The Family Corleone by Ed Falco Page A

that he recalled a series of scenes that merged with each other—as if one moment his mother knelt over Paolo weeping and the next moment he was walking with her up the gravel path of Don Ciccio’s estate, beautiful, bright flowers blooming on either side of the pathway as his mother held his hand and pulled him along. Don Ciccio was seated at a table with a bowl of oranges and a glass decanter of wine. The table was small, round, made of wood, with fat round legs. The Don was a stout man with a mustache and a mole on his right cheek. He wore a vest and a white long-sleeved shirt in the bright sunlight. The stripes of the vest slanted toward the center, making a V. A gold watch chain slung between vest pockets made a semicircle over his belly. Behind him were two great stone columns and a wrought-iron ornate fence where one of several bodyguards stood posted with shotguns slung over their shoulders. He remembered all this with great clarity, every detail: the way his mother begged for the life of her only remaining son, the way the Don refused, the motion with which his mother knelt to pull a knife from under her black dress, the way she held it to Don Ciccio’s neck, her last words,
Run! Vito!
And the shotgun blast that sent her flying backward with her arms flung open.
    These were the memories he wished he could banish. Fourteen years ago, when Vito chose his current way of life by murderingDon Fanucci, another stout pig who tried to run his little piece of New York as if it were a village in Sicily, Vito’s friends thought him fearless and ruthless to his enemies. He let them believe this then and now. It was, he supposed, the truth. But it was also the truth that he wanted to kill Fanucci the instant he first saw him, and he found the resolve to do it when he saw how he might profit from the killing. He felt not a moment’s fear. He had waited for Fanucci in the darkened hallway outside his apartment, the music and street noise and fireworks from the Feast of San Gennaro muffled by the brick walls of the tenement. To silence the pistol, he had wrapped a white towel around the muzzle, and the towel burst into flame as he fired the first shot into Fanucci’s heart. When Fanucci ripped open his vest as if to search for the offending bullet, Vito shot him again, this time in the face, and the bullet went in clean, leaving only a small red hole high on the big man’s cheek. When finally he fell, Vito unwrapped the burning towel from the gun, placed the muzzle in Fanucci’s mouth, and fired a last shot into his brain. All he felt at the sight of Fanucci slumped in his doorway dying was gratitude. Though the reasoning of the mind might not understand how killing Fanucci revenged the murder of his family, the logic of the heart understood.
    That was the beginning. The next man Vito killed was Don Ciccio himself. He returned to Sicily, to the village of Corleone, and gutted him like a pig.
    Now Vito was in the study of his spacious apartment, a don himself, looking over blueprints for an estate of his own. Downstairs, Fredo and Michael were fighting again. Vito took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the desk chair. When the boys stopped shouting, Vito turned his attention again to the blueprints. Then Carmella shouted at the boys, and they started yelling again, each of them pleading their cases. Vito pushed the blueprints aside and started for the kitchen. Before he was halfway down the stairs, the shouting stopped. By the time he reached the kitchen, Michael and Fredo were seated quietly at the table, Michael reading a schoolbook, Fredo doing nothing, sitting with his hands folded in front of him.With Carmella watching and looking worried, Vito took each of the boys by the ear and pulled them into the living room. He sat on the edge of a plush chair by the front window, still holding tight to each of the boys. Fredo had started yelling “Pop! Pop!” as soon as Vito took hold of him, while Michael, as usual,