The Godfather returns

by Mark Winegardner

  The Dons and their top men were acting more and more like the top men in corporations or governments. This, Hagen knew, was what Michael thought he wanted: to be legitimate. Michael was continuing down this road without Hagen ’s advice. Until it was sought, Hagen would keep his reservations to himself.

  Unlike Hagen, Michael had never worked for a corporation. In this business, who gets hurt who hasn’t brought it on himself? It’s rare. But in “legitimate” businesses? Before Hagen had quit to go to work for Vito Corleone, he’d spent his final months as a corporate lawyer working on “acceptable death rates”: How many innocent people would have to die various ways in various crashes of cars manufactured by the firm’s client before the fully expected lawsuits justified the cost of installing safer, more expensive parts. Babies, high school kids, pregnant women, brilliant young white men with high salaries: all researched, all calculated, all written down in the report he filed the day he quit. What did those people do to bring on their deaths?

  The government was worse, which Hagen knew long before he took office himself. Remember “Remember the Maine ”? All a big lie concocted so the United States could go to war under false pretenses and the men in charge could make their rich friends richer (including the newspaper moguls who self-servingly spread the lie in the first place). More people died in that trumped-up war than in every Mafia conflict put together. It’s only the negative stereotypes about Italians that make people think they’re a threat to the average Joe. The government, on the other hand, wages nonstop war on the average Joe, and the suckers just eat their bread, go to their circuses, and keep on pretending they live in a democracy-a lie so cherished they can’t grasp the self-evident, that America is run entirely via backroom deals involving the rich. In almost every election, the richer candidate defeats the poorer candidate. When the poorer candidate wins, it’s usually because he’s agreed to be a stooge for people richer than the ones who backed his opponent. Go ahead, try voting the bastards out. See what happens. More to the point: see what doesn’t. That ought to be his slogan: Hagen for Congress. See What Doesn’t Happen.

  Hagen doubted that the world had ever seen a better racket than the American government. It’s hard to sue the government, for example, and even if you win, so what? Here’s a million bucks. Then they raise taxes two million. Plus, with businesses, someone somewhere has to buy their crummy product. What are people supposed to do about the government? It’s yours, it’s you, you’re stuck with it, end of story.

  For years, Hagen had been working out deals with politicians, looking into their dead eyes and seeing what soulless opportunists those men had become, long before Hagen ever set foot in their offices to explain whatever mutually beneficial arrangement they would have little choice but to accept. These men-and, very occasionally, women-accepted without objection, thanked Hagen, shook his hand, smiled those public-servant smiles, and told him to come back anytime. If Hagen ever looked in the mirror and saw that look in his own eyes, he might just have to put a bullet between them.

  He’d never expected to hold elected office outside the state of Nevada (and was reluctant even to do that), and he never would have if not for the unforeseen opportunity provided by his predecessor’s death. The people of Nevada seemed as alarmed to find Tom Hagen in Congress as he was to be there-though less alarmed than his wife, Theresa. The criticism of his appointment, even after it had died down, was too much for her. She was concerned about the effect it would have on the kids. And the idea of being a Washington wife gave her the creeps. “You always seem to get what you want,” she’d told him, “and I know you well enough to know you never wanted this.” He tried to deny it, and she saw through him. She needed time to think about all this. She took the kids and went to spend the summer with her folks at the Jersey shore.

  Perhaps it was precisely because Tom Hagen had gone into this so grudgingly that his arrival in Washington was such a shock to his system. As his taxicab crossed the Potomac, it hit him, really, where he was, who he was. As realistic as Hagen was about what went on in that city, the sight of the Lincoln Memorial put a lump in his throat.

  That first night in his hotel, when he couldn’t sleep, he initially blamed it on jet lag and coffee, but he flew all the time and drank coffee by the gallon and ordinarily could go to sleep anytime he allowed himself to do so. He pulled back the curtain and saw the lights of the Mall, and felt goose bumps.

  He was a millionaire. He was a United States congressman. He started laughing.

