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The organization's code of conduct was partly Maranzano and partly Mafia omerta, a combination of such qualities as manliness, honor and willingness to keep secrets. Its requirements have never changed. The penalty for breaching the code: death. Except for the Chicago branch, which has always disdained the ornate, members are bound by an elaborate ceremony of medieval hocuspocus. Flanked by the boss and his lieutenants, the initiate and his sponsor may stand in front of a table on which are placed a gun and, on occasion, a knife. The boss picks up the gun and intones in the Sicilian dialect: "Niatri representam La Cosa Nostra. Sta famigghiaè La Cosa Nostra [We represent La Cosa Nostra. This family is Our Thing]." The sponsor then pricks his trigger finger and the trigger finger of the new member, holding both together to symbolize the mixing of blood. After swearing to hold the family above his religion, his country, and his wife and children, the inductee finishes the ritual. A picture of a saint or a religious card is placed in his cupped hands and ignited. As the paper burns, the inductee, together with his sponsor, proclaims: "If I ever violate this oath, may I burn as this paper."
Brilliant as Maranzano's plan was, it had one major flaw: Maranzano himself. Like his hero Caesar, Maranzano suffered from overweening ambition. Above the family bosses, there was, under his scheme, to be a Boss of All Bosses, a Capo di Tutti Capi, by the name of Salvatore Maranzano. When several of the family bosses found out that he was plotting to kill them, they worked up an assassination scheme. Five months after he took power, Il Capo di Tutti Capi was murdered. The same day, Sept. 10, 1931, 40 leaders allied with him were slain across the country.
With Maranzano's death, a kind of peace did settle over Cosa Nostra. There have been skirmishes and murders aplenty since then, but never anything like the Castellammarese War. In place of the Capo di Tutti Capi, the mobsters formed a Commission made up of nine to twelve family bosses to guide the organization and settle disputes. While its powers have never been precisely spelled out, the Commission seems to be roughly analogous to the governing body of a loose confederation. It must approve each family's choice of boss, and it can, if it wants to, remove a boss—usually by assassination.
Often, the Commission's chief function seems to be preservation of the balance of power, making sure that no one boss gains too much power. In Cosa Nostra's terms, as in nations', that is guns. Theoretically, at least, the 24 families have not been allowed to increase their numbers since the '30s. They vary greatly in size now, as they did then, from Carlo Gambino's army of 1,000 in New York to James Lanza's tiny, ineffectual squad of twelve in San Francisco. Currently, several families are open to recruits, offering new opportunities for growth and power. United by oath and blood, Maranzano's organization may have as long a life as Caesar's.