrust by the husband quivered in their transfixed
flesh. It amused them. It was while this was going on that Michael was hit with
what the Sicilians call “the thunderbolt.”
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Beyond the orange grove lay the green ribboned fields of a
baronial estate. Down the road from the grove was a villa so Roman it looked as
if it had been dug up from the ruins of Pompeii. It was a little palace with a
huge marble portico and fluted Grecian columns and through those columns came a
bevy of village girls flanked by two stout matrons clad in black. They were
from the village and had obviously fulfilled their ancient duty to the local
baron by cleaning his villa and otherwise preparing it for his winter sojourn.
Now they were going into the fields to pick the flowers with which they would
fill the rooms. They were gathering the pink sulla, purple wisteria, mixing
them with orange and lemon blossoms. The girls, not seeing the men resting in
the orange grove, came closer and closer.
They were dressed in cheap gaily printed frocks that clung
to their bodies. They were still in their teens but with the full womanliness
sun-drenched flesh ripened into so quickly. Three or four of them started
chasing one girl, chasing her toward the grove. The girl being chased held a
bunch of huge purple grapes in her left hand and with her right hand was
picking grapes off the cluster and throwing them at her pursuers. She had a
crown of ringleted hair as purple-black as the grapes and her body seemed to be
bursting out of its skin.
Just short of the grove she poised, startled, her eyes
having caught the alien color of the men’s shirts. She stood there up on her
toes poised like a deer to run. She was very close now, close enough for the
men to see every feature of her face.
She was all ovals– oval-shaped eyes, the bones of her face,
the contour of her brow. Her skin was an exquisite dark creaminess and her
eyes, enormous, dark violet or brown but dark with long heavy lashes shadowed
her lovely face. Her mouth was rich without being gross, sweet without being
weak and dyed dark red with the juice of the grapes. She was so incredibly
lovely that Fabrizzio murmured, “Jesus Christ, take my soul, I’m dying,” as a
joke, but the words came out a little too hoarsely. As if she had heard him,
the girl came down off her toes and whirled away from them and. fled back to
her pursuers. Her haunches moved like an animal’s beneath the tight print of
her dress; as pagan and as innocently lustful. When she reached her friends she
whirled around again and her face was like a dark hollow against the field of
bright flowers. She extended an arm, the hand full of grapes pointed toward the
grove. The girls fled laughing, with the black-clad, stout matrons scolding
them on.
As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing, his
heart pounding in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging
through his body, through all its extremities and
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pounding against the tips of his fingers, the tips of his
toes. All the perfumes of the island came rushing in on the wind, orange, lemon
blossoms, grapes, flowers. It seemed as if his body had sprung away from him
out of himself. And then he heard the two shepherds laughing.
“You got hit by the thunderbolt, eh?” Fabrizzio said,
clapping him on the shoulder. Even Calo became friendly, patting him on the arm
and saying, “Easy, man, easy,” but with affection. As if Michael had been hit
by a car. Fabrizzio handed him a wine bottle and Michael took a long slug. It
cleared his head.
“What the hell are you damn sheep
lovers talking about?” he said.
Both men laughed. Calo, his honest face filled with the
utmost seriousness, said, “You can’t hide the thunderbolt. When it hits you,
everybody can see it. Christ, man, don’t be ashamed of it, some men pray for
the thunderbolt. You’re a lucky fellow.”
Michael wasn’t too pleased about his emotions being so
easily read. But this was the first time in his life such a thing had happened
to him. It was nothing like his adolescent crushes, it was nothing like the
love he’d had for Kay, a love based as much on her sweetness, her intelligence
and the polarity of the fair and dark. This was an overwhelming desire for
possession, this was an unerasable printing of the girl’s face on his brain and
he knew she would haunt his memory every day of his life if he did not possess
her. His life had become simplified, focused on one point, everything else was
unworthy of even a moment’s attention. During his exile he had always thought
of Kay, though he felt they could never again be lovers or even friends. He
was, after all was said, a murderer, a Mafioso who had “made his bones.” But
now Kay was wiped completely out of his consciousness.
Fabrizzio said briskly, “I’ll go to the village, we’ll find
out about her. Who knows, she may be more available than we think. There’s only
one cure for the thunderbolt, eh, Calo?”
The other shepherd nodded his head gravely. Michael didn’t
say anything. He followed the two shepherds as they started down tie road to
the nearby village into which the flock of girls had disappeared.
The village was grouped around the usual central square with
its fountain. But it was on a main route so there were some stores, wine shops
and one little cafe with three tables out on a small terrace. The shepherds sat
at one of the tables and Michael joined them. There was no sign of the girls,
not a trace. The village seemed deserted except for small boys and a meandering
donkey.
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The proprietor of the cafe came to serve them. He was a
short, burly man, almost dwarfish but he greeted them cheerfully and set a dish
of chickpeas at their table. “You’re strangers here,” he said, “so let me
advise you. Try my wine. The grapes come from my own farm and it’s made by my
sons themselves. They mix it with oranges and lemons. It’s the best wine in
Italy.”
They let him bring the wine in a jug and it was even better
than he claimed, dark purple and as powerful as a brandy. Fabrizzo said to the
cafe proprietor, “You know all the girls here, I’ll bet. We saw some beauties
coming down the road, one in particular got our friend here hit with the
thunderbolt.” He motioned to Michael.
The cafe owner looked at Michael with new interest. The
cracked face had seemed quite ordinary to him before, not worth a second
glance. But a man hit with the thunderbolt was another matter. “You had better
bring a few bottles home with you, my friend,” he said. “You’ll need help in
getting to sleep tonight.”
Michael asked the man, “Do you know a girl with her hair all
curly? Very creamy skin, very big eyes, very dark eyes. Do you know a girl like
that in the village?”
The cafe owner said curdy, “No. I don’t know any girl like
that.” He vanished from the terrace into his cafe.
The three men drank their wine slowly, finished off the jug
and called for more. The owner did not reappear. Fabrizzio went into the cafe
after him. When Fabrizzio came out he grimaced and said to Michael, “Just as I
thought, it’s his daughter we were talking about and now he’s in the back
boiling up his blood to do us a mischief. I think we’d better start walking
toward Corleone.”
Despite his months on the island Michael still could not get
used to the Sicilian touchiness on matters of sex, and this was extreme even
for a Sicilian. But the two shepherds seemed to take it as a matter of course.
They were waiting for him to leave. Fabrizzio said, “The old bastard mentioned
he has two sons, big tough lads that he has only to whistle up. Let’s get
going.”
Michael gave him a cold stare. Up to now he had been a
quiet, gentle young man, a typical American, except that since he was hiding in
Sicily he must have done something manly. This was the first time the shepherds
had seen the Corleone stare. Don Tommasino, knowing Michael’s true identity and
deed, had always been wary of him, treating him as a fellow “man of respect.”
But these unsophisticated sheep herders had come to their own opinion of
Michael, and not a wise one. The cold look, Michael’s
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rigid white face, his anger that came off him like cold
smoke off ice, sobered their laughter and snuffed out their familiar
friendliness.
When he saw he had their proper, respectful attention
Michael said to them, “Get that man out here to me.”
They didn’t hesitate. They shouldered their luparas and went
into the dark coolness of the cafe. A few seconds later they reappeared with
the cafe owner between them. The stubby man looked in no way frightened but his
anger had a certain wariness about it.
Michael leaned back in his chair and studied the man for a
moment. Then he said very quietly, “I understand I’ve offended you by talking
about your daughter. I offer you my apologies, I’m a stranger in this country,
i don’t know the customs that well. Let me say this. I meant no disrespect to
you or her.”
The shepherd bodyguards were impressed. Michael’s voice had
never sounded like this before when speaking to them. There was command and
authority in it though he was making an apology. The cafe owner shrugged, more
wary still, knowing he was not dealing with some farmboy. “Who are you and what
do you want from my daughter?”
Without even hesitating Michael said, “I am an American
hiding in Sicily, from the police of my country. My name is Michael. You can
inform the police and make your fortune but then your daughter would lose a
father rather than gain a husband. In any case I want to meet your daughter.
With your permission and under the supervision of your family. With all
decorum. With all respect. I’m an honorable man and I don’t think of dishonoring
your daughter. I want to meet her, talk to her and then if it hits us both
right we’ll marry. If not, you’ll never see me again. She may find me
unsympathetic after all, and no man can remedy that. But when the proper time
comes I’ll tell you everything about me that a wife’s father should know.”
All three men were looking at him with amazement. Fabrizzio
whispered in awe, “It’s the real thunderbolt.” The cafe owner, for the first
time, didn’t look so confident, or contemptuous; his anger was not so sure.
Finally he asked, “Are you a friend of the friends?”
Since the word Mafia could never be uttered aloud by the
ordinary Sicilian, this was as close as the cafe owner could come to asking if
Michael was a member of the Mafia. It was the usual way of asking if someone
belonged but it was ordinarily not addressed to the person directly concerned.
“No,” Michael said. “I’m a stranger in
this country.”
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The cafe owner gave him another look, the smashed left side
of his face, the long legs rare in Sicily. He took a look at the two shepherds
carrying their luparas quite openly without fear and remembered how they had
come into his cafe and told him their padrone wanted to talk to him. The cafe
owner had snarled that he wanted the son of a bitch out of his terrace and one
of the shepherds had said, “Take my word, it’s best you go out and speak to him
yourself.” And something had made him come out. Now something made him realize
that it would be best to show this stranger some courtesy. He said grudgingly,
“Come Sunday afternoon. My name is Vitelli and my house is up there on the
hill, above the village. But come here to the cafe and I’ll take you up.”
Fabrizzio started to say something but Michael gave him one
look and the shepherd’s tongue froze in his mouth. This was not lost on
Vitelli. So when Michael stood up and stretched out his hand, the cafe owner
took it and smiled. He would make some inquiries and if the answers were wrong
he could always greet Michael with his two sons bearing their own shotguns. The
cafe owner was not without his contacts among the “friends of the friends.” But
something told him this was one of those wild strokes of good fortune that
Sicilians always believed in, something told him that his daughter’s beauty
would make her fortune and her family secure. And it was just as well. Some of
the local youths were already beginning to buzz around and this stranger with
his broken face could do the necessary job of scaring them off. Vitelli, to
show his goodwill, sent the strangers off with a bottle of his best and coldest
wine. He noticed that one of the shepherds paid the bill. This impressed him
even more, made it clear that Michael was the superior of the two men who
accompanied him.
Michael was no longer interested in his hike. They found a
garage and hired a car and driver to take them back to Corleone, and some time
before supper, Dr. Taza must have been informed by the shepherds of what had
happen. That evening, sitting in the garden, Dr. Taza said to Don Tommasino,
“Our friend got hit by the thunderbolt today.”
Don Tommasino did not seem surprised. He grunted. “I wish
some of those young fellows in Palermo would get a thunderbolt, maybe I could
get some peace.” He was talking about the new-style Mafia chiefs rising in the
big cities of Palermo and challenging the power of old-regime stalwarts like
himself.
Michael said to Tommasino, “I want you to tell those two
sheep herders to leave me alone Sunday. I’m going to go to this girl’s family
for dinner and I don’t want them hanging around.”
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Don Tommasino shook his head. “I’m responsible to your
father for you, don’t ask me that. Another thing, I hear you’ve even talked
marriage. I can’t allow that until I’ve sent somebody to speak to your father.”
Michael Corleone was very careful, this was after all a man
of respect. “Don Tommasino, you know my father. He’s a man who goes deaf when
somebody says the word no to him. And he doesn’t get his hearing back until
they answer him with a yes. Well, he has heard my no many times. I understand
about the two guards, I don’t want to cause you trouble, they can come with me
Sunday, but if I want to marry I’ll marry. Surely if I don’t permit my own
father to interfere with my personal life it would be an insult to him to allow
you to do so.”
The capo-mafioso sighed. “Well, then, marriage it will have
to be. I know your thunderbolt. She’s a good girl from a respectable family.
You can’t dishonor them without the father trying to kill you, and then you’ll
have to shed blood. Besides, I know the family well, I can’t allow it to
happen.”
Michael said, “She may not be able to stand the sight of me,
and she’s a very young girl, she’ll think me old.” He saw the two men smiling
at him. “I’ll need some money for presents and I think I’ll need a car.”
The Don nodded. “Fabrizzio will take care of everything,
he’s a clever boy, they taught him mechanics in the navy. I’ll give you some
money in the morning and I’ll let your father know what’s happening. That I
must do.”
Michael said to Dr. Taza, “Have you got anything that can
dry up this damn snot always coming out of my nose? I can’t have that girl
seeing me wiping it all the time.”
Dr. Taza said, “I’ll coat it with a drug before you have to
see her. It makes your flesh a little numb but, don’t worry, you won’t be
kissing her for a while yet.” Both doctor and Don smiled at this witticism.
By Sunday, Michael had an Alfa Romeo, battered but
serviceable. He had also made a bus trip to Palermo to buy presents for the
girl and her family. He had learned that the girl’s name was Apollonia and
every night he thought of her lovely face and her lovely name. He had to drink
a good deal of wine to get some sleep and orders were given to the old women
servants in the house to leave a chilled bottle at his bedside. He drank.it
empty every night.
On Sunday, to the tolling of church bells that covered all
of Sicily, he drove the Alfa Romeo to the village and parked it just outside
the cafe. Calo and Fabrizzio were in the
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back seat with their luparas and Michael told them they were
to wait in the cafe, they were not to come to the house. The cafe was closed
but Vitelli was there waiting for them, leaning against the railing of his
empty terrace.
They shook hands all around and Michael took the three
packages, the presents, and trudged up the hill with Vitelli to his home. This
proved to be larger than the usual village hut, the Vitellis were not
poverty-stricken.
Inside the house was familiar with statues of the Madonna
entombed in glass, votive lights flickering redly at their feet. The two sons
were waiting, also dressed in their Sunday black. They were two sturdy young
men just out of their teens but liking older because of their hard work on the
farm. The mother was a vigorous woman, as stout as her husband. There was no
sign of the girl.
After the introductions, which Michael did not even hear,
they sat in the room that might possibly have been a living room or just as
easily the formal dining room. It was cluttered with all kinds of furniture and
not very large but for Sicily it was middle-class splendor.
Michael gave Signor Vitelli and Signora Vitelli their
presents. For the father it was a gold cigar-cutter, for the mother a bolt of
the finest cloth purchasable in Palermo. He still had one package for the girl.
His presents were received with reserved thanks. The gifts were a little too
premature, he should not have given anything until his second visit.
The father said to him, in man-to-man country fashion,
“Don’t think we’re so of no account to welcome strangers into our house so
easily. But Don Tommasino vouched for you personally and nobody in this
province would ever doubt the word of that good man. And so we make you
welcome. But I must tell you that if your intentions are serious about my
daughter, we will have to know a little more about you and your family. You can
understand, your family is from this country.”
Michael nodded and said politely, “I
will tell you anything you wish to know anytime.”
Signor Vitelli held up a hand. “I’m not a nosy man. Let’s
see if it’s necessary first. Right now you’re welcome in my house as a friend
of Don Tommasino.”
Despite the drug painted inside his nose, Michael actually smelled
the girl’s presence in the room. He turned and she was standing in the arched
doorway that led to the back of the house. The smell was of fresh flowers and
lemon blossoms but she wore nothing in
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her hair of jet black curls, nothing on her plain severe
black dress, obviously her Sunday best. She gave him a quick glance and a tiny
smile before she cast her eyes down demurely and sat down next to her mother.
Again Michael felt that shortness of breath, that flooding
through his body of something that was not so much desire as an insane
possessiveness. He understood for the first time the classical jealousy of the
Italian male. He was at that moment ready to kill anyone who touched this girl,
who tried to claim her, take her away from him. He wanted to own her as wildly
as a miser wants to own gold coins, as hungrily as a sharecropper wants to own
his own land. Nothing was going to stop him from owning this girl, possessing
her, locking her in a house and keeping her prisoner only for himself. He
didn’t want anyone even to see her. When she turned to smile at one of her
brothers Michael gave that young man a murderous look without even realizing
it. The family could see it was a classical case of the “thunderbolt” and they
were reassured. This young man would be putty in their daughter’s hands until
they were married. After that of course things would change but it wouldn’t
matter.
Michael had bought himself some new clothes in Palermo and
was no longer the roughly dressed peasant, and it was obvious to the family
that he was a Don of some kind. His smashed face did not make him as
evil-looking as he believed; because his other profile was so handsome it made
the disfigurement interesting even. And in any case this was a land where to be
called disfigured you had to compete with a host of men who had suffered
extreme physical misfortune.
Michael looked directly at the girl, the lovely ovals of her
face. Her lips now he could see were almost blue so dark was the blood pulsating
in them. He said, not daring to speak her name, “I saw you by the orange groves
the other day. When you ran away. I hope I didn’t frighten you?”
The girl raised her eyes to him for just a fraction. She
shook her head. But the loveliness of those eyes had made Michael look away.
The mother said tartly, “Apollonia, speak to the poor fellow, he’s come miles
to see you,” but the girl’s long jet lashes remained closed like wings over her
eyes. Michael handed her the present wrapped in gold paper and the girl put it
in her lap. The father said, “Open it, girl,” but her hands did not move. Her
hands were small and brown, an urchin’s hands. The mother reached over and
opened the package impatiently, yet careful not to tear the precious paper. The
red velvet jeweler’s box gave her pause, she had never held such a thing in her
hands and didn’t know how to spring its catch. But she got it open on pure
instinct and then took
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out the present.
It was a heavy gold chain to be worn as a necklace, and it
awed them not only because of its obvious value but because a gift of gold in
this society was also a statement of the most serious intentions. It was no
less than a proposal of matrimony, or rather the signal that there was the intention
to propose matrimony. They could no longer doubt the seriousness of this
stranger. And they could not doubt his substance.
Apollonia still had not touched her present. Her mother held
it up for her to see and she raised those long lashes for a moment and then she
looked directly at Michael, her doelike brown eyes grave, and said, “Grazie.”
It was the first time he had heard her voice.
It had all the velvety softness of youth and shyness and it
set Michael’s ears ringing. He kept looking away from her and talking to the
father and mother simply because looking at her confused him so much. But he
noticed that despite the conservative looseness of her dress her body almost
shone through the cloth with sheer sensuality. And he noticed the darkening of
her skin blushing, the dark creamy skin, going darker with the blood surging to
her feet.
Finally Michael rose to go and the family rose too. They
said their good-byes formally, the girl at last confronting him as they shook
hands, and he felt the shock of her skin on his skin, her skin warm and rough,
peasant skin. The father walked down the hill with him to his car and invited
him to Sunday dinner the next week. Michael nodded but he knew he couldn’t wait
a week to see the girl again.
He didn’t. The next day, without his shepherds, he drove to
the village and sat on the garden terrace of the cafe to chat with her father.
Signor Vitelli took pity on him and sent for his wife and daughter to come down
to the cafe to join them. This meeting was less awkward. The girl Apollonia was
less shy, and spoke more. She was dressed in her everyday print frock which
suited her coloring much better.
The next day the same thing happened. Only this time
Apollonia was wearing the gold chain he had given her. He smiled at her then,
knowing that this was a signal to him. He walked with her up the hill, her
mother close behind them. But it was impossible for the two young people to
keep their bodies from brushing against each other and once Apollonia stumbled
and fell against him so that he had to hold her and her body so warm and alive
in his hands started a deep wave of blood rising in his body. They could not
see the mother behind them smiling because her daughter was a mountain goat and
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had not stumbled on this path since she was an infant in
diapers. And smiling because this was the only way this young man was going to
get his hands on her daughter until the marriage.
This went on for two weeks. Michael brought her presents
every time he came and gradually she became less shy. But they could never meet
without a chaperone being present. She was just a village girl, barely
literate, with no idea of the world, but she had a freshness, an eagerness for
life that, with help of the language barrier, made her seem interesting.
Everything went very swiftly at Michael’s request. And because the girl was not
only fascinated by him but knew he must be rich, a wedding date was set for the
Sunday two weeks away.
Now Don Tommasino took a hand. He had received word from
America that Michael was not subject to orders but that all elementary
precautions should be taken. So Don Tommasino appointed himself the parent of
the bridegroom to insure the presence of his own bodyguards. Calo and Fabrizzio
were also members of the wedding party from Corieone as was Dr. Taza. The bride
and groom would live in Dr. Taza’s villa surrounded by its stone wall.
The wedding was the usual peasant one. The villagers stood
in the streets and threw flowers as the bridal party, principals and guests,
went on foot from the church to the bride’s home. The wedding procession pelted
the neighbors with sugar-coated almonds, the traditional wedding candies, and
with candies left over made sugary white mountain on the bride’s wedding bed,
in this case only a symbolic one since the first night would be spent in the
villa outside Corleone. The wedding feast went on until midnight but bride and
groom would leave before that in the Alfa Romeo. When that time came Michael
was surprised to find that the mother was coming with them to the Corleone
villa at the request of the bride. The father explained: the girl was young, a
virgin, a little frightened, she would need someone to talk to on the morning
following her bridal night; to put her on the right track if things went wrong.
These matters could sometimes get very tricky. Michael saw Apollonia looking at
him with doubt in her huge doe-brown eyes. He smiled at her and nodded.
And so it came about that they drove back to the villa
outside Corleone with the mother-in-law in the car. But the older woman
immediately put her head together with the servants of Dr. Taza, gave her
daughter a hug and a kiss and disappeared from the scene. Michael and his bride
were allowed to go to their huge bedroom alone.
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Apollonia was still wearing her bridal costume with a cloak
thrown over it. Her trunk and case had been brought up to the room from the
car. On a small table was a bottle of wine and a plate of small wedding cakes.
The huge canopied bed was never out of their vision. The young girl in the
center of the room waited for Michael to make the first move.
And now that he had her alone, now that he legally possessed
her, now that there was no barrier to his enjoying that body and face he had
dreamed about every night, Michael could not bring himself to approach her. He
watched as she took off the bridal shawl and draped it over a chair, and placed
the bridal crown on the small dressing table. That table had an array of
perfumes and creams that Michael had had sent from Palermo. The girl tallied
them with her eyes for a moment.
Michael turned off the lights, thinking the girl was waiting
for some darkness to shield her body while she undressed. But the Sicilian moon
came through the unshuttered windows, bright as gold, and Michael went to close
the shutters but not all the way, the room would be too warm.
