Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol)

by Jerry Weber

  “I’ll try Luigi, but threatening me isn’t going to get your money back.”

  Jack is plenty scared, but he is hoping that $10K isn’t enough to bring the real bone breaking enforcers down on him. Three days later he calls Luigi and lies, “Luigi, I got a lead on a restaurant job downtown, but it will take time to get the money together from working there. Right now I have zero to give you”

  “Alright Jack have it your way, bye.”

  After another week Jack is home one night really worried about still no job and the gambling debt. But he can do nothing, because he is trapped in a situation he has no control over. The door buzzer sounds and Jack hollers “Who is it?”

  “UPS,” the voice from the other side of the door responds.

  Jack doesn’t think he ordered anything, but he instinctively opens the door. With that all hell breaks loose, as two goons tumble into his living room and force Jack down into his TV chair.

  “Luigi sends his regards,” the larger of the two says as he pounds Jack in the stomach with a clenched fist.

  “Ugh,” Jack cries out.

  “We are going to ask you just once nicely, duh you have da money fur us?”

  Jack shakes his head, but the motion is stopped by a volley of fists as he gets pummeled in the face by the second goon. He grunts in pain, but the fists keep flying, until Jack is bloodied and slumped over limp and near passed out in his chair.

  “Enough Enrico,” says the first goon, “Listen real careful Jack, dis aint nutin compared to what happens if we don’t hear from you wit da money next week.”

  With that they leave as quickly as they entered. Jack is panting, sweating, and might have soiled himself after the last horrible five minutes. He is almost immobilized and his face is really starting to throb. Who to call, and what to say? Jack spends the next two days home nursing his wounds. He has ice bags on both of his eyes which are swollen along with his face to twice their normal size. He decides he has to end this once and for all.

  He calls Luigi and says, “I have pictures of the beating your guys gave me, and if they ever come near me again I am going straight to the police.”

  Luigi hangs up on Jack, as this is not the news he wanted to hear. He is now forced to call Dominic, his lieutenant who runs Luigi’s neighborhood territory.

  “Look Dominic, dis guy Jack is becoming a loose cannon. He is talking about becoming a canary and singing about us to da cops.”

  “Okay Luigi, you did your part. I may call on you to help later after I decide how to handle this situation.”

  Jack meanwhile feels relieved; he finally told Luigi that he is no longer going to be intimidated by mob’s threats. What he doesn’t know is that Dominic is on the phone to Carlo looking for permission to head off a possible problem by wacking him. Carlo responds to Dominic, for a lousy $10K I would not have you take him out, but his threat of going to the cops takes this to a new level. Carlo is feeling much less inhibited with his new crematory scheme. Here is a case where he might have written off the 10Gs just to keep the peace. However, now he yearns to get back the old respect on the street that lately seemed to be lost.

  “You have my permission to wack Jack. By the way, take Enrico and Luigi along since they already know him; then use our new procedure and call Vinnie he will take it from there. Jack will be given a proper sendoff.”

  “Okay boss; consider it done.”

  Jack wakes up the next day and again feels insecure. It was too easy to get to him before, how easy would it be for them to do it again? How safe is he now? Jack has a cousin Robby, who is a detective in the NYPD Manhattan Bureau.

  He looks up the number of the 16th precinct and asks, “Is detective Robinson in?”

  “No, I’m sorry he is off until tomorrow, do you want to leave a message or can someone else help you?”

  “No, I’ll just call back later thank you.”

  Jack doesn’t know where Robby lives and doesn’t want to disturb his aging mother for the number. It can keep until tomorrow he tells himself.

