A fresh country morning. Summer firmly in the air at last. The Mafioso don, Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Ciampini, drove into town in the burgundy rear seat of his Chrysler New Yorker. His car of choice. He disdained the gangster cliché of the Cadillac. ‘Announce who you are, why?’ Two men, his driver and bodyguard, had come out to fetch him in a separate vehicle, a Caddy, that would remain on his property until their return. The two sat in the front seats of the boss’s vehicle, Ciampini in back. He never traveled without a chauffeur, and lately the bodyguard made sense. Way of the world now. Nobody knew how to keep the peace. He had a guy blown out of his apartment onto the street in pieces, and nobody could find all the pieces. Punks today. They had no clue. To swat a fly you fire a bazooka? Who wants to bring the attention? When Ciampini slipped into the plush rear seat of his car his bodyguard handed him the morning newspaper and no one said a word until he was willing to speak up. That would take about ten minutes while he caught up on the news.
The drive steered them down a pleasant country road. They slowed for a tractor pulling a hay wagon. ‘Don’t honk,’ Ciampini instructed, without bothering to look up, his first words of the day. A man could easily be lulled into thinking that out here everything was right with the world. Out here, a man might listen to the birds sing and follow along behind a hay wagon without giving a toot.
When the farmer came upon a spot to move over, he did, and the New Yorker pulled out and around the wagon.
Still reading, Ciampini spoke. ‘How’re you guys?’
‘Good, boss. Good. You?’
The driver drove. The bodyguard did the talking, if there was any talking to do. Always the case when he came along.
‘The Expos got beat again,’ Ciampini lamented.
‘The pitching.’
‘They need another arm.’
‘No argument, boss. None.’
He went quiet again with his nose in the paper. Once he had double-checked the financial pages and scanned the stock listings, he folded the paper neatly to a quarter its size and tucked it down on the seat beside him. By this time they were merging onto the expressway to draw them into Montreal.
The bodyguard figured he’d raise the subject uppermost on his mind. ‘Boss, I know you said last night not to worry about it or nothing like that, so I’m not worrying myself, but I still never heard from Teddy. You? No answer when I call.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Nothing I could say on the phone.’
‘He’s all right then? Our Teddy? Good. That’s good.’
‘Not that good. Worms in his eyes by now.’
The bodyguard turned part way around in his seat. Not easily. He was a big man who found it hard to maneuver his form. His jaw went slack. The driver, a large but less substantial man, also looked back. He returned his eyes to the road except to glance over at the bodyguard. This seemed like a crisis.
‘Our Teddy,’ the bodyguard said. ‘That’s a sin.’
‘It hurts me,’ Ciampini admitted.
‘Massimo did this?’
‘Worms slide through his eyes, too.’
Another jolt. ‘With Massimo they’re supposed to be, the worms. Who then?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Jesus’s mother and Joseph’s dad. Poor Teddy.’
‘Yeah. Poor Teddy. I guess he got slow in his old age. A lesson to everybody.’
The two men in front took that as a warning directed at them. They glanced at each other but had nothing more they dared say. They had questions they didn’t want to ask. They were hoping to hear the answers anyway.
‘Who can tell me what Willy does for us on a daily basis? You guys know?’
The bodyguard volunteered a reply. He twisted his torso around again. ‘He’s like the guy in the middle. Isn’t that right?’
‘How you figure?’ Ciampini put to him. As if he was testing the man’s knowledge.
‘Like, for example, if a gun is gonna change hands, right, there’s a buyer and a seller. The buyer could be dirty, a cop, the seller could be dirty too, an enemy. One way or the other it could be a trap. The consequences, they’re worse if we’re talking about drugs and money. Or the women we move in bulk. You never know. With Willy, see, you know. He does the buying or the selling. Depends on the situation. He negotiates the fee. Either way, we know he’s not dirty, right? None of us gets nailed, because he’s representing us. Somebody gets nailed – well, look at that, it’s only Willy. He goes down, it’s him, not one of us. Better that way for everybody that he’s in the middle.’
‘Maybe not for Willy.’
‘Maybe not for him, no, but it’s only Willy.’
‘We stay clean because Willy is exposed. He stays clean because he’s good at it. That’s what you say,’ Ciampini summed up.
‘That’s right. Isn’t that right?’
‘Seems that way.’ The boss propped an elbow on the window frame and with his elevated hand rubbed his chin. He had another question for them. ‘OK, if that’s true, then why do we want him dead?’
No one was quick with a reply.
They drove on in silence. Mile by mile, more traffic clustered along the route.
Eventually, Ciampini remarked, ‘Do you remember what Massi did wrong in his life?’
Everybody knew. The men in front assumed the question to be rhetorical and remained mute. They merely nodded.
Ciampini answered his own query. ‘His old man owned the TV store. The Dime took his television there. We put two and two together. We did. We figure it’s Massimo living out in the suburbs pulling the plug on the organization. He’s the one. It’s him. But what do we know for sure, really? Nothing. We’ll never know now. Worms are squirming down his throat, so he won’t say nothing to us.’
