First, naming Geraci the capo of Tessio’s old regime had, as Michael expected, put to rest any lingering resentment over Tessio’s unfortunately necessary execution. He was popular with the men on the street, who had no idea he was O’Malley, who merely thought he’d been in Tucson opening up new business ventures, which Geraci in fact had done. The Corleones had a few shylocks up and running, owned a bar and grill and a police captain, and had tapped into a source for marijuana that was protected by a former president of Mexico.
Second, every reason to be wary of Geraci had been tempered or eliminated. Even if Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco never sent someone to kill him, he’d be worried about it, which would rein in his aggressiveness. He seemed deeply, sincerely grateful to Michael for ensuring his protection after Forlenza’s ridiculous kidnapping stunt, setting him up in Tucson, and engineering his return to New York. And now that Narducci was poised to take over in Cleveland, Geraci’s ties to Forlenza were of little concern.
Third, Geraci was a great earner. His every human transaction leaked gold.
Fourth, Michael Corleone needed peace. His organization was not the U.S. Marine Corps. He had neither enough nor good enough personnel to wage war indefinitely. Keeping Geraci alive helped Michael cement the perception that Louie Russo was to blame for that crash, a key component of the peace agreement formalized at that first summit meeting in upstate New York.
So why the need for a second meeting? Why the need to hold such meetings annually? And why hold them in the same location?
The men who assembled for the first time in that white clapboard farmhouse certainly had no compelling reason to agree to reconvene there the following year (and, indeed, the 1957 meeting, by all accounts, was a routine affair, almost certainly unnecessary, a historical footnote to the 1956 meeting and the fateful one in the spring of 1958). The issues they had come to discuss and resolve had been discussed and resolved. The peace struck that day was historic and enduring; to this day, there has not been an outbreak of violence between Families comparable to the 1955-1956 war (or to the two that preceded it, either, the Five Families War of the 1940s and the Castellammarese War of 1933). There was no precedent for scheduling such a meeting; all previous summit meetings had been convened only in direct response to existing problems.
The decision to hold these meetings annually was made not at the 1956 meeting but soon thereafter. None of it would have happened if it weren’t for the sudden turn in the weather and, more so, that gargantuan pig.
Michael had intended to leave immediately after all the business had been transacted. But for hours, the windows had been open. For hours, the aroma of that roasting pig had wafted in, working its succulent magic. Clemenza-like most everyone else there-was hardly the sort of man who’d leave on a long drive without having a slice or six. The garlic bread was good enough to make grown men weep, if not these particular grown men. Still: great bread. Also there was pie. A humble but inviting feast on what, propitiously, turned out to be the first warm day of spring. Men lingered. To have done otherwise would have been an infamità.
Michael Corleone felt an icy hand on the back of his neck. “I can’t eat pork,” Russo said. His voice was barely lower than Michael’s three-year-old daughter’s. “Breaks my heart. But if I eat it,” he tapped his chest, “it’ll break it worse. A word with you before I go?”
They went for a walk together across the lawn as the other men dug in. Russo’s consigliere went to get the car.
“I didn’t want to say this back there. I’m new. The new man should shut up and listen.”
Michael nodded. Russo had actually talked plenty at the meeting.
“I’m not an educated man such as yourself,” he said in that odd, high voice, “but I’m confused about something. When you were talking at the end there about change, you lost me.”
“I have no interest in telling others how to run their business. But there will come a time when others will take control of street crime, the way Italians took over from the Irish and the Jews. Just look at the Negroes, who in some cities are gaining more power every day.”
“Not Chicago.”
“In any case, I see no point in our amassing greater power and prosperity if we don’t use it to move out of the shadows and into the light. And that’s what I intend to do.”
Laughter echoed in the dusk. Sitting on a big rock beside the tent, Pete Clemenza and Joe Zaluchi, related through the marriage of their children, were holding court and telling stories.
“You’re losing me again with the shadows and light.”
Michael started to explain.
“No, no, no,” Russo said. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
Michael did not apologize or acknowledge the petty outburst, which was shocking in a Don, even one from Chicago.
“I’ll put it to you like this,” Russo said. “You talk about how one day our kids can be congressmen, senators, even president, yet we got fellas like that on our payrolls.”
“Never a president,” Michael said, thinking of the Ambassador, and thinking not yet.
“Not yet,” Russo said. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you talked to Mickey Shea. You think you’re the only one he’s making deals with?”
Several Dons were looking their way. The last thing Michael needed was to have anyone think he was plotting something. “We should get back,” he said.
“I’m not getting back, remember?” Russo said. “I’m going. Look, all I’m trying to say is that, at least in Chicago, we elect who we want, and once they’re in office we get out of them what we want to get out of them. Even the ones we don’t control are controlled by someone.”
Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, Michael Corleone thought but did not say.
“Why, then,” said Russo, “would we wish this on our children? Why would we want for them to be puppets? We ain’t naive, you know, none of us, yet some of us got this big naive dream. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it one bit.”
The men under the tent were calling for them.
Michael smiled. “No man is beyond the control of others, Don Russo. Not even us.”
“Just wanted to say my piece,” Russo said. “Oh, and also-”
“Hey, Mike!” Clemenza called. “When you get a chance, we need you for something.”
“Yes?” Michael said to Russo.
“Real quick,” Russo said. “I want to clear the air and be done with it. I’m sure you know that Capone sent my brother Willie and another guy to help Maranzano out, back when him and your father were havin’ it out.”
So this was what the walk had really been about.
“So I’ve been told,” Michael said. The help had been a contract on Vito Corleone. The only part of Willie “the Icepick” Russo that had made it back to Chicago was his severed head.
“I blame Capone. I want you to know that. It wasn’t none of his business, the problems in New York.” Russo extended his soft and tiny hand. “Your father just did what he had to do.”
Michael accepted the handshake, which became an embrace, sealed with a kiss, and Don Russo got into his idling car.
“Where’d Don Russo go?” Clemenza asked when Michael got back to the tent. It must have almost killed Pete not to be able to call him “Fuckface” to the other Dons.
“He can’t eat pork,” Michael said.
“I thought Vinnie Forlenza was our token Jew,” Zaluchi said.
“Enough!” Forlenza said from his wheelchair. “If it wasn’t for the Jews I sent to Las Vegas, most of you bums wouldn’t have a pot to piss in.”
“We’d have even more money than they made us,” said Sammy Drago, the Don of Tampa, “if we had a dime for every time we hadda hear you tell us about ’em.”