Mafioso [Part 1]

by Nisa Santiago

  28

  1999

  Solitary confinement was degrading and could deteriorate an inmate’s mind if she wasn’t strong enough to survive the isolation. Max found herself inside the small, dark concrete room with no windows, naked and cold. The indignity was cruel, and she felt like a caged animal. But animals at the zoo, she felt, were treated better than this. She had spent sixty days in confinement with another thirty days to go. The punishment was harsh. She received her food and any other material through a rectangular slot in the steel door and barely had any human contact. There was no mail and no visitors. Three months was a long time to be alone, naked, and trying to keep your sanity. Her crime was fighting once again. She had put another inmate in the ICU.

  ***

  “That bitch right there is stealin’ from us, Max. This is the third straight week she’s been short wit’ the cash,” Ginger had told Max.

  Max had been moving drugs through the prison for several months. She supplied a few inmates for distribution and expected a sizable kickback. But an inmate named Rhea had been coming up short with payment lately. Rumor was, she had been bad-mouthing Max, trying to stir up some shit.

  “She’s playin’ us,” Ginger said.

  Stealing from an inmate in prison was a sure sign of disrespect. Max knew she needed to teach Rhea a lesson—make an example out of her. If she didn’t, then her other workers would try her too. Leanne had always told Max, “You let one get away with it, then you might as well let them all get away with it.”

  Max waited and watched. Then one day during lunch, Max was sitting with her cohorts in the cafeteria when she eyed Rhea coming her way. Rhea was calling her out indirectly without having to say a word. It was her movements, what she was doing, and what she was saying.

  Max confronted Rhea. “You short bitch! Where’s my fuckin’ money?”

  Rhea stood her ground. After a short, heated exchange, Max took a metal tray and smashed it against Rhea’s face with brute force. She hit her again, and Rhea went down.

  “You steal from me, bitch!” Max shouted.

  Max continued her assault, slamming the metal tray against Rhea’s face until it was covered with blood and her nose was broken. The clash provoked the other inmates with excitement. Screams broke out, and they cheered on the assault, but no one intervened.

  The guards rushed forward, shouting orders, and disrupted the fight. However Max resisted, punching one guard in the face. She was taken down roughly and carried away.

  Rhea was in bad shape. She was barely conscious, and her face was somewhat crooked. Because of the vicious assault on Rhea, numerous charges were brought up against Max. As she stood shackled in front of the warden while he berated her, something inside of her felt unconcerned. She liked who she was now—not one to be fucked with! If this were her a few years ago, then she wouldn’t be in the position she was in now. If she’d stood up for herself— against Sandy, against Layla, even against Scottie—then things might have been different. But maybe this was her destiny.

  Max had spent nearly five years in prison, and she’d adjusted and adapted. It was something she thought she would never do. Before Leanne’s departure to a different prison, she’d taught Max everything she knew, and Max caught on quickly. She went from a meek sheep to a wolf, preying on the weak and humble.

  ***

  After her ninety days in solitary confinement, Max stood naked in front of the guards feeling stronger than ever. They didn’t break her. The guards handed her some clothing, told her to get dressed, and told her that the warden had some important news for her.

  The news hit Max like a bolt of lightning. It damn near tore her apart emotionally. She couldn’t believe it. Her father had passed away from a heart attack several weeks earlier. Max felt crushed. Because she had been in solitary, she didn’t get the news immediately and couldn’t even say goodbye. Her father meant the world to her, and now he was gone. Once again, her life was hell. She felt like that scared and panicky inmate from five years earlier. She didn’t know what to do.

  She wanted to contact her mother. Oh God! She thought about the nightmare her mother had to be going through, losing a daughter to a lengthy incarceration and a husband to a heart attack.

  There was more news for Max, but Max couldn’t take more bad news.

  “You’re being transferred. Your reputation and the environment of violence you’ve caused here has gotten out of hand. The paperwork was implemented during your time in confinement.”

  “Where am I going?” she asked dejectedly.

