The Vulture's Game (Short Story)

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “I wasn’t at first,” Collins said. “Though I had a feeling none of this would go your way. The casinos, racetracks, airports, call girls—hell, even the drug business. We don’t belong in any of those fields, neither you nor me. And then that old man gets burned to death in a tenement fire. A fire you ordered set.”

  “The building was supposed to be empty,” Scanlon said.

  “But guess what?” Collins said. “It wasn’t and an old man died because you didn’t have the money to pay him out.”

  “You were part of this, too,” Scanlon said. “Don’t start playing altar boy with me. I’ve known you for too long a time. I may have lost everything, but not you. The house on the beach. The condo on the East Side. The money in the bank. They’re all still there waiting for you. And none of that would be yours if it wasn’t for me.”

  “That’s true,” Collins said. “Every word. All I have I have because of you. And because of that fact, I’m going to do you one last favor. Probably the biggest favor of your life.”

  “And what’s that, ‘friend’?”

  “Take your losses and walk away,” Collins said. “Don’t try to go out and pay someone to take out the kid or, even dumber, the old man. And don’t try to do it on your own. If you do anything foolish like that, one of your dreams will indeed come true.”

  Scanlon looked at Collins. “What?” he said.

  “You will finally end up on Page One of the tabloids,” Collins said. “Or at least photos of your body will.”

  “You planning on doing a disappearing act, too?”

  Collins shook his head. “No,” he said. “I signed on with a new firm. I start working for them next week.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “They’re a new company,” Collins said. “Small, family run outfit, out of Westchester County.”

  “What are you going to be doing for them?”

  “What it is I know how to do, Frank,” Collins said. “Managing buildings and construction sites. It seems they’ve acquired a few new buildings and sites over the last week and they needed an experienced hand to come on board. They made me a fair offer and I accepted.”

  “You’re leaving me to go work for the devil himself,” Scanlon said, shaking his head.

  “It won’t be new to me,” Collins said. “I’ve had a lot of practice in that area.”

  “This isn’t over yet, you know,” Scanlon said. “Give me a few years and then you’ll see.”

  “It’s over for me,” Collins said.

  Collins looked at Scanlon one last time and then turned and walked north up Madison Avenue, alone on a dark and empty street.

  Scanlon watched him leave, stared at him until he was long out of sight. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk toward the corner. A black sedan pulled up next to him and came to a slow stop. The tinted back window came down and a hand with a semiautomatic handgun stuck out, barrel pointed at Scanlon, who stood frozen in place.

  I stepped out of the passenger seat and walked over toward him, my hands in my pockets. “Nice night,” I said.

  “You won the first round,” Scanlon said. “But this fight is far from over.”

  “Oh no, it’s done,” I told him. “You’re done. I own you now. Any move you make, anything you try to do, won’t get done unless I give the go-ahead. You belong to me.”

  “And how long you think that will last?”

  “Until I decide you’re worth more dead to me than alive,” I said.

  Behind me, the man holding the gun leaned forward in his seat, his face barely visible in the darkness. “That gun that’s behind us,” I said. “I can make it appear anytime, any place, anywhere. Can you see it?”

  Scanlon nodded.

  “Good,” I said. “The next time, you won’t see the gun. You won’t see the man holding it. You won’t see me. The next time it will be just bullets.”

  The man sat back and brought his hand and the gun back into the car and raised the window. I stared at Scanlon for a few seconds and then turned and walked back to the car, got in, and slammed the passenger side door. The car slowly pulled out and drove up Madison Avenue.

  Frank Scanlon, once thought to be the most powerful and colorful man in New York, sat down on the steps leading to the Morgan Library and stared out at the streets of a city he once claimed as his own.

  CENTRAL PARK, SEPTEMBER 18, 2002

  12:24 A.M.

  It was just after midnight and I was on the second hour of a long walk through Central Park. I needed some time alone, as the activities of the past few weeks had consumed all my time and energy. I knew the job I was given on Scanlon was a test, and I was pleased that I brought the matter to a successful conclusion.

  In doing so, I realized that had been the moment I made my decision. For several years I had given a lot of thought as to what I would make of my life once my schooling was at an end. I’d thought about being a lawyer, but wasn’t certain I had the temperament for the job. I toyed with the idea of being a doctor, but it never went beyond that. Getting an MBA seemed a no-brainer since I could apply it to almost anything I chose to do. But what exactly would that be?

