At that moment they heard a woman scream in the living room.
Oh, Christ, Michael
would have to do would be to get up on
the screen and be himself.
Johnny worked fast. He found that he knew a lot more about
production than he thought he did, but he hired an executive producer, a man
who knew his stuff but had trouble finding work because of the blacklist.
Johnny didn’t take advantage but gave the man a fair contract. “I expect you to
save me more dough this way,” he told the man frankly.
So he was surprised when the executive producer came to him
and told him the union rep had to be taken care of to the tune of fifty
thousand dollars. There were a lot of problems dealing with overtime and hiring
and the fifty thousand dollars would be well spent. Johnny debated whether the
executive producer was hustling him and then said, “Send the union guy to me.”
The union guy was Billy Goff. Johnny said to him, “I thought
the union stuff was fixed by my friends. I was told not to worry about it. At
all.”
Goff said, “Who told you that?”
Johnny said, “You know goddamn well who told me. I won’t say
his name but if he tells me something that’s it.”
Goff said, “Things have changed. Your friend is in trouble
and his word don’t go this far west anymore.”
Johnny shrugged. “See me in a couple of
days. OK?”
Goff smiled. “Sure, Johnny,” he said.
“But calling in New York ain’t going to help you.”
But calling New York did help. Johnny spoke to Hagen at his
office. Hagen told him bluntly not to pay. “Your Godfather will be sore as hell
if you pay that bastard a dime,” he told Johnny. “It will make the Don lose
respect and right now he can’t afford that.”
“Can I talk to the Don?” Johnny asked. “Will you talk to
him? I gotta get the picture rolling.”
“Nobody can talk to the Don right now,” Hagen said. “He’s
too sick. I’ll talk to Sonny about fixing things up. But I’ll make the decision
on this. Don’t pay that smart bastard a dime. If anything changes, I’ll let you
know.”
Annoyed, Johnny hung up. Union trouble could add a fortune
to making the film and screw up the works generally. For a moment he debated
slipping Goff the fifty grand on the quiet. After all, the Don telling him
something and Hagen telling him something and giving him orders were two
different things. But he decided to wait for a few days.
By waiting he saved fifty thousand dollars. Two nights
later, Goff was found shot to death in his home in Glendale. There was no more
talk of union trouble. Johnny was a little shaken by the killing. It was the
first time the long arm of the Don had struck such a lethal blow so close to
him.
As the weeks went by and he became busier and busier with
getting the script ready, casting the movie and working out production details,
Johnny Fontane forgot about his voice, his not being able to sing. Yet when the
Academy Award nominations came out and he found himself one of the candidates,
he was depressed because he was not asked to sing one of the songs nominated
for the Oscar at the ceremony that would be televised nationally. But he
shrugged it off and kept working. He had no hope of winning the Academy Award
now that his Godfather was no longer able to put pressure on, but getting the
nomination had some value.
The record he and Nino had cut, the one of Italian songs,
was selling much better than anything he had cut lately, but he knew that it
was Nino’s success more than his. He resigned himself to never being able to
again sing professionally.
Once a week he had dinner with Ginny and the kids. No matter
how hectic things got he never skipped that duty. But he didn’t sleep with
Ginny. Meanwhile his second wife had finagled a Mexican divorce and so he was a
bachelor again. Oddly enough he was not that frantic to bang starlets who would
have been easy meat. He was too snobbish really. He was hurt that none of the
young stars, the actresses who were still on top, ever gave him a tumble. But
it was good to work hard. Most nights he would go home alone, put his old
records on the player, have a drink and hum along with them for a few bars. He
had been good, damn good. He hadn’t realized how good he was. Even aside from
the special voice, which could have happened to anybody, he was good. He had
been a real artist and never knew it, and never knew how much he loved it. He’d
ruined his voice with booze and tobacco and broads just when he really knew
what it was all about.
Sometimes Nino came over for a drink and listened with him
and Johnny would say to him scornfully, “You guinea bastard, you never sang
like that in your life.” And Nino would give him that curiously charming smile
and shake his head and say, “No, and I never will,” in a sympathetic voice, as
if he knew what Johnny was thinking.
Finally, a week before shooting the new picture, the Academy
Award night rolled around. Johnny invited Nino to come along but Nino refused.
Johnny said, “Buddy, I
never asked you a favor, right? Do me a favor tonight and
come with me. You’re the only guy who’ll really feel sorry for me if I don’t
win.”
For one moment Nino looked startled. Then he said, “Sure,
old buddy, I can make it.” He paused for a moment and said, “if you don’t win,
forget it. Just get as drunk as you can get and I’ll take care of you. Hell, I
won’t even drink myself tonight. How about that for being a buddy?”
“Man,” Johnny Fontane said, “that’s
some buddy.”
The Academy Award night came and Nino kept his promise. He
came to Johnny’s house dead sober and they left for the presentation theater
together. Nino wondered why Johnny hadn’t invited any of his girls or his
ex-wives to the Award dinner. Especially Ginny. Didn’t he think Ginny would
root for him? Nino wished he could have just one drink, it looked like a long
bad night.
Nino Valenti found the whole Academy Award affair a bore
until the winner of the best male actor was announced. When he heard the words
“Johnny Fontane,” he found himself jumping into the air and applauding. Johnny
reached out a hand for him to shake and Nino shook it. He knew his buddy needed
human contact with someone he trusted and Nino felt an enormous sadness that
Johnny didn’t have anyone better than himself to touch in his moment of glory.
What followed was an absolute nightmare. Jack Woltz’s
picture had swept all the major awards and so the studio’s party was swamped
with newspaper people and all the on-the-make hustlers; male and female. Nino
kept his promise to remain sober, and he tried to watch over Johnny. But the
women of the party kept pulling Johnny Fontane into bedrooms for a little chat
and Johnny kept getting drunker and drunker.
Meanwhile the woman who had won the award for the best
actress was suffering the same fate but loving it more and handling it better.
Nino turned her down, the only man at the party to do so.
Finally somebody had a great idea. The public mating of the
two winners, everybody else at the party to be spectators in the stands. The
actress was stripped down and the other women started to undress Johnny
Fontane. It was then that Nino, the only sober person there, grabbed the
half-clothed Johnny and slung him over his shoulder and fought his way out of
the house and to their car. As he drove Johnny home, Nino thought that if that
was success, he didn’t want it.
Book Three
Chapter 14
The Don was a real man at the age of twelve. Short, dark,
slender, living in the strange Moorish-looking village of Corleone in Sicily,
he had been born Vito Andolini, but when strange men came to kill the son of
the man they had murdered, his mother sent the young boy to America to stay
with friends. And in the new land he changed his name to Corleone to preserve
some tie with his native village. It was one of the few gestures of sentiment
he was ever to make.
In Sicily at the turn of the century the Mafia was the
second government, far more powerful than the official one in Rome. Vito
Corleone’s father became involved in a feud with another villager who took his
case to the Mafia. The father refused to knuckle under and in a public quarrel
killed the local Mafia chief. A week later he himself was found dead, his body
torn apart by lupara blasts. A month after the funeral Mafia gunmen came
inquiring after the young boy, Vito. They had decided that he was too close to
manhood, that he might try, to avenge the death of his father in the years to
come. The twelve-year-old Vito was hidden by relatives and shipped to America.
There he was boarded with the Abbandandos, whose son Genco was later to become
Consigliere to his Don.
Young Vito went to work in the Abbandando grocery store on
Ninth Avenue in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. At the age of eighteen Vito married
an Italian girl freshly arrived from Sicily, a girl of only sixteen but a
skilled cook, a good housewife. They settled down in a tenement on Tenth
Avenue, near 35th Street, only a few blocks from where Vito worked, and two
years later were blessed with their first child, Santino, called by all his
friends Sonny because of his devotion to his father.
In the neighborhood lived a man called Fanucci. He was a
heavy-set, fierce-looking Italian who wore expensive light-colored suits and a
cream-colored fedora. This man was reputed to be of the “Black Hand,” an
offshoot of the Mafia which extorted money from families and storekeepers by
threat of physical violence. However, since most of the inhabitants of the neighborhood
were violent themselves, Fanucci’s threats of bodily harm were effective only
with elderly couples without male children to defend them. Some of the
storekeepers paid him trifling sums as a matter of convenience. However,
Fanucci was also a scavenger on fellow criminals, people who illegally sold
Italian lottery or ran gambling games in their homes. The Abbandando grocery
gave him a
small tribute, this despite the protests of young Genco, who
told his father he would settle the Fanucci hash. His father forbade him. Vito
Corleone observed all this without feeling in any way involved.
One day Fanucci was set upon by three young men who cut his
throat from ear to ear, not deeply enough to kill him, but enough to frighten
him and make him bleed a great deal. Vito saw Fanucci fleeing from his
punishers, the circular slash flowing red. What he never forgot was Fanucci
holding the cream-colored fedora under his chin to catch the dripping blood as
he ran. As if he did not want his suit soiled or did not want to leave a
shameful trail of carmine.
But this attack proved a blessing in disguise for Fanucci.
The three young men were not murderers, merely tough young boys determined to
teach him a lesson and stop him from scavenging. Fannucci proved himself a
murderer. A few weeks later the knife-wielder was shot to death and the
families of the other two young men paid an indemnity to Fanucci to make him
forswear his vengeance. After that the tributes became higher and Fanucci
became a partner in the neighborhood gambling games. As for Vito Corleone, it
was none of his affair. He forgot about it immediately.
During World War I, when imported olive oil became scarce,
Fanucci acquired a part-interest in the Abbandando grocery store by supplying
it not only with oil, but imported Italian salami, hams and cheeses. He then
moved a nephew into the store and Vito Corleone found himself out of a job.
By this time, the second child, Frederioo, had arrived and
Vito Corleone had four mouths to feed. Up to this time he had been a quiet,
very contained young man who kept his thoughts to himself. The son of the
grocery store owner, young Genco Abbandando, was his closest friend, and to the
surprise of both of them, Vito reproached his friend for his father’s deed.
Genco, flushed with shame, vowed to Vito that he would not have to worry about
food. That he, Genco, would steal food from the grocery to supply his friend’s
needs. This offer though was sternly refused by Vito as too shameful, a son
stealing from his father.
The young Vito, however, felt a cold anger for the dreaded
Fanucci. He never showed this anger in any way but bided his time. He worked in
the railroad for a few months and then, when the war ended, work became slow
and he could earn only a few days’ pay a month. Also, most of the foremen were
Irish and American and abused the workmen in the foulest language, which Vito
always bore stone-faced as if he did not comprehend,
though he understood English very well
despite his accent.
One evening as Vito was having supper with his family there
was a knock on the window that led to the open sir shaft that separated them
from the next building. When Vito pulled aside the curtain he saw to his astonishment
one of the young men in the neighborhood, Peter Clemenza, leaning out from a
window on the other side of the air shaft. He was extending a white-sheeted
bundle.
“Hey, paisan,” Clemenza said. “Hold these for me until I ask
for them. Hurry up.” Automatically Vito reached over the empty space of the air
shaft and took the bundle. Clemenza’s face was strained and urgent. He was in
some sort of trouble and Vito’s helping action was instinctive. But when he
untied the bundle in his kitchen, there were five oily guns staining the white
cloth. He put them in his bedroom closet and waited. He learned that Clemenza
had been taken away by the police. They must have been knocking on his door
when he handed the guns over the air shaft.
Vito never said a word to anyone and of course his terrified
wife dared not open her lips even in gossip for fear her own husband would be
sent to prison. Two days later Peter Clemenza reappeared in the neighborhood
and asked Vito casually, “Do you have my goods still?”
Vito nodded. He was in the habit of talking little. Clemenza
came up to his tenement flat and was given a glass of wine while Vito dug the
bundle out of his bedroom closet.
Clemenza drank his wine, his heavy good-natured face alertly
watching Vito. “Did you look inside?”
Vito, his face impassive, shook his head. “I’m not
interested in things that don’t concern me,” he said.
They drank wine together the rest of the evening. They found
each other congenial. Clemenza was a storyteller; Vito Corleone was a listener
to storytellers. They became casual friends.
A few days later Clemenza asked the wife of Vito Corleone if
she would like a fine rug for her living room floor. He took Vito with him to
help carry the rug.
Clemenza led Vito to an apartment house with two marble
pillars and a white marble stoop. He used a key to open the door and they were
inside a plush apartment. Clemenza grunted, “Go on the other side of the room
and help me roll it up.”
The rug was a rich red wool. Vito
Corleone was astonished by Clemenza’s generosity.
Together they rolled the rug into a pile and Clemenza took
one end while Vito took the other. They lifted it and started carrying it
toward the door.
At that moment the apartment bell rang. Clemenza immediately
dropped the rug and strode to the window. He pulled the drape aside slightly
and what he saw made him draw a gun from inside his jacket. It was only at that
moment the astonished Vito Corleone realized that they were stealing the rug
from some stranger’s apartment.
The apartment bell rang again. Vito went up alongside
Clemenza so that he too could see what was happening. At’ the door was a
uniformed policeman. As they watched, the policeman gave the doorbell a final
push, then shrugged and walked away down the marble steps and down the street.
Clemenza grunted in a satisfied way and said, “Come on,
let’s go.” He picked up his end of the rug and Vito picked up the other end.
The policeman had barely turned the corner before they were edging out the
heavy oaken door and into the street with the rug between them. Thirty minutes
later they were cutting the rug to fit the living rooms of Vito Corleone’s
apartment. They had enough left over for the bedroom. Clemenza was an expert
workman and from the pockets of his wide, ill-fitting jacket (even then he
liked to wear loose clothes though he was not so fat), he had the necessary
carpet-cutting tools.
Time went on, things did not improve. The Corleone family
could not eat the beautiful rug. Very well, there was no work, his wife and
children must starve. Vito took some parcels of food from his friend Genco
while he thought things out. Finally he was approached by Clemenza and Tessio,
another young tough of the neighborhood. They were men who thought well of him,
the way he carried himself, and they knew he was desperate. They proposed to
him that he become one of their gang which specialized in hijacking trucks of
silk dresses after those trucks were loaded up at the factory on 31st Street.
