Английский язык с Крестным Отцом - Илья Франк
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Slapping the spoiled little bitch around always made him feel good. It dissolved some of
the frustration (досада, расстройство /планов/, разочарование) he felt at being
treated so badly by the Corleones.
The first time he had marked her up, he'd been a little worried. She had gone right out
to Long Beach to complain to her mother and father and to show her black eye. He had
really sweated it out. But when she came back she had been surprisingly meek, the
dutiful little Italian wife. He had made it a point to be the perfect husband over the next
few weeks, treating her well in every way, being lovey and nice with her, banging her
every day, morning and night. Finally she had told him what had happened since she
thought he would never act that way again.
She had found her parents coolly unsympathetic and curiously amused. Her mother
had had a little sympathy and had even asked her father to speak to Carlo Rizzi. Her
father had refused. "She is my daughter," he had said, "but now she belongs to her
husband. He knows his duties. Even the King of Italy didn't dare to meddle with the
relationship of husband and wife. Go home and learn how to behave so that he will not
beat you."
Connie had said angrily to her father, "Did you ever hit your wife?" She was his
favorite and could speak to him so impudently. He had answered, "She never gave me
reason to beat her." And her mother had nodded and smiled.
She told them how her husband had taken the wedding present money and never told
her what he did with it. Her father had shrugged and said, "I would have done the same
if my wife had been as presumptuous (самонадеянный, дерзкий, нахальный
[prı’zΛmptju∂s]) as you."
And so she had returned home, a little bewildered, a little frightened. She had always
been her father's favorite and she could not understand his coldness now.
But the Don had not been so unsympathetic as he pretended. He made inquiries and
found out what Carlo Rizzi had done with the wedding present money. He had men
assigned to Carlo Rizzi's bookmaking operation who would report to Hagen everything
Rizzi did on the job. But the Don could not interfere. How expect a man to discharge his
husbandly duties to a wife whose family he feared? It was an impossible situation and
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he dared not meddle. Then when Connie became pregnant he was convinced of the
wisdom of his decision and felt he never could interfere though Connie complained to
her mother about a few more beatings and the mother finally became concerned
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enough to mention it to the Don. Connie even hinted that she might want a divorce. For
the first time in her life the Don was angry with her. "He is the father of your child. What
can a child come to in this world if he has no father?" he said to Connie.
Learning all this, Carlo Rizzi grew confident. He was perfectly safe. In fact he bragged
(to brag – похваляться, хвастаться) to his two "writers" on the book, Sally Rags and
Coach, about how he bounced his wife around when she got snotty and saw their looks
of respect that he had the guts (имеет смелость, не боится; gut – кишка) to
manhandle (тащить, передвигать вручную; грубо обращаться, избивать) the
daughter of the great Don Corleone.
But Rizzi would not have felt so safe if he had known that when Sonny Corleone
learned of the beatings he had flown into a murderous rage and had been restrained
only by the sternest and most imperious command of the Don himself, a command that
even Sonny dared not disobey. Which was why Sonny avoided Rizzi, not trusting
himself to control his temper.
So feeling perfectly safe on this beautiful Sunday morning, Carlo Rizzi sped crosstown
on 96th Street to the East Side. He did not see Sonny's car coming the opposite way
toward his house.
Sonny Corleone had left the protection of the mall and spent the night with Lucy
Mancini in town. Now on the way home he was traveling with four bodyguards, two in
front and two behind. He didn't need guards right beside him, he could take care of a
single direct assault. The other men traveled in their own cars and had apartments on
either side of Lucy's apartment. It was safe to visit her as long as he didn't do it too often.
But now that he was in town he figured he would pick up his sister Connie and take her
out to Long Beach. He knew Carlo would be working at his book and the cheap bastard
wouldn't get her a car. So he'd give his sister a lift out.
He waited for the two men in front to go into the building and then followed them. He
saw the two men in back pull up behind his car and get out to watch the streets. He kept
his own eyes open. It was a million-to-one shot that the opposition even knew he was in
town but he was always careful. He had learned that in the 1930's war.
He never used elevators. They were death traps. He climbed the eight flights to
Connie's apartment, going fast. He knocked on her door. He had seen Carlo's car go by
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and knew she would be alone. There was no answer. He knocked again and then he
heard his sister's voice, frightened, timid, asking, "Who is it?"
The fright in the voice stunned him. His kid sister had always been fresh and snotty,
tough as anybody in the family. What the hell had happened to her? He said, "It's
Sonny." The bolt inside slid back and the door opened and Connie was in his arms
sobbing. He was so surprised he just stood there. He pushed her away from him and
saw her swollen face and he understood what had happened.
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He pulled away from her to run down the stairs and go after her husband. Rage flamed
up in him, contorting his own face. Connie saw the rage and clung to him, not letting him
go, making him come into the apartment. She was weeping out of terror now. She knew
her older brother's temper and feared it. She had never complained to him about Carlo
for that reason. Now she made him come into the apartment with her.
"It was my fault," she said. "I started a fight with him and I tried to hit him so he hit me.
He really didn't try to hit me that hard. I walked into it."
Sonny's heavy Cupid face was under control. "You going to see the old man today?"
She didn't answer, so he added, "I thought you were, so I dropped over to give you a
lift. I was in the city anyway."
She shook her head. "I don't want them to see me this way. I'll come next week."
"OK," Sonny said. He picked up her kitchen phone and dialed a number. "I'm getting a
doctor to come over here and take a look at you and fix you up. In your condition you
have to be careful. How many months before you have the kid?"
"Two months," Connie said. "Sonny, please don't do anything. Please don't."
