Exit Zero

by Neil A. Cohen

  How this removal would take place and who would be the one to oversee that removal was all administrative. The more pressing and controversial topic to be addressed was who of the three capos would be Big V’s successor?

  This transition plan needed to be resolved without dissention before the removal could take place and the new leadership could be announced. After all, the three were taking an action without sanction. There was no authorization from other families in New York or Philly. This could not be seen as a coup, or as an act of pure greed. Greed was good, but an underboss taking out a boss to further increase his own revenues would be seen as disloyal and the punishments would be harsh. This had to appear as an orderly transition of power to prevent any outside interference afterwards, or any attempts at acts of revenge from V loyalists from within the family.

  Gas Pipe knew that he was the one that was going to ascend to this role, even if the other two capos had not yet come to that realization. He had been a made-man the longest of the three, had been a strong earner for the family, and was known as the most brutal of the crew, both on his rise up the ranks and in his role as captain.

  He was not a man who lived by assumptions. He needed to ensure that everyone was on the same page with his expected coronation, and they should all willingly agree that his ascending to the rank of Boss of Bosses was the logical outcome. If anyone was not of that opinion, he had secretly brought enough firepower to change the mind of anyone who disagreed. After all, this may have been the mob, but it was still a democracy, not a dictatorship, and you won votes the best way you knew how.

  Bart Rizzi was an impeccably dressed man in his fifties. He ran a chain of high end Italian restaurants throughout the state and was known for his visits to each location, his mingling with the customers, his designer suits, and his expensive shoes. He seemed to have been born wearing a tie and pinkie ring.

  “This is not something that comes to us easy, and we know there is going to be significant fallout over this action,” Rizzi said to the assembled men, mustering all the solemnness in his voice that he could fake. “We need to ensure we have total loyalty to the new order once this transition takes place.”

  Gas Pipe began to speak up but his stomach preempted him, letting out a rumble and squeal as if his intestines were warming up for an operatic performance. This was followed by another round of breaking wind.

  “Jesus, Gas Pipe!” Rizzi chastised. “You having a problem over there?”

  Gas Pipe shot an accusatory look at his bodyguard Vincent. Two days prior, Vincent had been part of a crew that hijacked two large freezer trucks full of steaks. With an efficiency that most Fortune 500 companies would envy, the trucks were unloaded and the meat was sold and delivered within twenty-four hours to commercial entities all across the state. From high end steak joints up north to cheesesteak kiosks at the shore, to supermarkets, bodegas, and to butchers covering the entire Garden State. Of course, a case of the steaks were delivered to Gas Pipe’s home out of tribute, and he enjoyed two medium rare cuts of beef for dinner last night and a third with his eggs for breakfast this morning before making the drive to the Pines.

  Now, as his stomach growled and twisted, he assumed that one of those cuts of meat must have spoiled. On the drive to the meeting, he needed to have Vincent pull the car over on the parkway twice to puke, and had been farting like a cow the rest of the morning.

  “I’m fine, continue,” he snapped, annoyed at the attention being focused on his gastrointestinal issues.

  Gas Pipe was definitely not fine, he was nauseous and needed sleep. The night before he’d dreamt about this meeting. In his dream, he was on the hunting lodge porch smoking a cigar when the surrounding woods came alive with movement. A slow moan was heard at first, but then the sound grew to a deafening roar. He then traveled outside of his body, as if he were a bird flying through the branches deep in the woods. Below him he saw the dirt and fallen leaves on the ground rolling like waves in the water, as if there was an ocean of water beneath them, yet unseen. Then slowly rising from the mud appeared rotted and emaciated limbs, fingers reaching up like fast growing sprouts, followed by hands and arms. Soon faces were squirming up and out as if the Earth was giving birth to horrifically disfigured adults.

  The heads were missing large portions of skin, displaying cracked and stained jawbones and teeth. Some faces were missing noses, eyes, ears, tufts of hair haphazardly spread across bald heads with patches of skull bone visible. As the bodies used what limited strength and dexterity they had to extract themselves from the ground, large chunks of their remaining flesh simply pulled away and fell to the ground or was ripped from their torsos.

  They were in various states of dress: the remains of finely tailored suits, jeans and t-shirts, dressed for an evening on the town, and one was a woman who wore simply a bikini—not one that would be worn to the beach, but a bikini that only would be worn while hustling for dollar bills while and hanging upside down on a pole in front of leering college boys.

  The newborn corpses rose unsteadily to their feet, taking in deeply of the foul air that was now filled with the stench of their rotted flesh and exposed organs. While their bodies were devastated, their eyes— those that remained— looked perfect. Bright, bulbous, and searching.

