As he neared Sal’s SUV, Victor Garducci smel ed smoke. Not the smel of cigarette smoke, but rather the smel of burning paint and timber. Alex looked up and into the swirling winds he saw the unmistakable thick clouds of gaseous smoke. The smoke rose from the approximate location of Super Nova.
Before
Victor
could
contemplate
the
ramifications of the situation, a smal man ran into view. He stood about 5’7”. He wore a pair of wrinkled and worn blue jeans and a thick brown turtleneck. His face was set in a sort of impenetrable scowl, but he was unemotional except for the breath coming out in rasps from what must have been a recent run. He had gray eyes that seemed to never blink and slick black hair that fel on one side in front of his right eye.
Salvatore Senior, Sal, was now in plain view of Victor. As Salvatore ran up to his Escalade, Victor Garducci ran up and yel ed out to his old pal.
“Hey Sal-e! Wait up, man!”
Sal stopped with one hand on the door handle and looked up towards the voice. With a start he realized who it was cal ing his name.
“Holy Fuck! Vic! Hurry up and get in man.” Sal jumped in the SUV and reached across, unlocking the passenger side door. Victor jumped in, happy to be out of the cold. Sal didn’t wait for Victor to get settled. Instead, he backed up out of his paral el parking spot and let the tires squeal as he punched the accelerator too early. After that, however, there was silence as Sal sped off, checking his rearview and side mirrors in turns. They rounded the block and headed up towards Wizeguyz Bil iards, and Victor broke the paranoid quiet. He summoned the courage to ask his old captain, “Sal, what the hel is going on around here?” Sal looked at him, but did not answer.
After another long pause he asked, “What do you mean? Falzone didn’t send you up to get me?” Garducci thought about al the possible answers he could give, truths and lies. He decided the truth might work a bit better in this situation.
“No, Marano and Lucano sent me, said you were late and might need a hand. They didn’t tel me what you might need a hand with though. Shit, man, what you might need a hand with though. Shit, man, just tel me what the hel went down. I get back after a few months settling my debts and the next thing I know, before a ‘Hi, how are ya’, I’m sent off to find you and they don’t even know what happened to you!”
Victor knew his face was red, and he could feel his heart rate jump. He hoped Sal would relate it to anger, that he didn’t enjoy being so out of the loop.
It worked.
Sal gave him a look. Victor could see he wanted to assuage his old pal’s fears, and was happy when Sal decided to fil him in.
“Wel , best I can figure is they thought I wouldn’t be able to handle the job, that or I had gotten caught or something. It wasn’t so hard; it just took me longer because they didn’t close up til late.” Victor looked at Sal. Sal glanced over from his watch on the road and flashed a wicked smile at his pal. Garducci was confused.
“What job? What did you do?”
Sal looked over again with an excited tremor edging his voice and said, “Burned Ciancetta’s place to ashes, man. Old man Falzone is making his move on the top spot. Just between me and you though, he had it coming to him. We al run his il egitimate businesses and then that fat fuck decides to have an untouchable legitimate business? Who the fuck does he think he is, hording al the wealth himself? And let’s be honest. We al know that a lot of il egitimate activity takes place in his so-cal ed ‘legit’ pizzeria.”
Sal was looking self-important by this point.
Victor decided to take some of the wind out of his sails.
“Wel whose bright idea was that? Ciancetta is just going to col ect the insurance anyway.” Pieri Senior’s head snapped around and almost with an accusatory tone stated as flat as if he were reading stock quotes from the Wal Street Journal, “Wel , maybe so, but each week that place is outta commission, that shit-bag loses thousands.
It’s gonna take that bastard months to rebuild that place. Too bad though, I did like to eat some pizza there! Am I right bro? That was some good shit!” With that, Sal began to laugh in an adrenaline-inspired frenzy.
Victor almost said, “What if he just runs his business through his other joint across town?” but decided against further pushing his friend’s already tenuous mental and emotional threshold.
They drove along in silence after that, the only noise the steady hum of the engine and the back and forth scrapping of the windshield wipers pushing snow off of the car. Sal would look over at him and after a second of contemplating (which Victor Garducci pretended to ignore) he would exclaim something along the lines of “Damn good to see you, bro” or “Glad you’re back, man.”
Victor would voice how agreeable it was indeed to be back and then glance out the window and watch as the buildings rol ed on by into the snowy blackness beyond. Sal kept looking over, as if he were itching to say something, but then at the last moment decided to keep whatever it was to himself.
Although the drive was less than ten minutes, the tension that Victor felt made the ride seem like a grueling journey. Serious things were afoot here, and Victor was now smack dab in the middle of it. It seemed he’d thrust himself right in the middle of a damned mafia power struggle.
His plan was to get in using his undercover guise, and then get the information he needed and then disappear again. He was low level enough under normal circumstances that no one would miss him that much, especial y with the disorganization of modern organized crime. Now though, every man would be accounted for. And retaliation would be rained down for the burning of Don Ciancetta’s prize jewel, the Super Nova.
As far as Victor was concerned, he might be sitting next to a dead man. Another cause for concern was for Alex Vaughn’s buddy Ryan Slate.
He too would be enmeshed in this mafia war. Even worse, he would be connected with the Ciancettas.
The two of them might find themselves on opposing sides of this mess.
Also, being a low level associate of Joey Ciancetta, Leo Junior’s son would make him a prime target, if just to send a message to the Boss. Ryan Slate, also known as Ricky Vincenzio, might just be in line to be used as cannon fodder.
There is an old saying that you should never shoot the messenger. Wel , the way things worked with wise guys was that the message was a bul et riddled corpse.
riddled corpse.
