Chapter 4

   When Michael Corleone arrived at his father’s house in Long Beach he found the narrow entrance mouth of the mall blocked off with a link chain. The mall itself was bright with the floodlights of all eight houses, outlining at least ten cars parked along the curving cement walk.
   Two men he didn’t know were leaning against the chain. One of them asked in a Brooklyn accent, “Who’re you?”
   He told them. Another man came out of the nearest house and peered at his face. “That’s the Don’s kid,” he said. “I’ll bring him inside.” Mike followed this man to his father’s house, where two men at the door let him and his escort pass inside.
   The house seemed to be full of men he didn’t know, until he went into the living room. There Michael saw Tom Hagen’s wife, Theresa, sitting stiffly on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. On the coffee table in front of her was a glass of whiskey. On the other side of the sofa sat the bulky Clemenza. The caporegime’s face was impassive, but he was sweating and the cigar in his hand glistened slickly black with his saliva.
   Clemenza came to wring his hand in a consoling way, muttering, “Your mother is at the hospital with your father, he’s going to be all right.” Paulie Gatto stood up to shake hands. Michael looked at him curiously. He knew Paulie was his father’s bodyguard but did not know that Paulie had stayed home sick that day. But he sensed tension in the thin dark face. He knew Gatto’s reputation as an up-and-coming man, a very quick man who knew how to get delicate jobs done without complications, and today he had failed in his duty. He noticed several other men in the corners of the room but he did not recognize them. They were not of Clemenza’s people. Michael put these facts together and understood. Clemenza and Gatto were suspect. Thinking that Paulie had been at the scene, he asked the ferret-faced young man, “How is Freddie? He OK?”
   “The doctor gave him a shot,” Clemenza said. “He’s sleeping.”
   Michael went to Hagen’s wife and bent down to kiss her cheek. They had always liked each other. He whispered, “Don’t worry, Tom will be OK. Have you talked to Sonny yet?”
   Theresa clung to him for a moment and shook her head. She was a delicate, very pretty woman, more American than Italian, and very scared. He took her hand and lifted her off the sofa. Then he led her into his father’s corner room office.
   Sonny was sprawled out in his chair behind the desk holding a yellow pad in one hand and a pencil in the other. The only other man in the room with him was the caporegime Tessio, whom Michael recognized and immediately realized that it must be his men who were in the house and forming the new palace guard. He too had a pencil and pad in his hands.
   When Sonny saw them he came from behind his desk and took Hagen’s wife in his arms. “Don’t worry, Theresa,” he said. “Tom’s OK. They just wanta give him the proposition, they said they’d turn him loose. He’s not on the operating end, he’s just our lawyer. There’s no reason for anybody to do him harm.”
   He released Theresa and then to Michael’s surprise he too, got a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He pushed Sonny away and said grinning, “After I get used to you beating me up I gotta put up with this?” They had often fought when they were younger.
   Sonny shrugged. “Listen, kid, I was worried when I couldn’t get ahold of you in that hick town. Not that I gave a crap if they knocked you off, but I didn’t like the idea of bringing the news to the old lady. I had to tell her about Pop.”
   “How’d she take it?” Michael asked.
   “Good,” Sonny said. “She’s been through it before. Me too. You were too young to know about it and then things got pretty smith while you were growing up.” He paused and then said, “She’s down at the hospital with the old man. He’s gonna pull through.”
   “How about us going down?” Michael asked.
   Sonny shook his head and said dryly, “I can’t leave this house until it’s all over.” The phone rang. Sonny picked it up and listened intently. While he was listening Michael sauntered over to the desk and glanced down at the yellow pad Sonny had been writing on. There was a list of seven names. The first three were Sollozzo, Phillip Tattaglia, and John Tattaglia. It struck Michael with full force that he had interrupted Sonny and Tessio as they were making up a list of men to be killed.
   When Sonny hung up the phone he said to Theresa Hagen and Michael, “Can you two wait outside? I got some business with Tessio we have to finish.”
   Hagen’s wife said, “Was that call about Tom?” She said it almost truculently but she was weeping with fright. Sonny put his arm around her and led her to the door. “I swear he’s going to be OK,” he said. “Wait in the living room. I’ll come out as soon as I hear something.” He shut the door behind her. Michael had sat down in one of the big leather armchairs. Sonny gave him a quick sharp look and then went to sit down behind the desk.
   “You hang around me, Mike,” he said, “you’re gonna hear things you don’t wanta hear.”
   Michael lit a cigarette. “I can help out,” he said.
   “No, you can’t,” Sonny said. “The old man would be sore as hell if I let you get mixed up in this.”
   Michael stood up and yelled. “You lousy bastard, he’s my father. I’m not supposed to help him? I can help. I don’t have to go out and kill people but I can help. Stop treating me like a kid brother. I was in the war. I got shot, remember? I killed some Japs. What the hell do you think I’ll do when you knock somebody off? Faint?”
   Sonny grinned at him. “Pretty soon you’ll want me to put up my dukes. OK, stick around, you can handle the phone.” He turned to Tessio. “That call I just got gave me dope we needed.” Hd turned to Michael. “Somebody had to finger the old man. It could have been Clemenza, it could have been Paulie Gatto, who was very conveniently sick today. I know the answer now, let’s see how smart you are, Mike, you’re the college boy. Who sold out to Sollozzo?”
   Michael sat down again and relaxed back into the leather armchair. He thought everything over very carefully. Clemenza was a caporegime in the Corleone Family structure. Don Corleone had made him a millionaire and they had been intimate friends for over twenty years. He held one of the most powerful posts in the organization. What could Clemenza gain for betraying his Don? More money? He was rich enough but then men are always greedy. More power? Revenge for some fancied insult or slight? That Hagen had been made the Consigliere? Or perhaps a businessman’s conviction that Sollozzo would win out? No, it was impossible for Clemenza to be a traitor, and then Michael thought sadly it was only impossible because he didn’t want Clemenza to die. The fat man had always brought him gifts when he was growing up, had sometimes taken him on outings when the Don had been too busy. He could not believe that Clemenza was guilty of treachery.
   But, on the other hand, Sollozzo would want Clemenza in his pocket more than any other man in the Corleone Family.
   Michael thought about Paulie Gatto. Paulie as yet had not become rich. He was well thought of, his rise in the organization was certain but he would have to put in his time like everybody else. Also he would have wilder dreams of power, as the young always do. It had to be Paulie. And then Michael remembered that in the sixth grade he and Paulie had been in the same class in school and he didn’t want it to be Paulie either.
   He shook his head. “Neither one of them,” he said. But he said it only because Sonny had said he had the answer. If it had been a vote, he would have voted Paulie guilty.
   Sonny was smiling at him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Clemenza is OK. It’s Paulie.”
   Michael could see that Tessio was relieved. As a fellow caporegime his sympathy would be with Clemenza. Also the present situation was not so serious if treachery did not reach so high. Tessio said cautiously, “Then I can send my people home tomorrow?”
   Sonny said, “The day after tomorrow. I don’t want anybody to know about this until then. Listen, I want to talk some family business with my brother, personal. Wait out in the living room, eh? We can finish our list later. You and Ctemenza will work together on it.”
   “Sure,” Tessio said. He went out.
   “How do you know for sure it’s Paulie?” Michael asked.
   Sonny said, “We have people in the telephone company and they tracked down all of Paulie’s phone calls in and out. Clemenza’s too. On the three days Paulie was sick this month he got a call from a street booth across from the old man’s building. Today too. They were checking to see if Paulie was coming down or somebody was being sent down to take his place. Or for some other reason. It doesn’t matter.” Sonny shrugged. “Thank God it was Paulie. We’ll need Clemenza bad.”
   Michael asked hesitantly, “Is it going to be an all-out war?”
   Sonny’s eyes were hard. “That’s how I’m going to play it as soon as Tom checks in. Until the old man tells me different.”
   Michael asked, “So why don’t you wait until the old man can tell you?”
   Sonny looked at him curiously. “How the hell did you win those combat medals? We are under the gun, man, we gotta fight. I’m just afraid they won’t let Tom go.”
   Michael was surprised at this. “Why not?”
   Again Sonny’s voice was patient. “They snatched Tom because they figured the old man was finished and they could make a deal with me and Tom would be the sit-down guy in the preliminary stages, carry the proposition. Now with the old man alive they know I can’t make a deal so Tom’s no good to them. They can turn him loose or dump him, depending how Sollozzo feels. If they dump him, it would be just to show us they really mean business, trying to bulldoze us.”
   Michael said quietly, “What made Sollozzo think he could get a deal with you?”
   Sonny flushed and he didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “We had a meeting a few months ago, Sollozzo came to us with a proposition on drugs. The old man turned him down. But during the meeting I shot off my mouth a little, I showed I wanted the deal. Which is absolutely the wrong thing to do; if there’s one thing the old man hammered into me it’s never, to do a thing like that, to let other people know there’s a split of opinion in the Family. So Sollozzo figures he gets rid of the old man, I have to go in with him on the drugs. With the old man gone, the Family power is cut at least in half. I would be fighting for my life anyway to keep all the businesses the old man got together. Drugs are the coming thing, we should get into it. And his knocking off the old man is purely business, nothing personal. As a matter of business I would go in with him. Of course he would never let me get too close, he’d make sure I’d never get a clean shot at him, just in case. But he also knows that once I accepted the deal the other Families would never let me start a war a couple of years later just for revenge. Also, the Tattaglia Family is behind him.”
   “If they had gotten the old man, what would you have done?” Michael asked.
   Sonny said very simply, “Sollozzo is dead meat. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care if we have to fight all the five families in New York. The Tattaglia Family is going to be wiped out. I don’t care if we all go down together.”
   Michael said softly, “That’s not how Pop would have played it.”
   Sonny made a violent gesture. “I know I’m not the man he was. But I’ll tell you this and he’ll tell you too. When it comes to real action I can operate as good as anybody, short-range. Sollozzo knows that and so do Clemenza and Tessio, I ‘made my bones’ when I was nineteen, the last time the Family had a war, and I was a big help to the old man. So I’m not worried now. And our Family has all the horses in a deal like this. I just wish we could get contact with Luca.”
   Michael asked curiously, “Is Luca that tough, like they say? Is he that good?”
   Sonny nodded. “He’s in a class by himself. I’m going to send him after the three Tattaglias. I’ll get Sollozzo myself.”
   Michael shifted uneasily in his chair. He looked at his older brother. He remembered Sonny as being sometimes casually brutal but essentially warmhearted. A nice guy. It seemed unnatural to hear him talking this way, it was chilling to see the list of names he had scribbled down, men to be executed, as if he were some newly crowned Roman Emperor. He was glad that he was not truly part of all this, that now his father lived he did not have to involve himself in vengeance. He’d help out, answering the phone, running errands and messages. Sonny and the old man could take care of themselves, especially with Luca behind them.
   At that moment they heard a woman scream in the living room. Oh, Christ, Michael thought, it sounded like Tom’s wife. He rushed to the door and opened it. Everybody in the living room was standing. And by the sofa Tom Hagen was holding Theresa close to him, his face embarrassed. Theresa was weeping and sobbing, and Michael realized that the scream he had heard had been her calling out her husband’s name with joy. As he watched, Tom Hagen disentangled himself from his wife’s arms and lowered her back onto the sofa. He smiled at Michael grimly. “Glad to see you, Mike, really glad.” He strode into the office without another look at his still-sobbing wife. He hadn’t lived with the Corleone Family ten years for nothing, Michael thought with a queer flush of pride. Some of the old man had rubbed off on him, as it had on Sonny, and he thought, with surprise, even on himself.

Chapter 5

   It was nearly four o’clock in the morning as they all sat in the corner room office– Sonny, Michael, Tom Hagen, Clemenza and Tessio. Theresa Hagen had been persuaded to go to her own home next door. Paulie Gatto was still waiting in the living room, not knowing that Tessio’s men had been instructed not to let him leave or let him out of their sight.
   Tom Hagen relayed the deal Sollozzo offered. He told how after Sollozzo had learned the Don still lived, it was obvious that he meant to kill Hagen. Hagen grinned. “If I ever plead before the Supreme Court, I’ll never plead better than I did with that goddamn Turk tonight. I told him I’d talk the Family into the deal even though the Don was alive. I told him I could wrap you around my finger, Sonny. How we were buddies as kids; and don’t get sore, but I let him get the idea that maybe you weren’t too sorry about getting the old man’s job, God forgive me.” He smiled apologetically at Sonny, who made a gesture signifying that he understood, that it was of no consequence.
   Michael, leaning back in his armchair with the phone at his right hand, studied both men. When Hagen had entered the room Sonny had come rushing to embrace him. Michael realized with a faint twinge of jealousy that in many ways Sonny and Tom Hagen were closer than he himself could ever be to his own brother.
   “Let’s get down to business,” Sonny said. “We have to make plans. Take a look at this list me and Tessio made up. Tessio, give Clemenza your copy.”
   “If we make plans,” Michael said, “Freddie should be here.”
   Sonny said grimly, “Freddie is no use to us. The doctor says he’s in shock so bad he has to have complete rest. I don’t understand that. Freddie was always a pretty tough guy. I guess seeing the old man gunned down was hard on him, he always thought the Don was God. He wasn’t like you and me, Mike.”
   Hagen said quickly, “OK, leave Freddie out. Leave him out of everything, absolutely everything. Now, Sonny, until this is all over I think you should stay in the house. I mean sever leave it. You’re safe here. Don’t underrate Sollozzo, he’s got to be a pezzonovante, a real.90 caliber. Is the hospital covered?”
   Sonny nodded. “The cops have it locked in and I got my people there visiting Pop all the time. What do you think of that list, Tom?”
   Hagen frowned down at the fist of names: “Jesus Christ, Sonny, you’re really taking this personal. The Don would consider it a purely business dispute. Sollozzo is the key. Get rid of Sollozzo and everything falls in line. You don’t have to go after the Tattaglias.”
   Sonny looked at his two caporegimes. Tessio shrugged. “It’s tricky,” he said. Clemenza didn’t answer at all.
   Sonny said to Clemenza, “One thing we can take care of without discussion. I don’t want Paulie around here anymore. Make that first on your list.” The fat caporegime nodded.
   Hagen said, “What about Luca? Sollozzo didn’t seem worried about Luca. That worries me. If Luca sold us out, we’re in real trouble. That’s the first thing we have to know. Has anybody been able to get in touch with him?”
   “No,” Sonny said. “I’ve been calling him all night. Maybe he’s shacked up.”
   “No,” Hagen said. “He never sleeps over with a broad. He always goes home when he’s through. Mike, keep ringing his number until you get an answer.” Michael dutifully picked up the phone and dialed. He could hear the phone ringing on the other end but no one answered. Finally he hung up. “Keep trying every fifteen minutes,” Hagen said.
   Sonny said impatiently, “OK, Tom you’re the Consigliere, how about some advice? What the hell do you think we should do?”
   Hagen helped himself to the whiskey bottle on the desk. “We negotiate with Sollozzo until your father is in shape to take charge. We might even make a deal if we have to. When your father gets out of bed he can settle the whole business without a fuss and all the Families will go along with him.”
   Sonny said angrily, “You think I can’t handle this guy Sollozzo?”
   Tom Hagen looked him directly in the eye. “Sonny, sure you can outfight him. The Corleone Family has the power. You have Clemenza and Tessio here and they can muster a thousand men if it comes to an all-out war. But at the end there will be a shambles over the whole East Coast and all the other Families will blame the Corleones. We’ll make a lot of enemies. And that’s something your father never believed in.”
   Michael, watching Sonny, thought he took this well. But then Sonny said to Hagen, “What if the old man dies, what do you advise then, Consigliere?”
   Hagen said quietly, “I know you won’t do it, but I would advise you to make a real deal with Sollozzo on the drugs. Without your father’s political contacts and personal influence the Corleone Family loses half its strength. Without your father, the other New York Families might wind up supporting the Tattaglias and Sollozzo just to make sure there isn’t a long destructive war. If your father dies, make the deal. Then wait and see.”
   Sonny was white-faced with anger. “That’s easy for you to say, it’s not your father they killed.”
   Hagen said quickly and proudly, “I was as good a son to him as you or Mike, maybe better. I’m giving you a professional opinion. Personally I want to kill all those bastards.” The emotion in his voice shamed Sonny, who said, “Oh, Christ, Tom, I didn’t mean it that way.” But he had, really. Blood was blood and nothing else was its equal.
   Sonny brooded for a moment as the others waited in embarrassed silence. Then he sighed and spoke quietly. “OK, we’ll sit tight until the old man can give us the lead. But, Tom, I want you to stay inside the mall, too. Don’t take any chances. Mike, you be careful, though I don’t think. even Sollozzo would bring personal family into the war. Everybody would be against him then. But be careful. Tessio, you hold your people in reserve but have them nosing around the city. Clemenza, after you settle the Paulie Gatto thing, you move your men into the house and the mall to replace Tessio’s people. Tessio, you keep your men at the hospital, though. Tom, start negotiation over the phone or by messenger with Sollozzo and the Tattaglias the first thing in the morning. Mike, tomorrow you take a couple of Clemenza’s people and go to Luca’s house and wait for him to show up or find out where the hell he is. That crazy bastard might be going after Sollozzo right now if he’s heard the news. I can’t believe he’d ever go against his Don, no matter what the Turk offered him.”
   Hagen said reluctantly, “Maybe Mike shouldn’t get mixed up in this so directly.”
   “Right,” Sonny said. “Forget that, Mike. Anyway I need you on the phone here in the house, that’s more important.”
   Michael didn’t say anything. He felt awkward, almost ashamed, and he noticed Clemenza and Tessio with faces so carefully impassive that he was sure that they were hiding their contempt. He picked up the phone and dialed Luca Brasi’s number and kept the receiver to his ear as it rang and rang.