  Later that night, Jack is leaving Bozo’s after a couple of beers and a good basketball game. On the quiet street late at night walking home he hears an engine noise following him down the street. He turns and sees a black suburban driving slowly and keeping about fifty feet behind him. Jack doesn’t need any further clues as to who this could be. He takes off running and cuts a hard right into an alleyway between two buildings. Behind him, he hears car doors open and footsteps getting louder coming from behind. Jack, still being agile, gets to a five foot high gate at the end of the alley and scampers over. He knows this isn’t the end of the chase, so he looks for some open space to run towards. On the left is another street and Jack races down the sidewalk. He doesn’t see anyone behind him, so he slows his pace and tries to plan his next move. Before he can get his next breath, he sees the black suburban with its lights off barreling down the sidewalk directly towards him. He tries to duck to the right but is hit head on by the left fender of the 6,000 pound SUV. With a sickening thud, his neck is broken and his body is catapulted ten feet into the air.

  Luigi jumps out of the back of the Suburban and looks at Jack’s mangled body and says, “See what happens when you disrespect us, you lowly piece of shit. We gave youse a chance and you had da balls tu threaten me and my people; you got what you deserve.”

  Dominic, who is supervising this operation, gives the order, load him up and head for the warehouse boys.”

  He then calls Vinnie to meet them with the “mortuary van.” One more customer for a trip to Pennsylvania. In two more hours, Vic’s phone will ring in Duryea, it will be his second operation for the mob.

  CHAPTER 24

  Success in a Business

  It is now three months since the first package arrived in Vic’s garage. He has now had three more rendezvous with Vinnie, all as uneventful as the first. With each success and an additional $10,000 into his coffers, Vic is finally a success at a venture. He is careful to not deposit the cash in any of his accounts. He keeps this money literally under his mattress and takes out what he needs to make up payments when he is short in financing the funeral business. Yes, his other business is still a loser, but he can easily now make up the shortfall from his newfound “stash.” And it gets better; the extra $40,000 of found money is tax free, which is the reason Vic can’t deposit any of this directly into his checking or savings accounts. Only if the IRS were doing a formal audit of Vic’s books, would the injections of cash from another source be brought to light.

  Given the small size of Vic’s funeral business, an IRS audit is not likely. In fact the little money losing funeral home is a perfect dodge to ‘launder’ the money. Vic is doing in Duryea on a small scale what the mob is doing all across the country on a far larger scale; using legitimate businesses to hide money made in illegal activities. If anything were to go wrong, it would have to happen with the illegal operation of the crematory, and Vic swears to himself this won’t happen. With three months in, Vic doesn’t even think about a possible snag with these operations. He only has to be around when another call comes in.

  It was now time to live a bit. After spending the last several months scraping by from hand to mouth, Vic has a pent up appetite to finally enjoy some of the things he could only dream of before he met Sam. While not rich, Vic has what every American dreams of, excess spendable cash, literally walking around money.

  First, Vic takes his eight-year-old minivan with over 100,000 miles on the clock down to the local Chevy dealer. Without ever realizing, he is beginning to look more like a mob member, he purchases a brand new triple black Chevy Suburban with all of the bells and whistles. The truck has a sticker price on the north side of $40,000, but Vic simply puts $10,000 down and finances the rest. Don’t want to show all your new money at one time. Sitting in his aromatic leather captain’s chair driver’s seat, Vic is for the first time ‘king of the road’.

  He now uses his new wheels to take him to the Wilkes-Barre ma
ll and Nugents furniture store. Here he picks out, with the help of a shapely sales assistant, $15,000 worth of cool modern furniture for his man cave. The stuffy looking apartment sparsely furnished with his grandmother’s leftovers is to be a thing of the past. Next to the furniture store is Tomorrow’s Man, a men’s clothier, and another $3,000 for a completely new wardrobe. Finally Vic will look the part of a small town, thirty-year-old capitalist. Vic reflects as he leaves the clothing store with bags of stuff, that this is fun.

  “Now I know what I have been missing all this long time in the financial wilderness.”

  It’s funny, but for most people, the stigma of where the money came from soon disappears when one is out enjoying it. Vic is certainly no exception. In one short week, Vic has spent nearly $60,000. But, now with good credit, having paid off his overdue credit cards, he has a whole new outlook on things. Gone are the days when clerks would swipe his credit card and give him that sickening look when the purchase comes back rejected. No, life is good, and Vic is going to do what he has to do to keep it that way.

