by Joel Jenkins
“But those new businesses in Buffalo and up in Canada belong to us, because my family built them under my deals and direction. You know damn well that if I let you in on this, you would work night and day to try and take things over. Letting that happen would be a slap in the face to my family, and dealing with it would be an annoying little inconvenience for me.
“So with all due frankness, my business decision is that you can consider your family in the position of someone with a bad case of the shits who has no access to a toilet. Capito?”
Vito’s expression remained oddly unchanged as he seemingly vented a bit by rolling a napkin into a ball, and casually tossed it across the length of the diner. It hit the young woman sequestered in the far corner of the restaurant in the face, and she looked in their direction. Seeing who was seated across from her, she ran over to Gino’s side of the table with a bubbly sense of excitement.
“Oh my god, oh my god!” she blurted with a tone of breathless enthusiasm. “You’re Mr. Provenzo! ‘The World’s Greatest!’ I see you so often in the papers, oh my god you’re so handsome and distinguished in person! Your pictures don’t do you justice! Can I please please please have your autograph?”
“Oh brother,” Gia said with a roll of her eyes. “I think I actually preferred all ‘a that tension to this little bim.”
“I can’t help being a bit popular and admired, little girl,” Gino said, almost smiling. “All right, missy, you can have my autograph. But then you gotta run along, because I have some important business to attend to.” He tore a large shred off of one of the menus. “I got some paper for you here, let me just have Ira get me something to write with.”
The girl giggled. “Ooohh, it’s okay, Mr. Provenzo, sir, I have a pen and a little ink bottle in my purse. Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get it. Oh my god, this is soooooo like a wonderful dream!”
Gia shook her head. “Gotta love the groupies… they bring their own pen and inkwell with them.”
As promised, the still smiling girl reached into her polka dot-decorated purse for the item she was seeking.
“So who do I make this autograph out to, young lady?” Gino asked.
“Ooohhh, you can just make it out to… the bitch!” she retorted with a sudden drastic change of tone as she quickly pulled a stiletto from her purse and shoved it into Gino’s throat.
Gino gagged in shock and pain as blood poured out of his neck and mouth.
“Papa!” Gia screamed in horror at the top of her vocal capacity.
“Boys!” Fido shouted as he jumped to his feet. “That little bimbo was a plant! Kill them all!”
It was now disturbingly clear to Fido and his two fellow guards that Vito’s seemingly innocent hurling of the rolled napkin across the diner in the girl’s direction was a signal for her to drop her unthreatening veneer and fulfill her deadly purpose. Vito groomed and paid her well for this specific task; a plant who could appeal to Gino’s notorious ego—his sole weakness—and look safe enough so as not to immediately arouse the suspicions of his normally alert guards.
As guns were drawn on both sides, the gravely injured Gino Provenzo proved the rumors of his incredible toughness were no fairy tales as he instinctively grabbed his killer’s thin arm in a vice-like grip. The girl screamed and struggled, but Gino was determined to prevent her from fleeing the scene and escaping retribution for as long as his remaining breath held out.
Taking full advantage of Gino’s swan act, the now insanely angry Gia grabbed the girl by her throat with her left hand while grabbing the large glass pitcher of water with her right one. She then smashed the heavy pitcher against the teenager’s face, crushing her nasal cartilage into a mutilated pulp. Screaming expletives at her father’s assassin, Gina swiftly followed with a second smash to the girl’s face. The pitcher cracked while the teenager’s jawbone visibly detached from her skull.
“You dirty little whorebag!” Gia bellowed as she swung the pitcher at the girl’s face one final time, sending her now lifeless body sprawling several feet from Gino’s faltering grip. The girl’s corpse slammed onto the floor as torrents of blood spurted from every orifice of her now thoroughly unrecognizable face.
