<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>To go to the mattresses is mafia terminology for going into hiding. Of course, it's so obscure that few people will get it. I had to search to find out what it meant.<hr></blockquote> If I remember right (though my source was Puzo's The Godfather, not anything factual), there was more to it than that.<p>In the novel, when a major war was about to break out between Mafia families, the front-line guys of a family went out, rented empty apartments in nondescript places, and filled the floors with mattresses for the combatants so they'd have a place to sleep. The apartments were "hidden," true, but the idea was that by being hidden, they'd be a front-line base of operations protected from the other families -- the "trenches."<p>So to me, the figure of speech means that Little's team will fight for him under uncomfortable conditions for as long as it takes.
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