We turned off Sixth onto Spring and went into a little place called Umberto’s. A bald guy in a vest hustled up to Rollie with a lot of smiling and a lot of buon giorno and brought us to a booth across from the bar. A couple of dozen people were already eating and more than half of them were speaking Italian. Dark eyes moved with Rollie and voices lowered. The maître d’ snapped his fingers and a kid with spots on his face brought water. Maxie sat on the floor next to Rollie and panted. When the maître d’ and the kid were gone, I said, “They don’t mind the dog?”

“Max and I been eating here for years. When I was with the cops, I kept book on half the guys in this place. We nod, we smile, it’s like a game we play. This place is owned by the Gamboza family.”

“Here in DeLuca territory?”

Rollie sipped his water and nodded. “Used to be there were only five core families, with everybody killing everybody else over territory and business, but now there’s eight, nine families and these guys all like to make like they’re Lee Iacocca, everybody polite, everybody doing business with everybody else as long as the other guy pays rispetto. You know rispetto?”

“You want to do business in another guy’s territory, you don’t just move in. You pay respect. You ask permission and you give him a piece of the action.”

“Yeah. Vito Ratoulli, the guy owns this place, he’s a soldier for Carlino. He pays the DeLucas six percent of his gross to do business here. Vito makes the best calamari diablo around, he treats DeLuca with respect, old Sal even comes here to eat sometimes. Works both ways. Some of DeLuca’s people have businesses in Carlino territory.”

The maître d’ came back and put a large white plate between us. There was a little white bowl of olive oil and basil in the center of the plate and a dozen paper-thin slices of prosciutto fanned out around it and a row of small hot rolls around the edge of the plate. The rolls were warm and slick with olive oil and little pieces of garlic. Rollie folded up a slice of the prosciutto, swirled it in the olive oil, ate half of it along with one of the little rolls, then gave the rest to his dog. He said, “You like spicy food?”

“Yes.”

Rollie told the maître d’ that we wanted the calamari. The maître d’ went away. I said, “What part of Italy are your people from?”

Rollie made a booming laugh. “You eat enough macaroni, you lose your taste for red beans and fat-back.”

I said, “Why’d the families make peace?”