by Mario Puzo
“I can’t be killed,” Luca said. He glanced at Emilio and then walked away, as if the man’s presence held no interest to him. He leaned against the wall next to the window seat. When he saw that everyone was still looking at him, he added, “I’ve made—a deal with the devil,” and smiled crookedly, the left side of his face hardly moving.
Vito guided Barzini to the study door and then waved for all the others in the room to leave along with Emilio. “Give me a moment alone with my bodyguard,” he said, “per piacere.”
When the last of the men had left the study, Vito went to Luca and stood next to him at the window. “How is it that a man takes a bullet close-up from a cannon and now stands here in my study?”
Luca smiled his crooked smile. “You don’t believe—I made a deal with the devil?”
Vito touched Luca’s chest and felt the bulletproof vest under his shirt. “I didn’t think one of these could stop a high-caliber bullet.”
“Most of them—can’t,” Luca said, and he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a thick leather vest. “Most of them—are just—a lot of cotton.” He took Vito’s hand and pressed it against the leather. “Feel that?”
“What is it?” Vito asked. He felt layers of something solid under the leather.
“I had it made special. Steel scales—wrapped in cotton—inside leather. Weighs—a ton, but nothing—I can’t carry. It could—stop a hand grenade.”
Vito touched the left side of Luca’s face with the palm of his hand. “What do the doctors say about this?” he asked. “Does it cause you any pain?”
“Nah,” Luca said. “They say—it’ll get better in time.” He touched his face after Vito took his hand away. “I don’t mind it.”
“Why’s that?” Vito asked. When Luca only shrugged, Vito patted him on the arm and then pointed to the study door. “Tell the others to get packed. I want everybody back to Long Beach, right away. We’ll talk more later.”
Luca nodded obediently and left the room.
Alone in his study, Vito turned off the lamp and looked out the window. The streets were dark now and empty. Behind him, a bedroom door opened and closed, and then he heard Connie crying and Carmella comforting her. He closed his eyes and opened them again to see his reflection in the window, superimposed over the dark city streets and a black sky. When Connie stopped crying he ran his fingers through his hair, and then left his study and went to his bedroom, where he found that Carmella had already packed his suitcase and left it on their bed.
Cork waited downstairs, in the narrow room behind the bakery and off the alley, as Eileen put Caitlin to sleep for the night. He stretched out on the cot and got up again and stretched out again and got up again and then paced the room awhile before he sat down on the cot and fiddled with a radio on the nightstand. He found a boxing match and listened to it for a few minutes and then turned the big tuner knob and watched a black band slide along an array of numbers until he came to The Guy Lombardo Show, and he listened a minute to Burns and Allen as Gracie went on about her lost brother, and then he turned off the radio and got up and went to one of the two ancient bookcases and tried to pick out a title to read, but he couldn’t hold three words together in his mind for more than a second. Finally, he sat down on the cot again and put his head in his hands.
Eileen had insisted on him staying in this room behind the bakery until she could find Sonny and talk to him. She was right. It was a good idea. He didn’t want to put her and Caitlin in danger. He should probably be hiding out someplace else altogether, but he didn’t know where to go. He kept turning over the facts, rethinking and reviewing. He had shot Vito Corleone. There was no doubt about that. But he had been aiming for Dwyer, trying to save Vito from taking a bullet in the back of the head. And even though he had accidentally hit Vito, he had probably saved his life anyway, since Dwyer’s bullet missed its mark and it probably wouldn’t have if Vito hadn’t been hit and dropped to the ground. Probably, Dwyer would have hit him and killed him. So, as unbelievable as it sounded, he had probably saved Vito’s life by shooting him.
Even if no one else in the world could be expected to believe this, Cork felt that Sonny would. Sonny knew him too well. They were as much family as friends: Sonny had to know it wasn’t possible that he, that Bobby Corcoran, would take a shot at Vito. He had to know it, and all Cork had to do was explain the whole thing, how he’d come to the parade after seeing Mrs. O’Rourke, how he’d come there out of concern for him, for Sonny and his family, how he’d seen Dwyer sneaking up behind Vito and had tried to save him. The facts made sense when you pieced them together, and he knew Sonny would see the whole picture, and then he had to bet that Sonny could convince the rest of his family, and after that everything would be jake, and he could go on with his life with Eileen and Caitlin and the bakery. He might even expect some thanks from the Corleones for what he’d tried to do, how he’d tried to help. No one ever said he was a crack shot. Jaysu Christi, he’d tried to help is all.