Chapter 6

   Peter Clemenza slept badly that night. In the morning he got up early and made his own breakfast of a glass of grappa, a thick slice of Genoa salami with a chunk of fresh Italian bread that was still delivered to his door as in the old days. Then he drank a great, plain china mug filled with hot coffee that had been lashed with anisette. But as he padded about the house in his old bathrobe and red felt slippers he pondered on the day’s work that lay ahead of him. Last night Sonny Corleone had made it very clear that Paulie Gatto was to be taken care of immediately. It had to be today.
   Clemenza was troubled. Not because Gatto had been his protege and had turned traitor. This did not reflect on the caporegime’s judgment. After all, Paulie’s background had been perfect. He came from a Sicilian family, he had grown up in the same neighborhood as the Corleone children, had indeed even gone to school with one of the sons. He had been brought up through each level in the proper manner. He had been tested and not found wanting. And then after he had “made his bones” he had received a good living from the Family, a percentage of an East Side “book” and a union payroll slot. Clemenza had not been unaware that Paulie Gatto ‘supplemented his income with free-lance stickups, strictly against the Family rules, but even this was a sign of the man’s worth. The breaking of such regulations was considered a sign of high-spiritedness, like that shown by a fine racing horse fighting the reins.
   And Paulie had never caused trouble with his stickups. They had always been meticulously planned and carried out with the minimum of fuss and trouble, with no one ever getting hurt: a three-thousand-dollar Manhattan garment center payroll, a small chinaware factory payroll in the slums of Brooklyn. After all, a young man could always use some extra pocket money. It was all in the pattern. Who could ever foretell that Paulie Gatto would turn traitor?
   What was troubling Peter Clemenza this morning was an administrative problem. The actual execution of Gatto was a cut-and-dried chore. The problem was, who should the caporegime bring up from the ranks to replace Gatto in the Family? It was an important promotion, that to “button” man, one not to be handed out lightly. The man had to be tough and he had to be smart. He had to be safe, not a person who would talk to the police if he got in trouble, one well saturated in the Sicilians’ law of omerta, the law of silence. And then, what kind of a living would he receive for his new duties? Clemenza had several times spoken to the Don about better rewards for the all-important button man who was first in the front line when trouble arose, but the Don had put him off. If Paulie had been making more money, he might have been able to resist the blandishments of the wily Turk, Sollozzo.
   Clemenza finally narrowed down the list of candidates to three men. The first was an enforcer who worked with the colored policy bankers in Harlem, a big brawny brute of a man of great physical strength, a man with a great deal of personal charm who could get along with people and yet when necessary make them go in fear of him. But Clemenza scratched him off the list after considering his name for a half hour. This man got along too well with the black people, which hinted at some flaw of character. Also he would be too hard to replace in the position he now held.
   The second name Clemenza considered and almost settled on was a hard-working chap who served faithfully and well in the organization. This man was the collector of delinquent accounts for Family-licensed shylocks in Manhattan. He had started off as a bookmaker’s runner. But he was not quite yet ready for such an important promotion.
   Finally he settled on Rocco Lampone. Lampone had served a short but impressive apprenticeship in the Family. During the war he had been wounded in Africa and been discharged in 1943. Because of the shortage of young men, Clemenza had taken him on even though Lampone was partially incapacitated by his injuries and walked with a pronounced limp. Clemenza had used him as a black-market contact in the garment center and with government employees controlling OPA food stamps. From that, Lampone had graduated to trouble-shooter for the whole operation. What Clemenza liked about him was his good judgment. He knew that there was no percentage in being tough about something that would only cost a heavy fine or six months in jail, small prices to pay for the enormous profits earned. He had the good sense to know that it was not an area for heavy threats but light ones. He kept the whole operation in a minor key, which was exactly what was needed.
   Clemenza felt the relief of a conscientious administrator who has solved a knotty personnel problem. Yes, it would be Rocco Lampone who would assist. For Clemenza planned to handle this job himself, not only to help a new, inexperienced man “make his bones,” but to settle a personal score with Paulie Gatto. Paulie had been his protege, he had advanced Paulie over the heads of more deserving and more loyal people, he had helped Paulie “make his bones” and furthered his career in every way. Paulie had not only betrayed the Family, he had betrayed his padrone, Peter Clemenza. This lack of respect had to be repaid.
   Everything else was arranged. Paulie Gatto had been instructed to pick him up at three in the afternoon, and to pick him up with his own car, nothing hot. Now Clemenza took up the telephone and dialed Rocco Lampone’s number. He did not identify himself. He simply said, “Come to my house, I have an errand for you.” He was pleased to note that despite the early hour, Lampone’s voice was not surprised or dazed with sleep and he simply said, “OK.” Good man. Clemenza added, “No rush, have your breakfast and lunch first before you come see me. But not later than two in the afternoon.”
   There was another laconic OK on the other end and Clemenza hung up the phone. He had already alerted his people about replacing caporegime Tessio’s people in the Corleone mall so that was done. He had capable subordinates and never interfered in a mechanical operation of that kind.
   He decided to wash his Cadillac. He loved the car. It gave him such a quiet peaceful ride, and its upholstery was so rich that he sometimes sat in it for an hour when the weather was good because it was more pleasant than sitting in the house. And it always helped him think when he was grooming the car. He remembered his father in Italy doing the same thing with donkeys.
   Clemenza worked inside the heated garage, he hated cold. He ran over his plans. You had to be careful with Paulie, the man was like a rat, he could smell danger. And now of course despite being so tough he must be shitting in his pants because the old man was still alive. He’d be as skittish as a donkey with ants up his ass. But Clemenza was accustomed to these circumstances, usual in his work. First, he had to have a good excuse for Rocco to accompany them. Second, he had to have a plausible mission for the three of them to go on.
   Of course, strictly speaking, this was not necessary. Paulie Gatto could be killed without any of these frills. He was locked in, he could not run away. But Clemenza felt strongly that it was important to keep good working habits and never give away a fraction of a percentage point. You never could tell what might happen and these matters were, after all, questions of life and death.
   As he washed his baby-blue Cadillac, Peter Clemenza pondered and rehearsed his lines, the expressions of his face. He would be curt with Paulie, as if displeased with him. With a man so sensitive and suspicious as Gatto this would throw him off the track or at least leave him uncertain. Undue friendliness would make him wary. But of course the curtness must not be too angry. It had to be rather an absentminded sort of irritation. And why Lampone? Paulie would find that most alarming, especially since Lampone had to be in the rear seat. Paulie wouldn’t like being helpless at the wheel with Lampone behind his head. Clemenza rubbed and polished the metal of his Cadillac furiously. It was going to be tricky. Very tricky. For a moment he debated whether to recruit another man but decided against it. Here he followed basic reasoning. In years to come a situation might arise where it might be profitable for one of his partners to testify against him. If there were just one accomplice it was one’s word against the other. But the word of a second accomplice could swing the balance. No, they would stick to procedure.
   What annoyed Clemenza was that the execution had to be “public.” That is, the body was to be found. He would have much preferred having it disappear. (Usual burying grounds were the nearby ocean or the swamplands of New Jersey on land owned by friends of the Family or by other more complicated methods.) But it had to be public so that embryo traitors would be frightened and the enemy warned that the Corleone Family had by no means gone stupid or soft. Sollozzo would be made wary by this quick discovery of his spy. The Corleone Family would win back some of its prestige. It had been made to look foolish by the shooting of the old man.
   Clemenza sighed. The Cadillac gleamed like a huge blue steel egg, and he was nowhere near the solving of his problem. Then the solution hit him, logical and to the point. It would explain Rocco Lampone, himself and Paulie being together and give them a mission of sufficient secrecy and importance.
   He would tell Paulie that their job today was to find an apartment in case the Family decided to “go to the mattresses.”
   Whenever a war between the Families became bitterly intense, the opponents would set up headquarters in secret apartments where the “soldiers” could sleep on mattresses scattered through the rooms. This was not so much to keep their families out of danger, their wives and little children, since any attack on noncombatants was undreamed of. All parties were too vulnerable to similar retaliation. But it was always smarter to live in some secret place where your everyday movements could not be charted either by your opponents or by some police who might arbitrarily decide to meddle.
   And so usually a trusted caporegime would be sent out to rent a secret apartment and fill it with mattresses. That apartment would be used as a sally port into the city when an offensive was mounted. It was natural for Clemenza to be sent on such an errand. It was natural for him to take Gatto and Lampone with him to arrange all the details, including the furnishing of the apartment. Also, Clemenza thought with a grin, Paulie Gatto had proved he was greedy and the first thought that would pop into his head was how much he could get from Sollozzo for this valuable intelligence.
   Rocco Lampone arrived early and Clemenza explained what had to be done and what their roles would be. Lampone’s face lit up with surprised gratitude and he thanked Clemenza respectfully for the promotion allowing him to serve the Family. Clemenza was sure he had done well. He clapped Lampone on the shoulder and said, “You’ll get something better for your living after today. We’ll talk about that later. You understand the Family now is occupied with more critical matters, more important things to do.” Lampone made a gesture that said he would be patient, knowing his reward was certain.
   Clemenza went to his den’s safe and opened it. He took out a gun and gave it to Lampone. “Use this one,” he said.. “They can never trace it. Leave it in the car with Paulie. When this job is finished I want you to take your wife and children on a vacation to Florida. Use your own money now and I’ll pay you back later. Relax, get the sun. Use the Family hotel in Miami Beach so I’ll know where I can get you when I want.”
   Clemenza’s wife knocked on the door of the den to tell them that Paulie Gatto had arrived. He was parked in the driveway. Clemenza led the way through the garage and Lampone followed him. When Clemenza got into the front seat with Gatto he merely grunted in greeting, an exasperated look on his face. He looked at his wristwatch as if he expected to find that Gatto was late.
   The ferret-faced button man was watching him intently, looking for a clue. He flinched a little when Lampone got into the rear seat behind him and said, “Rocco, sit on the other site. A big guy like you blocks up my rear-view mirror.” Lampone shifted dutifully, so that he was sitting behind Clemenza, as if such a request was the most natural thing in the world.
   Clemenza said sourly to Gatto, “Damn that Sonny, he’s running scared. He’s already thinking of going to the mattresses. We have to find a place on the West Side. Paulie, you and Rocco gotta staff and supply it until the word comes down for the rest of the soldiers to use it. You know a good location?”
   As he had expected, Gatto’s eyes became greedily interested. Paulie had swallowed the bait and because he was thinking how much the information was worth to Sollozzo, he was forgetting to think about whether he was in danger. Also, Lampone was acting his part perfectly, staring out the window in a disinterested, relaxed way. Clemenza congratulated himself on his choice.
   Gatto shrugged. “I’d have to think about it,” he said.
   Clemenza grunted. “Drive while you think, I want to get. to New York today.”
   Paulie was an expert driver and traffic going into the city was light at this time in the afternoon, so the early winter darkness was just beginning to fall when they arrived. There was no small talk in the car. Clemenza directed Paulie to drive up to the Washington Heights section. He checked a few apartment buildings and told him to park near Arthur Avenue and wait. He also left Rocco Lampone in the car. He went into the Vera Mario Restaurant and had a light dinner of veal and salad, nodding his hellos to some acquaintances. After an hour had gone by he walked the several blocks to where the car was parked and entered it. Gatto and Lampone were still waiting. “Shit,” Clemenza said, “they want us back in Long Beach. They got some other job for us now. Sonny says we can let this one go until later. Rocco, you live in the city, can we drop you off?”
   Rocco said quietly, “I have my car out at your place and my old lady needs it first thing in the morning.”
   “That’s right,” Clemenza said. “Then you have to come back with us, after all.”
   Again on the ride back to Long Beach nothing was said. On the stretch of road that led into the city, Clemenza said suddenly, “Paulie, pull over, I gotta take a leak.” From working together so long, Gatto knew the fat caporegime had a weak bladder. He had often made such a request. Gatto pulled the car off the highway onto the soft earth that led to the swamp. Clemenza climbed out of the car and took a few steps into the bushes. He actually relieved himself. Then as he opened the door to get back into the car he took a quick look up and down the highway. There were no lights, the road was completely dark. “Go ahead,” Clemenza said. A second later the interior of the car reverberated with the report of a gun. Paulie Gatto seemed to jump forward, his body flinging against the steering wheel and then slumping over to the seat. Clemenza had stepped back hastily to avoid being hit with fragments of skull bone and blood.
   Rocco Lampone scrambled out of the back seat. He still held the gun and he threw it into the swamp. He and Clemenza walked hastily to a car parked nearby and got in. Lampone reached underneath the seat and found the key that had been left for them. He started the car and drove Clemenza to his home. Then instead of going back by the same route, he took the Jones Beach Causeway right on through to the town of Merrick and onto the Meadowbrook Parkway until he reached the Northern State Parkway. He rode that to the Long Island Expressway and then continued on to the Whitestone Bridge and through the Bronx to his home in Manhattan.

Chapter 7

   On the night before the shooting of Don Corleone, his strongest and most loyal and most feared retainer prepared to meet with the enemy. Luca Brasi had made contact with the forces of Sollozzo several months before. He had done so on the orders of Don Corleone himself. He had done so by frequenting the nightclubs controlled by the Tattaglia Family and by taking up with one of their top call girls. In bed with this call girl he grumbled about how he was held down in the Corleone Family, how his worth was not recognized. After a week of this affair with the call girl, Luca was approached by Bruno Tattaglia, manager of the nightclub. Bruno was the youngest son, and ostensibly not connected with the Family business of prostitution. But his famous nightclub with its dancing line of long-stemmed beauties was the finishing school for many of the city hookers.
   The first meeting was all above-board, Tattaglia offering him a job to work in the Family business as enforcer. The flirtation went on for nearly a month. Luca played his role of man infatuated with a young beautiful girl, Bruno Tattaglia the role of a businessman trying to recruit an able executive from a rival. At one such meeting, Luca pretended to be swayed, then said, “But one thing must be understood. I will never go against the Godfather. Don Corleone is a man I respect. I understand that he must put his sons before me in the Family business.”
   Bruno Tattaglia was one of the new generation with a barely hidden contempt for the old Moustache Petes like Luca Brasi, Don Corleone and even his own father. He was just a little too respectful. Now he said, “My father wouldn’t expect you to do anything against the Corleones. Why should he? Everybody gets along with everybody else now, it’s not like the old days. It’s just that if you’re looking for a new job, I can pass along the word to my father. There’s always need for a man like you in our business. It’s a hard business and it needs hard men to keep it running smooth. Let me know if you ever make up your mind.”
   Luca shrugged. “It’s not so bad where I’m at.” And so they left it.
   The general idea had been to lead the Tattaglias to believe that he knew about the lucrative narcotics operation and that he wanted a piece of it free-lance. In that fashion he might hear something about Sollozzo’s plans if the Turk had any, or whether he was getting ready to step on the toes of Don Corleone. After waiting for two months with nothing else happening, Luca reported to the Don that obviously Sollozzo was taking his defeat graciously. The Don had told him to keep trying but merely as a sideline, not to press it.
   Luca had dropped into the nightclub the evening before Don Corleone’s being shot. Almost immediately Bruno Tattaglia had come to his table and sat down.
   “I have a friend who wants to talk to you,” he said.
   “Bring him over,” Luca said. “I’ll talk to any friend of yours.”
   “No,” Bruno said. “He wants to see you in private.”
   “Who is he?” Luca asked.
   “Just a friend of mine,” Bruno Tattaglia said. “He wants to put a proposition to you. Can you meet him later on tonight?”
   “Sure,” Luca said. “What time and where?”
   Tattaglia said softly, “The club closes at four in the morning. Why don’t you meet in here while the waiters are cleaning ups.
   They knew his habits, Luca thought, they must have been checking him out. He usually got up about three or four in the afternoon and had breakfast, then amused himself by gambling with cronies in the Family or had a girl. Sometimes he saw one of the midnight movies and then would drop in for a drink at one of the clubs. He never went to bed before dawn. So the suggestion of a four A.M. meeting was not as outlandish as it seemed.
   “Sure, sure,” he said. “I’ll be back at four.” He left the club and caught a cab to his furnished room on Tenth Avenue. He boarded with an Italian family to which he was distantly related. His two rooms were separated from the rest of their railroad flat by a special door. He liked the arrangement because it gave him some family life and also protection against surprise where he was most vulnerable.
   The sly Turkish fox was going to show his bushy tail, Luca thought. If things went far enough, if Sollozzo committed himself tonight, maybe the whole thing could be wound up as a Christmas present for the Don. In his room, Luca unlocked the trunk beneath the bed and took out a bulletproof vest. It was heavy. He undressed and put it on over his woolen underwear, then put his shirt and jacket over it. He thought for a moment of calling the Don’s house at Long Beach to tell him of this new development but he knew the Don never talked over the phone, to anyone, and the Don had given him this assignment in secret and so did not want anyone, not even Hagen or his eldest son, to know about it.
   Luca always carried a gun. He had a license to carry a gun, probably the most expensive gun license ever issued anyplace, anytime. It had cost a total of ten thousand dollars but it would keep him out of jail if he was frisked by the cops. As a top executive operating official of the Family he rated the license. But tonight, just in case he could finish off the job, he wanted a “safe” gun. One that could not possibly be traced. But then thinking the matter over, he decided that he would just listen to the proposition tonight and report back to the Godfather, Don Corleone.
   He made his way back to the club but he did not drink any more. Instead he wandered out to 48th Street, where he had a leisurely late supper at Patsy’s, his favorite Italian restaurant. When it was time for his appointment he drifted uptown to the club entrance. The doorman was no longer there when he went in. The hatcheck girl was gone. Only Bruno Tattaglia waited to greet him and lead him to the deserted bar at the side of the room. Before him he could see the desert of small tables with the polished yellow wood dance floor gleaming like a small diamond in the middle of them. In the shadows was the empty bandstand, out of it grew the skeleton metal stalk of a microphone.
   Luca sat at the bar and Bruno Tattaglia went behind it. Luca refused the drink offered to him and lit a cigarette. It was possible that this would turn out to be something else, not the Turk. But then he saw Soltozzo emerge out of the shadows at the far end of the room.
   Sollozzo shook his hand and sat at the bar next to him. Tattaglia put a glass in front of the Turk, who nodded his thanks. “Do you know who I am?” asked Sollozzo.
   Luca nodded. He smiled grimly. The rats were being flushed out of their holes. It would be his pleasure to take care of this renegade Sicilian.
   “Do you know what I am going to ask of you?” Sollozzo asked.
   Luca shook his head.
   “There’s big business to be made,” Sollozzo said. “I mean millions for everybody at the top level. On the first shipment I can guarantee you fifty thousand dollars. I’m talking about drugs. It’s the coming thing.”
   Luca said, “Why come to me? You want me to talk to my Don?”
   Sollozzo grimaced. “I’ve already talked to the Don. He wants no part of it. All right, I can do without him. But I need somebody strong to protect the operation physically. I understand you’re not happy with your Family, you might make a switch.”
   Luca shrugged. “If the offer is good enough.”
   Sollozzo had been watching him intently and seemed to have come to a decision. “Think about my offer for a few days and then we’ll talk again,” he said. He put out his hand but Luca pretended not to see it and busied himself putting a cigarette in his mouth. Behind the bar, Bruno Tattaglia made a lighter appear magically and held it to Luca’s cigarette. And then he did a strange thing. He dropped the lighter on the bar and grabbed Lucas right hand, holding it tight.
   Luca reacted instantly, his body slipping off the bar stool and trying to twist away. But Sollozzo had grabbed his other hand at the wrist. Still, Luca was too strong for both of them and would have broken free except that a man stepped out of the shadows behind him and threw a thin silken cord around his neck. The cord pulled tight, choking off Lucas breath. His face became purple, the strength in his arms drained away. Tattaglia and Sollozzo held his hands easily now, and they stood there curiously childlike as the man behind Luca pulled the cord around Lucas neck tighter and tighter. Suddenly the floor was wet and slippery. Luca’s sphincter, no longer under control, opened, the waste of his body spilled out. There was no strength in him anymore and his legs folded, his body sagged. Sollozzo and Tattaglia let his hands go and only the strangler stayed with the victim, sinking to his knees to follow Lucas falling body, drawing the cord so tight that it cut into the flesh of the neck and disappeared. Lucas eyes were bulging out of his head as if in the utmost surprise and this surprise was the only humanity remaining to him. He was dead.
   “I don’t want him found,” Sollozzo said. “It’s important that he not be found right now.” He turned on his heel and left, disappearing back into the shadows.

