As these cases illustrate, the game of trust and distrust in this trade reached unsurpassed heights. When describing the traffic in drugs, even more than other markets, the pentiti—Mannoia in particular—exude suspicion, paranoia, and resentment. They complain of other people's cheating while boasting of their own. How lethal their own "addiction" was for them is indicated by how many died in the internecine conflict of the early 1980s—five hundred is a conservative estimate—how many others turned state's evidence to save their own skin, and how many more ended up in prison as a result.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 652