“If you people don’t hurry up,” Sandra called, “you’re going to miss Christmas.”

“Christmas!” cried Deanna Dunn, hurrying past Uncle Fredo. Deanna Dunn was not tall. She’d only come off that way standing next to Uncle Fredo, who was short, and because she had a tall woman’s walk and also a colossal head. The eye is passive. Only the brain can see. “How marvelous!”

Book IV. 1956 – 1957

Chapter 14

THAT SPRING, after months of negotiation, the Commission finally agreed to meet. Its first order of business would be to add Chicago ’s Louie Russo as its eighth member. Next would be the formal approval of the peace agreement. The heads of all twenty-four Families were invited. Every effort would be made to ensure that this time, peace would last.

Michael Corleone flew to New York on the red-eye, accompanied only by three bodyguards. Hagen, a declared candidate for the U.S. Senate, could not be a part of this. Since every important item of business had already been decided, for today, what Michael needed at his side was not a brilliant strategist but rather a man whose very presence suggested stability and respect for tradition. Clemenza was the perfect consigliere for such an occasion.

Michael had no intention of ever choosing a permanent consigliere. The job required an elusive set of contradictory skills. A schemer who’s also loyal. A Machiavellian negotiator who’s also guileless. A driven man with no personal ambition. The plan had been for Vito to be the last to hold the job. A CEO has a board and a battalion of lawyers. The president has a staff, a cabinet, judges whose places on the bench they owe to him, and the control of the world’s mightiest army. The Corleone organization would develop in the open and along such lines.

Clemenza picked them up at the airport himself. The very sight of the fat man was reassuring. He’d quit chewing toothpicks and gone back to cigars. All that had changed about him since Michael was a boy was that now he walked with a cane.

They drove into Manhattan, stopping at a bakery on Mulberry for a box of pastries, then on to the apartment on West Ninety-third where the Corleones were holding a Bocchicchio hostage-some baby-faced third cousin who’d gotten in from Sicily yesterday. He was playing dominos with Frankie Pants, Little Joe Bono, and Richie “Two Guns” Nobilio-Clemenza’s men. Kid couldn’t have been more than fifteen. They stood. Michael and Pete embraced and kissed each in turn. In halting English, the kid, whose name was Carmine Marino, addressed Michael as “Don Corleone” and thanked him for the chance to see America. The only window in the apartment was blackened with what looked like tar. “Prego,” Michael said. “Fa niente.”

“You didn’t bring coffee?” said Richie Two Guns, opening the box.

“Make coffee, you lazy fuck,” Clemenza said. “Or go downstairs to some deli. Good bakery can be hard to find, but you can get coffee anyplace. What, I’m supposed to slosh coffee all over my clean car while I drive it up here and deliver it to you, half spilled and cold?”

Clemenza winked, gave Frankie’s shoulders a quick rub, set out the pastries, and, like a tour guide, pointed out some of their finer points.

The peace talks started at two. By now, each Family coming to the table was holding a Bocchicchio hostage. The hostages went willingly. It was how the Bocchicchios made their money. If, for example, anything happened to Michael or Clemenza, one of their men would kill this boy. No Bocchicchio would rest until the boy’s murder was avenged-not on his killer but rather on those who’d harmed the killer’s associates. The Bocchicchios were the most single-mindedly vengeful clan Sicily had ever seen, wholly undeterred by prison or death. There was no defense against them. Bocchicchio insurance was better than a hundred bodyguards. The men who came to the table would do so with just their consiglieres.

Back in the car, Michael asked Clemenza how old he thought that baby-faced Bocchicchio kid was.

“Carmine?” The fat man considered this for a long time. “I’m not so good at this no more. All of a sudden everybody seems like a kid to me.”

“He looked like he was all of fifteen.”

“I hear there ain’t a whole lot of Bocchicchios left,” Clemenza said. “On the other hand, at my age, sometimes you look like you’re only fifteen. No disrespect or nothin’.”

“Of course.” Fifteen. When Michael was fifteen, he’d stood up at the dinner table, looked his father in the eye, and said he’d rather die than grow up to be a man like him. What happened after that still gave Michael chills, all these years later. Without that moment of stupid, boyish pride, Michael wondered, would he himself even be in this business? “I wouldn’t have thought,” Michael said, “that a kid that young would even be allowed to fly here alone.”

“I don’t know about that,” Clemenza said, “but he didn’t fly. He came over on a boat, along with most of the other hostages. In steerage. They still have that on boats? Whatever the cheapest one’s called. I doubt if the Bocchicchios are even paying him. Lot of times, they just send over shoestring relatives who want to come live in America. We’re paying a king’s ransom for this, y’know, but how they spread the wealth? Forget about it.”

Clemenza shook his big, sad head. They crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge and headed north.

“So tell me,” Michael said after a long silence. “What were those rumors you heard about Fredo?”

“What rumors?” Pete said.

Michael stared straight ahead at the road.

“I told you,” Pete said. “Drinking too much, and the rest of it comes from bad sources.”

Michael took a deep breath. “Did you hear that he’s a homosexual?”

“What’s wrong with you? You think that’s what I heard?”

“The man he beat up in San Francisco was a homosexual.”

“Don’t mean he wasn’t also a robber. A guy can be a robber and a queer both. If everybody who killed a queer turned queer, there’d be a lot of queers out there.”

Fredo’s story was that he’d been out for a walk to clear his head after Molinari’s funeral and stopped for a drink. A kid from the bar followed him to his hotel and later broke into his room to rob him. Fredo beat the kid up and he died. It was a ridiculous story-why, for example, didn’t the kid just rob Fredo on the street? Why wait until it was necessary to pick the lock on the door to Fredo’s room? On top of that, the kid’s parents had recently died and left him almost thirty thousand dollars-no fortune, but why was he robbing anyone? Hagen -acting strictly as a lawyer-had managed to keep the matter out of the newspapers and see to it that no charges were filed, but he’d returned from San Francisco with several matters of concern.

“So you’re sure you never heard that?” Michael said.

“I never said I never heard it. I said it came from bad sources. If I was to start believing everything I hear from bad sources, I’d never-” he said. “Jesus Christ, Mikey. This is your brother. He may have done some stupid shit and beat up a fag and all, but I can’t believe you think he maybe is one. This is Fredo we’re talking about, right? Curly hair, yay tall? Spends all his money on abortions and jewels, married to a fucking movie star-is that the guy you mean? I tell you what I got from a good source. That doctor you guys have out there? Segal? He told me that even after Fredo started up with Deanna Dunn, he knocked up a showgirl. Marguerite something. French, as in va-va-voom. Does that sound like fag behavior to you?”

Michael remained blank.

He’d given Fredo a chance to distinguish himself, and what happened? More boozing. More knocked-up showgirls. Michael wasn’t sure what Fredo was trying to prove by running off and marrying that Hollywood puttana. Though if anything can make a man more of a man, it’s marriage. Also, there’s a certain public image value right now to having a Corleone married to a movie star, even one whose best screen years were behind her. So he had to give Fredo that.