The Family Corleone (43 page)

“He sings beautifully, don’t you think?” Sandra asked. She held her wineglass by the stem with her right hand while her left hand rested, only slightly awkwardly, on her knee. She had on the dress Sonny had bought for her, a long lavender gown, tight around her waist and thighs and billowing out over her calves where it swept the floor when she walked.

“Nothing’s as beautiful as you tonight,” Sonny said, and then smiled to see that he had made her blush yet again. He sipped his whiskey and his eyes dropped to Sandra’s breasts, which were covered entirely by a high neckline but were revealed still by the way the silky fabric clung to them.

“What are you looking at?” Sandra asked, and then Sonny blushed, embarrassed, before he caught himself and laughed at her boldness.

“You’re full of surprises,” he said. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Sandra said. “A girl should surprise her guy now and then.”

Sonny propped his head on his hands and grinned as he looked at Sandra appraisingly. “That salesgirl who helped me pick out your dress,” he said, “she knew her stuff.”

Sandra let go of her wineglass and reached across the table to take Sonny’s hand. “I’m so happy, Santino,” she said, and gazed up at him.

When the silence felt a little awkward, Sonny looked across the room to the stage. “He’s a little crazy, that Johnny,” he said. “My father got him a good job as a riveter in the shipyards, but he wants to be a singer.” Sonny made a face that said he didn’t understand Johnny. “He’s got some voice though, huh?” When Sandra only nodded, he added, “His mother’s a pip.
Madon’!
”

“What about his mother?” Sandra asked. She lifted the wineglass to her lips and took a healthy sip.

“Nothing, really,” Sonny said. “She’s a little nutty, that’s all. I
guess that’s where Johnny gets it from. His father’s a fire chief,” he said. “Good friend of the family.”

Sandra listened as Johnny finished up the song accompanied by Nino. “They look like good boys,” she said.

“They’re swell,” Sonny said. “Tell me about Sicily,” he added. “What was it like growing up there?”

“A lot of my family,” she said, “they died in the earthquake.”

“Oh,” Sonny said. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It was before I was born,” she said, as if to excuse Sonny from having to feel bad for her. “My relatives that survived, they all left Messina and came to America, and then some of them, later, they went back to Messina and started up their lives again—so, for me, I’m from Sicily, true, but I grew up hearing about the wonderful America, about what a great country, America.”

“So why’d they go back?”

“I don’t know,” Sandra said. “Sicily’s beautiful,” she added, after thinking about it. “I miss the beaches and the mountains, especially Lipari, where we used to go for vacations.”

“How come I never hear you speaking Italian?” Sonny asked. “Even with your grandmother.”

“I grew up, my parents talked English around me, my relatives talked English. They sent me to school to improve my English… I speak English better than I speak Italian!”

Sonny laughed at that, and an echoing burst of laughter came from the back of the room, from the tables surrounding the stage, where Nino was goofing around with Johnny.

“The food…,” Sandra whispered, as if to warn Sonny of their waiter’s approach. A tall, handsome, middle-aged man who spoke with a French accent appeared alongside the table. He placed two covered dishes in front of them and dramatically announced the meals as he removed each silver-plated cover. “Chicken cordon bleu,” he said to Sandra. “And a porterhouse steak, rare, for the gentleman,” he said, though it sounded more like “pewterhose steak” to Sonny’s ear. When he was finished, the waiter hesitated, as if to see if the
diners had any requests. When neither spoke, he bowed briskly from the waist and left.

“Did he think we forgot what we ordered?” Sonny asked, and he mimicked the waiter’s accent, “
Pewterhose steak
!”

“Look,” Sandra said, and she turned toward the back of the room, where Johnny had just stepped off the stage to polite applause and was making his way to their table.

Sonny stood to greet Johnny. They embraced, slapping each other on the back. “Oh!” Johnny said, glancing at the bloody steak on Sonny’s plate. “You sure that thing’s dead?”

“Johnny,” Sonny said, ignoring the joke. “I want you to meet my future wife.” He gestured to Sandra.