  Gas Pipe focused on one particular corpse that was struggling hard to free itself from its shallow grave, as it had no hands to grip the surface. It was then that he recognized that it was Jake “Doodles” Douglass. Doodles was a lowlife thug who ran landscaping scams. He would approach old people to provide landscaping, driveway paving, roofing, and home repairs. He would harass them until they forked over the money for the work in advance, and then he would begin the work and shake them down for more cash. As soon as he felt he had could not get any more out of them, he took off, leaving their yard, their driveway, or their house a torn up wreck.

  Doodles also sold a lot of blow, though he consumed as much as he distributed. He got pinched and tried to cut a deal with the cops to wear a wire, but one of the cops he was negotiating with was also part of Gas Pipe’s crew. Later that evening, when Doodles thought he was meeting up with the feds to get fitted for his wire, he found himself getting pummeled to near death by a bunch of pissed off goombas. They held him down and it was Gas Pipe himself who removed Doodles’ hands with a tree trimmer. The hands did not come off easily and he had to really work the tool up and down to snap them off at the wrists. He thought they could hear Doodles screaming all the way up in Newark.

  They’d dumped the body off in the Pine Barrens, not far from the cabin. That was not the only body Gas Pipe had sent to this cursed place: the stripper was an old mistress, or gumar, who he’d found out was also turning tricks on the side to supplement the income he provided; the guy in the bowling jacket was a degenerate gambler who missed too many payments; the guy in the suit was a soldier from the NYC family who was in Jersey visiting a girlfriend when he got into a fistfight at one of Rizzi’s restaurants. They Jersey crew were some young hotheads who were trying to make a name for themselves by teaching this NYC wise guy a lesson about boundaries and territories. They wanted to beat him up a little to teach him a lesson but things got out of hand and next thing you know, the guy’s head was split open in the parking lot. They had to clean it up quick, and not wanting to start a war between the two families, they quietly dumped his body out here.

  Now Gas Pipe’s victims, and perhaps a hundred more who were dumped by other members from hits throughout the ages, were awakening from their dirt naps to seek revenge.

  Gas Pipe turned to run inside the cabin, but the door was locked. He called for Vincent, with no response. He wanted to run, but the slow moving parade of his dismembered and disfigured victims had already made it to the edge of the porch. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide, and he fell to his knees and covered his face so as not to see the death he had wrought.

  He’d woken up to find he had shit the bed. Those fucking steaks.

 
The thought of the night before sent a shiver up Gas Pipe’s spine and he tried to refocus on the meeting at hand. He again listened to Rizzi’s exhortations as to how difficult a decision this had been for everyone.

  Fuck you, you fucking pussy, Gas Pipe thought to himself. Was this prick getting cold feet? Did he realize Gas Pipe was going to be the new boss and still held a grudge about the stain Rizzi’s guys left on his restaurant carpet? Had he flipped also? And why did he care so much about his clothes and shoes? Was he a faggola or something?

  Gas Pipe felt the rage welling up inside of him. His stomach was killing him but still he was hungry as hell. He wanted to eat, yet Rizzi kept talking. He wanted to rip his throat out with his own teeth to make him shut the fuck up already.

  I bet this fucking greasaball tastes like the meatballs he serves up at those overpriced diners.

  Gas Pipe’s stomach growled so loudly that it quieted room, as if it were a speaker at a podium clearing his throat loudly into the microphone to demand attention.

  The room of men turned their attention to the source of the disruption. Gas Pipe pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, his fixed gaze never leaving Rizzi’s fleshy throat.

  Chapter 47

  We’re From the Government and We’re Here to Help

  Hey Fiona,

  Sorry this is the first email in a week, but, well you were right, I should have blown off this Department of Health and Human Services internship and went to work with you part time at the caterer’s. This week has been an exercise in futility.

  Sorry I have not been in touch, but we were put on a social network blackout for this assignment and anyone caught posting, blogging, or emailing while on site would be terminated from the internship program immediately. At this point, who cares? Let them fire me.

  Four days ago, I am at HHS office in DC about to leave for the day when suddenly we are all called into an all hands staff meeting. They tell us we are going to participate in some sort of preparedness and response drill and that we are to head home immediately, pack up two days’ worth of clothes and report back to the DC office within ninety minutes.

  I head home, grab some clothes and toiletries, and head back to the office. It was fun and exciting at first, like a mystery vacation.

  When I get back to the office in DC, there are a half dozen chartered buses waiting for us. We pile on and are told that we are going to support the military in some sort of exercise in New Jersey, and that we would be staying at Fort Monmouth Army installation. We had to turn in our personal cell phones and were all assigned government phones that had no internet access, just phone and text. Like a cell phone out of the 1950’s.

  We arrive four hours later, close to midnight, only to then find out that Fort Monmouth had been closed due to BRAC years ago.

  So now it is scramble time and they don’t know where we should go. We are all tired and pissed, and this part of NJ isn’t exactly tourist central with a ton of hotel choices. So the buses scatter and we all end up at different hotels. I lucked out and got a Hampton Inn, which was not that bad.

