(I DO NOT own The Walking Dead, Code Lyoko, or any names/brands that might appear in the story. Any references to any person living or dead is merely a coincidence, and should NOT be taken as intentional.)
A couple of days after Frank Romano's murder, Mike and Henry were walking down Liberty Avenue in Jamaica after finding a spot to park Henry's car. The two met up earlier that morning for some breakfast and some coffee at a diner they both liked and then they set out for Sinner's Palace to deal with the buyer situation with its owner, George Campbell. The two weren't really sure what to expect from the Fox, but Mike was packing a loaded snub-nosed revolver just as a precaution.
Mike wasn't planning on using his piece to kill the Fox since Ray specifically stated he wanted him alive, but a gun was certainly a good tool to scare someone shitless and no matter how simple a job seemed to be he always, always kept a gun with him. The only problem that Mike and Henry were having at the moment was actually finding Sinner's Palace...
The two mobsters walked and walked and walked but they couldn't find the damn place anywhere. Street after street, building after building, everything was so unfamiliar and even a tiny bit alien to them. Hell, they couldn't even call Sam for the address they were looking for because Mike accidentally left his cell at home and the battery on Henry's phone was dead.
"Shit, you see the place anywhere?" Henry inquired as they checked the fronts of every building they walked past.
"Nope. I don't usually come out this way. None of this is familiar to me..." Mike replied as he also searched the buildings.
"Same here... Christ, of all the days to forget a fucking address..." Henry grumbled to himself as they stopped at a street corner.
Henry and Mike were both getting more and more annoyed by this searching, but they pressed on since this was something they had to do for Ray. The two kept walking for block after block but they couldn't find the damn place anywhere. Eventually they wandered into the more-seedy areas around Guy R. Brewster Boulevard and they finally realized that they were completely lost.
The two mobsters kept walking for a bit until they finally decided to ask for directions. There wasn't a shitload of people on the street that morning but at the corner to 109th Avenue they saw an unattractive woman on the corner who was very obviously some sort of a prostitute. Their mothers (God rest their souls) had always told them to avoid women such as this, but since Mike and Henry were getting a little desperate they decided to take the risk of asking her for directions. What could go wrong...?
The prostitute noticed the two mobsters approaching and she flashed a seductive grin towards them. "Hey boys... You two studs lookin' for some fun today? My rates are ten bucks for handjobs, twenty bucks for oral, fifty for pussy, and a hundred for shoving it up my-"
"NO!" Henry quickly stopped her in mid-sentence. "No, no, no, no,no,no,no,no! Fuck no... no thanks! We- uh... sorry, but... fuck, we're not here for any of that!" he made sure to say, stammering a bit since he was a bit taken aback by the woman's offers.
"We need help finding a place and we're a bit lost... you think you could help us? We've been walking for a while and we can't find the place anywhere. Does 'Sinner's Palace' ring any bells to you?" Mike asked the lady.
The prostitute seemed to be pretty annoyed by Henry and Mike's rejection of her offers for paid sex. Offended, even. Deciding not to help either of them for the "insult" which she believed she had received, she just gave them both the middle finger and she began to walk away to find some other guy who'd be a more-willing customer. Knowing the john's in Jamaica she knew she wouldn't have to look for very long...
"You don't know what you're missing, pendejos! (assholes!) My pussy is the best on the block!" the prostitute loudly announced so that everyone on the street could hear. "I could've sucked both your cocks so hard that neither of ya'd walk for a fuckin' week! Little-dick bitches like you two greaseballs ain't enough for a la puta (slut) like me!" she yelled back at the two men.
Mike and Henry immediately felt many eyes looking their way, and since the prostitute had succeeded in embarrassing them a bit they decided to just try to ignore the stares and keep heading down the street and keep looking for Sinner's Palace. Naturally, the two just hoped to God that they wouldn't run into someone as crazy as that woman ever again. Their mothers (God rest their souls) were absolutely right.
As they walked, Mike glanced back around his shoulder and saw that the crazy prostitute had already found another guy to solicit for sex, but this time she seemed to have succeeded since she suddenly started leading the guy around a building and into an alley to the side of it. Mike felt a sense of pity for whoever that poor bastard was since he had no idea what he was getting himself into... both figuratively and literally.
