It doesn’t take many words exchanged before you see what a good cop Bob Leuci must have made. He’s a friendly guy, open, listens with honest interest, talks with a relaxed confidence that could put a wiseguy at ease or earn a snitch’s trust.

He’s no longer the "Baby Face," his New York street nickname back in his early 20s, when some of the family photos on his writing study walls were taken. That innocent look made him a detective only three years into his police career, largely because he looked young enough to pass as a high school student and could buy drugs as easily as bumming cigarettes. Now Leuci is 64, living in a Saunderstown farmhouse with his second wife, Cathy, a successful mid-list crime novel writer for a little more time than the 20 years he spent as the cop in Prince of the City.

The book and resulting movie were about the systematic corruption that permeated the criminal justice system in the city at the time, from cops to courthouses and probably to city hall. For seven years Leuci held off playing along to get along, before shrugging and succumbing to payoffs.

For his next book, he’d like to do a nonfiction but novelistic account of the Rhode Island mob’s heyday, largely through the eyes of a gangster who had dealings with the major players, a guy Leuci has come to know. But for now, he’s revisiting his own old days, setting the record straight for his children and grandchildren.

He spoke at a picnic table in his backyard, chain-smoking and sipping a glass of grape juice.

Q: Why write this memoir now? Had you not worked it out in your own mind until recently?

A: I’ve always wanted to do it. After Prince of the City came out, the book, people would ask: "OK, we understand this whole thing, how the investigation proceeded and so on, but why did you do this? It makes no sense." That was a question a lot of people had. It’s not really explained.

There have been a number of books written that claim to be nonfiction but were fiction that use me as a character. And that character was very despicable, somebody who was arrested and turned on his friends, turned on his fellow officers. That was not true and it always irritated me. I thought that sooner or later I’d have to tell the story, step by step.

Q: When did you decide to write All the Centurions?

A: About three years ago. I thought, "Well, I can do this now." I’ve done enough writing that I can handle this first-person, which is different from what I do normally. It’s more of a journalistic effort, really, but it’s written in a form that’s more like a novel than any kind of reportage. But it was a difficult, difficult book to write. Much more difficult than anything I’d ever done. Rehashing some of that stuff and fishing in some of those old holes was not fun. Going back into a life I’d lived all those years ago — I’m a very different person today than I was then — was very painful. But at the same time, it was probably a good mental-health thing to do, in some ways.

Q: What about the blue wall of silence, the code of not ratting out a fellow cop? Is it possible to establish an atmosphere in a police department where that doesn’t develop?

A: Not entirely. It’s almost impossible to have that, where cops are willing to talk openly about things that are going on within their unit or amongst other policemen. There are certain things that policemen, even in those days, would draw the line and say, "I’m not going to let someone do that in my company." Murder being one. And drug dealing. But other than that, to have one policeman come forward and speak about another policeman is almost impossible.

It happens now with more regularity than it once did, but nevertheless that blue wall of silence really is a wall that’s established in many ways by the world around the police and not necessarily the police. Because the police are always feeling beset upon. They always feel under threat. They’re under threat by the media, they’re under threat by the community, they’re under threat by the people they police. They’re always feeling that it’s us against them. They don’t feel — even though so many police administrators talk about it — like commingling with the community. They don’t really feel that way. We can talk about it and talk about neighborhood policing, getting along with the neighborhood. But when they’re alone, together, it’s us and them. The rest of the world is made up of a bunch of freaked-out goofballs, and we’re the only ones who know what’s going on.

Q: There were a lot of people making a lot of excuses for Cianci and others after his trial. This seems to be an odd state for its level of acceptance of corruption.

A: Well, it’s not so odd, if you think about it. Like I say, it’s an instilled mode of behavior that’s been in place for many, many, many generations. Not years, generations. And people are willing to accept that and think that it’s OK — politicians on the municipal level, we expect them to be corrupt to a certain extent. And those expectations are then self-fulfilling.

Not unusual. Rhode Island’s mild. I always find it fascinating. Listen, I’ve been in Rhode Island 15 years, but I spent a lot of time in Brooklyn. I mean, Rhode Island is nothing compared to what Brooklyn was once like, or the Bronx or Manhattan. Nothing. It’s as honest as you can expect a small city to be. But it does take a terrible rap — mostly from the people who live here. And that, of course, spreads around the country, and people talk about Rhode Island as this corrupt place.

I think of Rhode Island in some ways as the Sicily of the United States. It has its own language. It has its own culture, its own food. It’s a very special place.

— B.R.