Dear Junior: A Mob Short Story

I wrote this short story for a fiction writing class a couple years back. Hope you read and enjoy!

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Dear Junior

Son,

I remember the day I became a made guy. That’s what we call it in the mob, see. Once you’re brought in as a full-time member, once you take that blood oath, that’s it. You’ve been made, and there’s only two ways out: the afterlife or 20 to life. But that’s a risk you’ve got to be willing to take because the rewards are unbelievable. When I got made, I went from being dead broke to the brink of Forbes. My family and I were living the high life. I’d worked hard. I was happy. Seems like just yesterday, I was doing these oddball jobs that the capos give to the young guns trying to make a name for themselves. Now, I was a capo. Now, I was the guy giving those young guns jobs. I remember the day I became a made guy. It was the greatest day of my life, even better than getting married or bringing you into this world. Looking back on it now, it turned out to be the worst day of my life. To tell you the truth, I think I’d do anything to take that day back.

When I was a kid, the Tomasino crime family ran every facet of New York City. Everything from the stocks on Wall Street to the point spread for the Giants game, all the way down to how hot the hot dogs were at your local street vendor. My pops always thought it was funny how the papers called them a “family”. More like a corporation, he’d say. Pops would know, because he was right in the thick of things. Throughout my teenage years, Dad worked himself up through the ranks of the Tomasinos. When he eventually made captain, you would’ve thought we won the lottery. The next day, the moving vans came, and within a couple of hours we went from a dirty one-bedroom apartment to a three-story mansion on the Upper West Side. Pops was ecstatic. He thought he’d finally done something with his life. It wasn’t even three weeks later that me and Mom were planning his funeral arrangements. I was seventeen.

Dad tried to keep what he did a secret, but I was no dumbass. I wasn’t blind either. This one time, I was looking around for my GI Joes. I was searching underneath my folks’ bed, and I came across this shoe box. Let me tell you, there weren’t any GI Joes in there. Instead, a loaded .45 Magnum and a boatload of cash. Pops came around the corner, gave me a nice slap, and sent me to bed. Later that night, he came in and woke me up. I remember it so clearly, probably the most vivid memory I have of my dad.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Jimmy. It’s just that…..there’ll come a time, son. There’ll come a time when you’ve got a family of your own. When you’ve got kids. It ain’t until you’ve got them that you realize you’d do anything for them. You see, Jimmy, I only get one shot to raise you. That’s why I keep six shots in my piece. Ain’t nobody gonna take you away from me, you understand? Nobody.”

At the funeral, that’s the only memory of Dad I could think about. It was the only thing I could think about when you were born five years later. It was the only thing I could think about when I got made. It was the last thing I was thinking about the night it all came crashing down.

See, the feds had finally caught up with us, and the big wigs at the top of the food chain didn’t know how to handle it. That’s what the high life does to you, see. They were living so large that every little detail didn’t seem worth double-checking. Let me tell you, when you first get made, you understand. You understand that, no matter what, you can’t talk to the feds. You just can’t. If you do……. well, you’ve seen the movies. Long story short, the cops had a guy on the inside. One by one, members of the Tomasino family were reigned in, charged, thrown in the can. The problem was, we didn’t know if the rat bastard was still among us. So, on the night it came crashing down, the boss called an emergency meeting.

Salvatore Tomasino. Big Sal. Sally Boy. Whatever you knew him as, he was the boss, and he hadn’t called for an emergency meeting in something like thirty years. At the table in Sal’s kitchen, the highest-ranking remaining members of the family consulted each other about what to do next. Sal and I were joined by Jackie, Sal’s right-hand man. Then there was Dom, a fellow capo of mine. Then, of course, there was Pete, another capo whose fuse was about as short as he was.

“I’m just gonna cut right to it, boys. I think I owe you that much.” Sal looked around the table longingly. If there was one thing the boss valued more than a plate full of lasagna, it was loyalty. “As some of you know, I’ve got a source inside the precinct. This source is telling me that we’re fucked, and we need to skip town ASAP.” The boss coughed a couple times. It looked to me like he was holding back tears. “You’ve all been loyal to me. Trustworthy. Now, we’re gonna get out of this, dammit. I just need you to trust me one more time.”

Sal explained how his father had kept a “safe house” in the family for times like these. You gotta understand, we were the subjects of a city-wide manhunt led by the fucking FBI. Nearly everybody we’d associated with for the past year had been taken in. We didn’t have a whole lot of options. Personally, I didn’t want to run and hide, but like I said, what choice did we have? We haven’t been caught yet, I thought. Maybe Sal’s got one more rabbit in that hat of his.

The hard part for me was leaving you and your mom behind. Yeah, I knew I’d taken an oath, and part of that oath was that the best interests of the Tomasinos came first. I didn’t care, I was still pissed. This was my family we were talking about. Before we all loaded into the car, Sal pulled me aside.