Mike turned to look back at Henry and he bumped his shoulder against him to get his attention. When Henry looked at his friend, Mike smirked.
"........Henry, I think that lady needs Jesus." Mike couldn't help but comment.
Henry slugged Mike in the arm and groaned at the shitty joke, causing Mike to laugh as they kept walking. Hopefully they'll find Sinner's Palace and not have any more distractions today...
Ray had a pretty big grin on his face as he spun some pizza dough in his hands. Business was always pretty good at Mama Moretti's during any given day of the week, but since a Yankees game was on today there was much more customers than usual. Pizza, beer, and baseball was almost as important to the people of Brooklyn as bread, air and water, and Ray always found baseball to be a helluva good way to make cash from a legitimate business. Being the manager of Mama Moretti's was a pain in the ass sometimes, but most of the time it was good work which he loved at the end of the day.
Plus it didn't hurt that the restaurant was one of several places throughout New York City which the Moretti Family used to help launder their money.
As his employees worked hard all around him, Ray flattened the dough on a table and then he spread some marinara sauce on it. After that he sprinkled on the cheese and he put on all sorts of delicious meats and vegetables, and after it was ready he got one of his chefs to send it to the oven. Ray was satisfied, and he decided to head back out to the register to see if he could help a bit over there. He gave one of the cashiers a much-deserved break and he went to run his register himself.
As he manned the register he noticed that a black car had stopped outside the restaurant. Ray saw two of his soldatos get out together and look at him through the window, but rather than go in through the front door Ray gave them the signal to head in through the back. The two soldatos nodded at him and then they walked around the side of the restaurant to head down the alley which'll lead to the back. He knew that they were going to report on what happened with a job he sent them to Yonkers for but it had to be discussed in private. Definitely not up at the front register.
Ray wondered how the two handled the thing in Yonkers but he had to forget about it for now since he saw a peculiar group of teenagers were heading into the restaurant from the sidewalk. Customers.
A few of the teens appeared to be pretty average-looking and could for the most part blend in anywhere in New York. But then there was some girl with pink hair, and then there was a boy who's blonde hair literally looked like a fucking cone! The fashion choices kids were using these days were getting a bit out of hand...
"-okay, so how about this place? I'd kill for a Caprese salad or something..." Ray heard an Asian-looking girl asked the group as they came inside.
"After that flight I'm willing to eat anything in sight, Yumi..." the pink-haired girl said as her stomach loudly growled.
"Better be careful saying things like that, Princess, or else we might christen you 'Odd 2.0'..." a boy next to the pink-haired girl joked.
"Wait, did Ulrich just crack a joke? It must be the end of the world..." a blonde-haired boy with glasses joked back with amusement, causing the others in the group including the boy and the pink-haired girl to laugh.
Ray cleared his throat and he put on his best face as the teens approached the register. They all looked pretty tired and they also looked very, very hungry. They all also had some luggage with them and cone-hair also had a dog in a kennel, but since JFK International Airport wasn't too far away from the restaurant it didn't take the smartest minds of the world to guess that they had just came in from somewhere pretty far away: probably overseas. Foreigners popping into the restaurant every once in a while wasn't anything new to Ray, but as long as they had U.S. Dollars then he was more than welcoming towards them.
"Hello, welcome to Mama Morreti's. I'm the manager, Ray." Ray cheerfully greeted the teens as he gathered six menus for them. "If you'll follow me I can get you seated somewhere." he instructed.
The teens nodded and Ray walked out from behind the register with the menus in hand. Ray found an empty booth in the restaurant and the teens sat down in it, and then Ray set the menus down for them to look through. The teens had gone through an insanely long and boring flight from Paris and the food on the plane was nothing less than terrible, so before getting to their hotel they were anxious to try this place out and see if it was any good. Hell, they were all so hungry that any restaurant in New York City would've looked good to them at the moment...
But before Ray could take their drink orders, he saw one of his soldatos looking at him through the ticket window as if he was impatient to tell him something. With an annoyed sigh Ray decided to go and see what he needed.
"I'll get one of my servers with you in a second and he'll take your drink orders." Ray cheerfully told the group of teens at the table.
