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appointment as Vincent’s underboss on the working side of the Prizzi family when Charley was thirty-two years old.
    On the night of Charley’s initiation into the friendship of the men of respect, the Prizzis had assembled forty “made” men at the St. Gabbione Laundry sorting room, in the basement. Charley had waited in an anteroom, amid the heady, strong, cleansing smells of soap and lye, with his fellow nominees: Dimples Tancredi, twenty-nine; his best friend, Gusto, twenty-three; Momo “The Cobra” Ginafonda, thirty-four, and two other guys who died from Asian flu within the following year.
    Charley had taken it for granted that his father would be his sponsor, so that he and all the others, including the members, were astounded when Don Corrado himself came out of the meeting room and escorted Charley into the presence of the brotherhood to be sworn in.
    Don Corrado was a robust fifty-nine years old when Charley was seventeen. He was, himself, fast becoming a national legend in the fratellanza and was already one of the nine richest men in the United States. Solemnly, he drove a dagger into the wooden table and, holding its hilt, said, “The first new member to enter the honored society within the Prizzi family for five years is the son of my oldest friend, Angelo Partanna, my consigliere . This son, who stands beside me now, is seventeen years of age, the same age his father was when he was sworn into membership before he left Agrigento, and the same age as I, myself, when I took the sacred oaths.”
    He placed a revolver at the base of the embedded knife. “Charley,” he said in his piercing voice, “you are entering into the honored society of the brotherhood of men of the greatest courage and loyalty. You enter our companionship alive and you go out dead. You will live and die by the gun and the knife. Take my hand upon the knife.”
    Charley reached across the table, towering over the tiny Don Corrado, who said to him, thrillingly, “Does the fratellanza come before anything else in your life?”
    “Yes,” Charley said.
    “Before family, before country, before God?”
    “I swear it,” Charley said.
    “There are three laws of the brotherhood which must become a part of you. The first—you must obey your superiors, to death if necessary, without question, for it will be for the good of the brotherhood. Do you swear it?”
    “I swear it,” Charley said, his face shining.
    “You must never betray any secret of our common cause nor seek any other comfort, be it from church or from a government, than the strength, protection, and comfort of this fratellanza . Do you swear it?”
    “I swear it!” Charley said, his voice rising.
    “Lastly, you must never violate the wife or children of another member.”
    “I swear it,” Charley said humbly.
    “Violation of these oaths will mean your instant death without trial or warning.”
    Angelo Partanna asked him to raise the first finger of his right hand. He pricked the finger with a straight pin and a tear of blood came forth. “This drop of blood symbolizes your birth into our family. We are one until death,” Don Corrado said, reaching up on his tiptoes to embrace Charley.
    “As we protect you, so must you protect Prizzi honor. Do you swear it?”
    “I swear it before God,” Charley said.
    He kissed the don, then he kissed his father. The members applauded. The large room was alight with their admiration.

Chapter Five
    His father’s baffling order to Paulie made Charley so restless that he had to scrub the kitchen floor to try to calm down. He filled a pail with soapy water and added his own formula of rubbing alcohol and straight ammonia, because he had it from the Prizzi chemist who cut the cinnari that it was stronger than household ammonia, and Charley insisted on a spotless house. He had always been a Mr. Clean. His mother had run the cleanest house in Brooklyn and nobody needed anybody to tell him why clean, cleaner, cleanest was the only