Tom Barber - One Way

Something was wrong.

Someone was here.

She knew it.

Inside a bar called Lombardis on Walker Street in Little Italy, a group of men were watching a hockey game on a television mounted above the long liquor shelf behind the bar. They each had a drink going and had been for some time, relaxed, secure on their own territory but each carrying a pistol on his person nevertheless.

On the screen, the Rangers were taking on the Penguins at the Garden and the game was squared at 2–2, the players skating fast around the ice, the puck flying back and forth, a quick flash of black on the white ice. There were several screens behind the bar; the one on the far right was flicked onto NY ONE, which was covering some kind of situation at a tenement block uptown in Harlem. No-one aside from one man paid any attention to it. Put a hockey game on alongside the news in here and there was only ever going to be one winner.

Sitting at the bar, Mike Lombardi drained his whiskey, watching the news report. Twenty five years old, tough and compact with swarthy looks passed down to him from his Milanese great-grandparents, he was still getting used to the fact that he was now head of his own New York crime family.

He’d always been an outsider. His mother had been a waitress who used to work in this bar; one night she caught his father Gino’s eye. Gino had been married at the time and once his wife had found out the girl was pregnant and that it was his, she’d come down here and given her one hell of a beating, to within an inch of her life. Apparently there’d been plenty of people around that night, but none of them had intervened, not when it was Gino’s wife dishing out the punishment. His mother had been hospitalised but despite Gino’s wife’s best efforts, Mike had been born six months later. In the space between the beating and his birth, Gino’s wife never let up. Although she never assaulted his mother again, she spent every spare moment making her life a misery, to the point that his mother soon quit working at the bar, frightened that the woman would assault her again or possibly order some kind of move against her.

Once Mike had been born, things still didn’t improve. Although his father was a feared man, the word bastard had echoed in Mike’s ears as a kid, both he and his mother ostracised, no-one wanting to get on the wrong side of Gino’s wife. Mike lived with his mother whilst he was growing up, but had started to come down here when he was old enough, working tirelessly to impress his father and trying to gain his attention and respect. Gino had always acknowledged Mike as his son, but as Mike grew older, ironically out of all of Gino’s kids he began to most resemble his father in looks and temperament. He was the second youngest of six and although he was clearly the least favoured, that had started to change with time. When others saw Gino’s acceptance and growing fondness for his youngest son, they’d followed suit and life had started to become a little easier during Mike’s teenage years.

Gino had encouraged the boy’s interest in the family business, despite his wife’s intense dislike of him. To her, he was a constant reminder of her husband’s infidelity. As Mike approached manhood, his dogged persistence had paid off. Unlike his half-siblings who grew up spoilt and lazy, Mike was a worker. In the last few years, he’d seen in the older man’s eyes that he’d more than gained his respect. Gino was increasingly and pleasantly surprised by his bastard son; Mike had started out working the racketeering in the area and had risen to where he was in charge of controlling shipments coming in through the East Side Docks, paying off guys who worked there and the Union, and ensuring the cops, Coastguard or US Customs never got wise to anything in the freight containers.

However, it had all been part of a plan, years in the making. All the insults and abuse Mike had received as a kid had left some deep scars; a boiling hatred had grown inside him, like a steaming pressure cooker always on the verge of exploding. Mike was only half related to every member of this family. The only person in the world he truly cared for, his mother, had already passed on. He’d never shaken the hatred that had festered within him since he was a child, or forgotten the insults and the way his mother was treated, his father never going out of his way to put a stop to it which he could have done in an instant. Looking at the world through a man’s eyes, Mike realised his position as Gino’s son gave him a major advantage.

It meant he could work his way up much more easily. Gain trust. Observe how the inner-workings of the operation functioned. Get a feel for the family; see who was happy and who was feeling misused. Blood was blood, and the one thing he’d inherited from his father was his ruthlessness. He’d shown hints of it already, kneecapping a guy who’d fallen asleep behind the wheel on a late-night job and consequently getting two of their guys busted. He’d also whacked three enforcers from the Devaney crew, chopping up the pieces and scattering them in the bay. Despite this violent streak, Mike was much more intelligent than he let on, and all this time had been planning his father’s downfall.

And at the beginning of the month, he’d executed his plan.

Motioning at the bartender to refill his glass, Mike glanced up at the screen. Reading the teletext, he made out that there’d been some kind of gunfight in the Upper West Side and that a team of armed men were holding off a tenement block, some people trapped inside. The bartender topped up Mike’s Jack as he watched the screen.

Suddenly, there was a screech outside the bar as a car pulled up, followed shortly afterwards by the sound of a door being slammed.

The men inside the joint glanced over at the noise.

Moments later, a big dark-haired guy dressed in jeans and a sweater strode in. He looked pissed. Two of Mike’s men, Paul and Luca, put down their drinks and stepped off their stools, walking towards him with total self-confidence, knowing they were on their turf. Even if this guy was lost, he was still going to catch a beating. No one walked in here without an invitation or Mike’s blessing.

However, the dark-haired guy didn’t slow his stride or hesitate for a moment. He laid Paul out with a fierce right hook, a savage punch that almost put him into next week, then slammed Luca up against the bar as he went for his pistol, twisting his arm behind him and pushing his head down to the wood. The others instantly reached for their weapons but the new guy pulled a gun from a holster on his hip, putting it to Luca’s head.

‘Throw them on the ground. Now!’

There was a pause, but the men complied, an assortment of handguns clattering to the floor, the men staring at him with vicious intent. Once the guns were on the floor, the guy slammed Luca’s head into the bar, breaking his nose. He collapsed to the polished floor in a heap at the newcomer’s feet.

‘You have any idea where you are?’ Mike said. ‘You’re a dead man.’

‘Is that right?’ the guy said, pulling something off his hip and sliding it across the bar. It was an NYPD badge. Mike looked at it.

‘Is that supposed to scare me?’

Moving forward, the newcomer grabbed the badge and slid it back into his pocket, then wrenched Mike off his stool, walking away and dragging him to the entrance, his gun buried in the mobster’s side. Mike hid his surprise. He knew some members of the Department were ball-breakers, but this guy was acting like a mob enforcer, almost like he was on the wrong side.

‘I don’t forget a face,’ Mike hissed. ‘I’ll find you.’

‘Oh I don’t think so,’ the man replied, pushing him through the front door and outside towards his car.