The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
54
fucking bastard,” Woltz screamed. “I’ll have you all in jail for a hundred years. I’ll spend 
every penny I have to get you. I’ll get that Johnny Fontane’s balls cut off, do you hear 
me, you guinea fuck?” 
Hagen said kindly, “I’m German-Irish.” There was a long pause and then a click of the 
phone being hung up. Hagen smiled. Not once had Woltz uttered a threat against Don 
Corleone himself. Genius had its rewards. 
* * *
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 

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