Omertá

“Gentlemen, pleasure to have your company this afternoon.” The Don of the New Jersey Mafia took a last drag of his cigarette, put it out in a cut-glass ashtray and sauntered over to his chair behind the cherrywood desk, sat down as if sinking into the couch at the end of a long day. “Wouldya like a cigarette?”

The head of the Moretti family of the New York Mafia sat down in the single chair placed on the other side of Way’s desk, and his henchmen positioned themselves, one at each shoulder. Gerard marvelled silently to himself how they both seemed to be exactly the same height, giving a wonderful sense of symmetry, and made a mental note to check the heels of their shoes as they left.

“No, thank-you. Won’t you have another yourself?” This man spoke from under a brow so overhanging Gerard was surprised it didn’t droop over into his mouth as he talked, and his hair was combed back from his head ever so slickly, as if it had been washed in crude oil. He was perhaps fifty, perhaps younger, Gerard reasoned, and probably blackened his hair with something not far away in substance from his earlier observation.

“No – I don’t believe in having one after the other, if you’ll excuse me. If one always has a cigarette hung from between one’s teeth, you don’t get the same appreciation of it, I find. I also find it greedy, and gluttony is a sin, I am proud to say, that is not one of mine. What do you have to say on greed and gluttony, Mister Moretti?”

He scowled, moreso than before. “I’m not going to have a battle of words with you, Way,” the name said with a sneer, the monosyllabic simplicity emphasised. “Not before I know what this is about. You better not have made me come down here for nuthin’. I know about you – you can’t get past that with me, being the Boss now.”

“I find your manner impolite, and would like to keep this as civil as possible. If you would not like a battle of words, perhaps you would like a battle of how many bodies we can produce of each other’s men in the next two weeks? I can assure you, I would win that one with even more ease than I would an argument with you.”

“This is the only faction of the organisation I have issues with. Do not ask of me to be polite – I dislike you, I disliked your father, I dislike things your family has done in the past. I do not retaliate – allow me this, though. To not wear a false face with you.”

Gerard placed his elbows on the table and tented his fingers, sighing laboriously. “Fine, okay. Here it is – you get your business out of this state. It’s not much to ask, wouldn’t you say?”

“Which particular business are you referring to here?” Moretti smirked a little. Gerard found this particularly unsavoury.

“I am referring to the trade in heroin to a mister Jonathan Hill, who purveyed it to youths and Beatniks in the guise of non-Mafia goods. We have dealt with mister Hill, but I still felt this talk that we are having was needed, just to make sure that you are absolutely clear on the fact that as soon as you cross the state line, you are on my territory, you get me?”

Moretti nodded, smiled a little wider. “You see, the thing here, Way, is that you talk big, but you must realise – you’re the little guy here. You’re tryna run an entire state from a fuckin’ shitty little office building in the center of it, with what? Like forty men, don’t you have? Or are you hangin’ around the local high schools, recruiting more like you on Friday afternoons?”

“That a jibe at my age, Moretti?” Gerard grinned wide, leaning forward across the desk.

“What I’m saying, Way, is that you’re in a mighty big pond and that you just ain’t big enough to see what’s going on in every corner of it.”

“Ah, maybe, maybe…” He sat back, leaning an elbow on the arm of his red leather chair. “But, you see, Moretti – we’re sharks, and while small, we move fast, and our appetite is insatiable. You get me? You like that one?”

Moretti grinned, humourlessly. “Touché, Way, yes. Perhaps you would make a better writer than a businessman.”

“I have a faithful team to be my businessmen. They require of me that I am a leader, a decision-maker… and that I have a way with words.” Gerard smiled. “Now, if I have made my point clear… I realise there is no moving you while we sit in this same office, but I can assure you I have other ways of bringing you around.” He brought himself forward again in his seat, and straightened his face. “Neither of us really want to get on the mattresses about this, I am sure. We simply want to do our jobs, run our organisations, yes?”

“That is all I wish to do, I agree.” Moretti sat back, shuffled his feet to get up.

“We’re on the same team, here, Moretti – it’s just difficult if certain members put dog shit in each other’s sneakers, am I right?” Gerard stood and made his way back around the desk. Moretti laughed, standing up and following him towards the door.

“Your company has been very entertaining, and yes, I see your point.” He stopped at the door, which Gerard was now holding open for him. “If you find anything else you think to be… amiss, then please do not hesitate to call me and we can continue this discussion.”

Gerard grinned back, and with the same amount of good-natured politeness, said: “Don’t fuck with little fish, Moretti. They swarm, and their bites hurt the most. Goodbye.” He gestured out of the door, and Moretti took his hat off the rack and doffed it as he placed it on his head, before sloping out of the door and down the corridor, his henchmen following without a sideways glance. Gerard noted that the second one was wearing rather large heels, and smirked to himself.

He was about to walk away and appreciate another cigarette at his desk when Frank appeared in the doorway and stood there with his hands folded in front of him.

“Oh! Frank… Come in.”

“Hello.” Frank entered, and sat, not on the chair on the other end of the desk, but on the windowsill. “You asked me to come up here?”

