FRED CORLEONE: That’s what they say. You’re a happily married man these days, I hear.
ROBERT CHADWICK: I am. Seven years this month, actually.
FRED CORLEONE: To a great girl. She’s the sister of Governor Jimmy Shea, if I’m not mistaken.
ROBERT CHADWICK: She is.
FRED CORLEONE: Whattaya think, our next president?
ROBERT CHADWICK: Margaret?
FRED CORLEONE: No, Governor Shea. Oh, right. Good one.
ROBERT CHADWICK: I do. I certainly hope so. I’ve actually known him since prep school. He’s a great leader, a great friend. A war hero, as you may know. He’s done wonderful things for New Jersey, and I think in all honesty that America needs a man like this, someone young and smart who can inspire people and take us into the space age. Not to get on a soapbox, but you asked.
FRED CORLEONE: What? Oh. I did. No, I agree with you. This is not a political show, but I’m an American, and so I have my opinions. The opinions expressed by guests on this show or even the host do not necessarily represent blah, blah, blah. However that goes. Anyway, maybe we should get into another topic.
ROBERT CHADWICK: I’m an American, too, old boy.
FRED CORLEONE: You are? I thought-
ROBERT CHADWICK: Since I was twelve years old.
FRED CORLEONE: That’s tremendous. I want to hear about how it is that you and Fontane and all your buddies-Gene Jordan, J. J. White, Jr.-
ROBERT CHADWICK: Morrie Streator, Buzz Fratello.
FRED CORLEONE: Right. You guys are staying up all night doing your act onstage at that casino which I don’t want to name right now-
ROBERT CHADWICK: The Kasbah.
FRED CORLEONE: -and then filming a movie all day?
ROBERT CHADWICK: It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s been a total gas.
FRED CORLEONE: What do you do in a nightclub act?
ROBERT CHADWICK (laughing): Precious little.
FRED CORLEONE: Seriously?
ROBERT CHADWICK: I don’t sing, and I certainly can’t dance. What I do is, I go up onstage, have a few drinks, and tell a few blue jokes. I assure you, they’re ba-a-a-a-a-ad jokes. People laugh, though. When you’re having that much fun, it’s contagious.
FRED CORLEONE: I’ll get back to that in a minute, but before we go to commercial, I want to ask you about the movie you’re making, because I hear that you and Fontane, Gino, Buzz, all your friends-that you think you’re gonna rob all the casinos in Vegas.
ROBERT CHADWICK: It’s only a movie, old boy.
FRED CORLEONE: No, I understand that, obviously, having-
ROBERT CHADWICK: You were brilliant in Ambush at Durango, by the way. Gave me chills.
FRED CORLEONE: Thank you. What I’m saying is that I wonder how you’re going to pull off your big caper. My thinking is that either you’ll do it in a way that could never work in real life, in which case it’ll seem ridiculous to people. Or else-and here’s my question-you do have a realistic way of doing it, but then you run the risk of someone copying you.
ROBERT CHADWICK: You’re having me on, right? Is that a question?
FRED CORLEONE (shrugging): It’s a valid point, I think.
ROBERT CHADWICK: You want me to tell you how we do it? How they do it? In the movie?
FRED CORLEONE: I do. That would be interesting.
ROBERT CHADWICK: It would be. But then who’d go see the movie?
FRED CORLEONE: Lots of people would see a movie like that. Whattaya say, folks, you want to hear how they pull their, whatever. Their heist, I think is the right word. How ’bout it?
(Recorded applause)
ROBERT CHADWICK: Cute. The problem is, Freddie-and all you good people out there, too-the problem is that I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
FRED CORLEONE (stares at him, frowning; an excruciatingly long silence)
ROBERT CHADWICK: Yikes. (Calling out.) Footwear! Bring me a 12D Italian loafer in a nice gray cement, extra heavy. Send the bill to this fellow.
FRED CORLEONE: We’ll be right back.
ROBERT CHADWICK: At least one of us will.
Two days later, Fredo Corleone went to Lake Tahoe to attend to some details in the wake of his mother’s death. He had also promised to take his nephew Anthony fishing.
The boy lived on a lake, but his own father never took him. Uncle Fredo took him whenever he was in town. Anthony was eight years old and crazy about Uncle Fredo.
