by Mario Puzo
“Ah, for the love of God.” Sean O’Rourke slid his beer away from him. He sounded disgusted and heartsick. In the silence that followed his outburst, Cork noticed how much Sean had changed since the last time he’d seen him. Much of his youth and handsomeness seemed to have been drained away, leaving him looking older and angrier, his face drawn and tight around narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. “My brother Willie dead and in his grave,” Sean said to the men at the bar. “My sister Kelly…” He shook his head, as if unable to find words. “And Donnie blinded,” he said, “good as dead.” He looked to Pete directly for the first time. “And now you’re talking about going to work for these murderin’ guinea bastards.”
“Sean—” Pete said.
“You can count me out, no matter what!” Stevie yelled, his mug of beer in his hand. “I hate these fuckin’ wops and I’m not workin’ for them!”
“And what is it they want from us anyway in return for this largesse?” Corr Gibson asked.
“Gentlemen,” Pete said. He looked up to the ceiling as if praying for patience. “If you’d all just for the love of God give me a chance to finish.” When a moment of silence followed, he went on. “Sean,” he said, reaching a hand out toward him, “Corr and I promised Willie we’d take care of Luca Brasi. We asked him to wait until the time was right.”
“Time will never be right for Willie anymore,” Sean said, and he pulled his beer back to him.
“And that weighs on our hearts,” Pete said.
Corr tapped his shillelagh on the floor in agreement.
“But now,” Pete went on, “now may be the time.”
“You’re not saying they want us to go up against the Corleones, are you, now, Pete?” Rick Donnelly pushed his stool back from the bar and looked at Pete as if he might be insane. “That would be nothing but suicide for sure.”
“They haven’t asked us to do anything yet, Rick.” Pete tilted his beer back and drained half of it, as if he’d come to the point where he needed a drink to keep from losing his temper. “They’ve made us a proposition: Come to work for them and we’ll get our neighborhoods back. They’re figuring we’re smart enough to know that means they’ll be taking the business away from the Corleones and Brasi, and that we’ll be a part of whatever has to be done to accomplish that.”
“And that means a bloody war,” Rick said.
“We don’t know what that means,” Pete said. “But I did tell the Rosatos that we wouldn’t ever work with the likes of Luca Brasi. I made it clear in fact that we wanted to see Luca Brasi dead and burning in hell.”
“And?” Sean asked, his interest suddenly piqued.
“And he said, quote, if you hate Luca Brasi, it would behoove you to come to work for us.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Cork asked, speaking up for the first time. The men all looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there. “Luca is part of the Corleone family now. You can’t go against Luca without going against the Corleones, so we’re back where we started. Like Rick said, a war with the Corleones would be suicide for sure.”
“If it’s to be a war,” Corr Gibson said, “Rick and young Bobby here are right: We’re no match for the Corleones. And if Mariposa’s men are in on the fighting, then why would they need us? They’ve got all the goons they need to do the job themselves.”
“Gentlemen,” Pete said, and then laughed in a way that suggested a potent mixture of amusement and frustration. “Gentlemen,” he repeated, and he lifted his beer mug as if proposing a toast. “I am not privy to the inner workings of the Rosato brothers, or Jumpin’ Joe Mariposa, or any other dago operation. I’m here to tell you the proposition as it was put to me. We go to work for them; we get our neighborhoods back. Part of the deal is that this is all on the Q.T. If they need something from us, we’ll hear from them. That’s the deal. We can take it or leave it.” He finished the last of his beer and clapped the mug down on the bar.
“For sure they need something from us,” Corr said, as if speaking to himself, though his eyes moved from face to face. To Pete he said, “I say if Luca Brasi winds up dead and buried and we wind up running the show in our own neighborhoods, then that’s a deal we can’t turn down.”
“I’m in agreement,” Pete said. “We don’t have to like the wop bastards to work with them.”
Sean said, without looking up from his beer, “If I get to be the one puts a bullet in Luca Brasi, I’m with you.”
“Jaysus,” Cork said. “No matter how you cut it, you’re talking about going up against the Corleones.”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Pete Murray asked.
“I do,” Cork said. “I’ve known Sonny and his family since I was in diapers.”
