Pennsylvania serves two connected roles in the book: it is a place on the road to Detroit and the home ground of Russell Bufalino’s far-reaching authority. Its significance lies not only in the journey through the state but in the contrast between Bufalino’s regional base and his national standing among organized-crime families.

A Stop on the Road to Detroit

In Frank Sheeran’s account, Kingston, near Wilkes-Barre in upstate Pennsylvania, is where a planned trip to Detroit begins. Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa were to travel with Bufalino and his family in Sheeran’s new black Lincoln Continental, after spending the night at a Howard Johnson in which Bufalino owned a share. The drive was expected to take about twelve hours; Bufalino did not allow smoking in the car, a rule tied to a bet that had led him to quit cigarettes years earlier.

The car later acquired a different significance. Authorities used its alleged under-the-table purchase against Sheeran when investigating the eight Hoffa suspects, and it contributed to his 1981 imprisonment for labor racketeering. The Pennsylvania-to-Detroit route thus sits beside a later legal consequence in the narrative: an ordinary journey and its vehicle become part of the account of how investigators pursued Sheeran.

Bufalino’s Pennsylvania Base

The book places Bufalino’s organization in Pennsylvania beyond Philadelphia and in upstate Pennsylvania, with interests extending to upstate New York, including Buffalo, parts of New York City and northern New Jersey, Florida, and Canada. The account also describes his family as headquartered outside New York City. That distance from the city’s five families did not make him marginal: families across the country sought his advice, and important assignments were entrusted to him.

Sheeran emphasizes the difference between public visibility and underworld standing. Bufalino was little known to the general public, while mob families and federal authorities understood the extent of his influence. Pennsylvania, in this telling, is not merely a peripheral territory on a map; it is the home base from which a discreet regional boss could exercise authority across family boundaries.

Continuity and Significance

Bufalino controlled his family until his death in a nursing home in 1994, aged ninety. The book contrasts the reported stability of his organization after his death with the disorder that followed the decline of the Philadelphia family. No sign of discord in the Bufalino family had been reported since his passing, extending the image of Pennsylvania as a center of durable control rather than a temporary foothold.

The state’s narrative importance therefore rests on a deliberate contrast: the trip begins in a small upstate Pennsylvania town, but the power associated with that place reaches far beyond it. Sheeran’s account makes geography a measure of influence—Bufalino’s base lies outside the celebrated New York center, yet people from across the country turn to him.