I wasn’t so moral that I didn’t know what made people tick. Me, moral—sounded more like a punch line to a bad joke. I was an assassin, how moral could I be? I didn’t want to judge some “John” for getting his jollies. If cybersex was his thing, so be it. But my beef with the Johns was straight up. They were complicit in the Machine’s criminal sex slavery and underage prostitution rackets. How? They fed the money to the Machine that kept the felonious behavior viable.
Johns had a choice, and they made it, but it was a wrong decision. Many of them got punked, and I didn’t feel a bit sorry for them. They had it coming. They were the dirt bags of the market, the consumers which supported the abuse of women and children with their money. If there wasn’t a market, organized crime wouldn’t waste their time with it. Maybe they didn’t know what the score was for the young girls, but I didn’t buy it. The Johns were slimy narcissistic people that knew watching a twelve-year-old having sex was wrong.
I’ve heard it said, you can’t save people from their own stupidity, and John’s were living proof. The adult playgrounds were littered with victims of organized crime. Not just the hookers, but the Johns too. Mobsters didn’t thump John’s or roll them like in the good-ol’-days. No, now they scammed credit card information through fraud, intimidation, and extortion. Cybercrime carried a hefty price tag.
Johns were their own worst enemy. They jumped in feet first when they surrendered their credit card information for the hook up. At that point, they weren’t Johns anymore; in the eyes of the Mob they became “Marks.” Johns knew they were dealing with criminals, so why the surprise when they discovered they’d had a game run on them.
The Machine’s minions worked the streets to hand out secret phone numbers or website addresses on used napkins at bars or whatever was handy. The John made the connection and they knew up front it wasn’t free. The John dummied up and provided the credit card information, and the charge was processed. Johns expected the girls to keep them on the hook as long as possible for the cha-ching to mount up. What followed was an education. There were hidden fees in the hook-up and maybe a few extra minutes slapped on his card, but the John got what he wanted; the small stuff could be overlooked. His anonymous escapade protected his public image and reputation.
The Machine’s nerdy new cybermobsters were cunning. They tapped his account for hundreds, maybe thousands extra, all in the matter of a few seconds. Do you think John Anonymous would run to the cops? Not a chance. If he did, he would expose his own deeds, and the picture-perfect little world he’d created for himself, and perhaps his family, would be destroyed. He’d take it in the shorts and count his lucky stars. It could’ve been worse.
The Mark, if he was loaded with loot, might have found himself at the mercy of Mostarda cybercriminals’ real talents. Remember the credit card information that was handed over so freely; they had it all in their greedy mitts. It was the face of the Mob, nerds armed with computers. It had given weenie-armed little punks, mobster power, and they knew how to exploit vulnerabilities. The Mob was still the Mob, they hadn’t changed a bit. They’d found a modern way to use the same old tricks to get what they wanted. However, if the nerds needed some muscle, they were savvy enough, to keep the wannabe mobsters around to bust a kneecap or two. I didn’t care in the slightest if the Mark had gotten taken. My concern was with the sex slavery with underage girls forced into play.
Cal listed the cybercriminals’ newest version of the older phone scam as webcam sex rip-off. The Marks were taken for a ride when they logged into the websites. It was pretty much the same gig as the phone sex, only they were secret websites, and difficult for the Feds to catch. The Internet gave the Machine new tools of leverage with IP addresses. Mostarda’s crew mastered multiple versions of internet-based piracy. These guys were hackers and smart. Smart enough to stay away from breaking into government infrastructures. They didn’t focus their attention on knocking off a bank with an internet heist. Such a move would put them on the Feds’ radar; rather they concentrated their efforts on stealing from the commoner.
The Palatini mission had never been about who got fleeced. When bank accounts were stripped, credit cards maxed out, or their identities stolen, it was an education. The only victims I cared about had been kidnapped, held hostage and exploited.
