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aligned himself with a boss called Vagnino, and this was perhaps natural, as Vagnino's strength lay in prostitution and the docks. But Vagnino was old, and had spent too long in prison, and lacked the will. Consequently, the war went badly for Guido and his gang. Being low in the scale of things, they were in the forefront of the battle. Within a month, half his gang were dead or had deserted, and Guido himself was in the hospital, his back and buttocks pitted with lead from the blast of a shotgun. He was lucky-he could have been facing the other way.
    While he lay on his stomach, his mentor Vagnino, tired and careless, ate dinner in the wrong restaurant and was shot to death before he finished the fritto misto.
    At this point, the police made a belated show of their authority. Newspapers and politicians demanded action. Deals were struck between the victors, led by one Floriano Conti, and the public prosecutor. Evidence was provided and an assorted dozen low-echelon operators were tried and sent to prison. Guido was among them. Sitting stiff and sore in the caged box in the courtroom, he heard the judge sentence him to two years in prison. He was eighteen years old.
    Prison had been a terrible shock. Not the hardships or the indignity-his upbringing had prepared him for that. He discovered that he suffered from mild but positive claustrophobia, which manifested itself in acute depression. The Italian penal system of the time took no cognizance of such problems and he suffered badly.
    For two months after his release he stayed in Positano. Not in his mother's home, but on the hills above the town, sleeping in the open, high above the cliffs and with the space of the ocean in front of him and the hills ranging far behind. He slowly readjusted and he resolved never to allow it to happen again. The experience had not reformed him, but in the future getting caught was not an option. Out there in the open, he also thought about his future. The Splendide brothel in Naples had been closed down by the police; the building was unoccupied and producing no income. In the past two years, Conti had tightened his grip on the city and cemented working alliances with influential officials, both in the police and the local government.
    Guido knew that to put the Splendide back into business he would need Conti's tacit approval, so his first act on arriving in Naples was to seek a meeting.
    Conti was still a young man, in his middle thirties, and he was of the new breed of bosses. Having established his territory by violence, he now adopted the posture of the practical businessman. He realized that to take full advantage of his power it was necessary to come to arrangements with other nationwide bosses. Cooperation was the theme, and when emissaries had arrived from Palermo he had agreed to a series of meetings to establish spheres of influence and a pecking order of power.
    These meetings during 1953-54 were curiously similar to the election of a Pope-held in great secrecy, and the result announced by something less than a puff of smoke. A great deal of jockeying for position went on. The hard traditionalists from Calabria did not want the more sophisticated bosses from Milan and Turin to have too much power. Similarly, those in the center from Rome and Naples wanted more of a say than had been normal before the war. Everybody accepted that there had to be order and structure and that someone had to be an arbitrator-which, in effect, meant the man of most influence.
    The bosses of the north wouldn't accept the Calabrians and vice versa. Moretti in Rome was considered too weak and Conti himself too young.
    As usual under such circumstances, a compromise was reached. The meetings had been instigated and organized from Palermo. The boss there was Cantarella.
    Small, dapper, and a diplomat. He was quietly determined to reestablish Palermo as the fountainhead and he had read the signs properly. The compromise installed him as interim arbitrator.