On Palm Sunday , one year after the Great War against the Santadio, Don
Domenico Clericuzio celebrated the christening of two infants of his own
blood and made the most important decision of his life. He invited the
greatest Family chiefs in America, as well as Alfred Gronevelt, the
owner of the Xanadu Hotel in Vegas, and David Redfellow, who had built
up a vast drug empire in the United States. All his partners to some
degree.
Now the most powerful Mafia Family head in America, Don Clericuzio
planned to relinquish that power, on the surface. It was time to play a
different hand; obvious power was too dangerous. But the relinquishing
of power was dangerous in itself. He had to do it with the most
skillful benignity and with personal goodwill. And he had to do it on
his own base.
The Clericuzio estate in Quogue comprised twenty acres surrounded by a
ten-foot-high redbrick wall armed by barbed wire and electronic sensors.
It held, besides the mansion, the homes for his three sons as well as
twenty small homes for trusted Family retainers.
Before the arrival of the guests, the Don and his sons sat around the
white wrought-iron table in the trellised garden at the back of the
mansion. The oldest, Giorgio, was tall, with a small, fierce mustache
and the lanky frame of an English gentleman, which he adorned with
tailored clothes. He was twenty-seven, saturnine, with savage wit and
closed face. The Don informed Giorgio that he, Giorgio, would be
applying to the Wharton School of Business. There he would learn all
the intricacies of stealing money while staying within the law.
Giorgio did not question his father; this was a royal edict, not an
invitation to discussion. He nodded obedience.
The Don addressed his nephew, Joseph "Pippi" De Lena, next.
The Don loved Pippi as much as he did his sons, for in addition to
blood-Pippi being his dead sister's son-Pippi was the great general who
had conquered the savage Santadio.
"You will go and live permanently in Vegas' " he said. "You will look
after our interest in the Xanadu Hotel. Now that our Family is retiring
from operations, there will not be much work here to do.
However you will remain the Family Hammer' " He saw Pippi was not happy,
that he must give reasons. "Your wife, Nalene, cannot live in the
atmosphere of the Family, she cannot live in the Bronx Enclave.
She is too different. She cannot be accepted by them. You must build
your life away from us." Which was all true, but the Don had another
reason. Pippi was the great hero general of the Clericuzio Family, and