All of the teens were practically starving to death at this point, but out of politeness they didn't raise any objections as Ray walked away. As the teens patiently waited at their table Ray headed back to the kitchen and he went to two of his servers: one of whom he asked to man the register and the other to head to the table and take the teenagers drink and food orders. The waiters both nodded and they headed out as Ray walked over to his office, snapping his fingers at his two soldatos to get them to follow him in.
Moretti Family soldatos Vinnie 'Ice Pick' Galante and Derek Rosato closely followed their don into his office and Vincent shut the door behind them, locking it for some assurance of privacy. Both 'Ice Pick' and Derek went to sit in a pair of chairs in front of Ray's desk as Ray himself went to lean against the front of his desk, crossing his arms as he looked upon his two hopefully-successful men.
"How'd it go up there in Yonkers last night? Anything I'll need to worry about down the road?" Ray inquired to the soldatos.
"Job went through without a hitch, boss." Vinnie 'Ice Pick' replied with a proud grin.
"That warehouse lit up like it was a fuckin' tinderbox." Rosato added with a chuckle. "We had to rough up one or two guys who were watchin' the place but no one got whacked. That warehouse and all the cargo inside it is ash right now, and we made sure it'll be that way for months."
Ray was happy at the good news. That warehouse up in Yonkers was owned by a low-rate Irish mob gang led by Gerald Conway that the Family has had trouble with in recent months. Last October the Irish sparked their beef with the Italians by ganging up on a Moretti Family gunman who was doing a hit on a family traitor up in the Bronx's Pelham Bay. His crime? Merely wandering into Irish territory in the first place. There was no warning whatsoever for the gunman and Ray had only learned of the incident after the Irish left the poor bastard's severed finger outside his restaurant.
The Moretti guy himself was later thrown out of a moving car near Jefferson Avenue in broad daylight and in full view of hundreds of bystanders. He lived after that terrible beating from the Irish, but his recovery took several months and Ray personally paid out thousands of dollars in medical expenses to see his guy through it.
The Family retaliated to what happened to their guy by kidnapping and beating three of the Irishman to within an inch of their lives. From what Ray heard one of the fuckers suffered some serious and permanent brain damage, and another ended up paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. He never found out exactly what happened to the third mick.
Since then there's been several small attacks from one side upon the other and there was legitimate worries that sooner or later a mob war was going to spark between the Conway Mob and the Moretti Family all over New York City. Conway's warehouse and the cargoes of illegal guns inside of it being burnt to cinders was just the latest act in a tit-for-tat showdown between the two groups.
In any event, Ray, beaming with pride in his men, went to pat the shoulders of both 'Ice Pick' and Rosato. They were pretty damn good at their jobs...
"You two did real good last night." Ray praised the two soldatos. "Conway's gonna be pretty damn mad once he hears about his warehouse being burnt, but he had it comin' and it was somethin' that needed to be handled. Thank you, boys." he added.
"Won't Conway come after the Family for this one?" Vinnie 'Ice Pick' wondered to his boss.
"Oh, I'm sure it's comin'." Ray replied with a shrug. "But those mick bastards started this whole thing knowing who they were up against. We'll handle whatever they try to throw at us, and if it comes to it we'll whack as many of them as we can and we'll burn everything they own across New York. I ain't worried, kid."
The two Moretti soldatos were eased by their don's lack of worry. However, they couldn't stay for much longer since their capo had asked them to head to some deli in Staten Island and rough up its owner a bit for missing out on protection payments to the Morettis. Ray was aware of this and he praised the two one more time before he told them to leave, and the two soldatos wished him a good day as they walked out of his office.
Ray organized a bit of paperwork on his deck before he decided to head back out into the restaurant. But once he got through the door to his office he heard some sort of a commotion coming from the dining area, so he ran through the kitchen to go and check what it was.
When he got to the dining area, Ray noticed that in the group of teens there was two who were in some sort of an argument with each other. They had gotten their food but the cone-haired boy had half of a breadstick shoved in his mouth, and the Asian-looking girl next to him looked pissed. Ray guessed that the kid probably stole a few breadsticks from her while she was eating from her bowl of Caprese salad with pesto sauce.
