AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Carmine
Snow falls on the streets of New York, and lights and decorations are up everywhere. Groups of people wrapped in coats and scarves gather around song-sheets on corners to sing Christmas carols. Men in red and white Santa outfits with big white beards and black boots ring bells over buckets, and smile red-faced as they collect for good causes.
Christmases were not always so wonderful at home when I was growing up. In a big family crammed into three small rooms on the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, we didn’t have such an easy time of it. Between brutal debt collectors and my frustrated and drunken father, Mama had a tough time just getting us food and keeping the roof over our heads. Sometimes, putting food on the table for me and my sisters was all that Mama could do.
There was hardly ever enough to keep us going. So, extras? Like presents? Cakes? Forget about it. She did what she could, and it made me grow up tough.
Tough enough to take on those debt collectors and face them down before I was even through school.
Tough enough to go to Cesare Spinelli and tell him to his face he and his goons had preyed on my mama enough.
In his dark basement office, Cesare leaned across the table like a bald, shiny sack of hammers. His slitted eyes burned into my face. But I did not flinch.
He hissed, “You got some balls, kid.”
I had a knife. I was ready to slam it through the back of his hand. Nail him to his heavy wooden desk.
In that moment, a calm came over me. I learned the sense to wait. Sure, I could injure him, but he and his men would have ripped me into pieces and had fun doing it. However good it might feel to me, letting go of my rage and standing up to one of the big bad bosses, it wasn’t going to do any good for Mama to have one less pair of hands to bring food and money into our shabby little walk-up.
Cesare snarled. “It’s the vig, kid. It’s how this works.”
It’s funny somehow that ‘vigorish,’ what the mob call their savage interest charges, comes from Yiddish.
I showed him the knife. He looked in my eye.
“Let me work it off. Tell me what you need. Let’s make a different deal.”
His jagged smile was like a saw blade. But he made a deal.
So I worked for Cesare. I became his enforcer, his dirty-jobs man. Eventually, his right hand.
For almost ten years, I worked. I learned. Got myself closer and closer to him. Practically a decade later, the two of us were in his study on Christmas Eve, and I reminded him of what he put my family through. How my mama scraped and cried and suffered.
“I know, kid,” he cackled, and lifted his cognac glass. He gave me his saw-blade smile and said, “It’s the vig.”
I had that same knife ready. Only, it wasn’t his hand that I cut.
When you kill the king, you take the crown. Cesare’s sordid lower East-side empire of sin became the rock, the base of my power. I took over the longshore rackets from Tiny Fantoni’s crew, the gaming and the back-room bars in Little Italy, and, eventually, the Mondelli’s waste disposal business.
When I took over the drugs and guns and muscle of the Infantino family, I consolidated it all into the grip that I have on the island now. All the games and dirty businesses from City Hall and Wall Street, all the way up to the park, they all kick back to me.
Maybe those early memories are the reason that, if you knew me well enough, you could say now that I’m a total sucker for anything to help out disadvantaged kiddies. When there are kids in need, and especially around Christmas, I’m an easy touch.
For me it’s a duty, and I’m proud that I have built the resources to do it. But I would never let on to anyone about it. I’ve made sure no one knows me that well.
I send money, manpower, machinery, whatever it takes, but I only watch from a distance. Virtually. I might see some web cams, but mostly all I need is a glance at the local press. Keeping my anonymity — publicity is not something I need, given my lines of business, so I never visit or put in an appearance.
But I’ve built up a few trusted contacts nationwide. A few carefully chosen people, all across the country, let me know about projects that might deserve my help. Needy kids.
That’s why an associate of mine, Giorgio, calls me in late December.
While we’re talking, Madonna! I see a picture of a girl on the screen behind him. My heart lifts, bangs, and then stops, like it’s suspended. She’s curvy. Soft and round. Gorgeously plump with bright eyes that get my cock pumped.
So, I ask him, casually, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ and he tells me she’s the girl who’s trying to make the charity event happen.
“Name?”
