The Godfather - Mario Puzo [27]
At the hotel Clemenza insisted on coming to the desk with her. When she protested, he said simply, “The boss said to make sure you got home OK. I gotta do it.”
After she received her room key he walked her to the elevator and waited until she got in. She waved to him, smiling, and was surprised at his genuine smile of pleasure in return. It was just as well she did not see him go back to the hotel clerk and ask, “What name she registered under?”
The hotel clerk looked at Clemenza coldly. Clemenza rolled the little green spitball he was holding in his hand across to the clerk, who picked it up and immediately said, “Mr. and Mrs. Michael Corleone.”
Back in the car, Paulie Gatto said, “Nice dame.”
Clemenza grunted. “Mike is doing the job on her.” Unless, he thought, they were really married. “Pick me up early in the morning,” he told Paulie Gatto. “Hagen got some deal for us that gotta be done right away.”
IT WAS LATE SUNDAY night before Tom Hagen could kiss his wife good-bye and drive out to the airport. With his special number one priority (a grateful gift from a Pentagon staff general officer) he had no trouble getting on a plane to Los Angeles.
It had been a busy but satisfying day for Tom Hagen. Genco Abbandando had died at three in the morning, and when Don Corleone returned from the hospital, he had informed Hagen that he was now officially the new Consigliere to the Family. This meant that Hagen was sure to become a very rich man, to say nothing of power.
The Don had broken a long-standing tradition. The Consigliere was always a full-blooded Sicilian, and the fact that Hagen had been brought up as a member of the Don’s family made no difference to that tradition. It was a question of blood. Only a Sicilian born to the ways of omerta, the law of silence, could be trusted in the key post of Consigliere. Between the head of the Family, Don Corleone, who dictated policy, and the operating level of men who actually carried out the orders of the Don, there were three layers, or buffers. In that way nothing could be traced to the top. Unless the Consigliere turned traitor. That Sunday morning Don Corleone gave explicit instructions on what should be done to the two young men who had beaten the daughter of Amerigo Bonasera. But he had given those orders in private to Tom Hagen. Later in the day Hagen had, also in private without witnesses, instructed Clemenza. In turn Clemenza had told Paulie Gatto to execute the commission. Paulie Gatto would now muster the necessary manpower and execute the orders. Paulie Gatto and his men would not know why this particular task was being carried out or who had ordered it originally. Each link of the chain would have to turn traitor for the Don to be involved and though it had never yet happened, there was always the possibility. The cure for that possibility also was known. Only one link in the chain had to disappear.
The Consigliere was also what his name implied. He was the counselor to the Don, his right-hand man, his auxiliary brain. He was also his closest companion and his closest friend. On important trips he would drive the Don’s car, at conferences he would go out and get the Don refreshments, coffee and sandwiches, fresh cigars. He would know everything the Don knew or nearly everything, all the cells of power. He was the one man in the world who could bring the Don crashing down to destruction. But no Consigliere had ever betrayed a Don, not in the memory of any of the powerful Sicilian Families who had established themselves in America. There was no future in it. And every Consigliere knew that if he kept the faith, he would become rich, wield power and win respect. If misfortune came, his wife and children would be sheltered and cared for as if he were alive or free. If he kept the faith.