Anthony loved to fish, but he’d never wanted to go fishing more than he did that day. His parents were splitting up, and he had a sneaking suspicion that it was somehow his fault. If he’d been a better boy, maybe none of the bad things that happened would have happened. Now he and his little sister weren’t even allowed to stay with their mother. She was moving away. He was staying here, with his father who was gone all the time, in this scary house that a few months earlier had been fired upon by men with tommy guns. A lot of the bullet holes were still there if a person knew where to look. Anthony was the kind of boy who knew where to look.
An hour after his mother said good-bye to him, Anthony got into the boat with Uncle Fredo and Al Neri, who worked for Anthony’s father. Mr. Neri had said to call him Uncle Al, but he wasn’t really Anthony’s uncle. Anthony thought that might be a sin and so never did it. That was how the Devil caught you, he’d learned at Sunday school. With little tricks like that.
Mr. Neri fired up the motor. Uncle Fredo had a secret way of catching fish that they were going to try out. Anthony didn’t like the idea of letting Mr. Neri in on the secret, but he was so eager to get out on the water he wasn’t about to complain. Anthony was as happy as a completely miserable little boy could be.
Right as they were about to shove off, Aunt Connie came running down the dock, shouting that Anthony’s father needed to take him to Reno. Anthony started to complain, but Uncle Fredo got a hard look on his face and said that Anthony had to go. He promised to take him tomorrow instead. The boy, devastated, nodded and tried not to let on.
Aunt Connie took Anthony back to the house. Everyone had said bad things about her until a few months ago. Now she was going to be the person who took care of Anthony and his little sister every day. She was no good at taking care of her own kids, as far as Anthony could see.
Once they got inside, Aunt Connie sent him to his room. He asked about Reno. She said she didn’t know about Reno, just go. He went.
From his bedroom window, the boy watched Mr. Neri and Uncle Fredo ride away. After they disappeared from view, he stayed there, even though there was nothing to see. Anthony was alone. He didn’t cry. He promised himself he’d never cry, no matter what happened to him. He would be a good boy always, and maybe his parents would love each other again.
Minutes later, he heard a gunshot.
Soon after that, Mr. Neri came back in the boat alone.
Anthony sobbed. He didn’t stop crying for days.
During his parents’ contentious divorce, the boy summoned the courage to confront his father with what he’d seen. Michael Corleone dropped his demand for custody of his two children, which was awarded to Kay Adams Corleone.
The cold waters of Lake Tahoe often prevent the formation of the internal gases that make corpses float. The body of Frederico Corleone was never found. His nephew never again went fishing.
Book VI. 1920 – 1945
Chapter 21
I T IS SAID that babies bring their own luck, and so it was with Michael Corleone. The Corleones were mired in poverty, living in a Hell’s Kitchen tenement. Railroad tracks ran right down the middle of the street. Day and night, freight trains rumbled by, loaded with animals headed for slaughter. Children clamored for the chance to play cowboy, to mount a horse and warn pedestrians to get out of the way. Every week, one or two failed to hear.
Since Santino’s birth ten years earlier, Carmela had suffered four miscarriages. The baby who’d survived, Frederico, had been sickly all five years of his life. Vito was working six days a
week in a corner grocery store owned by his adoptive parents. To make ends meet, he’d helped his friends Clemenza and Tessio hijack a truck, only to find that a bullying neighborhood dandy named Fanucci expected an extortionist portion of the proceeds. Weeks before Michael was born, Vito’s murder of Fanucci-widely suspected but only furtively discussed-brought Vito the respect of a grateful neighborhood. With a minimum of words, he began sorting out conflicts and protecting store owners from hoodlums and the police.
Michael’s birth itself was as painless as such a thing might ever be. He had ivory skin, long black eyelashes, and a head of lustrous hair. When the midwife spanked him, he took a deep breath but didn’t cry. She sighed like a girl at a Valentino movie. The moment he was at his mother’s breast, he was her favorite child. Vito had barely crossed the threshold to the room when he saw Michael’s noble features. The baby was the image of Vito’s own father, who’d fought alongside Garibaldi. Vito dropped to his knees and wept with joy.