Upstairs he heard the back door open and close and Eileen’s footsteps on the stairs, and then she opened the door and found him still with his head in his hands, sitting on the edge of the cot.
“Look at you,” she said, and she paused in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “You’re a sight, aren’t you, with your hair all disheveled and lookin’ like the weight of the world is on your shoulders?”
Cork straightened out his hair. “I’m sitting here and I’m thinking: Bobby Corcoran, did you really shoot Vito Corleone? And the answer keeps coming back, Yes, you did, Mr. Corcoran. You put a bullet in his shoulder in plain sight of dozens, including Sonny.”
Eileen sat beside Cork and put a hand on his knee. “Ah, Bobby,” she said, and then was quiet as her eyes moved over the rows of titles stuffed into the pair of bookcases across from her. She smoothed her dress down over her knees and reached under her hair to squeeze an earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.
“Ah, Bobby, what?” Cork said. He took his hands away from his face and looked at his sister. “What is it you’re wanting to say to me, Eileen?”
“Did you know that a little boy was killed in all the shooting? A child just Caitlin’s age?”
“I did,” Bobby said. “I saw him lying there in the street. It wasn’t me that shot him.”
“I didn’t mean to say it was you that shot that child,” Eileen said, and in her voice still there was a note of chastisement.
“Ah, for God’s sake, Eileen! I went there to help Sonny! You even said to go!”
“I didn’t say to take a gun with you. I didn’t say to go there armed.”
“Ah, Mother of God,” Bobby said, and again he held his head in his hands. “Eileen,” he said into his palms, “unless I can explain to Sonny what happened, I’m a dead man. I shot Vito Corleone. I didn’t mean to, but I did shoot him.”
“Sonny will listen to reason,” Eileen said, and she put a hand on her brother’s neck and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll wait a day or two until this mess settles, and if Sonny doesn’t show up at my door looking for you, I’ll go to him. One way or another we’ll talk. Once Sonny hears the whole story, he’ll see it’s the truth.”
“Then he just has to convince the rest of his family,” Bobby said, and his tone suggested that wouldn’t be easy.
“Aye,” Eileen said. “That could be a problem.” She kissed Bobby on the shoulder. “Sonny’s a good talker,” she added. “You have to give him that. He’ll win over his family. I’ll wager on it.” When Bobby didn’t answer, when he only nodded into his hands and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, Eileen kissed him on the side of the head and told him to try to get some sleep.
“Sleep,” Bobby said. “There’s a good idea,” and he flung himself down on the cot and covered his head with the pillow. “Wake me when it’s safe to move about in the world,” he said, his voice muffled.
“Ah, but then you’d have to sleep forever,” Eileen said as she left the room, but she said it so softly,
she was sure Bobby didn’t hear.
Clemenza grasped Sonny’s lapel and pulled him close. “Five minutes,” he said, “capisc’? You take any longer, I’ll come get you myself.” They were in the backseat of Clemenza’s Buick, Jimmy Mancini and Al Hats in the front, Jimmy at the wheel. They’d just pulled up to Sandra’s building, where Sandra was waiting, watching from her window. As soon as Jimmy had pulled the big Buick over to the curb, Sandra disappeared from the window, leaping up and hurrying out of sight. “Five minutes,” Clemenza repeated as Sonny grunted an affirmation and threw open his door. “Go ahead,” Clemenza said to Jimmy, tapping him on the shoulder.
Jimmy cut the engine and joined Hats, who was already out of the car, following Sonny toward Sandra’s stoop.
“Che cazzo!” Sonny spun around and threw up his hands. “Wait in the car! I’ll be two minutes!”