Something in the old man’s tone. The boys in front didn’t like this. As though they were suffering his unprovoked rebuke. They both felt that way. They were aware of an assumption, one they didn’t want to admit to or provoke further.
‘We let Massi think he’s going to do Willy, right?’ Ciampini continued. ‘Before he gets to do it, Teddy will do him. That takes care of Massimo. Willy helps with the body, the digging. Then Teddy takes care of Willy. Tic tac toe. That’s the plan. Anything wrong with that plan?’
‘Don’t know, boss,’ the bodyguard admitted. The plan struck him as being foolproof. Pretty damn brilliant. Pretty sweet. Except that the guy who was supposed to walk away didn’t walk away. Maybe nobody did.
‘Willy’s smart,’ Ciampini said. ‘Nobody thought about that. That’s what went wrong with the plan. Willy’s smart. Goodbye, Teddy.’
‘Willy? Willy did Teddy? Willy? That fucker. Boss, we’ll find him. For sure, we get him.’
‘No. You won’t. You’ll let him be or be next. You follow?’
‘We’ll let him be. Whatever you say, boss. Can I ask why, but?’
‘You can ask,’ Ciampini said. He didn’t answer the question. ‘Why’d we decide to take out Willy? Ever wonder? Because a man we don’t know about – we hear he’s a killer from LA, some Russian circus bear – comes into town and what’s his purpose? To take out our Willy. Why? That’s the question. Except that Willy takes out the guy from LA. How? That’s the next best question. Is something up with Willy we don’t know nothing about? Is he spoiled? Has he gone to rot? Must be the case. Our enemies must be working him if they want him iced. Otherwise, he’s got nothing to do with them, right? Plus, it’s in our heads like electric shock: he kills the killer? Our Willy? How come our Willy can do that? Our Willy can’t do that. He’s not capable. What is he, a tough guy now? What do we know about him anyway? We start to think it’s like it is with Massimo. They both must go. Now, who was real busy promoting that point of view, I’m asking? I’m asking you. Who made the case? It wasn’t you guys, I remember that. Who was it among us so sure Willy and Massimo had to go to the worms, the both?’
Neither man wanted to say. Answering a question like that could land a person in treacherous territory. Better if Ciampini answered his own question once again.
He did. ‘Pasquale. You remember?’
Willy had provoked the thought. It had swirled around Ciampini’s head. Willy said to let suspicion rain down on the man who wanted suspicion to rain down on him. Willy made a good case, saving his own life that way, for now, altering the course of action.
‘Yeah, boss,’ the bodyguard admitted. ‘I remember that.’
‘Me too,’ the driver said, speaking for the first time.
‘Pasquale,’ Ciampini repeated. ‘He was so sure, eh? Massi had to go because his old man’s shop did the TV repair. But what does that prove? Tell me this, when was the exact day when Massimo got so stupid? He used his old man’s store to plant a bomb in a TV? That’s way too dumb even for Massimo. Since when is he so brilliant to make a mistake like that? Nobody asked that question. Then Willy, he had to go because he was marked. Who knows the reason? We don’t know what he’s been up to. He knows too much and anyway, what do we really know about him? He works for us but he’s not one of us. All that came up. Pasquale made the case. Le Gris, too, the both. Together, they made a good case.’
The men up front didn’t join in. They didn’t want to be part of a chorus if it was the wrong chorus to be part of.
‘You two will keep your mouths shut,’ Ciampini let them know. ‘A leak, it came out of the mouth of both of you.’
‘Mouth shut, boss. Sealed like a rock.’
As though the two of them had only the one pair of lips.
‘You bet,’ the driver said. ‘You can count on us.’
‘I have no doubt,’ Ciampini said. ‘About Pasquale, I’m looking into this. Le Gris, too. No more rash decisions around here. Too many guys are feeding their balls to the worms. We can’t afford no more. Except maybe Pasquale. Maybe Le Gris. That’s something I’ll find out. I’m looking into that.’
‘If you need help with anything, boss, ask me.’
‘I don’t ask. I tell.’
‘Anything you want, boss.’
‘That’s all right. I got a man on it.’
‘If you don’t mind my saying, boss, I hope he’s somebody you can trust. Trust him like you can trust one of us.’
‘I’ll find out. That’s part of it. To find that out.’
The men up front didn’t understand that last statement, but they declined to question him further. Too risky. Besides, they wanted quiet time to grieve. Massimo The Coat and Teddy The Bear, long-time colleagues, were gone. They’d almost been pals. A surprise and a sorrow, although they were unsure if their sadness was something they should own up to or not.
‘Willy did Teddy,’ Ciampini said. ‘Leave him alone about that. For now. Time comes I change my mind, I’ll let you know. Take your revenge then. Only if I say so. Only when I say.’
‘OK, boss.’
That made sense. They drove on into the city. The streets opened before them, swallowing them into their usual urgency and the cacophony typical of morning’s mayhem. As though a street wasn’t a street in Montreal until some guy toted his massive belly over a jackhammer and jackhammered away.
The dust. The noise. The bedlam of morning.