The next day, thoughts of his father’s beloved olive grove inspired Vito to go into the olive oil business. Tessio and Clemenza would be his salesmen. Prohibition-which provided other profitable uses for their delivery trucks-was another stroke of luck that came into the world about the same time as Michael Corleone. Soon they were all rich.
Michael’s babyhood passed without his temperature ever climbing above ninety-eight. It was often cooler. He had a confidence about him, as if he knew people would love him and do what needed to be done and saw no need to make a fuss. His christening party was held in the street, which the police closed as a favor to the generous young importer. It seemed every Italian in New York was there. Michael’s godfather, the saturnine Tessio, spent the afternoon making silly faces at the baby, who was already able to smile. It was Vito’s smile, drained of menace.
After a year or so, the older boys saw that Michael had usurped them and become the favorite of both parents. Fredo reacted by putting mice in the baby’s cradle and, briefly, regressing into a period of bed-wetting. Once he even went to school and told everyone his baby brother had been sliced in two by the cowcatcher of the Eleventh Avenue freight train.
Sonny took bolder action, complicating Michael’s claim on Vito’s affections by bringing home a new rival, one Sonny chose himself-a sick and filthy kid whose parents had died of drink. At the age of twelve he’d been on the street, living by his wits-which, it turned out, were considerable. His name was Tom Hagen. Sonny ceded his narrow bed to his orphaned friend and slept on the floor. No one discussed making this arrangement permanent. But like so many of the Don’s affairs, a need presented itself and with a minimum of words was resolved.
Michael’s earliest memory was of the day his family moved to the Bronx. He was three. His mother was on the stoop, hugging neighbors good-bye and crying just as hard as baby Connie. Tom and Sonny must have been up at the new apartment. Michael was in the car with his father and a driver. Fredo stood at the curb, looking toward the trains. “What’s wrong?” Vito shouted. Fredo wanted to play cowboy. Sonny got to do it at least a hundred times. Fredo hadn’t done it once, and now they were leaving the neighborhood. Vito saw the misery on Fredo’s face. He took Michael by one hand and Fredo by the other and marched them down the narrow street. The man with the horse saw Vito, and a moment later Fredo was in the saddle, waiting for a train. When one appeared in the distance, Vito hoisted Michael onto his shoulders. Fredo rode the horse across the tracks, screaming his warnings, happy and unafraid.
The Corleones’ new apartment was in the Belmont section of the Bronx, on the second floor of an eight-story redbrick building. The apartment itself was humble but had a new icebox, good heat, and enough space for everyone. Vito owned the whole building, though so discreetly not even the super knew it. To young Michael, Belmont seemed like paradise. The streets were filled with boys playing stickball and the cries of men with laden pushcarts. The air shimmered with the tang of simmering onions and the sugary haze of rising breads. After supper, women carried chairs down to the sidewalks and gossiped away the twilight. Men shouted affectionate taunts to one another. There were more Italians in Belmont than in most of the towns they’d originally come from. They’d go years at a time without leaving the borough.
Outside the Corleones’ apartment was an iron fire escape. On hot nights they slept on it, an adventure tempered only when the wind shifted and sent the smell from the Bronx Zoo wafting down Arthur Avenue. “Enough,” Vito would say to his complaining children. “That zoo? It was built by Italians. What you smell is the fruit of their labor. How can a child of mine refuse fruit, which is a gift from God?” The others still complained sometimes, but not Michael. There were lions in that zoo, too. He loved lions. The Corleones. The lionhearted.
The Corleones became active in their new church. At first even Vito attended. Fredo went with his mother to Mass almost every day. When he was ten, he stood up at supper and announced that he’d had a talk with Father Stefano, his mother’s favorite celebrant and also his boxing coach, and decided to become a priest. The family exploded in congratulations. That night, Michael sat on the fire escape and watched his mother parade Fredo around the neighborhood. By the time Fredo returned, his face was covered with smeared lipstick.
At school, when Michael’s friends practiced that age-old ritual of bragging about their father, Michael would walk away. He’d been raised not to boast. He also had no need for it. Even the worst schoolyard bully knew that Michael’s quiet father was a man of respect. When Vito Corleone walked down the street, people backed away, almost bowing, as if he were a king.
