anymore. I need you here. At least for the next few weeks. You better phone Vegas and
talk to your wife. Just tell her a few weeks."
Hagen said musingly, "How do you think they'll come at you?"
Michael sighed. "The Don instructed me. Through somebody close. Barzini will set me
up through somebody close that, supposedly, I won't suspect."
Hagen smiled at him. "Somebody like me."
Michael smiled back. "You're Irish, they won't trust you."
"I'm German-American," Hagen said.
"To them that's Irish," Michael said. "They won't go to you and they won't go to Neri
because Neri was a cop. Plus both of you are too close to me. They can't take that
gamble. Rocco Lampone isn't close enough. No, it will be Clemenza, Tessio or Carlo
Rizzi."
Hagen said softly, "I'm betting it's Carlo"
"We'll see," Michael said. "It won't be long."
It was the next morning, while Hagen and Michael were having breakfast together.
224
Michael took a phone call in the library, and when he came back to the kitchen, he said
to Hagen, "It's all set up. I'm going to meet Barzini a week from now. To make new
peace now that the Don is dead." Michael laughed. Hagen asked, "Who phoned you,
who made the contact?" They both knew that whoever in the Corleone Family had
made the contact had turned traitor.
Michael gave Hagen a sad regretful smile. "Tessio," he said.
They ate the rest of their breakfast in silence. Over coffee Hagen shook his head, "I
could have sworn it would have been Carlo or maybe Clemenza. I never figured Tessio.
He's the best of the lot."
"He's the most intelligent," Michael said, "And he did what seems to him to be the
smart thing. He sets me up for the hit by Barzini and inherits the Corleone Family. He
sticks with me and he gets wiped out; he's figuring I can't win."
Hagen paused before he asked reluctantly, "How right is he figuring?"
Michael shrugged. "It looks bad. But my father was the only one who understood that
political connections and power are worth ten regimes, I think I've got most of my
father's political power in my hands now, but I'm the only one who really knows that." He
smiled at Hagen, a reassuring smile. "I'll make them call me Don. But I feel lousy about
Tessio."
Hagen said, "Have you agreed to the meeting with Barzini?"
"Yeah," Michael said. "A week from tonight. In Brooklyn, on Tessio's ground where I'll
be safe," He laughed again.
Hagen said, "Be careful before then."
For the first time Michael was cold with Hagen. "I don't need a Consigliori to give me
that kind of advice," be said.
During the week preceding the peace meeting between the Corleone and Barzini
Families, Michael showed Hagen just how careful he could be. He never set foot
outside the mall and never received anyone without Neri beside him. There was only
one annoying complication, Connie and Carlo's oldest boy was to receive his
Confirmation in the Catholic Church and Kay asked Michael to be the Godfather.
Michael refused.
"I don't often beg you," Kay said. "Please do this just for me. Connie wants it so much.
And so does Carlo. It's very important to them. Please, Michael."
225
She could see he was angry with her for insisting and expected him to refuse. So she
was surprised when he nodded and said, "OK. But I can't leave the mall. Tell them to
arrange for the priest to confirm the kid here. I'll pay whatever it costs. If they run into
trouble with the church people, Hagen will straighten it out."
And so the day before the meeting with the Barzini Family, Michael Corleone stood
Godfather to the son of Carlo and Connie Rizzi. He presented the boy with so extremely
expensive wristwatch and gold band. There was a small party in Carlo's house, to which
were invited the caporegimes, Hagen, Lampone and everyone who lived on the mall,
including, of course, the Don's widow. Connie was so overcome with emotion that she
hugged and kissed her brother and Kay all during the evening. And even Carlo Rizzi
became sentimental, wringing Michael's hand and calling him Godfather at every
excuse – old country style. Michael himself had never been so affable, so outgoing.
Connie whispered to Kay, "I think Carlo and Mike are going to be real friends now.
Something like this always bring people together."
Kay squeezed her sister-in-law's arm. "I'm so glad," she said.
