Godfather 01 The Godfather pdfdrive com

Michael knew that this was his father’s way of telling him the time was ripe.
It was almost three years now since he had returned home and over
two years since he had married Kay. The three years had been spent in learning
the Family business. He had put in long hours with Tom Hagen, long hours with
the Don. He was amazed at how wealthy and powerful the Corleone Family truly
was. It owned tremendously valuable real estate in midtown New York, whole
office buildings. It owned, through fronts, partnerships in two Wall Street
brokerage houses, pieces of banks on Long Island, partnerships in some garment
center firms, all this in addition to its illegal operations in gambling.
The most interesting thing Michael Corleone learned, in going back
over past transactions of the Corleone Family, was that the Family had received
some protection income shortly after the war from a group of music record
counterfeiters. The counterfeiters duplicated and sold phonograph records of
famous artists, packaging everything so skillfully they were never caught.
Naturally on the records they sold to stores the artists and original production
company received not a penny. Michael Corleone noticed that Johnny Fontane
had lost a lot of money owing to this counterfeiting because at that time, just
before he lost his voice, his records were the most popular in the country.
He asked Tom Hagen about it. Why did the Don allow the
counterfeiters to cheat his godson? Hagen shrugged. Business was business.
Besides, Johnny was in the Don’s bad graces, Johnny having divorced his
childhood sweetheart to marry Margot Ashton. This had displeased the Don
greatly.
“How come these guys stopped their operation?” Michael asked. “The
cops got on to them?”
Hagen shook his head. “The Don withdrew his protection. That was
right after Connie’s wedding.”
It was a pattern he was to see often, the Don helping those in
misfortune whose misfortune he had partly created. Not perhaps out of cunning

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or planning but because of his variety of interests or perhaps because of the
nature of the universe, the interlinking of good and evil, natural of itself.
Michael had married Kay up in New England, a quiet wedding, with
only her family and a few of her friends present. Then they had moved into one
of the houses on the mall in Long Beach. Michael was surprised at how well Kay
got along with his parents and the other people living on the mall. And of course
she had gotten pregnant right away, like a good, old-style Italian wife was
supposed to, and that helped. The second kid on the way in two years was just
icing.
Kay would be waiting for him at the airport, she always came to meet
him, she was always so glad when he came back from a trip. And he was too.
Except now. For the end of this trip meant that he finally had to take the action
he had been groomed for over the last three years. The Don would be waiting for
him. The caporegimes would be waiting for him. And he, Michael Corleone,
would have to give the orders, make the decisions which would decide his and
his Family’s fate.
Every morning when Kay Adams Corleone got up to take care of the
baby’s early feeding, she saw Mama Corleone, the Don’s wife, being driven
away from the mall by one of the bodyguards, to return an hour later. Kay soon
learned that her mother-in-law went to church every single morning. Often on
her return, the old woman stopped by for morning coffee and to see her new
grandchild.
Mama Corleone always started off by asking Kay why she didn’t think
of becoming a Catholic, ignoring the fact that Kay’s child had already been
baptized a Protestant. So Kay felt it was proper to ask the old woman why she
went to church every morning, whether that was a necessary part of being a
Catholic.
As if she thought that this might have stopped Kay from converting the
old woman said, “Oh, no, no, some Catholics only go to church on Easter and
Christmas. You go when you feel like going.”
Kay laughed. “Then why do you go every single morning?”
In a completely natural way, Mama Corleone said, “I go for my
husband,” she pointed down toward the floor, “so he don’t go down there.” She
paused. “I say prayers for his soul every day so he go up there.” She pointed
heavenward. She said this with an impish smile, as if she were subverting her
husband’s will in some way, or as if it were a losing cause. It was said jokingly