Sonny laughed. His face was cruelly intent (полный решимости; пристальный;
погруженный во что-либо [ın'tent]) when he said, "Don't worry, I won't make your kid
an orphan before he's born." He left the apartment after kissing her lightly on her
uninjured cheek.
On East 112th Street a long line of cars were double-parked in front of a candy store
that was the headquarters of Carlo Rizzi's book. On the sidewalk in front of the store,
fathers played catch with small children they had taken for a Sunday morning ride and
to keep them company as they placed their bets (делали ставки). When they saw Carlo
Rizzi coming they stopped playing ball and bought their kids ice cream to keep them
quiet. Then they started studying the newspapers that gave the starting pitchers (pitcher
– подающий мяч; to pitch – бросать, кидать; /спорт./ подавать), trying to pick out
winning baseball bets for the day.
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Carlo went into the large room in the back of the store. His two "writers," a small wiry
man called Sally Rags and a big husky fellow called Coach, were already waiting for the
action to start. They had their huge, lined pads in front of them ready to write down bets.
On a wooden stand was a blackboard with the names of the sixteen big league baseball
teams chalked on it, paired to show who was playing against who. Against each pairing
was a blocked-out square to enter the odds.
Carlo asked Coach, "Is the store phone tapped (to tap the line – подслушивать
телефонный разговор; tap – пробка, затычка; кран; to tap – вставлять кран,
снабжать втулкой; вынимать пробку) today?"
Coach shook his head. "The tap is still off."
Carlo went to the wall phone and dialed a number. Sally Rags and Coach watched
him impassively as he jotted down the "line," the odds on all the baseball games for that
day. They watched him as he hung up the phone and walked over to the blackboard
and chalked up the odds against each game. Though Carlo did not know it, they had
already gotten the line and were checking his work. In the first week in his job Carlo had
made a mistake in transposing the odds onto the blackboard and had created that
dream of all gamblers, a "middle." That is, by betting the odds with him and then betting
against the same team with another bookmaker at the correct odds, the gambler could
not lose. The only one who could lose was Carlo's book. That mistake had caused a
six-thousand-dollar loss in the book for the week and confirmed the Don's judgment
about his son-in-law. He had given the word that all of Carlo's work was to be checked.
Normally the highly placed members of the Corleone Family would never be
concerned with such an operational detail. There was at least a five-layer insulation to
their level. But since the book was being used as a testing ground for the son-in-law, it
had been placed under the direct scrutiny of Tom Hagen, to whom a report was sent
every day.
Now with the line posted, the gamblers were thronging into the back room of the
candy store to jot down the odds on their newspapers next to the games printed there
with probable pitchers. Some of them held their little children by the hand as they looked
up at the blackboard. One guy who made big bets looked down at the little girl he was
holding by the hand and said teasingly, "Who do you like today, Honey, Giants or the
Pirates?" The little girl, fascinated by the colorful names, said, "Are Giants stronger than
Pirates?" The father laughed.
A line began to form in front of the two writers. When a writer filled one of his sheets
he tore it off, wrapped the money he had collected in it and handed it to Carlo. Carlo
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went out the back exit of the room and up a flight of steps to an apartment which
housed the candy store owner's family. He called in the bets to his central exchange
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and put the money in a small wall safe that was hidden by an extended window drape.
Then he went back down into the candy store after having first burned the bet sheet and
flushed (to flush – спускать; бить струей) its ashes down the toilet bowl.
None of the Sunday games started before two P.M. because of the blue laws, so after
the first crowd of bettors, family men who had to get their bets in and rush home to take
their families to the beach, came the trickling (trickle – струйка) of bachelor gamblers or
the die-hards (die-hard – твердолобый человек; консерватор) who condemned their
families to Sundays in the hot city apartments. These bachelor bettors were the big
gamblers, they bet heavier and came back around four o'clock to bet the second games
of doubleheaders (две игры, следующие непосредственно друг за другом). They
were the ones who made Carlo's Sundays a full-time day with overtime, though some
married men called in from the beach to try and recoup (компенсировать, возмещать
[rı'ku:p]) their losses.
By one-thirty the betting had trickled off so that Carlo and Sally Rags could go out and
sit on the stoop (крыльцо со ступенями; открытая веранда) beside the candy store
and get some fresh air. They watched the stickball (stickball – a form of baseball played
in the streets, on playgrounds, etc., in which a rubber ball and a broomstick or the like
are used in place of a baseball and bat) game the kids were having. A police car went
by. They ignored it. This book had very heavy protection at the precinct and couldn't be
touched on a local level. A raid would have to be ordered from the very top and even
then a warning would come through in plenty of time.
Coach came out and sat beside them. They gossiped a while about baseball and
women. Carlo said laughingly, "I had to bat (бить палкой, битой; bat – бита; дубина,
било /для льна/) my wife around again today, teach her who's boss."
Coach said casually, "She's knocked up pretty big now, ain't she?"
"Ahh, I just slapped her face a few times," Carlo said.
"I didn't hurt her." He brooded for a moment. "She thinks she can boss me around, I
don't stand for that (не потерплю этого)."
There were still a few bettors hanging around shooting the breeze (to shoot the
breeze – трепаться, болтать /сленг/; breeze – легкий ветерок; новость, слух), talking
baseball, some of them sitting on the steps above the two writers and Carlo. Suddenly
the kids playing stickball in the street scattered. A car came screeching (to screech –
скрипеть, визжать) up the block and to a halt in front of the candy store. It stopped so
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abruptly that the tires screamed and before it had stopped, almost, a man came hurtling
out (to hurtle – пролетать, нестись со свистом; сильно бросать) of the driver's seat,