  Next day, we get up early and wait for instructions. And wait, and wait. Full day goes by and they never tell us a thing. We grabbed some dinner and went back to our rooms for the night.

  Day two, we again assemble in the lobby in the morning, and they tell us we are going to go to Trenton where all Health and Human Services staff are to be standing behind the HHS Secretary during a news conference. So I am thinking “we drove all this way just to be props behind the secretary of the department”? We all pile back into the buses and drive down to Trenton and gather at some high school. My supervisor is there and he is handing out HHS logo windbreakers for everyone to wear. This is really getting ridiculous, but I am thinking that if they want to show us off, who cares, right?

  We put on the jackets and wait for the secretary to arrive for our photo op. We wait and wait and wait. After like three hours of this, which is torture as we have no phones to even kill time on Facebook, the secretary’s advance person finally arrives and starts throwing a fit. She is screaming “what are you all doing here?”

  My supervisor explains to the woman that we were told by headquarters to come and stand behind the secretary of HHS while she made her speech.

  The woman starts screaming, “No, the secretary is going to make a statement that HHS people are here to help and are currently deployed all across the state to support the residents. How can they be deployed and helping if they are all standing there behind her? Standing there is not helping is it? Now get the hell out of here!”

  So my supervisor asks the woman where we should go.

  She screams “I don’t care, get out of here!”

  We all pile back in the busses and head back to the hotels. So were not helping anyone, and we are not being used as a background prop. We are sitting in the hotel rooms.

  We are the Federal Government, and we are here to…….order room service.

  At least I got a nice jacket out of it.

  Day three comes and they seem to be trying to think of things for us to do. We gather in the lobby and the buses take us to meet up at the PNC Arts Center, where they hold concerts and such. I ran into Broke Brian there. He is one of the other interns. He is not broke as in poor, but there are two interns named Brian, and he is the one who has like a million emotional problems. Like he is broken. So we call him Broke Brian.

  Broke Brian tells me they are housed at a Marriott. Damn, now I was pissed. I thought the Hampton was not bad, until I found out others were in a Marriott.

  Anyway, HHS had organized a bunch of rental cars for us. They give us each maps and tell us we are to pair up and drive around to the towns we are assigned to, marking on the map the locations of all the medical supplies stores, pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, etc. Anything medical.

  This is so ridiculous, we can pull this stuff up on the web, but they send us out anyway. I am paired up with Broke Brian and I convince him to drop me off back at my hotel. He was stressing out since he has OCD or something and is worried we are going to get in trouble. I tell him not to worry and to just drive around where we were told to go and make some notes.

  I go to my room and spend the rest of the day binge watching Breaking Bad on cable and ordering room service.

  Next morning, day four, we get up and again get on the buses which take us to the PNC Center, but this time, like half the team is a no-show. All the supervisors are freaking out since the missing interns and HHS staff are not in the hotels and not answering their phones. One supervisor is saying that if they went back to DC in the rental cars, they would be fired. Good luck firing anyone from a government job. If I did not need the recommendation, I probably would have taken a rental car and driven back to DC myself.

  But I am here along with about one hundred other HHS folks that remained.

  Oh and the Army finally arrived that day.

  It was about time, since I thought this was their exercise to begin with. They were in an adjacent parking lot and had a whole fleet of military trucks. They were setting up something, lots of makeshift walls, lights, barbed wire and what looked like cattle shoots to get into the walled off area.

  They had some really cool looking vehicles too, some things that almost looked like tanks, but not quite. And a bunch of these cargo containers on flatbed trucks. It was really weird and a little frightening. But anyway, yours truly had her own mission to carry out. That morning, we were given new maps, and told we are to identify on the map not only medical centers but gun stores. WTF? What do we care about gun stores? I had heard rumors in the halls of HHS that they were looking at guns as a “health risk” and planning on banning them or confiscating them in the name of public health. But Brian said that was all paranoid bullshit, and besides, we’re not ATF, we are not going to go around confiscating guns.

  I again convinced Broke Brian to drop me off at my hotel, but he was acting real weird. He wanted to come and hang out with me in my room. N
o way. He is cute, but too much baggage. He was really insistent so I told him I really wanted to be alone and he finally relented and went off to follow his provided map to find medical and gun stores.

  I spent that day binge watching Game of Thrones. Fantastic. I did not get much sleep, as there were sirens from fire trucks or police cars or something going off like every ten minutes.

  Needless to say, on day five, I get up and feel like crud. I go down to get my complimentary Hampton Inn breakfast and nothing is prepared. I bitched but the front desk clerk said a bunch of the staff did not show up this morning.

  They get me some plastic wrapped muffins and I get on the bus to head to PNC, but the bus is near empty. Now we are down to like ten people total from our group that are staying at the Hampton Inn. The rest have either split or more likely transferred to the Marriott.