Chapter 30 20-1

The death of Sandino Corleone set off shocking waves throughout the underground world.When the news spread that old man Corleone got up from the hospital bed and took charge of family affairs again, and when the spies who watched the funeral reported that the old man had apparently fully recovered, the heads of the five major families frantically prepared to launch a defensive war against the inevitable. A bloody war of vengeance to come.No one thought that Don Corleone could be dealt with easily because of his misfortune.He was a man who made only a few mistakes in his career, and each time he made a mistake he learned something.

When the secret envoys were entrusted with making peace proposals to the five major families, only Hagen guessed the old man's true intentions, but he was not surprised.Not only did he offer a peace proposal, but he advocated for a meeting of all the gangster families in the city, and invited gangster families from all over the United States to attend the meeting.Because the power of the New York gangster family is the largest in the country, it goes without saying that their safety affects the safety of the whole country. At first, some people were skeptical.Could it be that Don Corleone is setting a trap?Was he trying to paralyze his enemies?Could it be that he was trying to avenge his son by killing everyone?But Don Corleone was quick to show that he meant it.On the one hand, he brought all the gangster families in the country into this meeting, and on the other hand, he did nothing to mobilize his own people in a state of war, nor did he take any action to recruit troops and win allies.Then he took the final step which, in the popular mind, established the authenticity of his peaceful intentions while also securing the imminent grand conference.He asked Bu Qiqiu's family to mediate.

The Buqiqiu family is very unique. It was a particularly vicious branch of the gang in Sicily back then.After moving to the United States, it became an instrument of peace.It turned out to be a group of desperadoes who lived their lives blindly, but the way they live now may be called the way of the most holy and sages.The Buqiqiu family has a characteristic: it is a group that is closely bound together by blood ties, and loyalty to the family is very strict. Even in a society where loyalty to the family is higher than loyalty to the wife, their kind Loyalty to the family can still be said to stand out.

The Buqiqiu family, including the descendants of children born to parents, cousins, and cousins, once developed to almost two hundred months. At that time, they controlled a special economy in a small area in southern Sicily.The income of the entire family depended on four or five flour mills at that time. These flour mills were by no means shared by everyone, but they ensured the employment, living problems and minimum safety of all family members. This is enough to make them form a united front against their enemies. In that corner of their control, no competing mills could be built, nor dams that might supply water to their competing mills, or destroy their monopoly on buying and selling water power.On one occasion, an invincible landowner attempted to build a private flour mill for his own use, and the mill burned down.He complained to the local gendarmerie and higher authorities, resulting in the arrest of thirty members of the Buccio family.Before the trial was held, the landlord's manor was burned down.Months after the verdict was dropped, along with the charges, a concerned top official in the Italian government traveled to Sicily to try to solve the island's chronic water shortage by building a massive dam.Water conservancy technicians from Rome began to carry out exploration work, and the police flocked to the area like a flood, living in specially built barracks.

It seemed that the construction of the dam could not be stopped, and supplies and equipment had already been brought to Palermo.The authorities took matters to this point, and the Buqiqiu family contacted the leaders of the brother gangs everywhere and obtained a promise of support for them.As a result, heavy equipment was sabotaged and small equipment disappeared.The representatives of the underground gang forces in the Italian Parliament stuck to the rules and acted according to the rules, and launched a well-founded counterattack against the designers.This counterattack lasted for several years, and then Mussolini came to power, and the dictator issued a decree: the dam must be built.The result is still not built.The dictator realized that this family underground power formed an authority independent of his authority and would be a threat to his regime.He entrusted full authority to a high-ranking police officer, who resolved the matter decisively, by simply putting them one by one either in prison, or exiled to other isolated islands for hard labour.In just a few short years, he broke through the family's underground forces. The method he adopted was also very simple. He did not distinguish between indiscriminate and arrested whoever he wanted, even suspected members of the family's underground forces.This also destroyed many innocent families.

