The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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her permission. She was to sit on guard at the tenement door. He had some private 
business with Fanucci that could not be interrupted. He saw the look of fear on her face 
and was angry. He said to her quietly, “Do you think you’ve married a fool?” She didn’t 
answer. She did not answer because she was frightened, not of Fanucci now, but of her 
husband. He was changing visibly before her eyes, hour by hour, into a man who 
radiated some dangerous force. He had always been quiet, speaking little, but always 
gentle, always reasonable, which was extraordinary in a young Sicilian male. What she 
was seeing was the shedding of his protective coloration of a harmless nobody now that 
he was ready to start on his destiny. He had started late, he was twenty-five years old, 
but he was to start with a flourish. 
Vito Corleone had decided to murder Fanucci. By doing so he would have an extra 
seven hundred dollars in his bankroll. The three hundred dollars he himself would have 
to pay the Black Hand terrorist and the two hundred dollars from Tessio and the two 
hundred dollars from Clemenza. If he did not kill Fanucci, he would have to pay the man 
seven hundred dollars cold cash. Fanucci alive was not worth seven hundred dollars to 
him. He would not pay seven hundred dollars to keep Fanucci alive. If Fanucci needed 
seven hundred dollars for an operation to save his life, he would not give Fanucci seven 
hundred dollars for the surgeon. He owed Fanucci no personal debt of gratitude, they 
were not blood relatives, he did not love Fanucci. Why, then, should he give Fanucci 
seven hundred dollars? 
And it followed inevitably, that since Fanucci wished to take seven hundred dollars from 
him by force, why should he not kill Fanucci? Surely the world could do without such a 
person. 
There were of course some practical reasons. Fanucci might indeed have powerful 
friends who would seek vengeance. Fanucci himself was a dangerous man, not so 
easily killed. There were the police and the electric chair. But Vito Corleone had lived 
under a sentence of death since the murder of his father. As a boy of twelve he had fled 
his executioners and crossed the ocean into a strange land, taking a strange name. And 
years of quiet observation had convinced him that he had more intelligence and more 
courage than other men, though he had never had the opportunity to use that 
intelligence and courage. 
And yet he hesitated before taking the first step toward his destiny. He even packed the 
seven hundred dollars in a single fold of bills and put the money in a convenient sick 
pocket of his trousers. But he put the money in the left side of his trousers. In the 

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