The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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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. 
“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 

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