The Abbandanza crew represented what I liked least about sex offenders as a whole; they pretended to be something they weren’t. They called themselves businessmen. It had a nice ring to it, but the definition lacked credibility. They’d used their ill-gotten finances to buy highfalutin friends and influence, but it couldn’t change what they were—the scum of the earth. Their façade could fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but it didn’t fool me. They weren’t businessmen at all, they lacked the cajones to fess up to what they were; kidnappers and sex offenders that couldn’t man up and make an honest living so they enslaved others. The Mob liked to mix with the upper crust of society. Somehow it validated their existence as acceptable. It made a good fit too. Society’s elite had a slimy side, as well.
The Mob had plenty of legitimate business they’d invested in to launder their illegal incomes. When Capone ran the Chicago Outfit, he was taken down through his money. The government used paper and pen to write tax codes that could be enforced by a new law enforcement agency, the FBI. Of all the vile crimes Capone was rumored to have been responsible for, he was convicted and jailed on the least vicious of them all; tax evasion on his illegally gained fortune. It was the government’s position, regardless of where the moolah came from; they had to pay their fair share to Uncle Sam. Legitimate businesses were the only way to account for where the money had come from, although it hadn’t actually. The government could overlook that detail.
I was window shopping for a weak point to exploit. A person or situation that would allow me to cut them stem to stern. I wanted to rip their guts out for what they were. Suddenly, it occurred to me. There it was, right in front of my nose, and I hadn’t seen it. It was the Machine’s strength and their Achilles’ heel, all wrapped up in one nice, neat package.
Money, the Mob loved it. They couldn’t get enough of it. It came in from hundreds of different sources, but it was all tainted through illegal gain. With Anna, she was only interested in the money if it was directly associated with sex slavery or the illegal immigration rackets. I didn’t differentiate. All their money was a target, and it amounted to a lot of cash. I trained my cross-hairs on what I felt was their real weakness.
In the Mob world, everyone paid upwards. The rule of thumb was 10-percent of the take. It was networking at its finest. Someone once said, the love for money was the root of all evil, and the Mob loved their money. If some bum, hit one of their drops; there’d be hell to pay. Nobody had stolen from the Mob and lived to tell about it. I wanted to slap them in the face with it.
Frank Rizzi was part of the collection process. Mostarda’s crew, through various avenues of earnings, brought the money in and ultimately to Rizzi. According to Cal, Frank gathered up the cash daily and brought it to the Capo. From Mostarda, 10-percent went up to the CEO, Rocco Colansante. Capos Bacca and De Luca paid the same way. Camerota still paid to De Luca. There again was a weak point I kept in mind.
The CEO took his cut from each family-faction and sent the rest upward. The last in line were the Giannetti brothers, Boss and Underboss. How they did their split was unknown, and it didn’t really matter to me who got what. I had something for each of them. They’d been living off borrowed time, and for too long. Killing Anna was a mistake they would not recover from. I couldn’t guarantee I’d bring the entire crime family down, but I’d set my goals high, and it included the Abbandanza hierarchy.
Rizzi held the prestigious position of Rochester enforcer. Cal had made him sound like a glorified errand boy instead. He was a thug who cracked heads when he was told to and carried the drop like a ritzy butt-kissing bellhop. I thought it would be a good start on the money trail to have a
little chat with Rizzi. Perhaps he could shed light on where to find Carmine or what happened to Joey. In the process, the money he had for Rocco would become mine. When they discovered the drop hadn’t been made, and Rizzi’s bullet-ridden body turned up, they might think someone was trying to muscle in. It would be a brazen attention getter, especially if I tied Camerota’s name to it.
To pick up a visual on Rizzi, I used Cal’s notes. It wasn’t necessary to find his lair in Rochester; he had a money drop in Buffalo. Rizzi never travelled alone on the drops. The scene would be proverbial. Two birds for one stone. It was like a discount market, “get one Rizzi and get a second rider free.” Two for the price of one, it had a poetic sound.