There was no risk. The truck drivers were sensible workingmen who at the sight
of a gun flopped on the sidewalk like angels while the hijackers drove the
truck away to be unloaded at a friend’s warehouse. Some of the merchandise
would be sold to an Italian wholesaler, part of the loot would be sold
door-to-door in the Italian neighborhoods– Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, Mulberry
Street, and the Chelsea district in Manhattan– all to poor Italian families
looking for a bargain, whose daughters could never be able to afford such fine
apparel. Clemenza and Tessio needed Vito to drive since they knew he
chauffeured the Abbandando grocery store delivery truck. In 1919, skilled
automobile drivers were at a premium.
Against his better judgment, Vito Corleone accepted their
offer. The clinching argument was that he would clear at least a thousand
dollars for his share of the job. But his young companions struck him as rash,
the planning of the job haphazard, the distribution of the loot foolhardy. Their
whole approach was too careless for his taste. But he thought them of good,
sound character. Peter Clemenza, already burly, inspired a certain trust, and
the lean saturnine Tessio inspired confidence.
The job itself went off without a hitch. Vito Corleone felt
no fear, much to his astonishment, when his two comrades flashed guns and made
the driver get out of the silk truck. He was also impressed with the coolness
of Clemenza and Tessio. They didn’t get excited but joked with the driver, told
him if he was a good lad they’d send his wife a few dresses. Because Vito
thought it stupid to peddle dresses himself and so gave his whole share of
stock to the fence, he made only seven hundred dollars. But this was a
considerable sum of money in 1919.
The next day on the street, Vito Corleoue was stopped by the
cream-suited, white-fedoraed Fanucci. Fanucci was a brutal-looking man and he
had done nothing to disguise the circular scar that stretched in a white
semicircle from ear to ear, looping under his chin. He had heavy black brows
and coarse features which, when he smiled, were in some odd way amiable.
He spoke with a very thick Sicilian accent. “Ah, young
fellow,” he said to Vito. “People tell me you’re rich. You and your two
friends. But don’t you think you’ve treated me a little shabbily? After all,
this is my neighborhood and yon should let me wet my beak.” He used the
Sicilian phrase of the Mafia, “Fari vagnari a pizzu.” Pizzu means the beak of
any small bird such as a canary. The phrase itself was a demand for part of the
loot.
As was his habit, Vito Corleone did not answer. He
understood the implication immediately and was waiting for a definite demand.
Fanucci smiled at him, showing gold teeth and stretching his
nooses-like scar tight around his face. He mopped his face with a handkerchief
and unbuttoned his jacket for a moment as if to cool himself but really to show
the gun he carried stuck in the waistband of his comfortably wide trousers.
Then he sighed and said, “Give me five hundred dollars and I’ll forget the
insult. After all, young people don’t know the courtesies due a man like
myself.”
Vito Corleone smiled at him and even as a young man still
unblooded, there was something so chilling in his smile that Fanucci hesitated
a moment before going on.
“Otherwise the police will come to see you, your wife and
children will be shamed and destitute. Of course if my information as to your
gains is incorrect I’ll dip my beak just a little. But no less than three hundred
dollars. And don’t try to deceive me.”
For the first time Vito Corleone spoke. His voice was
reasonable, showed no anger. It was courteous, as befitted a young man speaking
to an older man of Fanucci’s eminence. He said softly, “My two friend have my
share of the money, rll have to speak to them.”
Fanucci was reassured. “You can tell your two friends that I
expect them to let me wet my beak in the same manner. Don’t be afraid to tell
them,” he added reassuringly. “Clemenza and I know each other well, he
understands these things. Let yourself be guided by him. He has more experience
in these matters.”
Vito Corleone shrugged. He tried to look a little
embarrassed. “Of course,” he said. “You understand this is all new to me. Thank
you for speaking to me as a godfather.”
Fanucci was impressed. “You’re a good fellow,” he said. He
took Vito’s hand and clasped it in both of his hairy ones. “You have respect,”
he said. “A fine thing in the young. Next time speak to me first, eh? Perhaps I
can help you in your plans.”
In later years Vito Corleone understood that what had made
him act in such a perfect, tactical way with Fanucci was the death of his own
hot-tempered father who had been killed by the Mafia in Sicily. But at that
time all he felt was an icy rage that this man planned to rob him of the money
he had risked his life and freedom to earn. He had not been afraid. Indeed he
thought, at that moment, that Fanucci was a crazy fool. From what he had seen
of Clemenza, that burly Sicilian would sooner give up his life than a penny of
his loot. After all, Clemenza had been ready to kill a policeman merely to
steal a rug. And the slender Tessio had the deadly air of a viper.
But later that night, in Clemenza’s tenement apartment
across the air shaft, Vito Corleone received another lesson in the education he
had just begun. Clemenza cursed, Tessio scowled, but then both men started
talking about whether Fanucci would be satisfied with two hundred dollars.
Tessio thought he might.
Clemenza was positive. “No, that scarface bastard must have
found out what we made from the wholesaler who bought the dresses. Fanucci
won’t take a dime less than three hundred dollars. We’ll have to pay.”
Vito was astonished but was careful not to show his
astonishment. “Why do we have to pay him? What can he do to the three of us?
We’re stronger than him. We have guns.
Why do we have to hand over the money
we earned?”
Clemenza explained patiently. “Fanucci has friends, real
brutes. He has connections with the police. He’d like us to tell him our plans
because he could set us up for the gyps and earn their gratitude. Then they
would owe him a favor. That’s how he operates. And he has a license from
Maranzalla himself to work this neighborhood.” Maranzalla was a gangster often
in the newspapers, reputed to be the leader of a criminal ring specializing in
extortion, gambling and armed robbery.
Clemenza served wine that he had made himself. His wife,
after putting a plate of salami, olives and a loaf of Italian bread on the
table, went down to sit with her women cronies in front of the building,
carrying her chair with her. She was a young Italian girl only a few years in
the country and did not yet understand English.
Vito Corleone sat with his two friends and drank wine. He
had never used his intelligence before as he was using it now. He was surprised
at how clearly he could think. He recalled everything he knew about Fanucci. He
remembered the day the man had had his throat cut and had run down the street
holding his fedora under his chin to catch the dripping blood. He remembered
the murder of the man who had wield the knife and the other two having their
sentences removed by paying an indemnity. And suddenly he was sure that Fanucci
had no great connections, could not possibly have. Not a man who informed to
the police. Not a man who allowed his vengeance to be bought off. A real
Mafioso chief would have had the other two men killed also. No. Fanucci had got
lucky and killed one man but had known he could not kill the other two after
they were alerted. And so he had allowed himself to be paid. It was the
personal brutal force of the man that allowed him to levy tribute on the
shopkeepers, the gambling games that ran in the tenement apartments. But Vito
Corleone knew of at least one gambling game that had never paid Fanucci
tributes and nothing had ever happened to the men running it.
And so it was Fanucci alone. Or Fanucci with some gunmen
hired for special jobs on a strictly cash basis. Which left Vito Corleone with
another decision. The course his own life must take.
It was from this experience came his oft-repeated belief
that every man has but one destiny. On that night he could have paid Fanucci
the tribute and have become again a grocery clerk with perhaps his own grocery
store in the years to come. But destiny had decided that he was to become a Don
and had brought Fanucci to him to set him on his
destined path.
When they finished the bottle of wine, Vito said cautiously
to Clemenza and Tessio, “If you like, why not give me two hundred dollars each
to pay to Fanucci? I guarantee he will accept that amount from me. Then leave
everything in my hands. I’ll settle this problem to your satisfaction.”
At once Clemenza’s eyes gleamed with suspicion. Vito said to
him coldly, “I never lie to people I have accepted as my friends. Speak to
Fanucci yourself tomorrow. Let him ask you for the money. But don’t pay him.
And don’t in any way quarrel with him. Tell him you have to get the money and
will give it to me to give him. Let him understand that you are willing to pay
what he asks. Don’t bargain. I’ll quarrel over the price with him. There’s no
point making him angry with us if he’s as dangerous a man as you say he is.”
They left it at that. The next day Clemenza spoke with
Fanucci to make sure that Vito was not making up the story. Then Clemenza came
to Vito’s apartment and gave him the two hundred dollars. He peered at Vito
Corleone and said, “Fanucci told me nothing below three hundred dollars, how
will you make him take less?”
Vito Corleone said reasonably, “Surely that’s no concern of
yours. Just remember that I’ve done you a service.”
Tessio came later. Tessio was more reserved than Clemenza,
sharper, more clever but with less force. He sensed something amiss, something
not quite right. He was a little worried. He said to Vito Corleone, “Watch
yourself with that bastard of a Black Hand, he’s tricky as a priest. Do you
want me to be here when you hand him the money, as a witness?”
Vito Corleone shook his head. He didn’t even bother to
answer. He merely said to Tessio, “Tell Fanucci I’ll pay him the money here, in
my house at nine o’clock tonight. I’ll have to give him a glass of wine and
talk, reason with him to take the lesser sum.”
Tessio shook his head. “You won’t have
much luck. Fanucci never retreats.”
“I’ll reason with him,” Vito Corleone said. It was to become
a famous phrase in the years to come. It was to become the warning rattle
before a deadly strike. When he became a Don and asked opponents to sit down
and reason with him, they understood it was the last chance to resolve an
affair without bloodshed and murder.
Vito Corleone told his wife to take the two children, Sonny
and Fredo, down into the street after supper and on no account to let them come
up to the house until he gave
her permission. She was to sit on guard at the tenement
door. He had some private business with Fanucci that could not be interrupted.
He saw the look of fear on her face and was angry. He said to her quietly, “Do
you think you’ve married a fool?” She didn’t answer. She did not answer because
she was frightened, not of Fanucci now, but of her husband. He was changing
visibly before her eyes, hour by hour, into a man who radiated some dangerous
force. He had always been quiet, speaking little, but always gentle, always
reasonable, which was extraordinary in a young Sicilian male. What she was
seeing was the shedding of his protective coloration of a harmless nobody now
that he was ready to start on his destiny. He had started late, he was
twenty-five years old, but he was to start with a flourish.
Vito Corleone had decided to murder Fanucci. By doing so he
would have an extra seven hundred dollars in his bankroll. The three hundred
dollars he himself would have to pay the Black Hand terrorist and the two
hundred dollars from Tessio and the two hundred dollars from Clemenza. If he
did not kill Fanucci, he would have to pay the man seven hundred dollars cold
cash. Fanucci alive was not worth seven hundred dollars to him. He would not
pay seven hundred dollars to keep Fanucci alive. If Fanucci needed seven
hundred dollars for an operation to save his life, he would not give Fanucci
seven hundred dollars for the surgeon. He owed Fanucci no personal debt of
gratitude, they were not blood relatives, he did not love Fanucci. Why, then,
should he give Fanucci seven hundred dollars?
And it followed inevitably, that since Fanucci wished to
take seven hundred dollars from him by force, why should he not kill Fanucci?
Surely the world could do without such a person.
There were of course some practical reasons. Fanucci might
indeed have powerful friends who would seek vengeance. Fanucci himself was a
dangerous man, not so easily killed. There were the police and the electric
chair. But Vito Corleone had lived under a sentence of death since the murder
of his father. As a boy of twelve he had fled his executioners and crossed the
ocean into a strange land, taking a strange name. And years of quiet
observation had convinced him that he had more intelligence and more courage
than other men, though he had never had the opportunity to use that
intelligence and courage.
And yet he hesitated before taking the first step toward his
destiny. He even packed the seven hundred dollars in a single fold of bills and
put the money in a convenient sick pocket of his trousers. But he put the money
in the left side of his trousers. In the
right-hand pocket he put the gun Clemenza had given him to
use in the hijacking of the silk truck.
Fanucci came promptly at nine in the evening. Vito Corleone
set out a jug of homemade wine that Clemenza had given him.
Fanucci put his white fedora on the table beside the jug of
wine. He loosened his broad multiflowered tie, its tomato stains camouflaged by
the bright patterns. The summer night was hot, the gaslight feeble. It was very
quiet in the apartment. But Vito Corleone was icy. To show his good faith he
handed over the roll of bills and watched carefully as Fanucci, after counting
it, took out a wide leather wallet and stuffed the money inside. Fanucci sipped
his glass of wine and said, “You still owe me two hundred dollars.” His
heavy-browed face was expressionless.
Vito Corleone said in his cool reasonable voice, “I’m a
little short, I’ve been out of work. Let me owe you the money for a few weeks.”
This was a permissible gambit. Fanucci had the bulk of the
money and would wait. He might even be persuaded to take nothing more or to
wait a little longer. He chuckled over his wine and said, “Ah, you’re a sharp
young fellow. How is it I’ve never noticed you before? You’re too quiet a chap
for your own interest. I could find some work for you to do that would be very
profitable.”
Vito Corleone showed his interest with a polite nod and
filled up the man’s glass from the purple jug. But Fanucci thought better of
what he was going to say and rose from his chair and shook Vito’s hand. “Good
night, young fellow,” he said. “No hard feelings, eh? If I can ever do you a
service let me know. You’ve done a good job for yourself tonight.”
Vito let Fanucci go down the stairs and out the building.
The street was thronged with witnesses to show that he had left the Corleone
home safely. Vito watched from the window. He saw Fanucci turn the corner
toward 11th Avenue and knew he was headed toward his apartment, probably to put
away his loot before coming out on the streets again. Perhaps to put away his
gun. Vito Corleone left his apartment and ran up the stairs to the roof. He
traveled over the square block of roofs and descended down the steps of an
empty loft building fire escape that left him in the back yard. He kicked the
back door open and went through the front door. Across the street was Fanucci’s
tenement apartment house.
The village of tenements extended only as far west as Tenth
Avenue. Eleventh Avenue was mostly warehouses and lofts rented by firms who
shipped by New York Central
Railroad and wanted access to the freight yards that
honeycombed the area from Eleventh Avenue to the Hudson River. Fanucci’s
apartment house was one of the few left standing in this wilderness and was
occupied mostly by bachelor trainmen, yard workers, and the cheapest
prostitutes. These people did not sit in the street and gossip like honest
Italians, they sat in beer taverns guzzling their pay. So Vito Corleone found
it an easy matter to slip across the deserted Eleventh Avenue and into the vestibule
of Fanucci’s apartment house. There he drew the gun he had never fired and
waited for Fanucci.
