by Robert Child
Chapter 4
MAFIA CLUBHOUSE 7TH STREET, PHILADELPHIA
Seven men, including capo, Phil Leoni and Nick Consiglioni, surround a card table. Smoke hangs thick as each plays a hand of ziganet, the Italian version of baccarat. Suddenly, they’re startled by two loud knocks on the door. All men instinctively reach for their guns as Leoni goes to the door and peers through a hole.
Charlie faces the door as Murray waits off to the side.
Leoni turns back to the men, “It’s a cop.”
The men hide their guns and slide away the cards.
“Yeah, who is it?” Leoni barks.
“PHPD. Got a report of a disturbance at this address,” Charlie replies.
Leoni looks back oddly at the men and comes back. “Disturbance? There ain’t no disturbance here.”
“Mind if I check?”
Leoni nods to get the guns out of sight and complies, “Yeah, just wait a second.”
Consiglioni moves across to the closet and stashes the guns inside and nods OK. Leoni opens the door. Charlie enters. “Officer Stanowski, PHPD.”
Murray quickly follows Charlie. The mobsters recognize Murray and deflate.
Leoni protests, “I thought it was just you.”
“I never said it was just me, hotshot.”
“Gentlemen, what do we have going on here?” Murray interjects, Charlie continues.
“Yeah, six guys sitting around a table, thumbs up their asses – something ain’t right.”
“Leoni,” Murray says pointing, “you tell your shithead boss his joke wasn’t funny. He just took a big bite of a shit sandwich.”
The mobsters look to each other with blank faces.
“Look, Murray, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Consiglioni shouts.
“You just tell him if he’s looking for me, he knows where to find me,” Murray counters. The mobsters roll their eyes. Murray pauses and gives Charlie a slight grin and nods to the men. Charlie immediately gets Frank’s unspoken request to fuck with them. Charlie turns and fakes beginning to head for the door.
“Okay, I guess we’ll be leaving,” then Charlie pauses and turns back, “By the way, who let you guys in here?”
Leoni looks back at his fellow mobsters. And back to Charlie. “I don’t know, nobody?”
Charlie responds, “Oh, so nobody let you in. Where’s your key?”
Leoni shrugs, the other men do as well.
Charlie presses, “Somebody had to unlock the door to let you in.”
Leoni folds his arms together, on the defensive.
“I see so you broke in, then you’re all fuckin’ burglars!” Charlie shouts.
“No! No! We, we gotta key.” Leoni protests. Mobsters start rifling through their pockets not finding any keys. Charlie grabs his shoulder radio mic.
“This is officer 5789, Stanowski, corner of 7th and Passyunk.”
Radio crackles, dispatcher responds, “Go ahead, 5789.”
“I have a possible 10-39 in progress, need backup and a wagon.”
“10-4,” the dispatcher responds. “Any shots fired?”
Charlie looks over to the men, smiles and clicks the radio mic again.
“Not yet.”
“Roger,” the dispatcher responds, “assistance is on the way.”
Consiglioni moves to get up shouting, “Hey! Hey!”
Drawing his weapon, Charlie barks, “Sit the fuck back down and shut up.”
Murray moves his hand close to his waist holster and Charlie leans back to Murray and whispers, “You know something, I’m gonna miss all this.”
RESORTS INTERNATIONAL HOTEL, ATLANTIC CITY, WEEKS LATER
A sparkling casino hotel towers above a squalid backstreet of abandoned cars and shuffling homeless people. Inside the penthouse suite, sitting at a long table overlooking the ocean, Scarponi holds court. The “family” is composed of twenty-something, dark haired men wearing gold chains. Phil Leoni sits to Scarponi’s left. He is watching guys further down the table laughing it up. The mobsters are laughing with Sal Vestra about Leoni and the guys who got arrested at the card game on Seventh Street.
Scarponi is not pleased.
“Yeah, big fucking joke? You get that cop’s name?”
Leoni nods embarrassed, “No,” then he remembers, “No wait, I think it was Stanowski or something like that.”
“Hauled in by a Pollock beat cop, nice.”
Leoni, wanting to shift attention off the incident, changes the subject. He nods in the direction of Sal while looking at Scarponi.
“Hey, Boss, ya know, Salvie, he’s been makin’ lots of money while you been gone – got a new fancy car. He’s been buildin’ a strong crew.”
Scarponi’s head is turned to Leoni but his eyes shift to Sal.
“Maybe too strong,” Leoni finishes. Scarponi nods.
Leoni wipes his mouth with a linen napkin and reaches in his suit jacket pocket rummaging for a folded-up newspaper article.
Scarponi eyes Phil suspiciously as he takes the article from his hand.
“This came out last week, front page of some New York paper. Sal’s making sure everybody gets a copy.”
Scarponi takes out his reading glasses and unfolds the article. The masthead reads, ‘THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’.
Further down the table the laughter dies as one by one the men turn and notice Scarponi reading the article.
Scarponi starts reading it aloud slowly. “Most feared mafia figure in Philadelphia…fastest-rising star in the Scarponi organization?” The kingpin looks up and takes off his reading glasses. Everyone has stopped eating, some mid-bite. The silence is deafening. “Hey Salvie, didn’t know we had a FUCKIN’ celebrity in the family. You been showing this all around?”
Quaking, Sal responds, “Yeah Nick, but it ain’t nothing, just a fuckin’ newspaper story.”
“Yeah, well I hear you’re pretty proud about this little piece of fuckin’ nothin’.
Vestra shoots shoots Leoni an accusing glance then casts his eyes on the floor.
Holding the article in the air while staring at Sal, Scarponi slowly rips it apart, letting the pieces fall to the table. When it is all torn to shreds, he leans forward into the table.
“I don’t wanna see your name in the paper no more, Sal. You got that?”
Vestra looking nervously back at Scarponi, “Sure, Nick, sure. Anything you say.”
Scarponi looks around the table and points. “And that goes for all of youse. I run this fucking show.”
The men quickly nod obedience.
Scarponi looks back at Leoni and shakes his head then looks back at the men, all still frozen. “I want you to understand somethin’. Every minute of every day of the last three fuckin’ years I spent rottin’ in that cell, I planned what I was gonna do when I came back.”
All of the guys turn and listen intently.
“No more of the small shit. We’re gonna own this fuckin’ town. Everybody’s gotta pay. Everybody!”
Scarponi begins to envision his reign of terror.
A scruffy corner drug dealer gets pushed around by twenty-something, dark-haired men in gold chains.
“From the fucking guy on the corner outside the school…”
A deli shop owner in white apron hands a wad of cash from his register to two young mobsters.
“To the guy I get my coffee from and the guys writing numbers…”
A burly man in a roofer’s union jumpsuit on a job site, glares at two young twenty-something dark-haired men wearing gold chains and he mouths them to “fuck off”.
“To the Goddamn unions operatin’ in our territory. They all gotta pay a street tax!”
Burly roofer’s union boss looks down from a three-story scaffold at two young men exiting a dark sedan at the bottom of his scaffold.
“Cause if they don’t…” Scarponi continues.
Thick chain wrapped around a pillar of the scaffold goes taut as the sedan peels away. Workers, now scrambl
ing down the scaffold, fall to their deaths in a crash of twisted steel.
“They’re gonna get hurt, real bad.”
Dust and smoke clears revealing the union boss dead under the rubble.
“Boys.” Scarponi pauses, smiles and rubs his hands together. “I’m just gettin’ warmed up.”
Thank you for reading the first installment in the Blood Betrayal series. I have made this first installment permanently free to try to introduce folks to the series and my writing.
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Rob Child
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