The girl was still standing by the table and so Michael went
out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. He and Dr. Taza and Don
Tommasino had taken a glass of wine together in the garden while the women had
prepared themselves for bed. He had expected to find Apollonia in her nightgown
when he returned, already between the covers. He was surprised that the mother
had not done this service for her daughter. Maybe Apollonia had wanted him to
help her to undress. But he was certain she was too shy, too innocent for such
forward behavior.
Coming back into the bedroom, he found it completely dark,
someone had closed the shutters all the way. He groped his way toward the bed
and could make out the shape of Apollonia’s body lying under the covers, her
back to him, her body curved away from him and huddled up. He undressed and
slipped naked beneath the sheets. He stretched out one hand and touched silky
naked skin. She had not put on her gown and this boldness delighted him.
Slowly, carefully, he put one hand on her shoulder and pressed her body gently
so that she would turn to him. She turned slowly and his hand touched her
breast, soft, full and then she was in his arms so quickiy that their bodies
came together in one line of silken electricity and he finally had his arms
around her, was kissing her warm mouth deeply, was crushing her body and
breasts against him and then rolling his body on top of hers.
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Her flesh and hair taut silk, now she was all eagerness,
surging against him wildly in a virginal erotic frenzy. When he entered her she
gave a little gasp and was still for just a second and then in a powerful
forward thrust of her pelvis she locked her satiny legs around his hips. When
they came to the end they were locked together so fiercely, straining against
each other so violently, that falling away from each other was like the tremble
before death.
That night and the weeks that followed, Michael Corleone
came to understand the premium put on virginity by socially primitive people.
It was a period of sensuality that he had never before experienced, a
sensuality mixed with a feeling of masculine power. Apollonia in those first
days became almost his slave. Given trust, given affection, a young
full-blooded girl aroused from virginity to erotic awareness was as delicious
as an exactly ripe fruit.
She on her part brightened up the rather gloomy masculine
atmosphere of the villa. She had packed her mother off the very next day after
her bridal night and presided at the communal table with bright girlish charm.
Don Tommasino dined with them every night and Dr. Taza told all his old stories
as they drank wine in the garden full of statues garlanded with blood-red
flowers, and so the evenings passed pleasantly enough. At night in their
bedroom the newly married couple spent hours of feverish lovemaking. Michael
could not get enough of Apollonia’s beautifully sculpted body, her
honey-colored skin, her huge brown eyes glowing with passion. She had a
wonderfully fresh smell, a fleshly smell perfumed by her sex yet almost sweet
and unbearably aphrodisiacal. Her virginal passion matched his nuptial lust and
often it was dawn when they fell into an exhausted slumber. Sometimes, spent
but not yet ready for sleep, Michael sat on the window ledge and stared at
Apollonia’s naked body while she slept. Her face too was lovely in repose, a
perfect face he had seen before only in art books of painted Italian Madonnas
who by no stretch of the artist’s skill could be thought virginal.
In the first week of their marriage they went on picnics and
small trips in the Alfa Romeo. But then Don Tommasino took Michael aside and
explained that the marriage had made his presence and identity common knowledge
in that part of Sicily and precautions had to be taken against the enemies of
the Corleone Family, whose long arms also stretched to this island refuge. Don Tommasino
put armed guards around his villa and the two shepherds, Calo and Fabrizzio,
were fixtures inside the walls. So Michael and his wife had to remain on the
villa grounds. Michael passed the time by teaching Apollonia to read and write
English and to drive the car along the inner walls of the villa.
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About this time Don Tommasino seemed to be preoccupied and
poor company. He was still having trouble with the new Mafia in the town of
Palermo, Dr. Taza said.
One night in the garden an old village woman who worked in
the house as a servant brought a dish of fresh olives and then turned to
Michael and said, “Is it true what everybody is saying that you are the son of
Don Corleone in New York City, the Godfather?”
Michael saw Don Tommasino shaking his head in disgust at the
general knowledge of their secret. But the old crone was looking at him in so
concerned a fashion, as if it was important for her to know the truth, that
Michael nodded. “Do you know my father?” he asked.
The woman’s name was Filomena and her face was as wrinkled
and brown as a walnut, her brown-stained teeth showing through the shell of her
flesh. For the first time since he had been in the villa she smiled at him.
“The Godfather saved my life once,” she said, “and my brains too.” She made a
gesture toward her head.
She obviously wanted to say something else so Michael smiled
to encourage her. She asked almost fearfully, “Is it true that Luca Brasi is
dead?”
Michael nodded again and was surprised at the look of
release on the old woman’s face. Filomena crossed herself and said, “God
forgive me, but may his soul roast in hell for eternity.”
Michael remembered his old curiosity about Brasi, and had
the sudden intuition that this woman knew the story Hagen and Sonny had refused
to tell him. He poured the woman a glass of wine and made her sit down. “Tell
me about my father and Luca Brasi,” he said gently. “I know some of it, but how
did they become friends and why was Brasi so devoted to my father? Don’t be
afraid, come tell me.”
Filomena’s wrinkled face, her raisin-black eyes, turned to
Don Tommasino, who in some way signaled his permission. And so Filomena passed
the evening for them by telling her story.
Thirty years before, Filomena had been a midwife in New York
City, on Tenth Avenue, servicing the Italian colony. The women were always
pregnant and she prospered. She taught doctors a few things when they tried to
interfere in a difficult birth. Her husband was then a prosperous grocery store
owner, dead now poor soul, she blessed him, though he had been a card player
and wencher who never thought to put aside for hard times. In any event one
cursed night thirty years ago when all honest people were long
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in their beds, there came a knocking on Filomena’s door. She
was by no means frightened, it was the quiet hour babes prudently chose to
enter safely into this sinful world, and so she dressed and opened the door.
Outside it was Luca Brasi whose reputation even then was fearsome. It was known
also that he was a bachelor. And so Filomena was immediately frightened. She
thought he had come to do her husband harm, that perhaps her husband had
foolishly refusal Brasi some small favor.
But Brasi had come on the usual errand. He told Filomena
that there was a woman about to give birth, that the house was out of the
neighborhood some distance away and that she was to come with him. Filomena
immediately sensed something amiss. Brasi’s brutal face looked almost like that
of a madman that night, he was obviously in the grip of some demon. She tried
to protest that she attended only women whose history she knew but he shoved a
handful of green dollars in her hand and ordered her roughly to come along with
him. She was too frightened to refuse.
In the street was a Ford, its driver of the same feather as
Luca Brasi. The drive was no more than thirty minutes to a small frame house in
Long Island City right over the bridge. A two-family house but obviously now
tenanted only by Brasi and his gang. For there were some other ruffians in the
kitchen playing cards and drinking. Brasi took Filomena up the stairs to a
bedroom. In the bed was a young pretty girl who looked Irish, her face painted,
her hair red; and with a belly swollen like a sow. The poor girl was so
frightened. When she saw Brasi she turned her head away in terror, yes terror,
and indeed the look of hatred on Brasi’s evil face was the most frightening
thing she had ever seen in her life. (Here Filomena crossed herself again.)
To make a long story short, Brasi left the room. Two of his
men assisted the midwife and the baby was born, the mother was exhausted and
went into a deep sleep. Brasi was summoned and Filomena, who had wrapped the
newborn child in an extra blanket, extended the bundle to him and said, “If
you’re the father, take her. My work is finished.”
Brasi glared at her, malevolent, insanity stamped on his
face. “Yes, I’m the father,” he said. “But I don’t want any of that race to
live. Take it down to the basement and throw it into the furnace.”
For a moment Filomena thought she had not understood him
properly. She was puzzled by his use of the word “race.” Did he mean because
the girl was not Italian? Or did he mean because the girl was obviously of the
lowest type; a whore in short? Or did he mean that anything springing from his
loins he forbade to live. And then she was sure he
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was making a brutal joke. She said shortly, “It’s your
child, do what you want.” And she tried to hand him the bundle.
At this time the exhausted mother awoke and turned on her
side to face them. She was just in time to see Brasi thrust violently at the
bundle, crushing the newborn infant against Filomena’s chest. She called out
weakly, “Luc, Luc, I’m sorry,” and Brasi turned to face her.
It was terrible, Filomena said now. So terrible. They were
like two mad animals. They were not human. The hatred they bore each other
blazed through the room. Nothing else, not even the newborn infant, existed for
them at that moment. And yet there was a strange passion. A bloody, demonical
lust so unnatural you knew they were damned forever. Then Luca Brasi turned
back to Filomena and said harshly, “Do what tell you, I’ll make you rich.”
Filomena could not speak in her terror. She shook her head.
Finally she managed to whisper, “You do it, you’re the father, do it if you
like.” But Brasi didn’t answer. Instead he drew a knife from inside his shirt.
“I’ll cut your throat,” he said.
She must have gone into shock then because the next thing
she remembered they were all standing in the basement of the house in front of
a square iron furnace. Filomena was still holding the blanketed baby, which had
not made a sound. (Maybe if it had cried, maybe if I had been shrewd enough to
pinch it, Filomena said, that monster would have shown mercy.)
One of the men must have opened the furnace door, the fire
now was visible. And then she was alone with Brasi in that basement with its
sweating pipes, its mousy odor. Brasi had his knife out again. And there could
be no doubting that he would kill her. There were the flames, there were
Brasi’s eyes. His face was the gargoyle of the devil, it was not human, it was
not sane: He pushed her toward the open furnace door.
At this point Filomena fell silent. She folded her bony
hands in her lap and looked directly at Michael. He knew what she wanted, how
she wanted to tell him, without using her voice. He asked gently, “Did you do
it?” She nodded.
It was only after another glass of wine and crossing herself
and muttering a prayer that she continued her story. She was given a bundle of
money and driven home. She understood that if she uttered a word about what had
happened she would be killed. But two days later Brasi murdered the young Irish
girl, the mother of the infant, and was arrested by the police. Filomena,
frightened out of her wits, went to the Godfather and
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told her story. He ordered her to keep silent, that he would
attend to everything. At that time Brasi did not work for Don Corleone.
Before Don Corleone could set matters aright, Luca Brasi
tried to commit suicide in his cell, hacking at his throat with a piece of
glass. He was transferred to the prison hospital and by the time he recovered
Don Corleone had arranged everything. The police did not have a case they could
prove in court and Luca Brasi was released.
Though Don Corleone assured Filomena that she had nothing to
fear from either Luca Brasi or the police, she had no peace. Her nerves were
shattered and she could no longer work at her profession. Finally she persuaded
her husband to sell the grocery store and they returned to Italy. Her husband
was a good man, had been told everything and understood. But he was a weak man
and in Italy squandered the fortune they had both slaved in America to earn.
And so after he died she had become a servant. So Filomena ended her story. She
had another glass of wine and said to Michael, “I bless the name of your
father. He always sent me money when I asked, he saved me from Brasi. Tell him
I say a prayer for his soul every night and that he shouldn’t fear dying.”
After she had left, Michael asked Don Tommasino, “Is her
story true?” The capo-mafioso nodded. And Michael thought, no wonder nobody
wanted to tell him the story. Some story. Some Luca.
The next morning Michael wanted to discuss the whole thug
with Don Tommasino but learned that the old man had been called to Palermo by
an urgent message delivered by a courier. That evening Don Tommasino returned and
took Michael aside. News had come from America, he said. News that it grieved
him to tell. Santino Corleone had been killed.
Chapter 24
The Sicilian sun, early-morning lemon-colored, filled
Michael’s bedroom. He awoke and, feeling Apollonia’s satiny body against his
own sleep-warm skin, made her come awake with love. When they were done, even
all the months of complete possession could not stop him from marveling at her
beauty and her passion.
She left the bedroom to wash and dress in the bathroom down
the hall. Michael, still naked, the morning sun refreshing his body, lit a
cigarette and relaxed on the bed. This was the last morning they would spend in
this house and the villa. Don Tommasino had arranged for him to be transferred
to another town on the southern coast of Sicily. Apollonia, in the first month
of pregnancy, wanted to visit with her family for a few weeks
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and would join him at the new hiding
place after the visit.
The night before, Don Tommasino had sat with Michael in the
garden after Apollonia had gone to bed. The Don had been worried and tired, and
admitted that he was concerned about Michael’s safety. “Your marriage brought
you into sight,” he told Michael: “I’m surprised your father hasn’t made arrangements
for you to go someplace else. In any case I’m having my own troubles with the
young Turks in Palermo. I’ve offered some fair arrangements so that they can
wet their beaks more than they deserve, but those scum want everything. I can’t
understand their attitude. They’ve tried a few little tricks but I’m not so
easy to kill. They must know I’m too strong for them to hold me so cheaply. But
that’s the trouble with young people, no matter how talented. They don’t reason
things out and they want all the water in the well.”
And then Don Tommasino had told Michael that the two
shepherds, Fabrizzio and Calo, would go with him as bodyguards in the Alfa
Romeo. Don Tommasino would say his good-byes tonight since he would be off
early in the morning, at dawn, to see to his affairs in Palermo. Also, Michael
was not to tell Dr. Taza about the move, since the doctor planned to spend the
evening in Palermo and might blab.
Michael had known Don Tommasino was in trouble. Armed guards
patrolled the walls of the villa at night and a few faithful shepherds with
their luparas were always in the house. Don Tommasino himself went heavily
armed and a personal bodyguard attended him at all times.
The morning sun was now too strong. Michael stubbed out his
cigarette and put on work pants, work shirt and the peaked cap most Sicilian
men wore. Still barefooted, he leaned out his bedroom window and saw Fabrizzio
sitting in one of the garden chairs. Fabrizzio was lazily combing his thick
dark hair, his lupara was carelessly thrown acres the garden table. Michael
whistled and Fabrizzio looked up to his window.
“Get the car,” Michael called down to
him. “I’ll be leaving in five minutes. Where’s Calo?”
Fabrizzio stood up. His shirt was open, exposing the blue
and red lines of the tattoo on his chest. “Calo is having a cup of coffee in
the kitchen,” Fabrizzio said. “Is your wife coming with you?”
Michael squinted down at him. It occurred to him that
Fabrizzio had been following Apollonia too much with his eyes the last few
weeks. Not that he would dare ever to make an advance toward the wife of a
friend of the Don’s. In Sicily there was no surerroad to death. Michael said
coldly, “No, she’s going home to her family first, she’ll
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join us in a few days.” He watched Fabrizzio hurry into the
stone hut that served as a garage for the Alfa Romeo.
Michael went down the hall to wash. Apollonia was gone. She
was most likely in the kitchen preparing his breakfast with her own hands to
wash out the guilt she felt because she wanted to see her family one more time
before going so far away to the other end of Sicily. Don Tommasino would
arrange transportation for her to where Michael would be.
Down in the kitchen the old woman Filomena brought him his
coffee and shyly bid him a good bye. ‘I’ll remember you to my father,” Michael
said and she nodded.
Calo came into the kitchen and
said to Michael, “The car’s outside, shall I get your bag?” “No, I’ll get it,”
Michael said. “Where’s Apolla?”
Calo’s face broke into an amused grin. “She’s sitting in the
driver’s seat of the car, dying to step on the gas. She’ll be a real American
woman before she gets to America.” It was unheard of for one of the peasant
women in Sicily to attempt driving a car. But Michael sometimes let Apollonia
guide the Alfa Romeo around the inside of the villa walls, always beside her
however because she sometimes stepped on the gas when she meant to step on the
brake.
Michael said to Calo, “Get Fabrizzio and wait for me in the
car.” He went out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs to the bedroom. His bag
was already packed. Before picking it up he looked out the window and saw the
car parked in front of the portico steps rather than the kitchen entrance.
Apollonia was sitting in the car, her hands on the wheel
like a child playing. Calo was just putting the lunch basket in the rear seat.
And then Michael was annoyed to see Fabrizzio disappearing through the gates of
the villa on some errand outside. What the hell was he doing? He saw Fabrizzio
take a look over his shoulder, a look that was somehow furtive. He’d have to
straighten that damn shepherd out. Michael went down the stairs and decided to
go through the kitchen to see Filomena again and give her a final farewell. He
asked the old woman, “Is Dr. Taza still sleeping?”
Filomena’s wrinkled face was sly. “Old roosters can’t greet
the sun. The doctor went to Palermo last night.”
Michael laughed. He went out the kitchen entrance and the
smell of lemon blossoms penetrated even his sinus-filled nose. He saw Apollonia
wave to him from the car just
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ten paces up the villa’s driveway and then he realized she
was motioning him to stay where he was, that she meant to drive the car to
where he stood. Calo stood grinning beside the car, his lupara dangling in his
hand. But there was still no sign of Fabrizzio. At that moment; without any
conscious reasoning process, everything came together in his mind, and Michael
shouted to the girl, “No! No!” But his shout was drowned in the roar of the
tremendous explosion as Apollonia switched on the ignition. The kitchen door
shattered into fragments and Michael was hurled along the wall of the villa for
a good ten feet. Stones tumbling from the villa roof hit him on the shoulders
and one glanced off his skull as he was lying on the ground. He was conscious
just long enough to see that nothing remained of the Alfa Romeo but its four
wheels and the steel shafts which held them together.
* * *
He came to consciousness in a room that seemed very dark and
heard voices that were so low that they were pure sound rather than words. Out
of animal instinct he tried to pretend he was still unconscious but the voices
stopped and someone was leaning from a chair close to his bed and the voice was
distinct now, saying, “Well, he’s with us finally.” A lamp went on, its light
like white fire on his eyeballs and Michael turned his head. It felt very
heavy, numb. And then he could see the face over his bed was that of Dr. Taza.
“Let me look at you a minute and I’ll put the light out,”
Dr,. Taza said gently. He was busy shining a small pencil flashlight into
Michael’s eyes. “You’ll be all right,” Dr. Taza said and turned to someone else
in the room. “You can speak to him.”
It was Don Tommasino sitting on a chair near his bed,
Michael could see him clearly now. Don Tommasino was saying, “Michael, Michael,
can I talk to you? Do you want to rest?”
It was easier to raise a hand to make a gesture and Michael
did so and Don Tommasino said, “Did Fabrizzio bring the car from the garage?”
Michael, without knowing he did so, smiled. It was in some
strange way, a chilling smile, of assent. Don Tommasino said, “Fabrizzio has
vanished. Listen to me, Michael. You’ve been unconscious for nearly a week. Do
you understand? Everybody thinks you’re dead, so you’re safe now, they’ve
stopped looking for you. I’ve sent messages to your father and he’s sent back
instructions. It won’t be long now, you’ll be back in America. Meanwhile you’ll
rest here quietly. You’re safe up in the mountains, in a special
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farmhouse I own. The Palermo people have made their peace
with me now that you’re supposed to be dead, so it was you they were after all
the time. They wanted to kill you while making people think it was me they were
after. That’s something you should know. As for everything else, leave it all
to me. You recover your strength and be tranquil.”
Michael was remembering everything now. He knew his wife was
dead, that Calo was dead. He thought of the old woman in the kitchen. He
couldn’t remember if she had come outside with him. He whispered, “Filomena?”
Don Tommasino said quietly, “She wasn’t hurt, just a bloody nose from the
blast. Don’t worry about her.”
Michael said, “Fabrizzio. Let your shepherds know that the
one who gives me Fabrizzio will own the finest pastures in Sicily.”
Both men seemed to sigh with relief. Don Tontmasino lifted a
glass from a nearby table and drank from it an amber fluid that jolted his head
up. Dr. Taza sat on the bed and said almost absently, “You know, you’re a
widower. That’s rare in Sicily.” As if the distinction might comfort him.
Michael motioned to Don Tommasino to lean closer. The Don
sat on the bed and bent his head. “Tell my father to get me home,” Michael
said. “Tell my father I wish to be his son.”
But it was to be another month before Michael recovered from
his injuries and another two months after that before all the necessary papers
and arrangements were ready. Then he was flown from Palermo to Rome and from
Rome to New York. In all that time no trace had been found of Fabrizzio.
Book Seven
Chapter 25
When Kay Adams received her college degree, she took a job
teaching grade school in her New Hampshire hometown. The first six months after
Michael vanished she made weekly telephone calls to his mother asking about
him. Mrs. Corleone was always friendly and always wound up saying, “You a very
very nice girl. You forget about Mikey and find a nice husband.” Kay was not
offended at her bluntness and understood that the mother spoke out of concern
for her as a young girl in an impossible situation.
When her first school term ended, she decided to go to New
York to buy some decent clothes and see some old college girl friends. She
thought also about looking for some sort of interesting job in New York. She
had lived like a spinster for almost two years,
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reading and teaching, refusing dates, refusing to go out at
all, even though she had given up making calls to Long Beach. She knew she
couldn’t keep that up, she was becoming irritable and unhappy. But she had
always believed Michael would write her or send her a message of some sort.
That he had not done so humiliated her, it saddened her that he was so distrustful
even of her.
She took an early train and was checked into her hotel by
midafternoon. Her girl friends worked and she didn’t want to bother them at
their jobs, she planned to call them at night. And she didn’t really feel like
going shopping after the exhausting train trip. Being alone in the hotel room,
remembering all the times she and Michael had used hotel rooms to make love,
gave her a feeling of desolation. It was that more than anything else that gave
her the idea of calling Michael’s mother out in Long Beach.
The phone was answered by a rough masculine voice with a
typical, to her, New York accent. Kay asked to speak to Mrs. Corelone. There
was a few minutes’ silence and then Kay heard the heavily accented voice asking
who it was.
Kay was a little embarrassed now. “This is Kay Adams, Mrs.
Corleone,” she said. “Do you remember me?”
“Sure, sure, I remember you,” Mrs. Corleone said. “How come
you no call up no more? You get a married?”
“Oh, no,” Kay said. “I’ve been busy.” She was surprised at
the mother obviously being annoyed that she had stopped calling. “Have you
heard anything from Michael? Is he all right”
There was silence at the other end of the phone and then
Mrs. Corleorie’s voice came strong. “Mikey is a home. He no call you up? He no
see you?”
Kay felt her stomach go weak from shock and a humiliating
desire to weep. Her voice broke a little when she asked, “How long has he been
home?”
Mrs. Corleone said, “Six months.”
“Oh, I see,” Kay said. And she did. She felt hot waves of
shame that Michael’s mother knew he was treating her so cheaply. And then she
was angry. Angry at Michael, at his mother, angry at all foreigners, Italians
who didn’t have the common courtesy to keep up a decent show of friendship even
if a love affair was over. Didn’t Michael know she would be concerned for him
as a friend even if he no longer wanted her for a bed companion, even if he no
longer wanted to marry her? Did he think she was one of
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those poor benighted Italian girls who would commit suicide
or make a scene after giving up her virginity and then being thrown over? But
she kept her voice as cool as possible. “I see, thank you very much,” she said.