  “Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.”

  “Louisiana?”

  Max was stunned she’d be so far from home. Now she’d never see her mother. Plus, she had to fight her way to the top in a new prison.

  29

  September 2014

  Whistler parked his truck outside the 15-story building a block away from Central Park on 88th Street and hurried to the entrance. Lucky still wasn’t answering her phone. He was worried. She needed to hear from him and not a stranger that her siblings were just murdered—gangland style—on their first day back to school.

  He pushed in the code to enter the building and dashed through the lobby to the elevators and ascended to the top floor, where her three-bedroom, 986 sq. ft suite was located. Stepping out of the elevator, he removed his pistol.

  He felt edgy. Everything felt so still. The hallway, bedecked with flowers, mirrors, and an antique table, was full of silence. He kept the gun ready by his side, and when he approached her door, he found it ajar. This worried him even more. Something was wrong.

  Slowly, he pushed open the door and entered her residence. He found a turned-over table and some broken glass on the floor, and the place was empty.

  “Shit!”

  Whistler knew they’d already gotten to her. Once again, the killer or killers were one step ahead of them. How long had she been gone? Did her kidnappers leave anything behind? Was she still alive?

  Whistler went looking around the apartment, and every room seemed disturbed. How did her captors know where to find her? How did they get inside the secure building? There were so many questions, but no answers.

  His heart sank with apprehension and concern for Lucky. Damn it! If only he’d come earlier, he probably could have saved her. He probably would have killed them. He would have had a face and a name and, most likely, information about who was raging war against their organization.

  Whistler knew he had to break the bad news to Scott. He took a deep breath and made the call to his boss. Scott’s phone rang, and he answered.

  “I’m at Lucky’s place, and they took her, Scott—She’s gone.”

  ***

  Wacka and Dagmar crossed over the Verrazano Bridge and entered Staten Island. The toll was paid, and they traveled on I-78 briefly and then exited onto a local road going south. Traffic was light during the warm night, a crescent moon in the sky. The two men were in a brown cargo van, driving at a moderate speed.

  Wacka was smoking a Newport. Dagmar glanced into the back of the van, checking up on Lucky. She was on her side, bound at her wrists and ankles, and unconscious. They nabbed her in her short-shorts and bellybutton shirt.

  “You hit that bitch too hard too many times, you think?” Dagmar asked. “Is she still breathing?”

  “This bitch is crazy. She wouldn’t cooperate—a fuckin’ pit bull that bitch is.”

  Dagmar chuckled and pulled his attention away from Lucky. She wasn’t going anywhere. “So what we gonna do with her?”

  “What we were paid to do,” Wacka said.

  Wacka took a final pull from the cigarette and shared it with his friend. They continued to drive farther into Staten Island. They wanted to find a secluded place, where the abuse was to happen, and where they would be not interrupted. They knew who Lucky was, and they showed no worries ab
out her father and his organization. They both were skilled ex-Marines.

  Wacka did a short stint in the Marine Corps in his early twenties and made it to the rank of corporal. He soon was involved in an assault case against a twenty-three-year-old fellow Marine. The Marine accused Wacka—a.k.a. Marcus Garson—of brutally attacking him. Wacka was found guilty of first degree assault and stripped of his military rank and privileges. He was dishonorably discharged and received a ten-year sentence in Leavenworth.

  Dagmar had received a bad conduct discharge from the military for serious offenses such as drug use, aggravated assault, and grand theft. He, too, did a sentence in Leavenworth, which was where he and Wacka connected.

  They reached South Beach, a stretch of shoreline with a good amount of seclusion on the edge of Staten Island. Wacka killed the van’s engine and turned his attention to Lucky.

  She was just waking up. Her eyes struggled to open. She still felt the pain from where Wacka had repeatedly smashed the butt of the gun into the back of her head, creating a sizable gash. The brutal assault knocked her out cold.

  Wacka smiled at his prize. “Wake up, bitch!”

  He and Dagmar removed themselves from the front seat of the van and commenced a long-lasting assault.

