For years the head of the FBI insisted there was no national Mafia. Then a New York State trooper named Edgar Croswell noticed something odd: a local businessman, Joseph Barbara, had booked rooms at a motel for dozens of out-of-town guests, and a lot of expensive cars with out-of-state plates were rolling up his hill. Troopers set up a roadblock. When the guests at the barbecue saw it, men in silk suits ran into the woods and fields. It made the front page of every newspaper in America. The words are imagined.