Hagen said formally, “The hospital called. Consigliere Abbandando is dying, he won’t last out the night. His family was told to come and wait.” Hagen had filled the Consigliere’s post for the past year, ever since the cancer had imprisoned Genco Abbandando in his hospital bed. Now he waited to hear Don Corleone say the post was his permanently. The odds were against it. So high a position was traditionally given only to a man descended from two Italian parents.