“No can do,” Jimmy said, and he nodded toward the top of the steps, where Sandra had appeared in the doorway, holding a hand over her heart, looking down at Sonny as if he might be in grave danger. “We’ll wait here,” Jimmy said, and he and Al turned their backs to the doorway and took up positions side by side at the bottom of the stairs.
Sonny looked once to Clemenza, who was frowning at him from the backseat, his hands folded over his belly, and then he muttered a curse under his breath and hurried up the steps. Sandra threw her arms around his neck and squeezed so violently that she almost knocked him over.
“Doll face,” Sonny said as he peeled her arms off his neck, “I gotta hurry. I wanted to tell you,” he added, stepping back and grasping her by the shoulders, “I may not be able to see you till all this parade stuff is over with.” He gave her a brief, passionless kiss on the lips. “But I’m all right,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Sonny…” Sandra started to speak and then stopped. She looked as though she might dissolve in tears if she tried to say another word.
“Doll face,” Sonny said again. “I promise, this’ll all blow over pretty soon.”
“How soon?” Sandra managed. She wiped away tears. “What’s going on, Sonny?”
“It’s nothin’,” Sonny said, and then caught himself. “It was a massacre, what happened,” he said, “but the cops will straighten it out. They’ll get the bastards that did this, and then everything will be back to normal.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, as if dismissing Sonny’s explanation. “The papers are saying terrible things about your family.”
“You don’t believe that crap, do you?” Sonny asked. “It’s ’cause we’re Italian, they can get away with saying that stuff about us.”
Sandra looked down the steps to where Jimmy and Al were standing at their posts like sentries. They each had one hand in their pockets as their eyes scanned the street. Beyond them a gleaming black Buick waited at the curb with a fat man waiting in the backseat. In her eyes there was a mix of recognition and surprise, as if she suddenly understood everything but still found it hard to believe.
“We’re businessmen,” Sonny said, “and sometimes our business gets rough. But this,” he said, meaning the parade massacre, “people are going to pay for this.”
Sandra nodded and was silent.
“I don’t have the time to explain everything,” Sonny said, his voice turning curt and hard, before he softened and added, with a touch of exasperation, “Do you love me?”
Sandra answered without hesitation, “Yes. I love you, Santino.”
“Then trust me,” he said. “Nothing bad’s going to happen.” He stepped close and kissed her again, this time tenderly. “I promise you that, okay? Nothin’ bad’s going to happen.” When she nodded and wiped away more tears, he kissed her again and brushed away the wetness from her cheeks. “I’ve got to go now.” He looked over his shoulder to the Buick, where he could almost see Clemenza through the roof, his hands over his fat belly, waiting. “I’ll be on Long Island, on my family’s estate, until this is all settled.” He held her hands and took a step back. “Don’t read the papers,” he said. “It’s nothin’ but lies.” He smiled, waited until he saw a hint of a smile returned, and then stepped in for a quick last kiss before he hurried off down the steps.
Sandra waited in the doorway and watched as the men at the bottom of the steps followed Sonny into the car. She watched as the car started up and drove away along Arthur Avenue. She remained in the doorway watching the dark street, her head empty of everything except the sight of Sonny driving off into the night. She couldn’t bring herself to close the door and return to her apartment and her sleeping grandmother until she repeated Sonny’s words in her head a dozen times: “Nothing bad’s going to happen,” and then finally she closed the door and went back up to her room, where all she could do was wait.
25.
Sonny pushed a door open and stuck his head into a dark room. He was in their soon-to-be new home, on Long Island, in the walled-in compound that was bustling now, late at night, with cars and men moving from house to house. Between the headlights and the lights on in every room in every house and the floodlights on the courtyard and the surrounding walls, the place was lit up like Rockefeller Center. Clemenza had told Sonny that his father wanted to see him, and Sonny had gone from room to room in his father’s house until he wound up at the door of what he guessed was the only dark space in the compound. “Pop?” he said, and he took a tentative step into the shadowy room, where his father’s silhouette was centered in a window that looked out on the courtyard. “Should I turn on the lights?” he asked.
The silhouette shook its head and stepped away from the window. “Close the door,” it said, in a voice that seemed to come from someplace far away.