“I’m glad Michael is home again and all right. I just wanted to know. I won’t
call you again.”
Mrs. Corleone’s voice came impatiently over the phone as if
she had heard nothing that Kay had said. “You wanta see Mikey, you come out
here now. Give him a nice surprise. You take a taxi, and I tell the man at the
gate to pay the taxi for you. You tell the taxi man he gets two times his
clock, otherwise he no come way out the Long Beach. But don’t you pay. My
husband’s man at the gate pay the taxi.”
“I couldn’t do that, Mrs. Corleone,” Kay said coldly. “If
Michael wanted to see me, he would have called me at home before this.
Obviously, he doesn’t want to resume our relationship.”
Mrs. Corleone’s voice came briskly over the phone. “You a
very nice girl, you gotta nice legs, but you no gotta much brains.” She
chuckled. “You come out to see me, not Mikey. I wanta talk to you. You come
right now. An’ no pay the taxi. I wait for you.” The phone clicked. Mrs.
Corleone had hung up.
Kay could have called back and said she wasn’t coming but
she knew she had to see Michael, to talk to him, even if it was just polite
talk. If he was home now, openly, that meant he was no longer in trouble, he
could live normally. She jumped off the bed and started to get ready to see
him. She took a great deal of care with her makeup and dress. When she was ready
to leave she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Was she better-looking
than when Michael had disappeared? Or would he find her unattractively older?
Her figure had become more womanly, her hips rounder, her breasts fuller.
Italians liked that supposedly, though Michael had always said he loved her
being so thin. It didn’t matter really, Michael obviously didn’t want anything
to do with her anymore, otherwise he most certainly would have called in the
six months he had been home.
The taxi she hailed refused to take her to Long Beach until
she gave him a pretty smile and told him she would pay double the meter. It was
nearly an hour’s ride and the mall in Long Beach had changed since she last saw
it. There were iron fences around it and an iron gate barred the mall entrance.
A man wearing slacks and a white jacket over a red shirt opened the gate, poked
his head into the cab to read the meter and gave the cab driver some bills.
Then when Kay saw the driver was not protesting and was happy
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with the money paid, she got out and
walked across the mall to the central house.
Mrs. Corleone herself opened the door and greeted Kay with a
warm embrace that surprised her. Then she surveyed Kay with an appraising eye.
“You a beautiful girl,” she said flatly. “I have stupid sons.” She pulled Kay
inside the door and led her to the kitchen, where a platter of food was already
set out and a pot of coffee perked on the stove. “Michael comes home pretty
soon,” she said. “You surprise him.”
They sat down together and the old woman forced Kay to eat,
meanwhile asking questions with great curiosity. She was delighted that Kay was
a schoolteacher and that she had come to New York to visit old girl friends and
that Kay was only twenty-four years old. She kept nodding her head as if all
the facts accorded with some private specifications in her mind. Kay was so
nervous that she just answered the questions, never saying anything else.
She saw him first through the kitchen window. A car pulled
up in front of the house and the two other men got out. Then Michael. He
straightened up to talk with one of the other men. His profile, the left one,
was exposed to her view. It was cracked, indented, like the plastic face of a
doll that a child has wantonly kicked. In a curious way it did not mar his
handsomeness in her eyes but moved her to tears. She saw him put a snow-white
handkerchief to his mouth and nee and hold it there for a moment while he
turned away to come into the house.
She heard the door open and his footsteps in the hall
turning into the kitchen and then he was in the open space, seeing her and his
mother. He seemed impassive, and then he smiled ever so slightly, the broken
half of his face halting the widening of his mouth. And Kay, who had want just
to say “Hello, how are you,” in the coolest possible way, slipped out of her
seat to run into his arms, bury her face against his shoulder. He kissed her
wet cheek and held her until she finished weeping and then he walked her out to
his car, waved his bodyguard away and drove off with her beside him, she
repairing her makeup by simply wiping what was left of it away with her
handkerchief.
“I never meant to do that,” Kay said. “It’s just that nobody
told me how badly they hurt you.”
Michael laughed and touched the broken side of his face.
“You mean this? That’s nothing. Just gives me sinus trouble. Now that I’m home
I’ll probably get it fixed. I couldn’t write you or anything,” Michael said.
“You have to understand that before anything else.”
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“OK,” she said.
“I’ve got a place in the city,” Michael said. “Is it all
right if we go there or should it be dinner and drinks at a restaurant?”
“I’m not hungry,” Kay said.
They drove toward New York in silence for a while. “Did you
get your degree?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” Kay said. “I’m teaching grade school in my hometown
now. Did they find the man who really killed the policeman, is that why you
were able to come home?”
For a moment Michael didn’t answer. “Yes, they did,” he
said. “It was in all the New York papers. Didn’t you read about it?”
Kay laughed with the relief of him denying he was a
murderer. “We only get The New York Times up in our town,” she said. “I guess
it was buried back in page eighty-nine. If I’d read about it I’d have called
your mother sooner.” She paused and then said, “It’s funny, the way your mother
used to talk, I almost believed you had done it. And just before you came,
while we were drinking coffee, she told me about that crazy man who confessed.”
Michael said, “Maybe my mother did
believe it at first.”
“Your own mother?” Kay asked.
Michael grinned. “Mothers are like
cops. They always believe the worst.”
Michael parked the car in a garage on Mulberry Street where
the owner seemed to know him. He took Kay around the corner to what looked like
a fairly decrepit brownstone house which fitted into the rundown neighborhood.
Michael had a key to the front door and when they went inside Kay saw that it
was as expensively and comfortably furnished as a millionaire’s town house.
Michael led her to the upstairs apartment which consisted of an enormous living
room, a huge kitchen and door that led to the bedroom. In one corner of the
living room was a bar and Michael mixed them both a drink. They sat on a sofa
together and Michael said quietly, “We might as well go into the bedroom.” Kay
took a long pull from her drink and smiled at him. “Yes,” she said.
For Kay the lovemaking was almost like it had been before
except that Michael was rougher, more direct, not as tender as he had been. As
if he were on guard against her. But she didn’t want to complain. It would wear
off. In a funny way, men were more sensitive in a situation like this, she
thought. She had found making love to Michael after
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a two-year absence the most natural thing in the world. It
was as if he had never been away.
“You could have written me, you could have trusted me,” she
said, nestling against his body. “I would have practiced the New England
omerta. Yankees are pretty closemouthed too, you know.”
Michael laughed softly in the darkness. “I never figured you
to be waiting,” he said. “I never figured you to wait after what happened.”
Kay said quickly, “I never believed you killed those two
men. Except maybe when your mother seemed to think so. But I never believed it
in my heart. I know you too well.”
She could hear Michael give a sigh. “It doesn’t matter
whether I did or not,” he said. “You have to understand that.”
Kay was a little stunned by the coldness in his voice. She
said, “So just tell me now, did you or didn’t you?”
Michael sat up on his pillow and in the darkness a light
flared as he got a cigarette going. “If I asked you to marry me, would I have
to answer that question first before you’d give me an answer to mine?”
Kay said, “I don’t care, I love you, I don’t care. If you
loved me you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me the truth. You wouldn’t be afraid I
might tell the police. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re really a gangster then,
isn’t that so? But I really don’t care. What I care about is that you obviously
don’t love me. You didn’t even call me up when you got back home.”
Michael was puffing on his cigarette and some burning ashes
fell on Kay’s bare back. She flinched a little and said jokingly, “Stop
torturing me, I won’t talk.”
Michael didn’t laugh. His voice sounded absentminded. “You
know, when I came home I wasn’t that glad when I saw my family, my father, my
mother, my sister Connie, and Tom. It was nice but I didn’t really give a damn.
Then I came home tonight and saw you in the kitchen and I was glad. Is that
what you mean by love?”
“That’s close enough for me,” Kay said.
They made love again for a while. Michael was more tender
this time. And then he went out to get them both a drink. When he came back he
sat on an armchair facing the bed. “Let’s get serious,” he said. “How do you
feel about marrying me?” Kay smiled at him and motioned him into the bed.
Michael smiled back at her. “Be serious,” he said. “I can’t tell you about
anything that happened. I’m working for my father now. I’m being
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trained to take over the family olive oil business. But you
know my family has enemies, my father has enemies. You might be a very young
widow, there’s a chance, not much of one, but it could happen. And I won’t be
telling you what happened at the office every day. I won’t be telling you
anything about my business. You’ll be my wife but you won’t be my partner in
life, as I think they say. Not an equal partner. That can’t be.”
Kay sat up in bed. She switched on a huge lamp standing on
the night table and then she lit a cigarette. She leaned back on the pillows
and said quietly, “You’re telling me you’re a gangster, isn’t that it? You’re
telling me that you’re responsible for people being killed and other sundry
crimes related to murder. And that I’m not ever to ask about that part of your
life, not even to think about it. Just like in the horror movies when the
monster asks the beautiful girl to marry him.” Michael grinned, the cracked
part of his face turned toward her, and Kay said in contrition, “Oh, Mike, I
don’t even notice that stupid thing, I swear I don’t.”
“I know,” Michael said laughing. “I like having it now
except that it makes the snot drip out of my nose.”
“You said be serious,” Kay went on. “If we get married what
kind of a life am I supposed to lead? Like your mother, like an Italian
housewife with just the kids and home to take care of? And what about if
something happens? I suppose you could wind up in jail someday.”
“No, that’s not possible,” Michael
said. “Killed, yes; jail, no.”
Kay laughed at this confidence, it was a laugh that had a
funny mixture of pride with its amusement. “But how can you say that?” she
said. “Really.”
Michael sighed. “These are all the things I can’t talk to
you about, I don’t want to talk to you about.”
Kay was silent for a long time. “Why do you want me to marry
you after never calling me all these months? Am I so good in bed?”
Michael nodded gravely. “Sure,” he said. “But I’m getting it
for nothing so why should I marry you for that? Look, I don’t want an answer
now. We’re going to keep seeing each other. You can talk it over with your
parents. I hear your father is a real tough guy in his own way. Listen to his
advice.”
“You haven’t answered why, why you want
to marry me,” Kay said.
Michael took a white handkerchief from
the drawer of the night table and held it to his
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nose. He blew into it and then wiped. “There’s the best
reason for not marrying me,” he said. “How would that be having a guy around
who always has to blow his nose?”
Kay said impatiently, “Come on, be
serious, I asked you a question.”
Michael held the handkerchief in his hand. “OK,” he said, “this
one time. You are the only person I felt any affection for, that I care about.
I didn’t call you because it never occurred to me that you’d still be
interested in me after everything that’s happened. Sure, I could have chased
you, I could have conned you, but I didn’t want to do that. Now here’s
something I’ll trust you with and I don’t want you to repeat it even to your
father. If everything goes right, the Corleone Family will be completely
legitimate in about five years. Some very tricky things have to be done to make
that possible. That’s when you may become a wealthy widow. Now what do I want
you for? Well, because I want you and I want a family. I want kids; it’s time.
And I don’t want those kids to be influenced by me the way I was influenced by
my father. I don’t mean my father deliberately influenced me. He never did. He
never even wanted me in the family business. He wanted me to become a professor
or a doctor, something like that. But things went bad and I had to fight for my
Family. I had to fight because l love and admire my father. I never knew a man
more worthy of respect. He was a good husband and a good father and a good
friend to people who were not so fortunate in life. There’s another side to
him, but that’s not relevant to me as his son. Anyway I don’t want that to
happen to our kids. I want them to be influenced by you. I want them to grow up
to be All-American kids, real All-American, the whole works. Maybe they or
their grandchildren will go into politics.” Michael grinned. “Maybe one of them
will be President of the United States. Why the hell not? In my history course
at Dartmouth we did some background on all the Presidents and they had fathers
and grandfathers who were lucky they didn’t get hanged. But I’ll settle for my
kids being doctors or musicians or teachers. They’ll never be in the Family
business. By the time they are that old I’ll be retired anyway. And you and I
will be part of some country club crowd, the good simple life of well-to-do
Americans. How dote that strike you for a proposition?”
“Marvelous,” Kay said. “But you sort of
skipped ones the widow part.”
“There’s not much chance of that. I just mentioned it to
give a fair presentation.” Michael patted his nose with the handkerchief.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe you’re a man like that,
you’re just not,” Kay said. Her face had a bewildered look. “I just don’t
understand the whole thing, how it could
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possibly be.”
“Well, I’m not giving any more explanations,” Michael said gently.
“You know, you don’t have to think about any of this stuff, it has nothing to
do with you really, or with our life together if we get married.”
Kay shook her head. “How can you want to marry me, how can
you hint that you love me, you never say the word but you just now said you
loved your father, you never said you loved me, how could you if you distrust
me so much you can’t tell me about the most important things in your life? How
can you want to have a wife you can’t trust? Your father trusts your mother. I
know that.”
“Sure,” Michael said. “But that doesn’t mean he tells her
everything. And, you know, he has reason to trust her. Not because they got
married and she’s his wife. But she bore him four children in times when it was
not that safe to bear children. She nursed and guarded him when people shot
him. She believed in him. He was always her first loyalty for forty years.
After you do that maybe I’ll tell you a few things you really don’t want to
hear.”
“Will we have to live in the mall?” Kay
asked.
Michael nodded. “We’ll have our own house, it won’t be so
bad. My parents don’t meddle. Our lives will be our own. But until everything
gets straightened out, I have to live in the mall.”
“Because it’s dangerous for you to live
outside it,” Kay said.
For the first time since she had come to know him, she saw
Michael angry. It was cold chilling anger that was not externalized in any
gesture or change in voice. It was a coldness that came off him like death and
Kay knew that it was this coldness that would make her decide not to marry him
if she so decided.
“The trouble is all that damn trash in the movies and the
newspapers,” Michael said. “You’ve got the wrong idea of my father and the
Corleone Family. I’ll make a final explanation and this one will be really
final. My father is a businessman trying to provide for his wife and children
and those friends he might need someday in a time of trouble. He doesn’t accept
the rules of the society we live in bgcause those rules would have condemned
him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force
and character. What you have to understand is that he considers himself the
equal of all those great men like Presidents and Prime Ministers and Supreme
Court Justices and Governors of the States. He refuses to live by rules set up
by others, rules which
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condemn him to a defeated life. But his ultimate aim is to
enter that society with a certain power since society doesn’t really protect
its members who do not have their own individual power. In the meantime he
operates on a code of ethics he considers far superior to the legal structures
of society.”
Kay was looking at him incredulously. “But that’s
ridiculous,” she said. “What if everybody felt the same way? How could society
ever function, we’d be back in the times of the cavemen. Mike, you don’t
believe what you’re saying, do you?”
Michael grinned at her. “I’m just telling you what my father
believes. I just want you to understand that whatever else he is, he’s not
irresponsible, or at least not in the society which he has created. He’s not a
crazy machine-gunning mobster as you seem to think. He’s a responsible man in
his own way.”
“And what do you believe?” Kay asked
quietly.
Michael shrugged. “I believe in my family,” he said. “I
believe in you and the family we may have. I don’t trust society to protect us,
I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men where only
qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.
But that’s for now. My father’s time is done. The things he did can no longer
be done exeept wilt a great deal of risk. Whether we like it or not the
Corleone Family has to join that society. But when they do I’d like us to join
it with plenty of our own power; that is, money and ownership of other
valuables. I’d like to make my children as secure as possible before they join
that general destiny.”
“But you volunteered to fight for your country, you were a
war hero,” Kay said. “What happened to make you change?”
Michael said, “’This is really getting us no place. But
maybe I’m just one of those real old-fashioned conservatives they grow up in
your hometown. I take care of myself, individual. Governments really don’t do
much for their people, that’s what it comes down to, but that’s not it really.
All I can say, I have to help my father, I have to be on his side. And you have
to make your decision about being on my side.” He smiled at her. “I guess
getting. married was a bad idea.”
Kay patted the bed. “I don’t know about marrying, but I’ve
gone without a man for two years and I’m not letting you off so easy now. Come
on in here.”
When they were in bed together, the light out, she whispered
to him, “Do you believe me about not having a man since you left?”
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“I believe you,” Michael said.
“Did you?” she whispered in a softer
voice.
“Yes,” Michael said. He felt her
stiffen a little. “But not in the last six months.” It was true.
Kay was the first woman he had made
love to since the death of Apollonia.
Chapter 26
The garish suite overlooked the fake fairyland grounds in
the rear of the hotel; transplanted palm trees lit up by climbers of orange
lights, two huge swimming pools shimmering dark blue by the light of the desert
stars. On the horizon were the sand and stone mountains that ringed Las Vegas
nestling in its neon valley. Johnny Fontane let the heavy, richly embroidered
gray drape fall and turned back to the room.
A special detail of four men, a pit boss, a dealer, extra
relief man, and a cocktail waitress in her scanty nightclub costume were
getting things ready for private action. Nino Valenti was lying on the sofa in
the living room part of the suite, a water glass of whiskey in his hand. He
watched the people from the casino setting up the blackjack table with the
proper six padded chairs around its horseshoe outer rim. “That’s great, that’s
great,” he said in a slurred vote that was not quite drunken. “Johnny, come on
and gamble with me against these bastards. I got the luck. We’ll beat their
crullers in.”
Johnny sat on a footstool opposite the couch. “You know I
don’t gamble,” he said: “How you feeling, Nino?”
Nino Valenti grinned at him. “Great. I got broads coming up
at midnight, then some supper, then back to the blackjack table. You know I got
the house beat for almost fifty grand and they’ve been grinding me for a week?”
“Yeah;” Johnny Fontane said. “Who do
you want to leave it to when you croak?”
Nino drained his glass empty. “Johnny, where the hell did
you get your rep as a swinger? You’re a deadhead, Johnny. Christ, the tourists
in this town have more fun than you do.”
Johnny said, “Yeah. You want a lift to
that blackjack table?”
Nino struggled erect on the sofa and pleated his feet firmly
on the rug. “I can make it,” he said. He let the glass slip to the floor and
got up and walked quite steadily to where the blackjack table had been set up.
The dealer was ready. The pit boss stood behind the dealer watching. The relief
dealer sat on a chair away from the table. The cocktail
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waitress sat on another chair in a line of vision so that
she could see any of Nino Valenti’s gestures.
Nino rapped on the green baize with his
knuckles. “Chips,” he said.
The pit boss took a pad from his pocket and filled out a
slip and put it in front of Nino with a small fountain pen. “Here you are, Mr.
Valenti,” he said. “The usual five thousand to start.” Nino scrawled his
signature on the bottom of the slip and the pit boss put it in his pocket. He
nodded to the dealer.
The dealer with incredibly deft fingers took stacks of black
and gold one-hundred-dollar daps from the built-in racks before him. In not
more than fire seconds Nino had five even stacks of one-hundred-dollar chips
before him, each stack had ten chips.
There were six squares a little larger than playing card
shapes etched in white on the green baize, each square placed to correspond to
where a player would sit. Now Nino was placing bets on three of these squares,
single chips, and so playing three hands each for a hundred dollars. He refused
to take a hit on ail three hands because the dealer had a six up, a bust card,
and the dealer did bust. Nino raked in his chips and turned to Johnny Fontane.
“That’s how to start the night, huh, Johnny?”
Johnny smiled. It was unusual for a gambler like Nino to
have to sign a chit while gambling. A word was usually good enough for the high
rollers. Maybe they were afraid Nino wouldn’t remember his take-out because of
his drinking. They didn’t know that Nino remembered everything.
Nino kept winning and after the third round lifted a finger
at the cocktail waitress. She went to the bar at the end of the room and
brought him his usual rye in a water glass. Nino took the drink, switched it to
his other hand so he could put an arm around the waitress. “Sit with me, honey,
play a few hands; bring me luck.”
The cocktail waitress was a very beautiful girl, but Johnny
could see she was all cold hustle; no real personality, though she worked at
it. She was giving Nino a big smile but her tongue was hanging out for one of
those black and gold chips. What the hell, Johnny thought, why shouldn’t she
get some of it? He just regretted that Nino wasn’t getting something better for
his money.
Nino let the waitress play his hands for a few rounds and
then gave her one of the chips and a pat on the behind to send her away from
the table. Johnny motioned to her to bring him a drink. She did so but she did
it as if she were playing the most dramatic moment in the most dramatic movie
ever made. She turned all her charm on the great
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Johnny Fontane. She made her eyes sparkle with invitation,
her walk was the sexiest walk ever walked, her mouth was, very slightly parted
as if she were ready to bite the nearest object of her obvious passion. She
resembled nothing so much as a female animal in heat, but it was a deliberate
act. Johnny Fontane thought, oh, Christ, one of them. It was the most popular
approach of women who wanted to take him to bed. It only worked when he was
very drunk and he wasn’t drunk now. He gave the girl one of his famous grins
and said, “Thank you, honey.” The girl looked at him and parted her lips in a
thank-you smile, her eyes went all smoky, her body tensed with the torso
leaning slightly back from the long tapering legs in their mesh stockings. An
enormous tension seemed to be building up in her body, her breasts seemed to
grow fuller and swell burstingly against her thin scantily cut blouse. Then her
whole body gave a slight quiver that almost let off a sexual twang. The whole
impression was one of a woman having an orgasm simply because Johnny Fontane
had smiled at her and said, “Thank you, honey.” It was very well done. It was
done better than Johnny had ever seen it done before. But by now he knew it was
fake. And the odds were always good that the broads who did it were a lousy
lay.
He watched her go back to her chair and nursed his drink
slowly. He didn’t want to see that little trick again. He wasn’t in the mood
for it tonight.
It was an hour before Nino Valenti began to go. He started
leaning first, wavered back, and then plunged off the chair straight to the
floor. But the pit boss and the relief dealer had been alerted by the first
weave and caught him before he hit the ground. They lifted him and carried him
through the parted drapes that led to the bedroom of the suite.
Johnny kept watching as the cocktail waitress helped the
other two men undress Nino and shove him under the bed covers. The pit boss was
counting Nino’s chips and making a note on his pad of chits, then guarding the
table with its dealer’s chips. Johnny said to him, “How long has that been
going on?”
The pit boss shrugged. “He went early tonight. The first
time we got the house doc and he fixed Mr. Valenti up with something and gave
him some sort of lecture. Then Nino told us that we shouldn’t call the doc when
that happened, just put him to bed and he’d be OK in the morning. So that’s
what we do. He’s pretty lucky, he was a winner again tonight, almost three
grand.”
