The old Don had helped the humiliated man in the black robe get justice. He had treated the judge's enemies as his own enemies.
He had caused those who tried to ruin the judge to weep bitter tears. He made sure the nominee under his protection got justice and became a justice.
''Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do me a service in return,'' the old Don, the head of the WASP Corleones, whispered to the younger man.
For Clarence Thomas, that day has arrived. Don Georgio of Kennebunkport needs a splash of service in connection with the hotheaded Sonny, who has gotten himself into his biggest scrape yet. Nearly a decade has passed, and now it time for Clarence to repay his political godfather.
Imagine what might have secretly transpired between the two:
''Look how the Democrats massacred my boy with dimpled ballots and endless hand recounts,'' an emotional Don Georgio confides in Justice Thomas. ''It's a low-tech lynching. I want you to use all your powers and all your skills. I don't want his mother to see him this way.''
Just when you thought our electoral spectacle could not get more surreal, labyrinthine, incestuous and conspiratorial, we now have Jeb's legislature joining W.'s lawsuit before Daddy's old Supreme Court.
''It's just a family affair,'' laughed a Bush aide in Tallahassee.
If the Bush forces angrily discounted a decision of the Florida Supreme Court that went against them, because all the justices were appointed by Democratic governors, then why would the Gore forces trust a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court if it went against them, when seven of nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents, including two by W.'s dad?
The highest court in the land is supposed to be above politics. But nothing has been above politics so far in this presidential mud wrestle.
And the two candidates whose marathon donnybrook has now spilled into the Supreme Court made that body a major campaign issue.
W. expressed the highest respect for Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Al Gore seized on this to scare women voters: ''When the names of Scalia and Thomas are used as benchmarks for who would be appointed, those are code words, and nobody should mistake this, for saying that the governor would appoint people who would overturn Roe v. Wade.''
How rich to see W., whose campaign was steeped in skepticism about Washington, the federal government and trial lawyers, send his lawyers to Washington to petition a states' rights Supreme Court to overturn a state decision.
The theme of revenge, so prominent in the race, is continuing in the coda. Cuban-Americans in Florida, still angry at the Clinton administration over the seizure of Elian, threatened to go back to the streets, which helped stop the Miami-Dade hand count that Al was hoping would put him over the top.
The Bush team filed suit with the Supreme Court in Washington knowing that the Supreme Court in Florida would ''always be a problem and that there had to be recourse,'' as one Bushie put it.
But the legal tactics of the two camps are running ahead of their political strategies.
Bush advisers were riding the tiger this weekend, unsure if the high court would prolong the wrangling rather than head it off. Their hope had been that W. would eke out an edge in votes by the 5 p.m. Sunday deadline, and Katherine Harris would hold a press conference certifying W. the winner.
Then he could have emerged and declared himself the president-elect -- as Napoleon once took the crown from the pope and proclaimed himself emperor.
''We were counting on Katherine 'Where is my ambassadorship? I held up my end of the deal' Harris to complete her duty,'' a Bush adviser in Florida said mordantly.
But now they are not sure what to do. If Al Gore ''steals enough votes to win'' on Sunday, in the Bush argot, at least the W. camp will have the U.S. Supreme Court to keep hopes alive. But what if W. gets his votes, and then the justices validate the Gore hand recounts -- hoisting W. with his own legal petard?
Will W. get Jebby's legislature to come to his rescue? Will Al keep counting and counting and counting . . .
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