Ricky did not realize that Luca Brazzi was a man's name, and so, all confused, he had dumped someone completely different, the wife of an architect named Lucia Brazziana (the wife not the architect), in the Hudson river, and had then sent a coded message to the Corlione family. As for Luca Brazzi, he did not sleep with the fishes; he simply overslept. So one can imagine Titaglia's confusion when he showed up, unannounced, with an icepick in hand, and stabbed it through Titaglia's eyeball.

This was in the era before horse heads and cardinals. When a vague optimism was still possible, and a public reeling from warfare might still take comfort in the idea of a large family, close-knit and strong in its cohesiveness. This was before the whole Fredo thing, which ruined not only the idea of family, but the whole American dream as well. After all, if one couldn't... then one couldn't...

Later still, cowboys would come back in style.