Chapter 8

   The day after the shooting of Don Corleone was a busy time for the Family. Michael stayed by the phone relaying messages to Sonny. Tom Hagen was busy trying to find a mediator satisfactory to both parties so that a conference could be arranged with Sollozzo. The Turk had suddenly become cagey, perhaps he knew that the Family button men of Clemenza and Tessio were ranging far and wide over the city in an attempt to pick up his trail. But Sollozzo was sticking close to his hideout, as were all top members of the Tattaglia Family. This was expected by Sonny, an elementary precaution he knew the enemy was bound to take.
   Clemenza was tied up with Paulie Gatto. Tessio had been given the assignment of trying to track down the whereabouts of Luca Brasi. Luca had not been home since the night before the shooting, a bad sign. But Sonny could not believe that Brasi had either turned traitor or had been taken by surprise.
   Mama Corleone was staying in the city with friends of the Family so that she could be near the hospital. Carlo Rizzi, the son-in-law, had offered his services but had been told to take care of his own business that Don Corleone had set him up in, a lucrative bookmaking territory in the Italian section of Manhattan. Connie was staying with her mother in town so that she too could visit her father in the hospital.
   Freddie was still under sedation in his own room of his parents’ house. Sonny and Michael had paid him a visit and had been astonished at his paleness, his obvious illness. “Christ,” Sonny said to Michael when they left Freddie’s room, “he looks like he got plugged worse than the old man.”
   Michael shrugged. He had seen soldiers in the same condition on the battlefield. But he had never expected it to happen to Freddie. He remembered the middle brother as being physically the toughest one in the family when all of them were kids. But he had also been the most obedient son to his father. And yet everyone knew that the Don had given up on this middle son ever being important to the business. He wasn’t quite smart enough, and failing that, not quite ruthless enough. He was too retiring a person, did not have enough force.
   Late in the afternoon, Michael got a call from Johnny Fontane in Hollywood. Sonny took the phone. “Nah, Johnny, no use coming back here to see the old man. He’s too sick and it would give you a lot of bad publicity, and I know the old man wouldn’t like that. Wait until he’s better and we can move him home, then come see him. OK, I’ll give him your regards.” Sonny hung up the phone. He turned to Michael and said. “That’ll make Pop happy, that Johnny wanted to fly from California to see how he was.”
   Late that afternoon, Michael was called to the listed phone in the kitchen by one of Clemenza’s men. It was Kay.
   “Is your father all right?” she asked. Her voice was a little strained, a little unnatural. Michael knew that she couldn’t quite believe what had happened, that his father really was what the newspapers called a gangster.
   “He’ll be OK,” Michael said.
   “Can I come with you when you visit him in the hospital?” Kay asked.
   Michael laughed. She had remembered him telling her how important it was to do such things if you wanted to get along with the old Italians. “This is a special case,” he said. “If the newspaper guys get ahold of your name and background you’ll be on page three of the Daily News. Girl from old Yankee family mixed up with son of big Mafia chief. How would your parents like that?”
   Kay said dryly, “My parents never read the Daily News.” Again there was an awkward pause and then she said, “You’re OK, aren’t you, Mike, you’re not in any danger?”
   Mike laughed again. “I’m known as the sissy of the Corleone family. No threat. So they don’t have to bother coming after me. No, it’s all over, Kay, there won’t be any more trouble. It was all sort of an accident anyway. I’ll explain when I see you.”
   “When will that be?” she asked.
   Michael pondered. “How about late tonight? We’ll have a drink and supper in your hotel and then I’ll go to the hospital and see my old man. I’m getting tired of hanging around here answering phones. OK? But don’t tell anybody. I don’t want newspaper photographers snapping pictures of us together. No kidding, Kay, it’s damned embarrassing, especially for your parents.”
   “All right,” Kay said. “I’ll be waiting. Can I do any Christmas shopping for you? Or anything else?”
   “No,” Michael said. “Just be ready.”
   She gave a little excited laugh. “I’ll be ready,” she said. “Aren’t I always?”
   “Yes, you are,” he said. “That’s why you’re my best girl.”
   “I love you,” she said. “Can you say it?”
   Michael looked at the four hood sitting in the kitchen. “No,” he said. “Tonight, OK?”
   “OK,” she said. He hung up.
   Clemenza had finally come back from his day’s work and was bustling around the kitchen cooking up a huge pot of tomato sauce. Michael nodded to him and went to the corner office where he found Hagen and Sonny waiting for him impatiently. “Is Clemenza out there?” Sonny asked.
   Michael grinned. “He’s cooking up spaghetti for the troops, just like the army.”
   Sonny said impatiently, “Tell him to cut out that crap and come on in here. I have more important things for him to do. Get Tessio in here with him.”
   In a few minutes they were all gathered in the office. Sonny said curtly to Clemenza, “You take care of him?”
   Clemenza nodded. “You won’t see him anymore.”
   With a slight electric shock, Michael realized they were talking about Paulie Gatto and that little Paulie was dead, murdered by that jolly wedding dancer, Clemenza.
   Sonny asked Hagen, “You have any luck with Sollozzo?”
   Hagen shook his head. “He seems to have cooled off on the negotiation idea. Anyway he doesn’t seem to be too anxious. Or maybe he’s just being very careful so that our button men won’t nail him. Anyway I haven’t been able to set up a top-notch go-between he’ll trust. But he must know he has to negotiate now. He missed his chance when he let the old man get away from him.”
   Sonny said, “He’s a smart guy, the smartest our Family ever came up against. Maybe he figured we’re just stalling until the old man gets better or we can get a line on him.”
   Hagen shrugged. “Sure, he figures that. But he still has to negotiate. He has no choice. I’ll get it set up tomorrow. That’s certain.”
   One of Clemenza’s men knocked on the office door and then came in. He said to Clemenza, “It just came over the radio, the cops found Paulie Gatto. Dead in his car.”
   Clemenza nodded and said to the man, “Don’t worry about it.” The button man gave his caporegime an astonished look, which was followed by a look of comprehension, before he went back to the kitchen.
   The conference went on as if there had been no interruption. Sonny asked Hagen, “Any change in the Don’s condition?”
   Hagen shook his head. “He’s OK but he won’t be able to talk for another couple of days. He’s all knocked out. Still recovering from the operation. Your mother spends most of the day with him, Connie too. There’s cops all over the hospital and Tessio’s men hang around too, just in case. In a couple of days he’ll be all right and then we can see what he wants us to do. Meanwhile we have to keep Sollozzo from doing anything rash. That’s why I want to start you talking deals with him.”
   Sonny grunted. “Until he does, I’ve got Clemenza and Tessio looking for him. Maybe we’ll get lucky and solve the whole business.”
   “You won’t get lucky,” Hagen said. “Sollozzo is too smart.” Hagen paused. “He knows once he comes to the table he’ll have to go our way mostly. That’s why he’s stalling. I’m guessing he’s trying to line up support from the other New York Families so that we won’t go after him when the old man gives us the word.”
   Sonny frowned. “Why the hell should they do that?”
   Hagen said patiently, “To avert a big war which hurts everybody and brings the papers and government into the act. Also, Sollozzo will give them a piece of the action. And you know how much dough there is in drugs. The Corleone Family doesn’t need it, we have the gambling, which is the best business to have. But the other Families are hungry. Sollozzo is a proven man, they know he can make the operation go on a big scale. Alive he’s money in their pockets, dead he’s trouble.”
   Sonny’s face was as Michael had never seen it. The heavy Cupid mouth and bronzed skin seemed gray. “I don’t give a fuck what they want. They better not mess in this fight.”
   Clemenza and Tessio shifted uneasily in their chairs, infantry leaders who hear their general rave about storming an impregnable hill no matter what the cost. Hagen said a little impatiently, “Come on, Sonny, your father wouldn’t like you thinking that way. You know what he always says, ‘That’s a waste.’ Sure, we’re not going to let anybody stop us if the old man says we go after Sollozzo. But this is not a personal thing, this is business. If we go after the Turk and the Families interfere, we’ll negotiate the issue. If the Families see that we’re determined to have Sollozzo, they’ll let us. The Don will make concessions in other areas to square things. But don’t go blood crazy on a thing like this. It’s business. Even the shooting of your father was business, not personal. You should know that by now.”
   Sonny’s eyes were still hard. “OK. I understand all that. Just so long as you understand that nobody stands in our way when we want Sollozzo.”
   Sonny turned to Tessio. “Any leads on Luca?”
   Tessio shook his head. “None at all. Sollozzo must have snatched him.”
   Hagen said quietly, “Sollozzo wasn’t worried about Luca, which struck me as funny. He’s too smart not to worry about a guy like Luca. I think he maybe got him out of the picture, one way or the other.”
   Sonny muttered, “Christ, I hope Luca isn’t fighting against us. That’s the one thing I’d be afraid of. Clemenza, Tessio, how do you two guys figure it?”
   Clemenza said slowly, “Anybody could go wrong, look at Paulie. But with Luca, he was a man who could only go one way. The Godfather was the only thing he believed in, the only man he feared. But not only that, Sonny, he respected your father as no one else respected him and the Godfather has earned respect from everyone. No, Luca would never betray us. And I find it hard to believe that a man like Sollozzo, no matter how cunning, could surprise Luca. He was a man who suspected everyone and everything. He was always ready for the worst. I think maybe he just went off someplace for a few days. We’ll be hearing from him anytime now.”
   Sonny turned to Tessio. The Brooklyn caporegime shrugged. “Any man can turn traitor. Luca was very touchy. Maybe the Don offended him some way. That could be. I think though that Sollozzo gave him a little surprise. That fits in with what the Consigliere says. We should expect the worst.”
   Sonny said to all of them, “Sollozzo should get the word soon about Paulie Gatto. How will that affect him?”
   Clemenza said grimly, “It will make him think. He will know the Corleone Family are not fools. He will realize that he was very lucky yesterday.”
   Sonny said sharply, “That wasn’t luck. Sollozzo was planning that for weeks. They must have tailed the old man to his office every day and watched his routine. Then they bought Paulie off and maybe Luca. They snatched Tom right on the button. They did everything they wanted to do. They were unlucky, not lucky. Those button men they hired weren’t good enough and the old man moved too quick. If they had killed him, I would have had to make a deal and Sollozzo would have won. For now. I would have waited maybe and got him five, ten years from now. But don’t call him lucky, Pete, that’s underrating him. And we’ve done that too much lately.”
   One of the button men brought a bowl of spaghetti in from the kitchen and then some plates, forks and wine. They ate as they talked. Michael watched in amazement. He didn’t eat and neither did Tom, but Sonny, Clemenza and Tessio dug in, mopping up sauce with crusts of bread. It was almost comical. They continued their discussion.
   Tessio didn’t think that the loss of Paulie Gatto would upset Sollozzo, in fact he thought that the Turk might have anticipated it, indeed might have welcomed it. A useless mouth off the payroll. And he would not be frightened by it; after all, would they be in such a situation?
   Michael spoke up diffidently. “I know I’m an amateur in this, but from everything you guys have said about Sollozzo, plus the fact that all of a sudden he’s out of touch with Tom, I’d guess he has an ace up his sleeve. He might be ready to pull off something real tricky that would put him back on top. If we could figure out what that would be, we’d be in the driver’s seat.”
   Sonny said reluctantly, “Yeah, I thought of that and the only thing I can figure is Luca. The word is already out that he’s to be brought here before he’s allowed any of his old rights in the Family. The only other thing I can think of is that Sollozzo has made his deal with the Families in New York and we’ll get the word tomorrow that they will be against us in a war. That we’ll have to give the Turk his deal. Right, Tom?”
   Hagen nodded. “That’s what it looks like to me. And we can’t move against that kind of opposition without your father. He’s the only one who can stand against the Families. He has the political connections they always need and he can use them for trading. If he wants to badly enough.”
   Clemenza said, a little arrogantly for a man whose top button man had recently betrayed him, “Sollozzo will never get near this house, Boss, you don’t have to worry about that.”
   Sonny looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said to Tessio, “How about the hospital, your men got it covered?”
   For the first time during the conference Tessio seemed to be absolutely sure of his ground. “Outside and inside,” he said. “Right around the clock. The cops have it covered pretty good too. Detectives at the bedroom door waiting to question the old man. That’s a laugh. The Don is still getting that stuff in the tubes, no food, so we don’t have to worry about the kitchen, which would be something to worry about with those Turks, they believe in poison. They can’t get at the Don, not in any way.”
   Sonny tilted back in his chair. “It wouldn’t be me, they have to do business with me, they need the Family machine.” He grinned at Michael. “I wonder if it’s you? Maybe Sollozzo figures to snatch you and hold you for a hostage to make a deal.”
   Michael thought ruefully, there goes my date with Kay. Sonny wouldn’t let him out of the house. But Hagen said impatiently, “No, he could have snatched Mike anytime if he wanted insurance. But everybody knows that Mike is not in the Family business. He’s a civilian and if Sollozzo snatches him, then he loses all the other New York Families. Even the Tattaglias would have to help hunt him down. No, it’s simple enough. Tomorrow we’ll get a representative from all the Families who’ll tell us we have to do business with the Turk. That’s what he’s waiting for. That’s his ace in the hole.”
   Michael heaved a sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “I have to go into town tonight.”
   “Why?” Sonny asked sharply.
   Michael grinned. “I figure I’ll drop in to the hospital and visit the old man, see Mom and Connie. And I got some other things to do.” Like the Don, Michael never told his real business and now he didn’t want to tell Sonny he was seeing Kay Adams. There was no reason not to tell him, it was just habit.
   There was a loud murmur of voices in the kitchen. Clemenza went out to see what was happening. When he came back he was holding Luca Brasi’s bulletproof vest in his hands. Wrapped in the vest was a huge dead fish.
   Clemenza said dryly, “The Turk has heard about his spy Paulie Gatto.”
   Tessio said just as dryly, “And now we know about Luca Brasi.”
   Sonny lit a cigar and took a shot of whiskey. Michael, bewildered, said. “What the hell does that fish mean?” It was Hagen the Irisher, the Consigliere, who answered him. “The fish means that Luca Brasi is sleeping on the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “It’s an old Sicilian message.”

Chapter 9

   When Michael Corleone went into the city that night it was with a depressed spirit. He felt that he was being enmeshed in the Family business against his will and he resented Sonny using him even to answer the phone. He felt uncomfortable being on the inside of the Family councils as if he could be absolutely trusted with such secrets as murder. And now, going to see Kay, he felt guilty about her also. He had never been completely honest with her about his family. He had told her about them but always with little jokes and colorful anecdotes that made them seem more like adventurers in a Technicolor movie than what they really were. And now his father had been shot down in the street and his eldest brother was making plans for murder. That was putting it plainly and simply but that was never how he would tell it to Kay. He had already said his father being shot was more like an “accident” and that all the trouble was over. Hell, it looked like it was just beginning. Sonny and Tom were off-center on this guy Sollozzo, they were still underrating him, even though Sonny was smart enough to see the danger. Michael tried to think what the Turk might have up his sleeve. He was obviously a bold man, a clever man, a man of extraordinary force. You had to figure him to come up with a real surprise. But then Sonny and Tom and Clemenza and Tessio were all agreed that everything was under control and they all had more experience than he did. He was the “civilian” in this war, Michael thought wryly. And they’d have to give him a hell of a lot better medals than he’d gotten in World War II to make him join this one.
   Thinking this made him feel guilty about not feeling more sympathy for his father. His own father shot fall of holes and yet in a curious way Michael, better than anyone else, understood when Tom had said it was just business, not personal. That his father had paid for the power he had wielded all his life, the respect he had extorted from all those around him.
   What Michael wanted was out, out of all this, to lead his own life. But he couldn’t cut loose from the family until the crisis was over. He had to help in a civilian capacity. With sudden clarity he realized that he was annoyed with the role assigned to him, that of the privileged noncombatant, the excused conscientious objector. That was why the word “civilian” kept popping into his skull in such an irritating way.
   When he got to the hotel, Kay was waiting for him in the lobby. (A couple of Clemenza’s people had driven him into town and dropped him off on a nearby corner after making sure they were not followed.)
   They had dinner together and some drinks. “What time are you going to visit your father?” Kay asked.
   Michael looked at his watch. “Visiting hours end at eight-thirty. I think I’ll go after everybody has left. They’ll let me up. He has a private room and his own nurses so I can just sit with him for a while. I don’t think he can talk yet or even know if I’m there. But I have to show respect.”
   Kay said quietly, “I feel so sorry for your father, he seemed like such a nice man at the wedding. I can’t believe the things the papers are printing about him. I’m sure most of it’s not true.”
   Michael said politely, “I don’t think so either.” He was surprised to find himself so secretive with Kay. He loved her, he trusted her, but he would never tell her anything about his father or the Family. She was an outsider.
   “What about you?” Kay asked. “Are you going to get mixed up in this gang war the papers are talking about so gleefully?”
   Michael grinned, unbuttoned his jacket and held it wide open. “Look, no guns,” he said. Kay laughed.
   It was getting late and they went up to their room. She mixed a drink for both of them and sat on his lap as they drank. Beneath her dress she was all silk until his hand touched the glowing skin of her thigh. They fell back on the bed together and made love with all their clothes on, their mouths glued together. When they were finished they lay very still, feeling the heat of their bodies burning through their garments. Kay murmured, “Is that what you soldiers call a quickie?”
   “Yeah,” Michael said.
   “It’s not bad,” Kay said in a judicious voice.
   They dozed off until Michael suddenly started up anxiously and looked at his watch. “Damn,” he said. “It’s nearly ten. I have to get down to the hospital.” He went to the bathroom to wash up and comb his hair. Kay came in after him and put her arms around his waist from behind. “When are we going to get married?” she asked.
   “Whenever you say,” Michael said. “As soon as this family thing quiets down and my old man gets better. I think you’d better explain things to your parents though.”
   “What should I explain?” Kay said quietly.
   Michael ran the comb through his hair. “Just say that you’ve met a brave, handsome guy of Italian descent. Top marks at Dartmouth. Distinguished Service Cross during the war plus the Purple Heart. Honest. Hard-working. But his father is a Mafia chief who has to kill bad people, sometimes bribe high government officials and in his line of work gets shot full of holes himself. But that has nothing to do with his honest hardworking son. Do you think you can remember all that?”
   Kay let go his body and leaned against the door of the bathroom. “Is he really?” she said. “Does he really?” She paused. “Kill people?”
   Michael finished combing his hair. “I don’t really know,” he said. “Nobody really knows. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”
   Before he went out the door she asked, “When will I see you again?”
   Michael kissed her. “I want you to go home and think things over in that little hick town of yours,” he said. “I don’t want you to get mixed up in this business in any way. After the Christmas holidays I’ll be back at school and we’ll get together up in Hanover. OK?”
   “OK,” she said. She watched him go out the door, saw him wave before he stepped into the elevator. She had never felt so close to him, never so much in love and if someone had told her she would not see Michael again until three years passed, she would not have been able to bear the anguish of it.


* * *

   When Michael got out of the cab in front of the French Hospital he was surprised to see that the street was completely deserted. When he entered the hospital he was even more surprised to find the lobby empty. Damn it, what the hell were Clemenza and Tessio doing? Sure, they never went to West Point but they knew enough about tactic to have outposts. A couple of their men should have been in the lobby at least.
   Even the latest visitors had departed, it was almost ten-thirty at night. Michael was tense and alert now. He didn’t bother to stop at the information desk, he already knew his father’s room number up on the fourth floor. He took the self-service elevator. Oddly enough nobody stopped him until he reached the nurses’ station on the fourth floor. But he strode right past her query and on to his father’s room. There was no one outside the door. Where the hell were the two detectives who were supposed to be waiting around to guard and question the old man? Where the hell were Tessio and Clemenza’s people? Could there be someone inside the room? But the door was open. Michael went in. There was a figure in the bed and by the December moonlight straining through the window Michael could see his father’s face. Even now it was impassive, the chest heaved shallowly with his uneven breath. Tubes hung from steel gallows beside the bed and ran into his nose. On the floor was a glass jar receiving the poisons emptied from his stomach by other tubes. Michael stayed there for a few moments to make sure his father was all right, then backed out of the room.
   He told the nurse, “My name is Michael Corleone, I just want to sit with my father. What happened to the detectives who were supposed to be guarding him?”
   The nurse was a pretty young thing with a great deal of confidence in the power of her office. “Oh, your father just had too many visitors, it interfered with the hospital service,” she said. “The police came and made them all leave about ten minutes ago. And then just five minutes ago I had to call the detectives to the phone for an emergency alarm from their headquarters, and then they left too. But don’t worry, I look in on your father often and I can hear any sound from his room. That’s why we leave the doors open.”
   “Thank you,” Michael said. “I’ll sit with him for a little while. OK?”
   She smiled at him. “Just for a little bit and then I’m afraid you’ll have to leave. It’s the rules, you know.”
   Michael went back into his father’s room. He took the phone from its cradle and got the hospital operator to give him the house in Long Beach, the phone in the corner office room. Sonny answered. Michael whispered, “Sonny, I’m down at the hospital, I came down late. Sonny, there’s nobody here. None of Tessio’s people. No detectives at the door. The old man was completely unprotected.” His voice was trembling.
   There was a long silence and then Sonny’s voice came, low and impressed, “This is Sollozzo’s move you were talking about.”
   Michael said, “That’s what I figured too. But how did he get the cops to clear everybody out and where did they go? What happened to Tessio’s men? Jesus Christ, has that bastard Sollozzo got the New York Police Department in his pocket too?”
   “Take it easy, kid.” Sonny’s voice was soothing. “We got lucky again with you going to visit the hospital so late. Stay in the old man’s room. Lock the door from the inside. I’ll have some men there inside of fifteen minutes, soon as I make some calls. Just sit tight and don’t panic. OK, kid?”
   “I won’t panic,” Michael said. For the first time since it had all started he felt a furious anger rising in him, a cold hatred for his father’s enemies.
   He hung up the phone and rang the buzzer for the nurse. He decided to use his own judgment and disregard Sonny’s orders. When the nurse came in he said, “I don’t want you to get frightened, but we have to move my father right away. To another room or another floor. Can you disconnect all these tubes so we can wheel the bed out?”
   The nurse said, “That’s ridiculous. We have to get permission from the doctor.”
   Michael spoke very quickly. “You’ve read about my father in the papers. You’ve seen that there’s no one here tonight to guard him. Now I’ve just gotten word some men will come into the hospital to kill him. Please believe me and help me.” He-could be extraordinarily persuasive when he wanted to be.
   The nurse said, “We don’t have to disconnect the tubes. We can wheel the stand with the bed.”
   “Do you have an empty room?” Michael whispered.
   “At the end of the hall,” the nurse said.
   It was done in a matter of moments, very quickly and very efficiently. Then Michael said to the nurse, “Stay here with him until help comes. If you’re outside at your station you might get hurt.”
   At that moment he heard his father’s voice from the bed, hoarse but full of strength, “Michael, is it you? What happened, what is it?”
   Michael leaned over the bed. He took his father’s hand in his. “It’s Mike,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. Now listen, don’t make any noise at all, especially if somebody calls out your name. Some people want to kill you, understand? But I’m here so don’t be afraid.”
   Don Corleone, still not fully conscious of what had happened to him the day before, in terrible pain, yet smiled benevolently on his youngest son, wanting to tell him, but it was too much effort, “Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.”