Joseph Falzone enjoyed a lot of power; he control ed the numbers and with the support of the Union he was a hard man to touch, but Ciancetta boasted the backing of the other organized families, the ones in New York City.
It would be interesting to see if they tried to snatch up some territory in the midst of this war.
Perhaps they would let the Buffalo crews duke it out themselves. Wars were notorious for being sloppy and getting people pinched. They might just stay out of the mix.
Then again, mobsters were known for being greedy and getting pinched might just become an afterthought. Most of the other families would stay out of it but a select few would ask to get involved and they would be al owed to go to the highest bidder, or the faction that would be most able to line the pockets of the other families.
Of course, those select few mercenaries would be al owed to enter into the fray with the understanding that they were, in fact, not al owed to go; but only if anyone asked any questions. The plain fact of the matter was that the mercenaries would stil be expected to kick some percentage of their earnings back upstairs to their superiors, permission or not. Permission mattered if and when you were caught, or whether or not you funneled the correct percentages upstairs.
The car stopped. They were not at the pool hal though.
“Where are we?” asked Garducci. He tried to mask his concern with a touch of annoyance.
Sal looked at him and said, “Man, you forget places quick. What happened, that sun and heat over in New Mexico melt your brain? We’re at Frankie DeRisio’s. You think I was gonna make you sleep on the streets? Not a guy in old Sal’s crew.
Come on, we’l make this bastard give us some food.”
For a second, Victor was hesitant, but then it dawned on him that he hadn’t eaten that day.
“Yeah, but let’s be quick about it, the bosses want to talk with you.” Victor needed to look good so if he needed to ride Sal al night to get him over to Aldo and Muro then Victor was going to do it, right after a quick, late night snack.
One thing was for sure, Rafael needed to get the bodies out of his house. Three bodies in one’s home never looked good. It did not look good if most precincts, and the FBI, had a dossier on you as wel , and then three bodies are found in your home.
Though these shits broke into his place, cal ing the police was out of the question. If they got involved it would be forever until Rontego could operate on a subsistence level just for fear of getting pinched. The local squad cars were bought off at any rate.
At first, the assassin was tempted to go over to Don Ciancetta and warn him of the dangers heading his way, and then ask for some help disposing of the bodies. But Rafael wasn’t quite sure how he was going to play his cards regarding the issue of this mob war.
Despite al the implications, one thing was for sure; the bodies had to go and had to go soon.
Three bodies couldn’t very wel be tossed in one trunk. Rafael grimaced as he considered the fat fuck that fel asleep during the botched assassination attempt on Rontego.
If he did them one at a time, it would take hours. As much as he hated it, Rafael was going to need to bring in help on this one.
He worked before with this guy from out of one of the local vil ages outside of Buffalo, Hamburg or Angola. They cal ed him the Cleaner. The guy ran his business under the guise of a carpet cleaning operation he liked to cal Busy Bumble Bees.
He was hard to book; he hated anyone cal ing him in unless it was a planned operation. He thought spur of the moment kil ings were best left to the gangland hits of the unorganized “niggers.” The prick was a racist, but he did his job wel .
His one worry was getting caught and if he thought you were going to bring him down he would just hang up the phone on you. He even had a code for ordering hits, and you got the code if you were referred by a big boss or if he told it to you himself.
Lucky for Rontego, after he worked with him on the hit for Ciancetta, years back during Old Leo’s rise to power, the Cleaner told him to cal whenever he needed and gave him the code.
Rafael looked at the mess in his apartment.
He checked himself over, no blood on his clothes.
That was one good thing. Rafael put his coat back on and exited his apartment. On his way out, he dead bolted the lock. It wouldn’t do to have any late night and unexpected visits from the landlady this evening.
Rontego walked down the stairs and into the late night air of Buffalo. The blast of cold wind hit him like an anvil as he exited the heat of his building. To cal the Cleaner he needed to get to the payphone at the end of the block.
Rontego wouldn’t let a phone line into his home. He saw too many wiser gangsters take twenty years in the pen for a careless word or two on the phone.
When Rafael got to the booth where the payphone was located, he entered it and pul ed the door closed behind him, shutting out the snow, which continued to fal outside. He didn’t know the Cleaner’s number, but the great part was that he was listed in the yel ow pages. Nothing like great service.
He flipped through the pages and found the ad he was looking for, “Busy Bumble Bees ‘Our Prices Don’t Sting’.”
Bullshit
, Rontego thought.
This was going to cost him a pretty penny.
Maybe he would go to Don Ciancetta, make him reimburse him.
Rontego inserted two quarters and dialed the number placed in the ad. After one ring a voice answered,
“Busy Bumble Bees. We’re closed for the evening. Is this an emergency?”
The voice was that of the Cleaner. He had a nasal voice that you don’t often forget.
Rafael replied, “Yeah, I spilt three gal ons of grape juice al over my carpet. I need it cleaned as soon as possible.”
There was a long silence and Rontego wondered if the man stil provided that type of service.
Just before Rontego thought he must have forgotten part of the code the voice replied, “Ok, payment on arrival, who is this?”
This might work out after al .
“Rontego. Need an address?”
“No, I know where you live. I’l be there in
“No, I know where you live. I’l be there in twenty minutes.”
With that the voice hung up. A few minutes later and Rontego was back in his apartment looking at the guys he dubbed the Three Stooges.
The assassin sat on his Lazy Boy and though there were bodies littered across the breadth of his home, he found that he was tired. Kil ing always took a lot out of him.
He dozed off for what seemed like a second when he heard a soft tapping on his door. With a start, he took a glance out the window. There along the street was the Busy Bumble Bee carpet cleaning van.
Rontego checked his watch; twenty-five minutes went by. This guy was pretty damn punctual.