“Yeah, well – one reason was so I had someone outside the door. I have to admit, I don’t want to be completely alone with Moretti and his cronies.” All traces of the Italian accent had been dropped. He perched on the edge of his desk, hands in his pockets. “The other was that I’m proposing a dinner date. You and your wife, me and Candida. De Lago’s – you free Saturday night?”

“Hm. Yeah, I’m free Saturday night. You still with Candida?”

“Oh – yeah, yeah, can’t seem to let her go.” He smiled, a little coyly, and reached behind him for his cigarette packet and matchbox, offered one to Frank, which he took, before taking one out himself, and lighting them both with the same match.

“Is that it, then? You brought me all the way upstairs to ask me and Lucia out?”

“Oh, no – I didn’t know quite what the plan of action was going to be until I actually met with him, of course, but I knew I would have to do something. You wanna set your boys on a job for tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, sure. What?” Frank tapped some ash out of the window, which was open a little outwards to let in the slightly grey air from above the canal.

“I want you to get some fish. Dead ones. Take a trip to New York, I’ll give you the address of Moretti’s place. We need a lot of fish. I want them all over the sidewalk in front of his premises – we’re gonna have to time it right, after the cleaners come around in the morning but before he comes in.”

Frank looked a little dumbfounded. “You want a coupla loaves of bread to go with that, Boss?”

Gerard chuckled. “No! What happened was, he was saying all this shit about little fish, so we got onto this metaphor – we’re sharks, right. That’s what we are. And we’re little fish, but you mighta heard that bit when I was showing him out – we swarm, and our bites hurt the most, or something.”

Frank was laughing, a high, dry, smoker’s laugh, bending over forwards a little, his legs crossed. “That’s a killer. That’s great, you know that? Fuckin’ fish… We should fill his car with them.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s an even better idea. But we’d have to get to his car… no. We wouldn’t be able to get to his car. We can break into his garage, sure, but I dunno where he lives… We dump the fish on the sidewalk. Get three fuckin’ trashcans full of ‘em, take the truck. It’s great, ‘cause it’s unthreatening, but it fuckin’ stinks.”

“You ain’t gonna call Rossi up here right after I’m gone and get him to get his guys to kill some people, areya? I mean, I get the impression that you know as well as me that my guys are a joke…”

“Hey, hey, your guys aren’t a joke. Your guys like a joke, and I get the feeling they have some adventures, misadventures, make a few mistakes. Rossi’s guys, you get in a room with all of ‘em and you don’t have a party, you have a board meeting, even if you give ‘em all drinks and nowhere to sit. They’re efficient, and that’s great, and we need that, but sometimes you need crazies, you know? Ask Rossi’s guys to dump a symbolic warning on someone’s doorstep and halfway there they’ll decide you can’t be serious and go and kill some guys instead. I have nothing against going and killing some guys, because it works, but you have to get a sense of timing. Also, with the New York Mafia – you don’t just walk in there all guns blazing with any of ‘em, because you don’t really want any of ‘em on your bad side, y’know? And with Moretti, we’re always like this close to starting a Mob war, which is crazy, it’s a real crazy place to be, but it’s dangerous. We don’t wanna be on the mattresses with these guys, you know? We don’t want a war – ‘cause on their own, we can take ‘em, but if they start getting the other families on their side – we can’t take all of New York, Frank. We’re good, for little fish, but shit, we ain’t that good.” He sighed as he said this last, a genuine sigh, and shook his head, tapping away the ash on his cigarette which he had been waving around him for a few moments and not smoking, and putting it in his mouth, standing up and walking around to sit at his desk.

Frank thought for a moment, before tapping ash out of the window again and standing up. “I’ll ask around, see if anyone’s friends with a fishmonger. We don’t have an associate, do we? It’s not exactly the kind of thing you see yourself needing…”

“That’d be great. We can afford to shell out for this, anyway – it’s just that a low profile would be best.”

“We don’t want the knacker’s yard incident again, is why we can’t just walk in any old place. I mean, we could steal, but that would be rude…” He crossed to the door, putting his hand on the handle absentmindedly as he thought.

“True, true… damn. Why will nobody trust an Italian in a suit, hey, Frankie?” He grinned, head resting on his hand.

Frank leaned back against the door. “Similar reasons why Moretti won’t trust you. They won’t trust nobody with a double zee or see or tee in their name and an accent – us guys have a code not to trust nobody without.” He grinned, a little apologetically. “Your fadder got along alright, and he was similarly cursed. You’ll do fine – and if they’re similarly prejudiced once you’ve clobbered ‘em a coupla times, then that’s their problem.”

Gerard regarded Frank with a wry smile. “You been talkin’ to your wife too much, Frankie. But thanks. It doesn’t worry me.”

“I’ll be seeing you, then.” He nodded and dodged out of the door, closing it behind him. Gerard watched the door for a couple more moments, and then, as if the conversation had been continued in his mind with an imaginary remnant of Frank, said, as he pulled a crystal bottle of amber liquid from the cabinet behind the desk: “And if that don’t work, I can always kill the bastard."