Chapter 1.10

It was late Sunday night before Tom Hagen could kiss his wife good-bye and drive out

to the airport. With his special number one priority (a grateful gift from a Pentagon staff

general officer) he had no trouble getting on a plane to Los Angeles.

It had been a busy but satisfying day for Tom Hagen. Genco Abbandando had died at

three in the morning and when Don Corleone returned from the hospital, he had

informed Hagen that he was now officially the new Consigliere to the family. This meant

that Hagen was sure to become a very rich man, to say nothing of power.

The Don had broken a long-standing tradition. The Consigliere was always a

full-blooded Sicilian, and the fact that Hagen had been brought up as a member of the

Don's family made no difference to that tradition. It was a question of blood. Only a

Sicilian born to the ways of ormerta, the law of silence, could be trusted in the key post

of Consigliere. Between the head of the family, Don Corleone, who dictated policy, and

the operating level of men who actually carried out the orders of the Don, there were

three layers, or buffers. In that way nothing could be traced to the top. Unless the

Consigliere turned traitor. That Sunday morning Don Corleone gave explicit instructions

on what should be done to the two young men who had beaten the daughter of Amerigo

Bonasera. But he had given those orders in private to Tom Hagen. Later in the day

Hagen had, also in private without witnesses, instructed Clemenza. In turn Clemenza

had told Paulie Gatto to execute the commission. Paulie Gatto would now muster the

necessary manpower and execute the orders. Paulie Gatto and his men would not know

why this particular task was being carried out or who had ordered it originally. Each link

of the chain would have to turn traitor for the Don to be involved and though it had never

yet happened, there was always the possibility. The cure for that possibility also was

known. Only one link in the chain had to disappear.

The Consigliere was also what his name implied. He was the counselor to the Don, his

right-hand man, his auxiliary brain. He was also his closest companion and his closest

friend. On important trips he would drive the Don's car, at conferences he would go out

and get the Don refreshments, coffee and sandwiches, fresh cigars. He would know

everything the Don knew or nearly everything, all the cells of power. He was the one

man in the world who could bring the Don crashing down to destruction. But no

Consigliere had ever betrayed a Don, not in the memory of any of the powerful Sicilian

families who had established themselves in America. There was no future in it. And

every Consigliere knew that if he kept the faith, he would become rich, wield power and

win respect. If misfortune came, his wife and children would be sheltered and cared for

as if he were alive or free. If he kept the faith.

In some matters the Consigliere had to act for his Don in a more open way and yet not

involve his principal. Hagen was flying to California on just such a matter. He realized

that his career as Consigliere would be seriously affected by the success or failure of this mission. By family business standards whether Johnny Fontane got his coveted part

in the war movie, or did not, was a minor matter. Far more important was the meeting

Hagen had set up with Virgil Sollozzo the following Friday. But Hagen knew that to the

Don, both were of equal importance, which settled the matter for any good Consigliere.

The piston plane shook Tom Hagen's already nervous insides and he ordered a martini

from the hostess to quiet them. Both the Don and Johnny had briefed him on the

character of the movie producer, Jack Woltz. From everything that Johnny said, Hagen

knew he would never be able to persuade Woltz. But he also had no doubt whatsoever

that the Don would keep his promise to Johnny. His own role was that of negotiator and

contact.

Lying back in his seat, Hagen went over all the information given to him that day. Jack

Woltz was one of the three most important movie producers in Hollywood, owner of his

own studio with dozens of stars under contract. He was on the President of the United

States' Advisory Council for War Information, Cinematic Division, which meant simply

that he helped make propaganda movies. He had had dinner at the White House. He

had entertained J. Edgar Hoover in his Hollywood home. But none of this was as

impressive as it sounded. They were all official relationships. Woltz didn't have any

personal political power, mainly because he was an extreme reactionary, partly because

he was a megalomaniac who loved to wield power wildly without regard to the fact that

by so doing legions of enemies sprang up out of the ground.

Hagen sighed. There would be no way to "handle" Jack Woltz. He opened his briefcase

and tried to get some paper work done, but he was too tired. He ordered another martini

and reflected on his life. He had no regrets, indeed he felt that he had been extremely

lucky. Whatever the reason, the course he had chosen ten years ago had proved to be

right for him. He was successful, he was as happy as any grown man could reasonably

expect, and he found life interesting.

Tom Hagen was thirty-five years old, a tall crew-cut man, very slender, very

ordinary-looking. He was a lawyer but did not do the actual detailed legal work for the

Corleone family business though he had practiced law for three years after passing the

bar exam.