Chapter 10

   The hospital was small and private with just one entrance. Michael looked through the window down into the street. There was a curved courtyard that had steps leading down into the street and the street was empty of cars. But whoever came into the hospital would have to come through that entrance. He knew he didn’t have much time so he ran out of the room and down the four flights and through the wide doors of the ground floor entrance. Off to the side he saw the ambulance yard and there was no car there, no ambulances either.
   Michael stood on the sidewalk outside the hospital and lit a cigarette. He unbuttoned his coat and stood in the light of a lamppost so that his features could be seen. A young man was walking swiftly down from Ninth Avenue, a package under his arm. The young man wore a combat jacket and had a heavy shock of black hair. His face was familiar when he came under the lamplight but Michael could not place it. But the young man stopped in front of him and put out his hand, saying in a heavy Italian accent, “Don Michael, do you remember me? Enzo, the baker’s helper to Nazorine the Paniterra; his son-in-law. Your father saved my life by getting the government to let me stay in America.”
   Michael shook his hand. He remembered him now.
   Enzo went on, “I’ve come to pay my respects to your father. Will they let me into the hospital so late?”
   Michael smiled and shook his head. “No, but thanks anyway. I’ll tell the Don you came.” A car came roaring down the street and Michael was instantly alert. He said to Enzo, “Leave here quickly. There may be trouble. You don’t want to get involved with the police.”
   He saw the look of fear on the young Italian’s face. Trouble with the police might mean being deported or refusal of citizenship. But the young man stood fast. He whispered in Italian. “If there’s trouble I’ll stay to help. I owe it to the Godfather.”
   Michael was touched. He was about to tell the young man to go away again, but then he thought, why not let him stay? Two men in front of the hospital might scare off any of Sollozzo’s crew sent to do a job. One man almost certainly would not. He gave Enzo a cigarette and lit it for him. They both stood under the lamppost is the cold December night. The yellow panes of the hospital, bisected by the greens of Christmas decorations, twinkled down on them. They had almost finished their cigarettes when a long low black car turned into 30th Street from Ninth Avenue and cruised toward them, very close to the curb. It almost stopped. Michael peered to see their faces inside, his body flinching involuntarily. The car seemed about to stop, then speeded forward. Somebody had recognized him. Michael gave Enzo another cigarette and noticed that the baker’s hands were shaking. To his surprise his own hands were steady.
   They stayed in the street smoking for what was no more than ten minutes when suddenly the night air was split by a police siren. A patrol car made a screaming turn from Ninth Avenue and pulled up in front of the hospital. Two more squad cars followed right behind it. Suddenly the hospital entranceway was flooded with uniformed police and detectives. Michael heaved a sigh of relief. Good old Sonny must have gotten through right away. He moved forward to meet them.
   Two huge, burly policemen grabbed his arms. Another frisked him. A massive police captain, gold braid on his cap, came up the steps, his men parting respectfully to leave a path. He was a vigorous man for his girth and despite the white hair that peeked out of his cap. His face was beefy red. He came up to Michael and said harshly, “I thought I got all you guinea hoods locked up. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”
   One of the cops standing beside Michael said, “He’s clean, Captain.”
   Michael didn’t answer. He was studying this police captain, coldly searching his face, the metallic blue eyes. A detective in plain clothes said, “That’s Michael Corleone, the Don’s son.”
   Michael said quietly, “What happened to the detectives who were supposed to be guarding my father? Who pulled them off that detail?”
   The police captain was choleric with rage. “You fucking hood, who the hell are you to tell me my business? I pulled them off. I don’t give a shit how many dago gangsters kill each other. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t lift a finger to keep your old man from getting knocked off. Now get the hell out of here. Get out of this street, you punk, and stay out of this hospital when it’s not visiting hours.”
   Michael was still studying him intently. He was not angry at what this police captain was saying. His mind was racing furiously. Was it possible that Sollozzo had been in that first car and had seen him standing in front of the hospital? Was it possible that Sollozzo had then called this captain and said, “How come the Corleones’ men are still around the hospital when I paid you to lock them up?” Was it possible that all had been carefully planned as Sonny had said? Everything fitted in. Still cool, he said to the captain, “I’m not leaving this hospital until you put guards around my father’s room.”
   The captain didn’t bother answering. He said to the detective standing beside him, “Phil, lock this punk up.”
   The detective said hesitantly, “The kid is clean, Captain. He’s a war hero and he’s never been mixed up in the rackets. The papers could make a stink.”
   The captain started to turn on the detective, his face red with fury. He roared out, “Goddamn it, I said lock him up.”
   Michael, still thinking clearly, not angry, said with deliberate malice, “How much is the Turk paying you to set my father up, Captain?”
   The police captain turned to him. He said to the two burly patrolmen, “Hold him.” Michael felt his arms pinned to his sides. He saw the captain’s massive fist arching toward his face. He tried to weave away but the fist caught him high on the cheekbone. A grenade exploded in his skull. His mouth filled with blood and small hard bones that he realized were his teeth. He could feel the side of his head puff up as if it were filling with air. His legs were weightless and he would have fallen if the two policemen had not held him up. But he was still conscious. The plainclothes detective had stepped in front of him to keep the captain from hitting him again and was saying, “Jesus Christ, Captain, you really hurt him.”
   The captain said loudly, “I didn’t touch him. He attacked me and he fell. Do you understand that? He resisted arrest.”
   Through a red haze Michael could see more cars pulling up to the curb. Men were getting out. One of them he recognized as Clemenza’s lawyer, who was now speaking to the police captain, suavely and surely. “The Corleone Family has hired a firm of private detectives to guard Mr. Corleone. These men with me are licensed to carry firearms, Captain. If you arrest them, you’ll have to appear before a judge in the morning and tell him why.”
   The lawyer glanced at Michael. “Do you want to prefer charges against whoever did this to you?” he asked.
   Michael had trouble talking. His jaws wouldn’t come together but he managed to mumble. “I slipped,” he said. “I slipped and fell.” He saw the captain give him a triumphant glance and he tried to answer that glance with a smile. At all costs he wanted to hide the delicious icy chilliness that controlled his brain, the surge of wintry cold hatred that pervaded his body. He wanted to give no warning to anyone in this world as to how he felt at this moment. As the Don would not. Then he felt himself carried into the hospital and he lost consciousness.
   When he woke up in the morning he found that his jaw had been wired together and that four of his teeth along the left side of his mouth were missing. Hagen was sitting beside his bed.
   “Did they drug me up?” Michael asked.
   “Yeah,” Hagen said. “They had to dig some bone fragments out of your gums and they figured it would be too painful. Besides you were practically out anyway.”
   “Is there anything else wrong with me?” Michael asked.
   “No,” Hagen said. “Sonny wants you out at the Long Beach house. Think you can make it?”
   “Sure,” Michael said. “Is the Don all right?”
   Hagen flushed. “I think we’ve solved the problem now. We have a firm of private detectives and we have the whole area loaded. I’ll tell you more when we get in the car.”
   Clemenza was driving, Michael and Hagen sat in the back. Michael’s head throbbed. “So what the hell really happened last night, did you guys ever find out?”
   Hagen spoke quietly. “Sonny has an inside man, that Detective Phillips who tried to protect you. He gave us the scoop. The police captain, McCluskey, is a guy who’s been on the take very heavy ever since he’s been a patrolman. Our Family has paid him quite a bit. And he’s greedy and untrustworthy to do business with. But Sollozzo must have paid him a big price. McCluskey had all Tessio’s men around and in the hospital arrested right after visiting hours. It didn’t help that some of them were carrying guns. Then McCluskey pulled the official guard detectives off the Don’s door. Claimed he needed them and that some other cops were supposed to go over and take their place but they got their assignments bollixed. Baloney. He was paid off to set the Don up. And Phillips said he’s the kind of guy who’ll try it again. Sollozzo must have given him a fortune for openers and promised him the moon to come.”
   “Was my getting hurt in the papers?”
   “No,” Hagen said. “We kept that quiet. Nobody wants that known. Not the cops. Not us.”
   “Good,” Michael said. “Did that boy Enzo get away?”
   “Yeah,” Hagen said. “He was smarter than you. When the cops came he disappeared. He claims he stuck with you while Sollozzo’s car went by. Is that true?”
   “Yeah,” Michael said. “He’s a good kid.”
   “He’ll be taken care of,” Hagen said. “You feeling OK?” His face was concerned. “You look lousy.”
   “I’m OK,” Michael said. “What was that police captain’s name?”
   “McCluskey,” Hagen said. “By the way, it might make you feel better to know that the Corleone Family finally got up on the scoreboard. Bruno Tattaglia, four o’clock this morning.”
   Michael sat up. “How come? I thought we were supposed to sit tight.”
   Hagen shrugged. “After what happened at the hospital Sonny got hard. The button men are out all over New York and New Jersey. We made the list last night. I’m trying to hold Sonny in, Mike. Maybe you can talk to him. This whole business can still be settled without a major war.”
   “I’ll talk to him,” Michael said. “Is there a conference this morning?”
   “Yeah,” Hagen said. “Sollozzo finally got in touch and wants to sit down with us. A negotiator is arranging the details. That means we win. Sollozzo knows he’s lost and he wants to get out with his life.” Hagen paused. “Maybe he thought we were soft, ready to be taken, because we didn’t strike back. Now with one of the Tattaglia sons dead he knows we mean business. He really took an awful gamble bucking the Don. By the way, we got the confirmation on Luca. They killed him the night before they shot your father. In Bruno’s nightclub. Imagine that?”
   Michael said, “No wonder they caught him off guard.”


* * *

   At the houses in Long Beach the entrance to the mall was blocked by a long black car parked across its mouth. Two men leaned against the hood of the car. The two houses on each side, Michael noticed, had opened windows on their upper floors. Christ, Sonny must really mean business.
   Clemenza parked the car outside the mall and they walked inside it. The two guards were Clemenza’s men and he gave them a frown of greeting that served as a salute. The men nodded their heads in acknowledgment. There were no smiles, no greetings. Clemenza led Hagen and Michael Corleone into the house.
   The door was opened by another guard before they rang. He had obviously been watching from a window. They went to the corner office and found Sonny and Tessio waiting for them. Sonny came to Michael, took his younger brother’s head in his hands and said kiddingly, “Beautiful. Beautiful.” Michael knocked his hands away, and went to the desk and poured himself some scotch, hoping it would dull the ache in his wired jaw.
   The five of them sat around the room but the atmosphere was different from their earlier meetings. Sonny was gayer, more cheerful, and Michael realized what that gaiety meant. There were no longer any doubts in his older brother’s mind. He was committed and nothing would sway him. The attempt by Sollozzo the night before was the final straw. There could no longer be any question of a truce.
   “We got a call from the negotiator while you were gone,” Sonny said to Hagen. “The Turk wants a meeting now.” Sonny laughed. “The balls on that son of a bitch,” he said admiringly. “After he craps out last night he wants a meeting today or the next day. Meanwhile we’re supposed just to lay back and take everything he dishes out. What fucking nerve.”
   Tom asked cautiously, “What did you answer?”
   Sonny grinned. “I said sure, why not? Anytime he says, I’m in no hurry. I’ve got a hundred button men out on the street twenty-four hours a day. If Sollozzo shows one hair on his asshole he’s dead. Let them take all the time they want.”
   Hagen said, “Was there a definite proposal?”
   “Yeah,” Sonny said. “He wants us to send Mike to meet him to hear his proposition. The negotiator guarantees Mike’s safety. Sollozzo doesn’t ask us to guarantee his safety, he knows he can’t ask that. No point. So the meeting will be arranged on his side. His people will pick Mike up and take Mike to the meeting place. Mike will listen to Sollozzo and then they’ll turn him loose. But the meeting place is secret. The promise is the deal will be so good we can’t turn it down.”
   Hagen asked, “What about the Tattaglias? What will they do about Bruno?”
   “That’s part of the deal. The negotiator says the Tattaglia Family has agreed to go along with Sollozzo. They’ll forget about Bruno Tattaglia. He pays for what they did to my father. One cancels out the other.” Sonny laughed again. “The nervy bastards.”
   Hagen said cautiously, “We should hear what they have to say.”
   Sonny shook his head from side to side. “No, no, Consigliere, not this time.” His voice held a faint trace of Italian accent. He was consciously mocking his father just to kid around. “No more meetings. No more discussions. No more Sollozzo tricks. When the negotiator gets in touch with us again for our answer I want you to give him one message. I want Sollozzo. If not, it’s all-out war. We’ll go to the mattresses and we’ll put all the button men out on the street. Business will just have to suffer.”
   “The other Families won’t stand for an all-out war,” Hagen said. “It puts too much heat on everybody.”
   Sonny shrugged. “They have a simple solution. Give me Sollozzo. Or fight the Corleone Family.” Sonny paused, then said roughly, “No more advice on how to patch it up, Tom. The decision is made. Your job is to help me win. Understand?”
   Hagen bowed his head. He was deep in thought for a moment. Then he said, “I spoke to your contact in the police station. He says that Captain McCluskey is definitely on Sollozzo’s payroll and for big money. Not only that, but McCluskey is going to get a piece of the drug operation. McCluskey has agreed to be Sollozzo’s bodyguard. The Turk doesn’t poke his nose out of his hole without McCluskey. When he meets Mike for the conference, McCluskey will be sitting beside him. In civilian clothes but carrying his gun. Now what you have to understand, Sonny, is that while Sollozzo is guarded like this, he’s invulnerable. Nobody has ever gunned down a New York police captain and gotten away with it. The heat in this town would be unbearable what with the newspapers, the whole police department, the churches, everything. That would be disastrous. The Families would be after you. The Corleone Family would become outcasts. Even the old man’s political protection would run for cover. So take that into consideration.”
   Sonny shrugged. “McCluskey can’t stay with the Turk forever. We’ll wait.”
   Tessio and Clemenza were puffing on their cigars uneasily, not daring to speak, but sweating. It would be their skins that would go on the line if the wrong decision was made.
   Michael spoke for the first time. He asked Hagen, “Can the old man be moved out of the hospital onto the mall here?”
   Hagen shook his head. “That’s the first thing I asked. Impossible. He’s in very bad shape. He’ll pull through but he needs all kinds of attention, maybe some more surgery. Impossible.”
   “Then you have to get Sollozzo right away,” Michael said. “We can’t wait. The guy is too dangerous. He’ll come up with some new idea. Remember, the key is still that he gets rid of the old man. He knows that. OK, he knows that now it’s very tough so he’s willing to take defeat for his life. But if he’s going to get killed anyway, he’ll have another crack at the Don. And with that polite captain helping him who knows what the hell might happen. We can’t take that chance. We have to get Sollozzo right away.”
   Sonny was scratching his chin thoughtfully. “You’re right, kid,” he said. “You got right to the old nuts. We can’t let Sollozzo get another crack at the old man.”
   Hagen said quietly, “What about Captain McCluskey?”
   Sonny turned to Michael with an odd little smile. “Yeah, kid, what about that tough police captain?”
   Michael said slowly, “OK, it’s an extreme. But there are times when the most extreme measures are justified. Let’s think now that we have to kill McCluskey. The way to do it would be to have him heavily implicated so that it’s not an honest police captain doing his duty but a crooked police official mixed up in the rackets who got what was coming to him, like any crook. We have newspaper people on our payroll we can give that story to with enough proof so that they can back it up. That should take some of the heat off. How does that sound?” Michael looked around deferentially to the others. Tessio and Clemenza had gloomy faces and refused to speak. Sonny said with the same odd smile, “Go on, kid, you’re doing great. Out of the mouths of infants, as the Don always used to say. Go ahead, Mike, tell us more.”
   Hagen was smiling too a little and averting his head. Michael flushed. “Well, they want me to go to a conference with Sollozzo. It will be me, Sollozzo and McCluskey all on our own. Set up the meeting for two days from now, then get our informers to find out where the meeting will be held. Insist that it has to be a public place, that I’m not going to let them take me into any apartments or houses. Let it be a restaurant or a bar at the height of the dinner hour, something like that, so that I’ll feel safe. They’ll feel safe too. Even Sollozzo won’t figure that we’ll dare to gun the captain. They’ll frisk me when I meet them so I’ll have to be clean then, but figure out a way you can get a weapon to me while I’m meeting them. Then I’ll take both of them.”
   All four heads turned and stared at him. Clemenza and Tessio were gravely astonished. Hagen looked a little sad but not surprised. He started to speak and thought better of it. But Sonny, his heavy Cupid’s face twitching with mirth, suddenly broke out in loud roars of laughter. It was deep belly laughter, not faking. He was really breaking up. He pointed a finger at Michael, trying to speak through gasps of mirth. “You, the high-class college kid, you never wanted to get mixed up in the Family business. Now you wanta kill a police captain and the Turk just because you got your face smashed by McCluskey. You’re taking it personal, it’s just business and you’re taking it personal. You wanta kill these two guys just because you got slapped in the face. It was all a lot of crap. All these years it was just a lot of crap.”
   Clemenza and Tessio, completely misunderstanding, thinking that Sonny was laughing at his young brother’s bravado for making such an offer, were also smiling broadly and a little patronizingly at Michael. Only Hagen warily kept his face impassive.
   Michael looked around at all of them, then stared at Sonny, who still couldn’t stop laughing. “You’ll take both of them?” Sonny said. “Hey, kid, they won’t give you medals, they put you in the electric chair. You know that? This is no hero business, kid, you don’t shoot people from a mile away. You shoot when you see the whites of their eyes like we got taught in school, remember? You gotta stand right next to them and blow their heads off and their brains get all over your nice Ivy League suit. How about that, kid, you wanta do that just because some dumb cop slapped you around?” He was still laughing.
   Michael stood up. “You’d better stop laughing,” he said. The change in him was so extraordinary that the smiles vanished from the faces of Clemenza and Tessio. Michael was not tall or heavily built but his presence seemed to radiate danger. In that moment he was a reincarnation of Don Corleone himself. His eyes had gone a pale tan and his face was bleached of color. He seemed at any moment about to fling himself on his older and stronger brother. There was no doubt that if he had had a weapon in his hands Sonny would have been in danger. Sonny stopped laughing, and Michael said to him in a cold deadly voice, “Don’t you think I can do it, you son of a bitch?”
   Sonny had got over his laughing fit. “I know you can do it,” he said. “I wasn’t laughing at what you said. I was just laughing at how funny things turn out. I always said you were the toughest one in the Family, tougher than the Don himself. You were the only one who could stand off the old man. I remember you when you were a kid. What a temper you had then. Hell, you even used to fight me and I was a lot older than you. And Freddie had to beat the shit out of you at least once a week. And now Sollozzo has you figured for the soft touch in the Family because you let McCluskey hit you without fighting back and you wouldn’t get mixed up in the Family fights. He figures he got nothing to worry about if he meets you head to head. And McCluskey too, he’s got you figured for a yellow guinea.” Sonny paused and then said softly, “But you’re a Corleone after all, you son of a bitch. And I was the only one who knew it. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the last three days, ever since the old man got shot, waiting for you to crack out of that Ivy League, war hero bullshit character you’ve been wearing. I’ve been waiting for you to become my right arm so we can kill those fucks that are trying to destroy our father and our Family. And all it took was a sock on the jaw. How do you like that?” Sonny made a comical gesture, a punch, and repeated, “How do you like that?”
   The tension had relaxed in the room. Mike shook his head. “Sonny, I’m doing it because it’s the only thing to do. I can’t give Sollozzo another crack at the old man. I seem to be the only one who can get close enough to him. And I figured it out. I don’t think you can get anybody else to knock off a police captain. Maybe you would do it, Sonny, but you have a wife and kids and you have to run the Family business until the old man is in shape. So that leaves me and Freddie. Freddie is in shock and out of action. Finally that leaves just me. It’s all logic. The sock on the jaw had nothing to do with it.”
   Sonny came over and embraced him. “I don’t give a damn what your reasons are, just so long as you’re with us now. And I’ll tell you another thing, you’re right all the way. Tom, what’s your say?”
   Hagen shrugged. “The reasoning is solid. What makes it so is that I don’t think the Turk is sincere about a deal. I think he’ll still try to get at the Don. Anyway on his past performance that’s how we have to figure him. So we try to get Sollozzo. We get him even if we have to get the police captain. But whoever does the job is going to get an awful lot of heat. Does it have to be Mike?”
   Sonny said softly, “I could do it.”
   Hagen shook his head impatiently. “Sollozzo wouldn’t let you get within a mile of him if he had ten police captains. And besides you’re the acting head of the Family. You can’t be risked.” Hagen paused and said to Clemenza and Tessio, “Do either one of you have a top button man, someone really special, who would take on this job? He wouldn’t have to worry about money for the rest of his life.”
   Clemenza spoke first. “Nobody that Sollozzo wouldn’t know, he’d catch on right away. He’d catch on if me or Tessio went too.”
   Hagen said, “What about somebody really tough who hasn’t made his rep yet, a good rookie?”
   Both caporegimes shook their heads. Tessio smiled to take the sting out of his words and said, “That’s like bringing a guy up from the minors to pitch the World Series.”
   Sonny broke in curtly, “It has to be Mike. For a million different reasons. Most important they got him down as faggy. And he can do the job, I guarantee that, and that’s important because this is the only shot we’ll get at that sneaky bastard Turk. So now we have to figure out the best way to back him up. Tom, Clemenza, Tessio, find out where Sollozzo will take him for the conference, I don’t care how much it costs. When we find that out we can figure out how we can get a weapon into his hands. Clemenza, I want you to get him a really ‘safe’ gun out of your collection, the ‘coldest’ one you got. Impossible to trace. Try to make it short barrel with a lot of blasting power. It doesn’t have to be accurate. He’ll be right on top of them when he uses it. Mike, as soon as you’ve used the gun, drop it on the floor. Don’t be caught with it on you. Clemenza, tape the barrel and the trigger with that special stuff you got so he won’t leave prints. Remember, Mike, we can square everything, witnesses, and so forth, but if they catch you with the gun on you we can’t square that. We’ll have transportation and protection and then we’ll make you disappear for a nice long vacation until the heat wears off. You’ll be gone a long time, Mike, but I don’t want you saying good-bye to your girl friend or even calling her. After it’s all over and you’re out of the country I’ll send her word that you’re OK. Those are orders.” Sonny smiled at his brother. “Now stick with Clemenza and get used to handling the gun he picks out for you. Maybe even practice a little. We’ll take care of everything else. Everything. OK, kid?”
   Again Michael Corleone felt that delicious refreshing chilliness all over his body. He said to his brother, “You didn’t have to give me that crap about not talking to my girl friend about something like this. What the hell did you think I was going to do, call her up to say good-bye?”
   Sonny said hastily, “OK, but you’re still a rookie so I spell things out. Forget it.”
   Michael said with a grin, “What the hell do you mean, a rookie? I listened to the old man just as hard as you did. How do you think I got so smart?” They both laughed.
   Hagen poured drinks for everyone. He looked a little glum. The statesman forced to go to war, the lawyer forced to go to law. “Well, anyway, now we know what we’re going to do,” he said.