He watched through the glass door of the vestibule, knowing
Fanucci would come down from Tenth Avenue. Clemenza had showed him the safety
on the gun and he had triggered it empty. But as a young boy in Sicily at the
early age of nine, he had often gone hunting with’his father, had often fired
the heavy shotgun called the lupara. It was his skill with the lupara even as a
small boy that had brought the sentence of death upon him by his father’s
murderers.
Now waiting in the darkened hallway, he saw the white blob
of Fanucci crossing the street toward the doorway. Vito stepped back, shoulders
pressed against the inner door that led to the stairs. He held his gun out to
fire. His extended hand was only two paces from the outside door. The door
swung in. Fanucci, white, broad, smelly, filled the square of light. Vito
Corleone fired.
The opened door let some of the sound escape into the
street, the rest of the gun’s explosion shook the building. Fanucci was holding
on to the sides of the door, trying to stand erect, trying to reach for his
gun. The force of his struggle had torn the buttons off his jacket and made it
swing loose. His gun was exposed but so was a spidery vein of red on the white
shirtfront of his stomach. Very carefully, as if he were plunging a needle into
a vein, Vito Corleone fired his second bullet into that red web.
Fanucci fell to his knees, propping the door open. He let
out a terrible groan, the groan of a man in great physical distress that was
almost comical. He kept giving these groans; Vito remembered hearing at least
three of them before he put the gun against Fanucci’s sweaty, suety cheek and
fired into his brain. No more than five seconds had passed when Fanucci slumped
into death, jamming the door open with his body.
Very carefully Vito took the wide wallet out of the dead
man’s jacket pocket and put it inside his shirt. Then he walked across the
street into the loft building, through that into the yard and climbed the fire
escape to the roof. From there he surveyed the street.
Fanucci’s body was still lying in the doorway but there was
no sign of any other person. Two windows had gone up in the tenement and he
could see dark heads poked out but since he could not see their features they
had certainly not seen his. And such men would not give information to the
police. Fanucci might lie there until dawn or until a patrolman making the
rounds stumbled on his body. No person in that house would deliberately expose
himself to police suspicion or questioning. They would lock their doors and
pretend they had heard nothing.
He could take his time. He traveled over the rooftops to his
own roof door and down to his own flat. He unlocked the door, went inside and
then locked the door behind him. He rifled the dead man’s wallet. Besides the
seven hundred dollars he had given Fanucci there were only some singles and a
five-dollar note.
Tucked inside the flap was an old five-dollar gold piece,
probably a luck token. If Fanucci was a rich gangster, he certainly did not
carry his wealth with him. This confirmed some of Vito’s suspicions.
He knew he had to get rid of the wallet and the gun (knowing
enough even then that he must leave the gold piece in the wallet). He went up
on the roof again and traveled over a few ledges. He threw the wallet down one
air shaft and then he emptied the gun of bullets and smashed its barrel against
the roof ledge. The barrel wouldn’t break. He reversed it in his hand and
smashed the butt against the side of a chimney. The butt split into two halves.
He smashed it again and the pistol broke into barrel and handle, two separate
pieces. He used a separate air shaft for each. They made no sound when they
struck the earth five stories below, but sank into the soft hill of garbage
that had accumulated there. In the morning more garbage would be thrown out of
the windows and, with luck, would cover everything. Vito returned to his
apartment.
He was trembling a little but was absolutely under control.
He changed his clothes and fearful that some blood might have splattered on
them, he threw them into a metal tub his wife used for washing. He took lye and
heavy brown laundry soap to soak the clothes and scrubbed them with the metal
wash board beneath the sink. Then he scoured tub and sink with lye and soap. He
found a bundle of newly washed clothes in the corner of the bedroom and mingled
his own clothes with these. Then he put on a fresh shirt and trousers and went
down to join his wife and children and neighbors in front of the tenement.
All these precautions proved to be
unnecessary. The police, after discovering the dead
body at dawn, never questioned Vito Corleone. Indeed he was
astonished that they never learned about Fanucci’s visit to his home on the
night he was shot to death. He had counted on that for an alibi, Fanucci
leaving the tenement alive. He only learned later that the police had been delighted
with the murder of Fanucci and not too anxious to pursue his killers. They had
assumed it was another gang execution, and had questioned hoodlums with records
in the rackets and a history of strongarm. Since Vito had never been in trouble
he never came into the picture.
But if he had outwitted the police, his partners were
another matter. Pete Clemenza and Tessio avoided him for the next week, for the
next two weeks, then they came to call on him one evening. They came with
obvious respect. Vito Corleone greeted them with impassive courtesy and served
them wine.
Clemenza spoke first. He said softly, “Nobody is collecting
from the store owners on Ninth Avenue. Nobody is collecting from the card games
and gambling in the neighborhood.”
Vito Corleone gazed at both men steadily but did not reply.
Tessio spoke. “We could take over Fanucci’s customers. They would pay us.”
Vito Corleone shrugged. “Why come to
me? I have no interest in such things.”
Clemenza laughed. Even in his youth, before growing his enormous
belly, he had a fat man’s laugh. He said now to Vito Corleone, “How about that
gun I gave you for the truck job? Since you won’t need it any more you can give
it back to me.”
Very slowly and deliberately Vito Corleone took a wad of
bills out of his side pocket and peeled off five tens. “Here, I’ll pay you. I
threw the gun away after the truck job.” He smiled at the two men.
At that time Vito Corleone did not know the effect of this
smile. It was chilling because it attempted no menace. He smiled as if it was
some private joke only he himself could appreciate. But since he smiled in that
fashion only in affairs that were lethal, and since the joke was not really
private and since his eyes did not smile, and since his outward character was
usually so reasonable and quiet, the sudden unmasking of his true self was
frightening.
Clemenza shook his head. “I don’t want the money,” he said.
Vito pocketed the bills. He waited. They all understood each other. They knew
he had killed Fanucci and though they never spoke about it to anyone the whole
neighborhood, within a few weeks, also knew. Vito Corleone was treated as a
“man of respect” by everyone. But he made no
attempt to take over the Fanucci
rackets and tributes.
What followed then was inevitable. One night Vito’s wife
brought a neighbor, a widow, to the flat. The woman was Italian and of
unimpeachable character. She worked hard to keep a home for her fatherless
children. Her sixteen-year-old son brought home his pay envelope sealed, to
hand over to her in the old-country style; her seventeen-year-old daughter, a
dressmaker, did the same. The whole family sewed buttons on cards at night at
slave labor piece rates. The woman’s name was Signora Colombo.
Vito Corleone’s wife said, “The Signora has a favor to ask
of you. She is having some trouble.”
Vito Corleone expected to be asked for money, which he was
ready to give. But it seemed that Mrs. Colombo owned a dog which her youngest
son adored. The landlord had received complaints on the dog barking at night
and had told Mrs. Colombo to get rid of it. She had pretended to do so: The
landlord had found out that she had deceived him and had ordered her to vacate
her apartment. She had promised this time to truly get rid of the dog and she
had done so. But the landlord was so angry that he would not revoke his order.
She had to get out or the police would be summoned to put her out. And her poor
little boy had cried so when they had given the dog away to relatives who lived
in Long Island. All for nothing, they would lose their home.
Vito
Corleone asked her gently, “Why do you ask me to help you?” Mrs. Colombo nodded
toward his wife. “She told me to ask you.”
He was surprised. His wife had never questioned him about
the clothes he had washed the night he had murdered Fanucci. Had never asked
him where all the money came from when he was not working. Even now her face
was impassive. Vito said to Mrs. Colombo, “I can give you some money to help
you move, is that what you want?”
The woman shook her head, she was in tears. “All my friends
are here, all the girls I grew up with in Italy. How can I move to another
neighborhood with strangers? I want you to speak to the landlord to let me
stay.”
Vito nodded. “It’s done then. You won’t have to move. I’ll
speak to him tomorrow morning.”
His wife gave him a smile which he did
not acknowledge, but he felt pleased. Mrs.
Colombo looked a little uncertain.
“You’re sure he’ll say yes, the landlord?” she asked.
“Signor Roberto?” Vito said in a
surprised voice. “Of course he will. He’s a good-hearted
fellow. Once I explain how things are with you he’ll take
pity on your misfortunes. Now don’t let it trouble you any more. Don’t get so
upset. Guard your health, for the sake of your children.”
* * *
The landlord, Mr. Roberto, came to the neighborhood every
day to check on the row of five tenements that he owned. He was a padrone, a
man who sold Italian laborers just off the boat to the big corporations. With
his profits he had bought the tenements one by one. An educated man from the
North of Italy, he felt only contempt for these illiterate Southerners from
Sicily and Naples, who swarmed like vermin through his buildings, who threw
garbage down the air shafts, who let cockroaches and rats eat away his walls
without lifting a hand to preserve his property. He was not a bad man, he was a
good husband and father, but constant worry about his investments, about the
money he earned, about the inevitable expenses that came with being a man of
property had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he was in a constant state of
irritation. When Vito Corleone stopped him on the street to ask for a word, Mr.
Roberto was brusque. Not rude, since any one of these Southerners might stick a
knife into you if rubbed the wrong way, though this young man looked like a
quiet fellow.
“Signor Roberto,” said Vito Corleone, “the friend of my
wife, a poor widow with no man to protect her, tells me that for some reason
she has been ordered to move from her apartment in your building. She is in
despair. She has no money, she has no friends except those that live here. I
told her that I would speak to you, that you are a reasonable man who acted out
of some misunderstanding. She has gotten rid of the animal that caused all the
trouble and so why shouldn’t she stay? As one Italian to another, I ask you the
favor.”
Signor Roberto studied the young man in front of him. He saw
a man of medium stature but strongly built, a peasant but not a bandit, though
he so laughably dared to call himself an Italian. Roberto shrugged. “I have
already rented the apartment to another family for higher rent,” he said. “I
cannot disappoint them for the sake of your friend.”
Vito Corleone nodded in agreeable understanding. “How much
more a month?” he asked.
“Five dollars,” Mr. Roberto said. This was a lie. The
railway flat, four dark rooms, rented for twelve dollars a month to the widow
and he had not been able to get more than that from the new tenant.
* * *
Vito Corleone took a roll of bills out of his pocket and
peeled off three tens. “Here is the six months’ increase in advance. You
needn’t speak to her about it, she’s a proud woman. See me again in another six
months. But of course you’ll let her keep her dog.”
“Like hell,” Mr. Roberto said. “And who the hell are you to
give me orders. Watch your manners or you’ll be out on your Sicilian ass in the
street there.”
Vito Corleone raised his hands in surprise. “I’m asking you
a favor, only that. One never knows when one might need a friend, isn’t that
true? Here, take this money as a sign of my goodwill and make your own
decision. I wouldn’t dare to quarrel with it.” He thrust the money into Mr.
Roberto’s hand. “Do me this little favor, just take the money and think things
over. Tomorrow morning if you want to give me the money back by all means do
so. If you want the woman out of your house, how can I stop you? It’s your
property, after all. If you don’t want the dog in there, I can understand. I
dislike animals myself.” He patted Mr. Roberto on the shoulder. “Do me this
service, eh? I won’t forget it. Ask your friends in the neighborhood about me,
they’ll tell you I’m a man who believes in showing his gratitude.”
But of course Mr. Roberto had already begun to understand.
That evening he made inquiries about Vito Corleone. He did not wait until the
next morning. He knocked on the Corleone door that very night, apologizing for
the lateness of the hour and accepted a glass of wine from Signora Corleone. He
assured Vito Corleone that it had all been a dreadful misunderstanding, that of
course Signora Colombo could remain in the flat, of course she could keep her
dog. Who were those miserable tenants to complain about noise from a poor
animal when they paid such a low rent? At the finish he threw the thirty
dollars Vito Corleone had given him on the table and said in the most sincere
fashion, “Your good heart in helping this poor widow has shamed me and I wish
to show that I, too, have some Christian charity. Her rent will remain what it
was.”
All concerned played this comedy prettily. Vito poured wine,
called for cakes, wrung Mr. Roberto’s hand and praised his warm heart. Mr.
Roberto sighed and said that having made the acquaintance of such a man as Vito
Corleone restored his faith in human nature. Finally they tore themselves away
from each other. Mr. Roberto, his bones turned to jelly with fear at his narrow
escape, caught the streetcar to his home in the Bronx and took to his bed. He
did not reappear in his tenements for three days.
* * *
Vito Corleone was now a “man of respect” in the
neighborhood. He was reputed to be a member of the Mafia of Sicily. One day a
man who ran card games in a furnished room came to him and voluntarily paid him
twenty dollars each week for his “friendship.” He had only to visit the game
once or twice a week to let the players understand they were under his
protection.
Store owners who had problems with young hoodlums asked him
to intercede. He did so and was properly rewarded. Soon he had the enormous
income for that time and place of one hundred dollars a week. Since Clemenza
and Tessio were his friends, his allies, he had to give them each part of the
money, but this he did without being asked. Finally he decided to go into the
olive oil, importing business with his boyhood chum, Genco Abbandundo. Genco
would handle the business, the importing of the olive oil from Italy, the
buying at the proper price, the storing in his father’s warehouse. Genco had
the experience for this part of the business. Clemenza and Tessio would be the
salesmen. They would go to every Italian grocery store in Manhattan, then
Brooklyn, then the Bronx, to persuade store owners to stock Genco Pura olive
oil. (With typical modesty, Vito Corleone refused to name the brand after
himself.) Vito of course would be the head of the firm since he was supplying
most of the capital. He also would be called in on special cases, where store
owners resisted the sales talks of Clemenza and Tessio. Then Vito Corleone
would use his own formidable powers of persuasion.
For the next few years Vito Corleone lived that completely
satisfying life of a small businessman wholly devoted to building up his
commercial enterprise in a dynamic, expanding economy. He was a devoted father
and husband but so busy he could spare his family little of his time. As Genco
Pura olive oil grew to become the bestselling imported Italian oil in America,
his organization mushroomed. Like any good salesman he came to understand the
benefits of undercutting his rivals in price, barring them from distribution
outlets by persuading store owners to stock less of their brands. Like any good
businessman he aimed at holding a monopoly by forcing his rivals to abandon the
field or by merging with his own company. However, since he had started off
relatively helpless, economically, since he did not believe in advertising,
relying on word of mouth and since if truth be told, his olive oil was no
better than his competitors’, he could not use the common strangleholds of
legitimate businessmen. He had to rely on the force of his own personality and
his reputation as a “man of respect.”
Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became known as a “man of
reasonableness.” He never uttered a threat. He always used logic that proved to
be irresistible. He always
made certain that the other fellow got his share of profit.
Nobody lost. He did this, of course, by obvious means. Like many businessmen of
genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And
so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly. There were some oil
wholesalers is Brooklyn, men of fiery temper, headstrong, not amenable to
reason, who refused to see, to recognize, the vision of Vito Corleone, even
after he had explained everything to them with the utmost patience and detail.
With these men Vito Corleone threw up his hands is despair and sent Tessio to
Brooklyn to set up a headquarters and solve the problem. Warehouses were
burned, truckloads of olive-green oil were dumped to form lakes in the cobbled
waterfront streets. One rash man, an arrogant Milanese with more faith in the
police than a saint has in Christ, actually went to the authorities with a
complaint against his fellow Italians, breaking the ten-century-old law, of
omerta. But before the matter could progress any further the wholesaler
disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving behind, deserted, his devoted wife
and three children, who, God be thanked, were fully grown and capable of taking
over his business and coming to terms with the Genco Pura oil company.
But great men are not born great, they grow great, and so it
was with Vito Corleone. When prohibition came to pass and alcohol forbidden to
be sold, Vito Corleone made the final step from a quite ordinary, somewhat
ruthless businessman to a great Don in the world of criminal enterprise. It did
not happen in a day, it did not happen in a year, but by the end of the
Prohibition period and the start of the Great Depression, Vito Corleone had
become the Godfather, the Don, Don Corleone.
It started casually enough. By this time the Genco Pura Oil
Company had a fleet of six delivery trucks. Through Clemenza, Vito Corleone was
approached by a group of Italian bootleggers who smuggled alcohol and whiskey
in from Canada. They needed trucks and deliverymen to distribute their produce
over New York City. They needed deliverymen who were reliable, discreet and of
a certain determination and force. They were willing to pay Vito Corleone for
his trucks and for his men. The fee was so enormous that Vito Corleone cut back
drastically on his oil business to use the trucks almost exclusively for the
service of the bootlegger-smugglers. This despite the fact that these gentlemen
had accompanied their offer with a silky threat. But even then Vito Carleone
was so mature a man that he did not take insult at a threat or become angry and
refuse a profitable offer because of it. He evaluated the threat, found it
lacking in conviction, and lowered his opinion of his new partners because they
had been so stupid to use threats where none were needed. This was useful
information to be
pondered at its proper time.
Again he prospered. But, more important, he acquired
knowledge and contacts and experience. And he piled up good deeds as a banker
piles up securities. For in the following years it became clear that Vito
Corleone was not only a man of talent but, in his way, a genius.
He made himself the protector of the Italian families who
set themselves up as small speakeasies in their homes, selling whiskey at
fifteen cents a glass to bachelor laborers. He became godfather t Mrs.
Colombo’s youngest son when the lad made his confirmation and gave a handsome
present of a twenty-dollar gold piece. Meanwhile, since it was inevitable that
some of his trucks be stopped by the police, Genco Abbandando hired a fine
lawyer with many contacts in the Police Department and the judiciary. A system
of payoffs was set up and soon the Corleone organization had a sizable “sheet,”
the list of officials entitled to a monthly sum. When the lawyer tried to keep
this list down, apologizing for the expense, Vito Corleone reassured him. “No;
no,” he said. “Get everyone on it even if they can’t help us right now. I
believe in friendship and I am willing to show my friendship first.”
As time went by the Corleone empire became larger, more
trucks were added, the “sheet” grew longer. Also the men working directly for
Tessio and Clemenza grew in number. The whole thing was becoming unwieldy.
Finally Vito Corleone worked out a system of organization. He gave Clemenza and
Tessio each the title of Caporegime, or captain, and the men who worked beneath
them the rank of soldier. He named Genco Abbandando his counselor, or
Consigliere. He put layers of insulation between himself and any operational
act. When he gave an order it was to Genco or to one of the caporegimes alone.
Rarely did he have a witness to any order he gave any particular one of them.
Then he split Tessio’s group and made it responsible for Brooklyn. He also
split Tessio off from Clemenza and made it clear over the years that he did not
want the two men to associate even socially except when absolutely necessary.
He explained this to the more intelligent Tessio, who caught his drift
immediately, though Vito explained it as a security measure against the law.
Tessio understood that Vito did not want his two caporegimes to have any opportunity
to conspire against him and he also understood there was no ill will involved,
merely a tactical precaution. In return Vito gave Tessio a free hand in
Brooklyn while he kept Clemenza’s Bronx life very much under his thumb.
Clemenza was the braver, more reckless, the crueler man despite his outward
jollity, and needed a tighter rein.
The Great Depression increased the power of Vito Corleone.
And indeed it was about that time he came to be called Don Corleone. Everywhere
in the city, honest men begged for honest work in vain. Proud men demeaned
themselves and their families to accept official charity from a contemptuous
officialdom. But the men of Don Corleone walked the streets with their heads
held high, their pockets stuffed with silver and paper money. With no fear of
losing their jobs. And even Don Corleone, that mgt modest of men, could not
help feeling a sense of pride. He was taking care of his world, his people. He
had not failed those who depended on him and gave him the sweat of their brows,
risked their freedom and their lives in his service. And when an employee of
his was arrested and sent to prison by some mischance, that unfortunate man’s
family received a living allowance; and not a miserly, beggarly, begrudging
pittance but the same amount the man earned when free.
This of course was not pure Christian charity. Not his best
friends would have called Don Corleone a saint from heaven. There was some
self-interest in this generosity. An employee sent to prison knew he had only
to keep his mouth shut and his wife and children would be cared for. He knew
that if he did not inform to the police a warm welcome would be his when he
left prison. There would be a party waiting in his home, the best of food,
homemade ravioli, wine, pastries, with all his friends and relatives gathered
to rejoice in his freedom. And sometime during the night the Consigliere, Genco
Abbandando, or perhaps even the Don himself, would drop by to pay his respects
to such a stalwart, take a glass of wine in his honor, and leave a handsome
present of money so that he could enjoy a week or two of leisure with his
family before returning to his daily toil. Such was the infinite sympathy and
understanding of Don Corleone.
It was at this time that the Don got the idea that he ran
his world far better than his enemies ran the greater world which continually
obstructed his path. And this feeling was nurtured by the poor people of the
neighborhood who constantly came to him for help. To get on the home relief, to
get a young boy a job or out of jail, to borrow a small sum of money
desperately needed, to intervene with landlords who against all reason demanded
rent from jobless tenants.
Don Vito Corleone helped them all. Not only that, he helped
them with goodwill, with encouraging words to take the bitter sting out of the
charity he gave them. It was only natural then that when these Italians were
puzzled and confused on who to vote for to represent them in the state
legislature, in the city offices, in the Congress, they should
ask the advice of their friend Don Corleone, their
Godfather. And so he became a political power to be consulted by practical
party chiefs. He consolidated this power with a far-seeing statesmanlike
intelligence; by helping brilliant boys from poor Italian families through
college, boys who would later become lawyers, assistant district attorneys, and
even judges. He planned for the future of his empire with all the foresight of
a great national leader.
The repeal of Prohibition dealt this empire a crippling blow
but again he had taken his precautions. In 1933 he sent emissaries to the man
who controlled all the gambling activities of Manhattan, the crap games on the
docks, the shylocking that went with it as hot dogs go with baseball games, the
bookmaking on sports and horses, the illicit gambling houses that ran poker
games, the policy or numbers racket of Harlem. This man’s name was Salvatore
Maranzano and he was one of the acknowledged pezzonovante,.90 calibers, or big
shots of the New York underworld. The Corleone emissaries proposed to Maranzano
an equal partnership beneficial to both parties. Vito Corleone with his
organization, his police and political contacts, could give the Maranzano
operations a stout umbrella and the new strength to expand into Brooklyn and
the Bronx. But Maranzano was a short-sighted man and spurned the Corleone offer
with contempt. The great Al Capone was Maranzano’s friend and he had his own
organization, his own men, plus a huge war chest. He would not brook this
upstart whose reputation was more that of a Parliamentary debater than a true
Mafioso. Maranzano’s refusal touched off the great war of 1933 which was to
change the whole structure of the underworld in New York City.
At first glance it seemed an uneven match. Salvatore
Maranzano had a powerful organization with strong enforcers. He had a
friendship with Capone in Chicago and could call on help in that quarter. He
also had a good relationship with the Tattaglia Family, which controlled
prostitution in the city and what there was of the thin drug traffic at that
time. He also had political contacts with powerful business leaders who used
his enforcers to terrorize the Jewish unionists in the garment center and the
Italian anarchist syndicates in the building trades.
Against this, Don Corleone could throw two small but
superbly organized regimes led by Clemenza and Tessio. His political and police
contacts were negated by the business leaders who would support Maranzano. But
in his favor was the enemy’s lack of intelligence about his organization. The
underworld did not know the true strength of his soldiers and even were
deceived that Tessio in Brooklyn was a separate and
independent operation.
And yet despite all this, it was an unequal battle until
Vito Corleone evened out the odds with one master stroke.
Maranzano sent a call to Capone for his two best gunmen to
come to New York to eliminate the upstart. The Corleone Family had friends and
intelligence in Chicago who relayed the news that the two gunmen were arriving
by train. Vito Corleone dispatched Luca Brasi to take care of them with
instructions that would liberate the strange man’s most savage instincts.
Brasi and his people, four of them, received the Chicago
hoods at the railroad station. One of Brasi’s men procured and drove a taxicab
for the purpose and the station porter carrying the bags led the Capone men to
this cab. When they got in, Brasi and another of his men crowded in after them,
guns ready, and made the two Chicago boys lie on the floor. The cab drove to a
warehouse near the docks that Brasi had prepared for them.
The two Capone men were bound hand and foot and small bath
towels were stuffed into their mouths to keep them from crying out.
Then Brasi took an ax from its place against the wall and
started hacking at one of the Capone men. He chopped the man’s feet off, then
the legs at the knees, then the thighs where they joined the torso. Brasi was
an extremely powerfull man but it took him many swings to accomplish his
purpose. By that time of course the victim had given up the ghost and the floor
of the warehouse was slippery with the hacked fragments of his flesh and the
gouting of his blood. When Brasi turned to his second victim he found further
effort unnecessary. The second Capone gunman out of sheer terror had,
impossibly, swallowed the bath towel in his mouth and suffocated. The bath
towel was found in the man’s stomach when the police performed their autopsy to
determine the cause of death.
A few days later in Chicago the Capones received a message
from Vito Corleone. It was to this effect: “You know now how I deal with
enemies. Why does a Neapolitan interfere in a quarrel between two Sicilians? If
you wish me to consider you as a friend I owe you a service which I will pay on
demand. A man like yourself must know how much more profitable it is to have a
friend who, instead of calling on you for help, takes care of his own affairs and
stands ever ready to help you in some future time of trouble. If you do not
wish my friendship, so be it. But then I must tell you that the climate in this
city is
damp; unhealthy for Neapolitans, and
you are advised never to visit it.”
The arrogance of this letter was a calculated one. The Don
held the Capones in small esteem as stupid, obvious cutthroats. His
intelligence informed him that Capone had forfeited all political influence
because of his public arrogance and the flaunting of his criminal wealth. The
Don knew, in fact was positive, that without political influence, without the
camouflage of society, Capone’s world, and others like it, could be easily
destroyed. He knew Capone was on the path to destruction. He also knew that
Capone’s influence did not extend beyond the boundaries of Chicago, terrible
and all-pervading as that influence there might be.
The tactic was successful. Not so much because of its
ferocity but because of the chilling swiftness, the quickness of the Don’s
reaction. If his intelligence was so good, any further moves would be fraught
with danger. It was better, far wiser, to accept the offer of friendship with
its implied payoff. The Capones, sent back word that they would not interfere.
The odds were now equal. And Vito Corleone had earned an
enormous amount of “respect” throughout the United States underworld with his
humiliation of the Capones. For six months he out-generaled Maranzano. He
raided the crap games under that man’s protection, located his biggest policy
banker in Harlem and had him relieved of a day’s play not only in money but in
records. He engaged his enemies on all fronts. Even in the garment centers he
sent Clemenza and his men to fight on the side of the unionists against the
enforcers on the payroll of Maranzano and the owners of the dress firms. And on
all fronts his superior intelligence and organization made him the victor.
Clemenza’s jolly ferocity, which Corleone employed judiciously, also helped
turn the tide of battle. And then Don Corleone sent the held-back reserve of
the Tessio regime after Maranzano himself.
By this time Maranzano had dispatched emissaries suing for a
peace. Vito Corleone refused to see them, put them off on one pretext or
another. The Maranzano soldiers were deserting their leader, not wishing to die
in a losing cause. Bookmakers and shylocks were paying the Corleone
organization their protection money. The war was all but over.
And then finally on New Year’s Eve of 1933. Tessio got inside
the defenses of Maranzano himself. The Maranzano lieutenants were anxious for a
deal and agreed to lead their chief to the slaughter. They told him that a
meeting had been arranged in a
Brooklyn restaurant with Corleone and they accompanied
Maranzano as his bodyguards. They left hum sitting at a checkered table,
morosely munching a piece of bread, and fled the restaurant as Tessio and four
of his men entered. The execution was swift and sure. Maranzano, his mouth full
of half-chewed bread, was riddled with bullets. The war was over.
The Maranzano empire was incorporated into the Corleone
operation. Don Corleone set up a system of tribute, allowing all incumbents to
remain in their bookmaking and policy number spots. As a bonus he had a
foothold in the unions of the garment center which in later years was to prove
extremely important. And now that he had settled his business affairs the Don
found trouble at home.
Santino Corleone, Sonny, was sixteen years old and grown to
an astonishing six feet with broad shoulders and a heavy face that was sensual
but by no means effeminate. But where Fredo was a quiet boy, and Michael, of
course, a toddler, Santino was constantly in trouble. He got into fights, did
badly in school and, finally, Clemenza, who was the boy’s godfather and had a
duty to speak, came to Don Corleone one evening and informed him that his son
had taken part in an armed robbery, a stupid affair which could have gone very
badly. Sonny was obvidusly the ringleader, the two other boys in the robbery
his followers.