Johnny Fontane said, “Well, let’s get the house doc up here
tonight. OK? Page the casino floor if you have to.”
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It was almost fifteen minutes before Jules Segal came into
the suite. Johnny noted with irritation that this guy never looked like a
doctor. Tonight he was wearing a blue loose-knit polo shirt with white trim,
some sort of white suede shoes and no socks. He looked funny as hell carrying
the traditional black doctor’s bag.
Johnny said, “You oughta figure out a
way to carry your stuff in a cut-down golf bag.”
Jules grinned understandingly, “Yeah, this medical school
carryall is a real drag. Scares the hell out of people. They should change the
color anyway.”
He went over to where Nino was lying in bed. As he opened
his bag he said to Johnny. “Thanks for that check you sent me as a consultant.
It was excessive. I didn’t do that much.”
“Like hell you didn’t,” Johnny said. “Anyway, forget that,
that was a long time ago. What’s with Nino?”
Jules was making a quick examination of heartbeat, pulse and
blood pressure. He took a needle out of his bag and shoved it casually into
Nino’s arm and pressed the plunger. Nino’s sleeping face lost its waxy
paleness, color came into the cheeks, as if the blood had started pumping
faster.
“Very simple diagnosis,” Jules said briskly. “I had a chance
to examine him and run some tests when he first came here and fainted. I had
him moved to the hospital before he regained consciousness. He’s got diabetes,
mild adult stabile, which is no problem if you take care of it with medication
and diet and so forth. He insists on ignoring it. Also he is firmly determined
to drink himself to death. His liver is going and his brain will go. Right now
he’s in a mild diabetic coma. My advice is to have him put away.”
Johnny felt a sense of relief. It couldn’t be too serious,
all Nino had to do was take care of himself. “You mean in one of those joints
where they dry you out?” Johnny asked.
Jules went over to the bar in the far corner of the room and
made himself a drink. “No,” he said. “I mean committed. You know, the crazy
house.”
“Don’t be funny,” Johnny said.
“I’m not joking,” Jules said. “I’m not up on all the
psychiatric jazz but I know something about it, part of my trade. Your friend
Nino can be put back into fairly good shape unless the liver damage has gone
too far, which we can’t know until an autopsy really. But the real disease is
in his head. In essence he doesn’t care if he dies, maybe he even wants to kill
himself. Until that is cured there’s so hope for him. That’s why I say, have
him
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committed and then he can undergo the
necessary psychiatric treatment.”
There was a knock on the door and Johnny went to answer it.
It was Lucy Mancini. She came into Johnny’s arms and kissed him. “Oh, Johnny,
it’s so good to see you,” she said.
“It’s been a long time,” Johnny Fontane said. He noticed
that Lucy had changed. She had gotten much slimmer, her clothes were a hell of
a lot better and she wore them better. Her hair style fitted her face in a sort
of boyish cut. She looked younger and better than he had ever seen her and the
thought crossed his mind that she could keep him company here is Vegas. It
would be a pleasure hanging out with a real broad. But before he could turn on
the charm he remembered she was the doc’s girl. So it was out. He made his
smile just friendly and said, “What are you doing coming to Nino’s apartment at
night, eh?”
She punched him in the shoulder. “I heard Nino was sick and
that Jules came up. I just wanted to see if I could help. Nino’s OK, isn’t he?”
“Sure,” Johnny said. “He’ll be fine.”
Jules Segal had sprawled out on the couch. “Like hell he
is,” Jules said. “I suggest we all sit here and wait for Nino to come to. And
then we all talk him into committing himself. Lucy, he likes you, maybe you can
help. Johnny, if you’re a real friend of his you’ll go along. Otherwise old
Nino’s liver will shortly be exhibit A in some university medical lab.”
Johnny was offended by the doctor’s flippant attitude. Who
the hell did he think he was? He started to say so but Nino’s voice came from
the bed, “Hey, old buddy, how, about a drink.
Nino was sitting up in bed. He grinned at Lucy and said, “Hey,
baby, come to old Nino.” He held his arms wide-open. Lucy sat on the edge of
the bed and gave him a hug. Oddly enough Nino didn’t look bad at all now,
almost normal.
Nino snapped his fingers. “Come on, Johnny, gimme a drink.
The night’s young yet. Where the hell’s my blackjack table?”
Jules took a long slug from his own glass and said to Nino,
“You can’t have a think. Your doctor forbids it.”
Nino scowled. “Screw my actor.” Then a play-acting look of
contrition came on his face. “Hey, Julie, that’s you. You’re my doctor, right?
I don’t mean you, old buddy. Johnny, get
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me a drink or I get up out of bed sad
get it myself.”
Johnny shrugged and moved toward the bar. Jules said
indifferently, “I’m saying he shouldn’t have it.”
Johnny knew why Jules irritated him. The doctor’s voice was
always cool, the words never stressed so matter how dire, the voice always low
and controlled. If he gave a warning the warning was in the words alone, the
voice itself was neutral, as if uncaring. It was this that made Johnny sore
enough to bring Nino his water glass of whiskey. Before he handed it over he
said to Jules, “This won’t kill him, right?”
“No, it won’t kill him,” Jules said calmly. Lucy gave him an
anxious glance, started to say something, then kept still. Meanwhile Nino had
taken the whiskey and poured it down his throat.
Johnny was smiling down at Nino; they had shown the punk
doctor. Suddenly Nino gasped, his face seemed to turn blue, he couldn’t catch
his breath and was choking for air. His body leaped upward like a fish, his
face was gorged with blood, his eyes bulging. Jules appeared on the other side
of the bed facing Johnny and Lucy. He took Nino by the neck and held him still
and plunged the needle into the shoulder near where it joined the neck. Nino
went limp in his hands, the heaves of his body subsided, and after a moment he
slumped down back onto his pillow. His eyes closed in sleep.
Johnny, Lucy and Jules went back into the living room part
of the suite and sat around the huge solid coffee table. Lucy picked up one of
the aquamarine phones and ordered coffee and some food to be sent up. Johnny
had gone over to the bar and mixed himself a drink.
“Did
you know he would have that reaction from the whiskey?” Johnny asked. Jules
shrugged. “I was pretty sure he would.” Johnny said sharply, “Then why didn’t
you warn me?” “I warned you,” Jules said.
“You didn’t warn me right,” Johnny said with cold anger.
“You are really one hell of a doctor. You don’t give a shit. You tell me to get
Nino in a crazy house, you don’t bother to use a nice word like sanitorium. You
really like to stick it to people, right?”
Lucy was staring down in her lap. Jules kept smiling at
Fontane. “Nothing was going to stop you from giving Nino that drink. You had to
show you didn’t have to accept my warnings, my orders. Remember when you
offered me a job as your personal physician
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after that throat business? I turned you down because I knew
we could never get along. A doctor thinks he’s God, he’s the high priest in
modern society, that’s one of his rewards. But you would never treat me that
way. I’d be a flunky God to you. Like those doctors you guys have in Hollywood.
Where do you get those people from anyway? Christ, don’t they know anything or
don’t they just care? They must know what’s happening to Nino but they just
give him all kinds of drugs to keep him going. They wear those silk suits and
they kiss your ass because you’re a power movie man and so you think they are
great doctors. Show biz, docs, you gotta have heart? Right? But they don’t give
a fuck if you live or die. Well, my little hobby, unforgivable as it is, is to
keep people alive. I let you give Nino that drink to show you what could happen
to him.” Jules leaned toward Johnny Fontane, his voice still calm, unemotional.
“Your friend is almost terminal. Do you understand that? He hasn’t got a chance
without therapy and strict medical care. His blood pressure and diabetes and
bad habits can cause a cerebral hemorrhage in this very next instant. His brain
will blow itself apart. Is that vivid enough for you? Sure, I said crazy house.
I want you to understand what’s needed. Or you won’t make a move. I’ll put it
to you straight. You can save your buddy’s life by having him committed.
Otherwise kiss him good-bye.”
Lucy murmured, “Jules, darling, lutes,
don’t be so tough. Just tell him.”
Jules stood up. His usual cool was gone, Johnny Fontane
noticed with satisfaction. His voice too had lost its quiet unaccented
monotone.
“Do you think this is the first time I’ve had to talk to
people like you in a situation like this?” Jules said. “I did it every day.
Lucy says don’t be so tough, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You
know, I used to tell people, “Don’t eat go much or you’ll die, don’t smoke so
much or you’ll die, don’t work so much or you’ll die, don’t drink so much or
you’ll die.’ Nobody listens. You know why? Because I don’t say, `You will die
tomorrow.’ Well, I can tell you that Nino may very well die tomorrow.”
Jules went over to the bar and mixed himself another drink.
“How about it, Johnny, are you going to get Nino committed?”
Johnny said, “I don’t know.”
Jules took a quick drink at the bar and filled his glass
again. “You know, it’s a funny thing, you can smoke yourself to death, drink
yourself to death, work yourself to death and even eat yourself to death. But
that’s all acceptable. The only thing you can’t do medically is screw yourself
to death and yet that’s where they put all the obstacles.” He
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paused to finish his drink. “But even that’s trouble, for
women anyway. I used to have women who weren’t supposed to have any more
babies. ‘It’s dangerous,’ I’d tell them. ‘You could die,’ I’d tell them. And a
month later they pop in, their faces all rosy, and say, ‘Doctor, I think I’m
pregnant,’ and sure enough they’d kill the rabbit. ‘But it’s dangerous,’ I’d
tell them. My voice used to have expression in those days. And they’d smile at
me and say, ‘But my husband and I are very strict Catholics,’ they’d say.”
There was a knock on the door and two waiters wheeled in a
cart covered with food and silver service coffeepots. They took a portable
table from the bottom of the cart and set it up. Then Johnny dismissed them.
They sat at the table and ate the hot sandwiches Lucy had
ordered and drank the coffee. Johnny leaned back and lit up a cigarette. “So
you save lives. How come you became an abortionist?”
Lucy spoke up for the first time. “He wanted to help girls
in trouble, girls who might commit suicide or do something dangerous to get rid
of the baby.”
Jules smiled at her and sighed. “It’s not that simple. I
became a surgeon finally. I’ve got the good hands, as ballplayers say. But I
was so good I scared myself silly. I’d open up some poor bastard’s belly and
know he was going to die. I’d operate and know that the cancer or tumor would
come back but I’d send them off home with a smile and a lot of bullshit. Some
poor broad comes in and I slice off one tit. A year later she’s back and I
slice off the other tit. A year after that, I scoop out her insides like you
scoop the seeds out of a cantaloupe. After all that she dies anyway. Meanwhile
husbands keep calling up and asking, ‘What do the tests show? What do the tests
show?’
“So I hired an extra secretary to take all those calls. I
saw the patient only when she was fully prepared for examination, tests or
operation. I spent the minimum possible time with the victim because I was,
after all, a busy man. And then finally I’d let the husband talk to me for two
minutes. ‘It’s terminal,’ I’d say. And they could never hear that last word.
They understood what it meant but they never heard it. I thought at first that
unconsciously I was dropping my voice on the last word, so I consciously said
it louder. But still they never heard it. One guy even said, ‘What the hell do
you mean, it’s germinal?’” Jules started to laugh. “Germinal, terminal, what
the hell. I started to do abortions. Nice and easy, everybody happy, like
washing the dishes and leaving a clean sink. That was my class. I loved it, I
loved being an abortionist. I don’t believe that a two-month fetus is a human
being so no problems there. I was helping young girls and
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married women who were in trouble, I was making good money.
I was out of the front tines. When I got caught I felt like a deserter that had
been hauled in. But I was lucky, a friend pulled some strings and got pie off
but now the big hospitals won’t let me operate. So here I am. Giving good
advice again which is being ignored just like in the old days.”
“I’m not ignoring it,” Johnny Fontane
said. “I’m thinking it over.”
Lucy finally changed the subject. “What are you doing in
Vegas, Johnny? Relaxing from your duties as big-time Hollywood wheel or
working?”
Johnny shook his head. “Mike Corleone wants to see me and
have a talk. He’s flying in tonight with Tom Hagen. Tom said they’ll be seeing
you, Lucy. You know what it’s all about?”
Lucy shook her head. “We’re all having dinner tether
tomorrow night. Freddie too. I think it might have something to do with the
hotel. The casino has been dropping money lately, which shouldn’t be. The Don
might want Mike to check it out.”
“I hear Mike finally got his face fixed,”
Johnny said.
Lucy laughed. “I guess Kay talked him into it. He wouldn’t
do it when they were married. I wonder why? It looked so awful and made his
nose drip. He should have had it done sooner.” She paused for a moment. “Jules
was called in by the Corleone Family for that operation. They used him as a
consultant and as observer.”
Johnny nodded and said dryly, “I
recommended him for it.”
“Oh,” Lucy said. “Anyway, Mike said he wanted to do
something for Jules. That’s why he’s having us to dinner tomorrow night.”
Jules said musingly, “He didn’t trust anybody. He warned me
to keep track of what everybody did. It was fairly straight, ordinary surgery.
Any competent man could do it.”
There was a sound from the bedroom of the suite and they
looked toward the drapes. Nino had become concious again. Johnny went and sat
on the bed. Jules and Lucy went over to the foot of the bed. Nino gave them a
wan grin. “OK, I’ll stop being a wise guy. I feel really lousy. Johnny,
remember about a year ago, what happened when we were with those two broads
down in Palm Springs? I swear to you I wasn’t jealous about what happened. I
was glad. You believe me, Johnny?”
Johnny said reassuringly, “Sure, Nino,
I believe you.”
Lucy and Jules looked at each other.
From everything they had heard and knew about
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Johnny Fontane it seemed impossible that he would take a
girl away from a close friend like Nino. And why was Nino saying he wasn’t
jealous a year after it happened? The same thought crossed both their minds,
that Nino was drinking himself to death romantically because a girl had left
him to go with Johnny Fontane.
Jules checked Nino again. “I’ll get a nurse to be in the
room with you tonight,” Jules said. “You really have to stay in bed for a
couple of days. No kidding.”
Nino smiled. “OK, Doc, just don’t make
the nurse too pretty.”
Jules made a call for the nurse and then he and Lucy left.
Johnny sat in a chair near the bed to wait for the nurse. Nino was falling
asleep again, an exhausted took on his face. Johnny thought about what he had
said, about not being jealous about what had happened over a year ago with
those two broads down in Palm Springs. The thought had never entered his head
that Nino might be jealous.
* * *
A year ago Johnny Fontane had sat in his plush office, the
office of the movie company he headed, and felt as lousy as he had ever felt in
his life. Which was surprising because the first movie he had produced, with
himself as star and Nino in a featured part, was making tons of money.
Everything had worked. Everybody had done their job. The picture was brought in
under budget. Everybody was going to make a fortune out of it and Jack Woltz
was losing ten years of his life. Now Johnny had two more pictures in production,
one starring himself, one starring Nino. Nino was great on the screen as one of
those charming, dopey lover-boys that women loved to shove between their tits.
Little boy lost. Everything he touched made money, it was rolling in. The
Godfather was getting his percentage through the bank, and that made Johnny
feel really good. He had justified his Godfather’s faith. But today that wasn’t
helping much.
And now that he was a successful independent movie producer
he had as much power, maybe more, than he had ever had as a singer. Beautiful
broads felt all over him just like before, though for a more commercial reason.
He had his own plane, he lived more lavishly even, with the special tax
benefits a businessman had that artists didn’t get. Then what the hell was
bothering him?
He knew what it was. The front of his head hurt, his nasal
passages hurt, his throat itched. The only way he could scratch and relieve
that itch was by singing and he was afraid to even try. He had called Jules
Segal about it, when it would be safe to try to sing and Jules had said anytime
he felt like it. So he’d tried and sounded so hoarse and
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lousy he’d given up. And his throat would hurt like hell the
next day, hurt in a different way than before the warts had been taken off.
Hurt worse, burning. He was afraid to keep singing, afraid that he’d lose his
voice forever, or ruin it.
And if he couldn’t sing, what the hell was the use of
everything else? Everything else was just bullshit. Sing was the only thing he
really knew. Maybe he knew more about singing and his kind of music than
anybody else in the world. He was that good, he realized now. All those years
had made him a real pro. Nobody could tell him, the right and the wrong, he
didn’t have to ask anybody. He knew. What a waste, what a damn waste.
It was Friday and he decided to spend the weekend with
Virginia and the kids. He called her up as he always did to tell her he was
coming. Really to give her a chance to say no. She never said no. Not in all
the years they had been divorced. Because she would never say no to a meeting
of her daughters and their father. What a broad, Johnny thought. He’d been
lucky with Virginia. And though he knew he cared more about her than any other
woman he knew it was impossible for them to live together sexually. Maybe when
they were sixty-five, like when you retire, they’d retire together, retire from
everything.
But reality shattered these tests when he arrived there and
found Virginia was feeling a little grouchy herself and the two girls not that
crazy to see him because they had been promised a weekend visit with some girl
friends on a California ranch where they could ride horses.
He told Virginia to send the girls off to the ranch and
kissed them good-bye with an amused smile. He understood them so well. What kid
wouldn’t rather go riding horses on a ranch than hang around with a grouchy
father who picked his own spots as a father. He said to Virginia, “I’ll have a
few drinks and then I’ll shove off too.”
“All right,” she said. She was having one of her bad days,
rare, but recognizable. It wasn’t too easy for her leading this kind of life.
She saw him taking an extra large drink. “What are you
cheering yourself up for?” Virginia asked. “Everything is going so beautifully
for you. I never dreamed you had it in you to be such a good businessman.”
Johnny smiled at her. “It’s not so hard,” he said. At the
same time he was thinking, so that’s what was wrong. He understood women and he
understood now that Virginia was down because she thought he was having
everything his own way. Women really hated
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seeing their men doing too well. It irritated them. It made
them less sure of the hold they exerted over them through affection, sexual
custom or marriage ties. So more to cheer her up than voice his own complaints,
Johnny said, “What the hell difference does it make if I can’t sing.”
Virginia’s voice was annoyed. “Oh, Johnny, you’re not a kid
anymore. You’re over thirty-five. Why do you keep worrying about that silly
singing stuff? You make more money as a producer anyhow.”
Johnny looked at her curiously and said, “I’m a singer. I
love to sing. What’s being old got to do with that?”
Virginia was impatient. “I never liked your singing anyway.
Now that you’ve shown you can make movies, I’m glad you can’t sing anymore.”
They were both surprised when Johnny said with fury, “That’s
a fucking lousy thing to say.” He was shaken. How could Virginia feel like
that, how could she dislike him so much?
Virginia smiled at his being hurt and because it was so
outrageous that he should be angry at her she said, “How do you think I felt
when all those girls came running after you because of the way you sang? How
would you feel if I went ass-naked down the street to get men running after me?
That’s what your singing was and I used to wish you’d lose your voice and could
never sing again. But that was before we got divorced.”
Johnny finished his drink. “You don’t understand a thing.
Not a damn thing.” He went into the kitchen and dialed Nino’s number. He
quickly arranged for them both to go down to Palm Springs for the weekend and
gave Nino the number of a girl to call, a real fresh young beauty he’d been
meaning to get around to. “She’ll have a friend for you,” Johnny said. “I’ll be
at your place in an hour.”
Virginia gave him a cool good-bye when he left. He didn’t
give a damn, it was one of the few times he was angry with her. The hell with
it, he’d just tear loose for the weekend and get all the poison out of his
system.
Sure enough, everything was fine down in Palm Springs.
Johnny used his own house down there, it was always kept open and staffed this
time of year. The two girls were young enough to be great fun and not too
rapacious for some kind of favor. Some people came over to keep them company at
the pool until suppertime. Nino went to his room with his girl to get ready for
supper and a quick bang while he was still warm from the sun. Johnny wasn’t in
the mood, so he sent his girl, a short bandbox blonde named
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Tina, up to shower by herself. He never could make love to
another woman after he’d had a fight with Virginia.
He went into the glass-walled patio living room that held a
piano. When singing with the band he had fooled around with the piano just for
laughs, so he could pick out a song in a fake moonlight-soft ballad style. He
sat down now and hummed along a bit with the piano, very softly, muttering a
few words but not really singing. Before he knew it Tina was in the living room
making him a drink and sitting beside him at the piano. He played a few tunes
and she hummed with him. He left her at the piano and went up to take his
shower. In the shower he sang short phrases, more like speaking. He got dressed
and went back down. Tina was still alone; Nino was really working his girl over
or getting drunk.
Johnny sat down at the piano again while Tina wandered off
outside to watch the pool. He started singing one of his old songs. There was
no burning in his throat. The tones were coming out muted but with proper body.
He looked at the patio. Tina was still out there, the glass door was closed,
she wouldn’t hear him. For some reason he didn’t want anybody to hear him. He
started off fresh on an old ballad that was his favorite. He sang full out as
if he were singing in public, letting himself go, waiting for the familiar
burning rasp in his throat but there was none. He listened to his voice, it was
diferent somehow, but he liked it. It was darker, it was a man’s voice, not a
kid’s, rich he thought, dark rich. He finished the song easing up and sat there
at the piano thinking about it.
Behind him Nino said, “Not bad, old
buddy, not bad at all.”
Johnny swiveled his body around. Nino was standing in the doorway,
alone. His girl wasn’t with him. Johnny was relieved. He didn’t mind Nino
hearing him.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Let’s get rid of
those two broads. Send them home.”
Nino said, “You send them home. They’re nice kids, I’m not
gonna hurt their feelings. Besides I just banged mine twice. How would it look
if I sent her away without even giving her dinner?” The hell with it, Johnny
thought. Let the girls listen even if he sounded lousy. He called up a band
leader he knew in Palm Springs and asked him to send over a mandolin for Nino.
The band leader protested, “Hell, nobody plays a mandolin in California.”
Johnny yelled, “Just get one.”
The house was loaded with recording equipment and Johnny had
the two girls work the turn-off and volumes. After they had dinner, Johnny went
to work. He had Nino playing the mandolin as accompaniment and sang all his old
songs. He sang them all the way
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out, not nursing his voice at all. His throat was fine, he
felt that he could sing forever. In the months he had not been able to sing he
had often thought about singing, planned out how he would phrase lyrics
differently now than as a kid. He had sung the songs in his head with more
sophisticated variations of emphasis. Now he was doing it for real. Sometimes
it would go wrong in the actual singing, stuff that had sound good when he
heard it just in his head didn’t work out when he tried it really singing out
loud. OUT LOUD, he thought. He wasn’t listening to himself now, he was
concentrating on performing. He fumbled a little on timing but that was OK,
just rusty. He had a metronome in his head that would never fail him. Just a
little practice was all he needed.
