"'I want you to know all my friends so that you can have an idea with whom you are dealing, and don't think they are poor, but all landlords,' now confided Cecala. 'Morello is President of the Corleone Society (Ignatz Florio) and has in his power four buildings amounting to one hundred thousand dollars. The other man you met the last time, Pecoraro, is the proprietor of a large wine deposit, and he has more property. Giglio and Cina are owners of the estates that you saw. I am poor because I did not know how to profit. My profession is that of barber. I had a splendid shop, but the business was poor and I sold it. Two weeks after I sold the barber shop I got in with Morello and opened a grocery store in Mott Street. But after two years I was forced into bankruptcy because all the goods were sold on credit and I was not paid. Then I opened up two gambling houses, one in Mott Street and the other in Elizabeth Street. I was getting along well while I fed the police. When I did not want to give them any more they began to go against me and forced me to close up.' "At the moment I could not understand why it should have been necessary to 'feed' the police, as he said, not being acquainted with the methods here." FOOTNOTE: [2] Piddu is the Sicilian diminutive for Giuseppe, the Christian name of Morello. CHAPTER XI THE BLACK-HANDER'S POLICE PROTECTION "'Certainly,' Cecala said. 'In America _everything is prohibited; but if you pay the police or detectives they will leave you in peace_. In this land money counts, so that if _you kill any one and have money you will get out of it_. Morello knows how much money he has given to detectives to get out free out of three or four cases in which he was implicated. Even now he is supposed to be watched by the police who do not care to watch him because they know that they will receive their bit. The government always holds him under suspicion as the head of the Black-Handers. When anything happens Morello is always in danger of arrest, but the same policeman he feeds tips him off and so Morello goes into hiding. The police then feign to raid his place, but, of course, the man wanted is never there. Now then, my dear Don Antonio, that's the way things are done in this country. During the last three years I am getting along well in my line: that is, I am the head of a band of incendiaries and earn a little money now and then.' "Cecala was disclosing to me a phase of the under-world life of crime and horror of which I knew nothing at the time. "'And what do you do to earn this money? Do you take the objects that you find in the burned houses?' I inquired. "'No,' sneered Cecala with contempt. 'I set fire to the houses to defraud the insurance companies!' "He said this with the pride of a professional expert. "'And how do you do it?' I inquired, curious to learn his ways.