At the age of eleven he had been a playmate of eleven-year-old Sonny Corleone.

Hagen's mother had gone blind and then died during his eleventh year. Hagen's father,

a heavy drinker, had become a hopeless drunkard. A hardworking carpenter, he had

never done a dishonest thing in his life. But his drinking destroyed his family and finally

killed him. Tom Hagen was left an orphan who wandered the streets and slept in

hallways. His younger sister had been put in a foster home, but in the 1920's the social

agencies did not follow up cases of eleven-year-old boys who were so ungrateful as to

run from their charity. Hagen, too, had an eye infection. Neighbors whispered that he

had caught or inherited it from his mother and so therefore it could be caught from him.

He was shunned. Sonny Corleone, a warmhearted and imperious eleven-year-old, had

brought his friend home and demanded that he be taken in. Tom Hagen was given a hot

dish of spaghetti with oily rich tomato sauce, the taste of which he had never forgotten,

and then given a metal folding bed to sleep on.

In the most natural way, without a word being spoken or the matter discussed in any

fashion, Don Corleone had permitted the boy to stay in his household. Don Corleone

himself took the boy to a special doctor and had his eye infection cured. He sent him to

college and law school. In all this the Don acted not as a father but rather as a guardian.

There was no show of affection but oddly enough the Don treated Hagen more

courteously than his own sons, did not impose a parental will upon him. It was the boy's

decision to go to law school after college. He had heard Don Corleone say once, "A

lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns." Meanwhile,

much to the annoyance of their father, Sonny and Freddie insisted on going into the

family business after graduation from high school. Only Michael had gone on to college,

and he had enlisted in the Marines the day after Pearl Harbor.

After he passed the bar exam, Hagen married to start his own family. The bride was a

young Italian girl from New Jersey, rare at that time for being a college graduate. After

the wedding, which was of course held in the home of Don Corleone, the Don offered to

support Hagen in any undertaking he desired, to send him law clients, furnish his office,

start him in real estate.

Tom Hagen had bowed his head and said to the Don, "I would like to work for you."

The Don was surprised, yet pleased. "You know who I am?" he asked.

Hagen nodded. He hadn't really known the extent of the Don's power, not then. He did

not really know in the ten years that followed until he was made the acting Consigliere

after Genco Abbandando became ill. But he nodded and met the Don's eyes with his

own. "I would work for you like your sons," Hagen said, meaning with complete loyalty,

with complete acceptance of the Don's parental divinity. The Don, with that

understanding which was even then building the legend of his greatness, showed the

young man the first mark of fatherly affection since he hadcome into his household. He

took Hagen into his arms for a quick embrace and afterward treated him more like a true

son, though he would sometimes say, "Tom, never forget your parents," as if he were

reminding himself as well as Hagen.

There was no chance that Hagen would forget. His mother had been near moronic and

slovenly, so ridden by anemia she could not feel affection for her children or make a

pretense of it. His father Hagen had hated. His mother's blindness before she died had

terrified him and his own eye infection had been a stroke of doom. He had been sure he

would go blind. When his father died, Tom Hagen's eleven-year-old mind had snapped

in a curious way. He had roamed the streets like an animal waiting for death until the

fateful day Sonny found him sleeping in the back of a hallway and brought him to his

home. What had happened afterward was a miracle. But for years Hagen had had

nightmares, dreaming he had grown to manhood blind, tapping a white cane, his blind

children behind him tap-tapping with their little white canes as they begged in the

streets. Some mornings when he woke the face of Don Corleone was imprinted on his

brain in that first conscious moment and he would feel safe.

But the Don had insisted that he put in three years of general law practice in addition to

his duties for the family business. This experience had proved invaluable later on, and

also removed any doubts in Hagen's mind about working for Don Corleone. He had then

spent two years of training in the offices of a top firm of criminal lawyers in which the

Don had some influence. It was apparent to everyone that he had a flair for this branch

of the law. He did well and when he went into the full-time service of the family business,

Don Corleone had not been able to reproach him once in the six years that followed.

When he had been made the acting Consigliere, the other powerful Sicilian families

referred contemptuously to the Corleone family as the "Irish gang." This had amused

Hagen. It had also taught him that he could never hope to succeed the Don as the head

of the family business. But he was content. That had never been his goal, such an

ambition would have been a "disrespect" to his benefactor and his benefactor's blood

family.