Stevie Dwyer leaned over the bar in Cork’s direction. “You might as well be a guinea yourself, Corcoran,” he shouted. To the others he said, “I told you he don’t belong with us. He’s been sucking Sonny Corleone’s dick since—”
Dwyer hadn’t gotten the last word out of his mouth before Cork’s beer mug, hurled across the bar, caught him square on the forehead and broke neatly in half along a seam in the glass. Stevie was partly knocked off his stool and partly he jumped back, his hand flying up to his forehead, where a stream of blood gushed from a wide gash. Before he could regain his balance, Cork was on top of him, throwing punches, one of which, a wicked uppercut that caught him under the jaw, rendered him senseless. He went down rubbery legged and wound up sitting against the barroom wall, his head dangling over his chest and blood spilling onto his pants legs. The bar was quiet as Cork stepped back and away from Stevie, and when he looked around he found the others unmoved from their places. Corr Gibson said, “Ah, the Irish. We’re a hopeless lot.”
“Someone was bound to crack open that moron’s head at some point,” Pete said, sliding off his stool. He went to Bobby, put a hand on his back, and led him out of the bar. On the street, standing out in the sunlight in front of Paddy’s, with the bright-green shades over the bar’s windows as backdrop, Pete tapped a cigarette out of a pack of Camels. He stared down at the image of a camel in the desert, and when he looked up he lit the cigarette with his eyes on Bobby. He took a drag, exhaled, and let his arm drop to his side. Finally, he asked, “Can we trust you to keep your mouth shut, Bobby?”
“Sure,” Cork said, and he glanced down at his knuckles, which suddenly hurt like hell. He saw that they were bloody and swollen. “This is none of my business,” he added. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the knuckles of his right hand. “Sonny and I have gone our own ways, but I won’t have any part of a war against him and his family.”
“All right,” Pete said, and he put one of his big mitts on the back of Cork’s neck and gave him a friendly shake. “Get out of here, then, and go about finding some other manner of making a living, something that doesn’t have anything to do with our business. Stay out of our way and out of our businesses and we’ll be fine. Do you understand me, Bobby?”
“Sure,” Cork said, and offered Pete Murray his hand. “I understand,” he said as they shook hands.
Pete Murray smiled, as if pleased with Bobby. “Now, let me go deal with these knuckleheads,” he said, and he went back into Paddy’s.
19.
Vito waited in the backseat of the Essex, a raincoat folded over his lap, his fedora on top of the raincoat, his hands clasped in front of the fedora. Luca Brasi, seated alongside him, stared out the front window, past Sonny in the passenger seat, out onto Sixth Avenue, where two young women were hurrying through the rain, each with a child in one hand and an open umbrella in the other. The umbrellas were bright red, in contrast to the day, which was gray and rainy. The men in the car were silent, Sonny in the front seat with his fedora tilted over his eyes, Luca in the back with his twisted face unreadable and blank. Vito had sent their driver, Richie Gatto, out to take a stroll around the neighborhood. Genco, to walk off his nerves, had chosen to join him. They were in the garment district, parked on t
he corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth. Above a shuttered newsstand on the corner, the side of a building had been turned into a massive billboard that pictured two blind children looking up to the words Your Money makes the Helpless Blind able to help themselves. Beyond the blind children, over the tops of the surrounding roofs, the steeple of Saint Francis rose up to a low ceiling of clouds, a bright cross at its pinnacle.
Sonny checked his wristwatch, tilted his hat back off his forehead, and twisted around slightly, as if he wanted to say something to his father about the time. Instead, he sank back into his seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes again.
Vito said, “It’s good to be a little late for a thing like this,” just as Richie and Genco came around the corner of Seventh Avenue and started toward the car. Richie wore a fedora pulled down low and the collar of his overcoat turned up against the rain, while Genco walked under a black umbrella. Both men looked from building to building as they walked, their eyes scouring entranceways and alleys. Genco, next to the bulk of Richie Gatto, looked as skinny as a stick figure.
“Nothing to worry about,” Richie said as he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“Clemenza and Tessio?” Vito asked.
“They’re in their places,” Genco said. He got into the backseat as Vito slid closer to Luca. “If there’s a commotion of any kind…” Genco cocked his head, a gesture that suggested Clemenza and Tessio might see the commotion, but he questioned whether or not it would do any good.
