Smooth Criminal

“Dom,” I said as we were walking down a dark alley toward what I think was Martino’s. “Do I look alright? You said that all of the women are amazingly beautiful. I’m afraid that I will easily be upstaged.”

“Anita,” Dominick said as he stopped, held my shoulders, and took a look at me. “You are not going to be upstaged. I have respect in this place. There people respect family, and they respect me, so they’ll respect you.” With that, he grabbed my hand and kept on walking.

“So, how much respect do you really have there?” I asked curiously.

“Enough. As far as I know, the only people I know that have more than I do are the people who are worthy of having a key.”

“So that means Martino, Tony, and who else?”

Dominick smiled. “The greatest gangster of all time and Martino’s cousin.”

“Who’s that?”

“You’ll see. Especially since we’re here.” Dominick had stopped in front of what looked like a metal cellar door.

I looked around. “This is it?”

Dominick laughed at me. “Be patience, sorellina.” Then he turned to the door, knocked on it, and a small door behind a set of metal bars opened up with a pair of eyes peeping through.

“What have you got to say?” said the eyes.

Dominick cleared his throat and said two words: “Human Nature.” With that, the small door closed and the main door slowly opened up. I could hardly believe that I was finally at Martino’s.

I loved it immediately. It was dark and mysterious and had a pretty badass vibe about it. There were men who I had only heard about by name before and had never thought that I would see them in person. There were also women, as beautiful as I had thought, some draped on the arms of some of the men, while others were perched in various locations, looking bored. There was a stage with various instruments near the back of the room, but nobody was there. There was slow music playing from the jukebox that was sitting off in one of the corners. A little bit of idle chatter could be heard over the music, but that was the bulk of the sound in the building.

It seemed as though everyone was waiting for someone.

“Dominick!” said the man behind the bar. “Nice to see you, my good man.”

“That’s Martino,” Dominick whispered to me as we walked up to the bar to greet the man. “Martino, how have you been?”

“Fine, fine.” Martino then caught a glimpse of me. “Dominick, why have you not introduced me to this lovely young lady?”

I blushed slightly at getting a compliment from a man who was once known as the best.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Martino, this is my little sister, Anita Rossetto. Anita, this is the great Martino Morretti.” I smiled at the man.

Martino nodded and turned to look at both of us. “So what’ll it be, you two?”

“I’ll take a Horse’s Neck,” Dominick said sitting on one of the barstools.

I followed suit and racked my brain for any cocktail that I could remember the name of. “Uh, Jack Rose, please.”

“Coming right up for both of ya.”

Within less than two minutes, both my brother and I had our drinks. Not long after that, all conversation in the joint stopped.