"Odd, baka! (idiot!) You've got your own food! Quit stealing!" the Asian-looking girl told him off with an annoyed tone.
The cone-haired boy appeared to say something back to the girl, but Ray couldn't hear very well what it was due to both distance the fact that the cone-haired kid's mouth was completely stuffed. But whatever he said caused the other teens with them to laugh while the Asian-looking girl grew more pissed off. Ray knew that she was probably about to strangle the guy, so he hurried over to try and diffuse the situation. The last thing he needed was customers fighting each other in his restaurant...
Ray approached the table just as the Asian teen was about to slap the back of the cone-haired boy's head. Once the teens saw Ray, however, they all turned their attention over to him. Ray simply smiled at the teens as they started calming down and he even leaned down to hand a few pieces of fresh sausage to the dog in the kennel, who was more than overjoyed to eat them.
"Relax a little bit, okay guys?" Ray smiled at the teens as he stood back up. "No need to start a fight in my restaurant. You'll get some extra drinks and a fresh pepperoni pizza during your meals today. All on the house." he added, deciding to be a bit of a good host to these foreign kids.
The teens were very surprised by the restaurant owner's kind offer. Thankfully the offer seemed to work since the Asian-looking girl was looking a lot more calm, while the cone-haired boy looked like he was going to drool due to simply hearing the words: "pepperoni" and "pizza" in the same sentence.
Ray glanced at the cone-haired boy's plate and saw it was empty. He was genuinely surprised that the cone-haired kid had eaten so much of his own food and his friend's food since he looked too scrawny to eat that much... or maybe he's svelte? He wasn't sure what the right word for the kid's appearance was. Anyway, the main thing was that the kids all looked pretty thankful towards Ray.
"Wow, thanks! That's really nice of you..." the tall black-haired boy said on behalf of the group.
"Anytime, kid. Happy to show a little hospitality every now and then." Ray said with a nod.
The other teens all gave their thanks to Ray as he walked away from their table. The teens went back to eating their meals as Ray headed to the kitchens and told a server in there to send out a pepperoni pizza and some new drinks over to the foreign kids, and then he headed back to his office. However, he stopped in his tracks when he saw the back door open.
Walking in was the Moretti associate Charlie Testa. He was a kid of around twenty-one years old and he first became associated with the Moretti Family sometime about four or five years ago. Ray had a lot of doubts about this kid at first but to his surprise the kid ended up holding his own amongst the more-experienced made men. He was annoying as fuck, sure, but the kid was pretty good at whatever Mike asked him to do for the Family.
Luckily, Mike didn't make the kid become an assassin for the Moretti Family or anything like that, but rather he usually limited him to running around New York City and New Jersey to do many of the random odd jobs that made men such as himself simply didn't want to do. But what was Charlie doing at the restaurant? Why'd he come to Ray of all people?
This had better be good...
"Hey, boss! I need to talk with ya about something..." Charlie asked his don for some time to hear him out.
"What?" Ray frowned. "Why the fuck are you bothering me, kid? You answer to Mike, you don't go straight to the top. Hell, you could even call up Paulie, or Vinnie, or Henry and see if they can help y-"
To Ray's surprise, Charlie interrupted him. "Boss, please, this is something I really need to speak to you about..."
Now, interrupting a mob boss as he was speaking was something of massive disrespect, and Charlie should have known that by now given the time he's spent doing things around New York City for Mike and for the Family at large. But since he was absolutely not in the mood to give the kid a lecture or worse, Ray just sighed and allowed Charlie to continue. But rather than give him an explanation right then and there, Charlie simply gestured over to the back door and Ray could see Charlie's car was parked in the alleyway.
What was this...?
Reluctantly, Ray followed Charlie out the back door and over to the back of his car. Charlie looked around for any signs of people watching, and when he was absolutely sure that there was no one looking their way he pulled out his keys and he unlocked his car, opening one of the rear doors for his boss. Ray saw a blanket covering something in the back seats and he pulled it off, causing his eyes to slowly widen when he saw that in the car there was some guy laying unconscious, bloodied, and very, very bruised.
"........kid, what the fuck is this?!" Ray frowned, far more annoyed than anything else. "Who the fuck is this guy?! Where'd you get him?!" he demanded to know.
