The Last Don - Mario Puzo [0]
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Book 2
Chapter 3
Book 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Book 4
Chapter 6
Book 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Book 6
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Book 7
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Book 8
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Other Books by Mario Puzo
Copyright Page
For
Virginia Altman
Domenick Cleri
PROLOGUE
Quogue 1965
ON PALM SUNDAY, one year after the Great War against the Santadio, Don Domenico Clericuzio celebrated the christening of two infants of his own blood and made the most important decision of his life. He invited the greatest Family chiefs in America, as well as Alfred Gronevelt, the owner of the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas, and David Redfellow, who had built up a vast drug empire in the United States. All his partners to some degree.
Now the most powerful Mafia Family head in America, Don Clericuzio planned to relinquish that power, on the surface. It was time to play a different hand; obvious power was too dangerous. But the relinquishing of power was dangerous in itself. He had to do it with the most skillful benignity and with personal goodwill. And he had to do it on his own base.
The Clericuzio estate in Quogue comprised twenty acres surrounded by a ten-foot-high redbrick wall armed by barbed wire and electronic sensors. It held, besides the mansion, the homes for his three sons as well as twenty small homes for trusted Family retainers.
Before the arrival of the guests, the Don and his sons sat around the white wrought-iron table in the trellised garden at the back of the mansion. The oldest, Giorgio, was tall, with a small, fierce mustache and the lanky frame of an English gentleman, which he adorned with tailored clothes. He was twenty-seven, saturnine, with savage wit and closed face. The Don informed Giorgio that he, Giorgio, would be applying to the Wharton School of Business. There he would learn all the intricacies of stealing money while staying within the law.
Giorgio did not question his father; this was a royal edict, not an invitation to discussion. He nodded obedience.
The Don addressed his nephew, Joseph “Pippi” De Lena, next. The Don loved Pippi as much as he did his sons, for in addition to blood—Pippi being his dead sister’s son—Pippi was the great general who had conquered the savage Santadio.
“You will go and live permanently in Vegas,” he said. “You will look after our interest in the Xanadu Hotel. Now that our Family is retiring from operations, there will not be much work here to do. However you will remain the Family Hammer.”
He saw Pippi was not happy, that he must give reasons. “Your wife, Nalene, cannot live in the atmosphere of the Family, she cannot live in the Bronx Enclave. She is too different. She cannot be accepted by them. You must build your life away from us.” Which was all true, but the Don had another reason. Pippi was the great hero general of the Cleri-cuzio Family, and if he continued to be “Mayor” of the Bronx Enclave, he would be too powerful for the sons of the Don when the Don no longer lived.
“You will be my Bruglione in the West,” he told Pippi. “You will become rich. But there is important work to do.”
He handed Pippi the deed to a house in Las Vegas. The Don then turned to his youngest son, Vincent, a man of twenty-five. He was the shortest of the children, but built like a stone door. He was spare in speech, and he had a soft heart. He had learned all the classic peasant Italian dishes at his mother’s knee, and it was he who had wept so bitterly at his mother’s dying young.
The Don smiled at him. “I am about to decide your destiny,” he said, “and set you on your true path. You will open the finest restaurant in New York. Spare no expense. I want you to show the French what real food is all about.” Pippi and the other sons laughed, even Vincent smiled. The Don smiled at him. “You will go to the best cooking school in Europe for a year.”
Vincent, though pleased,