The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
238
Mafia were savages, then the Boston people were gavones, or uncouth louts; 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 
features and scow-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 Consigliere 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. 
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 inspectors. These trucks helped ruin the highways 
and then his roadbuilding 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 

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