It wasn’t so much a meeting as a get-together. Alphonse liked a table littered with cigar ash and spilled booze. Assorted mafiosi from across the country jumped in and out of the conversation at their leisure. They hadn’t gathered specifically to talk shop, though business, of course, was the main course on the menu, as it always ended up being when a group of wise guys came together. As Capone's stature in their world grew - having become a consiglieri and right hand in recent times - he felt inclined to espouse some of the things that he had observed and learned. To a degree, the conceit of it was a vanity he rarely indulged. He was always more obligated to speak eye to eye, than from a veritable perch, but he wanted to speak in length, and this was the tone to set. 

“After I made my bones in this thing of ours, I was reminded that I had to be cautious when walking the streets. The idea that everything you do represents your family is the most basic and immediate of codes we teach new blood in our crews, and there is nowhere our actions are more noticeable. 

Around every corner stood a man with a speech on his mind, and if you didn’t have the clear-mindedness and thick skin to brush off a bad experience or two, before you knew it you could be arguing at the unforgiving side of an East Harlem cugine with a hard-on for primeval Sicilian law - and he doesn’t like the tone of your voice.”

Capone thought he saw a couple guys nod at the recollection of similar experiences. 

“Custom, as a thing in itself, sets the tracks by which our trains run. Tradition has bequeathed us her laws: family, omertà, respect, honour. And we are not wrong to entrench ourselves so deeply in reverence for ancient rites. Can you ever act with respect to those who have passed without observing what has led us here? 

But our business has also developed, since the very beginning, with adjustable parameters; we glean from experience what is necessary to perpetuate our success. That is why we continue to operate while so many other criminal enterprises fail. 

As such, over the years, the streets have grown in a predictable and Frankensteinian fashion. We began by chopping and sewing stray parts together. It was untidy, chaotic, unpredictable. What rose from the mire was not always easy to look upon but the culture of spontaneity inspired brazen, creative minds just the same.

That changed, slowly, as Godfather’s rose and fell. What we learned we passed on to our sons; appropriate ways to act, appropriate ways to speak. We turned rhetoric into a horse and beat it to death. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about the importance of street presence in a crewleader, there are dozens of gangsters, alive and dead, who can bring you up to speed. (I’ll tell you this: quiet leaders live, have lasted, and have held important roles, but they have never been remembered.)

It’s another reminder: every act counts, not just the ones meant to cultivate an image. When we talk about pickpocketing now, something that has been noted in rules by Godfathers, who are we discussing it for? Fresh blood rolls off the boats but they just as quickly find sponsors, teachers, and mentors, as they would their way to our streets. 

So who else? For a gaggle of mafiosi to line up and throw an opinion into a hat? What is the purpose of entertaining ancient ideas from old blood, and what are we showing by receiving it in the manner in which we do? I think this, I think that. Once you sit in the kitchen long enough, you stop picking up the smell. 

So, you open a window.

When we stress presence and leadership, we preach the importance of an individuality of opinion. Is it shocking, then, that a business which rewards ambition and greed has in turn created a culture of speaking that is more self-serving than rewarding? Why inquire, when it is in our nature to compel? 

Discussion is cooperative and reactive, an ebb and flow of information traded back and forth until a resolution is moulded (or not, sometimes more is learned from being driven further apart). Instead, I have observed many treat it instead like a trash dump, where you bring all of the things you have gathered, drop them off, and leave. 

There are men now, in the 1930’s, still studying stone tablets written thousands of years ago, and finding new things to say and new ways to be interested. And every week, a group of mafiosi are still asking themselves questions their ancestors may as well have carved into cave walls.”

Alphonse shrugged, turning his palms out in a ‘what can you do?’ manner. 

“Judgment will always pass. It certainly does in my mind. The streets are where history is made and recounted, and history favours the inquisitive, the brash and the bold. When you speak, don’t let your intention be to earn attention, it should be because you have something to say. That everyone will notice is part and parcel of the act, as it is out there for all to see.

Treating your image in the streets as something to cultivate and be proud of immediately pays more dividends than performing it like a duty because it will earn you the respect of your peers. That is the bottom line. No one can ever stress how much it matters what opinions you allow people to shape of you. It is everything."

The gangster leaned back, finally, and exhaled audibly as his back hit the chair. 

"So, for the sake of moving this discussion forward, my friends, let me ask you a few questions besides the points I have already made. Are we scraping the barrel for conversations that don't relate to the present, or immediate history? Can there always be new ways to talk about things that have existed since this all began? And why do we restrict ourselves to terms of business? Don't we ever roll up our sleeves? 

You'd have to look long and hard these days to find a conversation about Big Babe and the Yanks, or the damn Montreal Maroons falling to the mighty Red Wings in the '35 Stanley Cup final. Hell, you won't even find a dissenting voice over that damn bastard Woodrow Wilson and his attempted veto of our beloved Volstead Act.

Sometimes that's all a fella feels like talking about."

Al bristled at the thought of the timid, bespectacled Democrat. Capone was a true Republican, like all of the politicians he bought into office.