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almost, in her grim, Italian, old crone fashion. And as always when her husband
was not present, there was an attitude of disrespect to the great Don.
“How is your husband feeling?” Kay asked politely.
Mama Corleone shrugged. “He’s not the same man since they shot
him. He lets Michael do all the work, he just plays the fool with his garden, his
peppers, his tomatoes. As if he were some peasant still. But men are always like
that.”
Later in the morning Connie Corleone would walk across the mall
with her two children to pay Kay a visit and chat. Kay liked Connie, her
vivaciousness, her obvious fondness for her brother Michael. Connie had taught
Kay how to cook some Italian dishes but sometimes brought her own more
expert concoctions over for Michael to taste.
Now this morning as she usually did, she asked Kay what Michael
thought of her husband, Carlo. Did Michael really like Carlo, as he seemed to?
Carlo had always had a little trouble with the Family but now over the last years
he had straightened out. He was really doing well in the labor union but he had
to work so hard, such long hours. Carlo really liked Michael, Connie always
said. But then, everybody liked Michael, just as everybody liked her father.
Michael was the Don all over again. It was the best thing that Michael was going
to run the Family olive oil business.
Kay had observed before that when Connie spoke about her husband
in relation to the Family, she was always nervously eager for some word of
approval for Carlo. Kay would have been stupid if she had not noticed the
almost terrified concern Connie had for whether Michael liked Carlo or not. One
night she spoke to Michael about it and mentioned the fact that nobody ever
spoke about Sonny Corleone, nobody even referred to him, at least not in her
presence. Kay had once tried to express her condolences to the Don and his wife
and had been listened to with almost rude silence and then ignored. She had tried
to get Connie talking about her older brother without success.
Sonny’s wife, Sandra, had taken her children and moved to Florida,
where her own parents now lived. Certain financial arrangements had been made
so that she and her children could live comfortably, but Sonny had left no estate.
Michael reluctantly explained what had happened the night Sonny was
killed. That Carlo had beaten his wife and Connie had called the mall and Sonny
had taken the call and rushed out in a blind rage. So naturally Connie and Carlo
were always nervous that the rest of the Family blamed her for indirectly causing
Sonny’s death. Or blamed her husband, Carlo. But this wasn’t the case. The

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proof was that they had given Connie and Carlo a house in the mall itself and
promoted Carlo to an important job in the labor union setup. And Carlo had
straightened out, stopped drinking, stopped whoring, stopped trying to be a wise
guy. The Family was pleased with his work and attitude for the last two years.
Nobody blamed him for what had happened.
“Then why don’t you invite them over some evening and you can
reassure your sister?” Kay said. “The poor thing is always so nervous about what
you think of her husband. Tell her. And tell her to put those silly worries out of
her head.”
“I can’t do that,” Michael said. “We don’t talk about those things in
our family.”
“Do you want me to tell her what you’ve told me?” Kay said.
She was puzzled because he took such a long time thinking over a
suggestion that was obviously the proper thing to do. Finally he said, “I don’t
think you should, Kay. I don’t think it will do any good. She’ll worry anyway.
It’s something nobody can do anything about.”
Kay was amazed. She realized that Michael was always a little colder
to his sister Connie than he was to anyone else, despite Connie’s affection.
“Surely you don’t blame Connie for Sonny being killed?” she said.
Michael sighed. “Of course not,” he said. “She’s my kid sister and I’m
very fond of her. I feel sorry for her. Carlo straightened out, but he’s really the
wrong kind of husband. It’s just one of those things. Let’s forget about it.”
It was not in Kay’s nature to nag; she let it drop. Also she had learned
that Michael was not a man to push, that he could become coldly disagreeable.
She knew she was the only person in the world who could bend his will, but she
also knew that to do it too often would be to destroy that power. And living with
him the last two years had made her love him more.
She loved him because he was always fair. An odd thing. But he
always was fair to everybody around him, never arbitrary even in little things.
She had observed that he was now a very powerful man, people came to the
house to confer with him and ask favors, treating him with deference and respect
but one thing had endeared him to her above everything else.
Ever since Michael had come back from Sicily with his broken face,
everybody in the Family had tried to get him to undergo corrective surgery.
Michael’s mother was after him constantly; one Sunday dinner with all the
Corleones gathered on the mall she shouted at Michael, “You look like a
gangster in the movies, get your face fixed for the sake of Jesus Christ and your

