The Family Corleone (25 page)

“Table stakes, pot limit, two hundred,” Hooks said, and he reached for the cards.

Vinnie, sitting next to JoJo, had his hand down his pants, scratching.

Luca said, “What the hell is with you always scratching your balls, Vinnie?”

Hooks laughed. “He’s got the clap,” he said to Luca.

JoJo added, “He’s afraid to go get the shot.”

Luca pointed to the sink. “Wash your hands,” he said, “and then keep ’em out of your pants while you’re playing cards with us.”

“Sure, sure,” Vinnie said. He jumped up and went to the sink.

“Jesus Christ,” Luca said to no one in particular.

“Buck ante?” Hooks said.

Luca nodded and Hooks dealt the cards. In the basement, the furnace cut out, and the house was suddenly quiet, the wind whistling over the roof and the rattling of windows the only sounds. Luca asked Vinnie to turn on the radio, which he did before retaking his seat at the table. His hole cards, Luca saw, were crap, and he folded when JoJo bet a dollar. Bing Crosby was on. Luca didn’t know the song, but he recognized the voice. The pills were beginning to kick in and the headache was subsiding. In another minute, he’d be feeling better. He didn’t mind the sound of the wind. There was something soothing about it. The boys were talking, but he didn’t have to pay attention. He could let himself listen to the crooning on the radio and the wind whistling around the house for a minute, until Hooks dealt the next hand.

Vito came though the back door into the kitchen looking for Carmella. Outside everyone was packing up and getting ready to head back to the Bronx. The day’s light was fading, and in another half hour it would be dark. He found Carmella by herself, on the other side of the house, looking out the dining room window. “Vito,” she said, when he came up behind her, “that truck is driving away with a flat tire.”

Vito looked over her shoulder and out to the compound, where the Everready Furnace Repair truck bounced along, riding on the rim of a rear left wheel, the flat rubber tire flapping around it with every clumsy rotation. Both rear taillights were busted out and it looked like the driver’s side window had been shattered.

“What happened?” Carmella asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Vito said. “They’ll be all right. They’ve got three good tires.”

“
Sì
,” Carmella said, “but what happened?”

Vito shrugged, gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“
Madon’
…,” Carmella said, and then went back to watching the truck hobble away.

Vito stroked the back of Carmella’s hair and let his hand come to rest on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why are you here all alone like this?”

“I used to love spending time alone,” Carmella said, still looking out the window. “With the kids, eh…,” she said, meaning she never got to be alone anymore since having children.

“No,” Vito said, “that’s not it.” He took her gently by the arm and turned her around to face him. “What is it?” he asked again.

Carmella rested her head on Vito’s shoulder. “I worry,” she said. “All this…” She took a step back to gesture around her at the house and the compound. “All this,” she repeated, and she looked up to Vito. “I worry for you,” she said. “Vito. I look at all this and… I worry.”

“You always worried,” Vito said, “and yet here we are.” He touched her eyes, as if wiping away tears. “Look,” he said. “Tom’s in college. He’ll be a hotshot lawyer soon. Everybody’s fine and healthy.”

“
Sì
,” Carmella said. “We’ve been lucky.” She straightened out her dress. “Did you talk to Sonny about Sandrinella?”

“Yes,” Vito said.

“Good. That boy… I worry for his soul.”

“He’s a good boy.” Vito took Carmella’s hand, meaning to lead her to the kitchen and out of the house, but she resisted.

“Vito,” she said, “do you really think he’s behaving?”

“Sure I do. Carmella…” Vito put his hands on her cheeks. “Sonny will be fine. I promise. He’ll work his way up in the automobile business. I’ll help him. In time, God willing, he’ll be making more money than I could ever dream of. Him and Tommy and Michael and Fredo, our children will be like the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. With me to help, they’ll be rich beyond measure, and then they’ll take care of us when we’re old.”

Carmella grasped Vito’s hands by the wrists, pulled them away from her face, and put them around her waist. “You believe that?” she asked, and she pressed her cheek against his neck.

“If I didn’t believe that was possible…” Vito stepped back and took her by the hand. “If I didn’t believe that was possible,” he said, “I’d still be working as a clerk at Genco’s. Now,” he added, and he led her toward the kitchen and the back door, “everybody’s waiting.”

“Ah,” Carmella said, and she put her arm around his waist and walked close to him through the darkening rooms.