Acting on pure adrenaline, the now totally feral Gia hurled the pitcher at the still sitting Vito, who barely leaped out of his seat before it struck him in the face. She then pulled the blade from her father’s throat, and hastily put a napkin to the blood-spurting wound in a desperate attempt to staunch the bleeding.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she held her beloved father’s barely breathing body close, his great weight seemingly no obstruction to her surprisingly strong grip. But she saw the napkin quickly become soaked and break apart under the fountain of blood, and she knew what the end result would be. But she continued to deny it all the same.
“Papa, don’t die!” she told him. “Please! I’m sorry I sassed you before, I love you so much, you were a good father to me…”
The barely conscious Don looked up at her, the fire rapidly going out of his eyes. “Remember… all I taught you, little girl,” he managed to choke out. “I’m proud of you… always have… been…”
The great Gino Provenzo then expired in the arms of his daughter as he fully bled out. Forced into accepting the unacceptable, Gia screamed in protest to the God she was taught to so devoutly worship. She then turned to the now standing Vito Gambino with an expression evocative of a wild animal about to pounce on its prey.
“I’m going to kill you, Vito!” she hollered. “Bet your stinky little ass you’re going to pay for this! In bloody spades!”
Within the previous moments, the violent exchange between the two opposing security forces played out thusly:
Panaro and the tallest of Vito’s guards simultaneously reached for their Colt M1911 semi-automatic firearms. Panaro proved the quicker draw as he blasted a hole through his opponent’s forehead, shattering his skull and spraying fragments of gray matter on the floor.
The second of Vito’s guards then drew his own firearm and managed to blast a shot through Pinaro’s rib cage before he could react any further. The Killer’s blood-soaked body fell to the ground in what seemed like horrifying slow motion to anyone viewing. Fido quickly returned fire on behalf of his fallen brother-in-arms.
The round fired from the powerful .45 ACP magazine didn’t hit its mark, however, as the target leaped out of the line of fire and under a nearby table just in time. He then overturned the table to use as a makeshift shield as he himself returned fire. But Fido was similarly determined not to be an easy target, and leapt behind a nearby counter. The round intended for him instead blasted an antique clock off the wall.
Fido turned suddenly as he heard Florence screaming in horror while she quickly headed for the door. He considered giving a little emotional payback to Don Gambino by blowing her away, but quickly reconsidered. He knew it was important to conserve his ammo against the opposition capable of shooting back, and he presumed that Vito was unlikely to actually care about her enough to be hurt by her murder. So he allowed her to run out the door while he went back to exchanging fire with his main opponent.
Vito’s third guard leapt in front of his boss, determined to shield him while attempting to take out Gia, thereby spitefully cutting down the Provenzo Don’s cherished progeny. But Ira was as quick to defend her as the Gambino guard was with his boss. The suave Irishman drew his gun and blasted the would-be executioner in his left arm, causing his shot to go astray and miss Gia by a longshot. The round instead blew the cash register off the front counter, causing the horrified employees to scream in terror as they fled into the kitchen.
However, this guard proved to be of stern stuff, forcing himself not to lose the grip on his Colt as he went down on one knee. Channeling his will into initiating a counter shot, he managed to strike Ira in his left shoulder blade, knocking him off of his feet. He landed on his back, the impact causing him to drop his gun.
Shouting her lover’s name, Gia came to her
senses and released her hold on her father’s corpse. With prodigious speed and determination she leapt out of the guard’s line of fire, successfully dodging another shot from him. Landing on the floor towards Ira’s lost firearm, she grabbed it, aimed it, and blew a round directly in the opposing guard’s gut. A spray of crimson erupted from the hole cruelly blasted into his stomach, while his small intestines spilled messily onto the floor a second later. The man’s expression took on a combination of horror and confusion just before he collapsed as a heap of dead flesh.
“Shit!” Vito shouted at the sight of his defender’s execution.
He first considered drawing his own firearm to inflict his share of destruction on the still breathing members of his hated rival clan. He then thought better of it, and decided to flee the premises. After all, Gino was dead, and surely the Provenzo Family could no longer be a viable threat to his planned coup without the big man. As he turned towards the door to flee, he managed to almost reach it before he heard a loud blast and felt his left leg go numb.