What if the rider was innocent? I had already resolved the issue. There was no such thing as innocent. If I felt guilt, I’d learn to live with it—comfortably. Anyone who was associated or participated with the Machine was fair game. The focal point for the Palatini operation initially was to put an end to the syndicates kidnapping and exploitation of underage girls. I considered it my business as much as any soldier finds his purpose in defending his country against enemies both foreign and domestic. “We the People”—it was our fight! The fact that organized crime existed unabated, spoke to me. “We the People” could not depend on government intervention to save us. We had to act. We had to be willing to do something for ourselves. I am not ashamed to claim, I am justice by another name—Walter Eloy Goe. If I were a religious man, I’d pray for others to put on the mantle of protector of the people as Palatini had.
Cal and Anna died because they were willing to expose the Mob’s corruptness. Both had different reasons why they sacrificed their lives. Cal to write a best-seller and Anna for the freedoms of others, but they both died to expose the truth. In my book, there was no greater display of love for fellow human beings than the willingness to lay down your life for another. It was the Palatini way. In that, I was proud.
It wasn’t that most people didn’t believe as we did. It was society which had been shamed into accepting the psychobabble that punishment, retribution, and vengeance, were wrong for a civilized society. It was a sham, perpetrated by lemmings of the educated elite. They may have sounded real smart, but their ideas were contrary to nature. It wasn’t until a vile crime struck near home, that they believed, as I did. Once it was personal, like the tragedy that befell me with the loss of Anna, they too would want revenge. There was no closure in empty words, only in the smell of gun powder. Even then it was incomplete, but as close as I could get.
Rizzi didn’t have a definable schedule. He made the milk run into Buffalo a few times a week. The only consistency seemed to be his destination, a shipyard just off the Niagara Thruway. In times past, the docks boomed with business. But, with the economic downturn in the area, much of the shipyard had closed shop along that stretch of road. My destination was a small single story cargo office positioned at the front of a large parking pad, maybe three acres in size and empty. This was Rizzi’s drop point. I pulled into an abandoned lot kitty-corner of the office about the length of a football field away. I nestled my Avenger quietly between a small gathering of rusted out or otherwise immobilized forty-foot container vans and started my observation. Surrounding the parking pad was a six-foot high chain-link fence with four-foot wide rectangle placards attached. On the signs, printed in bold black letters on a red background were the words “Restricted”. Foreboding as it might seem, the sign nearest me drooped to one side, almost touching the ground.
Sometimes luck was on your side; it was always appreciated when it was. This was my lucky day. My first set up on Rizzi, and he showed. The Machine had a history of getting up late and working late. I thought it was unusual when Rizzi arrived before noon. My intention was to put a tail on him. Establish whatever I could from locations and residences, and then have an uninterrupted person to person chat with him.
The office was manned by a couple goons who had arrived around nine in the morning. When the car pulled up, I didn’t know it was Rizzi, but it soon became evident. The car was a mid-nineties 4-door Chevy Impala SS, silver-gray in color, that parked by a large entry gate next to the offices. The driver hopped out and went inside the cargo office while one of the goons came out and got into the vehicle. I could see a person seated on the passenger side of the car, I suspected it was Rizzi. Through my binoculars, I could see the two in the Impala making hand gestures. I assumed they were discussing business. Finally, the goon exited the car. Under his arm was a satchel. The prospects were good, it was the drop. The driver returned to the car, but they didn’t leave, so we waited. The goons in the office, Rizzi and his driver, and me, all waited.
A second vehicle pulled up to the main gate which was located next to the offices, I figured it might be shipyard business since it was at the entry gate, but the gate didn’t open. Right there, right in front of me, I watched Carmine Bruno step from the black SUV. Rizzi exited the Impala while his escort stayed put in the car. The pair embraced and walked together from the shipyard entrance along the access road in my direction, right at me.
I watched as they continued in my direction, closing the distance between us, one step at a time. I could feel a vibration, a tingling sensation, welling up inside me. I wasn’t anxious; I was excited. I felt the rush of adrenaline that accompanied a kill.
