The Family Corleone

by Ed Falco

  Cork’s shot missed Stevie and hit Vito in the shoulder. When Cork realized what he had done, the gun fell from his hand and he staggered backward as if he himself had just been shot.

  Vito dropped to the ground and Stevie’s shot missed him altogether.

  Cork stumbled back to the storefront.

  Luca Brasi, arisen from the dead, fired at Stevie, hitting him in the head—and then again it was like a downpour of movement and sound, gunfire everywhere again, Cork pressed against a brick wall, the Donnellys and Corr Gibson and the cops and everyone shooting at everyone.

  Amid the chaos of the moment, Cork’s only thought was that he had to explain himself to Sonny, explain what had just happened, that he had been aiming for Stevie and hit Vito by accident—but Sonny was lost in a crush of bodies attending to Vito.

  Cork shouted to Vinnie and Angelo. He stuck his head out and waved for them to come to him. The twins cast quick glances toward him as they turned away from the Donnellys. They appeared to argue between themselves, and then Vinnie jumped up and bolted for the sidewalk—and no sooner was he fully erect than a rattle of gunfire caught him in the neck and head, and pieces of his face exploded in a pink haze around him. He wavered on his feet, most of his face already gone, and then fell straight down, like a building imploding. Cork looked from Vinnie to Angelo, who was looking at his brother with amazement. On the street behind him, Luca Brasi had picked up Vito and was carrying him to safety, while Vito reached out for his family, still huddled on the ground. Then everyone seemed to realize at once that the gunfire coming from the Donnellys and Gibson had stopped, and that the storefronts and doorways where they had been taking cover were empty. When they understood that they were escaping, JoJo, Vinnie, and Paulie disappeared into the buildings, giving chase, and again, a moment of calm descended on the street, where Richie Gatto, Tony Coli, and Vinnie Romero lay dead, along with Pete Murray and Stevie Dwyer and Sean O’Rourke. As Cork looked over the dead, he saw that there were more bodies, and that they had to be parade watchers, people who had taken a break from their work or their shopping, and who would never do either again. Among them, he spotted the body of a child—a dark-haired boy who looked to be about Caitlin’s age.

  Somehow, everyone’s attention seemed to fall on the child at the same instant. To Cork, it appeared that everyone was looking at the same small body sprawled out on the sidewalk, one tiny arm dangling over the curb. There was still much shouting, now mostly from the cops, who were swarming everywhere, but it seemed to Cork that the street had suddenly gone silent. He stood in the doorway and looked behind him into what appeared to be a women’s clothing store. A dozen people who had been curled up in corners and hidden behind doors and counters were standing and moving toward him and the shattered window, wanting to get a look at the mayhem. When Cork turned back to the street he found waves of cops in uniform shouting orders and arresting everyone in sight. Sonny, with his hands cuffed behind him, was staring back at Cork, as was Angelo, in the arms of two brawny coppers. When another pair of uniforms started for the storefront, Cork slipped into the crowd, and then into the back rooms, where he found an exit to an alley. For a while he stood among the garbage pails and clutter. When he couldn’t imagine what to do next, he started toward Gimbels and the underground tunnels that would lead him back to his waiting car.

  24.

  Vito watched from his study window as the last of the reporters—a couple of fat men in cheap suits, with press credentials stuck in their hat bands—disappeared into an old Buick and drove off slowly down Hughes Avenue. Behind them, a trio of detectives were bantering with Hubbell and Mitzner, two Ivy League–educated lawyers in his employ. For hours his home had been crowded with cops and lawyers, while out on the street a mob of wire service and radio reporters harassed everyone who came near his building, including his neighbors. Now, alone in his darkened study, standing unseen at the window as evening approached, his arm in a sling, Vito waited for the last of the strangers to leave. Downstairs, his men also waited. They were in the kitchen with Clemenza, who had cooked a meal of spaghetti and meatballs for everyone, while Carmella went back and forth between the children’s bedrooms, comforting them. Vito ran the fingers of his good hand through his hair again and again, sometimes watching the street, sometimes looking at his own reflection in the dark glass of the window, his thoughts skittering back to the parade and the police and the hospital, to his children sprawled on the street with bullets flying around them, to Santino at his side wielding a gun, and, again and again, to the moment he first spotted the dead child on the sidewalk, blood spilling over the curb and pooling on the street.