Chapter 30
Albert Neri sat in his Bronx apartment and carefully brushed the blue serge of his old
policeman's uniform. He unpinned the badge and set it on the table to be polished. The
regulation holster and gun were draped over a chair. This old routine of detail made him
happy in some strange way, one of the few times he had felt happy since his wife had
left him, nearly two years ago.
He had married Rita when she was a high school kid and he was a rookie policeman.
She was shy, dark-haired, from a straitlaced Italian family who never let her stay out
later than ten o'clock at night. Neri was completely in love with her, her innocence, her
virtue, as well as her dark prettiness.
At first Rita Neri was fascinated by her husband. He was immensely strong and she
could see people were afraid of him because of that strength and his unbending attitude
toward what was right and wrong. He was rarely tactful. If he disagreed with a group's
attitude or an individual's opinion, he kept his mouth shut or brutally spoke his
contradiction. He never gave a polite agreement. He also had a true Sicilian temper and
his rages could be awesome. But he was never angry with his wife.
Neri in the space of five years became one of the most feared policemen on the New
York City force. Also one of the most honest. But he had his own ways of enforcing the
226
law. He hated punks and when he saw a bunch of young rowdies making a disturbance
on a street corner at night, disturbing passersby, he took quick and decisive action. He
employed a physical strength that was truly extraordinary, which he himself did not fully
appreciate.
One night in Central Park West he jumped out of the patrol car and lined up six punks
in black silk jackets. His partner remained in the driver's seat, not wanting to get
involved, knowing Neri. The six boys, all in their late teens, had been stopping people
and asking them for cigarettes in a youthfully menacing way but not doing anyone any
real physical harm. They had also teased girls going by with a sexual gesture more
French than American.
Neri lined them up against the stone wall that closed off Central Park from Eighth
Avenue. It was twilight, but Neri carried his favorite weapon, a huge flashlight. He never
bothered drawing his gun; it was never necessary. His face when he was angry was so
brutally menacing, combined with his uniform, that the usual punks were cowed. These
were no exception.
Neri asked the first youth in the black silk jacket, "What's your name?" The kid
answered with an Irish name. Neri told him, "Get off the street. I see you again tonight,
I'll crucify you." He motioned with his flashlight and the youth walked quickly away. Neri
followed the same procedure with the next two boys. He let them walk off. But the fourth
boy gave an Italian name and smiled at Neri as if to claim some sort of kinship. Neri was
unmistakably of Italian descent. Neri looked at this youth for a moment and asked
superfluously, "You Italian?" The boy grinned confidently.
Neri hit him a stunning blow on the forehead with his flashlight. The boy dropped to
his knees. The skin and flesh of his forehead had cracked open and blood poured down
his face. But it was strictly a flesh wound. Neri said to him harshly, "You son of a bitch,
you're a disgrace to the Italians. You give us all a bad name. Get on your feet." He gave
the youth a kick in the side, not gentle, not too hard. "Get home and stay off the street.
Don't ever let me catch you wearing that jacket again either. I'll send you to the hospital.
Now get home. You're lucky I'm not your father."
Neri didn't bother with the other two punks. He just booted their asses down the
Avenue, telling them he didn't want them on the street that night.
In such encounters all was done so quickly that there was no time for a crowd to
gather or for someone to protest his actions. Neri would get into the patrol car and his
partner would zoom it away. Of course once in a while there would be a real hard case
who wanted to fight and might even pull a knife. These were truly unfortunate people.
Neri would, with awesome, quick ferocity, beat them bloody and throw them into the
227
patrol car. They would be put under arrest and charged with assaulting an officer. But
usually their case would have to wait until they were discharged from the hospital.
Eventually Neri was transferred to the beat that held the United Nations building area,
mainly because he had not shown his precinct sergeant the proper respect. The United
Nations people with their diplomatic immunity parked their limousines all over the
streets without regard to police regulations. Neri complained to the precinct and was
told not to make waves, to just ignore it. But one night there was a whole side street that