They take Joey seriously cause of Stanfa. Despite his lack of business acumen, not many guys that young would have had the balls to hit a bosses son like that. Until someone else puts the murder game down ( And I mean, these guys just got through doing heavy time, they want To earn, not go back to jail..) and REALLY challenges him, you always gotta kind of respect that....

Funny thing, maybe the Bonnano Xmas party wasn't on the Feds radar cause they had all their resources tied into the bigger fish in the Genovese family. We're the parties the same year? Or was the Bonnano one a year later, I forget...