It was one of the very few times that Vito Corleone lost his
temper. Tom Hagen had been living in his home for three years and he asked
Clemenza if the orphan boy had been involved. Clemenza shook his head. Don
Corleone had a car sent to bring Santino to his offices in the Genco Pura Olive
Oil Company.
For the first time, the Don met defeat. Alone with his son,
he gave full vent to his rage, cursing the hulking Sonny in Sicilian dialect, a
language so much more satisfying than any other for expressing rage. He ended
up with a question. “What gave you the right to commit such an act? What made
you wish to commit such an act?”
Sonny stood there, angry, refusing to answer. The Don said
with contempt, “And so stupid. What did you earn for that night’s work? Fifty
dollars each? Twenty dollars? You risked your life for twenty dollars, eh?”
As
if he had not heard these last words, Sonny said defiantly, “I saw you kill
Fanucci.” The Don said, “Ahhh” and sank back in his chair. He waited.
Sonny said, “When Fanucci left the building, Mama said I
could go up the house. I saw you go up the roof and I followed you. I saw
everything you did. I stayed up there and I
saw you throw away the wallet and the
gun.”
The Don sighed. “Well, then I can’t talk to you about how
you should behave. Don’t you want to finish school, don’t you want to be a
lawyer? Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with
guns and masks.”
Sonny grinned at him and said slyly, “I want to enter the
family business.” When he saw that the Don’s face remained impassive, that he
did not laugh at the joke, he added hastily, “I can learn how to sell olive
oil.”
Still the Don did not answer. Finally he shrugged. “Every
man has one destiny,” he said. He did not add that the witnessing of Fanucci’s
murder had decided that of his son. He merely turned away and added quietly,
“Come in tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Genco will show you what to do.”
But Genco Abbandando, with that shrewd insight that a
Consigliere must have, realized the true wish of the Don and used Sonny mostly
as a bodyguard for his father, a position in which he could also learn the
subtleties of being a Don. And it brought out a professorial instinct in the
Don himself, who often gave lectures on how to succeed for the benefit of his
eldest son.
Besides his oft-repeated theory that a man has but one
destiny, the Don constantly reproved Sonny for that young man’s outbursts of temper.
The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the
unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No
one had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an
uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable. And so he tried to teach Sonny his own
disciplines. He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life
than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend
underestimate your virtues.
The caporegime, Clemenza, took, Sonny in hand and taught him
how to shoot and to wield a garrot. Sonny had no taste for the Italian rope, he
was too Americanized. He preferred the simple, direct, impersonal Anglo-Saxon
gun, which saddened Clemenza. But Sonny became a constant and welcome companion
to his father, driving his car, helping him in little details. For the next two
years he seemed like the usual son entering his father’s business, not too
bright, not too eager, content to hold down a soft job.
Meanwhile his boyhood chum and semiadopted brother Tom Hagen
was going to college. Fredo was still in high school; Michael, the youngest
brother, was in grammar school, and baby sister Connie was a toddling girl of
four. The family had long since
moved to an apartment house in the Bronx. Don Corleone was
considering buying a house in Long Island, but he wanted to fit this in with
other plans he was formulating.
Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of
America were being torn by underworld strife. Guerrilla wars by the dozen
flared up, ambitious hoodlums trying to carve themselves a bit of empire; men
like Corleone himself were trying to keep their borders and rackets secure. Don
Corleone saw that the newspapers and government agencies were using these
killings to get stricter and stricter laws, to use harsher police methods. He
foresaw that public indignation might even lead to a suspension of democratic
procedures which could be fatal to him and his people. His own empire,
internally, was secure. He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions
in New York City and then in the nation.
He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission.
He spent the first year meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York,
laying the groundwork, sounding them out, proposing spheres of influence that
would be honored by a loosely bound confederated council. But there were too
many factions, too many special interests that conflicted. Agreement was
impossible. Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history Don Corteone
decided that order and peace were impossible until the number of reigning
states had been reduced to a manageable number.
There were five or six “Families” too powerful to eliminate.
But the rest, the neighborhood Black Hand terrorists, the free-lance shylocks,
the strong-arm bookmakers operating without the proper, that is to say paid,
protection of the legal authorities, would have to go. And so he mounted what
was in effect a colonial war against these people and threw all the resources
of the Corleone organization against them.
The pacification of the New York area took three years and
had some unexpected rewards. At first it took the form of bad luck. A group of
mad-dog Irish stickup artists the Don had marked for extermination almost
carried the day with sheer Emerald Isle elan. By chance, and with suicidal
bravery, one of these Irish gunmen pierced the Don’s protective cordon and put
a shot into his chest. The assassin was immediately riddled with bullets but
the damage was done.
However this gave Sanrtino Corleone his chance. With his
father out of action, Sonny took command of a troop, his own regime, with the
rank of caporegime, and like a young, untrumpeted Napoleon, showed a genius for
city warfare. He also showed a
merciless ruthlessness, the lack of which had been Don
Corleone’s only fault as a conqueror.
From 1935 to 1937 Sonny Corleond made a reputation as the
most cunning and relentless executioner the underworld had yet known. Yet for
sheer terror even he was eclipsed by the awesome man named Luca Brasi.
It was Brasi who went after the rest of the Irish gunmen and
single-handedly wiped them out. It was Brasi, operating alone when one of the
six powerful families tried to interfere and become the protector of the
independents, who assassinated the head of the family as a warning. Shortly
after, the Don recovered from his wound and made peace with that particular
family.
By 1937 peace and harmony reigned in New York City except
for minor incidents, minor misunderstandings which were, of course, sometimes
fatal.
As the rulers of ancient cities always kept an anxious eye
on the barbarian tribes roving around their walls, so Don Corleone kept an eye
on the affairs of the world outside his world. He noted the coming of Hitler,
the fall of Spain, Germany’s strong-arming of Britain at Munich. Unblinkered by
that outside world, he saw clearly the coming global war and he understood the
implications. His own world would be more impregnable than before. Not only
that, fortunes could be made in time of war by alert, foresighted folk. But to
do so peace must reign in his domain while war raged in the world outside.
Don Corleone carried his message through the United States.
He conferred with compatriots in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland,
Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and Boston. He was the underworld apostle of
peace and, by,1939, more successful than any Pope, he had achieved a working
agreement amongst the most powerful underworld organizations in the country.
Like the Constitution of the United States this agreement respected fully the
internal authority of each member in his state or city. The agreement veered
only spheres of influence and an agreement to enforce peace in the underworld.
And so when World War II broke out in 1939, when the United
States, joined the conflict in 1941, the world of Don Vito Corleone was at
peace, in order, fully prepared to reap the golden harvest on equal terms with
all the other industries of a booming America. The Corleone Family had a hand
in supplying black-market OPA food stamps, gasoline stamps, even travel
priorities. It could help get war contracts and then help get black-market
materials for those garment center clothing firms who were not given
enough raw material because they did not have government
contracts. He could even get all the young men in his organization, those
eligible for Army draft, excused from fighting in the foreign war. He did this
with the aid of doctors. who advised what drugs had to be taken before physical
examination, or by placing the men in draft-exempt positions in the war
industries.
And so the Don could take pride in his rule. His world was
safe for those who had sworn loyalty to him; other men who believed in law and
order were dying by the millions. The only fly in the ointment was that his own
son, Michael Corleone, refused to be helped, insisted on volunteering to serve
his own country. And to the Don’s astonishment, so did a few of his other young
men in the organization. One of the men, trying to explain this to his
caporegime, said, “This country has been good to me.” Upon this story being
relayed to the Don he said angrily to the caporegime, “I have been good to
him.” It might have gone badly for these people but, as he had excused his son
Michael, so must he excuse other young men who so misunderstood their duty to
their Don and to themselves.
At the end of World War II Don Corleone knew that again his
world would have to change its ways, that it would have to fit itself more
snugly into the ways of the other, larger world. He believed he could do this
with no loss of profit.
There was reason for this belief in his own experience. What
had put him on the right track were two personal affairs. Early in his career
the then-young Nazorine, only a baker’s helper planning to get married, had
come to him for assistance. He and his future bride, a good Italian girl, had
saved their money and had paid the enormous sum of three hundred dollars to a
wholesaler of furniture recommended to them. This wholesaler had let them pick
out everything they wanted to furnish their tenement apartment. A fine sturdy
bedroom set with two bureaus and lamps. Also the living room set of heavy
stuffed sofa and stuffed armchairs, all covered with rich gold-threaded fabric.
Nazorine and his fiancee had spent a happy day picking out what they wanted
from the huge warehouse crowded with furniture. The wholesaler took their money,
their three hundred dollars wrung from the sweat of their blood, and pocketed
it and promised the furniture to be delivered within the week to the already
rented flat.
The very next week however, the firm had gone into
bankruptcy. The great warehouse stocked with furniture had been sealed shut and
attached for payment of creditors. The wholesaler had disappeared to give other
creditors time to unleash their anger on the empty air. Nazorine, one of these,
went to his lawyer, who told him nothing could be
done until the case was settled in court and all creditors
satisfied. This might take three years and Nazorine would be lucky to get back
ten cents on the dollar.
Vito Corleone listened to this story with amused disbelief.
It was not possible that the law could allow such thievery. The wholesaler
owned his own palatial home, an estate in Long Island, a luxurious automobile,
and was seeding his children to college. How could he keep the three hundred
dollars of the poor baker Nazorine and not give him the furniture he had paid
for? But, to make sure, Vito Corleone had Genco Abbandando check it out with
the lawyers who represented the Genco Pura company.
They verified the story of Nazorine. The wholesaler had all
his personal wealth in his wife’s name. His furniture business was incorporated
and he was not personally liable. True, he had shown bad faith by taking the
money of Nazorine when he knew he was going to file bankruptcy but this was a
common practice. Under law there was nothing to be done.
Of course the matter was easily adjusted. Don Corleone sent
his Consigliere, Genco Abbandando, to speak to the wholesaler, and as was to be
expected, that wide-awake businessman caught the drift immediately and arranged
for Nazorine to get his furniture. But it was an interesting lesson for the
young Vito Corleone.
The second incident had more far-reaching repercussions. In
1939, Don Corleone had decided to move his family out of the city. Like any
other parent he wanted his children to go to better schools and mix with better
companions. For his own personal reasons he wanted the anonymity of suburban
life where his reputation was not known. He bought the mall property in Long
Beach, which at that time had only four newly built houses but with plenty of
room for more. Sonny was formally engaged to Sandra and would soon marry, one
of the houses would be for him. One of the houses was for the Don. Another was
for Genco Abbandando and his family. The other was kept vacant at the time.
A week after the mall was occupied, a group of three workmen
came in all innocence with their truck. They claimed to be furnace inspectors
for the town of Long Beach. One of the Don’s young bodyguards let the men in
and led them to the furnace in the basement. The Don, his wife and Sonny were
in the garden taking their ease and enjoying the salty sea air.
Much to the Don’s annoyance he was summoned into the house
by his bodyguard. The three workmen, all big burly fellows, were grouped around
the furnace. They had taken
it apart, it was strewn around the cement basement floor.
Their leader, an authoritative man, said to the Don in a gruff voice, “Your
furnace is in lousy shape. If you want us to fix it and put it together again,
it’ll cost you one hundred fifty dollars for labor and parts and then we’ll
pass you for county inspection.” He took out a red paper label. “We stamp this
seal on it, see, then nobody from the county bothers you again.”
The Don was amused. It had been a boring, quiet week in
which he had had to neglect his business to take care of such family details
moving to a new house entailed. In more broken English than his usual slight
accent he asked, “If I don’t pay you, what happens to my furnace?”
The leader of the three men shrugged. “We just leave the
furnace the way it is now.” He gestured at the metal parts strewn over the
floor.
The Don said meekly, “Wait, I’ll get you your money.” Then
he went out into the garden and said to Sonny, “Listen, there’s some men
working on the furnace, I don’t understand what they want. Go in and take care
of the matter.” It was not simply a joke; he was considering making his son his
underboss. This was one of the tests a business executive had to pass.
Sonny’s solution did not altogether please his father. It
was too direct, too lacking in Sicilian subtleness. He was the Club, not the
Rapier. For as soon as Sonny heard the leader’s demand he held the three men at
gunpoint and had them thoroughly bastinadoed by the bodyguards. Then he made
them put the furnace together again and tidy up the basement. He searched them
and found that they actually were employed by a house-improvement firm with
headquarters in Suffolk County. He learned the name of the man who owned the
firm. Then he kicked the three men to their truck. “Don’t let me see you in
Long Beach again,” he told them. “I’ll have your balls hanging from your ears.”
It was typical of the young Santino, before he became older
and crueler, that he extended his protection to the community he lived in.
Sonny paid a personal call to the home-improvement firm owner and told him not
to send any of his men into the Long Beach area ever again. As soon as the
Corleone Family set up their usual business liaison with the local police force
they were informed of all such complaints and all crimes by professional
criminals. In less than a year Long Beach became the most crime-free town of
its size in the United States. Professional stickup artists and strong-arms
received one warning not to ply their trade in the town. They were allowed
one offense. When they committed a second they simply
disappeared. The flimflam home-improvement gyp artists, the door-to-door con
men were politely warned that they were not welcome in Long Beach. Those
confident con men who disregarded the warning were beaten within an inch of
their lives. Resident young punks who had no respect for law and proper
authority were advised in the most fatherly fashion to run away from home. Long
Beach became a model city.
What impressed the Don was the legal validity of these sales
swindles. Clearly there was a place for a man of his talents in that other
world which had been closed to him as an honest youth. He took appropriate
steps to enter that world.
And so he lived happily on the mall in Long Beach,
consolidating and enlarging his empire, until after the war was over, the Turk
Sollozzo broke the peace and plunged the Don’s world into its own war, and
brought him to his hospital bed.
Book Four
Chapter 15
In the New Hampshire village, every foreign phenomenon was
properly noticed by housewives peering from windows, storekeepers lounging
behind their doors. And so when the black automobile bearing New York license
plates stopped in front of the Adams’ home, every citizen knew about it in a
matter of minutes.