Finally he stopped singing. Tina came over to him with eyes
shining and gave him a long kiss. “Now I know why Mother goes to all your
movies,” she said. It was the wrong thing to say at any time except this.
Johnny and Nino laughed.
They played the feedback and now Johnny could really listen
to himself. His voice had changed, changed a hell of a lot but was still
unquestionably the voice of Johnny Fontane. It had become much richer and
darker as he had noticed before but there was also the quality of a man singing
rather than a boy. The voice had more true emotion, more character. And the
technical part of his singing was far superior to anything he had ever done. It
was nothing less than masterful. And if he was that good now, rusty as hell,
how good would he be when he got in shape again? Johnny grinned at Nino. “Is
that as good as I think it is?”
Nino looked at his happy face thoughtfully. “It’s very damn
good,” he said. “But let’s see how you sing tomorrow.”
Johnny was hurt that Nino should be so downbeat. “You son of
a bitch, you know you can’t sing like that. Don’t worry about tomorrow. I feel
great.” But he didn’t sing any more that night. He and Nino took the girls to a
party and Tina spent the night in his_bed but he wasn’t much good there. The
girl was a little disappointed. But what the hell, you couldn’t do everything
all in one day, Johnny thought.
He woke up in the morning with a sense of apprehension, with
a vague terror that he had dreamed his voice had come back. Then when he was
sure it was not a dream he got scared that his voice would be shot again. He
went to the window and hummed a bit, then he went down to the living room still
in his pajamas. He picked out a tune on the piano and after a while tried
singing with it. He sang mutedly but there was no pain, no hoarseness in his
throat, so he turned it on. The cords were true. and rich, he didn’t
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have to force it at all. Easy, easy, just pouring out.
Johnny realized that the bad time was over, he had it all now. And it didn’t
matter a damn if he fell on his face with movies, it didn’t matter if he
couldn’t get it up with Tina the night before; it didn’t matter that Virginia
would hate him being able to sing again. For a moment he had just one regret.
If only his voice had come back to him while trying to sing for his daughters,
how lovely that would have been. That would have been so lovely.
* * *
The hotel nurse had come into the room wheeling a cart
loaded with medication. Johnny got up and stared down at Nino, who was sleeping
or maybe dying. He knew Nino wasn’t jealous of his getting his voice back. He
understood that Nino was only jealous because he was so happy about getting his
voice back. That he cared so much about singing. For what was very obvious now
was that Nino Valenti didn’t care enough about anything to make him want to
stay alive.
Chapter 27
Michael Corleone arrived late in the evening and, by his own
order, was not met at the airport. Only two men accompanied him: Tom Hagen and
a new bodyguard, named Albert Neri.
The most lavish suite of rooms in the
hotel had been set aside for Michael and his party.
Already waiting in that suite were the
people it would be necessary for Michael to see.
Freddie greeted his brother with a warm embrace. Freddie was
much stouter, more benevolent-looking, cheerful, and far more dandified. He
wore an exquisitely tailored gray silk and accessories to match. His hair was
razor cut and arranged as carefully as a movie star’s, his face glowed with
perfect barbering and his hands were manicured. He was an altogether different
man than the one who had been shipped out of New York four years before.
He leaned back and surveyed Michael fondly. “You look a hell
of a lot better now that you got your face fixed. Your wife finally talked you
into it, huh? How is Kay? When she goons come out and visit us out here?”
Michael smiled at his brother. “You’re looking pretty good
too. Kay would have come out this time, but she’s carrying another kid and she
has the baby to look after. Besides this is business, Freddie, I have to fly
back tomorrow night or the morning after.”
“You have to eat something first,”
Freddie said. “We’ve got a great chef in the hotel,
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you’ll get the best food you ever ate. Go take your shower
and change and everything will be set up right here. I have all the people you
want to see lined up, they’ll be waiting around for when you’re ready, I just
have to call them.”
Michael said pleasantly, “Let’s save Moe Greene to the end,
OK? Ask Johnny Fontane and Nino up to eat with us. And Lucy and her doctor
friend. We can talk while we eat.” He turned to Hagen. “Anybody you want to add
to that, Tom?”
Hagen shook his head. Freddie had greeted him much less
affectionately than Michael, but Hagen understood. Freddie was on his father’s
shit list and Freddie naturally blamed the Consigliere for not straightening
things out. Hagen would gladly have done so, but he didn’t know why Freddie was
in his father’s bad graces. The Don did not give voice to specific grievances.
He just made his displeasure felt.
It was after midnight before they gathered around the
special dinner table set up in Michael’s suite. Lucy kissed Michael and didn’t
comment on his face looking so much better after the operation. Jules Segal
boldly studied the repaired cheekbone and said to Michael, “A good job. It’s
knitted nicely. Is the sinus OK?”
“Fine,” Michael said. “Thanks for
helping out.”
Dinner focused on Michael as they ate. They all noted his
resemblance in speech and manner to the Don. In some curious way he inspired
the same respect, the same awe, and yet he was perfectly natural, at pains to
put everyone at their ease. Hagen as usual remained in the background. The new
man they did not know; Albert Neri was also very quiet and unobtrusive. He had
claimed he was not hungry and sat in an armchair close to the door reading a
local newspaper.
After they had had a few drinks and food, the waiters were
dismissed. Michael spoke to Johnny Fontane. “Hear your voice is back as good as
ever, you got all your old fans back. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Johnny said. He was curious about exactly why
Michael wanted to see him. What favor would he be asked?
Michael addressed them all in general. “The Corleone Family
is thinking of moving out here to Vegas. Selling out all our interests in the
olive oil business and settling here. The Don and Hagen and myself have talked
it over and we think here is where the future is for the Family. That doesn’t
mean right now or next year. It may take two, three, even four years to get
things squared away. But that’s the general plan. Some friends of ours own a
good percentage of this hotel and casino so that will be our foundation. Moe
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Greene will sell us his interest so it
can be wholly owned by friends of the Family.”
Freddie’s moon face was anxious. “Mike, you sure about Moe
Greene selling? He never mentioned it to me and he loves the business. I really
don’t think he’ll sell.”
Michael said quietly, “I’ll make him an
offer he can’t refuse.”
The words were said in an ordinary voice, yet the effect was
chilling, perhaps because it was a favorite phrase of the Don’s. Michael turned
to Johnny Fontane. “The Don is counting on you to help us get started. It’s
been explained to us that entertainment will be the big factor in drawing
gamblers. We hope you’ll sign a contract to appear five times a year for maybe
a week-long engagement. We hope your friends in movies do the same. You’ve done
them a lot of favors, now you can call them in.”
“Sure,” Johnny said. “I’ll do anything for my Godfather, you
know that, Mike.” But there was just the faint shadow of doubt in his voice.
Michael smiled and said, “You won’t lose money on the deal
and neither will your friends. You get points in the hotel, and if there’s
somebody else you think important enough, they get some points too. Maybe you
don’t believe me, so let me say I’m speaking the Don’s words.”
Johnny said hurriedly, “I believe you, Mike. But there’s ten
more hotels and casinos being built on the Strip right now. When you come in,
the market may be glutted, you may be too late with all that competition
already there.”
Tom Hagen spoke up. “The Corleone Family has friends who are
financing three of those hotels.” Johnny understood immediately that he meant
the Corleone Family owned the three hotels, with their casinos. And that there
would be plenty of points to give out.
“I’ll start working on it,” Johnny
said.
Michael turned to Lucy and Jules Segal. “I owe you,” he said
to Jules. “I hear you want to go back to cutting people up and that hospitals
won’t let you use their facilities because of that old abortion business. I
have to know from you, is that what you want?”
Jules smiles. “I guess so. But you don’t know the medical
setup. Whatever power you have doesn’t mean anything to them. I’m afraid you
can’t help me in that.”
Michael nodded absentmindedly. “Sure, you’re right. But some
friends of mine, pretty well-known people, are going to build a big hospital
for Las Vegas. The town will need it the way it’s growing and the way it’s
projected to grow. Maybe they’ll let you into the
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operating room if it’s put to them right. Hell, how many
surgeons as good as you can they get to come out to this desert? Or any half as
good? We’ll be doing the hospital a favor. So stick around. I hear you and Lucy
are going to get married?”
Jules shrugged. “When I see that I have
any future.”
Lucy said wryly, “Mike, if you don’t
build that hospital, I’ll die an old maid.”
They all laughed. All except Jules. He said to Michael, “If
I took a job like that there couldn’t be any strings attached.”
Michael
said coldly, “No strings. I just owe you and I want to even out.” Lucy said
gently, “Mike, don’t get sore.”
Michael smiled at her. “I’m not sore.” He turned to Jules.
“That was a dumb thing for you to say. The Corleone Family has pulled some
strings for you. Do you think I’m so stupid I’d ask you to do things you’d hate
to do? But if I did, so what? Who the hell else ever lifted a finger to help
you when you were in trouble? When I heard you wanted to get back to being a
real surgeon, I took a lot of time to find out if I could help. I can. I’m not
asking you for anything. But at least you can consider our relationship
friendly, and I assume you would do for me what you’d do for any good friend.
That’s my string. But you can refuse it.”
Tom Hagen lowered his head and smiled. Not even the Don
himself could have done it any better.
Jules was flushing. “Mike, I didn’t mean it that way at all.
I’m very grateful to you and your father. Forget I said it.”
Michael nodded and said, “Fine. Until the hospital gets
built and opens up you’ll be medical director for the four hotels. Get yourself
a staff. Your money goes up too, but you can discuss that with Tom at a later time.
And Lucy, I want you to do something more important. Maybe coordinate all the
shops that will be opening up in the hotel arcades. On the financial side. Or
maybe hiring the girls we need to work in the casinos. something like that. So
if Jules doesn’t marry you, you can be a rich old maid.”
Freddie had been puffing on his cigar angrily. Michael
turned to him and said gently, “I’m just the errand boy for the Don, Freddie.
What he wants you to do he’ll tell you himself, naturally, but I’m sure it will
be something big enough to make you happy. Everybody tells us what a great job
you’ve been doing here.”
“Then why is he sore at me?” Freddie
asked plaintively. “Just because the casino has
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been losing money? I don’t control that end, Moe Greene
does. What the hell does the old man want from me?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Michael said. He turned to Johnny
Fontane. “Where’s Nino? I was looking forward to seeing him again.”
Johnny shrugged. “Nino is pretty sick. A nurse is taking
care of him in his room. But the doc here says he should be committed, that
he’s trying to kill himself. Nino!”
Michael said thoughtfully, really surprised, “Nino was
always a real good guy. I never knew him to do anything lousy, say anything to
put anybody down. He never gave a damn about anything. Except the booze.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “The money is rolling in, he could get
a lot of work, singing or in the movies. He gets fifty grand a picture now and
he blows it. He doesn’t give a damn about being famous. All the years we’ve
been buddies I’ve never known him to do anything creepy. And the son of a bitch
is drinking himself to death.”
Jules was about to say something when there was a knock on
the door of the suite. He was surprised when the man in the armchair, the man
nearest the door, did not answer it but kept reading the newspaper. It was
Hagen who went to open it. And was almost brushed aside when Moe Greene came
striding into the room followed by his two bodyguards.
Moe Greene was a handsome hood who had made his rep as a
Murder Incorporated executioner in Brooklyn. He had branched out into gambling
and gone west to seek his fortune, had been the first person to see the
possibilities of Las Vegas and built one of the first hotel casinos on the
Strip. He still had murderous tantrums and was feared by everyone in the hotel,
not excluding Freddie, Lucy and Jules Segal. They always stayed out of his way
whenever possible.
His handsome face was grim now. He said to Michael Corleone,
“I’ve been waiting around to talk to you, Mike. I got a lot of things to do
tomorrow so I figured I’d catch you tonight. How about it?”
Michael Corleone looked at him with what seemed to be
friendly astonishment. “Sure,” he said. He motioned in Hagen’s direction. “Get
Mr. Greene a drink, Tom.”
Jules noticed that the man called Albert Neri was studying
Moe Greene intently, not paying any attention to the bodyguards who were
leaning against the door. He knew there was no chance of any violence, not in
Vegas itself. That was strictly forbidden as
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fatal to the whole project of making
Vegas the legal sanctuary of American gamblers.
Moe Greene said to his bodyguards, “Draw some chips for all
these people so that they can gamble on the house.” He obviously meant Jules,
Lucy, Johnny Fontane and Michael’s bodyguard, Albert Neri.
Michael Corleone nodded agreeably. “That’s a good idea.” It
was only then that Neri got out of his chair and prepared to follow the others
out.
After the good-byes were said, there were Freddie, Tom
Hagen, Moe Greene and Michael Corleone left in the room.
Greene put his drink down on the table and said with barely
controlled fury, “What’s this I hear the Corleone Family is going to buy me
out? I’ll buy you out. You don’t buy me out.”
Michael said reasonably, “Your casino has been losing money
against all the odds. There’s something wrong with the way you operate. Maybe
we can do better.”
Greene laughed harshly. “You goddamn Dagos, I do you a favor
and take Freddie in when you’re having a bad time and now you push me out.
That’s what you think. I don’t get pushed out by nobody and I got friends that
will back me up.”
Michael was still quietly reasonable. “You took Freddie in
because the Corleone Family gave you a big chunk of money to finish furnishing
your hotel. And bankroll your casino. And because the Molinari Family on the
Coast guaranteed his safety and gave you some service for taking him in. The
Corleone Family and you are evened out. I don’t know what you’re getting sore
about. We’ll buy your share at any reasonable price you name, what’s wrong with
that? What’s unfair about that? With your casino losing money we’re doing you a
favor.”
Greene shook his head. “The Corleone Family don’t have that
much muscle anymore. The Godfather is sick. You’re getting chased out of New
York by the other Families and you think you can find easier pickings here.
I’ll give you some advice, Mike, don’t try.”
Michael said softly, “Is that why you
thought you could slap Freddie around in public?”
Tom Hagen, startled, turned his attention to Freddie.
Freddie Corleone’s face was getting red. “Ah, Mike, that wasn’t anything. Moe
didn’t mean anything. He flies off the handle sometimes, but me and him are
good friends. Right, Moe?”
Greene was wary. “Yeah, sure. Sometimes I got to kick asses
to make this place run right. I got sore at Freddie because he was banging all
the cocktail waitresses and
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letting them goof off on the job. We
had a little argument and I straightened him out.”
Michael’s face was impassive when he said to his brother,
“You straightened out, Freddie?”
Freddie stared sullenly at his younger brother. He didn’t
answer. Greene laughed and said, “The son of a bitch was taking them to bed two
at a time, the old sandwich job. Freddie, I gotta admit you really put it to
those broads. Nobody else could make them happy after you got through with
them.”
Hagen saw that this had caught Michael by surprise. They
looked at each other. This was perhaps the real reason the Don was displeased
with Freddie. The Don was straitlaced about sex. He would consider such
cavorting by his son Freddie, two girls at a time, as degeneracy. Allowing
himself to be physically humiliated by a man like Moe Greene would decrease
respect for the Corleone Family. That too would be part of the reason for being
in his father’s bad books.
Michael rising from his chair, said, in a tone of dismissal,
“I have to get back to New York tomorrow, so think about your price.”
Greene said savagely, “You son of a bitch, you think you can
just brush me off like that? I killed more men than you before I could jerk
off. I’ll fly to New York and talk to the Don himself. I’ll make him an offer.”
Freddie said nervously to Tom Hagen, “Tom, you’re the
Consigliere, you can talk to the Don and advise him.”
It was then that Michael turned the full chilly blast of his
personality on the two Vegas men. “The Don has sort of semiretired,” he said.
“I’m running the Family business now. And I’ve removed Tom from the Consigliere
spot. He’ll be strictly my lawyer here in Vegas. He’ll be moving out with his
family in a couple of months to get all the legal work started. So anything you
have to say, say it to me.”
Nobody answered. Michael said formally, “Freddie, you’re my
older brother, I have respect for you. But don’t ever take sides with anybody
against the Family again. I won’t even mention it to the Don.” He turned to Moe
Greene. “Don’t insult people who are trying to help you. You’d do better to use
your energy to find out why the casino is losing money. The Corleone Family has
big dough invested here and we’re not getting our money’s worth, but I still
didn’t come here to abuse you. I offer a helping hand. Well, if you prefer to
spit on that helping hand, that’s your business. I can’t say any more.”
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He had not once raised his voice but his words had a
sobering effect on both Greene and Freddie. Michael stared at both of them,
moving away from the table to indicate that he expected them both to leave.
Hagen went to the door and opened it. Both men left without saying good night.
* * *
The next morning Michael Corleone got the message from Moe
Greene: he would not sell his share of the hotel at any price. It was Freddie
who delivered the message. Michael shrugged and said to his brother, “I want to
see Nino before I go back to New York.”
In Nino’s suite they found Johnny Fontane sitting on the
couch eating breakfast. Jules was examining Nino behind the closed drapes of
the bedroom. Finally the drapes were drawn back. Michael was shocked at how
Nino looked. The man was visibly disintegrating. The eyes were dazed, the mouth
loose, all the muscles of his face slack. Michael sat on his bedside and said,
“Nino, it’s good to catch up with you. The Don always asks about you.”
Nino grinned, it was the old grin. “Tell him I’m dying. Tell
him show business is more dangerous than the olive oil business.”
“You’ll be OK,” Michael said. “If there’s anything bothering
you that the Family can help, just tell me.”
Nino shook his head. “There’s nothing,”
he said. “Nothing.”
Michael chatted for a few more moments and then left.
Freddie accompanied him and his party to the airport, but at Michael’s request
didn’t hang around for departure time. As he boarded the plane with Tom Hagen
and Al Neri, Michael turned to Neri and said, “Did you make him good?”
Neri tapped his forehead. “I got Moe
Greene mugged and numbered up here.”
Chapter 28
On the plane ride back to New York, Michael Corleone relaxed
and tried to sleep. It was useless. The most terrible period of his life was
approaching, perhaps even a fatal time. It could no longer be put off.
Everything was in readiness, all precautions had been taken, two years of
precautions. There could be no further delay. Last week when the Don had
formally announced his retirement to the caporegimes and other members of the
Corleone Family, Michael knew that this was his father’s way of telling him the
time
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was ripe.
It was almost three years now since he had returned home and
over two years since he had married Kay. The three years had been spent in
learning the Family business. He had put in long hours with Tom Hagen, long
hours with the Don. He was amazed at how wealthy and powerful the Corleone
Family truly was. It owned tremendously valuable real estate in midtown New
York, whole office buildings. It owned, through fronts, partnerships in two
Wall Street brokerage houses, pieces of banks on Long Island, partnerships in
some garment center firms, all this in addition to its illegal operations in
gambling.
The most interesting thing Michael Corleone learned, in
going back over past transactions of the Corleone Family, was that the Family
had received some protection income shortly after the war from a group of music
record counterfeiters. The counterfeiters duplicated and sold phonograph
records of famous artists, packaging everything so skillfully they were never
caught. Naturally on the records they sold to stores the artists and original
production company received not a penny. Michael Corleone noticed that Johnny
Fontane had lost a lot of money owing to this counterfeiting because at that
time, just before he lost his voice, his records were the most popular in the
country.
He asked Tom Hagen about it. Why did the Don allow the
counterfeiters to cheat his godson? Hagen shrugged. Business was business.
Besides, Johnny was in the Don’s bad graces, Johnny having divorced his
childhood sweetheart to marry Margot Ashton. This had displeased the Don
greatly.
“How come these guys stopped their operation?” Michael
asked. “The cops got on to them?”
Hagen shook his head. “The Don withdrew his protection. That
was right after Connie’s wedding.”
It was a pattern he was to see often, the Don helping those
in misfortune whose misfortune he had partly created. Not perhaps out of
cunning or planning but because of his variety of interests or perhaps because
of the nature of the universe, the interlinking of good and evil, natural of
itself.
Michael had married Kay up in New England, a quiet wedding,
with only her family and a few of her friends present. Then they had moved into
one of the houses on the mall in Long Beach. Michael was surprised at how well
Kay got along with his parents and the
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other people living on the mall. And of course she had
gotten pregnant right away, like a good, old-style Italian wife was supposed
to, and that helped. The second kid on the way in two years was just icing.
Kay would be waiting for him at the airport, she always came
to meet him, she was always so glad when he came back from a trip. And he was
too. Except now. For the end of this trip meant that he finally had to take the
action he had been groomed for over the last three years. The Don would be
waiting for him. The caporegimes would be waiting for him. And he, Michael
Corleone, would have to give the orders, make the decisions which would decide
his and his Family’s fate.
* * *
Every morning when Kay Adams Corleone got up to take care of
the baby’s early feeding, she saw Mama Corleone, the Don’s wife, being driven
away from the mall by one of the bodyguards, to return an hour later. Kay soon
learned that her mother-in-law went to church every single morning. Often on
her return, the old woman stopped by for morning coffee and to see her new
grandchild.
Mama Corleone always started off by asking Kay why she
didn’t think of becoming a Catholic, ignoring the fact that Kay’s child had
already been baptized a Protestant. So Kay felt it was proper to ask the old
woman why she went to church every morning, whether that was a necessary part
of being a Catholic.
As if she thought that this might have stopped Kay from
converting the old woman said, “Oh, no, no, some Catholics only go to church on
Easter and Christmas. You go when you feel like going.”
Kay laughed. “Then why do you go every
single morning?”
In a completely natural way, Mama Corleone said, “I go for
my husband,” she pointed down toward the floor, “so he don’t go down there.”
She paused. “I say prayers for his soul every day so he go up there.” She
pointed heavenward. She said this with an impish smile, as if she were
subverting her husband’s will in some way, or as if it were a losing cause. It
was said jokingly almost, in her grim, Italian, old crone fashion. And as
always when her husband was not present, there was an attitude of disrespect to
the great Don.
“How is your husband feeling?” Kay
asked politely.
Mama Corleone shrugged. “He’s not the
same man since they shot him. He lets Michael
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do all the work, he just plays the fool with his garden, his
peppers, his tomatoes. As if he were some peasant still. But men are always
like that.”
