Cracking Wise

Back in the day I found a list in my father’s bottom desk drawer. It was rather long and back then I didn’t really know what it meant. I knew he was involved with gangsters and I had alway assumed the list was just a collection of his top ten favorite. Mobsters, that is. 

Number ten on the list was Don Ferro. Now he was an artist. Strung up every cop he killed for the public to see all while collecting profits from the judges and lawyers he capped. Not all stories come to a happy close and neither did his. 

When the feds found out what he was doing they tracked him down. He was never heard of after that. Still he lives on a mighty reminder of no matter how wicked you can be, there’s always someone higher that can wipe you off the earth as if you were never here.

Number nine on the list was Carlo Funzi. Famous for collecting a total of three hundred and forty three goons, taking them to the streets of Brooklyn, he was known for holding the longest stand off with the cops ever recorded. He eventually sought shelter to shoot from. Funzi’s standoff lasted four hours as he filled every cop who walked into the building with bullets. 

In his final hour he ran about the roof of the building, apparently drugged up and screaming to the copters above and the vans below. He boasted about how god was protecting him and how he would walk away after successfully taking on and killing the entire United States Military all in one night. His charade ended when the building he was in was brought down by small military tanks that had been called in. 

He had finally reached the top and he fell from it, ending his career and his life. Funny thing is, he was apparently spotted driving a van or two in and out of the Bronx. He’s still suspected to be roaming the slums outside of the state.

Number eight on the list was Lawrence Raab. A well respected banker for many years, Mr. Raab was just a corrupt individual which, with the help of a rising crime family, became a ruthless gangster and hit man for the now nonexistent Vittero Mob. His targets were mostly rival bankers. Along the way he approximately stole over two million dollars which eventually was circulated back to the people once circulated through the mob. 

They were unsuccessful at proving he committed the murders of fellow bankers, but were successful at catching him in the act of taking money from the banks and delivering it to the Vittero Mob. This lead to the downfall and disbanding of the mob and the arrest of Lawrence Raab. He is currently serving a sentence of thirty years in Alcatraz.

Number seven on the list is Charles Barbato. Also known as “Barbato the Butcher”, he was a gangster more known for how much he didn’t kill when he could of. Not possessing much more than a fifth grade education level, he was the kinder right-hand-man to former Lucchese boss, Tony Franza. 

He numbered them backwards and the list stopped at number seven with the numbers six to zero written beneath it all. It wasn’t until adulthood that I would discover it was a hit list. I slowly pieced together the purpose of the hit list while touching upon a memory scarred into my past. 

It was the day men in crimson suits busted down the door of my parent’s three room apartment and left me laying on the floor in a pool of my own tears. After that encounter I joined up with crime families here and there until finally settling down with the Ranova’s and adopting the name I would carry till the day I died. My name is Gabriel and this is the first and probable last story I’ll ever tell.

Now the following took place on Saturday March 29th, 1932 8:34 p.m. Since then it has become mob legend where I live. I just happened to be a soul fortunate enough to walk away from it with a concerned smirk on my face and a deviant memory in heart. And yet, the events of that night vary depending on who’s spinning that long-gone yarn, but I can tell you for sure that my versions the truest.

Funny how a simple meet and greet between rival gangs can turn into a bloody purging of rats and egos in only a few minutes. It was supposed to be a night where the Bonnano and Colombo Families would meet to finalize their joining against the Genovese Crime Family. 

Rob Bonnano and Frank Colombo had passed letters back and forth about this team-up months prior to tonight. Bonanno figured it would be a hard choice to make since the Colombo family was known for being blindly radical. 

When Bonanno was contacted by Frank he knew he either had to join forces with the Colombos or lunge into a pointless war that would take out half his men and ruin his revenue. Rob was smart, and he knew a tight spot when he saw one. If it wasn’t for his knowledge of how this system of philosophers and psychopaths worked, well, he’d be like those poor saps before him. Dead, that is.

Now me and my crew on the other hand, being from the smalltime Ranova Family, couldn’t allow this joining to happen. A fraction of the time we only served as informants to the higher mobs and since our ranking among the crime bosses and families was so low we would often go unnoticed and undetected by the feds and the mafia. This was on the rare occasions that we did get involved in the “bigger issues” of the time. And March twenty ninth was one of those times. 

We crashed their little diner party and made every unprepared goon look like human swiss cheese, but not before making it look like a Bonanno turned on a Colombo, triggering a dirty misunderstanding that spiraled out of the restaurant and into the street.

Me and my boys ditched the scene, but not before seeing the two remaining mob bosses duke it out after running out of bullets. They eventually just started knifing one another with broken shards of a nearby window. 

