John Ouimette heads back toward East Providence, still talking. Now the topic is his brother. As if his passengers didn’t know it already, Gerry Ouimette holds disrespect to be a capital offense. He believes that he has earned Patriarca’s homage for having pumped countless thousands of dollars the old man’s way via extortion, gambling, loan-sharking, and shakedown operations. There is nothing he wants more than to be acknowledged for his hard work and welcomed into La Cosa Nostra with open arms. He wants to be a made man. There is a glaring problem, of course: He has the wrong vowels in his last name. Behind his back the Italian wise guys refer to him as “that fucking Frenchman,” and he knows it.
Gerry is doing time in “Steel City,” the infamous North State wing of Rhode Island’s ACI, when he brings up his displeasure to Rudy Sciarra. That’s Rudolph Earl Sciarra of Johnston, Rhode Island, where he is much loved by his immediate family and known by his neighbors as a quiet and polite man.
Elsewhere, Sciarra is a legend. One of Patriarca’s most reliable soldiers, his street name is “The Captain.” He is a widely feared hit man, a ranking member of La Cosa Nostra, and he is as loyal as he is deadly. He sits at the right hand of The Godfather. From there he dispenses fear, retribution, and punishment with neither hesitation nor remorse.
Sciarra listens to Ouimette’s repeated bitching about his status, while gently stroking a pet mouse that was scampering from cell to cell before he caught it. For months the hit man has cared for the rodent, feeding it, setting up a box for its home, even tucking it away in his shirt pocket to carry around the yard. He named it “Topo,” an Italian word that means mouse and the namesake of the puppet Topo Gigio, frequently seen on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Sciarra cuts Ouimette’s rant short. He holds up the mouse so that Ouimette can see it. “Oh, Topo, this is Frenchy. Say ‘Hi’ to the Frenchman, Topo.”
Sciarra moves closer.
“Topo, Frenchy thinks he’s one of us. What do you think, Topo? You think so too? You agree with the Frenchman?”
Gerry Ouimette doesn’t get it. He’s trying to smile, but then Sciarra hollers at the mouse. “Well, you’re wrong, you dumb little shit!” And staring Ouimette in the eyes, Sciarra puts the mouse up to his mouth, sinks his teeth into its neck, rips its head off, and spits it out in Gerry’s face.
Sciarra throws the dead mouse away and wipes the blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Frenchman,” Sciarra says, “you got as much chance of being a part of us as that fuckin’ mouse. You understand? You keep whining about it, you’re goin’ to end up just like him. I’ll rip your fucking head off too. We clear on this?”
“That’s the kind of thing that really hurts a guy, you know?” John says.
Chucky speaks for the first time on the trip. “Fucker deserves to get blown away,” he says, his voice sounding like it’s rising from a tomb. “He’s overdue.”
Ouimette nods and, half twisting toward the backseat where Deuce is, tells him the second thing he and Gerry want is for Deuce to rob a particular coin shop just over the state line in Massachusetts.
Deuce shrugs and nods. He has hit places like this many times.
Chucky has turned to stone again.
“Sciarra first though,” Ouimette says. “Sciarra’s a dead man.”