  To compliment his living large, Vic, no longer depressed and broke, begins to frequent the local hot spots where the yuppies his age hang out. He can now easily leave tiny Duryea, and appear in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre for his weekends. Vic has regained some of the attitude and momentum he once had in his college days. Vic could order a $50.00 meal, and then stay to dance and party the night away. Combing his hair looking in the mirror, not a bad looking guy, he muses. He’s in the pink with proper attire, correct wheels, and the right attitude, combined with being a good spender by buying drinks and leaving good tips at the clubs and bars.

  Vic can finally attract the “hot” chicks. He started to hook up with the local girls who frequented these places. He reacquired his taste for dancing and was becoming quite popular with the “in” crowd. After some brief flings with some good looking women, Vic begins to realize these relationships always seemed to melt away when they found out what he did for a living. It seems most women aren’t thrilled with dating a funeral director, even if he was a cool dude. He had to start lying that he was into the computer industry, but that had its limits, and basically Vic was not able to settle in with any one favored lady. He took all this in stride for a while, but he really longed for a soul mate to have a permanent relationship with.

  CHAPTER 25

  Karen

  When Vic was doing the bar scene in Scranton, one of the bars he stopped at was Basil’s. A downtown club on the first floor of a large office building, the modern interior was minimalist almost to being austere. However, Basil’s offered a happy hour that went from 4 to 7 p.m., longer than the other Scranton places. On weekends, it also brought in some of the better local bands. Here is where Victor first noticed Karen Schmidt. Karen was one of the more conservatively attired girls in the place; she did not dress especially seductively. But her well-coordinated outfits did show off her curves very well. Besides not being flashy, she hung in the background, not hiding, but not aggressively looking for attention. Vic guessed she was about five foot six, and weighed perhaps one twenty. All of the weight well proportioned. She had a pleasant looking face, not a Hollywood starlet, but better than average. Vic would give her a solid eight.

  After a couple of weeks of seeing Karen talk to some of the guys and even do a couple of dances, he ascertained she was not hooked up with any one person. On the fourth visit to Basil’s, Vic decides “it’s now or never.” He will make his move and if she blows him off, well nothing ventured.

  Victor was pleased when Karen was not reticent to talk with him and accept a drink from him. She even accompanied him to the dance floor and was pretty agile with that not too shabby body of hers. Vic was impressed. He left it at that, but made it a point to be back the next Friday; there was something about Karen that wasn’t there with the other girls he got close to. Vic wanted to get to know this reserved pretty lady better. After more pleasantries the next week, Vic went for broke.

  “Karen, I would like to take you to dinner.”

  “Okay Vic, where and when?”

  “Tomorrow night we will go to Romano’s, one of the better Italian restaurants in Old Forge. By the way where do I find you?”

  “I live up near the hospital in the Valley View Apartments. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

  “Tomorrow then, I’ll pick you up at six.”

  Vic was elated, he’d now get a chance to learn more about Karen while having a great meal; life is good.

  At dinner the next night Vic learned that Karen is from Wyoming, Pennsylvania, hell right around the corner, and she also graduated Wilkes University with a BA in nursing. She worked at CMC Hospital, the largest in Scranton as an intensive care nurse. This thought Vic was great, nurses are usually unafraid of the dead because in their hospital training they are marched down to pathology at some point and made to witness an autopsy. That is not for the faint of heart, but hospitals want their nurses used to all aspects of the human body.

  After divulging that he ran a funeral home in Duryea none of the usual bad vibes came back from Karen. In fact she seemed genuinely interested and wanted to hear more about Vic’s career. At twenty-eight, she was two years younger than Vic, but very mature and a good conversationalist. Victor couldn’t believe his luck at finding this near-perfect girl; but there was more than luck at play.

