Santino Corleone Knows What He Saw

SANTINO CORLEONE KNOWS WHAT HE SAW

Look, I know what I saw. I was only ten, I think, back then, but I saw him do it.

I followed my father around a lot more than he knew I did. Mom thought I was just out with my friends in the neighborhood, which I was sometimes. We had our own little street gang. A bunch of us, ten or eleven years old, not really causing trouble. Small time, steal some fruit when the guy wasn’t looking, stuff like that.

My father was working with Sal Tessio and Pete Clemenza, guys he met in the neighborhood some years before. They were stealing stuff. Not big time stealing, but stealing just the same. It was a living. Look, things weren’t all that great back in the Twenties. Maybe the rest of the country was dancing the Charleston and living it up, but we were living in the tenements in Little Italy, barely getting by sometimes. My father and his friends were doing what they had to do just to get by. By now I had two younger brothers and a sister, living in a small walkup. We had to eat, so Pop did what he had to do for us.

Don Fanucci ran the neighborhood. He was the Black Hand. He made store owners and business people pay for protection. Back then, I didn’t know what that meant. Take money from your own people to protect them? From who? Or what? Well, the other Black Hand people would muscle in, in a heartbeat. Take over the neighborhood, extort the business people. If they didn’t pay, well, stores would be burned down, plate glass windows smashed, people hurt. That’s the way it was back then. Every block had someone from The Black Hand running things. People respected The Black Hand, but they were terrified of them.

People in our neighborhood feared Fanucci. Once, some young punks cornered him and jumped him. They beat him up and robbed him, and cut his throat. He didn’t die from that, and it only made him meaner. He doubled his fees. People didn’t refuse to pay, they couldn’t afford to pay. So he got even in one way or another. He had his toadies go in and break up stores, beat people up. Some fires were set, windows smashed. It wasn’t pretty.

Fanucci found out about Pop’s and Sal’s and Pete’s side gigs and demanded a piece of the action. To wet his beak, as he put it. Pop offered to pay what he and his friends could, but not what Fanucci demanded. He respected Pop for having the balls to talk to him. Making an offer he couldn’t refuse.

That was when Pop became the unofficial leader of his crew. Sal and Pete were scared of Fanucci and wouldn’t go against him, but Pop did. Pop still had a bad taste in his mouth from years before, when Fanucci brought his nephew in to where Pop was working. Old man Genco had to let Pop go because he couldn’t afford to pay him, what with the nephew taking his job.

Pop was a proud man and would not forget anything. He waited until the time was right.

The San Rocco Festival in town was a big noisy affair. Fanucci strutted around like a proud peacock, people bowing down to him and kissing his ring. Trying to look like a good citizen, he pinned some money to the donation board as everyone applauded him. Phony bastard.

Pop took to the roofs and followed him as he paraded himself down the street to his apartment. Pop didn’t know it, but I was shadowing him a few roofs behind him, hiding behind chimneys and the walls between buildings. I knew where he was going and what he was going to do. I could see it in his eyes. He had a score to settle.

And I wanted to see it. Witness it first hand.

What Pop and his friends did for a living fascinated me. I wanted to do what they did. Steal things and fence them. Make some good money. First come, first served. Finder’s keepers. Easy pickings.

But like my father, I’d never hurt someone who couldn’t defend themselves. Women, children, old people. Only people strong enough, people who deserved it. They said I was hot-tempered and quick to react, but sometimes you have to kick some ass to get things done.

Anyway, I watched from a transom window over the door to the roof. Pop didn’t know I was there.

Fanucci walked up the stairs to his top floor apartment and Pop was waiting for him. Shot him twice in the chest, and then in his mouth. Took his wallet and his money. Then he took to the roof again and broke apart the gun and headed for home. I followed him like I did before.

It did shake me up, seeing Pop murder someone like that, but it gave me a new respect for my father.

Word spread real quick and Pop was soon running the neighborhood. Old fashioned territory takeover. Plus, times were changing. The old Black Hand was dying as a new breed of gangster was taking over. More organized, like businessmen. Groups working together instead of fighting each other over trivial issues. Before long, Charlie Luciano put together the Commission and established the Five Families of New York.

Well, when I was sixteen, I was nabbed for a robbery. Clemenza dragged me by the scruff of my neck to see my father. Pop wanted an explanation. He wasn’t happy but I told him I saw him murder Fanucci and I wanted to be in what he called the “family business”. Pop put Clemenza in charge of teaching me the ropes.

I made my bones when I was nineteen. I was sent to kill someone who did us wrong. I didn’t ask questions, I just did my job, paid my dues. By my mid-twenties, I was caporegime with a crew of my own.

I don’t think Tessio and Clemenza were too happy about it, but I became Pop’s right-hand man, his underboss, over them a few years after that. But hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?

Someday, when somebody writes our story, I just hope they get the facts straight.