He was born with a degenerative muscular disease that confined him to a wheelchair and stripped him of the ability to talk and forced him to breathe through a small tube attached to an air purifier. But he was smart and stubborn and didn’t allow his handicaps to speak for him. He read all the books in his father’s library, earned degrees in music and art history, and along with my father and uncle, taught me what he knew about chess—how to play it and how to apply it to my work.
Jimmy urged me to read a series of books and articles that exposed me to the useful skills taught by game theory. Nothing I’ve learned in life has helped me more. It has made it easier to think as an adversary would think, and has shown me how to outmaneuver my opponent by anticipating his next step.
Game theory also helps keep my father’s memory alive.
My father loved to play cards and excelled at the Italian games of scoppa and sette bello. He enjoyed bocci, a game of chance, and chess, a game of skill. When I was very young my father would take me to watch him play with his friends. He would sit me up high—on a corner of a hutch or on a stool just above the players—hand me a prosciutto and mozzarella panini and give me a warm hug. “Watch and learn,” he would whisper in my ear. “And try and guess the moves each player makes before he makes them.”
Over time I mastered the games from my silent perch.
I learned you could minimize the risks in sette bello, similar to blackjack, by studying the habits of opposing players. In a game where any total above seven and a half means elimination, the more cautious route is often the safest. It is not, however, the clearest path to victory. I took note that players with the most aggressive reputations were the ones who took home the bulk of the winnings. They made it clear to the others they did not fear risk. Once that had been established, their need to take risks was minimized. They actually won the bulk of their hands by adopting a more cautious approach. It was the threat of a bold call that kept their opponents in check.
While I enjoyed watching the card games and took away many lessons from my hours spent in the company of my father and his friends, it was chess that intrigued me. There, across that board, a player had to consider three angles at once in order to enjoy success. He needed to be fearless and make a number of risky moves. He had to be able to gauge his opponent, anticipate not only his next move but, at the very least, his next two. And he had to know when best to play it safe, hold a position and stave off a strike until the moment was secure. It was a game of strategy that required skill and patience to ensure victory.
It was life played out across a checkered board.
Due to my father’s work schedule, which kept him away from home for several days at a time, our chess games were played over the span of weeks. I would spend hours staring at the board, our pieces crossing over into the other’s territory as I anticipated his next move as well as mine. My father was an excellent player but he was an even better teacher and he helped turn me into an unbeatable opponent.
After his death, Uncle Carlo took his place.
To him, chess was more than a game. It was a road map to how to run a crime organization—know your enemy, gauge his strengths and weaknesses, attack without mercy and retreat only when absolutely necessary. Both brothers loved the game for entirely different reasons. My father played for pleasure. My uncle played to hone his instincts and keep them sharp, one more tool to help him stay on top of the vicious world he ruled. Over the years, I came to value the game for both reasons.
It wasn’t a big leap to make the jump from chess to game theory.
It was Jimmy who first introduced me to the works of Emile Borel, the Godfather of Game Theory. By the time I was in college, I graduated to the lessons taught by Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann and spent a great deal of time devouring books and articles in the school library, usually late in the evening, a warm cup of coffee the only company I required. I learned how a significant number of world leaders grew adept at game theory and used its methods to maintain their power bases. In addition to offering all the benefits learned from chess—chiefly, how to read an opponent in order to propel him to eventual defeat—game theory extolled the zero-sum benefits of guile, deceit, and manipulation to help achieve the ultimate goal. Among our Presidents, no one was more practiced in the art than James Madison, who anticipated a friend’s betrayal even before the first move had been attempted. The game plans of football coach Vince Lombardi and the mathematical genius of John Nash were nourished by game theory. In my world, Charles “Lucky” Luciano was said to be a proponent of game theory, as was the brilliant Meyer Lansky, the first certified genius ever labeled a gangster.
