The Godfather

Book Five 
 
 

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 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
232
Chapter 20 
The death of Santino Corleone sent shock waves through the underworld of the nation. 
And when it became known that Don Corleone had risen from his sick bed to take 
charge of the Family affairs, when spies at the funeral reported that the Don seemed to 
be fully recovered, the heads of the Five Families made frantic efforts to prepare a 
defense against the bloody retaliatory war that was sure to follow. Nobody made the 
mistake of assuming that Don Corleone could be held cheaply because of his past 
misfortunes. He was a man who had made only a few mistakes in his career and had 
learned from every one of them. 
Only Hagen guessed the Don’s real intentions and was not surprised when emissaries 
were sent to the Five Families to propose a peace. Not only to propose a peace but a 
meeting of all the Families in the city and with invitations to Families all over the United 
States to attend. Since the New York Families were the most powerful in the country, it 
was understood that their welfare affected the welfare of the country as a whole. 
At first there were suspicions. Was Don Corleone preparing a trap? Was he trying to 
throw his enemies off their guard? Was he attempting to prepare a wholesale massacre 
to avenge his son? But Don Corleone soon made it clear that he was sincere. Not only 
did he involve all the Families in the country in this meeting, but made no move to put 
his own people on a war footing or to enlist allies. And then he took the final irrevocable 
step that established the authenticity of these intentions and assured the safety of the 
grand council to be assembled. He called on the services of the Bocchicchio Family. 
The Bocchicchio Family was unique in that, once a particularly ferocious branch of the 
Mafia in Sicily, it had become an instrument of peace in America. Once a group of men 
who earned their living by a savage determination, they now earned their living in what 
perhaps could be called a saintly fashion. The Bocchicchios’ one asset was a closely 
knit structure of blood relationships, a family loyalty severe even for a society where 
family loyalty came before loyalty to a wife. 
The Bocchicchio Family, extending out to third cousins, had once numbered nearly two 
hundred when they ruled the particular economy of a small section of southern Sicily. 
The income for the entire family then came from four or five flour mills, by no means 
owned communally, but assuring labor and bread and a minimal security for all Family 
members. This was enough, with intermarriages, for them to present a common front 
against their enemies. 

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