  What Vic didn’t know was that Karen had been somewhat reticent about meeting other guys, due to an unpleasant experience in her recent past. It seems Karen was dating a doctor at the hospital. Unbeknown to Karen the doctor had a wife back in Philadelphia. All of this came to a head when the little woman came up one Saturday night from the City of Brotherly Love to see why her husband seemed to not want to come home on weekends.

  Acting on a tip from a jealous intern at the hospital, Karen and Emily (Mrs. Edward Smallwood) met up in a restaurant in downtown Scranton. This was highly embarrassing to Dr. Smallwood who had one too many women sitting at his table. Karen was mortified, said goodbye, and left that scene forever.

  Thus, Karen was free when Vic, through good timing, was observing her. Of course, Vic wanted to get serious immediately, but Karen, coming off of a bad experience was reserved about being intimate with Vic. She wanted to know more about him and feel secure, before she let her emotions get irretrievably involved.

  After four weeks, the romance was proceeding like a high school puppy love affair. Vic was hot to engage in any kind of sex he can get, usually settling for kissing and petting in the living room of either his or Karen’s apartment.

  Karen insisted that she would not sleep with Vic, but was feeling herself getting closer to Vic and actually longing for more. She wanted to be sure, so even though the last time she confided in her mother about a boyfriend it turned out horribly embarrassing for Karen; she needed to know more about Vic.

  “Mom, I am dating this funeral director, Victor Kozol. He’s a really nice guy from Duryea, but I really don’t know much about him, how can I be sure he is who he claims to be?”

  “I have a co-worker at the pharmacy where I work who is from Duryea, what if I ask her if she knows anything about Victor?”

  “Okay mom, I know it sounds hokey, but I can’t get myself emotionally involved for a second time only to find out the other person is an imposter or deeply flawed.”

  In just one day, Mary Schmidt, Karen’s mother is on the phone with her daughter.

  “Well Jane my friend doesn’t know him or his parents who are retired and living in Florida, the rest of his story checks out though. He runs the family funeral home and has never been married. In fact, he only in the last month has been seen in the company of a good looking girlfriend around town.”

  Karen was ecstatic; she knew that she is that girl. She has in the past couple of weeks been eating out and hanging around Duryea with Vic.

  “Oh and Karen, why don’t you ask this Victor of yours to come over for a good home cooked meal some Sunday.”

&nbs
p; “Okay mom, I will see how he reacts to that, and thanks for the help with the ‘find out’ committee.”

  In another month, Vic and Karen have spent some nights together both at his place and hers, and they are more enamored with each other than ever. Vic loved the idea of not being lonely, and was happy to shuttle between his place and Scranton. He was actually in love for the first time in his life.

  But, as he reflected on the good parts of this new relationship, Victor began to have his own reservations about his future relationship with Karen.

  For the first time in months, the other and much darker side of his life started to encroach into his consciousness. There were two elephants in the closet that Victor did not want Karen or anyone else to find out about. One was his funeral business was nearly non-existent; which if and when Karen figured out she might start to wonder, where did Vic get all of the money he had to keep his lifestyle up? This would lead to the much darker secret in Vic’s life, his association with underworld characters from New York.

  Since Victor never had to associate with them publicly in Duryea, they were separated by one hundred miles of space. This made it much easier to cover for a lifestyle that was anything but normal. But, would the width of the State of New Jersey, forever keep Victor safe from being discovered, especially by Karen?

  CHAPTER 26

  The Sunday Dinner

  It was a gray, overcast fall Sunday the prearranged dinner that Vic has agreed to have with Karen’s parents was to take place. He was a little apprehensive about the meeting, but the promise of a roast beef dinner with homemade apple pie took away most of Vic’s reservations.

  It has been a long time since he has eaten home cooking, and he was not going to back out now. Karen picked him up at 11:00 and drove him over the short distance to Wyoming. The small town of less than five thousand people is much like Duryea but has an area of newer homes up on the hill overlooking the old town. This is where the Schmidts, Mike and Mary, live and also is where Karen was raised. The two story brick home with white trim was neat and well-maintained.