Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

That first night in his hotel, when he couldn’t sleep, he initially blamed it on jet lag and coffee, but he flew all the time and drank coffee by the gallon and ordinarily could go to sleep anytime he allowed himself to do so. He pulled back the curtain and saw the lights of the Mall, and felt goose bumps.

He was a millionaire. He was a United States congressman. He started laughing.

Then he got dressed.

The impulse had come from the heart, and he was in the elevator before he thought about what an indefensibly sentimental thing he was about to do.

He knew even as it was happening that this was not a story he could ever tell to anyone.

He crossed Constitution Avenue and stood at the west end of the Reflecting Pool, which smelled like rotten eggs. Lights shone on the water. A couple opposite him held hands and kissed. What tremendous beauty.

He was an orphan, that’s what he was. When he was ten, his mother went blind and then died and his father drank himself to death, and Hagen got stuck in an orphanage and ran away and lived on the street for more than a year before he made friends with Sonny Corleone and Sonny brought him home like a stray puppy. At the time, it had made no sense that Sonny’s father had gone along with this, but Hagen had been too grateful to question anything. After that, it became something Hagen didn’t think about. His mother died of a venereal disease and his father was a violent, rampaging, death-courting drunk. Hagen was an expert about not talking about things or thinking about them a long time before Vito Corleone honed and harnessed those skills.

But that night it suddenly hit him. Vito had been an orphan, too, taken in by the Abbandandos at about the same age as Hagen was taken in by the Corleones. Vito grew up in the same house as the man who would become his consigliere. Vito had re-created a mirror image of that dynamic in his own house, as first Sonny and then Michael used Hagen in that role.

Hagen turned around slowly, arms out, taking it all in, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument. The Capitol and, above it, the seemingly random stars that had somehow aligned for that to be his new place of business. Hagen stayed where he was, at the west end of the pool, both reflected and reflecting, and kept turning around. He didn’t believe in God, an afterlife, or anything mystical, but at that moment he did, without a doubt, feel the presence of the dead, heavy and literal as a block of ice. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The late congressman. Sonny and Vito Corleone. Bridget and Marty Hagen. Those untold thousands of men who’d taken bullets in the head and heart for something bigger than their own immediate families and interests. All the people whose lives had been laid down so that he could have his-so that, for however long, he would find himself here, transformed into some excellent gray-haired stranger named Congressman Thomas F. Hagen.

During his time in Congress, he’d often think back to this moment and the euphoria he’d felt-usually at one of the surprisingly many times people seemed legitimately and even selflessly interested in improving the lives of strangers. Unlike those whose early days in Washington were spent watching their naive idealism swiftly ground to dust, pulverized by the realities of politics and money, Hagen had no ideals to crush. When congressmen he’d last seen when he’d come to bribe them saw him inside the Capitol and introduced themselves, pretending never to have met him, Hagen was only mildly amused. He’d spent his life sitting in an office while people paraded in one by one, asking for favors, so their piggishness barely registered on him, either. On the other hand, while virtue and altruism are in short supply on Capitol Hill, for a man incapable of disillusionment, they’re everywhere.

That first night in Washington, though, his euphoria was finally interrupted when, as he was staring up at the night sky, he felt the barrel of a gun against his ribs. It was a Negro in a white cowboy hat with a bandanna over his face. He wore crepe-soled shoes. Hagen hadn’t heard him coming.

“Hope that watch doesn’t have sentimental value,” the man said.

“It doesn’t,” Hagen said, though it had been an anniversary present from Theresa. Not a milestone anniversary, but he did like the watch. “It’s just a watch.”

“It’s a hell of a nice watch.”

“Thanks. Be sure to point that out to your fence. I like the hat, by the way.”

“Thanks. You’re rich, huh?” he said, handing back Hagen ’s emptied wallet.

“Less so now,” Hagen said. He’d only had a couple hundred dollars on him.

“Sorry about that,” the man said, turning away. “It’s just business, you know?”

“I understand completely,” Hagen called after him. Had the city ever seen a more cheerful mugging victim? “Good luck to you, friend.”

Hagen, being Hagen, had left plenty of time for the drive from Theresa’s parents’ house in Asbury Park down the shore to his party’s national convention in Atlantic City, and it was only after he hit Atlantic City and the traffic was rerouted and snarled that he had any reason to check his watch. He’d replaced the one that had been stolen with a replica of it so he wouldn’t have to say anything to Theresa. But he’d left it on the nightstand. He could picture it. It was right next to his convention credentials. He slammed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

It had been ridiculous not to get a hotel in Atlantic City, but he’d been trying to bring Theresa around, and it had been great to see the kids. Even the boys had been glad to see him, shooting baskets in the driveway and talking about girls and cars and even that barbaric, tuneless music they loved. It had all worked out great. Theresa was coming home at the end of the summer- Hagen hadn’t been sure she would-and had even said she would consider showing up at various campaign events, so long as Tom wrangled her an appointment to the board for the proposed new museum of modern art. But he’d underestimated how much the drives back and forth would take out of him, and of course naturally the day the traffic was the worst was the only day he really had to be there, and it also just figured that, spread so thin, he’d forget things. If he hadn’t tried to do so much in such a little time, he’d have traveled with his chief of staff-an unlikable but witheringly efficient young Harvard-educated twit recommended to him by the governor-and Ralph would have made sure he had everything, no matter how distracted his boss had been by running out to the beach for a last-minute swim with his daughter.

Hagen had no idea how long he’d been beating the steering wheel when he caught sight of himself, red-faced and sweating, a heart attack waiting to happen. He took a deep breath. He pulled out a comb and put himself together.

With no parking pass, he took a spot far up the boardwalk from Convention Hall. By the time he got there, he was soaked with sweat, so disheveled that, despite several inventive tactics with different gatekeepers, he failed to talk his way into the hall in time to see Governor James Kav-anaugh Shea’s nominating speech. From the roar of the crowd, it seemed to be going well.

For the first time, Hagen noticed the words carved into the hall’s limestone facade: CONSILIO ET PRUDENTIA. Latin. “Counsel and prudence.” Consiglio. Prudenza.

The way things were going, it wouldn’t surprise Hagen if someday the Mob rented an arena like this for its own business. Shock, yes, but not surprise. If Hagen were still consigliere, his first words of counsel would be that the gatherings of men from various Families-weddings, funerals, title fights, one nightclub’s secret owners trying to impress another’s with the biggest shows, the biggest names-had become too frequent, too public, too glamorous, even the funerals. He’d heard that the meeting in New York had led to an agreement that they’d meet annually. What next? Printed stock certificates? Live television coverage?