Outside challengers get used and discarded when rival families reach a truce

Evidence

Yet, in the end, although the old guard lost the war, Di Stefano did not win it either. The 1987 Carabinieri report (CPM-RCC) still listed as bosses either the few who had managed to stay alive or the direct heirs and relatives of the deceased. Di Stefano does not feature among them. It seems likely that the Agrigento cartel yielded some power to Palermo (possibly allowing a redefinition of the drug trade in favor of the latter), and a truce was eventually declared. Di Stefano was simply used and abandoned: he himself was murdered in 1989. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Di Stefano as a ‘useful fool’ of Palermo mirrors Puzo’s theme where the individual outsider is sacrificed to stabilize the system of families.