Lawless Measures: Vigilante - The Fight Continues

by Lyle O'Connor

  “Like I said, I have other plans already.” The weapon discharged, and the round I’d jacked into the pipe, roared out. Lippa bowled to the ground, he screamed in agony from the gut shot. Both hands were clenched tightly over the stomach wound. Blood oozed out through his fingers and ran freely. It was a miserable way to die.

  I sat on the edge of the open trunk and watched Lippa wriggle in pain. It was all but over for him. I just wanted to watch his suffering a little longer. When he ceased to entertain me with his pain wrenched torso and laid face up as if looking peacefully at the stars, I wanted him dead. I quietly slipped up alongside Lippa and discharged my weapon again, this time blowing brain matter and debris into the air from the gravel-laden river bank. I really didn’t have any further use for him.

  I tossed the phone in the river near where I killed Lippa. Keeping a souvenir would be a mistake, and those pesky signals bounce off towers. GPS, it was new technology being installed in some phones. It was risky to have operational, but water killed the signal and destroyed any trace of DNA. It would never be found. That would be the easy fix.

  There was going to be a plethora of forensic evidence associated with Lippa’s crime scene. The alehouse may have had a camera system, but because of their clientele, I doubted it. Plausible deniability trumps any good reason to have cameras at a Mob pub. The apartment complex did have cameras, and there I was on the surveillance video for sure. If the police get a whiff I was there and could connect the dots, it might pan out as a good lead for them. If the security guard, Ryan Vaquero, heard of Lippa’s murder, he might come forth with the video. If they could tie me in, there will be ballistics, fibers from the trunk of my car, too many things to anchor a case against me. I needed to get to Naccarella and Bruno fast. If the cops managed to pinch me before I found Anna, my opportunity to get her out alive would be lost.

  The Machine wasn’t known for reconciling events of this nature. There would be no negotiations; it had to be a rescue. Otherwise, if they thought the gig was up, they would silence her because she could finger them.

  As I drove toward sanctuary, it occurred to me I couldn’t continue along haphazardly. I needed somewhere to conduct business of my own, mobster style. It had to be isolated, private, and easily accessible. Potentially this could be a time consuming project, but I didn’t have time. Much to Maximillian’s chagrin, as long as I’m in place, it’s a Palatini project, and it’s not tied off.

  I needed to exercise caution at this juncture. My base nature was getting the best of me. I was the proverbial bull in a china shop; I enjoyed the feeling, and it was my greatest weakness. The project was now two-fold. The original mission to free those ensnared in human trafficking and finding Anna. However, Anna was paramount. I needed to blaze a trail through leads and get the next link in the mystery secured before the project unraveled. I wasn’t worried about those I would leave in the wake, when I finished with them, they wouldn’t be talking.

  Over my morning coffee, I perused the newspaper classified ads section for a suitable storage rental, out-building, or anything I could use with the privacy I needed. One of the beauties of Buffalo was its lagging economy. For thirty years or more the city’s ruling political regime coupled with organized crime ran businesses out of town or into the dirt. The mismanagement of taxpayer funds left Buffalo teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. With manufacturing dried up there was an abundance of vacated buildings around the outskirts of the industrial area. Rent on a small building was inexpensive and private, and there were a lot of abandoned buildings, lying dormant and isolated from housing areas. I was in my Avenger before noon checking out real estate.

  It took the better part of a day to find a place I was comfortable with. On the south end of Ohio Street, off a service road, sat a dilapidated-1940s Quonset hut, shabby and in partial ruin. It was unoccupied and available. The corrugated metal roof was dog-eared, rickety, and missing in areas from the semicircular rafters. The most conspicuous feature I found appealing was the rear overhead garage door that hung off track at an angle which rendered it useless. It gave the hut, personality. It was perfect for my aspirations.

  I spent a few hours watching the hut for activities that might impede my primary intention. Confident I’d found a good place, I called the phone number for the property management, paid a couple months up front, and had power turned on. I stopped by the hardware store, picked up a couple portable heaters for the tiny office inside the hut, light bulbs, and a lock to secure the entry door.