“We’ve all got people, Jimmy”, he told me in his deep, Queens accent. “Remember the oath, son. You swore an oath. Not just to me, but to Dom, to Jackie, to Pete, and even to that rat bastard, whoever the fuck he is. I don’t want to do this any more than you do. But you gotta do it.”

“I know, boss. I know.” Sal looked at me for a long time. It seemed like he felt sorry for me, but I didn’t want him to. After all, we were in this shit together.

Jackie drove us to the safe house, which was in the woods of Vermont, close to the Canadian border. It was about a ten-hour haul. You could see the Montreal skyline in the distance, but the vision of the skyscrapers was wiped out by a sea of white snow hitting the back-passenger window.

“Vermont? Fuckin’ Vermont? Are you kidding me with this? The safe house couldn’t have been in, I don’t know, Miami? What the fuck’s in Vermont?” I was impressed when Pete made this little outburst, because before that, I’d thought his vocabulary was limited to certain four-letter words.

“I’ll tell ya what’s in Vermont, Petey,” Sal turned around in his seat and pointed a long, wrinkly finger in Pete’s face. “You. That’s what. So, sit back, shut your mouth, and enjoy the scenery.” Pete did as he was told.

After about another half hour, Jackie pulled up on an old-looking brick building, which looked like it could collapse if you simply touched it wrong. Pete let out a groan, but one look from Sal quickly made him go quiet.

“It ain’t too bad, boss,” mumbled Dom, who usually didn’t speak unless he was spoken to. “I seen worse.”

“I’ve only been here once before. My old man brought me a week before he passed. Told me not to worry about maintaining the place because, if I did things the right way, I’d never need it. He’s probably looking down on me right now, shaking his head.” Sal kicked a rock down the sloping hill that Jackie’s Cadillac had somehow managed to navigate.

The five of us cautiously followed Sal into the house. As soon as the door opened, a pack of probably ten mice went sprinting out the door. The once navy-blue paint on the walls was peeling off. Parts of the carpet had been either torn out of eaten through, but something told me that the mice had something to do with that. Coincidentally, there were five chairs in the small establishment. Jackie had his sights set on the nicest-looking one; it had two legs shorter than the other ones, along with stains of some kind on its leather lining.

“Ten fuckin’ hours of nothin’ but driving. I think I deserve a little break.” Jackie plopped down in the chair, which sunk about a whole foot down. “Nice,” he said sarcastically. “You know, I might actually be in hell right now.”

“That’s enough, Jack. Let’s get a fire going.” Sal pointed at me and Dom, which was sign language for “get the firewood”. We got the biggest logs we’d brought out of the trunk of the car, threw them into worn-down fireplace and lit some newspapers up. We couldn’t bring a lot of stuff with us, but we managed some cards, smokes, a couple of disposable phones, and as much food and wine as we could shove in the Caddy.

The first week wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected. Being on the run still sucked ass, mind you, but it wasn’t terrible. And for the most part, we all got along, save for the night it all came crashing down. Somehow, on that night, we’d gone from playing poker to talking basketball, and the whole thing went sour from there.

“You’re a dumbass, Pete,” mocked Jackie. “Ain’t nobody beatin’ the Bulls this year. It ain’t happenin’! MJ’s back, and he’s hungry for another ring.”

Pete wasn’t having it. “And I’m tellin’ you, Jackie. Don’t sleep on my Knicks! Ewing’s got one more run in him, I can feel it.”

“Look, man. If the game’s on the line, who do I want taking the last shot?” I fancied myself an NBA aficionado. “Reggie. Fuckin’. Miller. Until your Knicks beat those Pacers, Petey, ain’t nothin’ gonna change. Same old, same old.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Sal slip out of the house. I could hear him taking a call out there, but I couldn’t quite make out the words of the conversation.

To everybody’s surprise, Dom chimed in. I didn’t even think he knew what basketball was. Outside, I couldn’t hear Sal talking, so he must’ve been listening to whoever was on the other line.

“Hello? Hakeem the Dream? Olajuwon and those boys are going for three in a row. I’m pickin’ the Rockets, boys. Houston over Chicago in six.” Dom held up six fingers to further drive home the point he was making.

“Six? My apologies, Pete. Dom’s the dumbass!”, Jackie bellowed as he finished off his glass of wine.

All of a sudden, the door flung open. It was Sal, who had broken his disposable phone in half. Snow was blowing in, and his face was red, but not from the cold. He was beyond pissed.

“SO, WHICH ONE OF YOU COCKSUCKERS IS IT, HUH? HUH? WHO’S FUCKIN’ ME OVER? I’LL KILL YA MYSELF, I TELL YA, I’LL FUCKIN’ KILL YA!!” A small earthquake might have registered in that house. Jackie dropped his glass on the floor, but Sal’s yelling drowned out the sound of it breaking.

