“How’d it go?” Angelo asked.
“How does it always go?” was Black’s reply.
Chapter Two
Rocco “Rocky Fists” Fiorentino always wanted to be a gangster, and by the time he was nineteen, he was running his own loan shark and robbery operations. It earned him two years in prison for armed robbery. When he got out, he didn’t stay out for long; Fiorentino was arrested along with two other men, and they were all charged with rape.
When Fiorentino was released from prison on parole, he became an associate of Crazy Nicky Gaetano, a Curcio family member through his connection with Alessandro Reviello, who he had met in prison. From there, Fiorentino became involved in the illegal gambling and loansharking businesses, and soon he became an influential member of Big Tony’s crew, and a made man in The Curcio Family. By that time, Rocky Fists’ criminal record included several arrests for assault.
The Curcio Family powerbase was in the Bronx, but Big Tony belonged to the less influential Mount Vernon faction of the family. He ran his crew out of a small bar called the Catania Social Club. The crew was involved in illegal gambling, loansharking, extortion, burglary, narcotics dealing, the occasional murder contracts, union, and construction rackets. Big Tony’s crew was getting noticed.
Fiorentino controlled a union that represented workers who painted and decorated hotels, bridges, and subway stations. Through the union treasurer, he and Santino “Little Sonny” Calabresi would pick up cash payments from the contractors and charged them a ten to fifteen percent tax on all major commercial painting jobs.
Little Sonny was born in Brooklyn; his father ran a bakery there and his mother taught school. When he was eighteen, he joined the Army, but was discharged later that year, classified as psychoneurotic with pronounced homicidal tendencies.
Big Tony saw that both men could make money and were willing to use violence, if needed, and put Rocky Fists and Little Sonny in charge of his bookmaking and debt collecting operations. And of course, there were the occasional murder contracts that needed to be handled.
It was later that same night when Fiorentino found himself waiting in his Lincoln outside of Calabresi’s house and honked the horn again. He had been parked there for ten minutes, and he was getting impatient. They had places that they needed to be.
“And this fuckin’ guy is fuckin’ around,” he said, and he leaned on the horn until he saw the door open and Calabresi come out of the house.
“About time.”
“Relax,” he glanced at the time on the dash. “We still got plenty of time.”
Fiorentino was there to pick him up for a meeting later that night with Luciano Trentini. With Big Tony dead and Johnny Boy murdered, everybody expected The Commission to name him as the new boss of The Curcio Family. After she gave Fiorentino the finger, Constance, Little Sonny’s wife, kissed her husband goodbye and he walked to the car.
“Fuck, Sonny,” Fiorentino said when Calabresi got in the car with him.
“What?” Calabresi asked as he put on his seatbelt. “Relax, we got plenty of fuckin’ time.”
“I know,” he said, and drove off. “I wanted to stop by The Platinum before we go.”
“
What you wanna go to The Platinum for?”
“I need to see Darcie.”
“You don’t have time to fuck her, Rock,” Calabresi laughed. “Get your dick sucked maybe.”
Fiorentino laughed with him. “Nothing like that. I got her working on something for me. I need to hear what she’s got.”
“Working on what?”
“I been hearing that Angelo is planning to make a move on Luciano,” Fiorentino said, as he slowed down to stop at a red light.
“Yeah, I heard that too. But that prick hasn’t got the balls to make a move like that,” Calabresi said, as the car in front of them stopped short and Fiorentino ran into their bumper.
“This fuckin’ guy!” he shouted, pounded the steering wheel, and reached for the handle.
“Don’t kill him, Rock,” Calabresi laughed, just as a Dodge Ram with a titanium steel front bumper guard slammed into their rear-end. The impact of the collision had both men shaken, so they didn’t see Black and Angelo get out of the truck, walk up on either side of the Lincoln, and open fire. They tossed their empty weapons in the car, got back in the truck, and drove off leaving Rocco “Rocky Fists” Fiorentino and Santino “Little Sonny” Calabresi dead.
As they drove away from the scene, Angelo glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
“See, Mikey. I told you that we had plenty of time.” He laughed. “But yeah, Sonny was cutting it kind of close,” he said, as he pulled in a parking lot.
“You got everything in place?” Black asked as they got out of the Dodge.