Faced with this lawless tyranny, the Buqiqiu family recklessly launched an armed struggle.As a result, half of the men in the family were killed in the armed conflict, and the other half were exiled to the small island of the penal colony.There were very few people left, and it was only at this time that arrangements were made for them to emigrate to the United States by boat through secret underground channels.A total of two dozen immigrants settled in a small town in the Hudson Valley not far from New York City.Here, they started from scratch and worked hard to have their own garbage removal company and their own trucks.Because they have no competitors, they slowly get rich.They don't have competition because competitors keep finding their trucks set on fire or vandalized.There was a stubborn boy who tried to steal the business by cutting prices, and later found him crushed in a garbage dump, smothered to death.

But when the men married, it goes without saying that their Sicilian wives bore many children.That way, the trash haulers, while they can sustain them, can't afford to pay for the finer things America has to offer.As a result, the Buqiqiu family has diversified, serving as peace mediators and hostages between the warring underground families. The Buqiqiu family has passed down a stupid character from generation to generation, or they are as uncivilized as primitive people.All in all, they are self-aware that they cannot compete with other underground families in their struggle to organize and control complex and difficult business sectors such as prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, public fraud, etc.They are straightforward people who know how to give a simple policeman a gift, but they don't know how to approach a political backdoor matchmaker.They have only two family heirlooms: one is their way of talking, and the other is their brutal character.

Anyone in the Bu Qiqiu family will never lie; never betray; behaviors such as lying and betrayal are really complicated for people in Qiqiu's family.Also, anyone in Bu Qiqiu's family will never forget that they have been hurt, and they must take revenge no matter how much the cost is.Thus, by their wanderings, they discover at last the occupation which will prove to be their most lucrative. When the warring families wanted to make peace, and wanted to arrange a meeting, they first approached the Buqiqiu family.The patriarch of the Buqiqiu family controlled the first few negotiations and arranged the necessary hostages.For example, it turned out that when Michael met with Sollozzo, the Buccaccio family assigned one of their own to stay at the Corleone home as a guarantee of Michael's safety, and Sollozzo paid for this obligation.If Michael is killed by Sollozzo, the hostages in the hands of the Corleone family will be killed by Corleone's people.In this case, the Buqiqiu family will take revenge on Sollozzo on the grounds of the death of members of the family.Because the people of Buqiqiu's clan are as uncivilized as primitive people, they will never allow anything, any form of punishment, to hinder their revenge.If they were betrayed, they would rather die than take revenge.There is no effective way to prevent their revenge.Therefore, a Bu Qiqiu hostage is equal to the most secure guarantee.

It can be seen from this that since Don Corleone hired the Buqiqiu family to act as mediators.And ask them to provide hostages so that all the underground families can come to participate in the peace talks, then the sincerity of the old man is beyond doubt, and there is no possibility of conspiracy.Attending such a meeting will be as safe as attending a wedding. After the hostages were provided, the meeting took place in the manager's conference room of a small commercial bank: the bank's president was very grateful to Don Corleone, and although part of the bank's share capital was in the name of the president, but actually belonged to Don Corleone.The President had voluntarily provided Don Corleone with a written document proving his ownership of those shares to rule out any possibility of treachery.The president has always cherished the scene at that time.Don Corleone was terribly disgusted by the Governor's supply of such documents.

"I will entrust to you all my fortune," he said to the Governor, "I will entrust to you my life and the happiness of my grandchildren, saying that you will play tricks on me or will not trust me, My party must be incredible. Then my whole world, and all my confidence in my own judgment about human nature, would collapse. Of course, I also keep accounts myself, just in case I encounter No matter what happens, my heirs will know that you are keeping some property for them. But, I know that even if I am no longer in this world and cannot take care of my children and grandchildren, you will take good care of them.