That bitch! he silently shouted to himself as he realized that Gia put a bullet through his limb. Focusing his inordinate willpower, he forced himself to jump back up on his single good leg and push himself out the door. Once outside, his indomitable will enabled him to limp across the parking lot towards his vehicle at surprising speed, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he did so. While uttering a string of obscenities in Italian, he drew his gun and shot two of the Provenzo car’s tires, rendering the vehicle un-drivable.
He then clambered to his car as quickly as he possibly could considering his serious albeit non-lethal injury. Forcing himself into the vehicle, he managed to key the ignition, and drive himself away while using his single usable leg to operate both the brake and the accelerator. You’re dead, bitch, you’re dead! he repeatedly shouted to himself as further motivation to get to a place of treatment without passing out at the wheel.
Back to the present moment, Fido continued his exchange of fire with the sole remaining Gambino guard. After the leader of the Provenzo security force successfully blasted away the top of the table protecting his adversary, he realized that he was out of ammo. But the Gambino guard managed to reload his Colt faster than Fido could.
Spurred into a sense of confidence, the Gambino trigger man decided to charge Fido. The latter ejected the spent cartridge and reached into his belt for another magazine. But before he could reload, he noticed the other guard standing in front of him with the barrel of his gun pointed downward at his temple.
“Say ‘hi’ to the Devil for me, willya?” the guard said as he squeezed the trigger. The loud reverberation of a Colt being fired was heard, and Fido’s body was covered in a thick spatter of blood.
However, the trembling man quickly discovered that he could still see and hear the surroundings of the familiar world. He wiped the thick cover of stinging blood off of his eyes as he looked up just in time to see his opponent’s body fall to the ground. A gaping hole leading from the back of the fallen guard’s head and out the front of his mouth was the source of his demise. The blood that spattered all over Fido was not his own.
Pushing himself cautiously to his feet, he saw that the bullet had been fired from Gia. After taking out the last of Gambino’s guards before he could kill Fido, she threw the gun to the floor and ran to the fallen Ira’s side. She found that he was wounded badly, but not fatally. Nevertheless, she could see that he needed medical attention right away.
Cradling her bleeding lover in her arms, she turned to the cowering employees peeking out of the kitchen door. “Well, what the hell are you idiots waiting for, the sun to go down? One of you get on the horn and call a goddamned ambulance!”
Shakily nodding her head in compliance, one of the waitresses ran into the break room where the phone was located. She knew that ignoring a direct order from the female dispenser of mayhem before her was even more unthinkable than the tableau she had just witnessed.
As tears poured out of her eyes, Gia continued to hold Ira while doing her best to slow his blood loss. “Hold on, honey, an ambulance is on its way,” she told him. He gritted his teeth and nodded his head in acknowledgement.
She then looked up as the sullen-faced Fido walked up to her. “Thank you for saving my life, Miss Gia. Your papa would be proud.”
“Papa is dead!” she screamed at Fido. “Look! He’s dead! Oh my god, he’s dead!”
Fido turned and noticed the body of Gino Provenzo strewn on the floor amidst the several other corpses, a pool of his blood darkening the white tile along with their own. “I’m sorry I failed ya, Boss,” he solemnly lamented.
* * *
A few days following the funeral of Gino Provenzo, the expected important meeting in regards to the future of the family business was planned. Gino’s nephew, Al “The Pain” Provenzo, a rugged young man with a “take no prisoners” reputation earned from his work as a lieutenant for the New York City faction of the family business, had flown down to Buffalo to preside over the meeting. The meeting was being conducted in a rented section of a West Side community center. The building was now bereft of any family-related occupant save the staff cook, Peter; and Pete knew better than to say anything to anyone, considering his debts.
Al stood in front of a table addressing the large assortment of the Buffalo Provenzo Family’s enforcers, lieutenants, bookkeepers, attorneys, and security guards. Fido sat at the head of the table where the security group was seated, bearing a dejected countenance as he listened to Al’s speech.
