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"You'll be OK," Michael said. "If there's anything bothering you that the Family can
help, just tell me."
Nino shook his head. "There's nothing," he said. "Nothing."
Michael chatted for a few more moments and then left. Freddie accompanied him and
his party to the airport, but at Michael's request didn't hang around for departure time.
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As he boarded the plane with Tom Hagen and Al Neri, Michael turned to Neri and said,
"Did you make him good?"
Neri tapped his forehead. "I got Moe Greene mugged and numbered up here."
Chapter 28
On the plane ride back to New York, Michael Corleone relaxed and tried to sleep. It
was useless. The most terrible period of his life was approaching, perhaps even a fatal
time. It could no longer be put off. Everything was in readiness, all precautions had
been taken, two years of precautions. There could be no further delay. Last week when
the Don had formally announced his retirement to the caporegimes and other members
of the Corleone Family, Michael knew that this was his father's way of telling him the
time was ripe.
It was almost three years now since he had returned home and over two years since
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.
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"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.