Although the bank president is not a Sicilian, he is also a very emotional person.He knew the old man very well. Nowadays, the godfather's request is also an order to the president. Therefore, on a Saturday afternoon, a set of rooms in the bank's general manager's office, the conference room and the soft leather chairs inside, and the absolutely quiet environment, all belong to the bank. Let it be used by the leaders of the underground families. The security of the bank was carried out by a small and carefully selected unit: this unit wore the uniform of the bank guard squad.At about ten o'clock on a Saturday morning, everyone in the meeting room was present.In addition to the five major families in New York, there are representatives of the other ten major families in the country, except for the black sheep in their world, the Chicago faction.They had long since given up trying to civilize the Chicago faction, and they thought it unreasonable to include the mad dogs in such an important meeting. A bar and a bistro have been set up exclusively for conference attendees.Each representative participating in the meeting can only bring one assistant according to regulations.Most of the old men brought their respective staff officers as assistants.So there are relatively few young people in the house.Tom Hagen was a young man, and the only representative of all the delegates present who was not of Sicilian descent.He was the object of curiosity, an oddball like no other. Hagen knew how to keep his word and his actions in check.He doesn't talk easily, and he doesn't smile easily.He served his boss, Don Corleone, as respectfully as a favorite would serve a king: brought him a cold drink, lighted his cigarette, moved the ashtray to his front, showing respect for the old man, but Not groveling. Of all the people in the room, only Hagen could recognize the people in the pictures on the surrounding walls.These colorful oil paintings are all legendary figures in the financial world.One of them was Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton.Hagen couldn't help feeling that perhaps Hamilton would approve of such a peace conference being held at the bank.There is nothing more calming than money, and nothing more capable of urging people to pure reason than other distractions. The arrival time of the attendees is scheduled to last from 9:30 am to 10:00 am.Old man Corleone was the first to attend the meeting because he was the advocate of this peace meeting and had a sense of responsibility as a master.One of the many qualities about him is punctuality. The twentieth attendee was Carlo Tramonti, who dominated the southern United States.He was a middle-aged man with a particularly fine face, and he was quite tall for the average Sicilian.His clothes are particularly well-made, and his hair style is also particularly well-crafted.He looked less Italian than a magazine fishing millionaire lounging on his yacht. The Tramonti family used to rely on gambling to make a living. People who met him for the first time would never have imagined how cruel the means he used when he seized the power of the current empire. He was a child when he came out of Sicily.He made his home in Florida, grew up, and was employed by the coalition of small-town politicians in the South, which controlled the gambling industry.These politicians are very powerful people, supported by very powerful police officers, and they have no idea that they will be knocked out by a fledgling new immigrant.They did not expect him to be so ferocious, and at the same time they did not think that what they were fighting for was worth so much blood, so they did not think it was worth fighting him hard.Tramonti used more money from the gross as a bribe to win over the police first.He then wiped out those bumpkin hooligans who were not creative in their business operations one by one.Tramonti established contact with the Batista regime in Cuba, invested a lot of money in entertainment venues such as casinos and brothels in Havana, and lured gamblers from the American mainland.Tramonti now owns several times the property of a millionaire and owns one of the most luxurious hotels in Miami Beach. Tramonti was escorted into the conference room by his assistant, his staff officer.He immediately hugs Don Corleone and has a sympathetic look on his face, expressing how sorry he is for Don Corleone's loss of his son. The other old men also arrived one after another.They all recognize each other, and they have met each other over the years, some in ordinary social occasions, and some in business contacts.They showed each other professional courtesy every time they met.In the days when they were both relatively young and their bodies were not fat, they all did small favors for each other.The old man who arrived on the twentieth was Joseph Zaluqi of Detroit.The Zarouqi family owns a racetrack in the Detroit area and owns a large part of the gambling business.Zaluqi was a round-faced, amiable man who lived in a $100,000 house in the trendy Louths Corner in the Detroit area.One of his sons was related by marriage to an old and