Arty was scrawling in his private shorthand in his cheap hlue spiral notebook. Without lifting his eyes from the page he gave a noncommittal nod.
"Sicilians," Vincente went on, "we believe the opposite. Laws could change tomorra. Ya could have a different cop onna beat, a different judge inna courtroom. The whole fuckin' government could change. But your friends, they ain't goin' nowhere. World ain't that big. Where they gonna go? You'll be dealin' wit' 'em next week, next year; ya couldn't shake 'em if ya wanted to, believe me.
So the bottom line? If ya gotta do somethin' wrong to keep things easy wit' your friends, ya do it."
Arty looked up from his notebook. "We saying wrong or illegal?"
"An excellent question!" said Vincente.
He raised a finger, his cavernous dark eyes picked up glints from the stars and the floodlights; for the moment his grim preoccupations seemed to fall away, the relief was like a cramp letting go. He came forward to the edge of his seat, and despite the wrinkles he seemed suddenly young, as spry and bold as a sophomore in a dorm, talking philosophy in his pajamas.
"Wrong or illegal?" he parroted with zest. "Who's ta decide where one stops and th' other starts? Fuckin' government, they want ya ta believe the laws are right, period. Ya think about it, ya know that's bullshit. Prohibition—right one day, wrong the next? Gambling—wrong for four guys inna back of a candy store, right for four thousand ol' ladies in a casino? Obvious bullshit."
He broke off, sipped some wine, wiped his full lips with the back of his hand.
"But there's gotta be some way—" Arty put in.
"Some way a what?" Vincente interrupted. "Some way a keepin' things orderly? Which is another way a sayin' keepin' people in their place? I agree. But my point is this: ya got blond hair, ya been ta college, y'own stock and got a house inna country, then yeah, the laws look pretty reasonable; ya say, Hey, I'm playin' by the rules and I'm winning, so this must be a fair game and I must be a helluva fella. Ya got black hair, ya start off broke, ya talk funny—it all looks a little different, don't it? And this is where your friends come in. Ya see what I'm sayin'?"
Arty wasn't sure he did, but he nodded and kept scrawling. He thought vaguely of the terrifying day when he would have to sit down with this jungle of notes and bushwhack a trail that a reader could follow.
"Mafia," Vincente rolled on. "In Sicily, ya know, it goes by a lotta different names. I'll tell ya my favorite: gli amici degli amici. The friends of friends. That says it all. It's an us-and-them kinda thing, that simple—a system outside the system."
The Godfather paused for a sip of wine. Crickets rasped, blue light shimmered softly above the pool.
"Not that the system runs perfect," the old man acknowledged. "The legit world has its fuckups; so do we. And this is where it comes back to right and wrong."
Arty pricked up his ears; he'd stopped believing it ever would.
"Someone fucks up inna legit world, the legit world decides how ta judge it. Someone fucks up in our world, we decide. We judge hard, very hard, but we judge fair. And we judge accordin' to what we think is right and wrong. What I'm sayin', we don't dodge th' obligation, we don't go runnin' ta lawyers, we don't hide behind robes and flags and fancy words and mumbo jumbo. We judge. And lemme tell ya somethin', Ahty, I ain't braggin', but that takes balls. Someone needs punishing, we don't leave it to a buncha strangers—we punish. We clean our own house; we don't ask for help. Takes nerve."
The old man stabbed the air with his index finger, cleared his throat, and reached for his wine. He took a hurried shallow sip and then continued.
"And this is how it's gotta be. Ya know why, Ahty? Because gli amici degli amici, the whole network, like, it's just a big outgrowt' a the family. Ya got a problem in your family, ya run to a cop? Ya think a cop has any fuckin' business nosin' in when it's a question a fa—"
The old man broke off suddenly, the last fragment tailed away in a slow and labored whistling hiss. Arty kept on scratching out his notes, and when he finally looked up he saw Vincente bent and slouching in his chair, as limp as if he had no bones. His eyes were dull and distant, his neck was frail and stringy inside his shirt. Arty had seen him run out of gas before, but never this abruptly; he had no way of knowing that the old man, in his meanderings, had fallen into a thought as into a muddy ditch with chill and fetid water at the bottom.
"Go ahead, Vincente," the ghostwriter coaxed. "What you were saying, it was—"
"It was bullshit," the old man said bitterly. "I don't know what the fuck I'm talkin' about." He picked up his wineglass, twirled it by the stem, put it aside without drinking. He looked past Arty at the blue gleam of the pool, stared off at the dead heavens and seemed to want to be there.