  I knew what my uncle wanted it to be, or at least I think I did. He needed someone to step into his place when the time came and he was still young enough to groom his own successor. That right should have naturally fallen to Jimmy, and had he been born without his disability, I would probably have been interviewing at a few of the downtown accounting firms I keep my money in. But regardless how Jimmy might feel about being passed over, passed over he was going to be—if not by me, then by someone else. Uncle Carlo would never risk the future of his organization.

  Now, I would be less than honest if I didn’t tell you how much I loved working the Scanlon job. I loved the planning, sizing up the adversary, trying to pinpoint his weak spots while being acutely aware of his strengths. And yes, I loved the danger, too. I chose the way to bring Scanlon down. The easy way would have been to take him out. Give the order, sit back, and wait for the hit to take place. But I’ve learned a lot from my uncle, not just his words, but also his actions. And I had learned just as much during my time in Italy watching the old Dons there go about their business. Toss in the books I was given to read about the men who established the international Crime Commission—Charles “Lucky” Luciano; the Chairman of the Board, Frank Costello; and the genius Meyer Lansky—and the lessons were there to be absorbed.

  You can always take someone out. If history has taught us anything, it has most certainly taught us that. From presidents to loan sharks, from popes to pimps, anyone can be brought down with a phone call and two bullets.

  But not anyone can be put into such a corner, a tight spot from which there is no way out, and be defeated in so thorough a manner that he is left with nothing. That’s so much more fitting an end than leaving him facedown on a sidewalk. In a way, killing him lets him off the hook, death being the ultimate escape. But survival is a punishing weight he will carry for the rest of his life.

  I walked past the shuttered children’s zoo and made my way down a dark winding path. I knew then that my life had been forever altered, my uncle and Frank Scanlon had together seen to that. When you come right down to it, the decision wasn’t such a difficult one. I might regret it one day, time would decide that. But back then, for that one moment, I knew there was no other way for me.

  I would become what I was destined to become. I would take the reins from Uncle Carlo and continue to build on the foundation he put in place. I will become the one who decides.

  I will be, sad but true, everything my father would have hated.

  I will be feared and respected.

  I will have great wealth and power.

  I will be a mob boss.

  I will be a Don.

  BY LORENZO CARCATERRA

  A Safe Place: The True Story of a Father, a Son, a Murder

  Sleepers

  Apaches

  Gangster

 
Street Boys

  Paradise City

  Chasers

  Midnight Angels

  The Wolf

  Short Story

  “The Vulture’s Game” (eBook)

  PHOTO CREDIT: KATE CARCATERRA

  LORENZO CARCATERRA is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sleepers, A Safe Place, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, and Midnight Angels. He is a former writer/producer for Law & Order and has written for National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Maxim. He lives in New York City with Gus, his Olde English Bulldogge, and is at work on his next novel.

  www.lorenzocarcaterra.com

  Read on for an excerpt from

  The Wolf

  by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Chapter 1

  Los Angeles, California

  Spring, 2013

  My name is Vincent Marelli and I own your life.

  I know you’ve never met me, and if you are lucky you never will. The chances are better than even you’ve never heard of me, but in more ways than you could think of, I own a piece of you. Of everything you do. I don’t care where you live or what you do, a percentage of your money finds its way into the pockets of the men I lead. We are everywhere, touch everything and everyone, and always turn a profit. And once we’ve squeezed every nickel we can out of you, we toss you aside and never bother giving you a second thought.

  You lay down a bet at a local casino or with the bookie in the next cubicle, we get a cut. You take the family on that long-planned vacation, a large chunk of the cash you spend—highway tolls, hotel meals, the rides you put your kids on—finds its way into our pockets. You smoke, we earn. You drink, we earn more. Buy a house, fly to Europe, lease a car, mail your mother a birthday present, we make money on it. Hell, the day you’re born and the day you’re buried are both days we cash out on you.

  And you’ll never know how we do it.

  That’s our secret.

  We’re never in the headlines. Oh, you’ll read about some busts and see a bunch of overweight guys in torn sweatshirts with tabloids folded over their heads do a perp walk for the nightly news, but that’s not us. Those rodeo clowns are the ones we want you to think we are. Those are the faces that get Page One attention, headline trials, and triple-decade prison sentences. We have thousands of guys like that and we toss them into the water any time federal or local badges need to make a splash, make the public think they’re out there serving and protecting.

  We remain untouched.

  We are the most powerful organization in the world.

  In the last twenty years nearly every top-tier branch of organized crime has joined our union: from the three Italian factions to the Yakuza in Japan, the Triads of China, the French working out of Marseilles, the Algerians, the Israelis, the Greeks, the Irish, and the British. We are now one. A powerful and ruling body so strong, we are beyond the reach of any government, let alone an ambitious local district attorney out to make a name. We have become what the old-timers like Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky dreamed about.

