chapter 2.2

Jack Woltz always slept alone. He had a bed big enough for ten people and a bedroom

large enough for a movie ballroom scene, but he had slept alone since the death of his

first wife ten years before. This did not mean he no longer used women. He was

physically a vigorous man despite his age, but he could be aroused now only by very

young girls and had learned that a few hours in the evening were all the youth his body

and his patience could tolerate.

On this Thursday morning, for some reason, he awoke early. The light of dawn made his

huge bedroom as misty as a foggy meadowland. Far down at the foot of his bed was a

familiar shape and Woltz struggled up on his elbows to get a clearer look. It had the

shape of a horse's head. Still groggy, Woltz reached and flicked on the night table lamp.

The shock of what he saw made him physically ill. It seemed as if a great

sledgehammer had struck him on the chest, his heartbeat jumped erratically and he

became nauseous. His vomit spluttered on the thick bear rug.

Severed from its body, the black silky head of the great horse Khartoum was stuck fast

in a thick cake of blood. White, reedy tendons showed. Froth covered the muzzle and

those apple-sized eyes that had glinted like gold, were mottled the color of rotting fruit

with dead, hemorrhaged blood. Woltz was struck by a purely animal terror and out of

that terror he screamed for his servants and out of that terror he called Hagen to make

his uncontrolled threats. His maniacal raving alarmed the butler, who called Woltz's

personal physician and his second in command at the studio. But Woltz regained his

senses before they arrived.

He had been profoundly shocked. What kind of man could destroy an animal worth six

hundred thousand dollars? Without a word of warning. Without any negotiation to have

the act, its order, countermanded. The ruthlessness, the sheer disregard for any values,

implied a man who considered himself completely his own law, even his own God. And

a man who backed up this kind of will with the power and cunning that held his own

stable security force of no account. For by this time Woltz had learned that the horse's

body had obviously been heavily drugged before someone leisurely hacked the huge

triangular head off with an ax. The men on night duty claimed that they had heard

nothing. To Woltz this seemed impossible. They could be made to talk. They had been

bought off and they could be made to tell who had done the buying.

Woltz was not a stupid man, be was merely a supremely egotistical one. He had

mistaken the power he wielded in his world to be more potent than the power of Don

Corleone. He had merely needed some proof that this was not true. He understood this

message. That despite all his wealth, despite all his contacts with the President of the

United States, despite all his claims of friendship with the director of the FBI, an obscure

importer of Italian olive oil would have him killed. Would actually have him killed!

Because he wouldn't give Johnny Fontane a movie part he wanted. It was incredible.

People didn't have any right to act that way. There couldn't be any kind of world if

people acted that way. It was insane. It meant you couldn't do what you wanted with

your own money, with the companies you owned, the power you had to give orders. It

was ten times worse than communism. It had to be smashed. It must never be allowed.

Woltz let the doctor give him a very mild sedation. It helped him calm down again and to

think sensibly. What really shocked him was the casualness with which this man

Corleone had ordered the destruction of a world-famous horse worth six hundred

thousand dollars. Six hundred thousand dollars! And that was just for openers. Woltz

shuddered. He thought of this life he had built up. He was rich. He could have the most

beautiful women in the world by cooking his finger and promising a contract. He was

received by kings and queens. He lived a life as perfect as money and power could

make it. It was crazy to risk all this because of a whim. Maybe he could get to Corleone.

What was the legal penalty for killing a racehorse? He laughed wildly and his doctor and

servants watched him with nervous anxiety. Another thought occurred to him. He would

be the laughingstock of California merely because someone had contemptuously defied

his power in such arrogant fashion. That decided him. That and the thought that maybe,

maybe they wouldn't kill him. That they had something much more clever and painful in

reserve.

Woltz gave the necessary orders. His personal confidential staff swung into action. The

servants and the doctor were sworn to secrecy on pain of incurring the studio's and

Woltz's undying enmity. Word was given to the press that the racehorse Khartoum had

died of an illness contracted during his shipment from England. Orders were given to bury the remains in a secret place on the estate.

Six hours later Johnny Fontane received a phone call from the executive producer of the

film telling him to report for work the following Monday.