It made perfect sense for me to adapt the theory to our criminal undertakings. Gangsters like to keep rules simple, and when it comes to that there is nothing better. The most basic rule and also the most effective: deviate from the strategy of your opponent and you’ll walk away with a win.
In recent years I’ve taken advantage of the anonymity of the Internet to stay sharp. I joined an online group where aspects of the methods are discussed and broken down. We seek each other’s advice, make comments on another member’s maneuvers, and attempt to solve potential challenges. In this company of seventy members, I am not Vincent. I am not the Wolf. I am not a crime boss. I am a faceless player in a group made up of investment bankers, housewives, attorneys, painters, and carpenters. I seek their guidance and they look to me to offer mine. In the safety of such a unique community I can be myself.
Face-to-face, however, there is no better partner than Jimmy. I speak to him every day, and while he can’t respond, I can tell by his facial expressions if he agrees or is dismayed by my decisions. He is my anchor and I never finalize a deal or make a judgment without running it past him first. I am aware that if Jimmy, two years older than me, were able to function at full capacity, he would have been chosen to run our criminal organization into the twenty-first century.
“The threat is real,” I said, looking back at Uncle Carlo. “Not just for the immediate but for the long haul.”
“It’s a good war to fight, I give you that,” Uncle Carlo said. “Going to miss being part of it.”
“You’re in this,” I said, “as long as I am.”
“What did Jimmy think?” Uncle Carlo asked.
“Left a bio of George Patton on my desk with a note,” I said, smiling.
“What’d it say?”
“Don’t lose,” I said.
Uncle Carlo chuckled as he pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket. He reached for a gold-tinted lighter with his initials engraved on the side and lit it, taking in a deep breath, ignoring the pain it caused his lungs. I had long ago given up any attempt to get him to quit his habits. “What do you need me to do?” he asked.
“First, in the event things don’t go my way I need you to take care of Jack,” I said, “the same way you took care of me.”
“No worries there,” Uncle Carlo said. “What else?”
“Talk to Jannetti,” I said.
“About the Strega?” he asked.
I nodded. “He might balk at first,” I said. “But once he gives it thought, he’ll figure she’s our best option against Raza.”
“She’s his daughter,” Uncle Carlo said. “It might not sit well you asking to risk her life and his syndicate for a terrorist.”
“He’s never been shy about putting her in the way of a bullet.”
“That was
him
sending her on those jobs,” Uncle Carlo said. “Now it’s you.”
“Any more to it than that?” I asked.
Uncle Carlo rested the cigar against an ashtray and looked across the room at me. It was a look I knew, a staunch reminder that the wheezing, shaking old man was still one of the most powerful Dons in the country.
“Cut the shit, Vincent,” he said. “When it comes to you and the Strega, there’s always more to it.”
I nodded and gazed out the bay window that looked down on the plush gardens of my uncle’s Hamptons estate. “That was a long time ago,” I said.
He laughed. “Jannetti and his crew are old-school Camorristas. To them, we might as well still be in the seventeenth century. Their rules, their ways, they never change. You would
think
all these years later, especially in light of what happened, that would rest where it belongs—in the past. But on that, dear nephew, you would be wrong. Potentially dead wrong.”
“Jannetti’s been grooming her to take his place as head of the Camorra,” I said. “He’s been out in the open with that from the start. One day soon, Angela will be the only woman with a seat on the council. She comes through big in this fight that will go a long way to making her acceptable to the others at the table.”
“He may want more than that for her,” Uncle Carlo said.
I looked at Uncle Carlo. “My seat,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ve known him for too many years,” Uncle Carlo said. “Jannetti sets his mind to something, he never lets go of it, like a dog with a bone. Angela’s his legacy. Everything he does, every move he makes, is done with her future in mind.”
