Godfather 01 The Godfather pdfdrive com

party chiefs. He consolidated this power with a far-seeing statesmanlike
intelligence; by helping brilliant boys from poor Italian families through college,

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boys who would later become lawyers, assistant district attorneys, and even
judges. He planned for the future of his empire with all the foresight of a great
national leader.
The repeal of Prohibition dealt this empire a crippling blow but again
he had taken his precautions. In 1933 he sent emissaries to the man who
controlled all the gambling. activities of Manhattan, the crap games on the
docks, the shylocking that went with it as hot dogs go with baseball games, the
bookmaking on sports and horses, the illicit gambling houses that ran poker
games, the policy or numbers racket of Harlem. This man’s name was Salvatore
Maranzano and he was one of the acknowledged pezzonovante, .90 calibers, or
big shots of the New York underworld. The Corleone emissaries proposed to
Maranzano an equal partnership beneficial to both parties. Vito Corleone with
his organization, his police and political contacts, could give the Maranzano
operations a stout umbrella and the new strength to expand into Brooklyn and
the Bronx. But Maranzano was” a short-sighted man and spurned the Corleone
offer with contempt. The great AI Capone was Maranzano’s friend and he had
his own organization, his own men, plus a huge war chest. He would not brook
this upstart whose reputation was more that of a Parliamentary debater than a
true Mafioso. Maranzano’s refusal touched off the great war of 1933 which was
to change the whole structure of the underworld in New York City.
At first glance it seemed an uneven match. Salvatore Maranzano had a
powerful organization with strong enforcers. He had a friendship with Capone in
Chicago and could call on help in that quarter. He also had a good relationship
with the Tattaglia Family, which controlled prostitution in the city and what
there was of the thin drug traffic at that time. He also had political contacts with
powerful business leaders who used his enforcers to terrorize the Jewish
unionists in the garment center and the Italian anarchist syndicates in the
building trades.
Against this, Don Corleone could throw two small but superbly
organized regimes led by Clemenza and Tessio. His political and police contacts
were negated by the business leaders who would support Maranzano. But in his
favor was the enemy’s lack of intelligence about his organization. The
underworld did not know the true strength of his soldiers and even were
deceived that Tessio in Brooklyn was a separate and independent operation.
And yet despite all this, it was an unequal battle until Vito Corleone
evened out the odds with one master stroke.
Maranzano sent a call to Capone for his two best gunmen to come to

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New York to eliminate the upstart. The Corleone Family had friends and
intelligence in Chicago who relayed the news that the two gunmen were arriving
by train. Vito Corleone dispatched Luca Brasi to take care of them with
instructions that would liberate the strange man’s most savage instincts.
Brasi and his people, four of them, received the Chicago hoods at the
railroad station. One of Brasi’s men procured and drove a taxicab for the purpose
and the station porter carrying the bags led the Capone men to this cab. When
they got in, Brasi and another of his men crowded in after them, guns ready, and
made the two Chicago boys lie on the floor. The cab drove to a warehouse near
the docks that Brasi had prepared for them.
The two Capone men were bound hand and foot and small bath towels
were stuffed into their mouths to keep them from crying out.
Then Brasi took an ax from its place against the wall and started
hacking at one of the Capone men. He chopped the man’s feet off, then the legs
at the knees, then the thighs where they joined the torso. Brasi was an extremely
powerful man but it took him many swings to accomplish his purpose. By that
time of course the victim had given up the ghost and the floor of the warehouse
was slippery with the hacked fragments of his flesh and the gouting of his blood.
When Brasi turned to his second victim he found further effort unnecessary. The
second Capone gunman out of sheer terror had, impossibly, swallowed the bath
towel in his mouth and suffocated. The bath towel was found in the man’s
stomach when the police performed their autopsy to determine the cause of
death.
A few days later in Chicago the Capones received a message from
Vito Corleone. It was to this effect: “You know now how I deal with enemies.
Why does a Neapolitan interfere in a quarrel between two Sicilians? If you wish
me to consider you as a friend I owe you a service which I will pay on demand.
A man like yourself must know how much more profitable it is to have a friend
who, instead of calling on you for help, takes care of his own affairs and stands
ever ready to help you in some future time of trouble. If you do not wish my
friendship” so be it. But then I must tell you that the climate in this city is damp;
unhealthy for Neapolitans, and you are advised never to visit it.”
The arrogance of this letter was a calculated one. The Don held the
Capones in small esteem as stupid, obvious cutthroats. His intelligence informed
him that Capone had forfeited all political influence because of his public
arrogance and the flaunting of his criminal wealth. The Don knew, in fact was
positive, that without political influence, without the camouflage of society,