famous American family.Like Don Corleone, Zarugi was a man of the world.Detroit was the least violent of any city controlled by underground family forces.In the city, where only two people have been executed in the last three years, he disapproves of drug trafficking. Zaluqi came with his staff, and both of them stepped forward to hug old man Corleone.Zaluqi spoke with a humming American accent, and his original accent was extremely slight.His movements are very steady, he has the spirit of a businessman, and he is kind-hearted and warm to others.He said to Don Corleone, "Only your voice could have called me here." Don Corleone bowed and thanked him.He can count on Zaluqi to support him. The next two old men who arrived were from the West Coast.As they co-operated so closely on every question, they had come from there in the same car.There were two of them, Franco Falcon and Anthony Molinari.They were both younger than everyone else at the meeting, in their forties, and they were dressed more casually than the others, in a Hollywood-like attire.They were also a little too friendly.Franco Falcon controlled the movie unions and gambling at the studios, as well as a complex system of supplying girls to brothels in the western states.It is impossible for any old man to acquire the air of a place of entertainment, but Falcon did.The old man of his company, of course, distrusted him. Anthony Molinari controlled the San Francisco coast and was a well-known figure in sports betting.He is an Italian fisherman who owns the best seafood restaurant in San Francisco.He is very proud of owning such a restaurant.There is a legend that he opened this restaurant and lost money because he guaranteed good quality and low price.He had the expressionless face of a professional gambler.It is reported that he is also related to the drug smuggling activities to and from the Far Eastern sea lanes across the Mexican border.The assistants brought by the two old men, Falcon and Molinari, were young and burly, obviously not staff officers but bodyguards, but they did not dare to bring weapons to such an occasion.Everyone knows that these two bodyguards know the martial arts of unarmed self-defense.The other old men were amused by this, but not surprised at all; and if they were, they were no more surprised than if they found these two old Californians wearing amulets blessed by the Pope.However, it must be explained that some of these people are very devout and believe in God. Then came the representative of Boston's underground family, an old man who had no respect for his peers.It is reported that he is not decent to his "subjects" and hard-hearted to deceive his "subjects".This is forgivable, and everyone will adjust their greediness according to the environment.What cannot be forgiven is his inability to maintain order within his empire.In the Boston area, there are many assassinations, many small-scale wars for power and profit, and many individual reckless activities without background support. The mockery of the law is blatant.If the underground gangster families in Chicago are savages, then the underground gangster families in Boston are a bunch of rogues, shameless.Shameless fools, lawless thugs.The old Boston gangster's name was Domenico Pancha.He was short and fat, and, as another old man said, he looked like a thief with his eyes and eyes. The Cleveland Gang, perhaps the largest of the strictly gambling underground in America, was represented by a very shrewd elderly man.He had a thin face and white hair.He is considered (without pointing it out to him, of course) "Jewish gang" because his assistants are mostly Jewish and mostly Sicilian. Rumor has it that he would have appointed A Jew came to serve as his staff. In short, just as the Corleone family, the country is considered to be the Irish Gang for the leading members of Hagen. The family of old Vincent Fowler is more accurately called For the Jewish family. However, the organization he runs is extremely efficient. Although his appearance is a bit sentimental, no one has ever seen him dizzy at the sight of a murderer. His ruling strategy is: wearing spring velvet on iron hands as soft and smooth as a political glove. Representatives of the five New York families were the last to arrive.Tom Hagen especially noticed that these five people stood out and attracted people's attention compared with the country bumpkins from other places.These five old men still retain the ancient Sicilian tradition and are all "potbellied characters".In a symbolic sense, it means strength and courage, and in a literal sense, it means a broad-minded and fat body, and the meanings of these two aspects are always mutual, and in fact it is true in Sicily.These five old men are strong and fat, with big heads like lion heads, and all parts of their faces are very big, with big fleshy noses, big thick lips, and bulging cheeks.Their clothes are not very elegant, and their hair is not very delicately cut.They are down-to-earth and down-to-earth people who don't pay attention to vanity. There was an old man named Anthony Strachey, who controlled the dock shipping