The man receiving the most slaps on the back Ireland's prime minister, Brian Cowen was a picture of rumpled, jowly anxiety, like a hapless underboss summoned to explain a disaster on his watch.
So were the reputed underboss, Domenico Cefalu ("Italian Dom" or "the Greaseball") and consigliere Joseph ("Miserable") Corozzo.
Below the underboss were the caporegime, or lieutenants, who, acting as buffers between the lower echelon workers and the don himself, protected him from a too-direct association with the organization's illicit operations.
Each don had an underboss, who functioned as a vice president or deputy director, and a consigliere, or counselor, who had considerable power and influence.
Each mob, or "family," already well-organized, would be reorganized with both a boss and an underboss and, under them, lieutenants (caporegime) and soldiers.
Most famously in the early Nineties, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a Gambino underboss, defected to give testimony that eventually led to the conviction of the so-called "Teflon Don, John Gottii.
As reported yesterday in a gossip column in the News, the actor James Gandolfini, who portrays the lead character, Tony Soprano, the underboss of a New Jersey organized-crime family, has apparently been replaced by former President Bill Clinton.
A bit later, Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, Gotti's underboss, says, "I don't think it's gonna be by Gleeson".
Scarpa believed that the gunmen had been sent by William (Wild Bill) Cutolo, then reputedly the acting underboss.
For decades, Mafioso from Joseph Valachi ("The Valachi Papers") to Henry Hill ("Wise Guys" and "Goodfellas") to Salvatore Gravano ("Underboss") have violated the traditional code of silence, looking to cash in on their criminal pasts with potentially lucrative careers as newly minted truth-tellers.
The alleged crimes spanned two decades and include the 1993 murder of underboss Joseph Scopo, the family's asserted control of Local 6A of the Cement and Concrete Workers Union and the asserted defrauding of the city in connection with an annual feast, La Festa di Santa Rosalia in Bensonhurst.
