Page 1 of The Mob and his Messenger

Chapter OneDomenico“If they fucking stole from us, they’re dead men. I’m telling you this right now. Nobody steals from the DeLuca family and gets away with it. Just ask the men who’ve tried … if you can find a fucking shovel strong enough to dig that deep.”

I sit back in the conference room, the sounds of the city just beyond the window that shines dully in the late-summer smog. The bar beyond the locked door is noisy, too, but just with the regular drunken antics of an afternoon bar.

I listen closely to Gabriel’s ranting, my consigliere all puffed up in his anger, his combed-over black hair coated in sweat. His gold watch jingles as he waves his arms, and he stomps up and down in his baggy suit. He turns to me, glaring as if for a moment he thinks I’ve become Patty Mc-Fucking-Guinness, the man who has made the mistake of waging war against us.

“Skip?” he says. His face quivers as he stares at me, five years younger, but he’s lived harder, and as he looks at me he seems old and fierce. “We’ve gotta do something about this.”

I sit back against the desk and fold my arms, letting out a low sigh, looking past Gabriel to the room we sometimes use for meets. It’s better down here, in the muck of the city, with the smog and the traffic and the distraction. It’s easier for me to slip through unnoticed, turn to mist and drift through the raging mess that is Downtown. The crime waves are up since Patty started making plays, swooping in like a vulture the moment his old man passed away.

And who’s to say Patty didn’t have a hand in that?

“I know,” I mutter.

“It almost makes me want to go back to the old ways,” Gabriel rages.

I move around the desk and drop into my seat, taking the silver letter opener and idly spinning it on the oak.

The blade swivels against my fingertip, pricking lightly.

It makes me remember the oaths, the ceremonies, of those early days before the DeLuca family became the DeLuca family when I was fighting, making my name, establishing my rightful dominance.

“We didn’t work this hard to return to being fucking barbarians.”

Gabriel drops down opposite me. “Hard work don’t mean shit if we let the Irish take it all away.”

“I know how some of the men would have it,” I murmur. “They’d want to roll up like the Irish do, just glide up to a street corner and start unloading. Is that what you want?”

Gabriel grimaces.

Through the face of a thirty-seven year old man, I see the ten year old boy he was when I first met him.

I was fifteen and he was ten, and I helped raise him from the dirt and welcomed him into the Family. We grew up together, me as a boy becoming a man far too quickly, and Gabriel as an eager orphan ready to leave the hard life of the streets behind.

But the streets became ours, and he became my best friend, and his opinion means a damn lot to me.

“No,” he sighs. “Of course not.”

“Then what?” I snap.

“I don’t know,” he shouts. “Just something.”

“I know.” I flip the letter opener and grip the hilt in my hand. “I feel the same way, sometimes. The rage fucking consumes me. Thinking about those men taking our product, what we worked for, what we paid for. Do you know what was in that shipping container, Gabriel?”

“Electronics? Cars? I don’t know. I heard it sunk – they sunk it, or paid for it to be sunk – but I just assumed it was, well, something profitable. Jewelry maybe. What was it?”

It was food for the homeless shelter because the Irish are getting everybody hooked on hard drugs and people are becoming homeless at record rates. No, not the Irish. Patty, Patty forcing into reality things his father always promised to avoid. Patty doesn’t give a shit. He’ll let people starve if that’s what it takes to win this war.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say after a pause. “I want you to go down to the docks and speak with the manager of the day shift. He knows us. Talk to him about our shipping containers and let him know that there isn’t going to be another accident. And then have him fire every bastard who was involved. The Unions will kick up a shit storm, so you’ll need to talk to our contact there, too. Let him know. We’re firing every fucking crew that’s involved in any of our shipments going missing. There’s a price to pay for working for the Irish. And let them know we’re being kind. We could put them all in the fucking ocean for the fishes if we wanted to.”

Gabriel nods, the same way he did when I gave him instructions when we were kids. “You got it. Anything else?”

---