  Lucky found herself defenseless with her hands and ankles bound. She squirmed in her restraints as the two predators pounced on her with hard fists. “My father is gonna fuck y’all up!”

  Her threats fell on deaf ears. Wacka punched her repeatedly in the face, spewing blood and bruising her skin. Meanwhile, Dagmar kicked her in the side.

  Lucky cried and screamed. The blood saturated her face, blurring her vision. By now, she was disoriented, disheveled, bloody, and beaten. Her right eye had been hit so many times, it was swollen shut, and her eye socket and ribs were broken. They beat her within an inch of her life.

  When they were done with her, they removed her battered body from the van and dumped her on the beach, barely breathing.

  “Why we’re keeping her alive?” Dagmar asked. “Why she’s different from the others?”

  “Because our employer wants us to send a message with this one,” Wacka said.

  Dagmar didn’t like that she’d seen their faces. He gripped a 9mm in his hand and glared at Lucky slumped against the sand under the cover of night. He pointed the gun at her. “She needs to go!”

  “We chill, Dagmar. You hear me? Stand the fuck down!” Wacka said to him. “This bitch don’t know anything about us.”

  Dagmar griped, but it was Wacka’s show, so he relented.

  They went back to the van, leaving Lucky on the beach in need of serious medical treatment. Once again, she was unconscious with life-threatening injuries.

  “I got a bad feeling about this one,” Dagmar continued. “We need to break out.”

  “Let’s blow this town then. I’ll go to DC and see Moms,” Wacka said.

  It would be hours before Lucky was found by a man walking his dog. At just eighteen years old, she probably would never be the same.

  ***

  Upon hearing the news, Scott and Whistler hurried to Staten Island University Hospital South Campus on Sequine Avenue. They came in full force; almost a small and heavily armed army flanked them. Hearing the grim news about his daughter’s nasty assault plunged Scott into a darker and unstable state. He couldn’t believe it’d happened again. They had gotten to Lucky somehow and done things to her he didn’t want to think about.

  Scott and Whistler marched through the hospital lobby with a sense of urgency. They knew her room number, and security didn’t dare get in their way. Scott looked like the Devil himself, scarlet with rage, wearing a mean scowl. His fists were clenched, and he wanted to start World War III on the streets of New York and beyond. Nobody was safe.

  Lucky was in the ICU, her face swollen up like a pumpkin and almost unrecognizable. She suffered several facial fractures—broken cheekbone, jaw, nose, and eye socket. She was connected to tubes and wires, a monitor, and ventilator.

  Scott stood over his beaten daughter transfixed with more heartache. Unable to compose himself, a few tears trickled from his eyes. Seeing Lucky beaten like that tore him apart. Whistler too. Both men were in bad shape. The emotions engulfed them with intense feelings of failure and culpability.

  Scott squeezed his fists tighter, feeling his skin break from the pressure against his fingernails. “I want them all dead, Whistler. Every last muthafucka in DMC’s crew, wiped out immediately,” Scott said.

  “These attacks—they feel personal, Scott. I’m not so sure it was DMC,” Whistler said.

  Scott suddenly spun around and charged at Whistler, grabbed him up by his clothing, and forced him against the wall. “Where the fuck was you? Huh? You tell me this is personal! It’s fuckin’ personal all right; they’re coming after my family! I want every soldier—every associate—on the hunt for these bastards! I want ’em dead! I want their families and their children dead too! I want them fuckin’ exterminated!” Scott released his tight grip from his friend. “Get it done!”

  Whistler collected himself, understanding Scott’s emotions. He fixed his ruffled clothing and heaved a sigh.

  Scott was back at his daughter’s bedside, standing in silence and woe.

  Two suit-and-tie detectives showed up at the hospital to get a statement from Lucky, but she was in no condition to talk. Scott and Whistler were like two snarling guard dogs toward the detectives. Scott made it clear that no one would be speaking to his little girl. He didn’t care if they wore a badge or not. Besides, no one in his organization spoke to police.