business in the New Jersey area and on the west side of Manhattan.He runs the gambling business in South Jersey and has a very close relationship with the Democratic Party.He made his fortune with a fleet of freight cars, largely because his trucks could be vastly overloaded and pass without being stopped and fined by road transport overweight inspectors.The trucks damaged the road, and his road repair company contracted with state authorities to repair the damaged road.It's the kind of business that would make anyone happy: one way of making money leads to another.Strachey, too, was old-fashioned and refused to run prostitution, but since his business was mainly on the wharves, he had to get involved in drug smuggling.Of the five New York families that opposed Corleone, the Strachey family was the weakest, but the most secure. to be Tyrion.The family headed by Conio controls the upstate of New York, and specially arranges for Italian immigrants to cross the border from Canada and enter the United States to operate the gambling industry in remote areas of New York State. veto power.The face of this old man is like that of a rural baker who laughs and laughs all day long. That funny look can completely disarm you.His legal status is to run a large dairy company.Corneo was a lover of children, and his pockets were full of sweets.He has a lot of grandchildren, and his colleagues have a lot of small interests, and he hopes to meet one and tease him with candy.He often wore a fedora with the brim drooping a little like a woman's sun hat, which made his round face look even wider, which was funny.He was one of the few old men who was never arrested, whose real activities were never even suspected.As such, he remains a member of the Citizens' Council and has the honor of being selected as "New York State Businessman of the Year" by the Chamber of Commerce. The closest ally of the Tattaglia family is the old man Emilio Bazzini.He runs part of the gambling industry in New York City's Brooklyn and Queens boroughs.He also engages in a bit of prostitution business, very domineering.He completely controls Capitol Island.He also manipulated sports betting in the Bronx and Westchester counties, and was involved in the narcotics trade.He was close to the Cleveland Gang and the Western Gang, and was one of the few canny figures interested in the open cities of Nevada, Vegas and Reno.He has branches in Miami Beach and Cuba.Apart from the Corleone family, his family is in New York, which is considered the largest in the whole country, and his power has even expanded to Sicily.He will intervene in any profitable illegal activities.He was even rumored to have a foothold on Wall Street, supporting the Tattaglias with money and behind-the-scenes activities since the family war broke out.His ambition is to replace Don Corleone, make himself the most powerful and admired underground gang leader in the country, and at the same time annex part of the Corleone Empire.He was a lot like Don Corleone, but more modern, more thoughtful and methodical.He should never be called senile: he is trusted by the new, younger, more active, thriving leaders.He displayed great strength of character in his calm, none of Don Corleone's enthusiasm; perhaps he was the most "respected" figure in the group at the moment. The last to arrive was old Philip Tattaglia.He was the leader of the Tattaglia family who supported Sollozzo's direct challenge to Corleone's authority.But, strange to say, he was treated with a little contempt.One of the reasons is that he was willing to allow himself to be influenced by Sollozzo, and in fact led by that ingenious "Turkish" hand.He was responsible for all this upheaval: a disturbance which greatly affected the daily business activities of the great families in New York.Another reason is that he is still a playboy over sixty years old, a pervert who chases after women whenever he sees them, and he also has ample opportunities to satisfy his animal desires and indulge himself. This is because the Tattaglia family is in the business of buying and selling women.The family's profession was organizing prostitution, and besides controlling nightclubs all over the United States, there was a way to place any talented person anywhere.Philippe Tattaglia resorted to violence to capture up-and-coming singers and comedians, and threatened to force his way into record companies, but organizing prostitution was the family's bread and butter. main source. His character made everyone here feel very unpleasant.He muttered all day, always complaining that his family business was costing too much.The laundromat's receipt, with so many towels on it, ate up all the profits (in fact, the laundry is his own); those female dolls are very lazy, very unreliable, some run away, and some commit suicide; Those in charge of picking up prostitutes are not trustworthy, dishonest, and not loyal at all. Good helpers are really hard to find; young men of Ximianli blood are very proud, and they often sneer at such jobs, thinking that trafficking and ruining women To the detriment of their dignity; those little