  Then he got dressed.

  The impulse had come from the heart, and he was in the elevator before he thought about what an indefensibly sentimental thing he was about to do.

  He knew even as it was happening that this was not a story he could ever tell to anyone.

  He crossed Constitution Avenue and stood at the west end of the Reflecting Pool, which smelled like rotten eggs. Lights shone on the water. A couple opposite him held hands and kissed. What tremendous beauty.

  He was an orphan, that’s what he was. When he was ten, his mother went blind and then died and his father drank himself to death, and Hagen got stuck in an orphanage and ran away and lived on the street for more than a year before he made friends with Sonny Corleone and Sonny brought him home like a stray puppy. At the time, it had made no sense that Sonny’s father had gone along with this, but Hagen had been too grateful to question anything. After that, it became something Hagen didn’t think about. His mother died of a venereal disease and his father was a violent, rampaging, death-courting drunk. Hagen was an expert about not talking about things or thinking about them a long time before Vito Corleone honed and harnessed those skills.

  But that night it suddenly hit him. Vito had been an orphan, too, taken in by the Abbandandos at about the same age as Hagen was taken in by the Corleones. Vito grew up in the same house as the man who would become his consigliere. Vito had re-created a mirror image of that dynamic in his own house, as first Sonny and then Michael used Hagen in that role.

  Hagen turned around slowly, arms out, taking it all in, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument. The Capitol and, above it, the seemingly random stars that had somehow aligned for that to be his new place of business. Hagen stayed where he was, at the west end of the pool, both reflected and reflecting, and kept turning around. He didn’t believe in God, an afterlife, or anything mystical, but at that moment he did, without a doubt, feel the presence of the dead, heavy and literal as a block of ice. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The late congressman. Sonny and Vito Corleone. Bridget and Marty Hagen. Those untold thousands of men who’d taken bullets in the head and heart for something bigger than their own immediate families and interests. All the people whose lives had been laid down so that he could have his-so that, for however long, he would find himself here, transformed into some excellent gray-haired stranger named Congressman Thomas F. Hagen.

  During his time in Congress, he’d often think back to this moment and the euphoria he’d felt-usually at one of the surprisingly many times people seemed legitimately and even selflessly interested in improving the lives of strangers. Unlike those whose early days in Washington were spent watching their naive idealism swiftly ground to dust, pulverized by the realities of politics and money, Hagen had no ideals to crush. When congressmen he’d last seen when he’d come to bribe them saw him inside the Capitol and introduced themselves, pretending never to have met him, Hagen was only mildly amused. He’d spent his life sitting in an office while people paraded in one by one, asking for favors, so their piggishness barely registered on him, either. On the other hand, while virtue and altruism are in short supply on Capitol Hill, for a man incapable of disillusionment, they’re everywhere.

  That first night in Washington, though, his euphoria was finally interrupted when, as he was staring up at the night sky, he felt the barrel of a gun against his ribs. It was a Negro in a white cowboy hat with a bandanna over his face. He wore crepe-soled shoes. Hagen hadn�
�t heard him coming.

  “Hope that watch doesn’t have sentimental value,” the man said.

  “It doesn’t,” Hagen said, though it had been an anniversary present from Theresa. Not a milestone anniversary, but he did like the watch. “It’s just a watch.”

  “It’s a hell of a nice watch.”

  “Thanks. Be sure to point that out to your fence. I like the hat, by the way.”

  “Thanks. You’re rich, huh?” he said, handing back Hagen ’s emptied wallet.

  “Less so now,” Hagen said. He’d only had a couple hundred dollars on him.

  “Sorry about that,” the man said, turning away. “It’s just business, you know?”

  “I understand completely,” Hagen called after him. Had the city ever seen a more cheerful mugging victim? “Good luck to you, friend.”

