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caporegimes, Clemenza and Tessio.
The atmosphere of the meeting was by no means so congenial as in
former days. Ever since Don Corleone had announced his semiretirement and
Michael’s take-over of the Family business, there had been some strain.
Succession in control of such an enterprise as the Family was by no means
hereditary. In any other Family powerful caporegimes such as Clemenza and
Tessio might have succeeded to the position of Don. Or at least they might have
been allowed to split off and form their own Family.
Then, too, ever since Don Corleone had made the peace with the Five
Families, the strength of the Corleone Family had declined. The Barzini Family
was now indisputably the most powerful one in the New York area; allied as
they were to the Tattaglias, they now held the position the Corleone Family had
once held. Also they were slyly whittling down the power of the Corleone
Family, muscling into their gambling areas, testing the Corleones’ reactions and,
finding them weak, establishing their own bookmakers.
The Barzinis and Tattaglias were delighted with the Don’s retirement.
Michael, formidable as he might prove to be, could never hope to equal the Don
in cunning and influence for at least another decade. The Corleone Family was
definitely in a decline.
It had, of course, suffered serious misfortunes. Freddie had proved to
be nothing more than an innkeeper and ladies’ man, the idiom for ladies’ man
untranslatable but connotating a greedy infant always at its mother’s nipple--in

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short, unmanly. Sonny’s death too, had been a disaster. Sonny had been a man to
be feared, not to be taken lightly. Of course he had made a mistake in sending
his younger brother, Michael, to kill the Turk and the police captain. Though
necessary in a tactical sense, as a long-term strategy it proved to be a serious
error. It had forced the Don, eventually, to rise from his sickbed. It had deprived
Michael of two years of valuable experience and training under his father’s
tutelage. And of course an Irish as a Consigliere had been the only foolishness
the Don had ever perpetrated. No Irishman could hope to equal a Sicilian for
cunning. So went the opinion of all the Families and they were naturally more
respectful to the Barzini-Tattaglia alliance than to the Corleones. Their opinion
of Michael was that he was not equal to Sonny in force though more intelligent
certainly, but not as intelligent as his father. A mediocre successor and a man not
to be feared too greatly.
Also, though the Don was generally admired for his statesmanship in
making the peace, the fact that he had not avenged Sonny’s murder lost the
Family a great deal of respect. It was recognized that such statesmanship sprang
out of weakness.
All this was known to the men sitting in the room and perhaps even
believed by a few. Carlo Rizzi liked Michael but did not fear him as he had
feared Sonny. Clemenza, too, though he gave Michael credit for a bravura
performance with the Turk and the police captain, could not help thinking
Michael too soft to be a Don. Clemenza had hoped to be given permission to
form his own Family, to have his own empire split away from the Corleone. But
the Don had indicated that this was not to be and Clemenza respected the Don
too much to disobey. Unless of course the whole situation became intolerable.
Tessio had a better opinion of Michael. He sensed something else in
the young man: a force cleverly kept hidden, a man jealously guarding his true
strength from public gaze, following the Don’s precept that a friend should
always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.
The Don himself and Tom Hagen were of course under no illusions
about Michael. The Don would never have retired if he had not had absolute
faith in his son’s ability to retrieve the Family position. Hagen had been
Michael’s teacher for the last two years and was amazed at how quickly Michael
grasped all the intricacies of the Family business. Truly his father’s son.
Clemenza and Tessio were annoyed with Michael because he had
reduced the strength of their regimes and had never reconstituted Sonny’s