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commercial bank whose president was indebted to Don Corleone and indeed some of
whose stock belonged to Don Corleone though it was in the president's name. The
president always treasured that moment when he had offered to give Don Corleone a
written document proving his ownership of the shares, to preclude (предотвратить) any
treachery. Don Corleone had been horrified. "I would trust you with my whole fortune,"
he told the president. "I would trust you with my life and the welfare (благосостояние)
of my children. It is inconceivable (немыслимо, непредставимо) to me that you would
ever trick me or otherwise betray me. My whole world, all my faith in my judgment of
human character would collapse. Of course I have my own written records so that if
something should happen to me my heirs would know that you hold something in trust
for them. But I know that even if I were not here in this world to guard the interests of my
children, you would be faithful to their needs."
The president of the bank, though not Sicilian, was a man of tender sensibilities. He
understood the Don perfectly. Now the Godfather's request was the president's
command and so on a Saturday afternoon, the executive suite of the bank, the
conference room with its deep leather chairs, its absolute privacy, was made available
to the Families.
Security at the bank was taken over by a small army of handpicked (выбранный,
подобранный; отборный) men wearing bank guard uniforms. At ten o'clock on a
Saturday morning the conference room began to fill up. Besides the Five Families of
New York, there were representatives from ten other Families across the country, with
the exception of Chicago, that black sheep of their world. They had given up trying to
civilize Chicago, and they saw no point in including those mad dogs in this important
conference.
A bar had been set up and a small buffet. Each representative to the conference had
been allowed one aide (помощник, адъютант [eıd]). Most of the Dons had brought their
Consiglioris as aides so there were comparatively few young men in the room. Tom
Hagen was one of those young men and the only one who was not Sicilian. He was an
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object of curiosity, a freak (каприз, причуда; уродец; человек или явление,
выходящее за рамки обычного).
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Hagen knew his manners. He did not speak, he did not smile. He waited on his boss,
Don Corleone, with all the respect of a favorite earl (граф /английский/ [∂:l]) waiting on
his king; bringing him a cold drink, lighting his cigar, positioning his ashtray; with respect
but no obsequiousness (подобострастие; obsequious [∂b’si:kwı∂s] –
подобострастный).
Hagen was the only one in that room who knew the identity of the portraits hanging on
the dark paneled walls. They were mostly portraits of fabulous financial figures done in
rich oils. One was of Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. Hagen could not help thinking
that Hamilton might have approved of this peace meeting being held in a banking
institution. Nothing was more calming, more conducive to pure reason, than the
atmosphere of money.
The arrival time had been staggered (to stagger – шататься, колебаться;
регулировать часы работы) for between nine-thirty to ten A.M. Don Corleone, in a
sense the host since he had initiated the peace talks, had been the first to arrive; one of
his many virtues was punctuality. The next to arrive was Carlo Tramonti, who had made
the southern part of the United States his territory. He was an impressively handsome
middle-aged man, tall for a Sicilian, with a very deep sunburn, exquisitely tailored and
barbered. He did not look Italian, he looked more like one of those pictures in the
magazines of millionaire fishermen lolling (to loll – сидеть развалясь; стоять
/облокотясь/ в ленивой позе) on their yachts. The Tramonti Family earned its
livelihood from gambling, and no one meeting their Don would ever guess with what
ferocity he had won his empire.
Emigrating from Sicily as a small boy, he had settled in Florida and grown to manhood
there, employed by the American syndicate of Southern small-town politicians who
controlled gambling. These were very tough men backed up by very tough police
officials and they never suspected that they could be overthrown by such a greenhorn
(новичок, неопытный человек) immigrant. They were unprepared for his ferocity and
could not match it simply because the rewards being fought over were not, to their
minds, worth so much bloodshed. Tramonti won over the police with bigger shares of
the gross (общая масса [gr∂us]); he exterminated those redneck (неотесанный
человек, деревенщина) hooligans who ran their operation with such a complete lack of
imagination. It was Tramonti who opened ties with Cuba and the Batista regime and
eventually poured money into the pleasure resorts of Havana gambling houses,
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whorehouses, to lure (завлекать, заманивать [lu∂]) gamblers from the American
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mainland. Tramonti was now a millionaire many times over and owned one of the most
luxurious hotels in Miami Beach.
When he came into the conference room followed by his aide, an equally sunburned
Consigliori, Tramonti embraced Don Corleone, made a face of sympathy to show he
sorrowed for the dead son.
Other Dons were arriving. They all knew each other, they had met over the years,
either socially or when in the pursuit of their businesses. They had always showed each
other professional courtesies and in their younger, leaner (lean – тощий, худой) days
had done each other little services. The second Don to arrive was Joseph Zaluchi from
Detroit. The Zaluchi Family, under appropriate disguises and covers, owned one of the
horse-racing tracks in the Detroit area. They also owned a good part of the gambling.
Zaluchi was a moon-faced, amiable-looking man who lived in a one-hundred-thousand-
dollar house in the fashionable Grosse Point section of Detroit. One of his sons had
married into an old, well-known American family. Zaluchi, like Don Corleone, was
sophisticated (скушенный, изощренный, сложный, непростой). Detroit had the lowest
incidence of physical violence of any of the cities controlled by the Families; there had
been only two executions in the last three years in that city. He disapproved of traffic in
drugs.
Zaluchi had brought his Consigliori with him and both men came to Don Corleone to
embrace him. Zaluchi had a booming American voice with only the slightest trace of an
accent. He was conservatively dressed, very businessman, and with a hearty goodwill
to match. He said to Don Corleone, "Only your voice could have brought me here." Don
Corleone bowed his head in thanks. He could count on Zaluchi for support.