Chapter 11

   Captain Mark McCluskey sat in his office fingering three envelopes bulging with betting slips. He was frowning and wishing he could decode the notations on the slips. It was very important that he do so. The envelopes were the betting slips that his raiding parties had picked up when they had hit one of the Corleone Family bookmakers the night before. Now the bookmaker would have to buy back the slips so that players couldn’t claim winners and wipe him out.
   It was very important for Captain McCluskey to decode the slips because he didn’t want to get cheated when he sold the slips back to the bookmaker. If there was fifty grand worth of action, then maybe he could sell it back for five grand. But if there were a lot of heavy bets and the slips represented a hundred grand or maybe even two hundred grand, then the price should be considerably higher. McCluskey fiddled with the envelopes and then decided to let the bookie sweat a little bit and make the first offer. That might tip off what the real price should be.
   McCluskey looked at the station house clock on the wall of his office. It was time for him to pick up that greasy Turk, Sollozzo,and take him to wherever he was going to meet the Corleone Family. McCluskey went over to his wall locker and started to change into his civilian clothes. When he was finished he called his wife and told her he would not be home for supper that night, that he would be out on the job. He never confided in his wife on anything. She thought they lived the way they did on his policeman’s salary. McCluskey grunted with amusement. His mother had thought the same thing but he had learned early. His father had shown him the ropes.
   His father had been a police sergeant, and every week father and son had walked through the precinct and McCluskey Senior had introduced his six-year-old son to the storekeepers, saying, “And this is my little boy.”
   The storekeepers would shake his hand and compliment him extravagantly and ring open their cash registers to give the little boy a gift of five or ten dollars. At the end of the day, little Mark McCluskey would have all the pockets of his suit stuffed with paper money, would feel so proud that his father’s friends liked him well enough to give him a present every month they saw him. Of course his father put the money in the bank for him, for his college education, and little Mark got at most a fifty-cent piece for himself.
   Then when Mark got home and his policemen uncles asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he would lisp childishly, “A policeman,” they would all laugh uproariously. And of course later on, though his father wanted him to go to college first, he went right from high school to studying for the police force.
   He had been a good cop, a brave cop. The tough young punks terrorizing street corners fled when he approached and finally vanished from his beat altogether. He was a very tough cop and a very fair one. He never took his son around to the storekeepers to collect his money presents for ignoring garbage violations and parking violations; he took the money directly into his own hand, direct because he felt he earned it. He never ducked into a movie house or goofed off into restaurants when he was on foot patrol as some of the other cops did, especially on winter nights. He always made his rounds. He gave his stores a lot of protection, a lot of service. When winos and drunks filtered up from the Bowery to panhandle on his beat he got rid of them so roughly that they never came back. The tradespeople in his precinct appreciated it. And they showed their appreciation.
   He also obeyed the system. The bookies in his precinct knew he would never make trouble to get an extra payoff for himself, that he was content with his share of the station house bag. His name was on the list with the others and he never tried to make extras. He was a fair cop who took only clean graft and his rise in the police department was steady if not spectacular.
   During the time he was raising a large family of four sons, none of whom became policemen. They all went to Fordham University and since by that time Mark McCluskey was rising from sergeant to lieutenant and finally to captain, they lacked for nothing. It was at this time that McCluskey got the reputation for being a hard bargainer. The bookmakers in his district paid more protection money than the bookmakers in any other part of the city, but maybe that was because of the expense of putting four boys through college.
   McCluskey himself felt there was nothing wrong with clean graft. Why the hell should his kids go to CCNY or a cheap Southern college just because the Police Department didn’t pay its people enough money to live on and take care of their families properly? He protected all these people with his life and his record showed his citations for gun duels with stickup men on his beat, strong-arm protection guys, would-be pimps. He had hammered them into the ground. He had kept his little corner of the city safe for ordinary people and he sure as hell was entitled to more than his lousy one C note a week. But he wasn’t indignant about his low pay, he understood that everybody had to take care of themselves.
   Bruno Tattaglia was an old friend of his. Bruno had gone to Fordham with one of his sons and then Bruno had opened his nightclub and whenever the McCluskey family spent an infrequent night on the town, they could enjoy the cabaret with liquor and dinner– on the house. On New Year’s Eve they received engraved invitations to be guests of the management and always received one of the best tables. Bruno always made sure they were introduced to the celebrities who performed in his club, some of them famous singers and Hollywood stars. Of course sometimes he asked a little favor, like getting an employee with a record cleared for a cabaret work license, usually a pretty girl with a police dossier as a hustler or roller. McCluskey would be glad to oblige.
   McCluskey made it a policy never to show that he understood what other people were up to. When Sollozzo had approached him with the proposition to leave old man Corleone uncovered in the hospital, McCluskey didn’t ask why. He asked price. When Sollozzo said ten grand, McCluskey knew why. He did not hesitate. Corleone was one of the biggest Mafia men in the country with more political connections than Capone had ever had. Whoever knocked him off would be doing the country a big favor. McCluskey took the money in advance and did the job. When he received a call from Sollozzo that there were still two of Corleone’s men in front of the hospital he had flown into a rage. He had locked up all of Tessio’s men, he had pulled the detective guards off the door of Corleone’s hospital room. And now, being a man of principle, he would have to give back the ten grand, money he had already earmarked to insure the education of his grandchildren. It was in that rage that he had gone to the hospital and struck Michael Corleone.
   But it had all worked out for the best. He had met with Sollozzo in the Tattaglia nightclub and they had made an even better deal. Again McCluskey didn’t ask questions, since he knew all the answers. He just made sure of his price. It never occurred to him that he himself could be in any danger. That anyone would consider even for a moment killing a New York City police captain was too fantastic. The toughest hood in the Mafia had to stand still if the lowliest patrolman decided to slap him around. There was absolutely no percentage in killing cops. Because then all of a sudden a lot of hoods were killed resisting arrest or escaping the scene of a crime, and who the hell was going to do anything about that?
   McCluskey sighed and got ready to leave the station house. Problems, always problems. His wife’s sister in Ireland had just died after many years of fighting cancer and that cancer had cost him a pretty penny. Now the funeral would cost him more. His own uncles and aunts in the old country needed a little help now and then to keep their potato farms and he sent the money to do the trick. He didn’t begrudge it. And when he and his wife visited the old country they were treated like a king and queen. Maybe they would go again this summer now that the war was over and with all this extra money coming in. McCluskey told his patrolman clerk where he would be if he was needed. He did not feel it necessary to take any precautions. He could always claim Sollozzo was an informer he was meeting. Outside the station house he walked a few blocks and then caught a cab to the house where he would meet with Sollozzo.