Later in the morning Connie Corleone would walk across the
mall with her two children to pay Kay a visit and chat. Kay liked Connie, her
vivaciousness, her obvious fondness for her brother Michael. Connie had taught
Kay how to cook some Italian dishes but sometimes brought her own more expert
concoctions over for Michael to taste.
Now this morning as she usually did, she asked Kay what
Michael thought of her husband, Carlo. Did Michael really like Carlo, as he
seemed to? Carlo had always had a little trouble with the Family but now over
the last years he had straightened out. He was really doing well in the labor
union but he had to work so hard, such long hours. Carlo really liked Michael,
Connie always said. But then, everybody liked Michael, just as everybody liked
her father. Michael was the Don all over again. It was the best thing that
Michael was going to run the Family olive oil business.
Kay had observed before that when Connie spoke about her
husband in relation to the Family, she was always nervously eager for some word
of approval for Carlo. Kay would have been stupid if she had not noticed the
almost terrified concern Connie had for whether Michael liked Carlo or not. One
night she spoke to Michael about it and mentioned the fact that nobody ever spoke
about Sonny Corleone, nobody even referred to him; at least not in her
presence. Kay had once tried to express her condolences to the Don and his wife
and had been listened to with almost rude silence and then ignored. She had
tried to get Connie talking about her older brother without success.
Sonny’s wife, Sandra, had taken her children and moved to
Florida, where her own parents now lived. Certain financial arrangements had
been made so that she and her children could live comfortably, but Sonny had
left no estate.
Michael reluctantly explained what had happened the night
Sonny was killed. That Carlo had beaten his wife and Connie had called the mall
and Sonny had taken the call and rushed out in a blind rage. So naturally
Connie and Carlo were always nervous that the rest of the Family blamed her for
indirectly causing Sonny’s death. Or blamed her husband, Carlo. But this wasn’t
the case. The proof was that they had given Connie and Carlo a house in the
mall itself and promoted Carlo to an important job in the labor union setup.
And Carlo had straightened out, stopped drinking, stopped whoring, stopped
trying to be a wise guy. The Family was pleased with his work and attitude for
the last
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two years. Nobody blamed him for what
had happened.
“Then why don’t you invite them over some evening and you
can reassure your sister?” Kay said. “The poor thing is always so nervous about
what you think of her husband. Tell her. And tell her to put those silly
worries out of her head.”
“I
can’t do that,” Michael said. “We don’t talk about those things in our family.”
“Do you want me to tell her what you’ve told me?” Kay said.
She was puzzled because he took such a long time thinking
over a suggestion that was obviously the proper thing to do. Finally he said,
“I don’t think you should, Kay. I don’t think it will do any good. She’ll worry
anyway. It’s something nobody can do anything about.”
Kay was amazed. She realized that
Michael was always a little colder to his sister
Connie than he was to anyone else,
despite Connie’s affection. “Surely you don’t blame
Connie for Sonny being killed?” she
said.
Michael sighed. “Of course not,” he said. “She’s my kid
sister and I’m very fond of her. I feel sorry for her. Carlo straightened out,
but he’s really the wrong kind of husband. It’s just one of those things. Let’s
forget about it.”
It was not in Kay’s nature to nag; she let it drop. Also she
had learned that Michael was not a man to push, that he could become coldly
disagreeable. She knew she was the only person in the world who could bend his
will, but she also knew that to do it too often would be to destroy that power.
And living with him the last two years had made her love him more.
She loved him because he was always fair. An odd thing. But
he always was fair to everybody around him, never arbitrary even in little
things. She had observed that he was now a very powerful man, people came to
the house to confer with him and ask favors, treating him with deference and
respect but one thing had endeared him to her above everything else.
Ever since Michael had come back from Sicily with his broken
face, everybody in the Family had tried to get him to undergo corrective
surgery. Michael’s mother was after him constantly; one Sunday dinner with all
the Corleones gathered on the mall she shouted at Michael, “You look like a
gangster in the movies, get your face fixed for the sake of Jesus Christ and
your poor wife. And so your nose will stop running like a drunken Irish.”
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The Don, at the head of the table, watching everything, said
to Kay, “Does it bother you?”
Kay shook her head. The Don said to his wife. “He’s out of
your hands, it’s no concern of yours.” The old woman immediately held her peace.
Not that she feared her husband but because it would have been disrespectful to
dispute him in such a matter before the others.
But Connie, the Don’s favorite, came in from the kitchen,
where she was cooking the Sunday dinner, her face flushed from the stove, and
said, “I think he should get his face fixed. He was the most handsome one in
the family before he got hurt. Come on, Mike, say you’ll do it.”
Michael looked at her in an absentminded fashion. It seemed
as if he really and truly had not heard anything said. He didn’t answer.
Connie came to stand beside her father. “Make him do it,”
she said to the Don. Her two hands rested affectionately on his shoulders and
she rubbed his neck. She was the only one who was ever so familiar with the
Don. Her affection for her father was touching. It was trusting, like a little
girl’s. The Don patted one of her hands and said, “We’re all starving here. Put
the spaghetti on the table and then chatter.”
Connie turned to her husband and said, “Carlo, you tell Mike
to get his face fixed. Maybe he’ll listen to you.” Her voice implied that
Michael and Carlo Rizzi had some friendly relationship over and above anyone
else’s.
Carlo, handsomely sunburned, blond hair neatly cut and
combed, sipped at his glass of homemade wine and said, “Nobody can tell Mike
what to do.” Carlo had become a different man since moving into the mall. He
knew his place in the Family and kept to it.
There was something that Kay didn’t understand in all this,
something that didn’t quite meet the eye. As a woman she could see that Connie
was deliberately charming her father, though it was beautifully done and even
sincere. Yet it was not spontaneous. Carlo’s reply had been a manly knuckling
of his forehead. Michael had absolutely ignored everything.
Kay didn’t care about her husband’s disfigurement but she
worried about his sinus trouble which sprang from it. Surgery repair of the
face would cure the sinus also. For that reason she wanted Michael to enter the
hospital and get the necessary work done. But she understood that in a curious
way he desired his disfigurement. She was sure that the Don understood this
too.
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But after Kay gave birth to her first child, she was
surprised by Michael asking her, “Do you want me to get my face fixed?”
Kay nodded. “You know how kids are, your son will feel bad
about your face when he gets old enough to understand it’s not normal. I just
don’t want our child to see it. I don’t mind at all, honestly, Michael.”
“OK.” He smiled at her. “I’ll do it.”
He waited until she was home from the hospital and then made
all the necessary arrangements. The operation was successful. The cheek
indentation was now just barely noticeable.
Everybody in the Family was delighted, but Connie more so
than anyone. She visited Michael every day in the hospital, dragging Carlo
along. When Michael came home, she gave him a big hug and a kiss and looked at
him admiringly and said, “Now you’re my handsome brother again.”
Only the Don was unimpressed, shrugging his shoulders and
remarking, “What’s the difference?”
But Kay was grateful. She knew that Michael had done it
against all his own inclinations. Had done it because she had asked him to, and
that she was the only person in the world who could make him act against his
own nature.
* * *
On the afternoon of Michael’s return from Vegas, Rocco
Lampone drove the limousine to the mall to pick up Kay so that she could meet
her husband at the airport. She always met her husband when he arrived from out
of town, mostly because she felt lonely without him, living as she did in the
fortified mall.
She saw him come off the plane with Tom Hagen and the new
man he had working for him, Albert Neri. Kay didn’t care much for Neri, he
reminded her of Luca Brasi in his quiet ferociousness. She saw Neri drop behind
Michael and off to the side, saw his quick penetrating glance as his eyes swept
over everybody nearby. It was Neri who first spotted Kay and touched Michael’s
shoulder to make him look in the proper direction.
Kay ran into her husband’s arms and he quickly kissed her
and let her go. He and Tom Hagen and Kay got into the limousine and Albert Neri
vanished. Kay did not notice that Neri had gotten into another car with two
other men and that this car rode behind the
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limousine until it reached Long Beach.
Kay never asked Michael how his business had gone. Even such
polite questions were understood to be awkward, not that he wouldn’t give her
an equally polite answer, but it would remind them both of the forbidden
territory their marriage could never include. Kay didn’t mind anymore. But when
Michael told her he would have to spend the evening with his father to tell him
about the Vegas trip, she couldn’t help making a little frown of
disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Tomorrow night we’ll go into New
York and see a show and have dinner, OK?” He patted her stomach, she was almost
seven months pregnant. “After the kid comes you’ll be tied down again. Hell,
you’re more Italian than Yankee. Two kids in two years.”
Kay said tartly, “And you’re more Yankee than Italian. Your
first evening home and you spend it on business.” But she smiled at him when
she said it. “You won’t be home late?”
“Before
midnight,” Michael said. “Don’t wait up for me if you feel tired.” “I’ll wait
up,” Kay said.
* * *
At the meeting that night, in the corner room library of Don
Corleone’s house, were the Don himself, Michael, Tom Hagen, Carlo Rizzi, and
the two caporegimes, Clemenza and Tessio.
The atmosphere of the meeting was by no means so congenial
as in former days. Ever since Don Corleone had announced his semiretirement and
Michael’s take-over of the Family business, there had been some strain.
Succession in control of such an enterprise as the Family was by no means
hereditary. In any other Family powerful caporegimes such as Clemenza and
Tessio might have succeeded to the position of Don. Or at least they might have
been allowed to split off and form their own Family.
Then, too, ever since Don Corleone had made the peace with
the Five Families, the strength of the Corleone Family had declined. The
Barzini Family was now indisputably the most powerful one in the New York area;
allied as they were to the Tattaglias, they now held the position the Corleone
Family had once held. Also they were slyly whittling down the power of the
Corleone Family, muscling into their gambling areas, testing the Corleones’
reactions and, finding them weak, establishing their own bookmakers.
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The Barzinis and Tattaglias were delighted with the Don’s
retirement. Michael, formidable as he might prove to be, could never hope to
equal the Don in cunning and influence for at least another decade. The
Corleone Family was definitely in a decline.
It had, of course, suffered serious misfortunes. Freddie had
proved to be nothing more than an innkeeper and ladies’ man, the idiom for
ladies’ man untranslatable but connotating a greedy infant always at its
mother’s nipple– in short, unmanly. Sonny’s death too, had been a disaster.
Sonny had been a man to be feared, not to be taken lightly. Of course he had
made a mistake in sending his younger brother, Michael, to kill the Turk and
the police captain. Though necessary in a tactical sense, as a long-term
strategy it proved to be a serious error. It had forced the Don, eventually, to
rise from his sickbed. It had deprived Michael of two years of valuable
experience and training under his father’s tutelage. And of course an Irish as
a Consigliere had been the only foolishness the Don had ever perpetrated. No
Irishman could hope to equal a Sicilian for cunning. So went the opinion of all
the Families and they were naturally more respectful to the Barzini-Tattaglia
alliance than to the Corleones. Their opinion of Michael was that he was not
equal to Sonny in force though more intelligent certainly, but not as
intelligent as his father. A mediocre successor and a man not to be feared too
greatly.
Also, though the Don was generally admired for his statesmanship
in making the peace, the fact that he had not avenged Sonny’s murder lost the
Family a great deal of respect. It was recognized that such statesmanship
sprang out of weakness.
All this was known to the men sitting in the room and
perhaps even believed by a few. Carlo Rizzi liked Michael but did not fear him
as he had feared Sonny. Clemenza, too, though he gave Michael credit for a
bravura performance with the Turk and the police captain, could not help
thinking Michael too soft to be a Don. Clemenza had hoped to be glven
permission to form his own Family, to have his own empire split away from the
Corleone. But the Don had indicated that this was not to be and Clemenza
respected the Don too much to disobey. Unless of course the whole situation became
intolerable.
Tessio had a better opinion of Michael. He sensed something
else in the young man: a force cleverly kept hidden, a man jealously guarding
his true strength from public gaze, following the Don’s precept that a friend
should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.
The Don himself and Tom Hagen were of course under no
illusions about Michael. The Don would never have retired if he had not had
absolute faith in his son’s ability to
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retrieve the Family position. Hagen had been Michael’s
teacher for the last two years and was amazed at how quickly Michael grasped
all the intricacies of the Family business. Truly his father’s son.
Clemenza and Tessio were annoyed with Michael because he had
reduced the strength of their regimes and had never reconstituted Sonny’s
regime. The Corleone Family, in effect, had now only two fighting divisions
with less personnel than formerly. Clemenza and Tessio considered this
suicidal, especially with the Barzini-Tattaglia encroachments on their empires.
So now they were hopeful these errors might be corrected at this extraordinary
meeting convened by the Don.
Michael started off by telling them about his trip to Vegas
and Moe Greene’s refusing the offer to buy him out. “But we’ll make him an
offer he can’t refuse,” Michael said. “You already know the Corleone Family
plans to move its operations West. We’ll have four of the hotel casinos on the
Strip. But it can’t be right away. We need time to get things straightened
out.” He spoke directly to Clemenza. “Pete, you and Tessio, I want you to go
along with me for a year without questioning and without reservations. At the
end of that year, both of you can split off from the Corleone Family and be your
own bosses, have your own Families. Of course it goes without saying we’d
maintain our friendship, I wouldn’t insult you and your respect for my father
by thinking otherwise for a minute. But up until that time l want you just to
follow my lead and don’t worry. There are negotiations going on that will solve
problems that you think are not solvable. So just be a little patient.”
Tessio spoke up. “If Moe Greene wanted to talk to your
father, why not let him? The Don could always persuade anybody, there was never
anyone who could stand up to his reasonableness.”
The Don answered this directly. “I’ve retired, Michael would
lose respect if I interfered. And besides that’s a man I’d rather not talk to.”
Tessio remembered the stories he’d heard about Moe Greene
slapping Freddie Corleone around one night in the Vegas hotel. He began to
smell a rat. He leaned back. Moe Greene was a dead man, he thought. The
Corleone Family did not wish to persuade him.
Carlo Rizzi spoke up. “Is the Corleone Family going to stop
operating in New York altogether?”
Michael nodded. “We’re selling the
olive oil business. Everything we can, we turn over to
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Tessio and Clemenza. But, Carlo, I don’t want you to worry
about your job. You grew up in Nevada, you know the state, you know the people.
I’m counting on you being my right-hand man when we make our move out there.”
Carlo leaned back, his face flushed with gratification. His
time was coming, he would move in the constellations of power.
Michael went on. “Tom Hagen is no longer the Consigliere.
He’s going to be our lawyer in Vegas. In about two months he’ll move out there
permanently with his family. Strictly as a lawyer. Nobody goes to him with any
other business as of now, this minute. He’s a lawyer and that’s all. No
reflection on Tom. That’s the way I want it. Besides, if I ever need any
advice, who’s a better counselor than my father?” They all laughed. But they
had gotten the message despite the joke. Tom Hagen was out; he no longer held any
power. They all took their fleeting glances to check Hagen’s reaction but his
face was impassive.
Clemenza spoke up in his fat man’s wheeze. “Then in a year’s
time we’re on our own, is that it?”
“Maybe less,” Michael said courteously. “Of course you can
always remain part of the Family, that’s your choice. But most of our strength
will be out West and maybe you’d do better organized on your own.”
Tessio said quietly, “In that case I think you should give
us permission to recruit new men for our regimes. Those Barzini bastards keep
chiseling in on my territory. I think maybe it would be wise to teach them a
little lesson in manners.”
Michael shook his head. “No. No good. Just stay still. All
that stuff will be negotiated, everything will be straightened out before we
leave.”
Tessio was not to be so easily satisfied. He spoke to the
Don directly, taking a chance on incurring Michael’s ill will. “Forgive me,
Godfather, let our years of friendship be my excuse. But I think you and your
son are all wrong with this Nevada business. How can you hope for success there
without your strength here to back you up? The two go hand in hand. And with
you gone from here the Barzini and the Tattaglia will be too strong for us. Me
and Pete will have trouble, we’ll come under their thumb sooner or later. And
Barzini is a man not to my taste. I say the Corleone Family has to make its
move from strength, not from weakness. We should build up our regimes and take
back our lost territories in Staten Island at least.”
The Don shook his head. “I made the
peace, remember, I can’t go back on my word.”
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Tessio refused to be silenced. “Everybody knows Bartini gave
you provocation since then. And besides, if Michael is the new chief of the
Corleone Family, what’s to stop him from taking any action he sees fit? Your
word doesn’t strictly bind him.”
Michael broke in sharply. He said to Tessio, very much the
chief now, “There are things being negotiated which will answer your questions
and resolve your doubts. If my word isn’t enough for you, ask your Don.”
But Tessio understood he had finally gone too far. If he
dared to question the Don he would make Michael, his enemy. So he shrugged and
said, “I spoke for the good of the Family, not for myself. I can take care of
myself.”
Michael gave him a friendly smile. “Tessio, I never doubt
you in any way. I never did. But trust in me. Of course I’m not equal to you
and Pete in these things, but after all I’ve my father to guide me. I won’t do
too badly, we’ll all come out fine.”
The meeting was over. The big news was that Clemenza and
Tessio would be permitted to form their own Families from their regimes. Tessio
would have his gambling and docks in Brooklyn, Clemenza the gambling in
Manhattan and the Family contacts in the racing tracks of Long Island.
The two caporegimes left not quite satisfied, still a little
uneasy. Carlo Rizzi lingered hoping that the time had come when he finally
would be treated as one of the family, but he quickly saw that Michael was not
of that mind. He left the Don, Tom Hagen and Michael alone in the corner
library room. Albert Neri ushered him out of the house and Carlo noticed that
Neri stood in the doorway watching him walk across the floodlit mall.
In the library the three men had relaxed as only people can
who have lived years together in the same house, in the same family. Michael
served some anisette to the Don and scotch to Tom Hagen. He took a drink for
himself, which he rarely did.
Tom Hagen spoke up first. “Mike, why are
you cutting me out of the action?”
Michael seemed surprised. “You’ll be my number one man in
Vegas. We’ll be legitimate all the way and you’re the legal man. What can be
more important than that?”
Hagen smiled a little sadly. “I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about Rocco Lampone building a secret regime without my knowledge.
I’m talking about you dealing direct with Neri rather than through me or a
caporegime. Unless of course you don’t know what Lampone’s doing.”
Michael said softly, “How did you find
out about Lampone’s regime?”
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Hagen shrugged. “Don’t worry, there’s no leak, nobody else
knows. But in my position I can see what’s happening. You gave Lampone his own
living, you gave him a lot of freedom. So he needs people to help him in his
little empire. But everybody he recruits has to be reported to me. And I notice
everybody he puts on the payroll is a little too good for that particular job,
is getting a little more money than that particular exercise is worth. You
picked the right man when you picked Lampone, by the way. He’s operating
perfectly.”
Michael grimaced. “Not so damn perfect if you noticed.
Anyway the Don picked Lampone.”
“OK,” Tom said, “so why am I cut out of
the action?”
Michael faced him and without flinching gave it to him
straight. “Tom, you’re not a wartime Consigliere. Things may get tough with
this move we’re trying to make and we may have to fight. And I want to get you
out of the line of fire too, just in case.”
Hagen’s face reddened. If the Don had told him the same
thing, he would have accepted it humbly. But where the hell did Mike come off
making such a snap judgment?
“OK,” he said, “but I happen to agree with Tessio. I think
you’re going about this all wrong. You’re making the move out of weakness, not
strength. That’s always bad. Barzini is like a wolf, and if he tears you limb
from limb, the other Families won’t come rushing to help the Corleones.”
The Don finally spoke. “Tom, it’s not just Michael. I
advised him on these matters. There are things that may have to be done that I
don’t want in any way to be responsible for. That is my wish, not Michael’s. I
never thought you were a bad Consigliere, I thought Santino a bad Don, may his
soul rest in peace. He had a good heart but he wasn’t the right man to head the
Family when I had my little misfortune. And who would have thought that Fredo
would become a lackey of women? So don’t feel badly. Michael has all my
confidence as you do. For reasons which you can’t know, you must have no part
in what may happen. By the way, I told Michael that Lampone’s secret regime
would not escape your eye. So that shows I have faith in you.”
Michael laughed. “I honestly didn’t
think you’d pick that up, Tom.”
Hagen knew he was being mollified.
“Maybe I can help,” he said.
Michael shook his head decisively.
“You’re out, Tom.”
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Tom finished his drink and before he left he gave Michael a
mild reproof. “You’re nearly as good as your father,” he told Michael. “But
there’s one thing you still have to learn.”
“What’s that?” Michael said politely.
“How to say no,” Hagen answered.
Michael nodded gravely. “You’re right,”
he said. “I’ll remember that.”
When Hagen had left, Michael said jokingly to his father,
“So you’ve taught me everything else. Tell me how to say no to people in a way
they’ll like.”
The Don moved to sit behind the big desk. “You cannot say
‘no’ to the people you love, not often. That’s the secret. And then when you
do, it has to sound like a ‘yes.’ Or you have to make them say ‘no.’ You have
to take time and trouble. But I’m old-fashioned, you’re the new modern
generation, don’t listen to me.”
Michael
laughed. “Right. You agree about Tom being out, though, don’t you?” The Don
nodded. “He can’t be involved in this.”
Michael said quietly, “I think it’s time for me to tell you
that what I’m going to do is not purely out of vengeance for Apollonia and
Sonny. It’s the right thing to do. Tessio and Tom are right about the
Barzinis.”
Don Corleone nodded. “Revenge is a dish that tastes best
when it is cold,” he said. “I would not have made that peace but that I knew
you would never come home alive otherwise. I’m surprised, though, that Barzini
still made a last try at you. Maybe it was arranged before the peace talk and
he couldn’t stop it. Are you sure they were not after Don Tommasino?”
Michael said, “That’s the way it was supposed to look. And
it would have been perfect, even you would never have suspected. Except that I
came out alive. I saw Fabrizzio going through the gate, running away. And of
course I’ve checked it all out since I’ve been back.”
“Have they found that shepherd?” the
Don asked.
“I found him,” Michael said. “I found him a year ago. He’s
got his own little pizza place up in Buffalo. New name, phony passport and
identification. He’s doing very well is Fabrizzio the shepherd.”
The Don nodded. “So it’s to no
purpose to wait any longer. When will you start?” Michael said, “I want to wait
until after Kay has the baby. Just in case anything goes
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wrong. And I want Tom settled in Vegas so he won’t be
concerned in the affair. I think a year from now.”
“You’ve prepared for everything?” the Don asked. He did not
look at Michael when he said this.