“This is a difficult time for all of us,” Al said in a convincingly melancholic voice. “My Uncle Gino was a good guy… he totally earned his nickname, ‘The World’s Greatest.’ But he’s gone now, thanks to the two-timing treachery of Vito Gambino. Vito and his entire family are going to pay for this, and I’m here to make sure that happens. Out of respect to my uncle’s memory and the huge successful business he built here in the Queen City, I ask all of you to join me in defending the legacy he has left for the business.”
“Damn straight we’re gonna do that!” decreed a somewhat husky female voice that emanated from the entrance door. “Only it’s gonna be me who leads the way, not you, Al.”
Taken aback by that bold pronouncement and identifiably feminine voice, Al turned around. There he saw his cousin Gia standing in the doorway, with Ira at her side despite his left arm being in a sling. This time, however, she wasn’t wearing one of her characteristic bias dresses; she was wearing an expensive beige leather trench coat over a white button down blouse and a dark flannel skirt, with not a single flower design on it. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and the top of her head was adorned with a gray pub cap. Every eye in the room was focused on her, the men of a traditional persuasion finding her both incredibly alluring as well as dynamically business-like and “tough.”
“Oh, hi, Cousin Gia,” Al stuttered. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Of course ya didn’t,” she replied. “’Cause you called this meeting without inviting or informing me about it. Which was a dirty thing, considering I’m Papa Gino’s next of kin. And his natural successor to the top spot of the family business.”
Al’s countenance now took on a dumbfounded look combined with a flash of anger. “Listen, Gia, I didn’t mean to leave you out, I just didn’t think you would have any interest in a business meeting like this. I was going to invite you to the family dinner party scheduled for—”
“How could I not be interested in how the business will be run from now on?” Gia replied curtly. “It’s a business my papa shed blood to build into what it is, and he sacrificed his life protecting it. Let’s call it things like they are, Cousin. You didn’t want me involved, ’cause you want to take over the top spot following the retribution on the Gambinos. And you don’t think a dame can hold that spot. Well, guess what, big guy?”
The tension in the room was now palpable, with all the men in attendance paying rapt attention to what was transpi
ring before them. Of them all, only Fido seemed to have a look remotely resembling one of satisfaction.
“Gia, I was just keeping with tradition here,” Al said. “This has never been women’s work, and I think I would be Uncle Gino’s natural choice to take over the business—”
“You can shove this ‘tradition’ up your back exit!” the plucky women exclaimed, startling Al with her level of sass. “I’m Papa’s only child, you weren’t close enough to him to be considered like a son, and it wouldn’t matter if you were. I owe a lot to my Papa, including payback on the Buffalo Gambino Family. And I’m gonna make sure his business is done right!”
“Gia, Gia,” Al said, visibly beginning to lose his patience as he started inching closer to her. “Let’s be reasonable here! The work I did in New York over the years more than justifies—”
Ira suddenly interjected as he pulled his Colt on Al with his good hand, halting the young gangster in his tracks. “Do not take another step, Al. I was present at the meeting where Uncle Gino was killed, and Gia did a mighty impressive job of taking down not only the girl who stabbed him, but also two of the three armed body guards who were there. She also got a little piece of Vito, even though he did get away. On top of all that, she not only saved my life, but she saved Fido’s life too. Isn’t that right, Fido?”
Fido at first looked distressed at being put on the spot. But he knew what he owed to both Gia, for saving his life, and to the legacy of Papa Gino, for taking him off the streets and making him what he was now.
“Y-yeah, true,” Fido said in a low tone.
“Can you speak up a bit please, Fido?” Gia asked. “Some of the gentlemen here may not have heard you.”
Fido cleared his throat. “Yes, it all went down just like Ira said it did. And yes, Gia did save my life, and Papa Gino was everything to me, so… they got my support, for whatever that’s worth.”