* * *

   It was Tom Hagen who had to make all the arrangements for Michael’s leaving the country, his false passport, his seaman’s card, his berth on an Italian freighter that would dock in a Sicilian port. Emissaries were sent that very day by plane to Sicily to prepare a hiding plate with the Mafia chief in the hill country.
   Sonny arranged for a car and an absolutely trustworthy driver to be waiting for Michael when he stepped out of the restaurant where the meeting would be held with Sollozzo. The driver would be Tessio himself, who had volunteered for the job. It would be a beat-up-looking car but with a fine motor. It would have phony license plates and the car itself would be untraceable. It had been saved for a special job requiring the best.
   Michael spent the day with Clemenza, practicing with the small gun that would be gotten to him. It was a.22 filled with soft-nosed bullets that made pinpricks going in and left insulting gaping holes when they exited from the human body. He found that it was accurate up to five of his steps away from a target. After that the bullets might go anywhere. The trigger was tight but Clemenza worked on this with some tools so that it pulled easier. They decided to leave it noisy. They didn’t want an innocent bystander misunderstanding the situation and interfering out of ignorant courage. The report of the gun would keep them away from Michael.
   Clemenza kept instructing him during the training session. “Drop the gun as soon as you’ve finished using it. Just let your hand drop to your side and the gun slip out. Nobody will notice. Everybody will think you’re still armed. They’ll be staring at your face. Walk out of the place very quickly but don’t run. Don’t look anybody directly in the eye but don’t look away from them either. Remember, they’ll be scared of you, believe me, they’ll be scared of you. Nobody will interfere. As soon as you’re outside Tessio will be in the car waiting for you. Get in and leave the rest to him. Don’t be worried about accidents. You’d be surprised how well these affairs go. Now put this hat on and let’s see how you look.” He clapped a gray fedora on Michael’s head. Michael, who never wore a hat, grimaced. Clemenza reassured him. “It helps against identification, just in case. Mostly it gives witnesses an excuse to change their identification when we make them see the light. Remember, Mike, don’t worry about prints. The butt and trigger are fixed with special tape. Don’t touch any other part of the gun, remember that.”
   Michael said, “Has Sonny found out where Soliozzo is taking me?”
   Clemenza shrugged. “Not yet. Sollozzo is being very careful. But don’t worry about him harming you. The negotiator stays in our hands until you come back safe. If anything happens to you, the negotiator pays.”
   “Why the hell should he stick his neck out?” Michael asked.
   “He gets a big fee,” Clemenza said. “A small fortune. Also he is an important man in the Families. He knows Sollozzo can’t let anything happen to him. Your life is not worth the negotiator’s life to Sollozzo. Very simple. You’ll be safe all right. We’re the ones who catch hell afterwards.”
   “How bad will it be?” Michael asked.
   “Very bad,” Clemenza said. “It means an all-out war with the Tattaglia Family against the Corleone Family. Most of the others will line up with the Tattaglias. The Sanitation Department will be sweeping up a lot of dead bodies this winter.” He shrugged. “These things have to happen once every ten years or so. It gets rid of the bad blood. And then if we let them push us around on the little things they wanta take over everything. You gotta stop them at the beginning. Like they shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they were just asking for big trouble when they let him get away with that.”
   Michael had heard his father say this same thing before, only in 1939 before the war actually started. If the Families had been running the State Department there would never have been World War II, he thought with a grin.
   They drove back to the mall and to the Don’s house, where Sonny still made his headquarters. Michael wondered how long Sonny could stay cooped up in the safe territory of the mall. Eventually he would have to venture out. They found Sonny taking a nap on the couch. On the coffee table was the remains of his late lunch, scraps of steak and bread crumbs and a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
   His father’s usually neat office was taking on the look of a badly kept furnished room. Michael shook his brother awake and said, “Why don’t you stop living like. a bum and get this place cleaned up?”
   Sonny yawned. “What the hell are you, inspecting the barracks? Mike, we haven’t got the word yet where they plan to take you, those bastards Sollozzo and McCluskey. If we don’t find that out, how the hell are we going to get the gun to you?”
   “Can’t I carry it on me?” Michael asked. “Maybe they won’t frisk me and even if they do maybe they’ll miss it if we’re smart enough. And even if they find it– so what. They’ll just take it off me and no harm done.”
   Sonny shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “We have to make this a sure hit on that bastard Sollozzo. Remember, get him first if you possibly can. McCluskey is slower and dumber. You should have plenty of time to take him. Did Clemenza tell you to be sure to drop the gun?”
   “A million times,” Michael said.
   Sonny got up from the sofa and stretched. “How does your jaw feel, kid?”
   “Lousy,” Michael said. The left side of his face ached except those parts that felt numb because of the drugged wire holding it together. He took the bottle of whiskey from the table and swigged directly from it. The pain eased.
   Sonny said, “Easy, Mike, now is no time to get slowed up by booze.”
   Michael said, “Oh, Christ, Sonny, stop playing the big brother. I’ve been in combat against tougher guys than Sollozzo and under worse conditions. Where the hell are his mortars? Has he got air cover? Heavy artillery? Land mines? He’s just a wise son of a bitch with a big-wheel cop sidekick. Once anybody makes up their mind to kill them there’s no other problem. That’s the hard part, making up your mind. They’ll never know what hit them.”
   Tom Hagen came into the room. He greeted them with a nod and went directly to the falsely listed telephone. He called a few times and then shook his head at Sonny. “Not a whisper,” he said. “Sollozzo is keeping it to himself as long as he can.”
   The phone rang. Sonny answered it and he held up a hand as if to signal for quiet though no one had spoken. He jotted some notes down on a pad, then said, “OK, he’ll be there,” and hung up the phone.
   Sonny was laughing. “That son of a bitch Sollozzo, he really is something. Here’s the deal. At eight tonight he and Captain McCluskey pick up Mike in front of Jack Dempsey’s bar on Broadway. They go someplace to talk, and get this. Mike and Sollozzo talk in Italian so that the Irish cop don’t know what the hell they are talking about. He even tells me, don’t worry, he knows McCluskey doesn’t know one word in Italian unless it’s ‘soldi’ and he’s checked you out, Mike, and knows you can understand Sicilian dialect.”
   Michael said dryly, “I’m pretty rusty but we won’t talk long.”
   Tom Hagen said, “We don’t let Mike go until we have the negotiator. Is that arranged?”
   Clemenza nodded. “The negotiator is at my house playing pinochle with three of my men. They wait for a call from me before they let him go.”
   Sonny sank back in the leather armchair. “Now how the hell do we find out the meeting place? Tom, we’ve got informers with the Tattaglia Family, how come they haven’t given us the word?”
   Hagen shrugged. “Sollozzo is really damn smart. He’s playing this close to the vest, so close that he’s not using any men as a cover. He figures the captain will be enough and that security is more important than guns. He’s right too. We’ll have to put a tail on Mike and hope for the best.”
   Sonny shook his head. “Nah, anybody can lose a tail when they really want to. That’s the first thing they’ll check out.”
   By this time it was five in the afternoon. Sonny, with a worried look on his face, said, “Maybe we should just let Mike blast whoever is in the car when it tries to pick him up.”
   Hagen shook his head. “What if Sollozzo is not in the car? We’ve tipped our hand for nothing. Damn it, we have to find out where Sollozzo is taking him.”
   Clemenza put in, “Maybe we should start trying to figure why lie’s making it such a big secret.”
   Michael said impatiently, “Because it’s the percentage. Why should he let us know anything if he can prevent it? Besides, he smells danger. He must be leery as hell even with that police captain for his shadow.”
   Hagen snapped his fingers. “That detective, that guy Phillips. Why don’t you give him a ring, Sonny? Maybe he can find out where the hell the captain can be reached. It’s worth a try. McCluskey won’t give a damn who knows where he’s going.”
   Sonny picked up the phone and dialed a number. He spoke softly into the phone, then hung up. “He’ll call us back,” Sonny said.
   They waited for nearly another thirty minutes and then the phone rang. It was Phillips. Sonny jotted something down on his pad and then hung up. His face was taut. “I think we’ve got it,” he said. “Captain McCluskey always has to leave word on where he can be reached. From eight to ten tonight he’ll be at the Luna Azure up in the Bronx. Anybody know it?”
   Tessio spoke confidently. “I do. It’s perfect for us. A small family place with big booths where people can talk in private. Good food. Everybody minds their own business. Perfect.” He leaned over Sonny’s desk and arranged stubbed-out cigarettes into map figures. “This is the entrance. Mike, when you finish just walk out and turn left, then turn the corner. I’ll spot you and put on my headlights and catch you on the fly. If you have any trouble, yell and I’ll try to come in and get you out. Clemenza, you gotta work fast. Send somebody up there to plant the gun. They got an old-fashioned toilet with a space between the water container and the wall. Have your man tape the gun behind there. Mike, after they frisk you in the car and find you’re clean, they won’t be too worried about you. In the restaurant, wait a bit before you excuse yourself. No, better still, ask permission to go. Act a little in trouble first, very natural. They can’t figure anything. But when you come out again, don’t waste any time. Don’t sit down again at the table, start blasting. And don’t take chances. In the head, two shots apiece, and out as fast as your legs can travel.”
   Sonny had been listening judiciously. “I want somebody very good, very safe, to plant that gun,” he told Clemenza. “I don’t want my brother coming out of that toilet with just his dick in his hand.”
   Clemenza said emphatically, “The gun will be there.”
   “OK,” Sonny said. “Everybody get rolling.”
   Tessio and Clemenza left. Tom Hagen said, “Sonny, should I drive Mike down to New York?”
   “No,” Sonny said. “I want you here. When Mike finishes, then our work begins and I’ll need you. Have you got those newspaper guys lined up?”
   Hagen nodded. “I’ll be feeding them info as soon as things break.”
   Sonny got up and came to stand in front of Michael. He shook his hand. “OK, kid,” he said, “you’re on. I’ll square it with Mom your not seeing her before you left. And I’ll get a message to your girl friend when I think the time is right. OK?”
   “OK,” Mike said. “How long do you think before I can come back?”
   “At least a year,” Sonny said.
   Tom Hagen put in, “The Don might be able to work faster than that, Mike, but don’t count on it. The time element hinges on a lot of factors. How well we can plant stories with the newsmen. How much the Police Department wants to cover up. How violently the other Families react. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of heat and trouble. That’s the only thing we can be sure of.”
   Michael shook Hagen’s hand. “Do your best,” he said. “I don’t want to do another three-year stretch away from home.”
   Hagen said gently, “It’s not too late to back out, Mike, we can get somebody else, we can go back over our alternatives. Maybe it’s not necessary to get rid of Sollozzo.”
   Michael laughed. “We can talk ourselves into any viewpoint,” he said. “But we figured it right the first time. I’ve been riding the gravy train all my life, it’s about time I paid my dues.”
   “You shouldn’t let that broken jaw influence you,” Hagen said. “McCluskey is a stupid man and it was business, not personal.”
   For the second time he saw Michael Corleone’s face freeze into a mask that resembled uncannily the Don’s. “Tom, don’t let anybody kid you. It’s all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it’s personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That’s what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal. Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes. Right? And you know something? Accidents don’t happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult. So I came late, OK, but I’m coming all the way. Damn right, I take that broken jaw personal; damn right, I take Sollozzo trying to kill my father personal.” He laughed. “Tell the old man I learned it all from him and that I’m glad I had this chance to pay him back for all he did for me. He was a good father.” He paused and then he said thoughtfully to Hagen, “You know, I can never remember him hitting me. Or Sonny. Or Freddie. And of course Connie, he wouldn’t even yell at her. And tell me the truth, Tom, how many men do you figure the Don killed or had killed.”
   Tom Hagen turned away. “I’ll tell you one thing you didn’t learn from him: talking the way you’re talking now. There are things that have to be done and you do them and you never talk about them. You don’t try to justify them. They can’t be justified. You just do them. Then you forget it.”
   Michael Corleone frowned. He said quietly, “As the Consigliere, you agree that it’s dangerous to the Don and our Family to let Sollozzo live?”
   “Yes,” Hagen said.
   “OK,” Michael said. “Then I have to kill him.”
   Michael Corleone stood in front of Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on Broadway and waited for his pickup. He looked at his watch. It said five minutes to eight. Sollozzo was going to be punctual. Michael had made sure he was there in plenty of time. He had been waiting fifteen minutes.
   All during the ride from Long Beach into the city he had been trying to forget what he had said to Hagen. For if he believed what he said, then his life was set on an irrevocable course. And yet, could it be otherwise after tonight? He might be dead after tonight if he didn’t stop all this crap, Michael thought grimly. He had to keep his mind on the business at hand. Sollozzo was no dummy and McCluskey was a very tough egg. He felt the ache in his wired jaw and welcomed the pain, it would keep him alert.
   Broadway wasn’t that crowded on this cold winter night, even though it was near theater time. Michael flinched as a long black car pulled up to the curb and the driver, leaning over, opened the front door and said, “Get in, Mike.” He didn’t know the driver, a young punk with slick black hair and an open shirt, but he got in. In the back seat were Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo.
   Sollozzo reached a hand over the back of the seat and Michael shook it. The hand was firm, warm and dry. Sollozzo said, “I’m glad you came, Mike. I hope we can straighten everything out. All this is terrible, it’s not the way I wanted things to happen at all. It should never have happened.”
   Michael Corleone said quietly, “I hope we can settle things tonight, I don’t want my father bothered any more.”
   “He won’t be,” Sollozzo said sincerely. “I swear to you by my children he won’t be. Just keep an open mind when we talk. I hope you’re not a hothead like your brother Sonny. It’s impossible to talk business with him.”
   Captain McCluskey grunted. “He’s a good kid, he’s all right.” He leaned over to give Michael an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about the other night, Mike. I’m getting too old for my job, too grouchy. I guess I’ll have to retire pretty soon. Can’t stand the aggravation, all day I get aggravation. You know how it is.” Then with a doleful sigh, he gave Michael a thorough frisk for a weapon.
   Michael saw a slight smile on the driver’s lips. The car was going west with no apparent attempt to elude any trailers. It went up on to the West Side Highway, speeding in and out of traffic. Anyone following would have had to do the same. Then to Michael’s dismay it took the exit for the George Washington Bridge, they were going over to New Jersey. Whoever had given Sonny the info on where the meeting was to be held had given him the wrong dope.
   The car threaded through the bridge approaches and then was on it, leaving the blazing city behind. Michael kept his face impassive. Were they going to dump him into the swamps or was it just a last-minute change in meeting place by the wily Sollozzo? But when they were nearly all the way across, the driver gave the wheel a violent twist. The heavy automobile jumped into the air when it hit the divider and bounced over into the lanes going back to New York City. Both McCluskey and Sollozzo were looking back to see if anyone had tried doing the same thing. The driver was really hitting it back to New York and then they were off the bridge and going toward the East Bronx. They went through the side streets with no cars behind them. By this time it was nearly nine o’clock. They had made sure there was no one on their tail. Sollozzo lit up a cigarette after offering his pack to McCluskey and Michael, both of whom refused. Sollozzo said to the driver, “Nice work. I’ll remember it.”
   Ten minutes later the car pulled up in front of a restaurant in a small Italian neighborhood. There was no one on the streets and because of the lateness of the hour only a few people were still at dinner. Michael had been worried that the driver would come in with them, but he stayed outside with his car. The negotiator had not mentioned a driver, nobody had. Technically Sollozzo had broken the agreement by bringing him along. But, Michael decided not to mention it, knowing they would think he would be afraid to mention it, afraid of ruining the chances for the success of the parley.
   The three of them sat at the only round table, Sollozzo refusing a booth. There were only two other people in the restaurant. Michael wondered whether they were Sollozzo plants. But it didn’t matter. Before they could interfere it would be all over.
   McCluskey asked with real interest, “Is the Italian food good here?”
   Sollozzo reassured him. “Try the veal, it’s the finest in New York.” The solitary waiter had brought a bottle of wine to the table and uncorked it. He poured three glasses full. Surprisingly McCluskey did not drink. “I must be the only Irishman who don’t take the booze,” he said. “I seen too many good people get in trouble because of the booze.”
   Sollozzo said placatingly to the captain, “I am going to talk Italian to Mike, not because I don’t trust you but because I can’t explain myself properly in English and I want to convince Mike that I mean well, that it’s to everybody’s advantage for us to come to an agreement tonight. Don’t be insulted by this, it’s not that I don’t trust you.”
   Captain McCluskey gave them both an ironic grin… “Sure, you two go right ahead,” he said. “I’ll concentrate on my veal and spaghetti.”
   Sollozzo began speaking to Michael in rapid Sicilian. He said, “You must understand that what happened between me and your father was strictly a business matter. I have a great respect for Don Corleone and would beg for the opportunity to enter his service. But you must understand that your father is an old-fashioned man. He stands in the way of progress. The business I am in is the coming thing, the wave of the future, there are untold millions of dollars for everyone to make. But your father stands in the way because of certain unrealistic scruples. By doing this he imposes his will on men like myself. Yes, yes, I know, he says to me, ‘Go ahead, it’s your business,’ but we both know that is unrealistic. We must tread on each other’s corns. What he is really telling me is that I cannot operate my business. I am a man who respects himself and cannot let another man impose his will on me so what had to happen did happen. Let me say that I had the support, the silent support of all the New York Families. And the Tattaglia Family became my partners. If this quarrel continues, then the Corleone Family will stand alone against everyone. Perhaps if your father were well, it could be done. But the eldest son is not the man the Godfather is, no disrespect intended. And the Irish Consigliere, Hagen, is not the man Genco Abbandando was, God rest his soul. So I propose a peace, a truce. Let us cease all hostilities until your father is well again and can take part in these bargainings. The Tattaglia Family agrees, upon my persuasions and my indemnities, to forgo justice for their son Bruno. We will have peace. Meanwhile, I have to make a living and will do a little trading in my business. I do not ask your cooperation but I ask you, the Corleone Family, not to interfere. These are my proposals. I assume you have the authority to agree, to make a deal.”
   Michael said in Sicilian, “Tell me more about how you propose to start your business, exactly what part my Family has to play in it and what profit we can take from this business.”
   “You want the whole proposition in detail then?” Sollozzo asked.
   Michael said gravely, “Most important of all I must have sure guarantees that no more attempts will be made on my father’s life.”
   Sollozzo raised his hand expressively. “What guarantees can I give you? I’m the hunted one. I’ve missed my chance. You think too highly of me, my friend. I am not that clever.”
   Michael was sure now that the conference was only to gain a few days’ time. That Sollozzo would make another attempt to kill the Don. What was beautiful was that the Turk was underrating him as a punk kid. Michael felt that strange delicious chill filling his body. He made his face look distressed. Sollozzo asked sharply, “What is it?”
   Michael said with an embarrassed air, “The wine went right to my bladder. I’ve been holding it in. Is it all right if I go to the bathroom?”
   Sollozzo was searching his face intently with his dark eyes. He reached over and roughly thrust his hand in Michael’s crotch, under it and around, searching for a weapon. Michael looked offended. McCluskey said curtly, “I frisked him. I’ve frisked thousands of young punks. He’s clean.”
   Sollozzo didn’t like it. For no reason at all he didn’t like it. He glanced at the man sitting at a table opposite them and raised his eyebrows toward the door of the bathroom. The man gave a slight nod that he had checked it, that there was nobody inside. Sollozzo said reluctantly, “Don’t take too long.” He had marvelous antenna, he was nervous.
   Michael got up and went into the bathroom. The urinal had a pink bar of soap in it secured by a wire net. He went into the booth. He really had to go, his bowels were loose. He did it very quickly, then reached behind the enamel water cabinet until his hand touched the small, blunt-nosed gun fastened with tape. He ripped the gun loose, remembering that Clemenza had said not to worry about leaving prints on the tape. He shoved the gun into his waistband and buttoned his jacket over it. He washed his hands and wet his hair. He wiped his prints off the faucet with his handkerchief. Then he left the toilet.
   Sollozzo was sitting directly facing the door of the toilet, his dark eyes blazing with alertness. Michael gave a smile. “Now I can talk,” he said with a sigh of relief.
   Captain McCluskey was eating the plate of veal and spaghetti that had arrived. The man on the far wall had been stiff with attention, now he too relaxed visibly.
   Michael sat down again. He remembered Clemenza had told him not to do this, to come out of the toilet and blaze away. But either out of some warning instinct or sheer funk he had not done so. He had felt that if he had made one swift move he would have been cut down. Now he felt safe and he must have been scared because he was glad he was no longer standing on his legs. They had gone weak with trembling.
   Sollozzo was leaning toward him. Michael, his belly covered by the table, unbuttoned his jacket and listened intently. He could not understand a word the man was saying. It was literally gibberish to him. His mind was so filled with pounding blood that no word registered. Underneath the table his right hand moved to the gun tucked into his waistband and he drew it free. At that moment the waiter came to take their order and Sollozzo turned his head to speak to the waiter. Michael thrust the table away from him with his left hand and his right hand shoved the gun almost against Sollozzo’s head. The man’s coordination was so acute that he had already begun to fling himself away at Michael’s motion. But Michael, younger, his reflexes sharper, pulled the trigger. The bullet caught Sollozzo squarely between his eye and his ear and when it exited on the other side blasted out a huge gout of blood and skull fragments onto the petrified waiter’s jacket. Instinctively Michael knew that one bullet was enough. Sollozzo had turned his head in that last moment and he had seen the light of life die in the man’s eyes as clearly as a candle goes out.
   Only one second had gone by as Michael pivoted to bring the gun to bear on McCluskey. The police captain was staring at Sollozzo with phlegmatic surprise, as if this had nothing to do with him. He did not seem to be aware of his own danger. His veal-covered fork was suspended in his hand and his eyes were just turning on Michael. And the expression on his face, in his eyes, held such confident outrage, as if now he expected Michael to surrender or to run away, that Michael smiled at him as he pulled the trigger. This shot was bad, not mortal. It caught MeCluskey in his thick bull-like throat and he started to choke loudly as if he had swallowed too large a bite of the veal. Then the air seemed to fill with a fine mist of sprayed blood as he coughed it out of his shattered lungs. Very coolly, very deliberately, Michael fired the next shot through the top of his white-haired skull.
   The air seemed to be full of pink mist. Michael swung toward the man sitting against the wall. This man had not made a move. He seemed paralyzed. Now he carefully showed his hands on top of the table and looked away. The waiter was staggering back toward the kitchen, an expression of horror on his face, staring at Michael in disbelief. Sollozzo was still in his chair, the side of his body propped up by the table. McCluskey, his heavy body pulling downward, had fallen off his chair onto the floor. Michael let the gun slip out of his hand so that it bound off his body and made no noise. He saw that neither the man against the wall nor the waiter had noticed him dropping the gun. He strode the few steps toward the door and opened it. Sollozzo’s car was parked at the curb still, but there was no sign of the driver. Michael turned left and around the corner. Headlights flashed on and a battered sedan pulled up to him, the door swinging open. He jumped in and the car roared away. He saw that it was Tessio at the wheel, his trim features hard as marble.
   “Did you do the job on Sollozzo?” Tessio asked.
   For that moment Michael was struck by the idiom Tessio had used. It was always used in a sexual sense, to do the job on a woman meant seducing her. It was curious that Tessio used it now. “Both of them,” Michael said.
   “Sure?” Tessio asked.
   “I saw their brains,” Michael said.
   There was a change of clothes for Michael in the car. Twenty minutes later he was on an Italian freighter slated for Sicily. Two hours later the freighter put out to sea and from his cabin Michael could see the lights of New York City burning like the fires of hell. He felt an enormous sense of relief. He was out of it now. The feeling was familiar and he remembered being taken off the beach of an island his Marine division had invaded. The battle had been still going on but he had received a slight wound and was being ferried back to a hospital ship. He had felt the same overpowering relief then that he felt now. All hell would break loose but he wouldn’t be there.


* * *

   On the day after the murder of Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, the police captains and lieutenants in every station house in New York City sent out the word: there would be no more gambling, no more prostitution, no more deals of any kind until the murderer of Captain McCluskey was caught. Massive raids began all over the city. All unlawful business activities came to a standstill.
   Later that day an emissary from the Families asked the Corleone Family if they were prepared to give up the murderer. They were told that the affair did not concern them. That night a bomb exploded in the Corleone Family mall in Long Beach, thrown from a car that pulled up to the chain, then roared away. That night also two button men of the Corleone Family were killed as they peaceably ate their dinner in a small Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. The Five Families War of 1946 had begun.

