The Godfather returns

Still, Michael was terrified. Only So

“What’d he do?” Michael said.

“Some stupid cafone stunt,” Tom said. “Typical So

Tom and So

As for So

“What kind of stupid cafone stunt?” Michael asked Tom.

“A rubar poco si va in galera, a rubar tanto si fa carriera.” Steal a little, go to jail; steal a lot, make a career of it. “So

“Ah-ah-ah!” Carmela clamped her hands over Co

The parlor door opened. Vito was shaking, red-faced, visibly angry. He and Clemenza left without saying a word. Co

Years later, Michael would learn that So

When Vito confronted So

Vito believed that he himself had done what he had to do in a world that offered little to a man who looked like he did and came from where he came from. He did so steadfast in the belief that life would be different for his children. He’d promised himself that none of them, not even Hagen, would follow in his footsteps. It was the only promise Vito Corleone ever broke.

At the time, though, all Michael knew was that, for the first time in his life, he’d seen his stoic father lose his temper, and that So

She didn’t. Her face was gray and drawn.

Michael caught the door as Tom was closing it and followed him down the stairs. When they got to the street it was raining. A downpour. Tom leaned against the glass door, hesitating.

“Tell me what’s happening, Tom,” Michael said. “I have a right to know. We’re family.”

“Where’d you learn to talk like that, kid?”

Michael hardened his expression as best he could.

Tom glanced over his shoulder. The super and a few tenants were milling around. “Not here.” He motioned toward an awning a few doors down. Together, they ran for it.

At sixteen, Hagen didn’t know everything. But he knew how to read So

From that day on, So

Within weeks of one another, So

Michael couldn’t have pinpointed a moment when all this changed, when Fredo’s clumsiness became something darker, when the self-sufficiency became sullen self-absorption. It must have happened gradually, but to Michael, it seemed that one moment Fredo was a weakling, the next he was a strong, serious young man, and the next he was locked in his room for hours at a time. At sixteen, Fredo a

Vito Corleone kept stressing the importance of education, and sometimes at night he and Michael sat on the fire escape and dreamed big dreams about the boy’s future. Vito had had such conversations with the other boys, too, and only Tom-who was about to start law school at Columbia-even finished high school. Michael loved and respected his father, but he was scared that he’d turn sixteen and something in his blood would send him into the world Tom told him about.

Michael’s understanding of that world was still that of an eleven-year-old. During the summer, when Michael was home from school, his father-undoubtedly on days he expected to be uneventful-sometimes took him along as he made his rounds. Vito seemed mainly to go from meal to meal, at various social clubs, restaurants, and coffee shops, shaking hands, saying he’d already eaten, and then eating anyway. He’d leave without seeming to have conducted any business at all, unless it somehow all got done in brief whispers.

On one such day, Vito was suddenly called to meet with some people at the Genco Pura warehouse. He told Michael to wait outside. Michael found a baseball in the trunk of the car and went into the alley to throw it off the wall. When he got there, a boy he’d never seen before was already doing the same thing. The boy’s features were aggressively Irish.

“This is my alley,” Michael said, though he didn’t know what provoked him to say that.

“Aw, c’mon,” the boy said. “No one owns alleys.” He flashed a dazzling white smile and laughed. The laugh was kind of braying, but it somehow put Michael at ease.

Still, they didn’t say much more than that for a long time. They stood alongside each other in that alley, and each threw his scuffed baseball against the wall over and over, trying to outdo each other, though neither one was a born ballplayer.

“You know,” the Irish boy finally said, out of breath and taking a break, “my dad’s boss of all those trucks out there, and you know what’s in ’em, don’tcha?”

“Some of those trucks are my dad’s. All the ones that say ‘Genco Pura Olive Oil.’ ”