Weird little thing in the book, at Vito's funeral, "The Five Families sent their Dons and caporegimes, as did the Tessio and Clemenza Families." So it seems at some point Puzo was thinking of them as independents, perhaps abandoning the line later.
That is interesting Pete. Of course, in other posts we have lamented Puzo's sloppy writing. I guess this is just one example of it especially since near the end of the novel Puzo writes that "during that same twenty-four hour period Clemenza and Lampone turned loose their regimes ..."; "Neri was sent to take command of the Tessio regime."; "Now...Clemenza had his own family."