Book Two

Chapter 12

   Johnny Fontane waved a casual dismissal to the manservant and said, “See you in the morning, Billy.” The colored butler bowed his way out of the huge dining room-living room with its view of the Pacific Ocean. It was a friendly-goodbye sort of bow, not a servant’s bow, and given only because Johnny Fontane had company for dinner.
   Johnny’s company was a girl named Sharon Moore, a New York City Greenwich Village girl in Hollywood to try for a small part in a movie being produced by an old flame who had made the big time. She had visited the set while Johnny was acting in the Woltz movie. Johnny had found her young and fresh and charming and witty, and had asked her to come to his place for dinner that evening. His invitations to dinner were always famous and had the force of royalty and of course she said yes.
   Sharon Moore obviously, expected him to come on very strong because of his reputation, but Johnny hated the Hollywood “piece of meat” approach. He never slept with any girl unless there was something about her he really liked. Except, of course, sometimes when he was very drunk and found himself in bed with a girl he didn’t even remember meeting or seeing before. And now that he was thirty-five years old, divorced once, estranged from his second wife, with maybe a thousand pubic scalps dangling from his belt, he simply wasn’t that eager. But there was something about Sharon Moore that aroused affection in him and so he had invited her to dinner.
   He never ate much but he knew young pretty girls ambitiously starved themselves for pretty clothes and were usually big eaters on a date so there was plenty of food on the table. There was also plenty of liquor; champagne in a bucket, scotch, rye, brandy and liqueurs on the sideboard. Johnny served the drinks and the plates of food already prepared. When they had finished eating he led her into the huge living room with its glass wall that looked out onto the Pacific. He put a stack of Ella Fitzgerald records on the hifi and settled on the couch with Sharon. He made a little small talk with her, found out about what she had been like as a kid, whether she had been a tomboy or boy crazy, whether she had been homely or pretty, lonely or gay. He always found these details touching, it always evoked the tenderness he needed to make love.
   They nestled together on the sofa, very friendly, very comfortable. He kissed her on the lips, a cool friendly kiss, and when she kept it that way he left it that way. Outside the huge picture window he could see the dark blue sheet of the Pacific lying flat beneath the moonlight.
   “How come you’re not playing any of your records?” Sharon asked him. Her voice was teasing. Johnny smiled at her. He was amused by her teasing him. “I’m not that Hollywood,” he said.
   “Play some for me,” she said. “Or sing for me. You know, like the movies. I’ll bubble up and melt all over you just like those girls do on the screen.”
   Johnny laughed outright. When he had been younger, he had done just such things and the result had always been stagy, the girls trying to look sexy and melting, making their eyes swim with desire for an imagined fantasy camera. He would never dream of singing to a girl now; for one thing, he hadn’t sung for months, he didn’t trust his voice. For another thing, amateurs didn’t realize how much professionals depended on technical help to sound as good as they did. He could have played his records but he felt the same shyness about hearing his youthful passionate voice as an aging, balding man running to fat feels about showing pictures of himself as a youth in the full bloom of manhood.
   “My voice is out of shape,” he said. “And honestly, I’m sick of hearing myself sing.”
   They both sipped their drinks. “I hear you’re great in this picture,” she said. “Is it true you did it for nothing?”
   “Just a token payment,” Johnny said.
   He got up to give her a refill on her brandy glass, gave her a gold-monogrammed cigarette and flashed his lighter out to hold the light for her. She puffed on the cigarette and sipped her drink and he sat down beside her again. His glass had considerably more brandy in it than hers, he needed it to warm himself, to cheer himself, to charge himself up. His situation was the reverse of the lover’s usual one. He had to get himself drunk instead of the girl. The girl was usually too willing where he was not. The last two years had been hell on his ego, and he used this simple way to restore it, sleeping with a young fresh girl for one night, taking her to dinner a few times, giving her an expensive present and then brushing her off in the nicest way possible so that her feelings wouldn’t be hurt. And then they could always say they had had a thing with the great Johnny Fontane. It wasn’t true love, but you couldn’t knock it if the girl was beautiful and genuinely nice. He hated the hard, bitchy ones, the ones who screwed for him and then rushed off to tell their friends that they’d screwed the great Johnny Fontane, always adding that they’d had better. What amazed him more than anything else in his career were the complaisant husbands who almost told him to his face that they forgave their wives since it was allowed for even the most virtuous matron to be unfaithful with a great singing and movie star like Johnny Fontane. That really floored him.
   He loved Ella Fitzgerald on records. He loved that kind of clean singing, that kind of clean phrasing. It was the only thing in life he really understood and he knew he understood it better than anyone else on earth. Now lying back on the couch, the brandy warming his throat, he felt a desire to sing, not music, but to phrase with the records, yet it was something impossible to do in front of a stranger. He put his free hand in Sharon’s lap, sipping his drink from his other hand. Without any slyness but with the sensualness of a child seeking warmth, his hand in her lap pulled up the silk of her dress to show milky white thigh above the sheer netted gold of her stockings and as always, despite all the women, all the years, all the familiarity, Johnny felt the fluid sticky warmness flooding through his body at that sight. The miracle still happened, and what would he do when that failed him as his voice had?
   He was ready now. He put his drink down on the long inlaid cocktail table and turned his body toward her. He was very sure, very deliberate, and yet tender. There was nothing sly or lecherously lascivious in his caresses. He kissed her on the lips while his hands rose to her breasts. His hand fell to her warm thighs, the skin so silky to his touch. Her returning kiss was warm but not passionate and he preferred it that way right now. He hated girls who turned on all of a sudden as if their bodies were motors galvanized into erotic pumpings by the touching of a hairy switch.
   Then he did something he always did, something that had never yet failed to arouse him. Delicately and as lightly as it was possible to do so and still feel something, he brushed the tip of his middle finger deep down between her thighs. Some girls never even felt that initial move toward lovemaking. Some were distracted by it, not sure it was a physical touch because at the same time he always kissed them deeply on the mouth. Still others seemed to suck in his finger or gobble it up with a pelvic thrust. And of course before he became famous, some girls had slapped his face. It was his whole technique and usually it served him well enough.
   Sharon’s reaction was unusual. She accepted it all, the touch, the kiss, then shifted her mouth off his, shifted her body ever so slightly back along the couch and picked up her drink. It was a cool but definite refusal. It happened sometimes. Rarely; but it happened. Johnny picked up his drink and lit a cigarette.
   She was saying something very sweetly, very lightly. “It’s not that I don’t like you, Johnny, you’re much nicer than I thought you’d be. And it’s not because I’m not that kind of a girl. It’s just that I have to be turned on to do it with a guy, you know what I mean?”
   Johnny Fontane smiled at her. He still liked her. “And I don’t turn you on?”
   She was a little embarrassed. “Well, you know, when you were so great singing and all, I was still a little kid. I sort of just missed you, I was the next generation. Honest, it’s not that I’m goody-goody. If you were a movie star I grew up on, I’d have my panties off in a second.”
   He didn’t like her quite so much now. She was sweet, she was witty, she was intelligent. She hadn’t fallen all over herself to screw for him or try to hustle him because his connections would help her in show biz. She was really a straight kid. But there was something else he recognized. It had happened a few times before. The girl who went on a date with her mind all made up not to go to bed with him, no matter how much she liked him, just so that she could tell her friends, and even more, herself, that she had turned down a chance to screw for the great Johnny Fontane. It was something he understood now that he was older and he wasn’t angry. He just didn’t like her quite that much and he had really liked her a lot.
   And now that he didn’t like her quite so much, he relaxed more. He sipped his drink and watched the Pacific Ocean. She said, “I hope you’re not sore, Johnny. I guess I’m being square, I guess in Hollywood a girl’s supposed to put out just as casually as kissing a beau good night. I just haven’t been around long enough.”
   Johnny smiled at her and patted her cheek. His hand fell down to pull her skirt discreetly over her rounded silken knees. “I’m not sore,” he said. “It’s nice having an old-fashioned date.” Not telling what he felt: the relief at not having to prove himself a great lover, not having to live up to his screened, godlike image. Not having to listen to the girl trying to react as if he really had lived up to that image, making more out of a very simple, routine piece of ass than it really was.
   They had another drink, shared a few more cool kisses and then she decided to go. Johnny said politely, “Can I call you for dinner some night?”
   She played it frank and honest to the end. “I know you don’t want to waste your time and then get disappointed,” she said. “Thanks for a wonderful evening. Someday I’ll tell my children I had supper with the great Johnny Fontane all alone in his apartment.”
   He smiled at her. “And that you didn’t give in,” he said. They both laughed. “They’ll never believe that,” she said. And then Johnny, being a little phony in his turn, said, “I’ll give it to you in writing, want me to?” She shook her head. He continued on. “Anybody doubts you, give me a buzz on the phone, I’ll straighten them right out. I’ll tell them how I chased you all around the apartment but you kept your honor. OK?”
   He had, finally, been a little too cruel and he felt stricken at the hurt on her young face. She understood that he was telling her that he hadn’t tried too hard. He had taken the sweetness of her victory away from her. Now she would feel that it had been her lack of charm or attractiveness that had made her the victor this night. And being the girl she was, when she told the story of how she resisted the great Johnny Fontane, she would always have to add with a wry little smile, “Of course, he didn’t try very hard.” So now taking pity on her, he said, “If you ever feel real down, give me a ring. OK? I don’t have to shack up every girl I know.”
   “I will,” she said. She went out the door.
   He was left with a long evening before him. He could have used what Jack Woltz called the “meat factory,” the stable of willing starlets, but he wanted human companionship. He wanted to talk like a human being. He thought of his first wife, Virginia. Now that the work on the picture was finished he would have more time for the kids. He wanted to become part of their life again. And he worried about Virginia too. She wasn’t equipped to handle the Hollywood sharpies who might come after her just so that they could brag about having screwed Johnny Fontane’s first wife. As far as he knew, nobody could say that yet. Everybody could say it about his second wife though, he thought wryly. He picked up the phone.
   He recognized her voice immediately and that was not surprising. He had heard it the first time when he was ten years old and they had been in 4B together. “Hi, Ginny,” he said, “you busy tonight? Can I come over for a little while?”
   “All right,” she said. “The kids are sleeping though; I don’t want to wake them up.”
   “That’s OK,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
   Her voice hesitated slightly, then carefully controlled not to show any concern, she asked, “Is it anything serious, anything important?”
   “No,” Johnny said. “I finished the picture today and I thought maybe I could just see you and talk to you. Maybe I could take a look at the kids if you’re sure they won’t wake up.”
   “OK,” she said. “I’m glad you got that part you wanted.”
   “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you in about a half hour.”
   When he got to what had been his home in Beverly Hills, Johnny Fontane sat in the car for a moment staring at the house. He remembered what his Godfather had said, that he could make his own life what he wanted. Great chance if you knew what you wanted. But what did he want?
   His first wife was waiting for him at the door. She was pretty, petite and brunette, a nice Italian girl, the girl next door who would never fool around with another man and that had been important to him. Did he still want her, he asked himself, and the answer was no. For one thing, he could no longer make love to her, their affection had grown too old. And there were some things, nothing to do with sex, she could never forgive him. But they were no longer enemies.
   She made him coffee and served him homemade cookies in the living room. “Stretch out on the sofa,” she said, “you look tired.” He took off his jacket and his shoes and loosened his tie while she sat in the chair opposite him with a grave little smile on her face. “It’s funny,” she said.
   “What’s funny?” he asked her, sipping coffee and spilling some of it on his shirt.
   “The great Johnny Fontane stuck without a date,” she said.
   “The great Johnny Fontane is lucky if he can even get it up anymore,” he said.
   It was unusual for him to be so direct. Ginny asked, “Is there something really the matter?”
   Johnny grinned at her. “I had a date with a girl in my apartment and she brushed me off. And you know, I was relieved.”
   To his surprise he saw a look of anger pass over Ginny’s face. “Don’t worry about those little tramps,” she said. “She must have thought that was the way to get you interested in her.” And Johnny realized with amusement that Ginny was actually angry with the girl who had turned him down.
   “Ah, what the hell,” he said. “I’m tired of that stuff. I have to grow up sometime. And now that I can’t sing anymore I guess I’ll have a tough time with dames. I never got in on my looks, you know.”
   She said loyally, “You were always better looking than you photographed.”
   Johnny shook his head. “I’m getting fat and I’m getting bald. Hell, if this picture doesn’t make me big again I better learn how to bake pizzas. Or maybe we’ll put you in the movies, you look great.”
   She looked thirty-five. A good thirty-five, but thirty-five. And out here in Hollywood that might as well be a hundred. The young beautiful girls thronged through the city like lemmings, lasting one year, some two. Some of them so beautiful they could make a man’s heart almost stop beating until they opened their mouths, until the greedy hopes for success clouded the loveliness of their eyes. Ordinary women could never hope to compete with them on a physical level. And you could talk all you wanted to about charm, about intelligence, about chic, about poise, the raw beauty of these girls overpowered everything else. Perhaps if there were not so many of them there might be a chance for an ordinary, nice-looking woman. And since Johnny Fontane could have all of them, or nearly all of them, Ginny knew that he was saying all this just to flatter her. He had always been nice that way. He had always been polite to women even at the height of his fame, paying them compliments, holding lights for their cigarettes, opening doors. And since an this was usually done for him, it made it even more impressive to the girls he went out with. And he did it with all girls, even the one-night stands, I-don’t-know-your-name girls.
   She smiled at him, a friendly smile. “You already made me, Johnny, remember? For twelve years. You don’t have to give me your line.”
   He sighed and stretched out on the sofa. “No kidding, Ginny, you look good. I wish I looked that good.”
   She didn’t answer him. She could see he was depressed. “Do you think the picture is OK? Will it do you some good?” she asked.
   Johnny nodded. “Yeah. It could bring me all the way back. If I get the Academy thing and play my cards right, I can make it big again even without the singing. Then maybe I can give you and the kids more dough.”
   “We have more than enough,” Ginny said.
   “I wants see more of the kids too,” Johnny said. “I want to settle down a little bit. Why can’t I come every Friday night for dinner here? I swear I’ll never miss one Friday, I don’t care how far away I am or how busy I am. And then whenever I can I’ll spend weekends or maybe the kids can spend some part of their vacations with me.”
   Ginny put an ashtray on his chest. “It’s OK with me,” she said. “I never got married because I wanted you to keep being their father.” She said this without any kind of emotion, but Johnny Fontane, staring up at the ceiling, knew she said it as an atonement for those other things, the cruel things she had once said to him when their marriage had broken up, when his career had started going down the drain.
   “By the way, guess who called me,” she said.
   Johnny wouldn’t play that game, he never did. “Who?” he asked.
   Ginny said, “You could take at least one lousy guess.” Johnny didn’t answer. “Your Godfather,” she said.
   Johnny was really surprised. “He never talks to anybody on the phone. What did he say to you?”
   “He told me to help you,” Ginny said. “He said you could be as big as you ever were, that you were on your way back, but that you needed people to believe in you. I asked him why should I? And he said because you’re the father of my children. He’s such a sweet old guy and they tell such horrible stories about him.”
   Virginia hated phones and she had had all the extensions taken out except for the one in her bedroom and one in the kitchen. Now they could hear the kitchen phone ringing. She went to answer it. When she came back into the living room there was a look of surprise on her face. “It’s for you, Johnny,” she said. “It’s Tom Hagen. He says it’s important.”
   Johnny went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Yeah, Tom,” he said.
   Tom Hagen’s voice was cool. “Johnny, the Godfather wants me to come out and see you and set some things up that can help you out now that the picture is finished. He wants me to catch the morning plane. Can you meet it in Los Angeles? I have to fly back to New York the same night so you won’t have to worry about keeping your night free for me.”
   “Sure, Tom,” Johnny said. “And don’t worry about me losing a night. Stay over and relax a bit. I’ll throw a party and you can meet some movie people.” He always made that offer, he didn’t want the folks from his old neighborhood to think he was ashamed of them.
   “Thanks,” Hagen said, “but I really have to catch the early morning plane back. OK, you’ll meet the eleven-thirty A.M. out of New York?”
   “Sure,” Johnny said.
   “Stay in your car,” Hagen said. “Send one of your people to meet me when I get off the plane and bring me to you.”
   “Right,” Johnny said.
   He went back to the living room and Ginny looked at him inquiringly. “My Godfather has some plan for me, to help me out,” Johnny said. “He got me the part in the movie, I don’t know how. But I wish he’d stay out of the rest of it.”
   He went back onto the sofa. He felt very tired. Ginny said, “Why don’t you sleep in the guest bedroom tonight instead of going home? You can have breakfast with the kids and you won’t have to drive home so late. I hate to think of you all alone in that house of yours anyway. Don’t you get lonely?”
   “I don’t stay home much,” Johnny said.
   She laughed and said, “Then you haven’t changed much.” She paused and then said, “Shall I fix up the other bedroom?”
   Johnny said, “Why can’t I sleep in your bedroom?”
   She flushed. “No,” she said. She smiled at him and he smiled back. They were still friends.
   When Johnny woke up the next morning it was late, he could tell by the sun coming in through the drawn blinds. It never came in that way unless it was in the afternoon. He yelled, “Hey, Ginny, do I still rate breakfast?” And far away he heard her voice call, “Just a second.”
   And it was just a second. She must have had everything ready, hot in the oven, the tray waiting to be loaded, because as Johnny lit his fast cigarette of the day, the door of the bedroom opened and his two small daughters came in wheeling the breakfast cart.
   They were so beautiful it broke his heart. Their faces were shining and clear, their eyes alive with curiosity and the eager desire to run to him. They wore their hair braid old-fashioned in long pigtails and they wore old-fashioned frocks and white patent-leather shoes. They stood by the breakfast cart watching him as he stubbed out his cigarette and waited for him to call and hold his arms wide. Then they came running to him. He pressed his face between their two fresh fragrant cheeks and scraped them with his beard so that they shrieked. Ginny appeared in the bedroom door and wheeled the breakfast cart the rest of the way so that he could eat in bed. She sat beside him on the edge of the bed, pouring his coffee, buttering his toast. The two young daughters sat on the bedroom couch watching him. They were too old now for pillow fights or to be tossed around. They were already smoothing their mussed hair. Oh, Christ, he thought, pretty soon they’ll be all grown up, Hollywood punks will be out after them.
   He shared his toast and bacon with them as he ate, gave them sips of coffee. It was a habit left over from when he had been singing with the band and rarely ate with them so they liked to share his food when he had his odd-hour meals like afternoon breakfasts or morning suppers. The change-around in food delighted them– to eat steak and french fries at seven in the morning, bacon and eggs in the afternoon.
   Only Ginny and a few of his close friends knew how much he idolized his daughters. That had been the worst thing about the divorce and leaving home. The one thing he had fought about, and for, was his position as a father to them. In a very sly way he had made Ginny understand he would not be pleased by her remarrying, not because he was jealous of her, but because he was jealous of his position as a father. He had arranged the money to be paid to her so it would be enormously to her advantage financially not to remarry. It was understood that she could have lovers as long as they were not introduced into her home life. But on this score he had absolute faith in her. She had always been amazingly shy and old-fashioned in sex. The Hollywood gigolos had batted zero when they started swarming around her, sniffing for the financial settlement and the favors they could get from her famous husband.
   He had no fear that she expected a reconciliation because he had wanted to sleep with her the night before. Neither one of them wanted to renew their old marriage. She understood his hunger for beauty, his irresistible impulse toward young women far more beautiful than she. It was known that he always slept with his movie co-stars at least once. His boyish charm was irresistible to them, as their beauty was to him.
   “You’ll have to start getting dressed pretty soon,” Ginny said. “Tom’s plane will be getting in.” She shooed the daughters out of the room.
   “Yeah,” Johnny said. “By the way, Ginny, you know I’m getting divorced? I’m gonna be a free man again.”
   She watched him getting dressed. He always kept fresh clothes at her house ever since they had come to their new arrangement after the wedding of Don Corleone’s daughter. “Christmas is only two weeks away,” she said. “Shall I plan on you being here?”
   It was the first time he had even thought about the holidays. When his voice was in shape, holidays were lucrative singing dates but even then Christmas was sacred. If he missed this one, it would be the second one. Last year he had been courting his second wife in Spain, trying to get her to marry him.
   “Yeah,” he said. “Christmas Eve and Christmas.” He didn’t mention New Year’s Eve. That would be one of the wild nights he needed every once in a while, to get drunk with his friends, and he didn’t want a wife along then. He didn’t feel guilty about it.
   She helped him put on his jacket and brushed it off. He was always fastidiously neat. She could see him frowning because the shirt he had put on was not laundered to his taste, the cuff links, a pair he had not worn for some time, were a little too loud for the way he liked to dress now. She laughed softly and said, “Tom won’t notice the difference.”
   The three women of the family walked him to the door and out on the driveway to his car. The two little girls held his hands, one on each side. His wife walked a little behind him. She was getting pleasure out of how happy he looked. When he reached his car he turned around and swung each girl in turn high up in the air and kissed her on the way down. Then he kissed his wife and got into the car. He never liked drawn-out good-byes.