“Clemenza said you wanted to see me.” Sonny closed the door and moved through the shadows to his father, who pulled a pair of chairs together with his good arm. His left arm hung useless in a sling over his chest.
“Sit down.” Vito took a seat and gestured to the chair across from him. “I want to talk to you alone a moment.”
“Sure, Pop.” Sonny took his seat, folded his hands in his lap, and waited.
“In a minute,” Vito said, his voice not much more than a whisper, “Clemenza will join us, but I wanted to have a word with you first.” He leaned forward and hung his head and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair, and then held his head in his hands.
Sonny had never seen his father like this, and an impulse rushed up to touch him, to lay a hand on his father’s knee in comfort. It was an impulse he didn’t act on but would recall often in the future, this moment with his father in his shadowy unfurnished study when he wanted to reach out and comfort him.
“Santino,” Vito said, and he sat up. “Let me ask you, and I want you to take a moment to consider this: Why do you think Emilio came to us? Why is he betraying Giuseppe Mariposa?”
In his father’s eyes, Sonny read a note of hopefulness, as if Vito deeply wanted him to get this answer right, and so Sonny tried to think about the question—but he came up with nothing, a blank space, a refusal on his mind’s part to do any thinking. “I don’t know, Pop,” he said. “I guess I take him at his word, what he said: He sees you’ll make a better leader now than Mariposa.”
Vito shook his head and the little bit of hope in his eyes disappeared. It was replaced, though, with kindness. “No,” he said, and he laid his good hand on Sonny’s knee, exactly the gesture Sonny had entertained a moment earlier. “A man like Emilio Barzini,” he said, “can never be taken at his word. To understand the truth of things,” he went on, tightening his grip on Sonny’s knee, “you have to judge both the man and the circumstances. You have to use both your brains and your heart. That’s what it’s like in a world where men lie as a matter of course—and there is no other kind of world, Santino, at least not here on earth.”
“So why, then?” Sonny asked, a note of frustration in his voice. “If not what he said, then why?”
“Because,” Vito said, “Emilio p
lanned the parade shootings.” He paused and watched Sonny, looking like exactly what he was: a parent explaining something to his child. “He didn’t plan for it to turn into the massacre that it did, and that was his mistake,” he continued, “but you can be sure that this was Emilio’s plan. Mariposa was never smart enough to come up with something like this. If it had worked, if I had been killed, along with Luca Brasi—and you, Sonny, killing you would have been part of the plan too—and if this could have all been blamed on the crazy Irish, because everyone knows Italians would never endanger women and children, another man’s innocent family, that this is our code—if even the others’ families, they believed it was the Irish—then the war would have been over, and Joe would be on his way to running everything, with Emilio as his second in command.” Vito got up and wandered to the window, where he looked out at the activity in the courtyard. With his right hand, he slipped the sling over his head and tossed it away, wincing slightly as he opened and closed the fist of his left hand. “Already,” he said, turning to Sonny, “we see the newspapers calling it an Irish vendetta, a bunch of mad-dog Irishmen. These stories are plants from newspapermen on Mariposa’s payroll. But now,” he added, “now that everything has turned out so badly, now Emilio is scared.” Vito took his seat across from Sonny again and leaned close. “He knew that if I survived I would see that Mariposa’s family had to be behind this massacre. He fears now that all the families will turn against him and Giuseppe. With the failure to kill Clemenza and Genco at Angelo’s, with the failure of Capone’s men to kill me, and now with this—With all of this so soon after our agreement to pay his tax—Giuseppe’s word is worth nothing, and now he’s shown that he can be defeated. Emilio’s best chance now is the deal he offered. That’s why he risked his life to come to us with this proposal. And most importantly, Sonny, that’s why, now, he can be trusted.”
“If he planned to kill us all, I don’t see why we let him walk away alive.” Sonny knew he should tamp down his anger, should struggle to be as reasonable as his father, but he couldn’t control it. Anger flared at the thought of Emilio planning to kill him and his family, and his only thought, if it could even be called a thought, was the desire to strike back.