Warren Murphy - Mob Psychology

"Why don't you fuggin' get another fuggin' car, then?"

"Fuggin," said Don Pietro thoughtfully. " I like the sound of this. Yes. You will be known henceforth as Fuggin."

" I don't fuggin' wanna be called Fuggin. What kinda name is that for a fuggin' wise guy?"

"You can accept 'Fuggin' as your name or you can accept only ten percent of all the money you steal for me," said Don Pietro, looking around for his greasy paper sack. He found it in the vent pocket of his suit, which was mysteriously spotless, if hopelessly wrinkled.

" 'Fuggin' is fuggin' spelled with two fuggin' G's, not three," said Carmine (Fuggin) Imbruglia in a sour voice. "Everybody remember that."

"That is good, Fuggin," said Don Pietro. "Now, the first thing I ask of you as a soldier in this thing of ours is to get me a few shrimp cocktails."

"What do I look like, a fuggin' waiter?" exploded Carmine.

"No, you look to me like a man who has respect for his capo," Don Pietro said evenly.

Listening to the steel in his capo's voice, Carmine Imbruglia swallowed once and asked, "How many shrimp cocktails you want?"

"One truckload. I understand there is one leaving Baltimore for the Fulton Fish Market at two o'clock this afternoon."

"Oh, swag," said Carmine. "Why dincha say so? I can handle this."

It was not easy. The truck was a sixteen-wheeler and Carmine's aging Volkswagen Beetle was not up to forcing a sixteen-wheeler over to the side of Interstate 95.

So Carmine executed the only strategy available to him. With the driver's door open, he cut in front of the truck, jammed on the brakes, and dived for the shoulder of the road.

In a grinding cacophony, the Beetle disappeared under the truck's front grille and bumper, lodging under the cab like a bone in a rottweiler's throat. The sixteen-wheeler jackknifed to a stop, rubber burning and smoking.

"Okay, stick 'em up," said Carmine to the driver.

The driver was obliging. He got out of the cab and stood white-faced as Carmine climbed behind the wheel. He got the engine started. He pressed the gas.

The truck lurched ahead and stopped amid a squealing of tormented metal.

"What the fug's wrong with this pile of junk?" demanded Carmine.

"The pile of junk under the cab," said the white-faced driver.

Carmine remembered his Volkswagen, which he had intended replacing with his share of the shrimp. Without the shrimp, there would be no replacement. And without wheels, his career as a wise guy was finished.

Rescue in the form of a tow truck happened along then.

Brandishing his Saturday-night special, Carmine made the hapless truck driver get in front of the tow truck. The wrecker screeched to a halt. Carmine jumped into view.

"You!" he told the wrecker driver. "You hook this wrecker up to that truck there."

"You crazy?" demanded the driver. " I can't haul a sixteen-wheeler. It'll bust my rig."

"You fuggin' do as I say, cogsugger, or I'll give you a lead fuggin' eye."

The driver didn't understand all of it, but the part about the lead eye was clear enough. He lifted the cab, and as cars whizzed by without pause or interest, Carmine made the two drivers haul the remains of his Beetle out of the way.

Then he made the driver of the wrecker tie up the truck driver. Carmine then bound the latter.

Carmine Imbruglia left them by the side of the road saying, "I hope yous jerks rot." It all had been too much like work.

After Carmine had gotten through telling Don Pietro Scubisci the whole story, Don Pietro paused to extract a toothpick from between his teeth and casually inspected a fragment of cold pink shrimp meat impaled on it.

"You left the wrecker?" he asked, unimpressed.

"What was I to do? You wanted shrimp. I brought you shrimp. When do I get my cut?"

Don Pietro snapped his fingers once.

Soldiers began bringing in cases of bottled shrimp cocktails and set them beside Carmine.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Your percentage," said Don Pietro.

" I expected money!"

"You are a smart boy, Carmine. I will let you sell your share of the shrimp for whatever price you see fit. This is only fair, since I will be moving volume at a very low price."

"You are very kind, Don Pietro," said Carmine sincerely, touched by the consideration of his capo.

He was a happy man as he carried the shrimp, one case at a rime, on the HIT back to Brownsville.

"We're gonna make a fortune," he told his wife. "Restaurants will be fallin' all over themselves for quality shrimp like these!"

"At least you got work, you bum," Camilla had said.

The next evening, Carmine Imbruglia dragged himself home with a solitary case of shrimp under his arm. It was the same case he had started the day with. The others remained stuffed in his refrigerator and in the cool air of his basement.

"I got no takers," he complained to his wife.

"What're you talking? No takers?"

"Somebody got to every fuggin' restaurant first. I got undercut. Except the last guy, who still wouldn't buy."

"Why not?"

"The stuff had spoiled by then," said Carmine, setting the case on the kitchen linoleum and kicking it methodically.

Carmine and Camilla had a rough next month, but as Carmine explained it to his wife over breakfast once morning, "At least we ain't fuggin' starving. We're eating better than any of the neighbors."

"If you call cold shrimp three times a day eating," Camilla had spat. "And I still say it was that rotten Don Pietro that undercut you with the restaurants."

"Get out of here! Don Pietro wouldn't do that. I'm a made guy now. A soldier. We're practically like this," said Carmine, putting two cocktail-sauce-covered fingers together."

"Put your balls in there and it would be the truth."

"When the time comes for me to make my bones," snarled Carmine (Fuggin) Imbruglia, "I hope it's for breaking yours."

The years rolled by. Carmine toiled in wire rooms, ran numbers, served as a wheelman, and whenever Don Carmine had a yen for seafood, he asked for Fuggin.

One day, at the height of the Scubisci-Pubescio wars, when Don Pietro and Don Fiavorante Pubescio of California were at war for the title capo da tutu capi, boss of all bosses, Don Pietro summoned Carmine Imbruglia to his scarred walnut table.

Carmine noticed a long gouge along the top where a .38 slug had chewed a furrow that had not been there the week before.

Don Pietro was pouring Asti Spumante into the furrow, trying to get it to match the color of the rest of the wood.

"Fuggin," he said softly, "I have need of you."

"Anything, Don Pietro. Just ask. I will make my bones with any Scubisci family member you name."

"Forget bones. I want cod."

"You want me to clip the Lord?" sputtered Carmine. "I wouldn't know where to find him. Would you settle for a priest?"

"I said cod, not God."

"Who's he? I don't know no west-coast wise guy that goes by the name Cod."

"Cod," said Don Pietro patiently, "is a fish. A tasty fish."

Carmine sighed. "Just tell me where the truck will be."

Don Pietro lifted a rag. "Not a truck. A boat. I want you to steal this fishing smack, whose hold is filled to the brim with fresh cod."

"I don't know nothing about hijacking no boats," said Carmine heatedly.

"You will learn," said Don Pietro, going back to his polishing.

It was actually pretty simple, Carmine found.

He rowed out into the Sound in a stolen rowboat and waited for the smack to happen along. Carmine wondered why it was called a smack. Maybe it was running drugs.

When it finally muttered into view, he rowed in front of it, chortling, "This is a snap. It's gonna be just like the shrimp heist, only smoother. I won't need no wrecker."

There was a minor problem when he waved his snub-nosed revolver and shouted, "This is a stickup!" because the boat for some reason wouldn't stop. It bore down on Carmine's tiny rowboat like a foaming monster.