The Godfather returns

by Mark Winegardner

  Concealed behind the parapets of the highest of the Castle in the Sand’s three Moorish towers and encased in a spire of mirrored glass was an unnamed, revolving ballroom where the ceremony would be held.

  “I bet you’re smelling printer’s ink right now,” said Clemenza, giving Michael a gentle elbow. “You can about taste it, am I right? In the back of your throat, eh? Like oil, but worse.”

  The reflection of Michael in the shiny brass elevator doors was sipping a crystal goblet of ice water. He looked like a put-together, invulnerable, slick-haired man of respect, with the wind at his back and the world by the balls.

  “I’m tellin’ you,” Clemenza said. “I don’t think I ever seen your old man so-”

  Michael nodded.

  “Waterworks,” Clemenza said. “Only time in all the years I ever saw him like that.”

  Clemenza had been the one who’d brought Michael to be straightened out, a few weeks after he returned to America from his exile in Sicily. The killings of Sollozzo and McCluskey, which had served to make his bones, had happened three years earlier. Clemenza had had tickets to a Dodgers game he’d gotten from a friend he had with the team. Second row, right behind the plate. It was the first game Michael had seen since they started letting Negroes play. He’d had no idea that this had happened, or when. He’d spent seven of the last eight years away from America, fighting and killing and in constant danger of being killed. He’d missed things. He hadn’t even been to his brother’s funeral. The Dodgers beat Chicago, 4-1.

  On the way home, they stopped at what, when Michael left the country, had been the offices of a daily newspaper. One of Clemenza’s shylocks had, for the usual reasons, found himself in possession of the building. Clemenza said he needed to take a look at the place to figure out whether to rent it, sell it, or torch it. All of which was true.

  When they entered the huge empty room where the printing press had been, there, in the pale late-summer light, sitting behind a long table, its blue paint peeling, were Tessio and Michael’s father. On the table were a tapered candle, a holy card, a pistol, and a knife. Michael knew what was coming: they were initiating him into the Family. After all that had happened, this was just a formality. It had been Michael’s own idea to kill those men-the man who’d arranged the hit on Vito Corleone and the crooked cop who, when he came to the hospital to finish the job, had had to settle for smashing Michael’s face. It had been his brother Sonny’s job, as acting Don, to okay those killings (Tessio had objected, saying it would be like “bringing a guy up from the minors to pitch in the World Series”). Later, Vito claimed he’d never wanted this life for Michael, but it had always been obvious he thought no one else could ever be good enough. At Michael’s initiation, his father mumbled a few unintelligible words before his shoulders started heaving. He began to sob. Clemenza followed suit. Tessio finished the job, in a combination of Sicilian and English, with saturnine eloquence. Afterward, they killed two bottles of Chianti. Vito couldn’t stop weeping. The smell of ink and grease registered on Michael, but somehow not the intensity of it. The next day, his clothes stank so badly they had to go in the trash. A week later, the building burned to the ground. Lightning, ruled the fire marshal. A month after that, the guy quit the fire department and moved to Florida. Now he fronted money-laundering operations down there-liquor stores, vending machines, real estate-and was engaged to Sonny’s widow, Sandra.

  The elevator doors opened. Michael and Pete boarded it and rode it together to the top.

  “Forlenza’d never clip his own godson.” Clemenza-who, on Michael’s orders, had killed Carlo Rizzi, the father of Michael’s own godson-sucked three olives off his toothpick and kept the pick in the corner of his mouth. “I also don’t think it’s possible a guy from another outfit could set foot on that fucking island without the Jew knowing about it,” Clemenza said. “I say accident.”

  The best information Hagen had been able to get was that there had been one survivor. This had not been confirmed. If the survivor was one of the two Dons or one of their men, it would look better. If it was Geraci, what would happen next was hard to figure. It might or might not be possible to pass him off as some private pilot named O’Malley with no connection to the Corleone Family. Also, it was going to be nearly impossible to learn what he knew or had been able to figure out. And then there was the matter of the thunderstorm. The storm might take the blame for everything, which would keep the crash from having its full effect. But Michael was already plotting how he might use any uncertainty over the cause of the crash to his advantage. “Accidents don’t happen,” Michael said, “to people who take accidents as a personal insult.”