Johnny took a step back and looked at Sonny, as if waiting for a punch line. “You’re on the level?” he asked, and then he looked down at the table as Sandra placed her hand on the tablecloth beside her plate, displaying the diamond on her finger. “Well, will you look at that,” he said, and he shook Sonny’s hand. “Congratulations, Santino.” He extended his hand to Sandra. When she took his awkwardly, without getting up from her seat, he bent to her, lifted her hand, and kissed it. “We’re family now,” he said. “Sonny’s father’s my godfather. I hope you’ll think of me like a brother.”

“Yeah, a
brother
,” Sonny said, and he shoved Johnny. To Sandra he said, “You gotta watch this guy.”

“And of course I’ll be singing at your wedding,” he said to Sandra. To Sonny he said, “And I won’t even charge you too much.”

“Where’s Nino?” Sonny asked.

“Ah, he’s mad at me again.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothin’! He’s always getting mad at me about something.” Johnny shrugged, as if there was no understanding Nino. “I have to go back to work,” he said. He lowered his voice. “This place is nothin’ but squares. I got some mug up there keeps asking me to sing ‘Inka Dinka Doo.’ I look like Jimmy Durante to you? Don’t answer that!” he said, before Sonny could jump on the opening.

Just as Johnny started to leave, Sandra said, “You sing beautifully, Johnny.”

Johnny’s expression changed at the compliment, turned unguarded and almost innocent. He seemed stuck for how to reply, and then finally said, “Thank you,” and went back up to the stage, where Nino was waiting for him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Johnny said to the audience, “I’d like to dedicate this next song to my dear friend, Santino, Sonny Corleone, and the beautiful young woman in the lavender gown”—he pointed across the room, and Sonny, in turn, pointed to Sandra—“who is obviously much too beautiful for a palooka like Sonny, but for reasons incomprehensible to mere mortals, has apparently just agreed to marry him.” The crowd applauded politely. Nino nearly dropped his mandolin before he stood up and opened his arms to Sonny and Sandra. “This is a new Harold Arlen number,” Johnny said, “and I gotta think it’s exactly what my friend Sonny is feeling right now.” He turned and whispered something to Nino, and then he leaned over the mike and started singing “I’ve Got the World on a String.”

Across from Sonny, Sandra ignored her food as she watched the stage intently. Sonny reached over the table and took her hand, and then they both sat quietly, along with everyone else in the room, and listened to Johnny sing.

At Angelo’s, the waiter had just delivered a covered tray to the table where Clemenza and Genco were talking casually to each other, a squat, straw-wrapped bottle of Chianti between them on a red tablecloth. Genco’s elbows rested on either side of his plate, his hands pressed together palm to palm in front of his face, his two index fingers squeezing the tip of his nose. He nodded now and then as he listened to Clemenza, who was doing most of the talking. They both looked to be absorbed in their conversation, and neither of them seemed interested in the tray that had just been delivered. The restaurant was tiny, with only six tables, all of them close together. Clemenza’s back was to the kitchen, near a set of leather-encased swinging doors with porthole windows through which Genco could
see Angelo at his stove beside a stainless steel counter. The four other diners in the room were at tables across from each other, against opposite walls, making a small triangle, their two tables at the base and Clemenza and Genco at the tip. The place was quiet, filled only with the muted sounds of three conversations and the occasional clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen.

To enter Angelo’s from the street, the two Anthonys had to climb down three steps and pull open a heavy door with the name of the restaurant on a brass plate under a small rectangular window. That brass plate was the only indication there was a restaurant in a place that otherwise looked like a basement apartment, no windows looking out onto the street, only a red brick wall and those three steps to a heavy wooden door. Anthony Firenza glanced back to the black Chrysler four-door parked on the street in front of the restaurant, Fio Inzana, a kid with peach-fuzz on his face, at the wheel. The kid looked like he couldn’t be more than sixteen. Firenza didn’t like having a
bambino
as his wheelman. It made him nervous. Beside him at the door, Bocatelli, the other Anthony, peered into the restaurant through a clouded pane of glass. He was the bigger of the two Anthonys, though in stature and age they were roughly the same, both pushing fifty, both a little over five-ten. They’d known each other since they were boys growing up on the same block in Cleveland Heights. They’d started getting in trouble together as teenagers and by the time they were in their twenties they were known by everybody as the two Anthonys.

Bocatelli shrugged and said, “I can’t see much. You ready?”