C
lemenza grumbled as he piloted the big Essex along Park Avenue in the Bronx, on his way to Luca’s warehouse. Next to him, Vito sat with his hands in his lap, looking preoccupied, his hat on the seat beside him. He was dressed comfortably in a worn wool jacket and a white shirt with a banded collar. His dark hair was slicked back and his eyes were focused on the windshield, though Clemenza doubted that Vito was seeing or hearing anything other than whatever it was that was going on in his own thoughts. Vito was forty-one, but there were times, like this one, when he still looked to Clemenza like the same kid he’d met for the first time some fifteen years earlier: He had the same muscular chest and arms, and the same dark eyes that seemed to take in everything. With Vito, what somebody did and what the doing meant, the bigger design behind an act that might look unimportant to someone else… he saw all that. He could be trusted to see all that. Which was why Clemenza went to work for him all those years ago, and why, so far, he’d never regretted it.

“Vito,” Clemenza said, “we’re almost there. I’m gonna ask you one more time not to do this.”

Vito shook himself free of his thoughts. “Are you catching whatever Tessio’s got?” he asked. “Since when do you worry like an old lady, my friend?”

“
Sfaccim!
” Clemenza said, mostly to himself. He took a blueberry
Danish from the open pastry box on the seat beside him and bit it in half. A glob of cream filling fell onto his belly. He picked it off his shirt, looked at it as if trying to figure out where to put it, and then popped it into his mouth. “At least let me come in with you,” he said, still chewing on the Danish. “For Christ’s sake, Vito!”

“Is that it?” Vito asked.

Clemenza had turned off Park onto a side street and pulled over in front of a fire hydrant. Up the block, a small warehouse with a rolling steel door was situated between a lumberyard and what looked like a machine shop. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said. He brushed crumbs off his belly and wiped them away from his lips. “Vito, let me come in with you. We’ll tell ’em you had second thoughts.”

“Drive up to the curb and drop me off,” Vito said. He picked up his hat from the seat beside him. “Wait here till you see me come out.”

“And if I hear shootin’,” Clemenza said angrily, “what do you want me to do?”

“If you hear shooting, go to Bonasera’s Funeral Parlor and make the arrangements.”

“Eh,” Clemenza said, and drove Vito to the curb in front of the warehouse. “I’ll do that.”

Vito got out of the car, put his hat on, and then looked back in at Clemenza. “Don’t be cheap,” he said. “I expect a big wreath from you.”

Clemenza gripped the steering wheel like he was trying to strangle someone. “Be careful, Vito,” he said. “I don’t like the things I hear about this guy.”

On the street, Vito started for the warehouse, and as he did so a side door opened and two men appeared. They were both young, and one of them wore a black porkpie hat with a feather in the brim. He had a baby face, a little bit of a squint in his eyes, and lips pressed together. In the way he held himself there was an air of fatality, as if he was ready for what might come, not especially looking forward to it, but not afraid either. The kid beside him was scratching his balls and looked like a fool.

“Mr. Corleone,” the one with the porkpie hat said as Vito neared him, “it’s an honor to meet you.” He extended his hand and Vito shook it. “I’m Luigi Battaglia,” he said. “Everybody calls me Hooks.” He gestured alongside him. “This is Vinnie Vaccarelli.”

Vito was taken aback by the deference of the greeting. “Can we step inside?” he asked.

Hooks opened the door for Vito. When Vinnie blocked Vito’s path and started to frisk him, Hooks put a hand on Vinnie’s shoulder.

“What?” Vinnie said.

“Inside,” Hooks said, as if disgusted.

Once the door closed behind him and Vito found himself in a damp, garage-like space, all empty concrete floor and walls with no windows, and what looked like an office in the back, he took off his jacket and hat and spread his arms and legs. Hooks looked him over and said, “Luca’s in his office,” and pointed to the back of the room.

Vinnie snorted at Hooks’s failure to frisk Vito, and then went back to scratching himself. Hooks accompanied Vito to the office, opened the door for him from the outside, and then closed it, leaving Vito alone in a room with a brute of a man leaning back against a rosewood desk.

“Mr. Brasi?” Vito said. He waited at the door and folded his hands in front of him.

“Mr. Corleone,” Luca answered, and he gestured to a chair. While Vito took his seat, Luca hoisted himself onto the desktop and crossed his legs. “Didn’t anybody tell you I’m a monster?” he asked. He pointed to Vito. “You come here by yourself? You must be crazier than I am.” He smiled and then laughed. “That worries me,” he said.