“They’ve got their boys with them,” Richie said, dismissing Genco’s worry. “If there’s trouble, we’re in good shape.”
“There won’t be any trouble,” Vito said. “This is just a precaution.” He glanced alongside him to Luca, who remained distant and removed, lost in whatever thoughts were left to him. In the front seat, Sonny straightened out his tie, the look on his face something between anger and annoyance. He hadn’t said two words all morning. “Sonny,” Vito said, “you walk behind Genco and keep your eyes open. Everybody will be sizing up everybody else at this meeting. What we say, what we do, how we appear—this is important. Understand?”
“Sure,” Sonny said. “You want me to keep my mouth shut, Pop. I got it.”
Luca Brasi, without any movement or change in the blank expression of his face, said, “Mouth shut—eyes open.”
Sonny glanced back at Luca. Alongside them on the street, a line of cars and trucks were stopped at a red light. The rain slowed to a misty drizzle. Once the light turned green and the traffic started moving, Richie waited for an opening and pulled out onto Sixth. A minute later he was pulling up behind a black Buick, on the street outside the courtyard of Saint Francis. A tall fat man stuffed into a bright-blue three-piece suit waited at the wheel of the Buick, an elbow sticking out the window. In the courtyard garden, Carmine Rosato and Ettore Barzini were chatting with a couple of beat cops. One of the cops said something that made the other three men laugh, and then Carmine escorted them out of the courtyard, walking between them, a hand on each cop’s elbow. Richie, who had come around to open the back door of the Essex for Genco, waved to Carmine and called out his name. The cops paused, watched Genco and Vito exit the car onto the sidewalk, and then moved on down the block, only to stop again, suddenly, at the sight of Luca Brasi exiting the car. Ettore, who had followed Carmine out of the courtyard, clapped a hand on the shoulder of one of the cops and moved them along. Carmine joined Richie, Genco, and Vito on the sidewalk. Inside the courtyard, a couple of Emilio Barzini’s men approached the gate and watched as Luca and Sonny joined the other men in a cluster beside the Essex. Barzini’s men looked at each other and then disappeared along the path to the church.
Carmine stepped closer to Richie. “You bringing Luca Brasi in there?” he asked, as if Luca weren’t standing right behind him.
“Yeah,” Richie said, all smiles. “What do you think he’s here for?”
“V’fancul’!” Carmine put a hand over his forehead and looked down at the sidewalk.
Sonny took an angry step forward, as if about to say something to Carmine, and then caught himself and backed up. He fixed his hat, adjusting the brim.
“We’re getting wet,” Vito said, and Genco hurried to open his umbrella and hold it over Vito’s head.
Carmine Rosato turned to Vito and said, “In a church?” meaning Luca Brasi had no business being inside a place of worship.
Vito started for the courtyard. Behind him, he heard Carmine say, “Richie, mi’ amico, Tomasino’s in there. He’s gonna go crazy.” Alongside Vito, Luca’s expression remained unchanged, his face as impassive as the gray sky.
Once inside the courtyard, Vito admired the arrangement of the gardens surrounding a concrete walkway to the church entrance. He paused by a four-tiered fountain a dozen feet in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary with her hands held out, in her traditional pose, as if welcoming all who approached her, her grief-filled eyes still, somehow, loving. When Genco came up beside him, Vito proceeded to the church with his consigliere by his side, Luca and Sonny following.
Behind the glass entranceway doors, in a small foyer, Emilio Barzini waited with his hands clasped at his waist. He shook hands with Vito and Genco and ignored Luca and Sonny. “This way,” he said, and led them through a second pair of glass doors that opened onto a wide corridor. “This is the Shrine of Saint Anthony,” he added, as if he were there to give them a guided tour of the church. Vito and the others gazed through a central portal into a long, low-ceilinged room with lines of brightly polished pews on either side of a tiled aisle leading to a marble altar. Vito crossed himself, as did all the others, when they passed the altar, before continuing along the hushed corridor, following Emilio.