  We are a United Nations of crime.

  We took the business of crime off the streets and brought it into the dark, wood-paneled rooms where the real money and power live. It didn’t happen overnight and there were some bodies dropped along the way. In those early years not every crew greeted the plan with applause. That’s understandable. These were men and women used to doing business their own way. It wasn’t easy to make them look at the bigger picture, have them see that the arrival of a new century brought with it an opportunity to take what we did in a more lucrative direction. But enough of them got it. They understood that the way we had accumulated wealth in the last century would take us only so far in this new one. That in order not only to compete but thrive and control the power levers, a modern gangster needed to be educated, as skillful with a spreadsheet as he was with a gun and a blade. The modern mob boss would need to be as comfortable inside a boardroom as his relatives had been inside a union hall. The muscle end would always be easy to find. The ones with the knowledge and expertise to dominate a corporate structure would take time to develop.

  By the time the new century was welcomed, my group was in complete command. We had infiltrated the corridors of power from Wall Street to hedge funds to insurance companies and oil conglomerates. We were knee-deep in the political and medical worlds and cut a wide path in the hotel, art, jewelry, and airline businesses. You add to that gambling, drugs, sports, and sex, and we owned it all. By the spring of 2011 thirty-one percent of the currency spent in the world found its way into our pockets.

  It should have been a gangster’s paradise, but in my world, hell is never far away. Terrorist organizations wanted no part of our methods and we wanted even less to do with their chaos. Besides, the way those groups traveled, the light of the law was never far behind. If they crossed into our turf for any reason, they were taken out, no questions asked, no arguments given. It worked pretty well for a few years.

  Then along came the Russians, 1.5 million members strong, well-organized and even better financed. They laid low for close to a decade, letting the Cold War dust settle before tossing their muscle and cash to the terrorists. My group liked to get the bulk of their work done under the radar and preferred to conduct business in countries with stable governments. The Russians were the opposite. They thrived on worldwide unease—the more of it there was, the better they liked it. They had connections with forty-seven of the 191 terror organizations around the world and were the key financial suppliers for twenty-three others. Their money flow was endless and they were quick to supply those organizations with any weapons and high-tech equipment they desired. The Russians also knew their way around what any terrorist outfit most craves—a dirty bomb. Thirty percent of the Russian crew came out of the Cold War with degrees in physics and chemistry. That combination alone, working with the wrong people looking to cause serious damage, would deal my business a lethal blow.

  If all that wasn’t bad enough, we also faced a growing problem south of the border. In 2008 the Mexican gangs got their hands on some terrorist money, working on the simple assumption that any enemy of the United States was sure to be a friend to them. The cartel bosses set up a drug pipeline, buying thousands of kilos of hash and heroin from the eighty-seven terrorist outfits around the world functioning as suppliers. In return, instead of paying in cash, they closed the deal with shipments of all calibers of guns, tossing in the clips for free. It wasn’t lost on me that the guns traded by the Mexicans to the terrorists were American-made and stolen.

  Any spot I could point to on a map was about to turn into a hot zone. There was too much trouble brewing for it not to bubble over, and by the summer of 2012, I had a major decision to make. One of those calls a guy like me gets to make once, maybe twice, in his life.

  I could walk away from everything I built, turn my back and enjoy what was left of my time, proud of the criminal empire I helped create. I was thirty-three, with a wife I adored, two daughters, and a son who only had to smile in my direction to make me feel special. I had millions saved and millions more securely invested, every cent clean and legal. I had a thriving real estate and construction business that would keep my days busy and fuel a good and quiet life.

  But something gnawed at me, held me back from taking the easy way out.

  If I walked and let the terrorists and their criminal enablers have their way, they would bring everything I helped build down in one tumble. Besides, guys like me never walk away. We like to think we can, but the truth is I could never leave a problem—any problem—on the table and ask someone else to handle it.

  There was never a doubt in my mind these terrorist groups needed to be taken out. And my organization was the only one with the money and the manpower to take them head-on. We would need to be as ruthless and determined as our enemies, use all our resources, skills, and connections to bring th
em to ruin. In the process we would sustain heavy losses—both financial and in blood—but there could be no other way. You don’t talk peace with a guy looking for a fight and you can’t cut a deal unless you trust the hand you’re shaking. I looked at the situation from every possible angle and could figure no other way out. It was a war that needed to be fought. It would be a war foreign to us all: the power of modern organized crime against the Russian mob, the Mexican crews, and every terrorist outfit on the grid.

  I had no way of knowing if it was a war we could win.

  I only knew it was a war we couldn’t lose.