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,
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.
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