  Scott sent the detectives on their way, away from his daughter’s room. “You talk to my lawyers, not my peoples.”

  Layla showed up at the hospital in worse shape than her husband. She was devastated with anguish and felt like it was ripping her apart. When she saw Lucky, she shrieked in agony and nearly collapsed. She couldn’t take any more. Why were they targeting her kids? What was her husband doing about it? Losing Gotti was painful enough, but losing more of her children was an apocalypse.

  Bugsy and Meyer arrived from Wilmington hours after Layla, and they were furious. Bugsy’s blasé and unruffled demeanor had become ruffled, and he was ready to blow someone’s head off. Meyer’s violent behavior was amplified tenfold. He was a bomb ready to explode and take out an entire city block. He wanted bloodshed. He wanted muthafuckas’ heads impaled with sharp spears for everyone to see. Niggas touched Bonnie, Clyde, and Lucky all on the same day? Unbelievable.

  The doctor came into the room with grim news. Lucky had suffered severe blunt force trauma to the head, and there was some swelling in her brain. She was in a medically induced coma, receiving a controlled dose of anesthetic. She was touch-and-go and would be observed vigilantly for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The doctor told them if there were no signs of improvement, she might be brain-dead.

  The news was a crushing blow to the family.

  “You’re saying our sister might be brain-dead?” Bugsy asked.

  “It’s too early to tell. The swelling prevents blood, and oxygen, from reaching the brain. The anesthetic should do its job, but there’s nothing I can do until the swelling has reduced. At that point we will run some tests on her and determine if surgery is necessary.”

  “What kind of tests?” Scott asked.

  “We’ll employ a nuclear brain scan or a cerebral angiogram, where a radioactive tracer is injected into the vein to see if blood is going to the brain,” the doctor said.

  The word radioactive stirred up some alarm to everyone in the room.

  “What do you mean radioactive?” Bugsy asked.

  “It’s a safe procedure,” the doctor assured them.

  “It better be,” Scott chimed.

  “And what’s the second test?” Bugsy asked him.

  “The cerebral ang
iogram is when the dye is injected into an artery, and X-ray pictures are taken of the brain. Now typically, four major arteries supply a lot of blood to the brain. In a brain-dead person, the X-ray of the blood vessels shows no blood going to the brain at all.”

  Meyer got in the doctor’s face with a threatening stare. “You do whatever you need to fix her, Doc. That’s my fuckin’ sister.”

  Hearing the possibility of her daughter being brain-dead, Layla flew out the room in tears. She couldn’t hear any more news.

  Scott stood firm but saddened. Though Lucky was in bad shape, he didn’t take his eyes off her. He took her still hand in his and vowed there would be vengeance executed in her honor.

  ***

  Whistler loitered outside the lobby smoking a cigarette. It was hard to see Lucky in that horrid condition. She was far from the sexy diva he was used to. Her beautiful face was a complete mess.

  Scott instructed Whistler to scrap their plans of a shrewd takeover in Delaware in exchange for extreme bloodshed and warfare. Something in Whistler screamed that they were barking up the wrong tree. They were missing something. He knew it.

  30

  It was a beautiful September Saturday, with a broad blue sky and a bright sun. Detective Jones was up bright and early and neatly dressed for work. He holstered his weapon on his hip and secured his police badge before brewing a cup of coffee and watching the morning news in the kitchen. His interest was mostly in the stock market, as he’d recently acquired some stock and wanted to invest his money wisely to launder his illegal income.

  On the streets, business was still good. The money was pouring in greater than before with the new management, and things were operating smoothly. As requested, the new organization was keeping the bloodshed to a minimum.

  His dealings with Deuce were gradually fading, as he didn’t want to end his business with DMC abruptly and bring on suspicion of his betrayal. But the inevitable was to come for Deuce. Nice and slow, Detective Jones allowed the new organization to move into Delaware territory with minimum collateral damage. And their product was far superior to DMC’s.