They drew close, I could see their precautionary measures, and it amused me. They didn’t look around like a bunch of amateurs to see if anyone was watching them. They assumed they had an audience. In a coy fashion, they covered their mouths when they talked. They wanted to insure no Feds were honing in on their conversation with a “Big Ear” and recording what they were saying or that they weren’t using a lip reader with binoculars hoping to pick up viable Intel. Rizzi held his stubby cigar in his mouth while Bruno dug at his teeth with perhaps a toothpick. It was an old Mafiosi trick. Unlike the Feds, I didn’t care what they had said. The FBI was tasked with building ironclad cases against the syndicate; all I had to do was pull a trigger. In this case it would be four times, for two rounds each. But first, I wanted Bruno and Rizzi to squeal like stuck pigs. They owed me that much.
They were getting close enough for an easy solution, if they saw me, I might have to resort to winging them, load and go. It was easier said than done. I would also have to kill the driver and the goons before I could get away.
I pulled out my M22 Glock, attached the moderator, and ran the slide. I worked the receiver to insure there was a chambered round. The inserted magazine now held only fourteen. I ejected the magazine and added another round which brought it up to full capacity. I reinserted the magazine and held the weapon by the steering wheel. I figured the extra round might come in handy if this went down. I held the trump card if it went south, surprise was the element. I was ready for war, they were not.
They stopped twenty feet short of my car. I could see their legs and feet on the opposite side of the container van that concealed my presence. I slipped my sunglasses on and cocked my head back slightly. I fully expected them to come check me out. A point blank encounter, perhaps out of view of the office crew, might work out in my favor. I’d smelled the sweet scent of death in the air, but Rizzi and Bruno turned away and ambled back toward the office. The scent would linger in my want, not to be realized at this moment in time.
Rizzi returned to his car. Moments later, he and his driver took off. My plan of random and roving was back in play. Rizzi was a good plan, but I couldn’t pass up on Bruno. I could tag and bag Rizzi and his driver any day of the week. Rizzi wasn’t going anyplace. Carmine, on the other hand, was elusive and more difficult to come up with. I gave him my full attention.
Rizzi pulled away while Bruno went into the cargo office. A few minutes later, Bruno emerged with a satchel under his arm. In mobsterville, this satchel was either a very popular fashion statement or it held something important. Bruno had a potbelly that hung over his belt if he had one on. He didn’t look like a fashion statement kind of
guy to me. My guess was it contained a pile of loot, the drop from the Mostarda crew.
I surmised Carmine had retrieved what he came for. He fired up his black SUV and backed away from the gate. I’d take Bruno for Rizzi, and still get the drop; it didn’t get much better than that. If my luck continued, Bruno would take a road trip to Toronto to pick up De Luca’s loot too. We drove north, the opposite direction I had hoped for. We were travelling the same route as Rizzi took. It didn’t make sense. I kept my Glock close, loaded, and ready for action.
Traffic was light which forced me to lie back on the tail. It wasn’t anything to worry over. If I lost the scent, I’d pick it up on another day. If I lost him and he had no idea he had been followed then he’d be at the shipyards again, and we would start the cat and mouse over. We travelled a few miles up I-190 to a ritzy condominium high-rise in the little Italy district of Niagara Falls. I parked off Pine Avenue where I could get a good look at the main entrance of the condo. By the time I parked, Bruno had gotten out of his vehicle and was nowhere in sight. My assumption was he’d already entered the building. I depended a lot on Cal’s notes. The address I was parked near was linked to underboss Antonio “Tuff Tony” Giannetti. He was the known entity Bruno answered to. He might also have given the order to whack Cal. Tuff Tony conducted himself more Hollywood than gangster, although the two were merging in general appearance. It was a gangster paradox. Wannabes that looked like Tinseltown rappers wanted to live the thug life. They had the gangster look. The real hood rats hated the ghetto look and did everything they could to shed it. Gangsters didn’t want to look like gangsters. The new breed of gangster wanted to look as if they’d posed for a cover shot on a GQ magazine. Upscale and upper class was their thing. Tuff Tony was the leader of the pack in the look. He took flash to a new level and too far for some of the older crime family members to appreciate. They didn’t like the notoriety he had netted in the newspapers and tabloids.
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