Kay Adams, really a small-town girl despite her college
education, was also peering from her bedroom window. She had been studying for
her exams and preparing to go downstairs for lunch when she spotted the car
coming up the street, and for some reason she was not surprised when it rolled
to a halt in front of her lawn. Two men got out, big burly men who looked like
gangsters in the movies to her eyes, and she flew down the stairs to be the
first at the door. She was sure they came from Michael or his family and she
didn’t want them talking to her father and mother without any introduction. It
wasn’t that she was ashamed of any of Mike’s friends, she thought; it was just
that her mother and father were old-fashioned New England Yankees and wouldn’t
understand her even knowing such people.
She got to the door just as the bell rang and she called to
her mother, “I’ll get it.” She opened the door and the two big men stood there.
One reached inside his breast pocket like a gangster reaching for a gun and the
move so surprised Kay that she let out a little gasp but the man had taken out
a small leather case which he flapped open to show an
identification card. “I’m Detective John Phillips from the
New York Police Department,” he said. He motioned to the other man, a
dark-complexioned man with very thick, very black eyebrows. “This is my
partner, Detective Siriani. Are you Miss Kay Adams?”
Kay nodded. Phillips said, “May we come in and talk to you
for a few minutes. It’s about Michael Corleone.”
She stood aside to let them in. At that moment her father
appeared in the small side hall that led to his study. “Kay, what is it?” he
asked.
Her father was a gray-haired, slender, distinguished-looking
man who not only was the pastor of the town Baptist church but had a reputation
in religious circles as a scholar. Kay really didn’t know her father well, he
puzzled her, but she knew he loved her even if he gave the impression he found
her uninteresting as a person. Though they had never been close, she trusted
him. So she said simply, “These men are detectives from New York. They want to
ask me questions about a boy I know.”
Mr.
Adams didn’t seem surprised. “Why don’t we go into my study?” he said.
Detective Phillips said gently, “We’d rather talk to your daughter alone, Mr.
Adams.”
Mr. Adams said courteously, “That depends on Kay, I think.
My dear, would-you rather speak to these gentlemen alone or would you prefer to
have me present? Or perhaps your mother?”
Kay shook her head. “I’ll talk to them
alone.”
Mr. Adams said to Phillips, “You can use my study. Will you
stay for lunch?” The two men shook their heads. Kay led them into the study.
They rested uncomfortably on the edge of the couch as she
sat in her father’s big leather chair. Detective Phillips opened the
conversation by saying, “Miss Adams, have you seen or heard from Michael
Corleone at any time in the last three weeks?” The one question was enough to
warn her. Three weeks ago she had read the Boston newspapers with their
headlines about the killing of a New York police captain and a narcotics
smuggler named Virgil Sollozzo. The newspaper had said it was part of the gang
war involving the Corleone Family.
Kay shook her head. “No, the last time I saw him he was
going to see his father in the hospital. That was perhaps a month ago.”
The other detective said in a harsh voice, “We know all
about that meeting. Have you seen or heard from him since then?”
“No,” Kay said.
Detective Phillips said in a polite voice, “If you do have
contact with him we’d like you to let us know. It’s very important we get to
talk to Michael Corleone. I must warn you that if you do have contact with him
you may be getting involved in a very dangerous situation. If you help him in
any way, you may get yourself in very serious trouble.”
Kay sat up very straight in the chair. “Why shouldn’t I help
him?” she asked. “We’re going to be married, married people help each other.”
It was Detective Siriani who answered her. “If you help, you
may be an accessory to murder. We’re looking for your boy friend because he
killed a police captain in New York plus an informer the police officer was
contacting. We know Michael Corleone is the person who did the shooting.”
Kay laughed. Her laughter was so unaffected, so incredulous,
that the officers were impressed. “Mike wouldn’t do anything like that,” she
said. “He never had anything to do with his family. When we went to his
sister’s wedding it was obvious that he was treated as an outsider, almost as
much as I was. If he’s hiding now it’s just so that he won’t get any publicity,
so his name won’t be dragged through all this. Mike is not a gangster. I know
him better than you or anybody else can know him. He is too nice a man to do
anything as despicable as murder. He is the most law-abiding person I know, and
I’ve never known him to lie.”
Detective
Phillips asked gentiy, “How long have you known him?” “Over a year,” Kay said
and was surprised when the two men smiled.
“I think there are a few things you should know,” Detective
Phillips said. “On the night he left you, he went to the hospital. When he came
out he got into an argument with a police captain who had come to the hospital
on official business. He assaulted that police officer but got the worst of it.
In fact he got a broken jaw and lost some teeth. His friends took him out to
the Corleone Family houses at Long Beach. The following night the police
captain he had the fight with was gunned down and Michael Corleone disappeared.
Vanished. We have our contacts, our informers. They all point the finger at
Michael Corleone but we have no evidence for a court of law. The waiter who
witnessed the shooting doesn’t recognize a picture of Mike but he may recognize
him in person. And we have Sollozzo’s driver, who refuses to talk, but we might
make him talk if we have Michael Corleone in our hands. So we have all our
people looking for him, the FBI is looking for him, everybody is looking for
him. So far, no luck, so we thought you might
be able to give us a lead.”
Kay said coldly, “I don’t believe a word of it.” But she
felt a bit sick knowing the part about Mike getting his jaw broken must be
true. Not that that would make Mike commit murder.
“Will you let us know if Mike contacts
you?” Phillips asked.
Kay shook her head. The other detective, Siriani, said
roughly, “We know you two have been shacking up together. We have the hotel
records and witnesses. If we let that information slip to the newspapers your
father and mother would feel pretty lousy. Real respectable people like them
wouldn’t think much of a daughter shacking up with a gangster. If you don’t come
clean right now I’ll call your old man in here and give it to him straight.”
Kay looked at him with astonishment. Then she got up and
went to the door of the study and opened it. She could see her father standing
at the living-room window, sucking at his pipe. She called out, “Dad, can you
join us?” He turned, smiled at her, and walked to the study. When he came
through the door he put his arm around his daughter’s waist and faced the
detectives and said, “Yes, gentlemen?”
When they didn’t answer, Kay said coolly to Detective
Siriani, “Give it to him straight, officer.”
Siriani flushed. “Mr. Adams, I’m telling you this for your
daughter’s good. She is mixed up with a hoodlum we have reason to believe
committed a murder on a police officer. I’m just telling her she can get into
serious trouble unless she cooperates with us. But she doesn’t seem to realize
how serious this whole matter is. Maybe you can talk to her.”
“That is quite incredible,” Mr. Adams
said politely.
Siriani jutted his jaw. “Your daughter and Michael Corleone
have been going out together for over a year. They have stayed overnight in
hotels together registered as man and wife. Michael Corleone is wanted for
questioning in the murder of a police officer. Your daughter refuses to give us
any information that may help us. Those are the facts. You can call them
incredible but I can back everything up.”
“I don’t doubt your word, sir,” Mr. Adams said gently. “What
I find incredible is that my daughter could be in serious trouble. Unless you’re
suggesting that she is a”– here his face became one of scholarly doubt– “a
‘moll,’ I believe it’s called.”
Kay looked at her father in astonishment. She knew he was
being playful in his donnish way and she was surprised that he could take the
whole affair so lightly.
Mr. Adams said firmly, “However, rest assured that if the
young man shows his face here I shall immediately report his presence to the
authorities. As will my daughter. Now, if you will forgive us, our lunch is
growing cold.”
He ushered the men out of the house with every courtesy and
closed the door on their backs gently but firmly. He took Kay by the arm and
led her toward the kitchen far in the rear of the house, “Come, my dear, your
mother is waiting lunch for us.”
By the time they reached the kitchen, Kay was weeping
silently, out of relief from strain, at her father’s unquestioning affection.
In the kitchen her mother took no notice of her weeping, and Kay realized that
her father must have told her about the two detectives. She sat down at her
place and her mother served her silently. When all three were at the table her
father said grace with bowed head.
Mrs. Adams was a short stout woman always neatly dressed,
hair always set. Kay had never seen her in disarray. Her mother too had always
been a little disinterested in her, holding her at arm’s length. And she did so
now. “Kay, stop being so dramatic. I’m sure it’s all a great deal of fuss about
nothing at all. After all, the boy was a Dartmouth boy, he couldn’t possibly be
mixed up in anything so sordid.”
Kay looked up in surprise. “How did you
know Mike went to Dartmouth?”
Her mother said complacently, “You young people are so
mysterious, you think you’re so clever. We’ve known about him all along, but of
course we couldn’t bring it up until you did.”
“But how did you know?” Kay asked. She still couldn’t face
her father now that he knew about her and Mike sleeping together. So she didn’t
see the smile on his face when he said, “We opened your mail, of course.”
Kay was horrified and angry. Now she could face him. What he
had done was more shameful than her own sin. She could never believe it of him.
“Father, you didn’t, you couldn’t have.”
Mr. Adams smiled at her. “I debated which was the greater
sin, opening your mail, or going in ignorance of some hazard my only child
might be incurring. The choice was simple, and virtuous.”
Mrs. Adams said between mouthfuls of
boiled chicken, “After all, my dear, you are
terribly innocent for your age. We had
to be aware. And you never spoke about him.”
For the first time Kay was grateful that Michael was never
affectionate in his letters. She was grateful that her parents hadn’t seen some
of her letters. “I never told you about him because I thought you’d be
horrified about his family.”
“We were,” Mr. Adams said cheerfully. “By the way, has
Michael gotten in touch with you?”
Kay shook her head. “I don’t believe
he’s guilty of anything.”
She saw her parents exchange a glance over the table. Then
Mr. Adams said gently, “If he’s not guilty and he’s vanished, then perhaps
something else happened to him.”
At first Kay didn’t understand. Then
she got up from the table and ran to her room.
* * *
Three days later Kay Adams got out of a taxi in front of the
Corleone mall in Long Beach. She had phoned, she was expected. Tom Hagen met
her at the door and she was disappointed that it was him. She knew he would
tell her nothing.
In the living room he gave her a drink. She had seen a
couple of other men lounging around the house but not Sonny. She asked Tom
Hagen directly, “Do you know where Mike is? Do you know where I can get in
touch with him?”
Hagen said smoothly, “We know he’s all right but we don’t
know where he is right now. When he heard about that captain being shot he was
afraid they’d accuse him. So he just decided to disappear. He told me he’d get
in touch in a few months.”
The story was not only false but meant
to be seen through, he was giving her that much.
“Did that captain really break his
jaw?” Kay asked.
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Tom said. “But Mike was never a
vindictive man. I’m sure that had nothing to do with what happened.”
Kay opened her purse and took out a letter. “Will you
deliver this to him if he gets in touch with you?”
Hagen shook his head. “If I accepted that letter. and you
told a court of law I accepted that letter, it might be interpreted as my
having knowledge of his whereabouts. Why don’t you just wait a bit? I’m sure
Mike will get in touch.”
She finished her drink and got up to leave. Hagen escorted
her to the hall but as he opened the door, a woman came in from outside. A
short, stout woman dressed in
black. Kay recognized her as Michael’s mother. She held out
her hand and said, “How are you, Mrs. Corleone?”
The woman’s small black eyes darted at her for a moment,
then the wrinkled, leathery, olive skinned face broke into a small curt smile
of greeting that was yet in some curious way truly friendly. “Ah, you Mikey’s
little girl,” Mrs. Corleone said. She had a heavy Italian accent, Kay could
barely understand her. “You eat something?” Kay said no, meaning she didn’t
want anything to eat, but Mrs. Corleone turned furiously on Tom Hagen and
berated him in Italian ending with, “You don’t even give this poor girl coffee,
you disgrazia.” She took Kay by the hand, the old woman’s hand surprisingly
warm and alive, and led her into the kitchen. “You have coffee and eat
something, then somebody drive you home. A nice girl like you, I don’t want you
to take the train.” She made Kay sit down and bustled around the kitchen,
tearing off her coat and hat and draping them over a chair. In a few seconds
there was bread and cheese and salami on the table and coffee perking on the
stove.
Kay said timidly, “I came to ask about Mike, I haven’t heard
from him. Mr. Hagen said nobody knows where he is, that he’ll turn up in a
little while.”
Hagen spoke quickly, “That’s all we can
tell her now, Ma.”
Mrs. Corleone gave him a look of withering contempt. “Now
you gonna tell me what to do? My husband don’t tell me what to do, God have
mercy on him.” She crossed herself.
“Is Mr. Corleone all right?” Kay asked.
“Fine,” Mrs. Corleone said. “Fine. He’s getting old, he’s
getting foolish to let something like that happen.” She tapped her head
disrespectfully. She poured the coffee and forced Kay to eat some bread and
cheese.
After they drank their coffee Mrs. Corleone took one of
Kay’s hands in her two brown ones. She said quietly, “Mikey no gonna write you,
you no gonna hear from Mikey. He hide two– three years. Maybe more, maybe much
more. You go home to your family and find a nice young fellow and get married.”
Kay took the letter out of her purse.
“Will you send this to him?”
The old lady took the letter and patted Kay on the cheek.
“Sure, sure,” she said. Hagen started to protest and she screamed at him in
Italian. Then she led Kay to the door. There she kissed her on the cheek very
quickly and said, “You forget about Mikey, he
no the man for you anymore.”
There was a car waiting for her with two men up front. They
drove her all the way to her hotel in New York never saying a word. Neither did
Kay. She was trying to get used to the fact that the young man she had loved
was a coldblooded murderer. And that she had been told by the most
unimpeachable source: his mother.
Chapter 16
Carlo Rizzi was punk sore at the world. Once married into
the Corleone Family, he’d been shunted aside with a small bookmaker’s business
on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He’d counted on one of the houses in the
mall on Long Beach, he knew the Don could move retainer families out when he
pleased and he had been sure it would happen and he would be on the inside of everything.
But the Don wasn’t treating him right. The “Great Don,” he thought with scorn.
An old Moustache Pete who’d been caught out on the street by gunmen like any
dumb small-time hood. He hoped the old bastard croaked. Sonny had been his
friend once and if Sonny became the head of the Family maybe he’d get a break,
get on the inside.
He watched his wife pour his coffee. Christ, what a mess she
turned out to be. Five months of marriage and she was already spreading,
besides blowing up. Real guinea broads all these Italians in the East.
