The Godfather

 
 

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 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
115
Chapter 11
Captain Mark McCluskey sat in his office fingering three envelopes bulging with betting 
slips. He was frowning and wishing he could decode the notations 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 higher. McCluskey fiddled with the 
envelopes and then decided 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 Turk, Sollozzo,and take him to wherever he was going to meet the 
Corleone Family. McCluskey went over to his wall locker and started to change into his 
civilian 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 in his 
wife on anything. She thought they lived the way they did on his policeman’s salary. 
McCluskey grunted with amusement. His mother had thought the same thing but he had 
learned early. His father had shown him the ropes. 
His father had been a police sergeant, and every week father and son had walked 
through the precinct and McCluskey Senior had introduced his six-year-old son to the 
storekeepers, saying, “And this is my little boy.” 
The storekeepers would shake his hand and compliment him extravagantly 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 

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