  “So sabotage?”

  “I don’t know. I agree, Don Forlenza wouldn’t kill his own godson, even if he had a reason to. As far as we know, he didn’t have a reason. But I’m not so sure it’s impossible to sneak onto that island somehow.”

  “If not Forlenza-”

  Michael shrugged and arched an eyebrow and kept his eyes fixed on Pete’s.

  “La testa di cazzo.” Clemenza pulled out the elevator’s emergency stop knob with one hand, pounding the wall with the other. “Russo.”

  Michael nodded, as if in thought. “One airplane,” he said, “and who gets hurt? They hit us, they hit Molinari, they hit their own guy Falcone, a reckless man who maybe they thought had stepped too far out on his own, and it all looks like Forlenza ordered it. Their four biggest competitors not just here, in Las Vegas, but in the western half of the country.”

  “ ‘Everything west of Chicago is Chicago,’ ” Clemenza said, mocking. “Quello stronzo.”

  “If you’re right,” Michael said, “turd only scratches the surface of what that guy is.” He shook his head in a way he was sure looked sincerely rueful.

  Clemenza filled his fat cheeks with air, exhaled slowly, then pushed the button in. When the elevator doors opened, a few dozen people were already there, scattered throughout the ballroom. Clemenza patted Michael on the back. “Don’t let that shit ruin this thing here,” he whispered. “Enjoy it, okay? You went to all that trouble to have your face fixed where that cop fucked it up. Show it off a little. Smile.”

  Michael had lied.

  Not lied exactly. More like: he’d led a horse to water, and Pete Clemenza had bent over and drunk. If Pete blamed Russo that fast, he wouldn’t be alone.

  The truth was that Michael Corleone had sought to hurt all four of his biggest rivals in the West. That was the easy part. The hard part had been to do it without taking the blame. By orchestrating the incident so that not another living soul knew all of what he’d done (not Hagen, not Pete, nobody), he might have done that, too.

  Frank Falcone was a menace. Ever since Michael had had Moe Greene killed, Falcone had been the biggest roadblock to the Corleones’ expansion into Las Vegas. Pignatelli would be more obedient to Chicago than Falcone was, yet because of his business relationship with the Corleones-both his involvement in the Castle in the Clouds and the satchel of cash he’d had Johnny Fontane deliver as a tribute for killing Falcone-he posed no threat.

  Tony Molinari was a longtime ally, true, but his increasing wariness about Michael’s setting up a base of operations in Lake Tahoe, a couple hundred miles from San Francisco, was a problem destined to escalate. Unfortunately, he’d become a cancer best removed now.

  Forlenza was an old man. Disgracing him while he was still alive was better than killing him. He’d been bragging to the other Dons for years about his little island fortress. He’d get all or part of the blame for the crash. Even if no one came after him for revenge, there would be pressure from his own men for him to step down. Sal Narducci-who’d struck a deal with Michael Corleone and overseen the sabotage of the plane-would become Don. After waiting for the job for twenty years, he was a good bet to keep his mouth shut about how he finally got it. Installing Narducci as Don would also sever Cleveland ’s ties to the Barzinis.

  The best part of the plan was what it would do to
Chicago. It would be impossible to prove that Russo had been behind it and equally impossible to disprove it. But once Michael let the members of the Commission know that the dead pilot O’Malley had really been his new capo, all the right people would consider who’d had the most to gain.

  Would Forlenza kill his own godson? No.

  Would Michael Corleone kill his new hotshot capo? Who could imagine?

  That left Chicago.

  Michael had managed to hit Chicago without killing a single one of Russo’s men. Michael would thus not have to worry about Russo seeking revenge. The only tangible loss Russo would suffer was that now he’d come to the peace table dealing from a position of weakness. But that was all Michael needed.

  The most difficult decision Michael had made was to kill Geraci.

  Without question, Geraci had done a brilliant job with the drug business, but his aggressiveness was an issue. His ambition was boundless, larger than even he himself understood. Though he’d been unswervingly loyal, his connection to Forlenza would always be a concern. He’d always be sore about Tessio. And when Michael had made Fredo sotto capo, Geraci had asked him, in public, if he’d lost his mind. They’d been at dinner at Patsy’s. No one else had been at the table. No one else had heard. Geraci had apologized. But few Dons would tolerate such disrespect. It might have seemed petty, but it convinced Michael Corleone that all the smaller concerns about him were well founded and destined to grow more severe.

