Mr. Bonavolonta has hated the Mafia ever since, as a child, he would overhear his father, an immigrant tailor, resisting attempts to extort his earnings. So he is avid to demythologize the mob in every way he can. He characterizes his subjects as lazy, unclean, parasitic, dishonorable, brutish and, above all, stupid. To illustrate this last, he cites one underboss's deputy who could not be persuaded by an undercover agent that Lake Michigan was not the Atlantic Ocean. And he quotes another mob member who told an agent with whom he was cooperating that if the agent should die an untimely death, he would personally be honored to act as "a ball bearing" at his funeral, meaning, the agent assumed, a pall bearer.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/08/books/...ed=2&src=pm