Three years after my father died, Uncle Carlo sent Jimmy and me to Italy for a summer to meet the Dons on the other side of the ocean. It was there I first met Angela. We were the same age, and while I spoke a broken version of Italian and she managed a garbled form of English, we became fast friends and the three of us—me, Angela, and Jimmy—went everywhere together. Her father couldn’t help but notice the affection she and I held for one another, but I was too naive to notice what signals I was sending the Don’s way.
But Jimmy noticed, and one morning while we were having breakfast in the room we shared, he passed his notebook across the table. On the thin white sheet he had written a list of all the families he could think of—both royal and criminal—who had linked themselves together down the centuries through marriage.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
He motioned for me to turn the page. When I did, I saw he had written down my name and Angela, linking our family with the Jannetti crew. “You’re serious?”
From his look I realized it didn’t matter if Jimmy was serious or not—what mattered was that Angela’s father was likely very serious.
“Me and Angela talked about this, Jim,” I said. “There’s plenty of time for that. But right now we’re just having fun. Nothing more to it than that.”
Jimmy stared at me, watching as I finished my breakfast. He never mentioned marriage or Angela again.
We both knew I was in love with her. She was a teenager, as was I, but the woman she would become had already begun to take form. She had long golden brown hair and matching eyes and a smile like a camera flash. She had a quick temper and was not afraid to expose it, but she also was deeply generous to those she loved, and had a dark sense of humor. The attraction was instant—and, if I’m being honest with myself, eternal.
She was more at ease around boys and men than girls her own age. Even then, she was the daughter of a Don and understood the power such a designation held.
During that long, hot summer, the three of us spent our days and most of our nights together. We began our mornings at the beach, meeting friends, sunning ourselves on the rocky coast.
In the afternoons, while most of the town slept and the shops were closed, we ventured into the hills, cooled by the shade of pine trees and damp red dirt, staring at the various villas hidden from the city streets below us. The evenings were always the most fun. We danced in many of the local clubs, Jimmy at our table, watching as the two of us tried to break moves on a crowded floor.
Many of our nights ended with a gelato at a front table in an all night bar overlooking the bay, music playing somewhere, fishing boats rocking against the tide.
When I got back to the States, Angela and I wrote often, each trying in vain to perfect the other’s language. She also corresponded with Jimmy, whose command of Italian was superior to mine. It had been made clear to me by Jimmy and Uncle Carlo that Angela was being groomed to succeed her father. Maybe it was that reason that kept me from turning friendship into something more.
At that time, I still had doubts—which I kept to myself, didn’t even share them with Jimmy—that the life of a crime boss was for me. Without feeling sure, I didn’t believe I could move forward with anything serious, regardless of how I felt about Angela. And there was one other factor holding me back. Angela was a creature of Naples; she had no interest in making a move to America. And while I loved Italy and would always want to spend as much time there as I could, America was where I would work.
So I decided the best approach was for us to wait. And given our young ages, neither of us was in a rush to get married.
The senior members of the families were another issue.
They were eager for us to get going. Nothing makes old Dons happier than a merger. It would guarantee complete rule on both sides of the ocean for decades, consolidate power, and accumulate larger shares of the profits being generated.
It was Jimmy who pointed out one issue I had ignored.
If I married Angela and unified the families, only one of us would eventually be Don—there was no such thing as shared power. Many of the international syndicates would never put a woman in such a position. But the Camorra had no such qualms, making for a potentially uncomfortable situation.
It’s not easy being a teenager in love, even in the best of circumstances. It is even more difficult when you put the pressures of organized crime into the mix.
“Why do you think she never married?” I asked Uncle Carlo, turning away from the window and walking toward him. “She’s a beautiful woman and I couldn’t have been the only one to take notice. She’s got Gypsy eyes, and my father used to say a Gypsy could steal your heart, soul, and wallet all in the same day.”
“She’s powerful and deadly,” Uncle Carlo said. “Most men shit their pants when they come across somebody like that. They can’t handle the heat that comes with having her by their side. Toss in the drop-dead looks and for many guys a dream woman like Angela becomes a nightmare.”