“THAT WAS MY GODDAMNED INFORMANT! HE JUST GOT WIND THAT THERE’S A SECOND RAT FUCK! ANOTHA ONE! AND WE’RE THE ONLY GUYS LEFT IN THE WHOLE DAMN FAMILY! SO, I ASK YOU AGAIN, WHO’S FUCKIN’ ME OVER?!”

Everybody was in shock. I’d never seen the boss like this, and clearly, no one else in house had, either. The stress of the whole FBI thing just embodied itself in Sal’s tirade. As the four of us were trying to comprehend what had just erupted from his mouth, the boss quickly sat down in the only vacant chair and swallowed about four heart pills. This was the first time I’d seen Sal look completely powerless.

“What’re you talkin’ about, Sally? There’s gotta be some mistake.” Jackie was lying to himself.

Dom went over to Sal and patted him on the shoulder. Sal was sweating bullets, but still managed to push Dom’s hand away.

“Get the hell off me”, he panted. He took one more pill before composing himself. “This guy doesn’t make mistakes, Jack. I’ve been linked up with him long enough to know that. One of us…... no…… one of you is a squealer.” As he referred to us, Sal waved his hands in our general direction.

“Son of a bitch”, I said, looking around at what was left of the Tomasino family.

“I don’t know which one of you would do this shit”, Sal muttered, getting to his feet. “But now, it’s just a matter of….”

I could see happening before it actually did. As he was explaining what it was a matter of, Sal started to reach for his chest. Before he could finish, he collapsed to the moldy carpet floor.

“Boss!”, I cried as I sprinted across the room. Sal was gasping for air, but it was no use. His heart was giving out on him. I was trying desperately to keep the boss afloat. Then, very slowly, Sal pointed at me. I mean, right at me. It turned out to be the last thing he ever did. His body went limp, and I slowly stood up, shaking my head in disbelief.

Dom and Jackie were looking at me, and Pete started walking towards me. Dom and Jackie joined him, and soon, I was pinned in the corner of the dim, fire-lit room. The front door was still open from when Sal had burst in.

“Now, why would Sally point at you, Jimmy? Why would he do somethin’ like that?” Jackie socked me across the face, and I could hear one of his knuckled cracking as he did it. “Perhaps he meant somethin’ like, I don’t know, you’re squealer he’s talkin’ about?

“I know how this looks, fellas”, I said, blood dripping from my nose. “I know it looks bad. But ya gotta believe me, I’m not talkin’! I got no idea why Sal did that! None!”

“BULLSHIT! ALL OF IT!” This time, it was Dom yelling. He picked up one of the folding chairs and launched it at the wall. I was surprised it didn’t go through it.

Pete and Jackie backed off of me. I knew this would probably be my only chance. I reached into my belt for my piece, the same gun my dad kept in that shoe box. I aimed right at the back of Jackie’s head and took my shot. The noise was deafening, the sound of the bullet bouncing off the depleted walls. Jackie fell to the floor, blood pouring out of his skull. Dom and Pete whirled around, and I focused my aim on Pete.

“I’m getting’ out of this, you bastards. Do you hear me? I’m walkin’ out of here!” I wanted to make sure they knew who was in control.

“I’ll be damned, Jimmy”, Pete whispered in amazement. “It was you. All this time, it was you.”

“I’m sorry, Pete.”

This time, the shot’s echo sounded a little different. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

As Pete hit the floor, I lowered my gun. I hadn’t noticed, but Dom had taken a seat. He was looking at the spot in the wall that the chair had hit. As he took out a cigarette, I strolled over to him. He was surprisingly calm, considering two friends had been gunned down right in front of him. Then again, Dom didn’t get rattled easily.

“What’re ya doin’, Jimmy?” He said it as a statement, not a question. “All we needed was Sal.”

“What?” I didn’t know what Dom was getting at. He exhaled the smoke, then peered at me through it.

“Ya didn’t have to whack ‘em, Jim. The deal said that all we needed was Sal. The feds said they didn’t have enough on Sal, so that’s where we came in. Make him think we’re on his side, get him to bring us up here, and get what we could out of him. Just don’t let him get onto us. No Sal, no deal.”

It hit me. “You’re the other rat.”

“That’s right Jim. Now, if I may.” Dom reached for my gun. He set on his lap and finished his smoke. Dom took one last look at me, as if saying “you blew it”.

“See ya on the other side, Jim.” I turned my head the other way, and Dom proceeded to blow his brains out.

I don’t want you to turn into your father, son. Don’t get into this business. Your mom tells me you’re going to college soon, and I want nothing more than to be there to provide for you. It’s unbelievable how time can fly. Last time I saw you, you were sitting in your crib, peaceful and innocent.

The fact of the matter is, I’m behind bars because of this business. I’m fatherless because of this business. You’re fatherless because of it. Don’t carry on the tradition.

Do that for me.

Make me proud,

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