The fury emanating off of these men was incredible. Each jolted at one another every chance they got, to swing and gash the other, just to move back in time and miss the sharp ends of the glass each one held. 

That was until their furious outbursts were silenced by the echoing of police gunfire. So it was then I took off like lightning and reported back to my boss about the beautiful brawl that now left the Bonannos leaderless and the Colombos numbers greatly damaged. 

We knew for a fact that the Bonanno Family would have a leader by next morning. Possibly one of Rob Bonnanos sons. Either way, the information would reach us soon enough. On the other hand, the Colombos would have a much harder time recovering from the previous night’s misadventure. 

This was the time we had been waited for, when the weakling Colombo Family would be easily vulnerable to our counter efforts. They were crippled and lacked someone in charge. The next day the Lucchese Family stepped in and took them out before we could. 

I suppose it was a kind gesture on their part. At least we didn’t have to get our hands dirty. Sure enough within a day since the shootout between the B’s and C’s, it was known throughout New Manhattan that Gerald Bonanno, brother of Rob Bonanno, was taking over the family. Not exactly what we expected, but being as tightly bunched together as the family was, we could see why the brother would take over instead of one of Rob’s ripe and fragile sons. 

Us and the Bonannos were the only real crime families that only allowed blood relatives to be initiated into our ranks. If you weren’t a Ranova, you weren’t in. Some idiot tried a blood transfusion between himself and a member of our gang that he’d kidnapped prior. 

It didn’t take long for use to find out and when we did, we left him buried naked in a wooden box filled with leeches somewhere in the Bronx. If they found him now, he’d look like a raisin.

A lot of weird s**t like that that happened back in those days. I suppose it was to be expected, what with the reconstruction of Manhattan and all. The great fire that took that town down now opened up a whole crime circuit fresh for the taking. Life was moving by fast after the Colombo’s were wiped out and I took a little break to revisit an old problem that had been brewing in my skull.

I still had my dad’s list. God knows how I’d managed to hang on to it all these years. But I knew for a fact that there must have been a good reason why these mystery men’s names were on paper and I swore by the angels above that I’d solve this thing.

This meant going to depths I’d fear to dream about. This meant erasing all fear of death and weakness. This meant taking the risks of a fool and the confidence of a mad man. This meant finding the truth and filling every rotten suited goon who got in my way full of brass, bronze, lead, gold and silver slugs!

So, with the rebooted mindset to find my parent’s killers and finish my old man’s list, I headed to the water to visit some old retired Bonnanos boys. There were three that still worked a little drug trade out by the shore well after quitting the mob. 

After being taken in my the Ranovas I had never heard anyone speak a word about what happened to my father or the guys that clipped him. It was like all my family friends and relatives just cut ties and vanished into the darkness.

I didn’t mind much. Crowds and groups were never my thing back then and they still aren’t today. I could soon see that the three Bonannos boys felt the same way, well, other then each others company. Their names were Mickey, Don, and Frezko. Just a happy little group of balding fat stooges. Just listening to them talk made me chuckle. 

I mean, I know it was rude, but seeing what the years had done to these guys made me think aging wasn’t so bad as long as someone got a laugh out of it.

I talked to them for a while, but they didn’t know anything. So I shot them all, one slug to each of their heads. Sure it wasn’t the rational thing to do at the time, but hey. I was on a mission and if I knew you were involved, well, lets just say if you didn’t have anything interesting thing to tell me, then you better come up with something halfway appealing to sing to your maker once I introduced you.

Looking back, all the gun slinging and goon purging didn’t get me far, but I was young and with a hand cannon at my side, I felt power. Power and heat, that’s what it was! God, just thinking about it gets my foot hopping. 

I remember every door I’d bust down and every life I’d take and how great it felt that I looked for the answers in all the wrong places, but still emerged unscathed and searching blindly.

Damn, I was moron. It was always at times when I would be sitting around doing nothing that answers flew my way and people really started to talk. 

Like the night I stopped into a bar to have a drink with a childhood friend, Rob Sanco. He didn’t get much out before a bullet flew past my shoulder and nailing him. I ran like hell outside to catch the shooter, but they were long gone.

All I got out of him was that his family suffered a similar fate as mine. Rob was the only person in his home left alive after his family was hit. In his case, the death toll took a sister and an uncle along with a mother and father. 

Before that bullet broke our whispers I ranted to me about how he was on the same mission I was and how he planned to track down and burn those b******s that iced his childhood and screwed him up. And like that, he was a bloody hulk of uselessness lying on the floor before me. Dam-nest thing, how this whole life pans out.