He reached out and felt Connie’s soft spreading buttocks.
She smiled at him and he said contemptuously, “You got more ham than a hog.” It
pleased him to see the hurt look on her face, the tears springing into her
eyes. She might be a daughter of the Great Don but she was his wife, she was
his property now and he could treat her as he pleased. It made him feel
powerful that one of the Corleones was his doormat.
He had started her off just right. She had tried to keep
that purse full of money presents for herself and he had given her a nice black
eye and taken the money from her. Never told her what he’d done with it,
either. That might have really caused some trouble. Even now he felt just the
slightest twinge of remorse. Christ, he’d blown nearly fifteen grand on the
track and show girl bimbos.
He could feel Connie watching his back and so he flexed his
muscles as he reached for the plate of sweet buns on the other side of the
table. He’d just polished off ham and eggs but he was a big man and needed a
big breakfast. He was pleased with the picture he knew he presented to his
wife. Not the usual greasy dark guinzo husband but crew-cut blond, huge
golden-haired forearms and broad shoulders and thin waist. And
he knew he was physically stronger than any of those
so-called hard guys that worked for the family. Guys like Clemenza, Tessio,
Rocco Lampone, and that guy Paulie that somebody had knocked off. He wondered
what the story was about that. Then for some reason he thought about Sonny. Man
to man he could take Sonny, he thought, even though Sonny was a little bigger
and a little heavier. But what scared him was Sonny’s rep, though he himself
had never seen Sonny anything but good-natured and kidding around. Yeah, Sonny
was his buddy. Maybe with the old Don gone, things would open up.
He dawdled over his coffee. He hated this apartment. He was
used to the bigger living quarters of the West and in a little while he would
have to go crosstown to his “book” to run the noontime action. It was a Sunday,
the heaviest action of the week, what with baseball going already and the tail
end of basketball and the night trotters starting up. Gradually he became aware
of Connie bustling around behind him and he turned his head to watch her.
She was getting dressed up in the real New York City guinzo
style that he hated. A silk flowered-pattern dress with belt, showy bracelet
and earrings, flouncy sleeves. She looked twenty years older. “Where the hell
are you going?” he asked.
She, answered him coldly, “To see my father out in Long
Beach. He still can’t get out of bed and he needs company.”
Carlo
was curious. “Is Sonny still running the show?” Connie gave him a bland look.
“What show?”
He was furious. “You lousy little guinea bitch, don’t talk
to me like that or I’ll beat that kid right out of your belly.” She looked
frightened and this enraged him even more. He sprang from his chair and slapped
her across the face, the blow leaving a red welt. With quick precision he
slapped her three more times. He saw her upper lip split bloody and puff up.
That stopped him. He didn’t want to leave a mark. She ran into the bedroom and
slammed the door and he heard the key turning in the lock. He laughed and
returned to his coffee.
He smoked until it was time for him to dress. He knocked on
the door and said, “Open it up before I kick it in.” There was no answer. “Come
on, I gotta get dressed,” he said in a loud voice. He could hear her getting up
off the bed and coming toward the door, then the key turned in the lock. When
he entered she had her back to him, walking back toward the bed, lying down on
it with her face turned away to the wall.
He dressed quickly and then saw she was in her slip. He
wanted her to go visit her father, he hoped she would bring back information.
“What’s the matter, a few slaps take all the energy out of you?” She was a lazy
slut.
“I don’t wanna go.” Her voice was tearful, the words
mumbled. He reached out impatiently and pulled her around to face him. And then
he saw why she didn’t want to go and thought maybe it was just as well.
He must have slapped her harder than he figured. Her left
cheek was blown up, the cut upper lip ballooned grotesquely puffy and white
beneath her nose. “OK,” he said, “but I won’t be home until late. Sunday is my
busy day.”
He left the apartment and found a parking ticket on his car,
a fifteen-dollar green one. He put it in the glove compartment with the stack
of others. He was in a good humor. Slapping the spoiled little bitch around
always made him feel good. It dissolved some of the frustration he felt at
being treated so badly by the Corleones.
The first time he had marked her up, he’d been a little
worried. She had gone right out to Long Beach to complain to her mother and
father and to show her black eye. He had really sweated it out. But when she
came back she had been surprisingly meek, the dutiful little Italian wife. He
had made it a point to be the perfect husband over the next few weeks, treating
her well in every way, being lovey and nice with her, banging her every day,
morning and night. Finally she had told him what had happened since she thought
he would never act that way again.
She had found her parents coolly unsympathetic and curiously
amused. Her mother had had a little sympathy and had even asked her father to
speak to Carlo Rizzi. Her father had refused. “She is my daughter,” he had
said, “but now she belongs to her husband. He knows his duties. Even the King
of Italy didn’t dare to meddle with the relationship of husband and wife. Go
home and learn how to behave so that he will not beat you.”
Connie had said angrily to her father, “Did you ever hit
your wife?” She was his favorite and could speak to him so impudently. He had
answered, “She never gave me reason to beat her.” And her mother had nodded and
smiled.
She told them how her husband had taken the wedding present
money and never told her what he did with it. Her father had shrugged and said,
“I would have done the same if my wife had been as presumptuous as you.”
And so she had returned home, a tittle bewildered, a little
frightened. She had always been her father’s favorite and she could not
understand his coldness now.
But the Don had not been so unsympathetic as he pretended.
He made inquiries and found out what Carlo Rizzi had done with the wedding
present money. He had men assigned to Carlo Rizzi’s bookmaking operation who
would report to Hagen everything Rizzi did on the job. But the Don could not
interfere. How expect a man to discharge his husbandly duties to a wife whose
family he feared? It was an impossible situation and he dared not meddle. Then
when Connie became pregnant he was convinced of the wisdom of his decision and
felt he never could interfere though Connie complained to her mother about a
few more beatings and the mother finally became concerned enough to mention it
to the Don. Connie even hinted that she might want a divorce. For the first time
in her life the Don was angry with her. “He is the father of your child. What
can a child come to in this world if he has no father?” he said to Connie.
Learning all this, Carlo Rizzi grew confident. He was
perfectly safe. In fact he bragged to his two “writers” on the book, Sally Rags
and Coach, about how he bounced his wife around when she got snotty and saw
their looks of respect that he had the guts to manhandle the daughter of the
great Don Corleone.
But Rizzi would not have felt so safe if he had known that
when Sonny Cotleone learned of the beatings he had flown into a murderous rage
and had been restrained only by the sternest and most imperious command of the
Don himself, a command that even Sonny dared not disobey. Which was why Sonny
avoided Rizzi, not trusting himself to control his temper.
So feeling perfectly safe on this beautiful Sunday morning,
Carlo Rizzi sped crosstown on 96th Street to the East Side. He did not see
Sonny’s car coming the opposite way toward his house.
* * *
Sonny Corleone had left the protection of the mall and spent
the night with Lucy Mancini in town. Now on the way home he was traveling with
four bodyguards, two in front and two behind. He didn’t need guards right
beside him, he could take care of a single direct assault. The other men
traveled in their own cars and had apartments on either side of Lucy’s
apartment. It was safe to visit her as long as he didn’t do it too often. But
now that he was in town he figured he would pick up his sister Connie and take
her out to Long Beach. He knew Carlo would be working at his book and the cheap
bastard wouldn’t get her a car. So he’d give his sister a lift out.
He waited for the two men in front to
go into the building and then followed them. He
saw the two men in back pull up behind his car and get out
to watch the streets. He kept his own eyes open. It was a million-to-one shot
that the opposition even knew he was in town but he was always careful. He had
learned that in the 1930’s war.
He never used elevators. They were death traps. He climbed
the eight flights to Connie’s apartment, going fast. He knocked on her door. He
had seen Carlo’s car go by and knew she would be alone. There was no answer. He
knocked again and then he heard his sister’s voice, frightened, timid, asking,
“Who is it?”
The fright in the voice stunned him. His kid sister had
always been fresh and snotty, tough as anybody in the family. What the hell had
happened to her? He said, “It’s Sonny.” The bolt inside slid back and the door
opened and Connie was in his arms sobbing. He was so surprised he just stood
there. He pushed her away from him and saw her swollen face and he understood
what had happened.
He pulled away from her to run down the stairs and go after
her husband. Rage flamed up in him, contorting his own face. Connie saw the
rage and clung to him, not letting him go, making him come into the apartment.
She was weeping out of terror now. She knew her older brother’s temper and
feared it. She had never complained to him about Carlo for that reason. Now she
made him come into the apartment with her.
“It was my fault,” she said. “I started a fight with him and
I tried to hit him so he hit me. He really didn’t try to hit me that hard. I
walked into it.”
Sonny’s heavy Cupid face was under
control. “You going to see the old man today?”
She didn’t answer, so he added, “I thought you were, so I
dropped over to give you a lift. I was in the city anyway.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want them
to see me this way. I’ll come next week.”
“OK,” Sonny said. He picked up her kitchen phone and dialed
a number. “I’m getting a doctor to come over here and take a look at you and
fix you up. In your condition you have to be careful. How many months before
you have the kid?”
“Two months,” Connie said. “Sonny,
please don’t do anything. Please don’t.”
Sonny laughed. His face was cruelly intent when he said,
“Don’t worry, I won’t make your kid an orphan before he’s born.” He left the
apartment after kissing her lightly on her uninjured cheek.
* * *
On East 112th Street a long line of cars were doubleparked
in front of a candy store that was the headquarters of Carlo Rizzi’s book. On
the sidewalk in front of the store, fathers played catch with small children
they had taken for a Sunday morning ride and to keep them company as they
placed their bets. When they saw Carlo Rizzi coming they stopped playing ball
and bought their kids ice cream to keep them quiet. Then they started studying
the newspapers that gave the starting pitchers, trying to pick out winning
baseball bets for the day.
Carlo went into the large room in the back of the store. His
two “writers,” a small wiry man called Sally Rags and a big husky fellow called
Coach, were already waiting for the action to start. They had their huge, lined
pads in front of them ready to write down bets. On a wooden stand was a
blackboard with the names of the sixteen big league baseball teams chalked on
it, paired to show who was playing against who. Against each pairing was a
blocked-out square to enter the odds.
Carlo
asked Coach, “Is the store phone tapped today?” Coach shook his head. “The tap
is still off.”
Carlo went to the wall phone and dialed a number. Sally Rags
and Coach watched him impassively as he jotted down the “line,” the odds on all
the baseball games for that day. They watched him as he hung up the phone and
walked over to the blackboard and chalked up the odds against each game. Though
Carlo did not know it, they had already gotten the line and were checking his
work. In the first week in his job Carlo had made a mistake in transposing the
odds onto the blackboard and had created that dream of all gamblers, a
“middle.” That is, by betting the odds with him and then betting against the
same team with another bookmaker at the correct. odds, the gambler could not
lose. The only one who coud lose was Carlo’s book. That mistake had caused a
six-thousand-dollar loss in the book for the week and confirmed the Don’s
judgment about his son-in-law. He had given the word that all of Carlo’s work
was to be checked.
Normally the highly placed members of the Corleone Family
would never be concerned with such an operational detail. There was at least a
five-layer insulation to their level. But since the book was being used as a
testing ground for the son-in-law, it had been placed under the direct scrutiny
of Tom Hagen, to whom a report was sent every day.
Now with the line posted, the gamblers were thronging into
the back room of the candy store to jot down the odds on their newspapers next
to the games printed there with probable pitchers. Some of them held their
little children by the hand as they looked up
at the blackboard. One guy who made big bets looked down at
the little girl he was holding by the hand and said teasingly, “Who do you like
today, Honey, Giants or the Pirates?” The little girl, fascinated by the
colorful names, said, “Are Giants stronger than Pirates?” The father laughed.
A line began to form in front of the two writers. When a
writer filled one of his sheets he tore it off, wrapped the money he had
collected in it and handed it to Carlo. Carlo went out the back exit of the
room and up a flight of steps to an apartment which housed the candy store
owner’s family. He called in the bets to his central exchange and put the money
in a small wall safe that was hidden by an extended window drape. Then he went
back down into the candy store after having first burned the bet sheet and
flushed its ashes down the toilet bowl.
None of the Sunday games started before two P.M. because of
the blue laws, so after the first crowd of bettors, family men who had to get
their bets in and rush home to take their families to the beach, came the
trickling of bachelor gamblers or the diehards who condemned their families to
Sundays in the hot city apartments. These bachelor bettors were the big
gamblers, they bet heavier and came back around four o’clock to bet the second
games of doubleheaders. They were the ones who made Carlo’s Sundays a full-time
day with overtime, though some married men called in from the beach to try and
recoup their losses.
By one-thirty the betting had trickled off so that Carlo and
Sally Rags could go out and sit on the stoop beside the candy store and get
some fresh air. They watched the stickball game the kids were having. A police
car went by. They ignored it. This book had very heavy protection at the
precinct and couldn’t be touched on a local level. A raid would have to be
ordered from the very top and even then a warning would come through in plenty
of time.
Coach came out and sat beside them. They gossiped a while
about baseball and women. Carlo said laughingly, “I had to bat my wife around
again today, teach her who’s boss.”
Coach said casually, “She’s knocked up
pretty big now, ain’t she?”
“Ahh, I just slapped her face a few times,” Carlo said. “I
didn’t hurt her.” He brooded for a moment. “She thinks she can boss me around,
I don’t stand for that.”
There were still a few bettors hanging around shooting the
breeze, talking baseball, some of them sitting on the steps above the two
writers and Carlo. Suddenly the kids
playing stickball in the street scattered. A car came
screeching up the block and to a halt in front of the candy store. It stopped
so abruptly that the tires screamed and before it had stopped, almost, a man
came hurtling out of the driver’s seat, moving so fast that everybody was
paralyzed. The man was Sonny Corleone.
His heavy Cupid-featured face with its thick, curved mouth
was an ugly mask of fury. In a split second he was at the stoop and had grabbed
Carlo Rizzi by the throat. He pulled Carlo away from the others, trying to drag
him into the street, but Carlo wrapped his huge muscular arms around the iron
railings of the stoop and hung on. He cringed away, trying to hide his head and
face in the hollow of his shoulders. His shirt ripped away in Sonny’s hand.
What followed then was sickening. Sonny began beating the
cowering Carlo with his fists, cursing him in a thick, rage-choked voice.