Michael said gently, “You have no part. You’re not
responsible. I take all responsibility. I would refuse to let you even veto. If
you tried to do that now, I would leave the Family and go my own way. You’re
not responsible.”
The Don was silent for a long time and then he sighed. He
said, “So be it. Maybe that’s why I retired, maybe that’s why I’ve turned
everything over to you. I’ve done my share in life, I haven’t got the heart
anymore. And there are some duties the best of men can’t assume. That’s it
then.”
During that year Kay Adams Corleone was delivered of a
second child, another boy. She delivered easily, without any trouble
whatsoever, and was welcomed back to the mall like a royal princess. Connie
Corleone presented the baby with a silk layette handmade in Italy, enormously
expensive and beautiful. She told Kay, “Carlo found it. He shopped all over New
York to get something extra special after I couldn’t find anything I really
liked.” Kay smiled her thanks, understood immediately that she was to tell
Michael this fine tale. She was on her way to becoming a Sicilian.
Also during that year, Nino Valenti died of a cerebral
hemorrhage. His death made the front pages of the tabloids because the movie
Johnny Fontane had featured him in had opened a few weeks before and was a
smash hit, establishing Nino as a major star. The papers mentioned that Johnny
Fontane was handling the funeral arrangements, that the funeral would be
private, only family and close friends to attend. One sensational story even
claimed that in an interview Johnny Fontane had blamed himself for his friend’s
death, that he should have forced his friend to place himself under medical
care, but the reporter made it sound like the usual self-reproach of the
sensitive but innocent bystander to a tragedy. Johnny Fontane had made his
childhood friend, Nino Valenti, a movie star and what more could a friend do?
No member of the Corleone Family attended the California
funeral except Freddie. Lucy and Jules Segal attended. The Don himself had
wanted to go to California but had suffered a slight heart attack, which kept
him in his bed for a month. He sent a huge floral wreath instead. Albert Neri
was also sent West as the official representative of the Family.
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Two days after Nino’s funeral, Moe Greene was shot to death
in the Hollywood home of his movie-star mistress; Albert Neri did not reappear
in New York until almost a month later. He had taken his vacation in the
Caribbean and returned to duty tanned almost black. Michael Corleone welcomed
him with a smile and a few words of praise, which included the information that
Neri would from then on receive an extra “living,” the Family income from an
East Side “book” considered especially rich. Neri was content, satisfied that
he lived in a world that properly rewarded a man who did his duty.
Book Eight
Chapter 29
Michael Corleone had taken precautions against every
eventuality. His planning was faultless, his security impeccable. He was
patient, hoping to use the full year to prepare. But he was not to get his
necessary year because fate itself took a stand against him, and in the most
surprising fashion. For it was the Godfather, the great Don himself, who failed
Michael Corleone.
* * *
On one sunny Sunday morning, while the women were at church,
Don Vito Corleone dressed in his gardening uniform: baggy gray trousers, a
faded blue shirt, battered dirty-brown fedora decorated by a stained gray silk
hatband. The Don had gained considerable weight in his few years and worked on
his tomato vines, he said, for the sake of his health. But he deceived no one.
The truth was, he loved tending his garden; he loved the
sight of it early on a morning. It brought back his childhood in Sicily sixty
years ago, brought it back without the terror, the sorrow of his own father’s
death. Now the beans in their rows grew little white flowers on top; strong
green stalks of scallion fenced everything in. At the foot of the garden a
spouted barrel stood guard. It was filled with liquidy cow manure, the finest
garden fertilizer. Also in that lower part of the garden were the square wooden
frames he had built with his own hands, the sticks cross-tied with thick white
string. Over these frames crawled the tomato vines.
The Don hastened to water his garden. It must be done before
the sun waxed too hot and turned the water into a prism of fire that could burn
his lettuce leaves like paper. Sun was more important than water, water also
was important; but the two, imprudently mixed, could cause great misfortune.
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The Don moved through his garden hunting for ants. If ants
were present, it meant that lice were in his vegetables and the ants were going
after the lice and he would have to spray.
He had watered just in time. The sun was becoming hot and
the Don thought, “Prudence. Prudence.” But there were just a few more plants to
be supported by sticks and he bent down again. He would go back into the house
when he finished this last row.
Quite suddenly it felt as if the sun had come down very
close to his head. The air filled with dancing golden specks. Michael’s oldest
boy came running through the garden toward where the Don knelt and the boy was
enveloped by a yellow shield of blinding light. But the Don was not to be tricked,
he was too old a hand. Death hid behind that flaming yellow shield ready to
pounce out on him and the Don with a wave of his hand warned the boy away from
his presence. Just in time. The sledgehammer blow inside his chest made him
choke for air. The Don pitched forward into the earth.
The boy raced away to call his father. Michael Corleone and
some men at the mall gate ran to the garden and found the Don lying prone,
clutching handfuls of earth. They lifted the Don up and carried him to the
shade of his stone-flagged patio. Michael knelt beside his father, holding his
hand, while the other men called for an ambulance and doctor.
With a great effort the Don opened his eyes to see his son
once more. The massive heart attack had turned his ruddy face almost blue. He
was in extremis. He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his
eyes, and he whispered, “Life is so beautiful.”
He was spared the sight of his women’s tears, dying before
they came back from church, dying before the ambulance arrived, or the doctor.
He died surrounded by men, holding the hand of the son he had most loved.
The funeral was royal. The Five Families sent their Dons and
caporegimes, as did the Tessio and Clemenza Families. Johnny Fontane made the
tabloid headlines by attending the funeral despite the advice of Michael not to
appear. Fontane gave a statement to the newspapers that Vito Corleone was his
Godfather and the finest man he had ever known and that he was honored to be
permitted to pay his last respects to such a man and didn’t give a damn who
knew it.
The wake was held in the house of the mall, in the
old-fashioned style. Amerigo Bonasera had never done finer work, had discharged
all obligations, by preparing his
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old friend and Godfather as lovingly as a mother prepares a
bride for her wedding. Everyone commented on how not even death itself had been
able to erase the nobility and the dignity of the great Don’s countenance and
such remarks made Amerigo Bonasera fill with knowing pride, a curious sense of
power. Only he knew what a terrible massacre death had perpetrated on the Don’s
appearance.
All the old friends and servitors came. Nazorine, his wife,
his daughter and her husband and their children, Lucy Mancini came with Freddie
from Las Vegas. Tom Hagen and his wife and children, the Dons from San
Francisco and Los Angeles, Boston and Cleveland. Rocco Lampone and Albert Neri
were pallbearers with Clemenza and Tessio and, of course, the sons of the Don.
The mall and all its houses were filled with floral wreaths.
Outside the gates of the mall were the newspapermen and
photographers and a small truck that was known to contain FBI men with their
movie cameras recording this epic. Some newspapermen who tried to crash the funeral
inside found that the gate and fence were manned with security guards who
demanded identification and an invitation card. And though they were treated
with the utmost courtesy, refreshment sent out to them, they were not permitted
inside. They tried to speak with some of the people coming out but were met
with stony stares and not a syllable.
Michael Corleone spent most of the day in the corner library
room with Kay, Tom Hagen and Freddie. People were ushered in to see him, to
offer their condolences. Michael received them with all courtesy even when some
of them addressed him as Godfather or Don Michael, only Kay noticing his lips
tighten with displeasure.
Clemenza and Tessio came to join this inner circle and
Michael personally served them with a drink. There was some gossip of business.
Michael informed them that the mall and all its houses were to be sold to a
development and construction company. At an enormous profit, still another
proof of the great Don’s genius.
They all understood that now the whole empire would be in
the West. That the Corleone Family would liquidate its power in New York. Such
action had been awaiting the retirement or death of the Don.
It was nearly ten years since there had been such a
celebration of people in this house, nearly ten years since the wedding of
Constanzia Corleone and Carlo Rizzi, so somebody said. Michael walked to the
window that looked out on the garden. That long time ago he had sat in the
garden with Kay never dreaming that so curious a destiny
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was to be his. And his father dying had said, “Life is so
beautiful.” Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word
about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.
It was time for the cemetery. It was time to bury the great
Don. Michael linked his arm with Kay’s and went out into the garden to join the
host of mourners. Behind him came the caporegimes followed by their soldiers
and then all the humble people the Godfather had blessed during his lifetime.
The baker Nazorine, the widow Colombo and her sons and all the countless others
of his world he had ruled so firmly but justly. There were even some who had
been his enemies, come to do him honor.
Michael observed all this with a tight, polite smile. He was
not impressed. Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, “Life is so beautiful,”
then nothing else is important. If I can believe in myself that much, nothing
else matters. He would follow his father. He would care for his children, his
family, his world. But his children would grow in a different world. They would
be doctors, artists, scientists. Governors. Presidents. Anything at all. He
would see to it that they joined the general family of humanity, but he, as a
powerful and prudent parent would most certainly keep a wary eye on that
general family.
* * *
On the morning after the funeral, all the most important
officials of the Corleone Family assembled on the mall. Shortly before noon
they were admitted into the empty house of the Don. Michael Corleone received
them.
They almost filled the corner library room. There were the
two caporegimes, Clemenza and Tessio; Rocco Lampone, with his reasonable,
competent air; Carlo Rizzi, very quiet, very much knowing his place; Tom Hagen
forsaking his strictly legal role to rally around in this crisis; Albert Neri
trying to stay physically close to Michael, lighting his new Don’s cigarette,
mixing his drink, all to show an unswerving loyalty despite the recent disaster
to the Corleone Family.
The death of the Don was a great misfortune for the Family.
Without him it seemed that half their strength was gone and almost all their
bargaining power against the Barzini-Tattaglia alliance. Everyone in the room
knew this and they waited for what Michael would say. In their eyes he was not
yet the new Don; he had not earned the position or the title. If the Godfather
had lived, he might have assured his son’s succession; now it was by no means
certain.
Michael waited until Ned had served
drinks. Then he said quietly, “I just want to tell
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everybody here that I understand how they feel. I know you
all respected my father, but now you have to worry about yourselves and your
families. Some of you wonder how what happened is going to affect the planning
we’ve done and the promises I made. Well, the answer to that is: nothing.
Everything goes on as before.”
Clemenza shook his great shaggy buffalo head. His hair was
an iron gray and his features, more deeply embedded in added layers of fat,
were unpleasant. “The Barzinis and Tattaglias are going to move in on us real
hard, Mike. You gotta fight or have a ‘sit-down’ with them.” Everyone in the
room noticed that Clemenza had not used a formal form of address to Michael,
much less the title of Don.
“Let’s wait and see what happens,”
Michael said. “Let them break the peace first.”
Tessio spoke up in his soft voice. “They already have, Mike.
They opened up two ‘books’ in Brooklyn this morning. I got the word from the
police captain who runs the protection list at the station house. In a month I
won’t have a place to hang my hat in all Brooklyn.”
Michael stared at him thoughtfully.
“Have you done anything about it?”
Tessio shook his small, ferretlike head. “No,” he said. “I
didn’t want to give you any problems.”
“Good,” Michael said. “Just sit tight. And I guess that’s
what I want to say to all of you. Just sit tight. Don’t react to any
provocation. Give me a few weeks to straighten things out, to see which way the
wind is going to blow. Then I’ll make the best deal I can for everybody here.
Then we’ll have a final meeting and make some final decisions.”
He ignored their surprise and Albert Neri started ushering
them out. Michael said sharply, “Tom, stick around a few minutes.”
Hagen went to the window that faced the mall. He waited
until he saw the caporegimes and Carlo Rizzo and Rocco Lampone being shepherded
through the guarded gate by Neri. Then he turned to Michael and said, “Have you
got all the political connections wired into you?”
Michael shook his head regretfully. “Not all. I needed about
four more months. The Don and I were working on it. But I’ve got all the
judges, we did that first, and some of the more important people in Congress.
And the big party boys here in New York were no problem, of course. The
Corleone Family is a lot stronger than anybody thinks, but I hoped to make it
foolproof.” He smiled at Hagen. “I guess you’ve figured everything out
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by now.”
Hagen nodded. “It wasn’t hard. Except why you wanted me out
of the action. But I put on my Sicilian hat and I finally figured that too.”
Michael laughed. “The old man said you would. But that’s a
luxury I can’t afford anymore. I need you here. At least for the next few
weeks. You better phone Vegas and talk to your wife. Just tell her a few
weeks.”
Hagen said musingly, “How do you think
they’ll come at you?”
Michael sighed. “The Don instructed me. Through somebody
close. Brazini will set me up through somebody close that, supposedly, I won’t
suspect.”
Hagen smiled at him. “Somebody like
me.”
Michael smiled back. “You’re Irish,
they won’t trust you.”
“I’m German-American,” Hagen said.
“To them that’s Irish,” Michael said. “They won’t go to you
and they won’t go to Neri because Neri was a cop. Plus both of you are too
close to me. They can’t take that gamble. Rocco Lampone isn’t close enough. No,
it will be Clemenza, Tessio or Carlo Rizzi.”
Hagen said softly, “I’m betting it’s
Carlo.”
“We’ll see,” Michael said. “It won’t be
long.”
* * *
It was the next morning, while Hagen and Michael were having
breakfast together. Michael took a phone call in the library, and when he came
back to the kitchen, he said to Hagen, “It’s all set up. I’m going to meet
Barzini a week from now. To make new peace now that the Don is dead.” Michael
laughed.
Hagen asked, “Who phoned you, who made the contact?” They
both knew that whoever in the Corleone Family had made the contact had turned
traitor.
Michael gave Hagen a sad regretful smile.
“Tessio,” he said.
They ate the rest of their breakfast in silence. Over coffee
Hagen shook his head. “I could have sworn it would have been Carlo or maybe
Clemenza. I never figured Tessio. He’s the best of the lot.”
“He’s the most intelligent,” Michael
said. “And he did what seems to him to be the smart
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thing. He sets me up for the hit by Barzini and inherits the
Corleone Family. He sticks with me and he gets wiped out; he’s figuring I can’t
win.”
Hagen paused before he asked
reluctantly, “How right is he figuring?”
Michael shrugged. “It looks bad. But my father was the only
one who understood that political connections and power are worth ten regimes.
I think I’ve got most of my father’s political power in my hands now, but I’m
the only one who really knows that.” He smiled at Hagen, a reassuring smile.
“I’ll make them call me Don. But I feel lousy about Tessio.”
Hagen said, “Have you agreed to the
meeting with Barzini?” ’
“Yeah,” Michael said. “A week from tonight. In Brooklyn, on
Tessio’s ground where I’ll be safe.” He laughed again.
Hagen said, “Be careful before then.”
For the first time Michael was cold with Hagen. “I don’t
need a Consigliere to give me that kind of advice,” he said.
* * *
During the week preceding the peace meeting between the
Corleone and Barzini Families, Michael showed Hagen just how careful he could
be. He never set foot outside the mall and never received anyone without Neri
beside him. There was only one annoying complication. Connie and Carlo’s oldest
boy was to receive his Confirmation in the Catholic Church and Kay asked
Michael to be the Godfather. Michael refused.
“I don’t often beg you,” Kay said. “Please do this just for
me. Connie wants it so much. And so does Carlo. It’s very important to them.
Please, Michael.”
She could see he was angry with her for insisting and
expected him to refuse. So she was surprised when he nodded and said, “OK. But
I can’t leave the mall. Tell them to arrange for the priest to confirm the kid here.
I’ll pay whatever it costs. If they run into trouble with the church people,
Hagen will straighten it out.”
And so the day before the meeting with the Barzini Family,
Michael Corleone stood Godfather to the son of Carlo and Connie Rizzi. He
presented the boy with an extremely expensive wristwatch and gold band. There
was a small party in Carlo’s house, to which were invited the caporegimes,
Hagen, Lampone and everyone who lived on the mall, including, of course, the
Don’s widow. Connie was so overcome with emotion that she hugged and kissed her
brother and Kay all during the evening. And even Carlo Rizzi
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became sentimental, wringing Michael’s hand and calling him
Godfather at every excuse– old country style. Michael himself had never been so
affable, so outgoing. Connie whispered to Kay, “I think Carlo and Mike are
going to be real friends now. Something like this always brings people
together.”
Kay squeezed her sister-in-law’s arm.
“I’m so glad,” she said.
Chapter 30
Albert Neri sat in his Bronx apartment and carefully brushed
the blue serge of his old policeman’s uniform. He unpinned the badge and set it
on the table to be polished. The regulation holster and gun were draped over a
chair. This old routine of detail made him happy in some strange way, one of
the few times he had felt happy since his wife had left him, nearly two years
ago.
He had married Rita when she was a high school kid and he
was a rookie policeman. She was shy, dark-haired, from a straitlaced Italian
family who never let her stay out later than ten o’clock at night. Neri was
completely in love with her, her innocence, her virtue, as well as her dark
prettiness.
At first Rita Neri was fascinated by her husband. He was
immensely strong and she could see people were afraid of him because of that
strength and his unbending attitude toward what was right and wrong. He was
rarely tactful. If he disagreed with a group’s attitude or an individual’s
opinion, he kept his mouth shut or brutally spoke his contradiction. He never
gave a polite agreement. He also had a true Sicilian temper and his rages could
be awesome. But he was never angry with his wife.
Neri in the space of five years became one of the most
feared policemen on the New York City force. Also one of the most honest. But
he had his own ways of enforcing the law. He hated punks and when he saw a
bunch of young rowdies making a disturbance on a street corner at night,
disturbing passersby, he took quick and decisive action. He employed a physical
strength that was truly extraordinary, which he himself did not fully
appreciate.
One night in Central Park West he jumped out of the patrol
car and lined up six punks in black silk jackets. His partner remained in the
driver’s seat, not wanting to get involved, knowing Neri. The six boys, all in
their late teens, had been stopping people and asking them for cigarettes in a
youthfully menacing way but not doing anyone any real physical harm. They had
also teased girls going by with a sexual gesture more French than American.
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Neri lined them up against the stone wall that closed off
Central Park from Eighth Avenue. It was twilight, but Neri carried his favorite
weapon, a huge flashlight. He never bothered drawing his gun; it was never
necessary. His face when he was angry was so brutally menacing, combined with
his uniform, that the usual punks were cowed. These were no exception.
Neri asked the first youth in the black silk jacket, “What’s
your name?” The kid answered with an Irish name. Neri told him, “Get off the
street. I see you again tonight, I’ll crucify you.” He motioned with his
flashlight and the youth walked quickly away. Neri followed the same procedure
with the next two boys. He let them walk off. But the fourth boy gave an
Italian name and smiled at Neri as if to claim some sort of kinship. Neri was
unmistakably of Italian descent. Neri looked at this youth for a moment and
asked superfluously, “You Italian?” The boy grinned confidently.
Neri hit him a stunning blow on the forehead with his
flashlight. The boy dropped to his knees. The skin and flesh of his forehead
had cracked open and blood poured down his face. But it was strictly a flesh
wound. Neri said to him harshly, “You son of a bitch, you’re a disgrace to the
Italians. You give us all a bad name. Get on your feet.” He gave the youth a
kick in the side, not gentle, not too hard. “Get home and stay off the street.
Don’t ever let me catch you wearing that jacket again either. I’ll send you to
the hospital. Now get home. You’re lucky I’m not your father.”
Neri didn’t bother with the other two punks. He just booted
their asses down the Avenue, telling them he didn’t want them on the street
that night.
In such encounters all was done so quickly that there was no
time for a crowd to gather or for someone to protest his actions. Neri would
get into the patrol car and his partner would zoom it away. Of course once in a
while there would be a real hard case who wanted to fight and might even pull a
knife. These were truly unfortunate people. Neri would, with awesome, quick
ferocity, beat them bloody and throw them into the patrol car. They would be
put under arrest and charged with assaulting an officer. But usually their case
would have to wait until they were discharged from the hospital.
Eventually Neri was transferred to the beat that held the
United Nations building area, mainly because he had not shown his precinct
sergeant the proper respect. The United Nations people with their diplomatic
immunity parked their limousines all over the streets without regard to police
regulations. Neri complained to the precinct and was told not to make waves, to
just ignore it. But one night there was a whole side street that was
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impassable because of the carelessly parked autos. It was
after midnight, so Neri took his huge flashlight from the patrol car and went
down the street smashing windshields to smithereens. It was not easy, even for
high-ranking diplomats, to get the windshields repaired in less than a few
days. Protests poured into the police precinct station house demanding
protection against this vandalism. After a week of windshield smashing the
truth gradually hit somebody about what was actually happening and Albert Neri
was transferred to Harlem.
One Sunday shortly afterward, Neri took his wife to visit
his widowed sister in Brooklyn. Albert Neri had the fierce protective affection
for his sister common to all Sicilians and he always visited her at least once
every couple of months to make sure she was all right. She was much older than
he was and had a son who was twenty. This son, Thomas, without a father’s hand,
was giving trouble. He had gotten into a few minor scrapes, was running a
little wild. Neri had once used his contacts on the police force to keep the
youth from being charged with larceny. On that occasion he had kept his anger
in check but had given his nephew a warning. “Tommy, you make my sister cry
over you and I’ll straighten you out myself.” It was intended as a friendly
pally-uncle warning, not really as a threat. But even though Tommy was the
toughest kid in that tough Brooklyn neighborhood, he was afraid of his Uncle
Al.
On this particular visit Tommy had come in very late
Saturday night and was still sleeping in his room. His mother went to wake him,
telling him to get dressed so that he could eat Sunday dinner with his uncle
and aunt. The boy’s voice came harshly through the partly opened door, “I don’t
give a shit, let me sleep,” and his mother came back out into the kitchen
smiling apologetically.
So they had to eat their dinner without him. Neri asked his
sister if Tommy was giving her any real trouble and she shook her head.
Neri and his wife were about to leave when Tommy finally got
up. He barely grumbled a hello and went into the kitchen. Finally he yelled in
to his mother, “Hey, Ma, how about cooking me something to eat?” But it was not
a request. It was the spoiled complaint of an indulged child.
His mother said shrilly, “Get up when it’s dinnertime and
then you can eat. I’m not going to cook again for you.”
It was the sort of little ugly scene that was fairly
commonplace, but Tommy still a little irritable from his slumber made a
mistake. “Ah, fuck you and your nagging, I’ll go out
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and eat.” As soon as he said it he
regretted it.
His Uncle Al was on him like a cat on a mouse. Not so much
for the insult to his sister this particular day but because it was obvious
that he often talked to his mother in such a fashion when they were alone.