"He's one of Conway's boys! I snatched him off the street!" Charlie explained with a grin.
That revelation did it for Ray. Now he was pissed. The mafia don suddenly grabbed Charlie Testa by the scruff of his leather jacket, and before the kid knew what was even happening his don had already pushed him up against the brick wall of his restaurant. Don Moretti was so pissed at what he heard that he was struggling to not beat Charlie to a pulp right then and there.
"You grabbed one of Conway's boys without even tellin' anyone?! Tellin' me, even?! Have you actually lost your fuckin' mind, kid?!" Ray again demanded an explanation from the young mobster.
Charlie appeared to be taken aback by his don's reaction. "What're you talking about?! We're warring against these bog-trotters, right?!"
"Do you not realize that snatching one of 'em off the street is gonna draw a shitload of heat on us?! Christ, it's daylight out there right now, Charlie! There's tens of thousands of people walking the streets in the Bronx alone!" Ray stated.
"No one saw me!" Charlie defended himself. "The drunk motherfucker was emptying his lunch in an alley off of Lafayette! Had to kick the living shit out of him, but there totally wasn't anyone around who was watchin' us."
"Then why the fuck did you bring him here?! Why couldn't you take him to Paulie?... Fuck, why couldn't you take him to anyone else?! My restaurant is a legitimate business for a reason, you stupido cazzo! (dumb fuck!)"
"Mike isn't answering his phone and neither is Henry! Hell, everyone's either busy or not picking up! Even Paulie's busy with somethin' in Long Island too!"
Ray's fist trembled with rage but he let go of Charlie's coat and backed away, allowing the young mobster to get away from the wall. Ray couldn't believe that Charlie was dumb enough to bring one of the Irish goons directly to Mama Moretti's. He understood that usually the people who work for him were busy across New York City or even beyond, but if Charlie had just bothered to call Ray then maybe he could have offered a place or two for him to take the unconscious mick.
Whatever.
It is what it is.
Either way, the mick could maybe be useful to the Moretti Family after all. Maybe he knew something about Gerald Conway's operations in the Bronx, or maybe he could at least tell Ray something useful about the Conway Mob or the people who helped run it. So, with a sigh, Ray gestured to the unconscious mick and then he gestured over towards the back door of the restaurant. He'd have told the kid to take him to Paulie's scrapyard but if Paulie was busy then Ray didn't really have a choice but to hold the Irishman here until Paulie finished up with his business.
"Move him inside and put him in the freezer. Don't say a fuckin' word while you do it, kid. Not. One. Word." Ray ordered with a warning the kid wouldn't forget.
Charlie was so frightened by his boss's sudden warning that he stayed completely silent as he did what he was told. Luckily once you went inside the freezer was a ways away from the kitchen, so Ray didn't have to rush his workers out to prevent them from seeing anything. Ray opened up the back door for Charlie and he didn't dare lift a finger to help him. He was gonna do every bit of this himself: lifting, moving, setting in the freezer.
A struggling Charlie managed to get the guy through the door as Ray went to open the door to the freezer. After that, he simply walked away and left Charlie to deal with this until he could get back. For the kid's own sake he better not fuck any of this up.
Ray took a deep breath and calmed himself down a bit as he headed back out to the restaurant. Even though there was an unconscious Irishman in his freezer he still had a business to run. He got back to the register and he continued to ring up customers as they came up. The foreign kids from earlier were still at their table and now they were sharing a pizza together, and Ray was close enough to hear them chatting with each other about their plans to drive down south to surprise some friends of theirs who were going to be in Atlanta in a week or so. Guess the kids have a long trip ahead of them...
More and more people came into the restaurant with each passing minute and soon the bar in the other room was packed up with people who were watching the Yankees game today. The cooks in the back were busy, the waiters were busy, Ray was busy, everyone who worked in the damn restaurant was busy and the money was just piling in the registers.
For now, things were starting to look up again.
Henry and Mike continued to wander in their search for Sinner's Palace. The two mobsters were still completely lost and they were struggling to figure out where they even were, let alone the sex club's location. North? South? East? West? Who knew which direction they were even going. But they had to get their shit together and find this place or else Ray was gonna lose his shit...