  Hagen, being Hagen, had left plenty of time for the drive from Theresa’s parents’ house in Asbury Park down the shore to his party’s national convention in Atlantic City, and it was only after he hit Atlantic City and the traffic was rerouted and snarled that he had any reason to check his watch. He’d replaced the one that had been stolen with a replica of it so he wouldn’t have to say anything to Theresa. But he’d left it on the nightstand. He could picture it. It was right next to his convention credentials. He slammed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

  It had been ridiculous not to get a hotel in Atlantic City, but he’d been trying to bring Theresa around, and it had been great to see the kids. Even the boys had been glad to see him, shooting baskets in the driveway and talking about girls and cars and even that barbaric, tuneless music they loved. It had all worked out great. Theresa was coming home at the end of the summer- Hagen hadn’t been sure she would-and had even said she would consider showing up at various campaign events, so long as Tom wrangled her an appointment to the board for the proposed new museum of modern art. But he’d underestimated how much the drives back and forth would take out of him, and of course naturally the day the traffic was the worst was the only day he really had to be there, and it also just figured that, spread so thin, he’d forget things. If he hadn’t tried to do so much in such a little time, he’d have traveled with his chief of staff-an unlikable but witheringly efficient young Harvard-educated twit recommended to him by the governor-and Ralph would have made sure he had everything, no matter how distracted his boss had been by running out to the beach for a last-minute swim with his daughter.

  Hagen had no idea how long he’d been beating the steering wheel when he caught sight of himself, red-faced and sweating, a heart attack waiting to happen. He took a deep breath. He pulled out a comb and put himself together.

  With no parking pass, he took a spot far up the boardwalk from Convention Hall. By the time he got there, he was soaked with sweat, so disheveled that, despite several inventive tactics with different gatekeepers, he failed to talk his way into the hall in time to see Governor James Kav-anaugh Shea’s nominating speech. From the roar of the crowd, it seemed to be going well.

  For the first time, Hagen noticed the words carved into the hall’s limestone facade: CONSILIO ET PRUDENTIA. Latin. “Counsel and prudence.” Consiglio. Prudenza.

  The way things were going, it wouldn’t surprise Hagen if someday the Mob rented an arena like this for its own business. Shock, yes, but not surprise. If Hagen were still consigliere, his first words of counsel would be that the gatherings of men from various Families-weddings, funerals, title fights, one nightclub’s secret owners trying to impress another’s with the biggest shows, the biggest names-had become too frequent, too public, too glamorous, even the funerals. He’d heard that the meeting in New York had led to an agreement that they’d meet annually. What next? Printed stock certificates? Live television coverage?

  From inside, more cheers.

  Hagen heaved a sigh, walked across the boardwalk, and took a seat on the bench.

  A few hundred yards away, crews scrambled to finish the temporary stage for Johnny Fontane’s outdoor concert later tonight. A film crew set up, too-on the payroll of Fontane’s production company, even though there were no plans to release the footage or to show it anywhere outside Fontane’s house in Beverly Hills. Men unloaded trucks bearing risers and chairs-concessions controlled by the Stracci Family.

  What difference did it make if Hagen didn’t actually hear the speech? Who’d even know he’d missed it? What difference did it make that if it weren’t for Tom Hagen and his negotiating skills, this convention would probably have been held in Chicago? Other people got the credit, and, in the end, that was how Hagen liked it. It was against his nature to take credit for things, the way a man has to do if he wants the saps who think we live in a democracy to vote for him.

  He mopped his brow, wrung his handkerchief, and mopped it again. Hagen had done the negotiations, but the plan had been Michael Corleone’s, and this-holding the convention in Atlantic City -had been its master stroke. It brought everything together. The Straccis controlled the party machine in this state. But Black Tony (who’d been dying his hair jet black since he was a kid) lacked connections outside New Jersey and had been most grateful for the full cooperation of the Corleone-controlled politicians. The Straccis further benefited because they controlled the linen services and the waste removal in Atlantic City, as well as the illegal casinos in the Jersey Palisades. This had cemented a friendship between the Corleones and Don Stracci, enabling Ace Geraci’s regime to use the Stracci docks for the smuggling operation that had bankrolled so much of what came thereafter.