  About the child, he could do nothing. He would find a way to help the family, but he knew that was nothing, that only somehow undoing what had been done would be meaningful, and because he understood the limits of what was possible, he knew he would have to put the child out of mind—but for now he let himself see the image again. He let himself see the dead child on the sidewalk, bleeding into the street. He let himself remember Richie Gatto falling into his arms, and he let himself recall the indignities he suffered at the hands of the police, being handcuffed and carried away in a paddy wagon when he should have been taken directly to a hospital. He’d been shot in the shoulder. He’d been told the boy, Santino’s friend Bobby Corcoran, had shot him, though he hadn’t seen it happen. He had, though, seen the look in the eyes of the police who dragged him away. He’d seen their disgust at the sight of him, as if they were dealing with a savage. He’d said to one of the cops, “I was marching in a parade with my family,” as if to explain himself, and then he blushed at the disgrace of explaining himself to some buffóne, and was quiet and suffered the pain in his shoulder until Mitzner showed up and had him taken to Columbia Presbyterian, where they pulled a bullet out of him, wrapped his chest in gauze, put his arm in a sling, and sent him home to be pressed and mobbed by reporters before he could escape into his house and the quiet of his study.

  In the window glass, he saw that he had made a mess of his hair and he wondered at the strangeness of the image looking back at him: a middle-aged man in an unbuttoned dress shirt, his chest wrapped in gauze, his hair a mess, his left arm in a sling. He straightened out his hair as best he could. He buttoned up his shirt. His own children, he thought, his own children on the street in the midst of a gun battle. His wife sprawled on the ground trying to protect her children from men with guns. “Infamitá,” he whispered, and the single word seemed to fill up his study. “Infamitá,” he said again, and only when he was aware of his heart pounding and blood rushing to his face did he close his eyes and empty his head until he felt the return of a familiar calm. He didn’t say it. He didn’t even think it. But he knew it in his bones and in his blood: He would do whatever had to be done. He would do it to the best of his abilities. And he would trust that God understood the things that men were forced to do, for themselves and for their families, in the world He had created.

  By the time Clemenza knocked twice before opening the study door, Vito was himself again. He turned on the lamp and took his seat behind the desk as Sonny, Tessio, and Genco followed Clemenza into the room and pulled up chairs around him. At a glance, Vito saw that Genco and Tessio were shaken. Clemenza looked no different now—after a massacre that had left a child and three of their own men dead—than he did after a Sunday dinner with friends. But in Tessio’s and Genco’s faces, Vito saw tightness and distress and something more, a subtle deepening of their features. In Santino, Vito found a mixture of solemnity and anger that he couldn’t read, and he wondered if he might be more Clemenza’s son than his own. “Are they all gone?” he asked. “The detectives, the reporters?”

  “Pack of jackals,” Clemenza said, “the whole lot of them.” He fussed with a red gravy stain on his tie and then loosened the knot. “They should all go to hell.”

  Genco said, “This is the biggest story since the Lindbergh kidnapping. That dead kid…” He pressed his hands together
as if praying. “It’s all over the newspapers and the radio. It’ll be on The March of Time on Friday, I heard. Madre ’Dio,” he added, as if offering up a prayer.

  Vito stood and put his hand on Genco’s back, and then patted his shoulder before he crossed the room and sat down again in the window seat. “How many were killed,” he asked Genco, “besides our men and the Irish?”

  “Four dead, including the kid,” Sonny answered for Genco, “and a dozen wounded. That’s what’s in the Mirror. They got a picture of the dead kid on the front page.”

  “LaGuardia was on the radio with his ‘throw the bums out’ garbage again.” Clemenza brushed at the gravy stain on his tie, and then, as if more frustrated with the tie than with the news, he undid the knot, pulled off the tie, and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

  To Genco, Vito said, “For the child and his family, we find a quiet way to provide whatever help money and connections can afford. Same for the families of the dead.”