“They’re waiting for you,” Emilio said. He stood aside and opened a heavy wooden door, beyond which five men sat at a long conference table. Vito identified all the men at a glance. At the head of the table, sitting in an ornate chair that looked comically like a throne with its plush red velvet stuffed back and armrests, Giuseppe Mariposa stared straight ahead, at nothing, showing his annoyance at Vito’s late entry to the meeting. He was dressed immaculately, a tailored suit fitted to his still athletic body, his white hair parted neatly in the center. Facing Vito, on the far side of the table, were Anthony Stracci of Staten Island and Ottilio Cuneo, who ran all of upstate. On the near side of the table, next to Giuseppe and beside an empty chair obviously meant for Vito, Mike DiMeo, the balding, heavy-set boss of New Jersey’s DiMeo family, fidgeted in his seat, his torso twisting this way and that, as if he couldn’t get comfortable. At the opposite end of the table from Giuseppe, Phillip Tattaglia tapped the ash off his cigarette as he looked up to Vito and Genco. A bodyguard stood against the wall behind each of the men. Giuseppe’s bodyguard, Tomasino Cinquemani, red-faced and breathing hard, was half-turned away from the table, showing his back to Vito.
“Forgive me,” Vito said. He looked around the room again, as if to assure himself of what he was seeing. Portraits of saints and priests decorated the walls, and five empty chairs were lined up against the wainscoting. At the back of the room, there was a second doorway. “It was my understanding,” he said, “that our consiglieri were to be a part of this meeting.”
“You must have misunderstood,” Giuseppe said, finally turning to look at him. He checked his wristwatch. “You got the time wrong too.”
“Vito,” Genco said, softly. He stepped close and began to speak quickly, in Italian, trying to explain that there had not been a mistake. He noted the five empty chairs and guessed that Mariposa had sent out the rest of the consiglieri.
“Luca Brasi!” Giuseppe barked, the name coming out like a curse. “Escort Genco into the back room.” He gestured toward the second doorway. “You can wait for us there with the others.”
Luca, standing directly behind Vito, gave no hint that he had heard Giuseppe. He waited comfortably, his hands dangling at his sides, his eyes on a bowl of fruit in the center of the long table.
Behind Giuseppe, Tomasino turned and faced Luca. There were two discolorations of skin that ran in jagged lines under his eye where Luca had pistol-whipped him. The scars burned red in comparison to the weathered olive skin surrounding them.
Luca lifted his eyes from the bowl of fruit to meet Tomasino’s eyes, and his face, for the first time, was animated slightly by the hint of a smile.
Vito touched Luca and Genco each on the elbow. “Andate,” he said, in a whisper that could still be heard throughout the room. “Go. I’ll have Santino with me.”
Sonny, who had been standing with his back to the door, his face red but otherwise expressionless, moved closer to his father.
Vito took his seat next to Mike DiMeo.
When the door had closed behind Genco and Luca, Giuseppe straightened out his shirtsleeves, tugged at the cuffs, and then pushed his chair back and stood up. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve asked you all to come here today so that we might avoid trouble in the future.” The words came out stiff and rehearsed. He coughed and then went on, sounding a little more natural. “Listen,” he said, “there’s a lot of money to be made if we all keep our heads and cooperate with each other like businessmen. Not like animals,” he added, and he looked to the back door, where Luca had just walked out. “You all have your territories,” he went on, “and you’re all bosses. Between us we control New York and New Jersey—except for certain Jews and certain Irish, a bunch of mad-dog fuckin’ idiots who think they can do whatever they want and go wherever they please.” He leaned closer to his audience. “But we’ll settle their hash later on,” he said. Between the bosses and the bodyguards there wasn’t a sound. Everyone in the room looked bored, with the exception of Phillip Tattaglia, who seemed to be hanging on Giuseppe’s every word. “Now,” Giuseppe continued, “there’s been too much killing. Some of it had to be,” he said, and then, looking at Vito, added, “And some of it didn’t. That kid Nicky Crea in Central Park…” He shook his head. “It makes the cops and politicians angry, and then it makes trouble for all of us. Now, I say, you’re all bosses of your families. You make the decisions. But I say when there’s a death sentence for one of our own people—I say, there should be a court of bosses to approve such a thing. That’s one of the reasons I’ve called you together here. To see if you would all agree to that.”