The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
128
alertness. Michael gave a smile. “Now I can talk,” he said with a sigh of relief. 
Captain McCluskey was eating the plate of veal and spaghetti that had arrived. The man 
on the far wall had been stiff with attention, now he too relaxed visibly. 
Michael sat down again. He remembered Clemenza had told him not to do this, to come 
out of the toilet and blaze away. But either out of some warning instinct or sheer funk he 
had not done so. He had felt that if he had made one swift move he would have been 
cut down. Now he felt safe and he must have been scared because he was glad he was 
no longer standing on his legs. They had gone weak with trembling. 
Sollozzo was leaning toward him. Michael, his belly covered by the table, unbuttoned his 
jacket and listened intently. He could not understand a word the man was saying. It was 
literally gibberish to him. His mind was so filled with pounding blood that no word 
registered. Underneath the table his right hand moved to the gun tucked into his 
waistband and he drew it free. At that moment the waiter came to take their order and 
Sollozzo turned his head to speak to the waiter. Michael thrust the table away from him 
with his left hand and his right hand shoved the gun almost against Sollozzo’s head. The 
man’s coordination was so acute that he had already begun to fling himself away at 
Michael’s motion. But Michael, younger, his reflexes sharper, pulled the trigger. The 
bullet caught Sollozzo squarely between his eye and his ear and when it exited on the 
other side blasted out a huge gout of blood and skull fragments onto the petrified 
waiter’s jacket. Instinctively Michael knew that one bullet was enough. Sollozzo had 
turned his head in that last moment and he had seen the light of life die in the man’s 
eyes as clearly as a candle goes out. 
Only one second had gone by as Michael pivoted to bring the gun to bear on 
McCluskey. The police captain was staring at Sollozzo with phlegmatic surprise, as if 
this had nothing to do with him. He did not seem to be aware of his own danger. His 
veal-covered fork was suspended in his hand and his eyes were just turning on Michael. 
And the expression on his face, in his eyes, held such confident outrage, as if now he 
expected Michael to surrender or to run away, that Michael smiled at him as he pulled 
the trigger. This shot was bad, not mortal. It caught MeCluskey in his thick bull-like 
throat and he started to choke loudly as if he had swallowed too large a bite of the veal. 
Then the air seemed to fill with a fine mist of sprayed blood as he coughed it out of his 
shattered lungs. Very coolly, very deliberately, Michael fired the next shot through the 
top of his white-haired skull. 

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