they decided to run this traffic together with the Sicilians even though compared with the Sicilians they were far hungrier far more enterprising far more capable of sniffing out every opportunity to turn a profit in all this the personality that emerged was Antonio Bardellino who was a great innovator continuously looking for new opportunities for new business new investments always looking for something bigger he already had something of a reputation and he oversaw the transition from a clan on a local scale to a clan with a regional dimension and sooner or later with a national and ultimately international dimension he was already traveling constantly in Europe and in Latin America to keep tabs on the international drug traffic while Mario Iovine his deputy remained solidly connected to our town and the surrounding area and managed the organization in the home territory and did the dirty work

and the clan grew constantly because it recruited a steady stream of young new members most of them out of work or in any case from poor families and soon it had as many as five thousand made men an enormous number considering that they all came from the same local villages and towns which have a total population of between fifty and sixty thousand and among these five thousand made men there are also prominent citizens professionals government officials and civil servants people who have connections with the political world with agencies and institutions people who are employed in all sorts of businesses while among the young there are only a very few who have to risk their lives as killers or in shootouts with the police who by the way in this period seemed to be blind and deaf because the links between the clan and the police like the agents and officers who overlooked the frauds at the fruit dump were becoming more and more intense increasingly solid

the main jobs for most of the young made men the muschilli were keeping an eye on the territory with constant patrols keeping and collecting money for the various traffics and bribes and protection extortion and fronting for more or less legal activities having property contracts real estate farmland and things of that sort put in their name that became a very convenient and easy way to make a living and it was even fun because it was like belonging to a big community that included young people from various towns and villages and they organized everywhere and in the same way secret gambling dens where people would hang out and spend the night winning and losing immense amounts of money and there were houses where you could go for sex there were always women available they would organize orgies and there was always plenty to drink and plenty to snort because cocaine circulated freely there