  Still, only the last justified having Geraci killed. Even that might have been forgiven. There had been no betrayal. Geraci’s assets easily outweighed his liabilities. Michael liked him.

  Sacrificing Fausto Geraci, Jr., was not what Vito Corleone would have done.

  It was, rather, the act of a marine who’d seen at least a thousand good men die, seemingly at random: a necessary evil swapped for the chance to achieve a greater good.

  It was a perfect plan, unless it was true that one of the men had survived.

  Clemenza had lied, too.

  Michael’s initiation was not the only time he’d seen the Don like that. Still frail from his own gunshot wounds, Vito had returned home from burying Santino so wracked with grief it haunted everyone who’d seen it. Michael hadn’t seen it. The people who had-Michael’s mother, his sister and her husband, his brothers, Tom and Fredo, and Pete Clemenza, who, soon after the sobbing started, embraced his friend and went home, leaving the family to themselves-carried with them the image of that broken man and the sounds of his horrible wails. They had never spoken of it, not to one another and certainly not to anyone who hadn’t been there, not even Michael.

  Several people who’d been at the Fontane show made an appearance in the rotating ballroom. A reception, that’s all it seemed to be. There was no discernible mass exodus of the union officials, orchestra members, or women. As far as any of the thirteen new men might have been able to tell, one moment those other people were there. The next, made members of the Corleone Family were carrying two long tables, already covered with white linen tablecloths, to the center of the parquet dance floor, and every single one of the outsiders was gone.

  Someone hit the lights.

  Throughout the room, men put hands on the shoulders of the inductees and in hoarse whispers congratulated them (there would have been fourteen if Fredo hadn’t made Figaro miss his plane). These were men the new guys had looked up to for years-running their neighborhoods, dressed in tailored suits and holding forth in barbershops and at lunch counters and on empty peach crates in front of certain garages, driv-ing fancy cars and fucking fancier women, dispensing favors and looking out for their own, running a court of last resort for a maligned people who needed one, operating in a world that, back then, had seemed mysterious, powerful, and unattainable. Outside the dark ballroom, oblivious tourists swam in the rooftop pool.

  When the ballroom lights came back up, the table was set: thirteen place settings, each with a votive candle, a holy card, a dagger, and-in a gesture meant to denote the Family’s expansion into the Wild West (Fredo’s idea, in other words)-a gleaming, unloaded Colt.45.

  The thirteen new men were shown to their places. The others-fifty-two of them were able to make it, some who’d been at the show, some who’d slipped into town and into the Castle in the Sand just for this-sat in the chairs around the circle.

  Michael Corleone sat with the rest of his men. He milked the silence. He was not a superstitious man, but he worked with superstitious men and he knew that they were counting and recounting the number of men in the middle and not liking it that the number kept being thirteen. But the risk of letting them dwell on that pointless coincidence seemed worth the reward of letting the men at the tables stew in their barely concealed anxiety. To a person, they were transparently trying, and failing, to look as if this were just another moment in their lives. They knew who he was and that he was in charge of this, and so it was comical to watch them try not to look at him. He could hear the voice of Sergeant Bradshaw, his old DI: Your fool deniiiies fear. A maRINE is unafraid to admit fear. Your fool scoffs at danger. Your fool ignorrrrrres danger. In the face of danger, a… MARINE… IGNORES… NOTHING.

  At last Michael stood.

  “Let me tell you the story of a boy,” he said, approaching the tables. “He was born one thousand, one hundred and forty years ago in the Sicilian countryside, near the town of Corleone. His childhood was one of wealth and happiness, until, at the age of twelve, the Arab hordes, on their way north through the mountains, slaughtered the boy’s parents. The boy, hiding in a clay pot, peeked out and saw the blade of a scimitar decapitate his mother, and from the dead lips of her severed head she shouted words of love to her only son. These murders were acts of savagery. The Arabs were protecting nothing, avenging nothing. They did not so much as pick a tomato from the vine, a grape from the field, or an olive from the grove. They killed for the sake of killing and proceeded north toward their objective, Palermo.”