One night at dinner, when Michael was six, there was a knock at the door. It was Peter Clemenza. He apologized for interrupting dinner and asked to have a word with Vito alone. Moments later, from behind the locked parlor door, Vito began to yell in Sicilian dialect, which Michael understood, but imperfectly. His father’s rage was clear enough. Michael’s mother fed olives and calamari to Connie and pretended to be oblivious. Tom smirked and shook his head. “It’s Sonny,” Tom said. Sonny wasn’t at dinner-which had become less and less unusual-but Tom’s smirk seemed to indicate that nothing truly grave had befallen him.
Still, Michael was terrified. Only Sonny-and, years later, Michael-would ever provoke Vito Corleone enough to shatter his legendary patience and reserve. There was no greater measure of the depth of his love for them. If the dead could speak, many would testify that it was Vito’s patience and reserve a person should fear most.
“What’d he do?” Michael said.
“Some stupid cafone stunt,” Tom said. “Typical Sonny.”
Tom and Sonny were both students at Fordham Prep. Since the move they’d run with different crowds. Tom was on the tennis team and an honor student. Perhaps because he wasn’t really a member of the family, perhaps out of gratitude, he’d quietly become the perfect son-the smartest, the most loyal, the best behaved, the most ambitious, and, at the same time, the most humble. The most ardent student of Vito’s code of behavior, he spoke Italian like a native, and was in every way but blood the most Sicilian.
As for Sonny, he’d been kicked off the football team after shouting at the coach (when Sonny had asked his father to intercede, Vito slapped the boy and said nothing). He sneaked bootleg gin and slipped into Harlem to hear jazz. Even at sixteen, Sonny was already getting a reputation as a ladies’ man, and not only from girls his age.
“What kind of stupid cafone stunt?” Michael asked Tom.
“A rubar poco si va in galera, a rubar tanto si fa carriera.” Steal a little, go to jail; steal a lot, make a career of it. “Sonny and two idiots he thinks are his friends pulled a stickup-”
“Ah-ah-ah!” Carmela clamped her hands over Connie’s ears. “Enough!”
The parlor door opened. Vito was shaking, red-faced, visibly angry. He and Clemenza left without saying a word. Connie broke into tears. Michael forced himself not to follow suit.
Years later, Michael would learn that Sonny had robbed a
filling station that received protection from the Maranzano Family, though Sonny hadn’t known that. The robbery had been a lark. That night, Vito went to make things right with Maranzano and dispatched Clemenza to go look for Sonny. A few hours later, Pete found him atop a lonely and demonstrative housewife and dragged the boy to the office at Genco Pura Olive Oil to face his father’s wrath.
When Vito confronted Sonny about his stupid act, what Sonny said in his defense was that he’d seen his father kill Fanucci. Vito sat down, heavily, defeated, unable to talk to his son about how he should behave. When Sonny asked to quit school and join the family business, Vito relented and called it destiny.
Vito believed that he himself had done what he had to do in a world that offered little to a man who looked like he did and came from where he came from. He did so steadfast in the belief that life would be different for his children. He’d promised himself that none of them, not even Hagen, would follow in his footsteps. It was the only promise Vito Corleone ever broke.
At the time, though, all Michael knew was that, for the first time in his life, he’d seen his stoic father lose his temper, and that Sonny had somehow caused it. Moments after Vito and Clemenza left, Tom, obviously disgusted, excused himself and headed for the door. “Need anything, Ma? I’m going for a walk.”
She didn’t. Her face was gray and drawn.
Michael caught the door as Tom was closing it and followed him down the stairs. When they got to the street it was raining. A downpour. Tom leaned against the glass door, hesitating.
“Tell me what’s happening, Tom,” Michael said. “I have a right to know. We’re family.”
“Where’d you learn to talk like that, kid?”
Michael hardened his expression as best he could.
Tom glanced over his shoulder. The super and a few tenants were milling around. “Not here.” He motioned toward an awning a few doors down. Together, they ran for it.
At sixteen, Hagen didn’t know everything. But he knew how to read Sonny, and he worshiped Vito, so he knew more than anyone would have guessed. The things he told Michael that night, under the striped awning in front of Racalmuto Meat, were candid and true.
The Godfather returns Page 38
