accompanying the gift. During the reception, Michael's girlfriend Kay Adams asked him about Brasi. Michael relates the story of how his father once helped his godson, Johnny Fontane, back when Fontane's career was just starting to take off. Don Corleone had offered bandleader Les Halley $10,000 to release Fontane from his contract when he learned that Halley was unfairly exploiting his godson's fame. His offer refused, Vito returned the next day accompanied by Brasi and his then-consigliere Genco Abbandando. He then repeated his offer to Halley at gunpoint, this time telling him that either his signature or his brains would wind up on the contract. Halley agreed, accepting Corleone's payment of $10,000 (in the movie, only $1,000). Suspicious of drug baron Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo and his dealings with the Tattaglia family, Don Corleone orders Brasi to feign dissatisfaction working for the Corleones and convince Sollozzo that he is willing to work for him as a means of gathering information. Don Philip Tattaglia then arranges a meeting between Brasi and Sollozzo. Sollozzo, not fooled by the ruse, has Brasi strangled to death with piano wire. Sometime later, the Corleone family receives a package containing Brasi's custom-made bulletproof vest wrapped around a dead fish, an old Sicilian message that indicates Brasi "sleeps with the fishes". When Michael succeeds his father as Don of the Corleone family, Brasi's role as personal enforcer/bodyguard is filled by Al Neri, whom Michael "has ma[d]e...his Luca Brasi". In other media Luca Brasi plays a major role in the prequel novel The Family Corleone by Ed Falco. During the Great Depression, Luca Brasi is the leader of a small but feared street gang with ties to Sonny Corleone, who uses them as muscle to aid his family. The younger Brasi is described as a psychopath who has his own newborn child murdered by forcing an old woman to throw it alive into a burning furnace, lets its mother, Irish-American prostitute Kelly O'Rourke, die a savage death at his hands, and regularly abuses drugs. He also plans to kill Corleone associate Tom Hagen for having a one-night stand with Kelly, a feud that Vito settles by paying Brasi off. Brasi spends the money on more drugs; the resulting overdose causes him to suffer a complete mental breakdown that makes him even more unstable and dangerous. Although Vito dislikes and fears Brasi, he eventually recruits the brutal thug into