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poor wife. And so your nose will stop running like a drunken Irish.”
The Don, at the head of the table, watching everything, said to Kay,
“Does it bother you?”
Kay shook her head. The Don said to his wife. “He’s out of your
hands, it’s no concern of yours.” The old woman immediately held her peace.
Not that she feared her husband but because it would have been disrespectful to
dispute him in such a matter before the others.
But Connie, the Don’s favorite, came in from the kitchen, where she
was cooking the Sunday dinner, her face flushed from the stove, and said, “I
think he should get his face fixed. He was the most handsome one in the family
before he got hurt. Come on, Mike, say you’ll do it.”
Michael looked at her in an absentminded fashion. It seemed as if he
really and truly had not heard anything said. He didn’t answer.
Connie came to stand beside her father. “Make him do it,” she said to
the Don. Her two hands rested affectionately on his shoulders and she rubbed his
neck. She was the only one who was ever so familiar with the Don. Her affection
for her father was touching. It was trusting, like a little girl’s. The Don patted
one of her hands and said, “We’re all starving here. Put the spaghetti on the table
and then chatter.”
Connie turned to her husband and said, “Carlo, you tell Mike to get his
face fixed. Maybe he’ll listen to you.” Her voice implied that Michael and Carlo
Rizzi had some friendly relationship over and above anyone else’s.
Carlo, handsomely sunburned, blond hair neatly cut and combed,
sipped at his glass of homemade wine and said, “Nobody can tell Mike what to
do.” Carlo had become a different man since moving into the mall. He knew his
place in the Family and kept to it.
There was something that Kay didn’t understand in all this, something
that didn’t quite meet the eye. As a woman she could see that Connie was
deliberately charming her father, though it was beautifully done and even
sincere. Yet it was not spontaneous. Carlo’s reply had been a manly knuckling of
his forehead. Michael had absolutely ignored everything.
Kay didn’t care about her husband’s disfigurement but she worried
about his sinus trouble which sprang from it. surgery repair of the face would
cure the sinus also. For that reason she wanted Michael to enter the hospital and
get the necessary work done. But she understood that in a curious way he desired
his disfigurement. She was sure that the Don understood this too.
But after Kay gave birth to her first child, she was surprised by

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Michael asking her, “Do you want me to get my face fixed?”
Kay nodded. “You know how kids are, your son will feel bad about
your face when he gets old enough to understand it’s not normal. I just don’t
want our child to see it. I don’t mind at all, honestly, Michael.”
“OK.” He smiled at her. “I’ll do it.”
He waited until she was home from the hospital and then made all the
necessary arrangements. The operation was successful. The cheek indentation
was now just barely noticeable.
Everybody in the Family was delighted, but Connie more so than
anyone. She visited Michael every day in the hospital, dragging Carlo along.
When Michael came home, she gave him a big hug and a kiss and looked at him
admiringly and said, “Now you’re my handsome brother again.”
Only the Don was unimpressed, shrugging his shoulders and
remarking, “What’s the difference?”
But Kay was grateful. She knew that Michael had done it against all
his own inclinations. Had done it because she had asked him to, and that she was
the only person in the world who could make him act against his own nature.
On the afternoon of Michael’s return from Vegas, Rocco Lampone
drove the limousine to the mall to pick up Kay so that she could meet her
husband at the airport. She always met her husband when he arrived from out of
town, mostly because she felt lonely without him, living as she did in the
fortified mall.
She saw him come off the plane with Tom Hagen and the new man he
had working for him, Albert Neri. Kay didn’t care much for Neri, he reminded
her of Luca Brasi in his quiet ferociousness. She saw Neri drop behind Michael
and off to the side, saw his quick penetrating glance as his eyes swept over
everybody nearby. It was Neri who first spotted Kay and touched Michael’s
shoulder to make him look in the proper direction.
Kay ran into her husband’s arms and he quickly kissed her and let her
go. He and Tom Hagen and Kay got into the limousine and Albert Neri
vanished. Kay did not notice that Neri had gotten into another car with two other
men and that this car rode behind the limousine until it reached Long Beach.
Kay never asked Michael how his business had gone. Even such polite
questions were understood to be awkward, not that he wouldn’t give her an
equally polite answer, but it would remind them both of the forbidden territory
their marriage could never include. Kay didn’t mind anymore. But when

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Michael told her he would have to spend the evening with his father to tell him
about the Vegas trip, she couldn’t help making a little frown of disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Tomorrow night we’ll go into New York
and see a show and have dinner, OK?” He patted her stomach, she was almost
seven months pregnant.” After the kid comes you’ll be tied down again. Hell,
you’re more Italian than Yankee. Two kids in two years.”
Kay said tartly, “And you’re more Yankee than Italian. Your first
evening home and you spend it on business.” But she smiled at him when she
said it. “You won’t be home late?”
“Before midnight,” Michael said. “Don’t wait up for me if you feel
tired.”
“I’ll wait up,” Kay said.
At the meeting that night, in the comer room library of Don Corleone’s
house, were the Don himself, Michael, Tom Hagen, Carlo Rizzi, and the two