Mafia clients face competing extortion demands that the protector must neutralize

Evidence

At the beginning of the 1970s we were very worried because there was a danger of kidnaping, and this might affect the Costanzos. I have no knowledge of extortion requests received by them either by telephone or letter, except twice. Once a letter arrived which fixed a meeting with Costanzo at the Playa to deliver a sum of money; I, my brother, my cousin, Salvatore Marchese, and Calogero Bono, who in those days was working as a guard for the Costanzos, went to the meeting. No one showed up. The other time Enzo Costanzo, Carmelo’s son, received an extortionist phone call in Rome, where he was studying architecture. He was also informed-I cannot quite remember how-that there might be a risk of kidnaping. In order to protect him, Salvatore Marchese went to Rome, but this affair soon blew over because we discovered that it was a prank played by some youth. (AC: III, 948-949) Elsewhere in his testimony Calderone reports a further attempt at extortion. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 447

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete case of the rival-taxing-authority problem — the Costanzo protectors show up in force to a payoff meeting to assert territorial claim; this is empirical evidence for the reader’s Schelling/Gambetta model.