Tempted by the Sinner

“We’re taking a tour,” he said. “A little tour of the city.”

“Yeah?” I cocked my head. “I know this city pretty well already.”

“Not like I do.” He turned down a side street and slowed a bit. “This block belongs to a little gang called the Mencios. Little guys, no big deal. They pay fealty to my father, and otherwise get to run their shit.” We drove slow past a bunch of guys sitting on a corner stoop with big white t-shirts and white sneakers. They nodded at Vince as he waved to them.

He drove a few more blocks, turned right. “This is more Leone territory,” he said. “That business there, the dry cleaner’s? I own that, and I own the place down here on the left, the pawn shop.”

“How many businesses do you own around here?” I asked.

“Ten right now,” he said. “Used to be more, but I sold off the ones that weren’t profitable.”

“I didn’t know they needed to actually make money.”

He laughed. “They don’t, but it helps.”

We drove through more neighborhoods and he pointed out more mob-owned stores, talked about other little gangs. There were the Two Hats, the Chainz, the 616ers, the Twelve Shots, the Gustin Gang, the Vagos. On and on, gangs of all sizes, all of them working in some way for the Leone Crime Family.

He took me west and up a few more blocks, closer to Center City.

“This is Russian territory,” he said. “Most of the spots around here, they run. Their territory used to extend further south, but we’ve been taking it from them, bit by bit.”

“Weren’t they your biggest competitor for a while?” I asked.

He nodded. “For a long, long time. But shit changed recently, things went haywire for them, and we swooped in.”

“Huh,” I said, then laughed a little. “I like that you’re admitting it now, you know.”

He gave me a look. “Don’t ruin this.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway.” He drove further up, toward Fairmount and the Art Museum. “More Russian territory,” he said. “Up north, we own some of the blocks, but mostly it’s smaller gangs fighting it out. We tend to stay away from that petty shit.”

“You’re the big boys then,” I said.

“I like to think of us as the adults in the room,” he said with smirk. “We’re the businessmen. We’re in this for money and power, not for pride. This is a long game for us.”

“You’d think it would be a long game for them, too.”

“To some of them it is,” he said, his voice soft. “But so many of these gang boys can’t see a long game, can’t think past the next few days or weeks. They grew up thinking they’d never make it past their twentieth birthday.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s the way shit goes.” He pulled around Fairmount and drove slow toward Eastern State Penitentiary.

“Last night, I asked you why the Jalisco sent you that snake skeleton,” I said. “Are you ready to tell me now?”

He took a deep breath and nodded. “You see how much territory my people own,” he said. “And you see how much the Russians still have.”

“You have more,” I said.

“But they’re still significant. We’re the biggest, but they’re the second biggest.”

“What’s that have to do with the Jalisco?”

He hesitates, tensed his jaw, let it go.

“My father’s in talks with the Russians,” he said. “They want to make an alliance. Bring the families together, bring them closer.”

I blinked and shook my head. “Wait, what?”

“He thinks it makes sense,” he said with a sneer. “The two biggest families owning and ruling the whole damn city. Now that the Russians are on the fence and getting pushed back every day, they’re willing to negotiate. My father thinks it’s smarter to keep his opponent around, at least a little bit, so it’ll take some heat off us, keep the cops looking at the Russians for a while.”

I chewed my cheek and shifted in my seat as he turned down Nineteenth Street and headed south again.

“You don’t agree with that,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I don’t. If the decision were mine, I’d kill the Russians off and own this place outright. Letting them live is only going to let them regain strength so they can fight us for real one day in the future. And meanwhile, everyone in the city will know we’re the main power, Russians or not.”

I nodded slowly. “Makes sense to me.”

“My father doesn’t see it that way.” He grunted and shook his head. We rolled past a baseball field with kids practicing in the outfield. “He thinks we’re stronger united.”

He didn’t speak again as we kept moving south. I watched him, breathing deep and slow. There was so much going on in the city that I didn’t know about, so much fighting, so many gangs, so many groups. It was a teeming pile of roots, tangled together, a mass of violence and drugs and power.