The next two Dons to arrive were from the West Coast, motoring from there in the
same car since they worked together closely in any case. They were Frank Falcone and
Anthony Molinari and both were younger than any of the other men who would come to
the meeting; in their early forties. They were dressed a little more informally than the
others, there was a touch of Hollywood in their style and they were a little more friendly
than necessary. Frank Falcone controlled the movie unions and the gambling at the
studios plus a complex of pipeline (трубопровод, нефтепровод) prostitution that
supplied girls to the whorehouses of the states in the Far West. It was not in the realm
of possibility for any Don to become "show biz" but Falcone had just a touch. His fellow
Dons distrusted him accordingly.
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Anthony Molinari controlled the waterfronts of San Francisco and was preeminent
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(выдающийся, превосходящий других) in the empire of sports gambling. He came of
Italian fishermen stock and owned the best San Francisco sea food restaurant, in which
he took such pride that the legend had it he lost money on the enterprise by giving too
good value for the prices charged. He had the impassive face of the professional
gambler and it was known that he also had something to do with dope smuggling over
the Mexican border and from the ships plying (to ply – курсировать, совершать рейс /о
корабле/) the lanes (lane – узкая дорога, тропинка /особ. между живыми
изгородями/; морской путь) of the oriental oceans. Their aides were young, powerfully
built men, obviously not counselors but bodyguards, though they would not dare to carry
arms to this meeting. It was general knowledge that these bodyguards knew karate, a
fact that amused the other Dons but did not alarm them in the slightest, no more than if
the California Dons had come wearing amulets blessed by the Pope. Though it must be
noted that some of these men were religious and believed in God.
Next arrived the representative from the Family in Boston. This was the only Don who
did not have the respect of his fellows. He was known as a man who did not do right by
his "people," who cheated them unmercifully. This could be forgiven, each man
measures his own greed. What could not be forgiven was that he could not keep order
in his empire. The Boston area had too many murders, too many petty wars for power,
too many unsupported free-lance activities; it flouted (to flout – попирать, глумиться)
the law too brazenly. If the Chicago Mafia were savages, then the Boston people were
gavones, or uncouth (неуклюжий, грубоватый, неотесанный [Λn'ku:θ]) louts (lout –
неуклюжий, неотесанный человек, деревенщина); ruffians. The Boston Don's name
was Domenick Panza. He was short, squat; as one Don put it, he looked like a thief.
The Cleveland syndicate, perhaps the most powerful of the strictly gambling
operations in the United States, was represented by a sensitive-looking elderly man with
gaunt (сухопарый; длинный, вытянутый в длину; мрачный) features and snow-white
hair. He was known, of course not to his face, as "the Jew" because he had surrounded
himself with Jewish assistants rather than Sicilians. It was even rumored that he would
have named a Jew as his Consigliori if he had dared. In any case, as Don Corleone's
Family was known as the Irish Gang because of Hagen's membership, so Don Vincent
Forlenza's Family was known as the Jewish Family with somewhat more accuracy. But
he ran an extremely efficient organization and he was not known ever to have fainted at
the sight of blood, despite his sensitive features. He ruled with an iron hand in a velvet
political glove.
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The representatives of the Five Families of New York were the last to arrive and Tom
Hagen was struck by how much more imposing, impressive, these five men were than
the out-of-towners, the hicks. For one thing, the five New York Dons were in the old
Sicilian tradition, they were "men with a belly" meaning, figuratively, power and courage;
and literally, physical flesh, as if the two went together, as indeed they seem to have
done in Sicily. The five New York Dons were stout, corpulent men with massive leonine
heads, features on a large scale, fleshy imperial noses, thick mouths, heavy folded
cheeks. They were not too well tailored or barbered; they had the look of no-nonsense
busy men without vanity.
There was Anthony Stracci, who controlled the New Jersey area and the shipping on
the West Side docks of Manhattan. He ran the gambling in Jersey and was very strong
with the Democratic political machine. He had a fleet of freight hauling trucks that made
him a fortune primarily because his trucks could travel with a heavy overload and not be
stopped and fined by highway weight inspecton. These trucks helped ruin the highways
and then his road-building firm, with lucrative state contracts, repaired the damage
wrought. It was the kind of operation that would warm any man's heart, business of itself
creating more business. Stracci, too, was old-fashioned and never dealt in prostitution,
but because his business was on the waterfront it was impossible for him not to be
involved in the drug-smuggling traffic. Of the five New York Families opposing the
Corleones his was the least powerful but the most well disposed.
The Family that controlled upper New York State, that arranged smuggling of Italian
immigrants from Canada, all upstate (северная часть штата) gambling and exercised
veto power on state licensing of racing tracks, was headed by Ottilio Cuneo. This was a
completely disarming man with the face of a jolly round peasant baker, whose legitimate
activity was one of the big milk companies. Cuneo was one of those men who loved
children and carried a pocket full of sweets in the hopes of being able to pleasure one of
his many grandchildren or the small offspring (отпрыск) of his associates. He wore a
round fedora with the brim turned down all the way round like a woman's sun hat, which
broadened his already moon-shaped face into the very mask of joviality. He was one of
the few Dons who had never been arrested and whose true activities had never even
been suspected. So much so that he had served on civic committees and had been
voted as "Businessman of the Year for the State of New York" by the Chamber of
Commerce.
The closest ally to the Tattaglia Family was Don Emilio Barzini. He had some of the
gambling in Brooklyn and some in Queens. He had some prostitution. He had strong-
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