ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090084
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: TIM SULLIVAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Five years after heart trouble almost killed him in a Las Vegas casino, Mario Puzo relaxes in the easy chair of an elegant Fifth Avenue hotel room, waving an enormous cigar.
``I'm not supposed to smoke,'' says the author of ``The Godfather,'' as he stares longingly at the unlit stogie he's been chewing on. ``It's a tic, though, and I like the taste of nicotine.''
Puzo is 75 now, though you'd probably guess a decade less if you were to pass him on the street. With his large, square glasses and long strands of hair carelessly slicked back over his head, he looks like a well-tanned and slowly aging Hollywood mogul. He has back trouble and diabetes, and a fading scar at his collar is a reminder of the quadruple-bypass surgery that followed the gurgling noises that sounded in his chest on New Year's Eve in Vegas in 1991.
But every once in a while, he says, he takes a chance and lights up a cigar. He might not be hitting the roulette tables the way he used to, but Mario Puzo is still gambling.
Puzo returns to Vegas, and his old Mafia haunts, in his latest novel, ``The Last Don.'' Weaving together the sins of Hollywood, Las Vegas and a powerful Long Island-based crime family, Puzo creates an engrossing tale of mob machinations and Sicilian honor codes.
The Don himself is Domenico Clericuzio, the brilliant and brutal family patriarch who in the aftermath of a Mafia war yearns for a time when his heirs can be accepted into legitimate society. The hero is Croccifixio ``Cross'' De Lena, the Don's handsome, young nephew who has decided against his father's profession - killing people - because he just doesn't have the stomach. Jumping among characters and cities, Puzo traces the workings of a casino, the politics of movie-making and De Lena's inevitable clash with a long-buried secret.
It's turf that Puzo knows well, from previous books, as well as from his own years as a gambler and a screenwriter.
So perhaps the most surprising thing about the book is that it got its author out of the house!
Puzo is not very big on going out. He has seldom left his Long Island haven since his heart surgery and spends his time at home writing and reading, playing pinochle and watching television. When his longtime companion Carol Gino isn't around - he met her 17 years ago when she was nursing his dying wife - he said the phone barely even rings.
And he's never been too enthusiastic about giving interviews. Before ``The Last Don,'' Puzo hadn't sat down to talk about himself in 18 years.
``My mother's big advice was never to leave the house; you'll only get in trouble,'' he said of his childhood in New York City's Hell's Kitchen.
So what's he doing here, in a loud, difficult city he now hates, graciously welcoming a reporter and breaking his self-imposed code of silence?
Puzo has a book to sell. And when it comes to money, he's the most cheerfully greedy man around.
``The richer I get, the more miserly I become,'' said Puzo in his gravelly voice, stretching back on an easy chair in his maroon polo shirt and matching pajama pants, his bare feet resting on an ottoman. ``When I had no money I didn't care about money. Now I'm thinking, `Gee, I have to save more money. Maybe I'll live 'til I'm 90.'''
For a man who has made a career out of probing the forces that drive men to evil, Puzo can talk about his own greed without a trace of rancor.
``If it gets good reviews, that's great,'' he said happily. ``If it doesn't, as long as I get the money that's quite enough.''
It's an attitude that comes from waiting 48 years for success, years that sometimes left him very worried about how he was going to support his wife and five children.
``I was very dumb when I was young,'' said Puzo, whose 1964 story of immigrant life, ``The Fortunate Pilgrim,'' was hailed by The New York Times as ``a small classic.'' But it sold fewer than 5,000 copies and Puzo, seeking the fame and fortune he felt he deserved as a writer, set out to write a best seller.
He succeeded. ``The Godfather,'' published five years later, became a sensation, eventually selling more than 16 million copies.
``I thought you could only write serious literature if there's no compromise,'' Puzo said of his pre-Godfather days. ``Now I realize there's compromise.''
He's written three novels since ``The Godfather'': ``Fool's Die,'' in 1978, ``The Sicilian'' in 1984 and ``The Fourth K,'' in 1991. ``The Fourth K,'' a political thriller about a fictional member of the Kennedy family, was a commercial and critical disappointment.
But Puzo insists he is not spooning out literary Pablum, that he writes popular books on serious topics. His novels probe age-old themes: greed and power, respect and honor. Most famously in ``The Godfather,'' and again in ``The Last Don,'' Puzo reveals a world in which Mafia assassins are heroes - or at least come pretty close - and pillars of society are charlatans.
He is terribly suspicious of anyone who has achieved success, and happily roasts the hypocrisies of the politicians, businessmen and movie stars.
``People who succeed do terrible things,'' he said simply. ``I was lucky in that I didn't have to pay a price,'' for success.
Not that he thinks completely ill of the evil-doers. Puzo is known for his sympathetic portrayal of the Mafia, which in his hands has more to do with respect than greed, and more about honor than brutality. He writes about nurturing families that happen to be in the crime business. There are no buffoonish John Gottis in Puzo's mob books, no Vincent ``The Chin'' Gigantes wandering Greenwich Village in their bathrobes.
``They're not my Mafia,'' he said of the real-life mobsters. ``My Mafia is a very romanticized myth.''
And anyway, he asks a couple minutes later, ``Just because a guy's a murderer, he can't have endearing traits?''
He also insists, a little tiredly, that his research was done in libraries, not amid gangsters. Puzo has denied for years that he has vague links to organized crime.
``Where would I have time to be in the Mafia?'' he asks. ``I starved before the success of `The Godfather.' If I was in the Mafia I would have made enough money so I wouldn't have to write.''
He pauses a moment before continuing, smiling broadly. ``And it might have been preferable to be in the Mafia. I'm glad I'm a writer, but it's hard work. Nobody likes to work hard.''
As for his next book, Puzo is in the planning stages.
``It'll be a life-ending book, for me and the Mafia,'' he said, fictionally tracing the mob's history from the Middle Ages to the year 2000.
``Then I'll be dead, the Mafia will be dead and the public will be glad of it. They've had enough of both of us.''
EXCERPTS FROM "THE LAST DON"
-``In the world Don Clericuzio had created, he was revered. His family, the thousands who lived in the Bronx Enclave, the `Brugliones' who ruled territories and entrusted their money to him and came for his intercession when they got into trouble with the formal society. They knew that the Don was just. That in time of need, sickness, or any trouble, they could go to him and he would address their misfortunes. And so they loved him.''
-``There came times when risks had to be taken, when an iron fist must be shown. This the Family did with the utmost discretion and with terminal ferocity. And that was when you must earn the good life you led, when you truly earned your daily bread.
``Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Cross was finally put to the test.''
LENGTH: Long : 137 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Mario Puzo returns to Vegas, and his old Mafia haunts,by CNBin his latest novel, ``The Last Don.'' color.