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Gabriele
This weekend was a pain in the ass, but fruitful. We have a garage in Queens where we handle our less than savory activities. It’s a place where we take people who need encouragement to talk. The shy types. We give them a little moral support and get them to tell us what we need to know. The best I could tell Sinead was that I was on a rotation to help the family. I might have made it sound more like I had bodyguard duty, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. I rotated with Lorenzo and Matteo.
For years, I was the Mancinellis’ top enforcer. Because of my close friendship to Carmine and his position as resident persona non grata, I existed in limbo. Usually, an enforcer is toward the bottom of our hierarchy below associates which are below Made Men. But Uncle Salvatore elevated me to higher than a regular Made Man but lower than acapo.With things now resolved between Carmine and the family, Uncle Salvatore promoted him and me tocapo. That didn’t unteach me all that I learned over years of practice. I’m still the best at coercing information. But I’m only human, and I need a break every few hours. I might have played D1 baseball, but even my shoulders get tired swinging a tire iron or metal pipe.
We picked up a mid-level player in another lesser syndicate. One of our guys heard him shooting off his mouth at a casino in Jersey while he was drunk. He didn’t come out and say it, but our guy understood the man suggested his boss knew something about my case. I got curious. Can you blame me? Apparently, this shit stain’s boss, some guy named Art Cohenour, thinks he can plead down some grand larceny case by going state’s witness against me. I don’t know who the fuck Cohenour is or what he thinks he knows, but I needed to know.
The asshat we picked up held out longer than I thought, but it all came spilling out after I took out his left kneecap. Then it became a matter of beating him to revive him when he passed out. I suppose a bucket of water might have brought him around, but cracking his ribs was much more effective. He told Lorenzo that his boss is going to claim he heard about what I did from some idiot in the Polish mafia.
Fucking hell. When are people going to understand the difference? The Mafia— with a capital M —are Italians, and more often than not Sicilians. He was talking about the Polish Mob, fucking unoriginal name as you can get. We are not fucking interchangeable with these peon syndicates. The Russians are bratva, the Latin Americans are cartel, the Irish are the original mob— because that’s about as organized as they get —and we are the Mafia. Not hard, fucknuts.
We discovered there’s no real Polish syndicate member. Cohenour picked some guy he didn’t like who backed out of some investment and is going to say this unsuspecting patsy told him about me. He'll vanish conveniently when the cops are ready to interview him. Cohenour plans to implicate me in that, too. He believes telling the cops that he knows what I allegedly did will make him valuable. It’s about to make him dead if the Polish find out he’s sucking them in. I’d make him dead, but there’s one teensy-tiny speed bump to that.
He’s Sinead’s fucking client. Carmine looked up the public records to find out what Cohenour’s facing, and the documents list Sinead’s name right beside his as his counsel. I can’t touch him. It’s bad enough I can’t take him out. It’s going to be a disaster when Sinead finds out Uncle Salvatore contacted Bartlomiej Nowakowski, the Polish Mob’s boss. I can’t confess to knowing a crime is about to happen, but if she learns I had anything to do with it after the fact, she’ll never trust me.
“How was your weekend?”
I’m trying to make nice since I have to at least trust her not to let me wind up in jail for life with no possibility of parole.
“Boring but restful. Thanks for dropping me off here Thursday evening. I got even more done than I expected, so I really had no work to even think about over the weekend. That’s a pleasant change. How about you?”
“You know. Hanging out with Lorenzo and Marco. Same old same old.”
I grin because what else can I do? But I get serious when I glance at my watch. We only have an hour-and-a-half to review the evidence we have so far. Then we’re breaking for lunch before my pre-trial conference. I shift our attention to work and keeping me out of prison.
“Where do we stand on things?”
“The case still feels flimsy. The DA must have something they’re planning because they wouldn’t bring this to trial if they didn’t believe they could win. This is high profile, so they won’t want to fall on their faces. But I’m not seeing anything that really locks down any claim that you’re guilty.”
“We both know they don’t have to have concrete evidence to get a guilty decision. All they have to prove is motive, means, and opportunity. They’re going to say my motive is a rivalry or revenge. They’re going to say I had the means because I can get to explosives and coerce people into doing things. They’ll finally claim opportunity because it happened at night. All they have to do is keep hammering that home with even an ounce of support, and people will buy it.”
“That’s why we need something that’s absolute. Something that’s irrefutable against them. It won’t be hard to prove your known affiliation with the Mancinellis. Your family is pretty fucking squeaky clean for what you’re into, but it’s not a secret who you are. There’s just never enough to make any charges stick. The DA wants to change that.”
“There might be someone.”
Her eyebrows shoot up with that comment, but she’s trying for nonchalant when she responds.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Someone you know. Sinead, I spoke to someone over the weekend who said your client Art Cohenour could be involved. He’s going to claim he heard about my guilt from some guy in the Polish Mob. There is no guy, but he wants to get off the charges he faces.”
She sits back for a moment and bites the left corner of her bottom lip. The things I’d like to do while I nibble on it.
“I know. That’s who I met with last week.”
“He told you that was his plan?”
“You know I can’t get into more than that. Suffice it to say, I convinced him that trying it would be the height of stupidity.”
“He’s going to get himself killed, claiming someone in the Polish Mob is feeding him secrets. They will find out.”
I won’t say that we told them. I’m curious how she’s going to play this. Discovering one of her clients intends to testify against me raised all my suspicions against her. I may want to fuck her into next week, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends going out for a beer.
“I think I convinced him without having to scare him.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I can hope it, but I don’t think that’s the case. We switch subjects and examine the evidence we’ve collected on our side along with what the prosecution has already turned over.