  “Sì,” Genco said. “Already I’m hearing of funds to help the families. We can be generous there, and anonymous.”

  “Good,” Vito said. “As for everything else,” he started, and then was interrupted by a gentle knock on the door.

  “Yeah, what?” Sonny shouted at the door, and Vito looked away, out the window.

  Jimmy Mancini stepped into the study and hesitated, as if at a loss for words. He was a big man who looked older than his thirty-plus years, with muscular arms and skin that appeared deeply tanned even in the middle of winter. “Emilio Barzini,” he said, finally.

  “What about him?” Clemenza barked. Jimmy was one of his men, and he didn’t like his fumbling.

  “He’s here,” Jimmy said. “He’s at the front door.”

  “Barzini?” Tessio touched his heart, as if something hurt him there.

  To his father Sonny whispered, “We should kill the son of a bitch right here!”

  “He’s by himself,” Jimmy said. “I frisked him good. He’s here naked, hat in hand. He says, ‘Tell Don Corleone that I respectfully request an audience with him.’ ”

  The men in the room looked to Vito, who touched his chin tentatively and then nodded to Jimmy. “Bring him up,” he said. “Treat him with respect.”

  “V’fancul’!” Sonny rose halfway out of his seat, leaning toward Vito. “He tried to kill Genco and Clemenza!”

  “This is business,” Tessio said to Sonny. “Sit down and listen.”

  When Jimmy left and closed the door, Sonny said, “Let me frisk him again. He’s in our home, Pop.”

  “Which is why you don’t have to frisk him,” Vito said. He took his seat again behind his desk.

  Clemenza finished explaining for Vito. “There are things that are understood in our business, Sonny. A man like Emilio, he wouldn’t come into your home with murder in his heart.”

  At Clemenza’s words, Vito made a noise that came out as something between a grunt and a snarl, a sound so unusual coming from Vito that everyone turned to look at him.

  When Vito didn’t say anything, Tessio broke the silence by addressing Clemenza. “It’s good to trust,” he said, repeating an old Sicilian adage, “it’s better not to.”

  Clemenza smiled at that. “All right,” he said. “Let’s just say I trust that Jimmy frisked him.”

  When Mancini knocked once and opened the door, all the men in the room were seated. No one stood when Emilio entered the study. He held his hat in one hand, and the other hand dangled at his side. His dark hair was carefully combed, pushed up off his forehead. A whiff of cologne entered the room with him, a scent almost flowery. “Don Corleone,” he said, and he moved closer to Vito’s desk. The men had shifted in their chairs, two on each side of Vito, so that they formed a small audience, with Vito stage front and Emilio addressing him from the aisle. “I’ve come to talk business,” Emilio said, “but first I want to offer my condolences for the men you lost today, especially Richie Gatto, who I know was close to you, and who I too have known and respected for many years.”

  “You’re offering condolences?” Sonny said. “What do you think? You think this makes us weak now?”

  Sonny looked like he was about to say more before Clemenza laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

  Emilio never so much as glanced at Sonny. Looking at Vito, he said, “I’m willing to bet Don Corleone understands why I’m here.”

  From behind his desk, Vito watched in silence until he saw the slightest hint of sweat along Emilio’s upper lip. He grasped the armrest on his chair and leaned back. “You’re here because Giuseppe Mariposa was behind this massacre,” he said. “And now that he has failed, again, you see which way this war will go, and you want to save yourself and your family.”

  Emilio nodded once, slowly, a slight bow of his head. “I knew you would understand.”

  “It doesn’t take a genius,” Vito said. “The Irish would have never tried something like this without Mariposa’s backing.”

  Sonny’s face had gone from ruddy to bright red, and he looked so close to leaping for Emilio’s throat that Vito interceded. “Santino,” he said. “We invited Signor Barzini into our home, and now we will listen to what he has to say.”

  When Sonny muttered something under his breath and fell back in his seat, Vito turned again to Emilio.

