Fade In: Italian Countryside, only a mile or so from Corleone, the hamlet for which Mario Puzo's fictional mafia family in The Godfather was named. We see an old stone farmhouse, and in the distance, a flock of sheep mill about, bleating in a dilapidated pen.

Such was the misleadingly pastoral scene of Italy's huge Mafia arrest yesterday, and frankly, Francis Ford Coppola couldn't have directed it better himself.

In another fine example of how reality is often weirder than fiction, Italy's top Mafia boss—on the lam for the last 43 years—got all bunched up when he was brought down by his undies. Talk about airing your dirty laundry in public: Bernardo Provenzano, known as the "Boss of Bosses," was pantsed by the law when his laundry delivery (handled by a super secret team of mafia messengers) led police to his hideout.

What did Provenzano, who has been convicted in absentia for—among other crimes—a string of murders, have with him in his little stone hidey-hole? A 30-year old typewriter with which he had just begun to compose a love-letter to his wife, a portrait of Saint Padro Pio, a pot of wild chicory, and a whoooooole lot of dirty underwear.