Tommy never dared say such a thing in from of her brother. This particular
Sunday he had just been careless. To his misfortune.
Before the frightened eyes of the two women, Al Neri gave
his nephew a merciless, careful, physical beating. At first the youth made an
attempt at self-defense but soon gave that up and begged for mercy. Neri
slapped his face until the lips were swollen and bloody. He rocked the kid’s
head back and slammed him against the wall. He punched him in the stomach, then
got him prone on the floor and slapped his face into the carpet. He told the
two women to wait and made Tommy go down the street and get into his car. There
he put the fear of God into him. “If my sister ever tells me you talk like that
to her again, this beating will seem like kisses from a broad,” he told Tommy.
“I want to see you straighten out. Now go up the house and tell my wife I’m
waiting for her.”
It was two months after this that Al Neri got back from a
late shift on the force and found his wife had left him. She had packed all her
clothes and gone back to her family. Her father told him that Rita was afraid
of him, that she was afraid to live with him because of his temper. Al was
stunned with disbelief. He had never struck his wife, never threatened her in
any way, had never felt anything but affection for her. But he was so
bewildered by her action that he decided to let a few days go by before he went
over to her family’s house to talk to her.
It was unfortunate that the next night he ran into trouble
on his shift. His car answered a call in Harlem, a report of a deadly assault.
As usual Neri jumped out of the patrol car while it was still rolling to a
stop. It was after midnight and he was carrying his huge flashlight. It was
easy spotting the trouble. There was a crowd gathered outside a tenement
doorway. One Negro woman said to Neri, “There’s a man in there cutting a little
girl.”
Neri went into the hallway. There was an open door at the
far end with light streaming out and he could hear moaning. Still handling the
flashlight, he went down the hall and through the open doorway.
He almost fell over two bodies stretched out on the floor.
One was a Negro woman of about twenty-five. The other was a Negro girl of no
more than twelve. Both were bloody from razor cuts on their faces and bodies.
In the living room Neri saw the man who was
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responsible. He knew him well.
The man was Wax Baines, a notorious pimp, dope pusher and
strong-arm artist. His eyes were popping from drugs now, the bloody knife he
held in his hand wavered. Neri had arrested him two weeks before for severely
assaulting one of his whores in the street. Baines had told him, “Hey, man,
this none of your business.” And Neri’s partner had also said something about
letting the niggers cut each other up if they wanted to, but Neri had hauled
Baines into the station house. Baines was bailed out the very next day.
Neri had never much liked Negroes, and working in Harlem had
made him like them even less. They all were on drugs or booze while they let
their women work or peddle ass. He didn’t have any use for any of the bastards.
So Baines’ brazen breaking of the law infuriated him. And the sight of the
little girl all cut up with the razor sickened him. Quite coolly, in his own
mind, he decided not to bring Baines in.
But witnesses were already crowding into the apartment
behind him, some people who lived in the building and his partner from the
patrol car.
Neri ordered Baines, “Drop your knife,
you’re under arrest.”
Baines laughed. “Man, you gotta use your gun to arrest me.”
He held his knife up. “Or maybe you want this.”
Neri moved very quickly, so his partner would not have time
to draw a gun. The Negro stabbed with his knife, but Neri’s extraordinary
reflexes enabled him to catch the thrust with his left palm. With his right
hand he swung the flashlight in a short vicious arc. The blow caught Baines on
the side of the head and made his knees buckle comically like a drunk’s. The knife
dropped from his hand. He was quite helpless. So Neri’s second blow was
inexcusable, as the police departmental hearing and his criminal trial later
proved with the help of the testimony of witnesses and his fellow policeman.
Neri brought the flashlight down on the top of Baines’ skull in an incredibly
powerful blow which shattered the glass of the flashlight; the enamel shield
and the bulb itself popping out and flying across the room. The heavy aluminum
barrel of the flashlight tube bent and only the batteries inside prevented it
from doubling on itself. One awed onlooker, a Negro man who lived in the
tenement and later testified against Neri, said, “Man that’s a hard-headed
nigger.”
But Baines’ head was not quite hard enough. The blow caved
in his skull. He died two hours later in the Harlem Hospital.
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Albert Neri was the only one surprised when he was brought
up on departmental charges for using excessive force. He was suspended and
criminal charges were brought against him. He was indicted for manslaughter,
convicted and sentenced to from one to ten years in prison. By this time he was
so filled with a baffled rage and hatred of all society that he didn’t give a
damn. That they dared to judge him a criminal! That they dared to send him to
prison for killing an animal like that pimp-nigger! That they didn’t give a
damn for the woman and little girl who had been carved up, disfigured for life,
and still in the hospital.
He did not fear prison. He felt that because of his having
been a policeman and especially because of the nature of the offense, he would
be well taken care of. Several of his buddy officers had already assured him
they would speak to friends. Only his wife’s father, a shrewd old-style Italian
who owned a fish market in the Bronx, realized that a man like Albert Neri had
little chance of surviving a year in prison. One of his fellow inmates might
kill him; if not, he was almost certain to kill one of them. Out of guilt that
his daughter had deserted a fine husband for some womanly foolishness, Neri’s
father-in-law used his contacts with the Corleone Family (he paid protection
money to one of its representatives and supplied the Corleone itself with the
finest fish available, as a gift), he petitioned for their intercession.
The Corleone Family knew about Albert Neri. He was something
of a legend as a legitimately tough cop; he had made a certain reputation as a
man not to be held lightly, as a man who could inspire fear out of his own
person regardless of the uniform and the sanctioned gun he wore. The Corleone
Family was always interested in such man.. The fact that he was a policeman did
not mean too much. Many young men started down a false path to their true
destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
It was Pete Clemenza, with his fine nose for good personnel,
who brought the Neri affair to Tom Hagen’s attention. Hagen studied the copy of
the official police dossier and listened to Clemenza. He said, “Maybe we have
another Luca Brasi here.”
Clemenza nodded his head vigorously. Though he was very fat,
his face had none of the usual stout man’s benignity. “My thinking exactly.
Mike should look into this himself.”
And so it was that before Albert Neri was transferred from
the temporary jail to what would have been his permanent residence upstate, he
was informed that the judge had reconsidered his case on the basis of new
information and affidavits submitted by high police officials. His sentence was
suspended and he was released.
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Albert Neri was no fool and his father-in-law no shrinking
violet. Neri learned what had happened and paid his debt to his father-in-law
by agreeing to get a divorce from Rita. Then he made a trip out to Long Beach
to thank his benefactor. Arrangements had been made beforehand, of course.
Michael received him in his library.
Neri stated his thanks in formal tones and was surprised and
gratified by the warmth with which Michael received his thanks.
“Hell, I couldn’t let them do that to a fellow Sicilian,”
Michael said. “They should have given you a goddamn medal. But those damn
politicians don’t give a shit about anything except pressure groups. Listen, I
would never have stepped into the picture if I hadn’t checked everything out
and saw what a raw deal you got. One of my people talked to your sister and she
told us how you were always worried about her and her kid, how you straightened
the kid out, kept him from going bad. Your father-in-law says you’re the finest
fellow in the world. That’s rare.” Tactfully Michael did not mention anything
about Neri’s wife having left him.
They chatted for a while. Neri had always been a taciturn
man, but he found himself opening up to Michael Corleone. Michael was only
about five years his senior, but Neri spoke to him as if he were much older,
older enough to be his father.
Finally Michael said, “There’s no sense getting you out of
jail and then just leaving you high and dry. I can arrange some work for you. I
have interests out in Las Vegas, with your experience you could be a hotel
security man. Or if there’s some little business you’d like to go into, I can
put a word in with the banks to advance you a loan for capital.”
Neri was overcome with grateful embarrassment. He proudly
refused and then added, “I have to stay under the jurisdiction of the court
anyway with the suspended sentence.”
Michael said briskly, “That’s all crap detail, I can fix
that. Forget about that supervision and just so the banks won’t get choosy I’ll
have your yellow sheet pulled.”
The yellow sheet was a police record of criminal offenses
committed by any individual. It was usually submitted to a judge when he was
considering what sentence to give a convicted criminal. Neri had been long
enough on the police force to know that many hoodlums going up for sentencing
had been treated leniently by the judge because a clean yellow sheet had been
submitted by the bribed Police Records Department. So he was not too surprised
that Michael Corleone could do such a thing; he was, however, surprised that
such trouble would be taken on his account.
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“If I need help, I’ll get in touch,”
Neri said.
“Good, good,” Michael said. He looked
at his watch and Neri took this for his dismissal.
He rose to go. Again he was surprised.
“Lunchtime,” Michael said. “Come on and eat with me and my
family. My father said he’d like to meet you. We’ll walk over to his house. My
mother should have some fried peppers and eggs and sausages. Real Sicilian
style.”
That afternoon was the most agreeable Albert Neri had spent
since he was a small boy, since the days before his parents had died when he
was only fifteen. Don Corleone was at his most amiable and was delighted when
he discovered that Neri’s parents had originally come from a small village only
a few minutes from his own. The talk was good, the food was delicious, the wine
robustly red. Neri was struck by the thought that he was finally with his own
true people. He understood that he was only a casual guest but he knew he could
find a permanent place and be hazy in such a world.
Michael and the Don walked him out to his car. The Don shook
his hand and said, “You’re a fine fellow. My son Michael here, I’ve been
teaching him the olive business, I’m getting old, I want to retire. And he
comes to me and he says he wants to interfere in your little affair. I tell him
to just learn about the olive oil. But he won’t leave me alone. He says, here
is this fine fellow, a Sicilian and they are doing this dirty trick to him. He
kept on, he gave me no peace until I interested myself in it. I tell you this
to tell that he was right. Now that I’ve met you, I’m glad we took the trouble.
So if we can do anything further for you, just ask the favor. Understand? We’re
at your service.” (Remembering the Don’s kindness, Neri wished the great man
was still alive to see the service that would be done this day.)
It took Neri less than three days to make up his mind. He
understood he was being courted but understood more. That the Corleone Family
approved that act of his which society condemned and had punished him for. The
Corleone Family valued him, society did not. He understood that he would be
happier in the world the Corleones had created than in the world outside. And
he understood that the Corleone Family was the more powerful, within its
narrower limits.
He visited Michael again and put his cards on the table. He
did not want to work in Vegas but he would take a job with the Family in New
York. He made his loyalty clear. Michael was touched, Neri could see that. It
was arranged. But Michael insisted that Neri take a vacation first, down in
Miami at the Family hotel there, all expenses paid and
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a month’s salary in advance so he could have the necessary
cash to enjoy himself properly.
That vacation was Neri’s first taste of luxury. People at
the hotel took special care of him, saying, “Ah, you’re a friend of Michael
Corleone.” The word had been passed along. He was given one of the plush
suites, not the grudging small room a poor relation might be fobbed off with.
The man running the nightclub in the hotel fixed him up with some beautiful
girls. When Neri got back to New York he had a slightly different view on life
in general.
He was put in the Clemenza regime and tested carefully by
that masterful personnel man. Certain precautions had to be taken. He had,
after all, once been a policeman. But Neri’s natural ferocity overcame whatever
scruples he might have had at being on the other side of the fence. In less
than a year he had “made his bones.” He could never turn back.
Clemenza sang his praises. Neri was a wonder, the new Luca
Brasi. He would be better than Luca, Clemenza bragged. After all, Neri was his
discovery. Physically the man was a marvel. His reflexes and coordination such
that he could have been another Joe DiMaggio. Clemenza also knew that Neri was
not a man to be controlled by someone like himself. Neri was made directly
responsible to Michael Corleone, with Tom Hagen as the necessary buffer. He was
a “special” and as such commanded a high salary but did not have his own
living, a bookmaking or strong-arm operation. It was obvious that his respect
for Michael Corleone was enormous and one day Hagen said jokingly to Michael,
“Well now you’ve got your Luca.”
Michael nodded. He had brought it off. Albert Neri was his
man to the death. And of course it was a trick learned from the Don himself.
While learning the business, undergoing the long days of tutelage by his
father, Michael had one time asked, “How come you used a guy like Luca Brasi?
An animal like that?”
The Don had proceeded to instruct him. “There are men in
this world,” he said, “who go about demanding to be killed. You must have
noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their
automobiles in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender, they
humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. I have seen a
man, a fool, deliberately infuriate a group of dangerous men, and he himself
without any resources. These are people who wander through the world shouting,
‘Kill me. Kill me.’ And there is always somebody ready to oblige them. We read
about it in
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the newspapers every day. Such people of course do a great deal
of harm to others also.
“Luca Brasi was such a man. But he was such an extraordinary
man that for a long time nobody could kill him. Most of these people are of no
concern to ourselves but a Brasi is a powerful weapon to be used. The trick is
that since he does not fear death and indeed looks for it, then the trick is to
make yourself the only person in the world that he truly desires not to kill
him. He has only that one fear, not of death, but that you may be the one to
kill him. He is yours then.”
It was one of the most valuable lessons given by the Don
before he died, and Michael had used it to make Neri his Luca Brasi.
* * *
And now, finally, Albert Neri, alone in his Bronx apartment,
was going to put on his police uniform again. He brushed it carefully.
Polishing the holster would be next. And his policeman’s cap too, the visor had
to be cleaned, the stout black shoes shined. Neri worked with a will. He had
found his place in the world, Michael Corelone had placed his absolute trust in
him, and today he would not fail that trust.
Chapter 31
On that same day two limousines parked on the Long Beach
mall. One of the big cars waited to take Connie Corleone, her mother, her
husband and her two children to the airport. The Carlo Rizzi family was to take
a vacation in Las Vegas in preparation for their permanent move to that city.
Michael had given Carlo the order, over Connie’s protests. Michael had not
bothered to explain that he wanted everyone out of the mall before the
Corleone-Barzini Families’ meeting. Indeed the meeting itself was top secret.
The only ones who knew about it were the capos of the Family.
The other limousine was for Kay and her children, who were
being driven up to New Hampshire for a visit with her parents. Michael would
have to stay in the mall; he had affairs too pressing to leave.
The night before Michael had also sent word to Carlo Rizzi
that he would require his presence on the mall for a few days, that he could
join his wife and children later that week. Connie had been furious. She had
tried to get Michael on the phone, but he had gone into the city. Now her eyes
were searching the mall for him, but he was closeted with Tom Hagen and not to
be disturbed. Connie kissed Carlo good-bye when he put
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her in the limousine. “If you don’t come out there in two
days, I’ll come back to get you,” she threatened him.
He gave her a polite husbandly smile of
sexual complicity. “I’ll be there,” he said.
She hung out the window. “What do you think Michael wants
you for?” she asked. Her worried frown made her look old and unattractive.
Carlo shrugged. “He’s been promising me a big deal. Maybe
that’s what he wants to talk about. That’s what he hinted anyway.” Carlo did
not know of the meeting scheduled with the Barzini Family for that night.
Connie said eagerly, “Really, Carlo?”
Carlo nodded at her reassuringly. The limousine moved off
through the gates of the mall.
It was only after the first limousine had left that Michael
appeared to say good-bye to Kay and his own two children. Carlo also came over
and wished Kay a good trip and a good vacation. Finally the second limousine
pulled away and went through the gate.
Michael said, “I’m sorry I had to keep you here, Carlo. It
won’t be more than a couple of days.”
Carlo said quickly, “I don’t mind at
all.”
“Good,” Michael said. “Just stay by your phone and I’ll call
you when I’m ready for you. I have to get some other dope before. OK?”
“Sure, Mike, sure,” Carlo said. He went into his own house,
made a phone call to the mistress he was discreetly keeping in Westbury,
promising he would try to get to her late that night. Then he got set with a
bottle of rye and waited. He waited a long time. Cars started coming through
the gate shortly after noontime. He saw Clemenza get out of one, and then a
little later Tessio came out of another. Both of them were admitted to
Michael’s house by one of the bodyguards. Clemenza left after a few hours, but
Tessio did not reappear.
Carlo took a breath of fresh air around the mall, not more
than ten minutes. He was familiar with all the guards who pulled duty on the
mall, was even friendly with some of them. He thought he might gossip a bit to
pass the time. But to his surprise none of the guards today were men he knew.
They were all strangers to him. Even more surprising, the man in charge at the
gate was Rocco Lampone, and Carlo knew that Rocco was of too high a rank is the
Family to be pulling such menial duty unless something
“The
Godfather” By Mario Puzo363
extraordinary was afoot.
Rocco gave him a friendly smile and hello. Carlo was wary.
Rocco said, “Hey, I thought you were going an vacation with the Don?”
Carlo shrugged. “Mike wanted me to stick around for a couple
of days. He has something for me to do.”
“Yeah,” Rocco Lampone said. “Me too. Then he tells me to
keep a check on the gate. Well, what the hell, he’s the boss.” His tones
implied that Michael was not the man his father was; a bit derogatory.
Carlo ignored the tone. “Mike knows what he’s doing,” he said.
Rocco accepted the rebuke in silence. Carlo said so long and walked back to the
house. Something was up, but Rocco didn’t know what it was.
* * *
Michael stood in the window of his living room and watched
Carlo strolling around the mall. Hagen brought him a drink, strong brandy.
Michael sipped at it gratefully. Behind him, Hagen said, gently, “Mike, you
have to start moving. It’s time.”
Michael sighed. “I wish it weren’t so
soon. I wish the old man had lasted a little longer.”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Hagen said. “If I didn’t tumble,
then nobody did. You set it up real good.”
Michael turned away from the window. “The old man planned a
lot of it. I never realized how smart he was. But I guess you know.”
“Nobody like him,” Hagen said. “But this is beautiful. This
is the best. So you can’t be too bad either.”
“Let’s see what happens,” Michael said.
“Are Tessio and Clemenza on the mall?”
Hagen nodded. Michael finished the brandy in his glass.
“Send Clemenza in to me. I’ll instruct him personally. I don’t want to see
Tessio at all. Just tell him I’ll be ready to go to the Barzini meeting with
him in about a half hour. Clemenza’s people will take care of him after that.”
Hagen
said in a noncommittal voice, “There’s no way to let Tessio off the hook?” “No
way,” Michael said.
* * *
“The
Godfather” By Mario Puzo364
Upstate in the city of Buffalo, a small pizza parlor on a
side street was doing a rush trade. As the lunch hours passed, business finally
slackened off and the counterman took his round tin tray with its few leftover
slices out of the window and put it on the shelf on the huge brick oven. He
peeked into the oven at a pie baking there. The cheese had not yet started to
bubble. When he turned back to the counter that enabled him to serve people in
the street, there was a young, tough-looking man standing there. The man said,
“Gimme a slice.”
The pizza counterman took his wooden shovel and scooped one
of the cold slices into the oven to warm it up. The customer, instead of
waiting outside, decided to come through the door and be served. The store was
empty now. The counterman opened the oven and took out the hot slice and served
it on a paper plate. But the customer, instead of giving the money for it, was
staring at him intently.
“I hear you got a great tattoo on your chest,” the customer
said. “I can see the top of it over your shirt, how about letting me see the
rest of it?”
The counterman froze. He seemed to be
paralyzed.
“Open your shirt,” the customer said.
The counterman shook his head. “I got no tattoo,” he said in
heavily accented English. “That’s the man who works at night.”
The customer laughed. It was an unpleasant laugh, harsh,
strained. “Come on, unbutton your shirt, let me see.”
The counterman started backing toward the rear of the store,
aiming to edge around the huge oven. But the customer raised his hand above the
counter. There was a gun in it. He fired. The bullet caught the counterman in
the chest and hurled him against the oven. The customer fired into his body
again and the counterman slumped to the floor. The customer came around the
serving shelf, reached down and ripped the buttons off the shirt. The chest was
covered with blood, but the tattoo was visible, the intertwined lovers and the
knife transfixing them. The counterman raised one of his arms feebly as if to
protect himself. The gunman said, “Fabrizzio, Michael Corleone sends you his
regards.” He extended the gun so that it was only a few inches from the
counterman’s skull and pulled the trigger. Then he walked out of the store. At
the curb a car was waiting for him with its door open. He jumped in and the car
sped off.
Rocco Lampone answered the phone installed on one of the
iron pillars of the gate. He heard someone saying, “Your package is ready,” and
the click as the caller hung up.
“The
Godfather” By Mario Puzo365
Rocco got into his car and drove out of the mall. He crossed
the Jones Beach Causeway, the same causeway on which Sonny Corleone had been
killed, and drove out to the railroad station of Wantagh. He parked his car
there. Another car was waiting for him with two men in it. They drove to a
motel ten minutes farther out on Sunrise Highway and turned into its courtyard.
Rocco Lampone, leaving his two men in the car, went to one of the little
chalet-type bungalows. One kick sent its door flying off its hinges and Rocco
sprang into the room.
Phillip Tattaglia, seventy years old and naked as a baby,
stood over a bed on which lay a young girl. Phillip Tattaglia’s thick head of
hair was jet black, but the plumage of his crotch was steel gray. His body had
the soft plumpness of a bird. Rocco pumped four bullets into him, all in the
belly. Then he turned and ran back to the car. The two men dropped him off in
the Wantagh station. He picked up his car and drove back to the mall. He went
in to see Michael Corleone for a moment and then came out and took up his
position at the gate.
* * *
Albert Neri, alone in his apartment, finished getting his
uniform ready. Slowly he put it on, trousers, shirt, tie and jacket, holster
and gunbelt. He had turned in his gun when he was suspended from the force,
but, through some administrative oversight they had not made him give up his
shield. Clemenza had supplied him with a new.38 Police Special that could not
be traced. Neri broke it down, oiled it, checked the hammer, put it together
again, clicked the trigger. He loaded the cylinders and was set to go.
He put the policeman’s cap in a heavy paper bag and then put
a civilian overcoat on to cover his uniform. He checked his watch. Fifteen
minutes before the car would be waiting for him downstairs. He spent the
fifteen minutes checking himself in the mirror. There was no question. He
looked like a real cop.
The car was waiting with two of Rocco Lampone’s men in
front. Neri got into the back seat. As the car started downtown, after they had
left the neighborhood of his apartment, he shrugged off the civilian overcoat
and left it on the floor of the car. He ripped open the paper bag and put the
police officer’s cap on his head.
At 55th Street and Fifth Avenue the car pulled over to the
curb and Neri got out. He started walking down the avenue. He had a queer
feeling being back in uniform, patrolling the streets as he had done so many
times. There were crowds of people. He walked downtown until he was in front of
Rockefeller Center, across the way from St.
