The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
236
The arrival time had been staggered 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 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 
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; he exterminated those 
redneck 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 
gamblers from the American 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 
Consigliere, 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 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 Pointe section of Detroit. One of his sons had married into an 
old, well-known American family. Zaluchi, like Don Corleone, was sophisticated. Detroit 
had the lowest incidence of physical violence of any of the cities controlled by the 

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