Firenza looked through the window. He could make out the rough outline of a few tables. “Only looks like a few people in there,” he said. “We shouldn’t have any trouble spotting them.”

“But you know them, right?” Bocatelli said.

“Been a few years, but, yeah, I know Pete,” he said. “You ready?”

The Anthonys were both wearing black trench coats over snappy three-piece suits with white tab collars and gold collar bars, matching bright white carnations pinned to their lapels. Under Firenza’s trench coat, a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun was holstered at
his waist. Bocatelli was lightly armed in comparison, with a Colt .45 in his pocket.

Firenza said, “I kind of like Pete. He’s a funny guy.”

“We’ll send him a nice wreath,” Bocatelli said. “The family will appreciate it.”

Firenza took a step back and Bocatelli opened the door for him.

Clemenza recognized him right away, and Firenza acted surprised at seeing him. “Eh, Pete,” he said. He started to pull open his trench coat, Bocatelli coming up alongside him as they approached Clemenza’s table. Genco twisted around in his chair just as Bocatelli reached into his pocket—and then the kitchen doors swung open and a monster of a man stepped through them, his arms dangling at his sides, his face twisted grotesquely. The guy was tall enough that he had to stoop as he passed through the doors. He took a few steps into the room and stood at ease behind Clemenza. Firenza had already reached under his trench coat, about to pull the shotgun from its holster, and Bocatelli alongside him had his hand in his coat pocket—but both men froze at the sight of that
bestia
coming through the kitchen doors. Luca and the two Anthonys stared at each other over the heads of Pete and Genco, everyone frozen in place until two gunshots from the street broke the tableau. Bocatelli turned his head slightly, as if he had considered looking behind him in the direction of the gunshots, before he jumped, mimicking the movement of Firenza beside him, Bocatelli bringing the Colt out of his pocket and Firenza pulling out the shotgun. They appeared to have been confused by the huge, unarmed man at the table behind Clemenza before they realized what was going on and went for their weapons—and by that time, it was too late. The four men slightly in front of them at the wall tables already had their guns in hand. They lifted them from under red cloth napkins and fired a dozen shots seemingly all at once.

Clemenza lifted a glass of wine to his lips. Two of his men came out of the kitchen once the shooting was over, one of them carrying sheets of plastic, the other with a wash bucket and mop, and a minute later the two Anthonys were being hauled through the
kitchen door and out of sight. All that was left behind were slick wet spots where their blood had been cleaned up. Richie Gatto and Eddie Veltri, two of the four who had done the shooting, approached Clemenza as Luca Brasi without a word followed the others and disappeared through the kitchen. “Put the bodies in the car with the driver and take them down to the river,” Clemenza said.

Richie looked through the portholes, as if to assure himself no one was listening. “That Brasi’s got some balls,” he said to Clemenza. “No gun, no nothin’. He just stood there.”

Genco said to Clemenza, “Did you see the Anthonys stop in their tracks soon as he came through the door?”

Clemenza acted unimpressed. To Richie and Eddie he said, “
Andate!
” and as they started to leave, he twisted in his seat and called into the kitchen. “Frankie! What are you doing back there?”

Frankie Pentangeli came out of the kitchen while the doors were still swinging from Richie and Eddie’s departure.

“Come here!” Clemenza said, his mood suddenly jovial. “Sit down!” He pulled a chair out from the table. “Look at this!” He removed the cover from the silver plate in the center of the table and revealed a baked lamb’s head, cloven in two, the milky eyeballs still in place.

“
Capozzell’
,” Genco said. “Angelo makes the best.”

“
Capozzell’ d’angell’
,” Frankie said in his gravelly voice, as if talking to himself, laughing a little. “My brother in Catania, he makes this,” he said. “He loves the brains.”

“Oh! That’s what I like, the brains!” Clemenza said. “Sit down!” He slapped the table. “
Mangia!
”

“Sure,” Frankie said. He clasped Genco’s shoulder by way of a greeting and took a seat.

“Angelo!” Clemenza called to the kitchen. “Bring another plate!” To Frankie he said again, “
Mangia!
”

“We should talk business,” Frankie said, as Genco took a wineglass from another table and poured Frankie some Chianti.

“Not now,” Clemenza said. “You did good. We’ll talk later, with Vito. Now,” he said, shaking Frankie’s wrist, “now we eat.”