Setup or Bad day for the Senator?

In the Godfather 2 was the prostitute or mistress that is dead with the Senator was this a setup by the Corleones so they could fix it and have the Senator in their debt? I always thought it was, but I can't remember if they ever talked about it......

Does anyone out there now???

Al Neri killed the girl (remember when Tom motioned to him to leave him and the Senator alone?), so hence, it was a set-up, just like you guessed.

Set-up, most definitely...and a beauty of a one at that!

The Corleone Family ran the place and obviously knew about the Senator's fondness for prostitutes. They probably never did anything about it, but decided to use it against him if the oppotunity came along. When Geary tried to put the squeeze on them, they retaliated. And quite frankly, I don't believe it was over the money he was trying to extort. I think that he insulted Michael and Italians in general, and that's what made Michael do it.

I'm guessing it was a setup. The alternative is that the Corleones were waiting and hoping for the rather unlikely happenstance that the Senator would (i) kill a hooker (ii) in one of Fredo's brothels.

As Tom tells the Senator, this is my brother's place. Of course it was a setup.

Definitely a setup. Could not be otherwise, especially with Al hanging around . And I agree with SB that it was not over the money but rather for the disrespect Geary showed. This put Geary in Michael's pocket - no wonder that the Senator delivered this awkward speech in favor of the Italian-Americans at the hearings.

Thanks you guys....Very smart move on Mike's part, good for business and gets a powerful man in his own right in debted to the Corleone Family......
Thanks again
Do you guys think that Geary would have stayed an associate with Michael after he got him the liscense ??He didn't seem very trust worthy, but they also had a big fat pile of dirt on him, so hmmmmmmmmmm

I thought that he did, why else would he be in Cuba with them?

I have a different theory about Geary. He seemed to be in Michael's pocket after he was set up in the brothel. That's probably why he showed up in Havana. But I also think he was plotting his revenge:

We see Geary as a dunce because he thinks with his dick. But Geary is a politician, and politicians definitely know how to be two-faced. And he was at his most two-faced at the Senate hearings. When he says, "These hearings on the Mafia are not a reflection on the great Italian people...," who does he mean by "Mafia" if not Michael? And when he says it'd be a "shame if a few rotten apples were allowed to spoil the whole bunch," who does he mean by "rotten apple" if not the witness in front of the committee--Michael!
Geary also was helping to set Michael up for a fall. Roth, but not Michael, found out that Pentangeli had survived the attempted garroting and was ready to squeal. He reached for Questad, the Senate lawyer "who belongs to Roth." Questad convinced the committee chairman that they could use Pentangeli to trap Michael. The committee chairman arranged for the FBI to take custody of Frankie from the NYPD, and to keep his survival secret.
As a member of that committee, Geary knew Pentangeli had survived and was ready to testify against Michael. So, when Willie Cicci testified before the committee, Geary asked Cicci a question that seemed to be helpful to Michael: Did Cicci ever get a direct order from Michael, or was there always a buffer in between? Cicci says, "No, I never talked to him."
Aha!, thinks Michael. The committee's numero-uno witness, Cicci, has testified that he never got a direct order from him. Now it's safe for him to deny any and all of the committee's charges against him, because there are no witnesses who can testify that they ever got a direct order from him. Thus,Michael lies five times under oath. Unlike Geary and the rest of the committee members, he still doesn't know that Frankie's waiting in the wings to nail his ass.
Bada- bing! The chairman produces Frank Pentangeli, who's ready to testify that he did get orders from Michael to murder, etc. Oh-oh: Michael has opened himself to five counts of perjury. The beauty of it: Michael doesn't have to be tried and convicted of the charges that the committee accused him of (murdering the heads of the Five Families, killing Sollozzo and McCluskey, running all the gambling in America, etc.) They don't have to: they've already got him on five counts of perjury, each of which carries a five-year sentence! Geary's seemingly helpful questioning of Cicci had, in fact, set Michael up for those charges.

Interesting theory TB. I have a few remarks however.

1. Michael was no idiot. If he understood that Geary didn't help him as much as he could, the photos of the Senator with the dead prostitute would make headlines the next day, whether Michael was indicted for perjury or not.

2. Geary could have been thinking with his dick but, after the Carson City incident, he had learned his lesson. I find it more likely for Geary to be thinking about his career than about planning his revenge since then.

Geary was probably told "If Michael gets indicted, then you are finished" (i.e. the dead hooker story comes out). It would have been political and personal suicide for Geary to have double-crossed Micheal.

Maybe he didn't know about Pentangelli (if Roth knew that Geary belonged to Michael, maybe he got Questadt, who sits closer to the chairman and is therefore more senior (?-in any case, Geary is suffciently unimportant to be allowed to clear off to chair his own meeting) to persuade the chairman to keep Pentangelli under wraps for security reasons). Or perhaps Frankie had not at that point agreed to the deal?