  Emilio looked around the study until his eyes fell on a folding chair leaning against the wall. When no one took him up on his obvious request to be seated, he continued on his feet. “I was against this, Don Corleone,” he said. “I plead with you to believe me. I was against this, and so were the Rosatos—but you know Giuseppe. When he gets mule-headed about a thing, there’s no stopping him.”

  “But you were against this,” Vito said, “employing the Irish to do this dirty work, this massacre.”

  “Joe is a powerful man now.” Emilio gave away his nervousness only in the way he occasionally tapped his hat against his leg. “We couldn’t stop him any more than one of your captains could overrule your commands.”

  “But you were opposed to it,” Vito repeated.

  “We argued against it,” Emilio said, the brim of his hat bent in his grip, “but to no avail. And now, this bloodbath that will bring the cops down on all of us like we’ve never seen before. Already they’re raiding our banks and going after Tattaglia’s girls.”

  “Our banks,” Vito said, almost in a whisper. “Tattaglia’s girls…” He paused and let his gaze settle heavily on Emilio. “This upsets you, but not an innocent child murdered, not my family,” he said, his voice rising on the word family, “cowering in the street. My wife, my six-year-old daughter, my boys, in the street—this is not why you’re here, in my home.”

  “Don Corleone,” Emilio said, his head bowed, his voice full of emotion. “Don Corleone,” he repeated, “forgive me for allowing this to happen. Mi dispiace davvero. Mi vergogno. I should have come to you to prevent it. I should have risked my life and my fortune. I beg your forgiveness.”

  “Sì,” Vito said, and then he was silent, with Emilio held in his unrelenting gaze. “What is it you’ve come here to say, Emilio?” he added, finally. “How is it you propose to make amends?”

  “To survive a disgrace like this,” Emilio said, “we need wise leadership. Giuseppe is strong and ruthless, but he has never been called wise.”

  “And so?”

  “My brother, Ettore, the Rosato brothers, all our men, even Tomasino, we believe that a wise leader, a leader with political connections, is necessary in a time like this.” Emilio hesitated and tapped his hat against his thigh. He seemed to be looking for the right words. “We believe you should be our leader, Don Corleone. Giuseppe Mariposa, with this parade blunder, this disaster, his time is over.”

  “Sì,” Vito said, again, and finally looked away from Emilio. He glanced over his men, taking in their expressions: Clemenza and Tessio, with faces as blank as stone; Genco, with a look of interest and thoughtfulness; and Sonny, predictably, angry. “And they all a
gree to this,” Vito said, “all of Joe’s caporegimes?”

  “Yes,” Emilio said, “and if there’s any trouble after Joe’s gone—with his businesses, or with the Tattaglias, or even Al Capone and Frank Nitti, I give you my solemn word, the Barzinis and the Rosatos and Tomasino Cinquemani, we will fight by your side.”

  “And in return for this?” Vito asked.

  “A fair division of all of Joe’s businesses between your family and our families.” When Vito didn’t respond immediately, Emilio continued, “What happened today was terrible. Disgrazia. We must wipe ourselves clean of it and get back to operating peacefully, without all this bloodshed.”

  “On that we agree,” Vito said, “but on the division of Giuseppe’s businesses, we will need to talk.”

  “Yes, certainly,” Emilio said, with obvious relief. “You’re known as a man who is always fair, Don Corleone. I’m prepared to make this agreement here and now, on behalf of myself and the Rosatos and Tomasino Cinquemani.” He stepped closer to the desk and offered Vito his hand.

  Vito stood and shook hands with Emilio. “Genco will come to see you soon, and he’ll make the arrangements.” He came around the desk and put his hand on Emilio’s back, guiding him out of the study just as the door opened and Luca Brasi stepped into the room. He had on a new shirt and tie, but otherwise the same suit he had worn at the parade. The only evidence of the gun battle was a slight rip in his trousers.

  Emilio blanched and looked at Vito and then back to Luca. “I was told that you were among the dead.” He sounded more angry than shocked.