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MARIO PUZO didn't even have to make them up. The Borgias of 15th century Rome really lived. Instead of a don, their patriarch was none other than the powerful Pope Alexander VI, formerly Rodrigo Borgia, whose children included the infamous Lucrezia. And her brothers Cesare, Juan and Jofre were no strangers to vengeance, violence and manipulation, either. Poison was prominent in their lifestyles. Machiavelli was a family friend.
No wonder the author of "The Godfather," and co-screenwriter of the three films based on the bestseller, loved the Borgias.
"Mario believed that they were the first crime family," said Carol Gino, who for his last 20 years was Puzo's companion. For most of those years, Puzo worked on and off on a novel about the Renaissance dynasty. He kept researching and writing, she said, coming back to it when he was blocked on other projects but never finishing all the chapters.
"This was his epic," said Gino, 59, an author and a registered nurse who lives in Amityville, in the pleasant house on a canal where she and Puzo worked, composing their separate books, and discussing and editing each other's writing. Puzo often wrote in red ink on yellow paper, though he also used a manual typewriter, and Gino transcribed his scratchy penmanship on her computer, sometimes deciphering words that even he had trouble recognizing. They usually spent four days a week together, alternating between their homes, his in nearby Bay Shore.
Two weeks before his death at 78 on July 2, 1999, Puzo pulled a stack of yellow sheets from the bottom drawer of the desk in his study, she said. "Read it," he told Gino, a lively woman with large, warm eyes and dark hair. It was the last chapter of his Borgia opus.
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