  It was a full day by the time I headed back to sanctuary. I worked late into the night. I developed the smaller details accumulated by Cal and Anna into a decipherable representation of the syndicates’ operation. If there were criminal associates that had nothing to do with Anna’s abduction or the project, but managed to get in my way, I’d kill them too—the end justified the means.

  Investigating authorities swiftly connected the triple murders in Buffalo, and as expected, the news agencies ran with it. I didn’t view this in a positive light. With the turn of events that culminated with Anna’s disappearance, reporters only served to further complicate matters. The news agencies reported FBI sources had monitored mob activity closely, and hadn’t picked up any chatter to conclude a turf battle was brewing. Buffalo police speculated it was an internal housekeeping matter stemming, more or less, from unresolved conflicts within the crime family. They were quick to discount the expansion of organized crime in their city or that there was any danger to ordinary citizenry.

  Law enforcement erred before in their judgment of mob wars. New York had seen more than their share of territorial disputes that resulted in high body counts. The reporters made quick work of exposing the Feds track record. It served as a grim reminder that history had a habit of repeating itself. It was especially true when the future was dictated by the template of human nature, with greed being the underlying menace.

  The media audience might have been awed by the lightning-fast pace of the police to connect the three dead men, but seriously, they already knew these guys from their rap sheets. They were all affiliated Abbandanza family mobsters. How much of a stretch could it have been to get that right? The police supposition was likewise accurate that there wasn’t a territorial dispute going on behind the scenes. No police rocket science here, but rather a coy deception. Law Enforcement had paid out plenty of cold hard cash for eyes and ears on the streets. There was no honor in the criminal underworld, and everyone knew how the game was played. From paid informants to your average street junkies, they constantly gathered and sold information to the highest bidder. Sometimes it was the Feds who scored big on mob Intel, at other times; it was the mobsters that picked up tidbits that ultimately keep them out of the slammer. Being a snitch paid, but there was a risk. Snitches got stitches.

  In the Pacific Northwest where I hailed from, two murders carried out in one day on a couple known syndicate mobsters, made the front page headlines for days after the murders. In Buffalo, the local press quoted the cops and dismissed the story as insignificant. I figured these Bozo reporters were in cahoots with organized crime. There was no logical reason for them not to delve deep into the mysterious murders, unless they had no intention of exposing the crime family’s existence. They had an agenda.

  If I had to drop a dime and get my old friend Harold Horn involved, I’d make the call. As much as I disdained the liberal press, I held them accountable for not reporting the illegal activities of the criminal syndicates that operated freely. They were themselves a viper’s pit of organized crime.

  The Machine had links to politicians. It was a well-known fact and undisputed. However, most people chose not to believe it. They had infiltrated all levels of government; from the lowliest Buffalo city councilman to New York State officials. Any one of them might be on the bankroll or, at minimum, partisan to mobster behavior that benefitted their own causes.

  *

  To the judges, lawyers, politicians, and cops who abuse their power and a
uthority for filthy lucre, there is one who relentlessly pursues. He will not overlook how you have allowed crimes against humanity to go unchallenged; for this your requital churns impatiently. Count the days, hours or minutes, for the guilty there awaits the lawless measures of Walter. He is no respecter of persons.

  Chapter 4

  “They were criminally corrupt people; not innocent people corrupted by criminals.”

  —Walter

  It was my opinion, we had corrupt civil servants. Not all civil servants were bad, but some were, and they got my attention. Since I didn’t know who was and who wasn’t, I treated them all with the same respect, which was none. There were politicians, lawyers, cops, and judges that had been caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar. What followed, were the public’s outcry, and a search for “why.”

  Why! Why even ask? It was just another version of the age old question, “Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?” I put the question in perspective and rephrased it, “Were civil servants caught in the web of organized crime, criminals first or were made criminals by the Mob?” Most people couldn’t answer the question any more than they could answer the chicken or the egg dilemma. However, I wasn’t most people. I knew the answer.

  When politicians, police, or judiciary were caught with their fingers in the cookie jar their colleagues blamed organized crime. They cited mobsters for their overarching criminal influence on some of their own. How were gangsters to blame for the politicians, law enforcement, judiciary, and attorneys that were bad seeds? Did they threaten cops lives or put muscle on an elected official? Perhaps all they did was dangle an opportunity in front of them like bait on a hook, and they found it irresistible?