  Michael took a cigar from the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket. More than one of the men at the tables rubbed their damp palms against the sides of their thighs.

  “The boy’s name,” said Michael, “was Leolucas.” Michael paused to light the cigar and let the importance of the name sink in. “Though only twelve years old, he managed not only to run his family’s estate but also to work the land as long and as hard as someone twice his age. But as the years passed, he heard, in the solitude of the fields, a summons to his one true destiny. He sold his assets, gave his money to the poor, and became a monk. After many years, he returned to the village of his youth, where he performed countless selfless acts and was beloved by all who knew him. He died peacefully in his bed at the age of one hundred.”

  “Cent’anni!” shouted Clemenza. Every man who had a drink knocked it back.

  “Five hundred years later,” Michael said, circling the men at the tables, “the intercession of Leolucas protected the town of Corleone from an outbreak of the Black Plague. And in 1860, more than a thousand years after his death, Leolucas avenged the murders of his parents by appearing as a tower of white flame before the occupying army of the Bourbon French, spooking them from Corleone and into the hands of Garibaldi, who drove them from Sicily altogether. These miracles, and many others at the site of his tomb, were affirmed by the Holy Father in Rome. Leo-lucas is now and forever-” Michael took a regal puff of his cigar, strode to one of the tables, and took the holy card from in front of Tommy Neri, who was one of the thirteen. He kissed the card and set it back down. “-the patron saint of Corleone. Gentlemen?”

  He made a sweeping motion with his hand. Each of the thirteen kissed the pasteboard image of St. Leolucas.

  “Only a few years after the terrifying appearance of Saint Leolucas in the tower of flame,” Michael said, “in a cottage adjoining the fields once owned and tilled by the sainted Leolucas, another boy was born. His childhood was also happy, until, also at the age of twelve, men came to kill his father. The murder was accomplished with thr
ee blasts from a lupara. His mother was stabbed. Gutted, like an animal. Mortally wounded, she, too, managed to shout words of love to her son. The boy escaped. The murderers came after him, knowing that someday he would try to kill them. That man’s name-” Michael took another long draw off the cigar. He felt his own destiny flow through him. “-was Vito Andolini. He immigrated, alone, to the cold shores of America, where, to keep the murderers from finding him, he changed his surname, adopting the name of his hometown. It was one of the few sentimental gestures he ever made, all having to do in some way with la famiglia”-and here he smacked his chest with his fist-“with his beloved figliolanza”-and here he touched his chin. “He worked hard, helped his friends, built an empire, and never harbored an immodest thought. One day he did indeed return to Sicily and avenge the death of his parents. Vito Corleone, who earlier this year died peacefully in his beloved garden, was my father. I, Michael Corleone, am his son. But”-and he indicated the men in the outer circle-“these men of honor, too, are la famiglia Corleone. If you wish to be with us, we invite you to be reborn as such.”

  Michael took his seat. Fredo had been meant to perform the next part. Despite what people like Nick Geraci thought, Michael’s installation of his older brother as sotto capo had been more a means of encouragement than a job. Fredo had been given a few narrowly defined responsibilities, a small crew of reliable but mediocre men, a whorehouse in the desert, and some symbolic responsibilities, which he was discharging with his usual inconsistency. Michael was resigned to this. No matter how hard you beat a donkey, it will never become a racehorse.

  Clemenza planted his cane on the floor, grunted loudly, and stood.

  Undoubtedly, each of the thirteen already understood the formalities of this arrangement. But there were conventions to observe. Clemenza began by explaining the structure of the Family. Michael Corleone was the Godfather, whose authority is absolute. Frederico Corleone was the sotto capo. Rocco Lampone and himself, Pete Clemenza, were the caporegimes. Clemenza made no mention of the role of consigliere. This had been the case since the death of Genco Abbandando, first because Hagen, who was not Sicilian, could never participate in, observe, or even be mentioned in these ceremonies, then because during Vito’s brief stint as consigliere, the books had remained closed. Clemenza made no mention of Nick Geraci at all.