Toxic white smoke rings slowly surfaced upward, joining the dense cloud of smoke that had already enveloped the room. The pungent odor of cigar filled the study, clinging to every object. The walls of the room were so saturated by the fumes, they seemed to be the very cause of the stale and emanating smell.
The man sitting at the head of the table was the cause of this miasma, mechanically blowing smoke from his mouth while meditating intently on a memory. A fresh memory that hurt deep down and would scar him forever, leaving dark circles under his eyes. His name is Joe Santini, and he had just witnessed the murder of his brother, Angelo, whose death was an image that no man could erase from memory.
Of the other three men in the room, only Carmine D'Abbate sat with him at the table in silence, pouring himself a glass of red wine and staring at Joe with bulging, haggard eyes.
Frank “Drummer” Colombo stood leaning against the windowsill watching the rain pour down, drumming his fingers in rhythm with the chomping and snapping of his chewing gum. Drummer's apparent calm had been proven an illusion many times, given his ability to kill a man with the same understated manner as perusing the morning edition of The New York Times.
The third man, Johnny Greco, chain smoked and paced restlessly back and forth like a pendulum. Only one single, lewd word kept coming out of his mouth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
Carmine spoke in his usual calm and reassuring way, “Here Joe, have another glass. It'll do you good. This is the good stuff, not that crap from the supermarket. This comes from Italy.”
Johnny, high-strung by nature, couldn't stand the apathy and resignation one second longer. “Knock it off with the fuckin' wine, already! You trying to get him drunk? He's still gotta tell us what the fuck happened!”
Carmine was from the old school and didn't like Johnny's foulmouth language. “All you know how to say is 'fuck'. Cut it out. Besides, can't you see he's still in shock? Damn, show a little respect! He just lost his brother, for crying out loud.”
“That's exactly my point. I respect him. And I've always respected Angelo. I've been standing around for two hours doing nothing and I'm sick and tired of wasting time. I want to know right this minute who did it so I can go tear his head off with my bare hands. Fuck!”
Carmine stood up fast, knocking the chair to the floor. Pointing his finger at Johnny, he said, “I swear to you, if you say that word one more time, I'll rip the tongue out of your mouth and feed it to the dogs!”
“What do you want, hah? I can't even talk now? What are you, my mother? If I want to say fuck, I'll say it as much as I want: fuck, fuck, fuck,” said Johnny with all the arrogance and insolence his youth could muster.
Carmine was as good as his word. “I warned you, you stupid idiot! Now I'm gonna crack your dumb skull open so you can fill it with all the filthy language that you want!”
Johnny loved nothing more than a challenge. “Come on, fat-ass. You're full of shit. You think I'm afraid of you?” dared Johnny.
While they both attacked each other, wrestling like a couple of kids over a toy, Frank pulled his silver revolver out of its holster and shouted, “Knock it off for Christ's sake, you're grown men and you're acting like a couple of spoiled brats. If you don't stop it right now, I'll shoot you both in the knees. That'll give you something to cry about.”
Heedless to Frank's threat, they kept brawling until Joe spoke in a faint voice, “Knock it off or this lunatic will shoot both of you.”
Shocked by Joe's tone, they immediately stopped fighting. All three moved close to the table in reverent silence, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“It was supposed to be a two-man job because we didn't want to attract too much attention,” said Joe. “At least that's what the Boss told us. We were supposed to wait on that damned hill about three hundred yards away for the armored van to pass, hit the tire with the sniper rifle, then wait for our accomplice to get out after he'd knocked out his partner, grab the briefcase with the diamonds and run to the hideout. Clean and easy, just like that. But I knew better. There is no such thing as an easy job where everything goes smooth as silk. Anyway, when Angelo took his shot, both tires exploded and the van went off the road, rolled into a ditch and flipped over.