Vito offered Luca a slight smile in return. The man was tall and muscular, with an overhanging brow that made him look brutal. He wore a blue striped suit with a tie and a vest, but it did little to hide the animal bulk of him. In his eyes, Vito saw a hint of darkness behind the forced mirth, a suggestion of something frantic and dangerous, and he immediately believed everything he had heard about Luca Brasi. “I wanted to meet you,” he said. “I wanted to meet the man who makes Giuseppe Mariposa quake in his boots.”

“But not you,” Luca said. “You’re not quaking.” His tone wasn’t friendly or amused. If anything, it was ominous.

Vito shrugged. “I know some things about you,” he said.

“What do you know, Vito?”

Vito ignored the insolence of being called by his first name. “When you were a boy, only twelve years old,” he said, “your mother was attacked and you saved her life.”

“You know about that,” Luca said.

Luca’s tone was indifferent, as if he were neither surprised nor worried, but in his eyes, Vito saw something else. “Such a man,” Vito went on, “a man who as a boy has the courage to fight for his mother’s life—such a man must have a brave heart.”

“And what do you know about this man who attacked my mother?” Luca uncrossed his legs. He leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I know he was your father,” Vito said.

“Then you must know that I killed him.”

“You did what you had to do to save your mother’s life.”

Luca watched Vito in silence. In the quiet, the noise of traffic on Park Avenue filled the office space. Finally, he said, “I beat his head in with a two-by-four.”

“Good for you,” Vito said. “No boy should suffer witnessing his mother’s murder. I hope you beat his head to a pulp.”

Again Luca was quiet as he watched Vito.

“If you’re wondering how I know all this, Luca, I have friends among the police. Rhode Island isn’t another universe. It’s all in the records.”

“So you know what the police know,” Luca said, and he looked relieved. “And why are you here, Vito?” He clearly wanted to move on. “Are you runnin’ errands for Jumpin’ Joe Mariposa now? Have you come to threaten me?”

“Not at all,” Vito said. “I don’t like Giuseppe Mariposa. I think we have that in common.”

“And so?” Luca went around the desk and dropped heavily into his chair. “What is this about? Tomasino’s boys?”

“That’s none of my concern,” Vito said. “I’m here hoping I can find out from you who’s been stealing from Giuseppe. He’s in a temper and he’s causing me problems. He’s got it in his head I’m responsible.”

“You?” Luca said. “Why would he think…?”

“Who knows why Giuseppe thinks what he thinks,” Vito said. “But, such as it is, it would be a great help to me if I could find out who was behind all this trouble. If I could give him that information, that would calm him down for now—and, like it or not, for now Giuseppe Mariposa is a powerful man.”

“I see,” Luca said. “And why would I help you?”

“Out of friendship,” Vito said. “It’s better to have friends, Luca, no?”

Luca looked up to the ceiling, as if thinking over the proposition. He wavered slightly, and then said, “No. I don’t think so. I like the kid who’s been ’jackin’ Giuseppe’s hooch. And you’re right, Vito, we have this in common: I don’t like Mariposa. In fact I hate the
stronz’
.”

It was Vito’s turn to be quiet then and watch Luca. Brasi never intended to give up the thieves, and Vito couldn’t help but respect that. “Luca,” he asked, “aren’t you worried? You have no fear of Giuseppe Mariposa? You understand how powerful he is now? Now especially, with LaConti gone? With all the button men he has working for him? With all the cops and judges in his pocket?”

“This doesn’t mean anything to me,” Luca said, enjoying himself. “It never has. I’ll kill anybody. I’ll kill that fat Neapolitan pig runnin’ for mayor, he keeps annoying me. You think they can protect LaGuardia from me?”

“Not at all,” Vito said. “I know they can’t.” His hat was resting on his knees, and he pinched its brim, shaping it. “So you can’t help me,” he said, and he picked up his hat.

Luca said, “Sorry, Vito, ” and threw open his hands, as if there was nothing he could do about the situation. “But listen,” he added. “We have another problem that you don’t know about yet.”

“And what’s that?” Vito asked.

Luca scooted his chair back and leaned over the desk. “That German-Irish mutt that’s part of your family, Tom Hagen. I’m afraid I’ve got to kill him. It’s a matter of honor.”