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Capone’s world, and others like it, could be easily destroyed. He knew Capone
was on the path to destruction. He also knew that Capone’s influence did not
extend beyond the boundaries of Chicago, terrible and all-pervading as that
influence there might be.
The tactic was successful. Not so much because of its ferocity but
because of the chilling swiftness, the quickness of the Don’s reaction. If his
intelligence was so good, any further moves would be fraught with danger. It
was better, far wiser, to accept the offer of friendship with its implied payoff.
The Capones sent back word that they would not interfere.
The odds were now equal. And Vito Corleone had earned an enormous
amount of “respect” throughout the United States underworld with his
humiliation of the Capones. For six months he out-generaled Maranzano. He
raided the crap games under that man’s protection, located his biggest policy
banker in Harlem and had him relieved of a day’s play not only in money but in
records. He engaged his enemies on all fronts. Even in the garment centers he
sent Clemenza and his men to fight on the side of the unionists against the
enforcers on the payroll of Maranzano and the owners of the dress firms. And on
all fronts his superior intelligence and organization made him the victor.
Clemenza’s jolly ferocity, which Corleone employed judiciously, also helped
turn the tide of battle. And then Don Corleone sent the held-back reserve of the
Tessio regime after Maranzano himself.
By this time Maranzano had dispatched emissaries suing for a peace.
Vito Corleone refused to see them, put them off on one pretext or another. The
Maranzano soldiers were deserting their leader, not wishing to die in a losing
cause. Bookmakers and shylocks were paying the Corleone organization their
protection money. The war was all but over.
And then finally on New year’s Eve of 1933. Tessio got inside the
defenses of Maranzano himself. The Maranzano lieutenants were anxious for a
deal and agreed to lead their chief to the slaughter. They told him that a meeting
had been arranged in a Brooklyn restaurant with Corleone and they accompanied
Maranzano as his bodyguards. They left him sitting at a checkered table,
morosely munching a piece of bread, and fled the restaurant as Tessio and four
of his men entered. The execution was swift and sure. Maranzano, his mouth full
of half-chewed bread, was riddled with bullets. The war was over.
The Maranzano empire was incorporated into the Corleone operation.
Don Corleone set up a system of tribute, allowing all incumbents to remain in
their bookmaking and policy number spots. As a bonus he had a foothold in the

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unions of the garment center which in later years was to prove extremely
important. And now that he had settled his business affairs the Don found
trouble at home.
Santino Corleone, Sonny, was sixteen years old and grown to an
astonishing six feet with broad shoulders and a heavy face that was sensual but
by no means effeminate. But where Fredo was a quiet boy, and Michael, of
course, a toddler, Santino was constantly in trouble. He got into fights, did badly
in school and, finally, Clemenza, who was the boy’s godfather and had a duty to
speak, came to Don Corleone one evening and informed him that his son had
taken part in an armed robbery, a stupid affair which could have gone very
badly. Sonny was obviously the ringleader, the two other boys in the robbery his
followers.
It was one of the very few times that Vito Corleone lost his temper.
Tom Hagen had been living in his home for three years and he asked Clemenza
if the orphan boy had been involved. Clemenza shook his head. Don Corleone
had a car sent to bring Santino to his offices in the Genco Pura Olive Oil
Company.
For the first time, the Don met defeat. Alone with his son, he gave full
vent to his rage, cursing the hulking Sonny in Sicilian dialect, a language so
much more satisfying than any other for expressing rage. He ended up with a
question. “What gave you the right to commit such an act? What made you wish
to commit such an act?”
Sonny stood there, angry, refusing to answer. The Don said with
contempt, “ And so stupid. What did you earn for that night’s work? Fifty dollars
each? Twenty dollars? You risked your life for twenty dollars, eh?”
As if he had not heard these last words, Sonny said defiantly, “I saw
you kill Fanucci.”
The Don said, “Ahhh” and sank back in his chair. He waited.
Sonny said, “When Fanucci left--the building, Mama said I could go
up the house. I saw you go up the roof and I followed you. I saw everything you
did. I stayed up there and I saw you throwaway the wallet and the gun.”
The Don sighed. “Well, then I can’t talk to you about how you should
behave. Don’t you want to finish school, don’t you want to be a lawyer?
Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns
and masks.”
Sonny grinned at him and said slyly, “I want to enter the family
business.” When he saw that the Don’s face remained impassive, that he did not

