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“Can you believe the balls on that Russki bastard?” I muttered, ejecting the mag of my Colt 1911.“Demanding a meeting after that stunt he pulled on Fifth Avenue.” Satisfying myself it was still loaded, I slammed the mag back into place and worked the slider, chambering a round. “And on the night before your sister’s wedding. God, we must be thick and fruity for going along with this.”
“Like we had a choice…” Beside me, Turk watched the lights of New York City’s nightscape streak past the tinted windows of the Maserati Quattroporte. “The other families might line up to kiss our ass now. But you know as well as I do, the moment that Bratva brutto figlio di puttana bastardo gives the word, they’ll be fighting each other for the honour of handing him our balls just to avoid another war. We can’t fight both them and the Russians, not now, not while Pa is still in the hospital.” His darkly handsome face was as impassive as ever, but his fingers rapped atop the arm rest, stirring up a beat that would have had Fred and Ginger foxtrotting from dusk till dawn. “We got lucky at the Tower, but Alexi’s got everything he needs to destroy our family, and he knows it.”
It was a shit poor speech, but all things considered, he’d hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t blame him for being nervous.
He had called it the way it was. The Russians had our balls in a vice.
Hell, I had checked my piece twice already since getting into the back of the Maserati, and I had to resist the urge to check it again.
“Lucky?” I snorted, a dour smirk pulling at the corner of my mouth. “If I hadn’t needed that piss when I did, we’d all have caught a bullet, instead of a cab.”
I shoved the colt back into the holster of my shoulder rig concealed beneath my jacket, out of sight of any nosy pain-in-the-ass civilian that might happen across us. In the pocket under my right, there were two additional magazines.
At the first hint of trouble, I’d empty them all into Alexi’s chops.
Who cares if it would start another gang war?
We’ve all gotta die someday. If my choice was today or later, better to shoot first in a cluster fuck of a parley, then end up another pussy, feeding fish on the bottom of the East River tomorrow morning.
Bloody Bratva bastards wouldn’t catch me with my trousers down again.
Turk must have sensed what I was thinking because he turned and glowered at me. “Yeah, talk about a lucky shake.” For all his usual jocular humour, his grin did not meet his eyes. “Look, I know your feelings about the man. After what his dog did to your family, well, no one could blame you for not liking the idea, but it’s over. The war is over. You killed Tsabor. You’ve had your revenge, and now that the Scavos are dealt with, you’ve cemented your place in the family. We just need to keep the Russians sweet until Pa’s well again. Then we’ll settle old debts. We’ll have our day, brother, I promise you that, but we need to be patient for now.”
He was right, of course.
Say what you will about Turk DeCampo, and in my role of adopted little brother I often had, but he was rarely wrong.
It was one of the many things that made him so like his father.
They shared the same keen intellect, wily cunning, and infallible instinct, as well as that terrible low, slow burning fury that made them such terrible enemies. I had never seen either get angry. They never lost control. Their responses were always perfect. When I went all out, seeing red and wildly swinging a hammer, they stepped in with a nail straight to the target’s heart.
None had contested his ascension to acting head of the family while Pa was recuperating in his hospital bed. He was the perfect choice. It was what he’d spent his life training for. He was a proven commander, had the loyalty of the men, and was respected, but feared by his enemies.
And then, of course, he also had me watching his back. The DeCampo’s dreaded white ape enforcer. The orphan they had adopted from the streets and turned into their terrible pet Tarzan.
And like any good pet, I knew when to bow my head and wait for the master to scratch behind my ears. “If you say so.”
G-force kicked like a mule as the driver dragged the wheel around at speed. With a squeal of tyres, the Maserati swerved off the 278 Interstate and down into the warren of dated apartment blocks and department stores fronted with graffitied tin shutters that made up lower Williamsburg.
Throw in a shot of Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox walking down the street and it could have been a city street scene ripped right out of Friends.
It was a joke. Developers had invested millions into Williamsburg over the past thirty years, attempting to gentrify the old neighbourhood. I guess whatever part they had allocated for this stretch of Little Berlin got lost enroute, and into the pocket of whichever understanding city examiner had the job of ensuring the work followed building regulations. It was amazing how much a keen-eyed examiner could put away for themselves. Then of course, there were union payoffs, supply and labour issues, and even the occasional under the counter deal with whatever politician or activist was arguing for the preservation of the community spirit.
The money men routinely factored such bribes into their sums, along with their commissions for handling such delicate matters.
That was all on top of the big piece of cheese the developers were pocketing for themselves.
Honestly, I’m amazed they ever even bothered building anything at all.
It was a legal crime. Money changed hands, growing smaller and smaller every time, until the well ran dry. Everybody knew and nobody cared, so long as the rich got richer, and they left these poor sods no worse off than they had been before.
Ingenious, and they called us the Mafia.
Hell, we weren’t even in the same league. At least we had the courtesy to let someone know when they were getting fucked over.
The Naval Cemetery landscape was the one major beauty spot in the district. An area of the waterfront that had once been the site of the old Naval Hospital Cemetery until they had decommissioned it in the 1920s. A century on, and the city had given the site over to native Flora as a gift to the citizens, an escape from the urban jungle. That was how the politicians had sold it. Then they went and gave themselves a pat on the back, for figuring out a way to milk the taxpayer yet again. Minimum building or maintenance costs, but they could charge top dollar on venues for new age medicine nuts.
And I think they even got a commendation from greenpeace, as well as a mention in their newsletter.