  These were people in position that served the community. Many of them were elected to an office to represent the people for the good of the community. It was in their power to put the screws to organized crime, but, they didn’t, not even close. They were obsessed with power and made bank for themselves by benefiting organized crime. As I saw it, there were two forms of guilt. Some of the civil servants were omitters. They were the ones that took bribes and kickbacks to overlook criminal enterprises operating freely. The guiltiest of these were the politicians. We were building a government full of them. Then there were the “committers” the ones that bought in lock, stock and barrel, to commit crimes straight up. Scams, embezzlement, and frauds were their life’s work. They flaunted their Harvard education, shook hands, and kissed babies on their way to the top. Then they engaged in the bigger scams of housing markets, land grabs, and union trade agreements.

  How was it the Mob’s fault these louses did exactly what organized crime paid them to do? They weren’t made thieves, they were thieves, and on the take for all they could get. How was that the Mob’s fault? It was all opportunity, and they took it. An honest person with his head screwed on straight wouldn’t have gone for the offer, but those guys did. Bottom line, it was a quality of their being. They were criminally corrupt people; not innocent people corrupted by criminals. They abused their positions of power and authority to line their own pockets. Whether they ended up under Mob influence or not didn’t really matter to me. They would’ve found a way to make an extra buck off their servitude because they were criminally minded. I wasn’t giving the Mob a pass. What organized crime did was create opportunities for civil servants to fall into, and they did. In fact, they jumped in with both feet. They couldn’t get in fast enough. That’s where the money was.

  Anna had picked up travel brochures of Toronto. I glanced at them, but didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without. According to them, Toronto was a fascinating city to visit. I thought it sucked. All their jargon on the night life and the upscale parties were only places crime hung out. Toronto had a dark and sinister history. From its earliest days, and from what I could see, it hadn’t changed. It wasn’t built to provide an environment where decent people wanted to raise a family. It should have had an appeal to me because I wasn’t a family man. Maybe it did in a roundabout way; it was target rich. Obviously though, not everyone felt the same way.

  There was money to be made and businesses flourished. The migration found its way to Toronto by droves and brought the dregs of society with it. The morally corrupt and lawless stereotypes made it a hotbed of criminal activity in its earliest days. I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for all of it.

  I had my own ideas about what made Toronto a breeding ground for filth. This was an area of my life I carefully guarded. I tried to bring it up with Anna about the voices, apparitions, dreams and visions I’d had, but she’d dismissed it as something common among victims, except I’d never been a victim. I would have liked to have pressed the point with Anna, so she’d understand me, but I never found the liberty to explain my experiences. It wasn’t her, it was me. I didn’t want her to think of me as a nut job, so I’d kept it to myself.

  The kaleidoscope of dreams and nightmares I’d experienced in the past had paved the way for my transition to a vigilante. I was different from the other Palatini knights. For what I knew, they’d all had temporal experiences that brought them to the Society. I had an apparitional experience. Destiny, my spirit guide, had enlightened me, as if I were an oracle. I wasn’t chosen as a fortune-teller, tea-leaf reader, or a psychic. I was called to be an instrument of death. My passion was to right the wrongs for victims of heinous crimes. I didn’t become a Palatini by chance. I was led to knighthood in the society by Destiny.

  Carmine Bruno’s dossier fell from a pile of folders I’d had in my hands. It had landed on the table top in front me. The file stood wide open with a picture of Bruno’s face that stared back at me. Anna had spent a lot of time and compiled a large amount of information on Bruno’s nomadic lifestyle. From her notes, I could tell she had questions about his movements. “What was the reason,” she asked on her sidebar notes? I knew right off what the problem was. He was paranoid and rightfully so. When you took into consideration the people he worked for and how he conducted his business, it made good sense to be paranoid. In all likelihood, he figured his chances for a long life would be enhanced if he stayed on the move. It certainly improved his odds with me.

  Anna laid it all out as plain as she could make it. All the information she’d turned up on Bruno came from Cal’s notes. She’d drafted a targeting plan, personalized, just for him, but she never got the chance to put the finishing touches on it. I decided I would do the honors.

