The Godfather 教父 Chapter 11

Captain Mark McCluskey sat in his office fingering three envelopes bulging ¹ with betting slips. He was frowning and wishing he could decode ² the notations ³ on the slips. It was very important that he do so. The envelopes were the betting slips that his raiding parties had picked up when they had hit one of the Corleone Family bookmakers the night before. Now the bookmaker would have to buy back the slips so that players couldn't claim winners and wipe him out., ,It was very important for Captain McCluskey to decode the slips because he didn't want to get cheated when he sold the slips back to the bookmaker. If there was fifty grand worth of action, then maybe he could sell it back for five grand. But if there were a lot of heavy bets and the slips represented a hundred grand or maybe even two hundred grand, then the price should be considerably ⁴ higher. McCluskey fiddled ⁵ with the envelopes and then decided ⁶ to let the bookie sweat a little bit and make the first offer. That might tip off what the real price should be., ,McCluskey looked at the station house clock on the wall of his office. It was time for him to pick up that greasy ⁷ Turk, Sollozzo,and take him to wherever he was going to meet the Corleone Family. McCluskey went over to his wall locker ⁸ and started to change into his civilian ⁹ clothes. When he was finished he called his wife and told her he would not be home for supper that night, that he would be out on the job. He never confided ¹⁰ in his wife on anything. She thought they lived the way they did on his policeman's salary. McCluskey grunted ¹¹ with amusement. His mother had thought the same thing but he had learned early. His father had shown him the ropes., , ,The storekeepers would shake his hand and compliment him extravagantly ¹³ and ring open their cash registers to give the little boy a gift of five or ten dollars. At the end of the day, little Mark McCluskey would have all the pockets of his suit stuffed with paper money, would feel so proud that his father's friends liked him well enough to give him a present every month they saw him. Of course his father put the money in the bank for him, for his college education, and little Mark got at most a fifty-cent piece for himself., ,Then when Mark got home and his policemen uncles asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he would lisp childishly, "A policeman," they would all laugh uproariously. And of course later on, though his father wanted him to go to college first, he went right from high school to studying for the police force., ,Conscious of the bulging red folder, Nim told her,"Ask if it's important." 尼姆想到那个鼓鼓囊囊的红色文件夹便告诉她：“问问是不是重要的事 。 ”,All he had to do was decode it and pass it over.他需要做的就是将它破译然后转给他人。