  Governor Jimmy Shea got credit for bringing the convention and all its economic benefits to New Jersey. He got to make a big speech live on all three networks, prime-time TV, without having to go to the expense of being also-ran in the primaries. In return for these favors, his brother Danny (who didn’t know on whose behalf his father was intervening) helped curtail the prosecution of any of the Families in the recent killings. And (again via the Ambassador) Jimmy Shea agreed not to oppose a measure that would legalize gambling in Atlantic City. Now, with a good speech, Jimmy Shea had the chance to lay the groundwork for becoming-whether he knew it or not-the first American president ever to owe his election to the Cosa Nostra.

  He’d know it eventually, that was for certain.

  From inside the hall came an eruption of applause. A muffled brass band played “Into the Wild Blue Yonder.”

  This evening was the valedictory to the peace. Hagen had been the point man for it all, but at its culminating moment, where did he find himself? On a bench, across the boardwalk, outside looking in. He’d never even set foot inside Convention Hall. It housed the world’s largest pipe organ, he’d been told. Every year, it hosted the Miss America pageant, which Hagen had seen, on TV. No doubt the only difference between Miss Alabama ’s positions on opportunity (it’s knocking!), children (they’re the future!), education (for it!), the keys to a good life (hard work! churchgoing! family!), and world peace (possible in our lifetime!) and those of Governor Shea was that Shea didn’t have to say it in high heels and a bathing suit.

  What the hell. Why should Hagen care?

  Hagen walked to the hotel where the Ambassador had rented the main ballroom, figuring that he’d be early but with any luck he’d be able to grab a drink. A blue velvet banner with a union logo on it welcomed the delegates, but the Ambassador had quietly paid for everything. The place was already surprisingly crowded. Jimmy Shea had finished his speech, and a steadily increasing tide of people swept into the room, raving about how inspirational the governor had been, lamenting that it was too bad he’d been giving the nominating speech instead of the acceptance, that maybe Shea-young, attractive, a war hero-would stand a chance in November, unlike that dull scold from Ohio that the party was running as a sacrificial lamb.

  Hagen knew that some of these people were plants, paid to talk up Shea’s speech, no matter how he’d done. He also knew that Shea’s war heroism, while genuine, had been exaggerated in the public’s m
ind by the amount and nature of the news coverage it had received at the time, coverage Hagen had personally orchestrated. And he also knew, even in his brief time in Washington, that the “dull scold from Ohio ” was an honorable and formidable man. What being young and attractive had to do with being president, Hagen had no idea. Hagen got a double scotch and water and scanned the room for people whose hand it was prudent for him to go shake. Just then there was a commotion at the door, including gleeful screams. Hagen turned, and as he did a hand pounded him on the shoulder.

  “My congressman!” said Fredo Corleone, wearing a white dinner jacket. “Hey, fella, if I promise to vote for you, can I have your autograph?”

  Hagen put his mouth by Fredo’s ear. “What are you doing here? How’s Ma?”

  Fredo was drunk. He jerked a thumb toward the doors.

  It had not been Shea who entered, as Hagen had presumed, but Johnny Fontane, complete with a sizable entourage.

  “I came with Johnny,” Fredo said.

  “And Ma?” Two weeks ago Carmela Corleone had been rushed to the hospital for what had turned out to be a blood clot in her brain. At first, she hadn’t been expected to make it, but she’d rallied. The last time Hagen had been there, Fredo had assured him he’d stay in New York and oversee things, but here he was: here.

  “She’s fine,” Fredo said. “She’s home.”

  “I know she’s home. Why aren’t you home with her?”

  “Believe me, I’m just in the way up there.”

  Hagen doubted that. Connie Corleone had left Ed Federici and jetted off to Europe with some drunken playboy and had only sent a telegram and flowers. Carmela’s aunt had died earlier that year. Mike and Kay had been there for a while but had had to go back to Nevada. They’d hired a nurse. The only family Carmela had up there was Sonny’s daughter Kathy, who lived in a dormitory at Barnard.