hooligans would rather sing at the top of their voices and wear a crucifix of Easter palm leaves on the lapels of their suit jackets as a token of their devotion.Therefore, Philippe Tattaglia was always yelling, impersonal, and arrogant when speaking to his subordinates.His biggest rants were directed at the powerful people who had the power to issue or sell liquor licenses to his nightclubs and bars, and he insisted that the millions he had raised from paying the pickpockets in charge There are more millionaires than there are millionaires on Wall Street. It was inexplicable, too, that the war he had waged against the Corleones, nearly won, hadn't brought him the respect he deserved.People know that his strength comes first from Sollozzo, and also from the Bazzini family.Also, it was obviously to his disadvantage to take a sudden attack, to preemptively strike, but not to achieve complete victory.Had he been more capable, all this trouble could have been avoided.Don Corleone's death would mean the end of the war. Since they had both lost sons, the logical ending was for Don Corleone and Philip Tattaglia to welcome each other to the meeting with a formal bow.Don Corleone was the object of all attention, everyone was staring at him, trying to see what the gunshot wounds and defeat had left on him. What was puzzling was why Don Corleone was in his After Aiko's death, peace must be made. This is obviously an admission of defeat, which will definitely damage his personal prestige. They will soon understand the mystery of this. After greeting each other, pouring each other toasts, it was almost another half hour before Don Corleone was seated at the shiny walnut table.Hagen sat modestly behind the old man and slightly to the left, letting the other old men come forward and sit at the table.The assistants sat behind their old men, and the staff officers sat next to their old men, making it easy to offer opinions and suggestions when necessary. Don Corleone was the first to speak, and he spoke as if nothing had happened, as if it had never happened that he was shot and his eldest son was killed, that his empire wasn't in shambles, that his family wasn't divided, ev Lie Te did not flee to the west, under the protection of the Molinari family, nor did Michael secretly hide in the wilderness in the west.He spoke naturally, in the Sicilian dialect. "You all came and I want to say thank you," he said. "I think it's my favor to have you here; I should be grateful to you all. Therefore, I want to start by saying that I'm not here to quarrel with others, nor to persuade others, but to speak. and I will, as a reasonable man should do, spare no effort to make us all friends when we part. That is what I promise to do. Some of you know me as a man, know My people will know that I don't give guarantees lightly. Well, let's talk business. We are here today in terms of credit, and we don't need written guarantees like those lawyers who live by paper. He paused for a moment, and no one else spoke.Some were smoking a piècere, and some were sipping wine.These are patient people who are good at listening to others.They also have one thing in common: they are rare characters, characters who refuse to accept social constraints, and characters who refuse to be manipulated by others.No power in the world, no one can bring them to their knees unless they themselves will.They are men who will not hesitate to resort to deceit and murder to preserve their will.Only death can make them give up their will.In addition, reasoning completely and thoroughly can also make them give up their own will. Don Corleone let out a long sigh. "How did things evolve to this point?" He raised such a question that did not need to be answered in order to remind everyone to pay attention. "Well, that's nothing. A lot of stupidity has already happened. It's unfortunate and unnecessary. But let me give my personal take on what happened. He paused to see if anyone objected to his one-sided account of what had happened. "Thank God my health is back and maybe I can do something to get this right, maybe my son is being too reckless and stubborn. That, I don't deny. Anyway, let me just put it on the ground," he said. , Sollozzo came to me to discuss a business matter. In this business, he asked me to provide funds and political influence. He said he had been funded by the Tattaglia family. The business involved When it comes to drugs, I'm not interested in the drug business. I'm a quiet person, and the volume of such laborious buying and selling is too much. I explained this to Sollozzo, and in explaining, I told him, I showed as much respect as possible to the Tattaglia family. I politely declined his request. I told him that his business would not interfere with mine, and I had no reason to object to him making a living in this way. He misunderstood me and made us all miserable. Well, that's the way life is. Every one of you has a sad history. Things didn't turn out the way I wanted. " Don Corleone stopped and gestured to Hagen for a cold drink.Hagen quickly brought him a cold drink, and Don Corleone moistened his mouth.