The "few bad apples" that Geary referred to was Willy Cicci and any other l.c.n. members already convicted? So he meant that Michael should not be tarnished with the same brush (to mix metaphors) not that Michael was one of the bad apples.

I think it was a real wek point in the plot. A U.S. senator

I think it was a serious weakness in the plot. With all the prostitutes in Las Vegas and Nevada why would Sen.Leary go to a place operated by his bitter enemies? In the 1950's simply a photograph of him at the place would have been enough to ruin his career.

I don't think it was a weak point in the plot, the history of the Mafia wouldn't be near as long if people like senators and governers weren't corrupted by the Mafia. In order for them to survive they need to live in a corrupt world so their illegal enterprises keep running. Read "The Outfit" by Gus Russo and you'll see it's has gone way behond state senators.

TB you are correct. Gery was trying to have it both ways. No doubt he told the Corleones, "Look, there's not mucg I can do here except to try to show that Michael was isolated from any direct orders to kill people, and once I've done that I will excuse myself from the hearings." At the same time he did set up the potential perjury trap they had for Michael.

How would Geary have known that the Corleone's operated the brothel? Do you think that whore houses advertise or sign-up with the Better Business Bureau and list their employees in the phone book? I'm quite sure that the Corleone's controlled the brothel, with someone else fronting the operation. I'm confident that the brothel guy we see who meets Hagen actually ran the day-to-day operations or was the legal owner. It was probably very similar to the situation Roth was a silent partner in owning the Tropicalla, per the discussion Michael has with Ola:

"The casino you're interested in -- the registered owners are Jacob Lawrence, Allen Barclay - they're both Beverly Hills Attorneys. The real owners are the old Lakeville Road group from Cleveland, and our friend in Miami. Meyer Klingman runs the store -- he runs a piece of it, too -- he does alright."

It is not such a stretch to say that Geary would end up with a Corleone controlled prostitute. Remember how in Havana he was pretty open about having a "red headed Cubana" and how Fredo arranged for it. I could easily see the Corleones putting a ringer in a casino and steering Geary to the "right" brothel.

Isn't prostitution legal in Nevada?? Was it then? If so, then he really wasn't breaking any laws GOING to a prostitute, until he killed one!!

Legal or not, it put him in a dangerous situation politically if he were to be exposed as a "john." If it came out that he frequented the hooker scene, Geary would have had to find a new line of work.

This was in 1959. In those days the press never reported on the sex lives of politicians....look at JFK. If there was a dead prostitute and a Senator however, all bets would have been off.

I see your point about the way the media operated then vs now. But let's say Michael was backing another candidate running against Geary. Don't you think Michael would somehow "leak" the information to damage Geary? Politics has been dirty from day one.

IMHO, when Michael was not indicted, Geary must have been more relieved than Michael himself. So, I find it unlikely that he was a Roth/Questedt collaborator on the plan to trap Michael with the hidden Pentangeli and the perjury charges. Because the chances were that Michael would find out sooner or later (as he found out about Questedt) and then all hell would break loose - irrespective of the outcome of the hearings. Geary just asked Cicci the obvious question, confirmed that "godfather" is used by Italians out of respect, made the "rotten apples" speech and went home. Michael still had all the cards in this game.

Here's the catch:

Prostitution is indeed legal in Nevada. However, there are a few big cities in which is is illegal including: Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, and Lake Tahoe.

Wasn't Fredo's brothel in Carson City?

Michael Corleone and Dr.:
Logic is on your side. My theory is far-fetched. But it's a fact that Geary was a member of the Senate committee, and must have known that they were holding Frankie in reserve to trap Michael. If he was in Michael's pocket, why didn't he warn Michael?
Logically, Geary should have realized that Michael was smart and would figure out his two-faced act and his knowledge of Frankie's survival. But when the blood's on the boil, logic flies out the window. Logically, Paulie should never have concluded that he could betray Vito and get away with it, but greed overcame logic. Carlo was crazy to think he could pull that beating-Connie routine twice and not get blamed for Sonny's assassination--but lust for revenge made him crazy. Geary, as a US Senator, thought he was invincible. Probably he thought he could fool Michael. And if Michael were convicted of perjury, than the credibility of anything Michael said against Geary (as in the brothel murder) would be compromised.
SB: Prostitution has never been illegal on a statewide basis in Nevada. Today, licensed brothels exist in 10 of Nevada's 13 counties. In the late '40's, the gangsters who were building Vegas lobbied the state legislature to outlaw prostitution altogether. They piously declaimed that prostitution was sullying the state's "respectable" reputatation. Of course, they were just trying to prevent anyone else from getting between them and the suckers' money. The legislature responded by outlawing prostitution in counties with populations greater than 500,000, which at the time only applied to Clark County (where Vegas is located).