* * *

   Arrangements had been made by his PR man and aide. At his house a chauffeured car was waiting, a rented car. In it were the PR man and another member of his entourage. Johnny parked his car and hopped in and they were on their way to the airport. He waited inside the car while the PR man went out to meet Tom Hagen’s plane. When Tom got into the car they shook hands and drove back to his house.
   Finally he and Tom were alone in the living room. There was a coolness between them. Johnny had never forgiven Hagen for acting as a barrier to his getting in touch with the Don when the Don was angry with him, in those bad days before Connie’s wedding. Hagen never made excuses for his actions. He could not. It was part of his job to ad as a lightning rod for resentments which people were too awed to feel toward the Don himseif though he had earned them.
   “Your Godfather sent me out here to give you a hand on some things,” Hagen said. “I wanted to get it out of the way before Christmas.”
   Johnny Fontane shrugged. “The picture is finished. The director was a square guy and treated me right. My scenes are too important to be left on the cutting-room floor just for Woltz to pay me off. He can’t ruin a ten-million-dollar picture. So now everything depends on how good people think I am in the movie.”
   Hagen said cautiously, “Is winning this Academy Award so terribly important to an actor’s career, or is it just the usual publicity crap that really doesn’t mean anything one way or the other?” He paused and added hastily, “Except of course the glory, everybody likes glory.”
   Johnny Fontane grinned at him. “Except my Godfather. And you. No, Tom, it’s not a lot of crap. An Academy Award can make an actor for ten years. He can get his pick of roles. The public goes to see him. It’s not everything, but for an actor it’s the most important thing in the business. I’m counting on winning it. Not because I’m such a great actor but because I’m known primarily as a singer and the part is foolproof. And I’m pretty good too, no kidding.”
   Tom Hagen shrugged and said, “Your Godfather tells me that the way things stand now, you don’t have a chance of winning the award.”
   Johnny Fontane was angry. “What the hell are you talking about? The picture hasn’t even been cut yet, much less shown. And the Don isn’t even in the movie business. Why the hell did you fly the three thousand miles just to tell me that shit?” He was so shaken he was almost in tears.
   Hagen said worriedly, “Johnny, I don’t know a damn thing about all this movie stuff. Remember, I’m just a messenger boy for the Don. But we have discussed this whole business of yours many times. He worries about you, about your future. He feels you still need his help and he wants to settle your problem once and for all. That’s why I’m here now, to get things rolling. But you have to start growing up, Johnny. You have to stop thinking about yourself as a singer or an actor. You’ve got to start thinking about yourself as a prime mover, as a guy with muscle.”
   Johnny Fontane laughed and filled his glass. “If I don’t win that Oscar I’ll have as much muscle as one of my daughters. My voice is gone; if I had that back I could make some moves. Oh, hell. How does my Godfather know I won’t win it? OK, I believe he knows. He’s never been wrong.”
   Hagen lit a thin cigar. “We got the word that Jack Woltz won’t spend studio money to support your candidacy. In fact he’s sent the word out to everybody who votes that he does not want you to win. But holding back the money for ads and all that may do it. He’s also arranging to have one other guy get as much of the opposition votes as he can swing. He’s using all sorts of bribes– jobs, money, broads, everything. And he’s trying to do it without hurting the picture or hurting it as little as possible.”
   Johnny Fontane shrugged. He filled his glass with whiskey and downed it. “Then I’m dead.”
   Hagen was watching him with his mouth curled up with distaste. “Drinking won’t help your voice,” he said.
   “Fuck you,” Johnny said.
   Hagen’s face suddenly became smoothly impassive. Then he said, “OK, I’ll keep this purely business.”
   Johnny Fontane put his drink down and went over to stand in front of Hagen. “I’m sorry I said that, Tom,” he said. “Christ, I’m sorry. I’m taking it out on you because I wanta kill that bastard Jack Woltz and I’m afraid to tell off my Godfather. So I get sore at you.” There were tears in his eyes. He threw the empty whiskey glass against the wall but so weakly that the heavy shot glass did not even shatter and rolled along the floor back to him so that he looked down at it in baffled fury. Then he laughed. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
   He walked over to the other side of the room and sat opposite Hagen. “You know, I had everything my own way for a long time. Then I divorced Ginny and everything started going sour. I lost my voice. My records stopped selling. I didn’t get any more movie work. And then my Godfather got sore at me and wouldn’t talk to me on the phone or see me when I came into New York. You were always the guy barring the path and I blamed you, but I knew you wouldn’t do it without orders from the Don. But you can’t get sore at him. It’s like getting sore at God. So I curse you. But you’ve been right all along the line. And to show you I mean my apology I’m taking your advice. No more booze until I get my voice back. OK?”
   The apology was sincere. Hagen forgot his anger. There must be something to this thirty-five-year-old boy or the Don would not be so fond of him. He said, “Forget it, Johnny.” He was embarrassed at the depth of Johnny’s feeling and embarrassed by the suspicion that it might have been inspired by fear, fear that he might turn the Don against him. And of course the Don could never be turned by anyone for any reason. His affection was mutable only by himself.
   “Things aren’t so bad,” he told Johnny. “The Don says he can cancel out everything Woltz does against you. That you will almost certainly win the Award. But he feels that won’t solve your problem. He wants to know if you have the brains and balls to become a producer on your own, make your own movies from top to bottom.”
   “How the hell is he going to get me the Award?” Johnny asked incredulously.
   Hagen said sharply, “How do you find it so easy to believe that Woltz can finagle it and your Godfather can’t? Now since it’s necessary to get your faith for the other part of our deal I must tell you this. Just keep it to yourself. Your Godfather is a much more powerful man than Jack Woltz. And he is much more powerful in areas far more critical. How can he swing the Award? He controls, or controls the people who control, all the labor unions in the industry, all the people or nearly all the people who vote. Of course you have to be good, you have to be in contention on your own merits. And your Godfather has more brains than Jack Woltz. He doesn’t go up to these people and put a gun to their heads and say, ‘Vote for Johnny Fontane or you are out of a job.’ He doesn’t strong-arm where strong-arm doesn’t work or leaves too many hard feelings. He’ll make those people vote for you because they want to. But they won’t want to unless he takes an interest. Now just take my word for it that he can get you the Award. And that if he doesn’t do it, you won’t get it.”
   “OK,” Johnny said. “I believe you. And I have the balls and brains to be a producer but I don’t have the money. No bank would finance me. It takes millions to support a movie.”
   Hagen said dryly, “When you get the Award, start making plans to produce three of your own movies. Hire the best people in the business, the best technicians, the best stars, whoever you need. Plan on three to five movies.”
   “You’re crazy,” Johnny said. “That many movies could mean twenty million bucks.”
   “When you need the money,” Hagen said, “get in touch with me. I’ll give you the name of the bank out here in California to ask for financing. Don’t worry, they finance movies all the time. Just ask them for the money in the ordinary way, with the proper justifications, like a regular business deal. They will approve. But first you have to see me and tell me the figures and the plans. OK?”
   Johnny was silent for a long time. Then he said quietly, “Is there anything else?”
   Hagen smiled. “You mean, do you have to do any favors in return for a loan of twenty million dollars? Sure you will.” He waited for Johnny to say something. “Nothing you wouldn’t do anyway if the Don asked you to do it for him.”
   Johnny said, “The Don has to ask me himself if it’s something serious, you know what I mean? I won’t take your word or Sonny’s for it.”
   Hagen was surprised by this good sense. Fontane had some brains after all. He had sense to know that the Don was too fond of him, and too smart, to ask him to do something foolishly dangerous, whereas Sonny might. He said to Johnny, “Let me reassure you on one thing. Your Godfather has given me and Sonny strict instructions not to involve you in any way in anything that might get you bad publicity, through our fault. And he will never do that himself. I guarantee you that any favor he asks of you, you will offer to do before he requests it. OK?”
   Johnny smiled. “OK,” he said.
   Hagen said, “Also he has faith in you. He thinks you have brains and so he figures the bank will make money on the investment; which means he will make money on it. So it’s really a business deal, never forget that. Don’t go screwing around with the money. You may be his favorite godson but twenty million bucks is a lot of dough. He has to stick his neck out to make sure you get it.”
   “Tell him not to worry,” Johnny said. “If a guy like Jack Woltz can be a big movie genius, anybody can.”
   “That’s what your Godfather figures,” Hagen said. “Can you have me driven back to the airport? I’ve said all I have to say. When you do start signing contracts for everything, hire your own lawyers, I won’t be in on it. But I’d like to see everything before you sign, if that’s OK with you. Also, you’ll never have any labor troubles. That will cut costs on your pictures to some extent, so when the accountants lump some of that in, disregard those figures.”
   Johnny said cautiously, “Do I have to get your OK on anything else, scripts, slats, any of that?”
   Hagen shook his head. “No,” he aid. “It may happen that the Don would object to something but he’ll object to you direct if he does. But I can’t imagine what that would be. Movies don’t affect him at all, in any way, so he has no interest. And he doesn’t believe in meddling, that I can tell you from experience.”
   “Good,” Johnny said. “I’ll drive you to the airport myself. And thank the Godfather for me. I’d call him up and thank him but he never comes to the phone. Why is that, by the way?”
   Hagen shrugged. “He hardly ever talks on the phone. He doesn’t want his voice recorded, even saying something perfectly innocent. He’s afraid that they can splice the words together so that it sounds as if he says something else. I think that’s what it is. Anyway his only worry is that someday he’ll be framed by the authorities. So he doesn’t want to give them an edge.”
   They got into Johnny’s car and drove to the airport. Hagen was thinking that Johnny was a better guy than he figured. He’d already learned something, just his driving him personally to the airport proved that. The personal courtesy, something the Don himself always believed in. And the apology. That had been sincere. He had known Johnny a long time and he knew the apology would never be made out of fear. Johnny had always had guts. That’s why he had always been in trouble, with his movie bosses and with his women. He was also one of the few people who was not afraid of the Don. Fontane and Michael were maybe the only two men Hagen knew of whom this could be said. So the apology was sincere, he would accept it as such. He and Johnny would have to see a lot of each other in the next few years. And Johnny would have to pass the next test, which would prove how smart he was. He would have to do something for the Don that the Don would never ask him to do or insist that he do as part of the agreement. Hagen wondered if Johnny Fontane was smart enough to figure out that part of the bargain.


* * *

   After Johnny dropped Hagen off at the airport (Hagen insisted that Johnny not hang around for his plane with him) he drove back to Ginny’s house. She was surprised to see him. But he wanted to stay at her place so that he would have time to think things out, to make his plans. He knew that what Hagen had told him was extremely important, that his whole life was being changed. He had once been a big star but now at the young age of thirty-five he was washed up. He didn’t kid himself about that. Even if he won the Award as best actor, what the hell could it mean at the most? Nothing, if his voice didn’t come back. He’d be just second-rate, with no real power, no real juice. Even that girl turning him down, she had been nice and smart and acting sort of hip, but would she have been so cool if he had really been at the top? Now with the Don backing him with dough he could be as big as anybody in Hollywood. He could be a king. Johnny smiled. Hell. He could even be a Don.
   It would be nice living with Ginny again for a few weeks, maybe longer. He’d take the kids out every day, maybe have a few friends over. He’d stop drinking and smoking, really take care of himself. Maybe his voice would get strong again. If that happened and with the Don’s money, he’d be unbeatable. He’d really be as close to an oldtime king or emperor as it was possible to be in America. And it wouldn’t depend on his voice holding up or how long the public cared about him as an actor. It would be an empire rooted in money and the most special, the most coveted kind of power.
   Ginny had the guest bedroom made up for him. It was understood that he would not share her room, that they would not live as man and wife. They could never have that relationship again. And though the outside world of gossip columnists and movie fans gave the blame for the failure of their marriage solely to him, yet in a curious way, between the two of them, they both knew that she was even more to blame for their divorce.
   When Johnny Fontane because the most popular singer and movie musical comedy star in motion pictures, it had never occurred to him to desert his wife and children. He was too Italian, still too old-style. Naturally he had been unfaithful. That had been impossible to avoid in his business and the temptations to which he was continually exposed. And despite being a skinny, delicate-looking guy, he had the wiry horniness of many small-boned Latin types. And women delighted him in their surprises. He loved going out with a demure sweet-faced virginal-looking girl and then uncapping her breasts to find them so unexpectedly slopingly full and rich, lewdly heavy in contrast to the cameo face. He loved to find sexual shyness and timidity in the sexy-looking girls who were all fake motion like a shifty basketball player, vamping as if they had slept with a hundred guys, and then when he got them alone having to battle for hours to get in and do the job and finding out they were virgins.
   And all these Hollywood guys laughed at his fondness for virgins. They called it an old guinea taste, square, and look how long it took to make a virgin give you a blow job with all the aggravation and then they usually turned out to be a lousy piece of ass. But Johnny knew that it was how you handled a young girl. You had to come on to her the right way and then what could be greater than a girl who was tasting her first dick and loving it? Ah, it was so great breaking them in. It was so great having them wrap their legs around you. Their thighs were all different shapes, their asses were different, their skins were all different colors and shades of white and brown and tan and when he had slept with that young colored girl in Detroit, a good girl, not a hustler, the young daughter of a jazz singer on the same nightclub bill with him, she had been one of the sweetest things he had ever had. Her lips had really tasted like warm honey with pepper mixed in it, her dark brown skin was rich, creamy, and she had been as sweet as God had ever made any woman and she had been a virgin.
   And the other guys were always talking about blow jobs, this and other variations, and he really didn’t enjoy that stuff so much. He never liked a girl that much after they tried it that way, it just didn’t satisfy him right. He and his second wife had finally not got along, because she preferred the old sixty-nine too much to a point where she didn’t want anything else and he had to fight to stick it in. She began making fun of him and calling him a square and the word got around that he made love like a kid. Maybe that was why that girl last night had turned him down. Well, the hell with it, she wouldn’t be too great in the sack anyway. You could tell a girl who really liked to fuck and they were always the best. Especially the ones who hadn’t been at it too long. What he really hated were the ones who had started screwing at twelve and were all fucked out by the time they were twenty and just going through the motions and some of them were the prettiest of all and could fake you out.
   Ginny brought coffee and cake into his bedroom and put it on the long table in the sitting room part. He told her simply that Hagen was helping him put together the money credit for a producing package and she was excited about that. He would be important again. But she had no idea of how powerful Don Corleone really was so she didn’t understand the significance of Hagen coming from New York. He told her Hagen was also helping with legal details.
   When they had finished the coffee be told her he was going to work that night, and make phone calls and plans for the future. “Half of all this will be in the kids’ names,” he told her. She gave him a grateful smile and kissed him good night before she left his room.
   There was a glass dish full of his favorite monogrammed cigarettes, a humidor with pencil-thin black Cuban cigars on his writing desk. Johnny tilted back and started making calls. His brain was really whirring along. He called the author of the book, the best-selling novel, on which his new film was based. The author was a guy his own age who had come up the hard way and was now a celebrity in the literary world. He had come out to Hollywood expecting to be treated like a wheel and, like most authors, had been treated like shit. Johnny had seen the humiliation of the author one night at the Brown Derby. The writer had been fixed up with a well-known bosomy starlet for a date on the town and a sure shack-up later. But while they were at dinner the starlet had deserted the famous author because a ratty-looking movie comic had waggled his finger at her. That had given the writer the right slant on just who was who in the Hollywood pecking order. It didn’t matter that his book had made him world famous. A starlet would prefer the crummiest, the rattiest, the phoniest movie wheel.
   Now Johnny called the author at his New York home to thank him for the great part he had written in his book for him. He flattered the shit out of the guy. Then casually he asked him how he was doing on his next novel and what it was all about. He lit a cigar while the author told him about a specially interesting chapter and then finally said, “Gee, I’d like to read it when you’re finished. How about sending me a copy? Maybe I can get you a good deal for it, better than you got with Woltz.”
   The eagerness in the author’s voice told him that he had guessed right. Woltz had chiseled the guy, given him peanuts for the book. Johnny mentioned that he might be in New York right after the holidays and would the author want to come and have dinner with some of his friends. “I know a few good-looking broads,” Johnny said jokingly. The author laughed and said OK.
   Next Johnny called up the director and cameraman on the film he had just finished to thank them for having helped him in the film. He told them confidentially that he knew Woltz had been against him and he doubly appreciated their help and that if there was ever anything he could do for them they should just call.
   Then he made the hardest call of all, the one to Jack Woltz. He thanked him for the part in the picture and told him how happy he would be to work for him anytime. He did this merely to throw Woltz off the track. He had always been very square, very straight. In a few days Woltz would find out about his maneuvering and be astounded by the treachery of this call, which was exactly what Johnny Fontane wanted him to feel.
   After that he sat at the desk and puffed at his cigar. There was whiskey on a side table but he had made some sort of promise to himself and Hagen that he wouldn’t drink. He shouldn’t even be smoking. It was foolish; whatever was wrong with his voice probably wouldn’t be helped by knocking off drinking and smoking. Not too much, but what the hell, it might help and he wanted all the percentages with him, now that he had a fighting chance.
   Now with the house quiet, his divorced wife sleeping, his beloved daughters sleeping, he could think back to that terrible time in his life when he had deserted them. Deserted them for a whore tramp of a bitch who was his second wife. But even now he smiled at the thought of her, she was such a lovely broad in so many ways and, besides, the only thing that saved his life was the day that he had made up his mind never to hate a woman or, more specifically, the day he had decided he could not afford to hate his first wife and his daughters, his girl friends, his second wife, and the girl friends after that, right up to Sharon Moore brushing him off so that she could brag about refusing to screw for the great Johnny Fontane.


* * *

   He had traveled with the band singing and then he had become a radio star and a star of the movie stage shows and then he had finally made it in the movies. And in all that time he had lived the way he wanted to, screwed the women he wanted to, but he had never let it affect his personal life. Then he had fallen for his soon to be second wife, Margot Ashton; he had gone absolutely crazy for her. His career had gone to hell, his voice had gone to hell, his family life had gone to hell. And there had come the day when he was left without anything.
   The thing was, he had always been generous and fair. He had given his first wife everything he owned when he divorced her. He had made sure his two daughters would get a piece of everything he made, every record, every movie, every club date. And when he had been rich and famous he had refused his first wife nothing. He had helped out all her brothers and sisters, her father and mother, the girl friends she had gone to school with and their families. He had never been a stuck-up celebrity. He had sung at the weddings of his wife’s two younger sisters, something he hated to do. He had never refused her anything except the complete surrender of his own personality.
   And then when he had touched bottom, when he could no longer get movie work, when he could no longer sing, when his second wife had betrayed him, he had gone to spend a few days with Ginny and his daughters. He had more or less flung himself on her mercy one night because he felt so lousy. That day he had heard one of his recordings and he had sounded so terrible that he accused the song technicians of sabotaging the record. Until finally he had become convinced that that was what his voice really sounded like. He had smashed the master record and refused to sing anymore. He was so ashamed that he had not sung a note except with Nino at Connie Corleone’s wedding.
   He had never forgotten the look on Ginny’s face when she found out about all his misfortunes. It had passed over her face only for a second but that was enough for him never to forget it. It was a look of savage and joyful satisfaction. It was a look that could only make him believe that she had contemptuously hated him all these years. She quickly recovered and offered him cool but polite sympathy. He had pretended to accept it. During the next few days he had gone to see three of the girls he had liked the most over the years, girls he had remained friends with and sometimes still slept with in a comradely way, girls that he had done everything in his power to help, girls to whom he had given the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts or job opportunities. On their faces he had caught that same fleeting look of savage satisfaction.
   It was during that time that he knew he had to make a decision. He could become like a great many other men in Hollywood, successful producers, writers, directors, actors, who preyed on beautiful women with lustful hatred. He could use power and monetary favors grudgingly, always alert for treason, always believing that women would betray and desert him, adversaries to be bested. Or he could refuse to hate women and continue to believe in them.
   He knew he could not afford not to love them, that something of his spirit would die if he did not continue to love women no matter how treacherous and unfaithful they were. It didn’t matter that the women he loved most in the world were secretly glad to see him crushed, humiliated, by a wayward fortune; it did not matter that in the most awful way, not sexually, they had been unfaithful to him. He had no choice. He had to accept them. And so he made love to all of them, gave them presents, hid the hurt their enjoyment of his misfortunes gave him. He forgave them knowing he was being paid back for having lived in the utmost freedom from women and in the fullest flush of their favor. But now he never felt guilty about being untrue to them. He never felt guilty about how he treated Ginny, insisting on remaining the sole father of his children, yet never even considering remarrying her, and letting her know that too. That was one thing he had salvaged out of his fall from the top. He had grown a thick skin about the hurts he gave women.
   He was tired and ready for bed but one note of memory stuck with him: singing with Nino Valenti. And suddenly he knew what would please Don Corleone more than anything else. He picked up the phone and told the operator to get him New York. He called Sonny Corleone and asked him for Nino Valenti’s number. Then he called Nino. Nino sounded a little drunk as usual.
   “Hey, Nino, how’d you like to come out here and work for me,” Johnny said. “I need a guy I can trust.”
   Nino, kidding around, said, “Gee, I don’t know, Johnny, I got a good job on the truck, boffing housewives along my route, picking up a clear hundred-fifty every week. What you got to offer?”
   “I can start you at five hundred and get you blind dates with movie stars, how’s that?” Johnny said. “And maybe I’ll let you sing at my parties.”
   “Yeah, OK, let me think about it.” Nino said. “Let me talk it over with my lawyer and my accountant and my helper on the truck.”
   “Hey, no kidding around, Nino,” Johnny said. “I need you out here. I want you to fly out tomorrow morning and sign a personal contract for five hundred a week for a year. Then if you steal one of my broads and I fire you, you pick up at least a year’s salary. OK?”
   There was a long pause. Nino’s voice was sober. “Hey, Johnny, you kidding?”
   Johnny said, “I’m serious, kid. Go to my agent’s office in New York. They’ll have your plane ticket and some cash. I’m gonna call them first thing in the morning. So you go up there in the afternoon. OK? Then I’ll have somebody meet you at the plane and bring you out to the house.”
   Again there was a long pause and then Nino’s voice, very subdued, uncertain, said, “OK, Johnny.” He didn’t sound drunk anymore.
   Johnny hung up the phone and got ready for bed. He felt better than any time since he had smashed that master record.