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he had married Kay. The three years had been spent in learning the Family business.

He had put in long hours with Tom Hagen, long hours with the Don. He was amazed at

how wealthy and powerful the Corleone Family truly was. It owned tremendously

valuable real estate in midtown New York, whole office buildings. It owned, through

fronts, partnerships in two Wall Street brokerage houses, pieces of banks on Long

Island, partnerships in some garment center firms, all this in addition to its illegal

operations in gambling.

The most interesting thing Michael Corleone learned, in going back over past

transactions of the Corleone Family, was that the Family had received some protection

income shortly after the war from a group of music record counterfeiters. The

counterfeiters duplicated and sold phonograph records of famous artists, packaging

everything so skillfully they were never caught. Naturally on the records they sold to

stores the artists and original production company received not a penny. Michael

Corleone noticed that Johnny Fontane had lost a lot of money owing to this

counterfeiting because at that time, just before he lost his voice, his records were the

most popular in the country.

He asked Tom Hagen about it. Why did the Don allow the counterfeiters to cheat his

godson? Hagen shrugged. Business was business. Besides, Johnny was in the Don's

bad graces, Johnny having divorced his childhood sweetheart to marry Margot Ashton.

This had displeased the Don greatly.

206

"How come these guys stopped their operation?" Michael asked. "The cops got on to

them?"

Hagen shook his head. "The Don withdrew his protection. That was right after

Connie's wedding."

It was a pattern he was to see often, the Don helping those in misfortune whose

misfortune he had partly created. Not perhaps out of cunning or planning but because of

his variety of interests or perhaps because of the nature of the universe, the interlinking

of good and evil, natural of itself.

Michael had married Kay up in New England, a quiet wedding, with only her family

and a few of her friends present. Then they had moved into one of the houses on the

mall in Long Beach. Michael was surprised at how well Kay got along with his parents

and the other people living on the mall. And of course she had gotten pregnant right

away, like a good, old-style Italian wife was supposed to, and that helped. The second

kid on the way in two years was just icing.

Kay would be waiting for him at the airport, she always came to meet him, she was

always so glad when he came back from a trip. And he was too. Except now. For the

end of this trip meant that he finally had to take the action he had been groomed for

over the last three years. The Don would be waiting for him. The caporegimes would be

waiting for him. And he, Michael Corleone, would have to give the orders, make the

decisions which would decide his and his Family's fate.

Every morning when Kay Adams Corleone got up to take care of the baby's early

feeding, she saw Mama Corleone, the Don's wife, being driven away from the mall by

one of the bodyguards, to return an hour later. Kay soon learned that her mother-in-law

went to church every single morning. Often on her return, the old woman stopped by for

morning coffee and to see her new grandchild.

Mama Corleone always started off by asking Kay why she didn't think of becoming a

Catholic, ignoring the fact that Kay's child had already been baptized a Protestant. So

Kay felt it was proper to ask the old woman why she went to church every morning,

whether that was a necessary part of being a Catholic.

As if she thought that this might have stopped Kay from converting the old woman

said, "Oh, no, no, some Catholics only go to church on Easter and Christmas. You go

when you feel like going."

Kay laughed. "Then why do you go every single morning?"

207

In a completely natural way, Mama Corleone said, "I go for my husband," she pointed

down toward the floor, so he don't go down there." She paused. "I say prayers for his

soul every day so he go up there." She pointed heavenward. She said this with an

impish smile, as if she were subverting her husband's will in some way, or as if it were a

losing cause. It was said jokingly almost, in her grim, Italian, old crone fashion. And as

always when her husband was not present, there was an attitude of disrespect to the

great Don.

"How is your husband feeling?" Kay asked politely.

Mama Corleone shrugged. "He's not the same man since they shot him. He lets

Michael do all the work, he just plays the fool with his garden, his peppers, his tomatoes.

As if he were some peasant still. But men are always like that."

Later in the morning Connie Corleone would walk across the mall with her two

children to pay Kay a visit and chat. Kay liked Connie, her vivaciousness, her obvious

fondness for her brother Michael. Connie had taught Kay how to cook some Italian

dishes but sometimes brought her own more expert concoctions over for Michael to

taste.

Now this morning as she usually did, she asked Kay what Michael thought of her

husband, Carlo. Did Michael really like Carlo, as he seemed to? Carlo had always had a

little trouble with the Family but now over the last years he had straightened out. He was