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laugh at the joke, he added hastily, “I can learn how to sell olive oil.”
Still the Don did not answer. Finally he shrugged. “Every man has one
destiny,” he said. He did not add that the witnessing of Fanucci’s murder had
decided that of his son. He merely turned away and added quietly, “Come in
tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Genco will show you what to do.”
But Genco Abbandando, with that shrewd insight that a Consigliere
must have, realized the true wish of the Don and used Sonny mostly as a
bodyguard for his father, a position in which he could also learn the subtleties of
being a Don. And it brought out a professorial instinct in the Don himself, who
often gave lectures on how to succeed for the benefit of his eldest son.
Besides his oft-repeated theory that a man has but one destiny, the Don
constantly reproved Sonny for that young man’s outbursts of temper. The Don
considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of
anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No one had ever
heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an
uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable. And so he tried to teach Sonny his own
disciplines. He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life than
having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend
underestimate your virtues.
The caporegime, Clemenza, took Sonny in hand and taught him how
to shoot and to wield a garrot. Sonny had no taste for the Italian rope, he was too
Americanized. He preferred the simple, direct, impersonal Anglo-Saxon gun,
which saddened Clemenza. But Sonny became a constant and welcome
companion to his father, driving his car, helping him in little details. For the next
two years he seemed like the usual son entering his father’s business, not too
bright, not too eager, content to hold down a soft job.
Meanwhile his boyhood chum and semiadopted brother Tom Hagen
was going to college. Fredo was still in high school; Michael, the youngest
brother, was in grammar school, and baby sister Connie was a toddling girl of
four. The family had long since moved to an apartment house in the Bronx. Don
Corleone was considering buying a house in Long Island, but he wanted to fit
this in with other plans he was formulating.
Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of America
were being torn by underworld strife. Guerrilla wars by the dozen flared up,
ambitious hoodlums trying to carve themselves a bit of empire; men like
Corleone himself were trying to keep their borders and rackets secure. Don
Corleone saw that the newspapers and government agencies were using these

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killings to get stricter and stricter laws, to use harsher police methods. He
foresaw that public indignation might even lead to a suspension of democratic
procedures which could be fatal to him and his people. His own empire,
internally, was secure. He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions in
New York City and then in the nation.
He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission. He spent
the first year meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the
groundwork, sounding them out, proposing spheres of influence that would be
honored by a loosely bound confederated council. But there were too many
factions, too many special interests that conflicted. Agreement was impossible.
Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history Don Corleone decided that order
and peace were impossible until the number of reigning states had been reduced
to a manageable number.
There were five or six “Families” too powerful to eliminate. But the
rest, the neighborhood Black Hand terrorists, the freelance shylocks, the strong-
arm bookmakers operating without the proper, that is to say paid, protection of
the legal authorities, would have to go. And so he mounted what was in effect a
colonial war against these people and threw all the resources of the Corleone
organization against them.
The pacification of the New York area took three years and had some
unexpected rewards. At first it took the form of bad luck. A group of mad-dog
Irish stickup artists the Don had marked for extermination almost carried the day
with sheer Emerald Isle élan. By chance, and with suicidal bravery, one of these
Irish gunmen pierced the Don’s protective cordon and put a shot into his chest.
The assassin was immediately riddled with bullets but the damage was done.
However this gave Santino Corleone his chance. With his father out of
action, Sonny took command of a troop, his own regime, with the rank of