Alphonso Matricardi and Leonardo Rockaforte/The Clients Character Analysis

Alphonso Matricardi and Leonardo Rockaforte, often referred to only as “The Clients,” are a pair of aging Italian mobsters who operate a sprawling criminal enterprise throughout Brooklyn and New Jersey. Out of a jointly-owned house on Degraw Street in Boerum Hill, the formal and soft-spoken yet frighteningly powerful pair—whom Lionel believes may or may not be secretly romantically involved—runs a business redistributing goods seized by a group of suburban bandits who highjack trucks inbound for New York City. Lionel, Tony, Danny, and Gilbert were recruited by Frank to help with work for The Clients when they were still orphans at St. Vincent’s. But after Frank double-crossed Rockaforte and Matricardi, he was forced into exile upstate; and upon his return to Brooklyn, he had to beg The Clients for his very life. Matricardi and Rockaforte, the novel implies, have far-reaching influence and the capacity to kill with impunity. Lionel believes that it is The Clients who are ultimately responsible for Gerard Minna’s eventual “disappearance” as revenge for his part in Frank’s theft from them many years ago.