Warren Murphy - Mob Psychology

"Maybe it'll taste all right with the marinara sauce on it."

Don Carmine attempted a forkful. He spit it back into the plate. "Ptoo! You call this marinara sauce? There's no garlic. Only onions." He pawed through the remaining bags, extracting a cellophane package of sliced bread.

"This fuggin' looks like Wonder Bread," he complained. "I don't believe this. I can get better Italian bread down at the Cathay Pacific. This state in unbelievable. The chinks bake better bread than the wops. "

"Want me to take it back, boss?" asked Bruno the Chef.

"Later. Right now I wanna decent fuggin' meal. Go cook me somethin'. "

"Sure. What's your pleasure?"

"Clam chowder. Manhattan clam chowder. The red stuff. Fresh clams, too. And if I so much as chip a single tooth on a piece of shell, you're gonna hear about it."

"No sweat, boss," said Bruno the Chef, leaving the room to seek fresh clams.

As he was going out, Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto was coming in, clutching a grayish, slick sheet of paper.

"I'm the fuggin' Kingpin of Boston and I cant get a decent meal," Don Carmine was saying. "What happened to the respect we once got? I was fuggin' born too fuggin' late, I guess." He spied the Maggot and asked, "What's that?"

"Fax from Don Fiavorante."

"Give it here," said Don Carmine. He fingered the slick paper unhappily. "You'd think a classy guy like Don Fiavorante would spring for better paper to write on," he muttered. "Stuff's always waxy."

"Maybe it gets that way coming through the phone," postulated the Maggot as Don Carmine read through the note carefully, moving his lips with every syllable.

"Listen to this," Don Carmine said suddenly. "Don Fiavorante wants to know how come our sports book is doing so well. Wait'll I tell him, huh?"

"You bet, boss," said the Maggot, producing a notepad and pencil.

Don Carmine scribbled a hasty note and said, "Fuggin' fax that. "

Obediently the Maggot walked over to a nearby fax machine and started to feed the sheet into the slot.

"Wait a minute!" Don Carmine roared. "What the fug are you doin'?"

The Maggot turned. "Like you said, boss."

"Like I said, my fuggin' ass. That's a business secret. You don't fax it open like that. The wire could get crossed and someone might hear what's written on it or something."

"Sorry, boss," said the Maggot, withdrawing the sheet sheepishly.

Don Carmine snatched it away. "You gotta watch yourself every step with this technology stuff. You guys have no conception how this works. No conception."

Don Carmine carefully folded the sheet into thirds and produced an envelope. He placed the folded note inside, sealing it with a tongue that belonged on a size-fourteen brogan, and handed it back to the waiting Maggot.

"There. Now you can fax it."

While the Maggot was studiously feeding the envelope into the fax machine, Don Carmine Imbruglia picked up the evening Patriot Ledger and turned to the sports page.

As Carmine's eyes settled on the race results, they narrowed reflexively. Then they expanded like blackened kernels of surprised popcorn.

"What the fog is this!" he howled.

"What is it, boss?" wondered the Maggot.

"Get Tony, that weasel. Haul his butt over to the Bartilucci yards. I'm gonna make him rue the fuggin' day he ever met me. "

"Gotcha, boss," said the Maggot.

Tony Tollini lived for the day when he had worked off his debt to Carmine Imbruglia.

The trouble was, that day looked further and further distant.

No matter how hard he worked, helping build LCN into a moneymaking operation, his own vig kept going up. At first it was because Don Carmine kept remembering new losses that had been logged on the stolen hard disk. Then it was for rent in the condo in which Don Carmine and his men had installed themselves.

It was the Windbreak condominium complex, on Quincy Shore Drive, barely a stone's throw from LCN headquarters. It had been deserted when they had all moved in. There were no other tenants. Tony had the impression that Don Carmine was not exactly paying rent to the owners, yet he insisted or adding a thousand dollars a week to Tony's mounting debt. And food. Don Carmine had it sent over every week. More than Tony could eat, much of it spoiled or out of code. That was four hundred a week.

"I'm never going to get out from under," moaned Tony Tollini one day as he was walking along Wollaston Beach. "I'm never going to see Mamaroneck again." Even the dimming memory of the IDC south wing made him nostalgic for his old life. He would cheerfully eat mashed-potato sandwiches from the comfort of his old desk if only he could somehow be transported back there, free of debt, free of LCN, and most of all, free of the knowledge that if he attempted to run for it, he would have not only Don Carmine after him but also his own Uncle Fiavorante.

Hands in his pockets, Tony Tollini trudged back to his condo apartment.

He got as far as the Dunkin Donut shop on the corner of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street when a long black Cadillac rolled up onto the sidewalk to cut him off.

Doors were flung open. Tony's hands came out of his pockets in surprise. Familiar chisellike fingers grabbed his elbows and threw him into the waiting trunk. The lid slammed down and the car backed off the sidewalk, jouncing, to rejoin the hum of traffic moving toward the Neponset River Bridge and Boston.

In the darkness of the trunk Tony Tollini could only moan two words over and over again: "What now?"

The first thing that Tony Tollini saw when he was hauled out of the trunk was a rusty white sign affixed to a chain-link fence. It said "BARTILUCCI CONSTRUCTION COMPANY."

They walked him around to the back of a long shedlike building of rust-scabbed corrugated sheet steel.

Don Carmine Imbruglia was waiting for him. He sat up in the cab of a piece of construction equipment that Tony had never seen before. It resembled a backhoe, except that instead of a plow, a kind of articulated steel limb ending in a blunt square chisel hung in front of the cab like a praying-mantis foreleg.

"What did I do?" asked Tony, eyes widening into half-dollars.

"Lay him out for me," ordered Don Carmine harshly.

They laid Tony Tollini on the cold concrete amid rusty discarded gears and other machinery parts, which bit into his back and spine. His face looked up into the dimming sky, which was the color of burnished cobalt. A single star peeped out like a cold accusing eye.

Machinery whined and the articulated limb jerked and jiggled until the blunt hard chisel was poised over Tony Tollini's sweating face like a single spider's fang.

Don Carmine's raspy voice called over, "Hey, Tollini. You ever heard the expression 'nibbled to death by fuggin' baby ducks'?"

Tony Tollini didn't trust his voice. He nodded furiously.

"This baby here's a nibbler. They use 'em to bust up concrete. You know how hard concrete is?"

Tony kept nodding.

"You wanna bust up concrete," Don Carmine went on, "you need brute force. This baby has it. Watch."

Machinery toiled and the nibbler's blunt implement jerked leftward. It dropped, almost touching Tony's left ear. The Maggot was holding down Tony's head so he could not move.

Then a stuttering noise like a super jackhammer filled Tony Tollini's left ear. The hard ground under his head vibrated. The lone star in the cobalt sky above vibrated too.

When the noise stopped, Tony's left ear rang.

Don Carmine Imbruglia's voice penetrated the ringing like a sword slicing through a brass gong.

"You been holding out on me, Tollini!"

"No, honest. You have all my money. What more do you want?"

"I ain't talkin' money. I'm talkin' the hard-on disk."

"Which one?"

"The one the Jap stole, what do you think? You told me you hired him right off the fuggin' street. Never saw him before. Right?"