  After going through Bruno’s file carefully, the answer jumped out at me. He frequently stayed in the same place in Toronto. That translated to opportunity. He always rented a room at a small tavern nestled deep in the Corso Italia District. I figured that was the chink in his armor. He was a creature of habit. For a guy like him, it was a bad habit. He was called a wiseguy, but it didn’t mean he was all that wise. It was a smart move to be transient, but smart guys make mistakes too, and his habit might well be his.

  Bruno hung out at Musolino’s in Corso Italia. It was billed as an osteria, a dago-style restaurant. Older osteria’s were often used as meeting places and had rooms similar to an inn or bed and breakfast. Musolino’s, touting a rich guesthouse heritage, was such a place. This particular dive, nestled in the heart of a predominantly Italian neighborhood, was host to some of Toronto’s biggest names in organized crime. The way I saw it, all these upscale hoods in one place, was a plus. It was like I had all my ducks in one pond. All I had to do was line them up.

  The osteria sounded pretty cozy on the surface, but unbeknownst to Cal, his records demonstrated a more sinister history behind the scenes. I don’t blame Cal or Anna for overlooking what I spotted; they didn’t understand the depth of the problem they were up against. I was more in tune with the deeper roots of Musolino’s criminal landscape. My history from childhood to vigilantism had brought me experiences like no one I knew. I’d been there, in the darker recesses of spiritual influence where evil lurked. Musolino’s was one of those places. It bore an irrefutable past.
The kind of history nightmares were made from.

  Musolino’s, or at least the location in this district, had some sort of attraction for the worst of the worst. From the records, it dated back to the laying of the building’s first cornerstone. Sometime around the 1890s, before the Mafioso presences appeared, the osteria hosted a lawless clientele shrouded in mysteries. A medley of vagabonds and motley riff-raff made up the heart and soul of Corso Italia. It was bad DNA. Immigrants poured in from every nation under the sun. While most arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore, the Italian’s and Sicilian’s brought with them their extra baggage. Laden with their Old World obligations to continue feudal warfare, they settled in Toronto’s Italian district. Ambushes and mayhem abounded as they set about cutting out territories. It was here at the center of their bushwhacking activities a middle-aged couple decided to build a guesthouse.

  More rumor than fact surrounded John Jr. and Kate Benders. They reportedly built, owned, and operated the Labette Inn in Corso Italia at the turn of the century. It would become Musolino’s. The Benders were Dutch born immigrants, who initially made their way to the United States and took up residence in Osage Township, Kansas. The Civil War had ended by the time they arrived, and the westward expansion was well on the way. There was money to be made, so rumor has it, they opened an Inn. But, the Benders ran into trouble. Transients came up missing. Townsfolk made allegations and accusations against the Benders, and John Jr. and his family went on the lam. It must have been serious. The Benders abandoned their American dream and took flight to avoid arrest or possible lynching. Few people knew when they arrived in Toronto, but by 1895, they had resources enough to build a guesthouse—the Labette Inn.

  As a rule unsavory types weren’t pillars of the community for very long. This had been the case with the Benders. The rumor mill stirred when a vigilante committee from Kansas attempted to abduct the twosome and transport them back into the United States to face trial for multiple murders that allegedly occurred at their Kansas guesthouse. Evidently some of the missing people were found in a cellar of their guesthouse, heads bludgeoned and throats cut. With insufficient evidence of their guilt coupled with an uncooperative relationship with Canada to compel such action, John and Kate were allowed to forgo a forcible return to Kansas soil. The vigilante committee, despondent over their lack of success, set out to insure the Benders reputation would be destroyed. They marched and chanted, “Bloody Benders” in front of the Inn, which drew the attention of a reputed siege lord. He stepped in and arranged a personal favor for the Benders. After committee members received a few thug beat-downs, they left the neighborhood. According to the Kansas committee turned gossipers, John Jr. and Kate were not the traditional family of husband and wife, but rather they were brother and sister. References to their incestuous carnality spread like wildfire. They were further plagued by a series of local “missing person” investigations which, in some circumstances, had a connection to their Labette Inn. But rumors were just that, rumors, and they never gained traction in the highly transient city of Toronto. The Benders escaped, some believe for a second time, arrest and prosecution for multiple murders.