Carlo, despite his tremendous physique, offered no resistance, gave no cry for
mercy or protest. Coach and Sally Rags dared not interfere. They thought Sonny
meant to kill his brother-in-law and had no desire to share his fate. The kids
playing stickball gathered to curse the driver who had made them scatter, but
now were watching with awestruck interest. They were tough kids but the sight
of Sonny in his rage silenced them. Meanwhile another car had drawn up behind
Sonny’s and two of his bodyguards jumped out. When they saw what was happening
they too dared not interfere. They stood alert, ready to protect their chief if
any bystanders had the stupidity to try to help Carlo.
What made the sight sickening was Carlo’s complete
subjection, but it was perhaps this that saved his life. He clung to the iron
railings with his hands so that Sonny could not drag him into the street and
despite his obvious equal strength, still refused to fight back. He let the
blows rain on his unprotected head and neck until Sonny’s rage ebbed. Finally,
his chest heaving, Sonny looked down at him and said, “You dirty bastard, you
ever beat up my sister again I’ll kill you.”
These words released the tension. Because of course, if
Sonny intended to kill the man he would never have uttered the threat. He
uttered it in frustration because he could not carry it out. Carlo refused to
look at Sonny. He kept his head down and his hands and arms entwined in the
iron railing. He stayed that way until the car roared off and he heard Coach
say in his curiously paternal voice, “OK, Carlo, come on into the store. Let’s
get out of sight.”
It was only then that Carlo dared to
get out of his crouch against the stone steps of the
stoop and unlock his hands from the railing. Standing up, he
could see the kids look at him with the staring, sickened faces of people who
had witnessed the degradation of a fellow human being. He was a little dizzy
but if was more from shock, the raw fear that had taken command of his body; he
was not badly hurt despite the shower of heavy blows. He let Coach lead him by
the arm into the back room of the candy store and put ice on his face, which,
though it was not cut or bleeding, was lumpy with swelling bruises. The fear
was subsiding now and the humiliation he had suffered made him sick to his
stomach so that he had to throw up. Coach held his head over the sink,
supported him as if he were drunk, then helped him upstairs to the apartment
and made him lie down in one of the bedrooms. Carlo never noticed that Sally
Rags had disappeared.
Sally Rags had walked down to Third Avenue and called Rocco
Lampone to report what had happened. Rocco took the news calmly and in his turn
called his caporegime, Pete Clemenza. Clemenza groaned and said, “Oh, Christ,
that goddamn Sonny and his temper,” but his finger had prudently clicked down
on the hook so that Rocco never heard his remark.
Clemenza called the house in Long Beach and got Tom Hagen.
Hagen was silent for a moment and then he said, “Send some of your people and
cars out on the road to Long Beach as soon as you can, just in case Sonny gets
held up by traffic or an accident. When he gets sore like that he doesn’t know
what the hell he’s doing. Maybe some of our friends on the other side will hear
he was in town. You sever can tell.”
Clemenza said doubtfully, “By the time I could get anybody
on the road, Sonny will be home. That goes for the Tattaglias too.”
“I know,” Hagen said patiently. “But if something out of the
ordinary happens, Sonny may be held up. Do the best you can, Pete.”
Grudgingly Clemenza called Rocco Lampone and told him to get
a few people and cars and cover the road to Long Beach. He himself went out to
his beloved Cadillac and with three of the platoon of guards who now garrisoned
his home, started over the Atlantic Beach Bridge, toward New York City.
One of the hangers-on around the candy store, a small bettor
on the payroll of the Tattaglia Family as an informer, called the contact he
had with his people. But the Tattaglia Family had not streamlined itself for
the war, the contact still had to go all the way through the insulation layers
before he finally got to the caporegime, who contacted the Tattaglia chief. By
that time Sonny Corleone was safely back in the mall, in his
father’s house, in Long Beach, about to
face his father’s wrath.
Chapter 17
The war of 1947 between the Corleone Family and the Five
Families combined against them proved to be expensive for both sides. It was
complicated by the police pressure put on everybody to solve the murder of
Captain McCluskey. It was rare that operating officials of the Police
Department ignored political muscle that protected gambling and vice
operations, but in this case the politicians were as helpless as the general
staff of a rampaging, looting army whose field officers refuse to follow
orders.
This lack of protection did not hurt the Corleone Family as
much as it did their opponents. The Corleone group depended on gambling for
most of its income, and was hit especially hard in its “numbers” or “policy”
branch of operations. The runners who picked up the action were swept into
police nets and usually given a medium shellacking before being booked. Even
some of the “banks” were located and raided, with heavy financial loss. The
“bankers,” .90 calibers in their own right, complained to the caporegimes, who
brought their complaints to the family council table. But there was nothing to
be done. The bankers were told to go out of business. Local Negro free-lancers
were allowed to take over the operation in Harlem, the richest territory, and
they operated in such scattered fashion that the police found it hard to pin
them down.
After the death of Captain McCluskey, some newspapers
printed stories involving him with Sollozzo. They published proof that
McCluskey had received large sums of money in cash, shortly before his death.
These stories had been planted by Hagen, the information supplied by him. The
Police Department refused to confirm or deny these stories, but they were
taking effect. The police force got the word through informers, through police
on the Family payroll, that McCluskey had been a rogue cop. Not that he had taken
money or clean graft, there was no rank-and-file onus to that. But that he had
taken the dirtiest of dirty money; murder and drugs money. And in the morality
of policemen, this was unforgivable.
Hagen understood that the policeman believes in law and
order in a curiously innocent way. He believes in it more than does the public
he serves. Law and order is, after all, the magic from which he derives his
power, individual power which he cherishes as nearly all men cherish individual
power. And yet there is always the smoldering resentment against the public he
serves. They are at the same time his ward and his prey. As wards they are
ungrateful, abusive and demanding. As prey they are slippery
and dangerous, full of guile. As soon as one is in the
policeman’s clutches the mechanism of the society the policeman defends
marshals all its resources to cheat him of his prize. The fix is put in by
politicians. Judges give lenient suspended sentences to the worst hoodlums. Governors
of the States and the President of the United States himself give full pardons,
assuming that respected lawyers have not already won his acquittal. After a
time the cop learns. Why should he not collect the fees these hoodlums are
paying? He needs it more. His children, why should they not go to college? Why
shouldn’t his wife shop in more expensive places? Why shouldn’t be himself get
the sun with a winter vacation in Florida? After all, he risks his life and
that is no joke.
But usually he draws the line against accepting dirty graft.
He will take money to let a bookmaker operate. He will take money from a man
who hates getting parking tickets or speeding tickets. He will allow call girls
and prostitutes to ply their trade; for a consideration. These are vices
natural to a man. But usually he will not take a payoff for drugs, armed
robberies, rape, murder and other assorted perversions. In his mind these
attack the very core of his personal authority and cannot be countenanced.
The murder of a police captain was comparable to regicide.
But when it became known that McCluskey had been killed while in the company of
a notorious narcotics peddler, when it became known that he was suspected of
conspiracy to murder, the police desire for vengeance began to fade. Also,
after all, there were still mortgage payments to be made, cars to be paid off,
children to be launched into the world. Without their “sheet” money, policemen
had to scramble to make ends meet. Unlicensed peddlers were good for lunch
money. Parking ticket payoffs came to nickels and dimes. Some of the more
desperate even began shaking down suspects (homosexuals, assaults and
batteries) in the precinct squad rooms. Finally the brass relented. They raised
the prices and let the Families operate. Once again the payoff sheet was typed
up by the precinct bagman, listing every man assigned to the local station and
what his cut was each month. Some semblance of social order was restored.
* * *
It had been Hagen’s idea to use private detectives to guard
Don Corleone’s hospital room. These were, of course, supplemented by the much
more formidable soldiers of Tessio’s regime. But Sonny was not satisfied even
with this. By the middle of February, when the Don could be moved without
danger, he was taken by ambulance to his home in the mall. The house had been
renovated so that his bedroom was now a hospital room with all equipment
necessary for any emergency. Nurses specially recruited and
checked had been hired for round-the-clock care, and Dr.
Kennedy, with the payment of a huge fee, had been persuaded to become the
physician in residence to this private hospital. At least until the Don would
need only nursing care.
The mall itself was made impregnable. Button men were moved
into the extra houses, the tenants sent on vacations to their native villages
in Italy, all expenses paid.
Freddie Corleone had been sent to Las Vegas to recuperate
and also to scout out the ground for a Family operation in the luxury
hotel-gambling casino complex that was springing up. Las Vegas was part of the
West Coast empire still neutral and the Don of that empire had guaranteed
Freddie’s safety there. The New York five Families had no desire to make more
enemies by going into Vegas after Freddie Corleone. They had enough trouble on
their hands in New York.
Dr. Kennedy had forbade any discussion of business in front
of the Don. This edict was completely disregarded. The Don insisted on the
council of war being held in his room. Sonny, Tom Hagen, Pete Clemenza and
Tessio gathered there the very first night of his homecoming.
Don Corleone was too weak to speak much but he wished to
listen and exercise veto powers. When it was explained that Freddie had been
sent to Las Vegas to learn the gambling casino business he nodded his head
approvingly. When he learned that Bruno Tattaglia had been killed by Corleone
button men he shook his head and sighed. But what distressed him most of all
was learning that Michael had killed Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey and had
then been forced to flee to Sicily. When he heard this he motioned them out and
they continued the conference in the corner room that held the law library.
Sonny Corleone relaxed in the huge armchair behind the desk.
“I think we’d better let the old man take it easy for a couple of weeks, until
the doc says he can do business.” He paused. “I’d like to have it going again
before he gets better. We have the go-ahead from the cops to operate. The first
thing is the policy banks in Harlem. The black boys up there had their fun, now
we have to take it back. They screwed up the works but good, just like they
usually do when they run things. A lot of their runners didn’t pay off winners.
They drive up in Cadillacs and tell their players they gotta wait for their
dough or maybe just pay them half what they win. I don’t want any runner
looking rich to his players. I don’t want them dressing too good. I don’t want
them driving new cars. I don’t want them welching on paying a winner. And I
don’t want any free-lancers staying in
business, they give us a bad name. Tom, let’s get that
project moving right away. Everything else will fall in line as soon as you
send out the word that the lid is off.”
Hagen said, “There are some very tough boys up in Harlem.
They got a taste of the big money. They won’t go back to being runners or
sub-bankers again.”
Sonny shrugged. “Just give their names to Clemenza. That’s
his job, straightening them out.”
Clemenza said to Hagen, “No problem.”
It was Tessio wbo brought up the most important question.
“Once we start operating, the five Families start their raids. They’ll hit our
bankers in Harlem and out bookmakers on the East Side. They may even try to
make things tough for the garment center outfits we service. This war is going
to cost a lot of money.”
“Mabe they won’t,” Sonny said. “They know we’ll hit them
right back. I’ve got peace feelers out and maybe we can settle everything by
paying an indemnity for the Tattaglia kid.”
Hagen said, “We’re getting the cold shoulder on those
negotiations. They lost a lot of dough the last few months and they blame us
for it. With justice. I think what they want is for us to agree to come in on
the narcotics trade, to use the Family influence politically. In other words,
Sollozzo’s deal minus Sollozzo. But they won’t broach that until they’ve hurt
us with some sort of combat action. Then after we’ve been softened up they
figure we’ll listen to a proposition on narcotic.”
Sonny said curtly, “No deal on drugs.
The Don said no and it’s no until he changes it.”
Hagen said briskly, “Then we’re faced with a tactical
problem. Our money is out in the open. Bookmaking and policy. We can be hit.
But the Tattaglia Family has prostitution and call girls and the dock unions.
How the hell are we going to hit them? The other Families are in some gambling.
But most of them are in the construction trades, shylocking, controlling the
unions, getting the government contracts. They get a lot from strong-arm and
other stuff that involves innocent people. Their money isn’t out in the street.
The Tattaglia nightclub is too famous to touch it, it would cause too much of a
stink. And with the Don still out of action their political influence matches
ours. So we’ve got a real problem here.”
“It’s my problem, Tom,” Sonny said. “I’ll find the answer.
Keep the negotiation alive and follow through on the other stuff. Let’s go back
into business and see what happens.
Then we’ll take it from there. Clemenza and Tessio have
plenty of soldiers, we can match the whole Five Families gun for gun if that’s
the way they want it. We’ll just go to the mattresses.”
There was no problem getting the free-lance Negro bankers
out of business. The police were informed and cracked down. With a special
effort. At that time it was not possible for a Negro to make a payoff to a high
police or political official to keep such an operation going. This was due to
racial prejudice and racial distrust more than anything else. But Harlem had
always been considered a minor problem, and its settlement was expected.
The Five Families struck in an unexpected direction. Two
powerful officials in the garment unions were killed, officials who were
members of the Corleone Family. Then the Corleone Family shylocks were barred
from the waterfront piers as were the Corleone Family bookmakers. The
longshoremen’s union locals had gone over to the Five Families. Corleone
bookmakers all over the city were threatened to persuade them to change their
allegiance. The biggest numbers banker in Harlem, an old friend and ally of the
Corleone Family, was brutally murdered. There was no longer any option. Sonny
told his caporegimes to go to the mattresses.
Two apartments were set up in the city and furnished with
mattresses for the button men to sleep on, a refrigerator for food, and guns
and ammunition. Clemenza staffed one apartment and Tessio the other. All Family
bookmakers were given bodyguard teams. The policy bankers in Harlem, however, had
gone over to the enemy and at the moment nothing could be done about that. All
this cost the Corleone Family a great deal of money and very little was coming
in. As the next few months went by, other things became obvious. The most
important was that the Corleone Family had overmatched itself.
There were reasons for this. With the Don still too weak to
take a part, a great deal of the Family’s political strength was neutralized.
Also, the last ten years of peace had seriously eroded the fighting qualities
of the two caporegimes, Clemenza and Tessio. Clemenza was still a competent
executioner and administrator but he no longer had the energy or the youthful
strength to lead troops. Tessio had mellowed with age and was not ruthless
enough. Tom Hagen, despite his abilities, was simply not suited to be a
Consigliere in a time of war. His main fault was that he was not a Sicilian.
Sonny Corleone recognized these
weaknesses in the Family’s wartime posture but
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