"Okay, you remember where we parked?" Mike asked his fellow underboss.
"Mike, I don't even remember what street we parked on." Henry replied as he kept looking around.
Mike cursed under his breath as he and Henry kept walking through the streets of Jamaica. Street after street, block after block, building by fucking building. Honestly, how difficult was it to find one god damn building in New York? Anyway, the two mobsters were getting more annoyed and even more tired, so the pair decided to plop down on a bus bench for a bit to rest their muscles.
As the two rested they looked at their surroundings in an effort to pass a little bit of time before they'd resume their search. There was some people here and there on the sidewalks and there was also a bunch of cars in the streets going to wherever the fuck people usually go at 2:30 in the afternoon. The two noted the irony of a conservative mosque which was standing next to some sort of a gay bar fittingly called "Willie's", and the two soldatos shared a laugh when they saw some fat guy trip and fall as he exited an ice cream shop down the street.
The two ceased their laughter when they saw a smoking hot blonde walking in their direction down on their side of the street. Mid-twenties from the looks of it, double-D's, maybe Latina? Along with a helluva nice ass to boot. The woman noticed the two mobsters eye-goggling her from their bench and she couldn't help but give them a wink as she walked past them, and she didn't protest when the two watched her hips and her ass as she kept walking down the street.
"..........she winked at me, y'know." Mike pointed out to his friend with a grin.
Henry didn't reply but he knew deep down that Mike was flat out wrong. Anyway, the sexy girl had turned and went down a different street and alas she went out of their sight, but the two noticed something else that got their attention. At the end of the street they were on they saw a building with some neon signs. At first glance the two could've sworn that it was a nightclub or a bar or something, but that's when they saw it. A sign. A sign which said the name of the business in that building.
Sinner's Palace
The two mobsters literally began to laugh with glee at having finally found that fucking sex club. After hours of walking and confusion and dealing with crazy people and jackasses, they had finally found Sinner's Palace. Mike and Henry stood up from the bench and they resumed their walk, only this time it was back down that street and towards the sex club they had been searching for.
Within minutes the two were just a block down the street from Sinner's Palace. However, the two froze when they saw a woman and a man walk out into their path from behind an alleyway together. Neither Henry nor Mike recognized the guy, but the woman was none other than the exact same crazy prostitute whom they had encountered hours earlier on the corner of Guy R Brewster Boulevard and Liberty Avenue.
Oh shit.
Not her.
Please, God, not her.
As if on cue the crazy prostitute looked in their direction, and unfortunately for them she smirked as she immediately recognized the two greaseballs who seemingly rejected her offer earlier. The man looked pretty confused as the woman walked away from him and over to them, as she thought that they had finally come around to wanting to get some action from her.
"Hey, boys..." the crazy prostitute greeted with a sultry smirk. "You two finally change your mind for little 'ol me? Well, as I said before, my rates are ten bucks for handjobs, twenty bucks for oral, fifty for pussy, and a hundred for shoving it up my-"
"NO!" Henry quickly stopped her in mid-sentence exactly as he had hours earlier. "Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you, lady?! Honestly?! I've known some crazy bitches in my life but so far you're the craziest I've seen in weeks!"
"Same here! Good God, who raised you?!" Mike asked with a feeling of shock.
The crazy prostitute looked just as offended by their words as she was by the mobsters dual rejections hours earlier. But rather than start screaming out for everyone within a mile and a half to hear like she did the first time, she merely looked over at the man and she gestured over at the two mobsters who were in front of her. The two mobsters blinked with confusion as she pointed at them.
"Volpe, are you gonna handle these two limp-dicks or what?!" the crazy prostitute snapped at the man who the two mobsters guessed was her pimp.
"Baby, you've seriously gotta cut down on the coke. Relax..." the man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Mike and Henry's eyes widened even more once they heard what the crazy prostitute called the man. The man himself didn't notice the surprise on either of the Italian faces looking at him, as he was far too busy dealing with the crazy prostitute's shit for the millionth time just this week. As the two began to get in yet another heated argument, Mike and Henry glanced at each other with jaws ajar as if they couldn't believe their luck.
Volpe...
That's Italian for 'Fox'...
This was the motherfucker they needed to find!
The Fox barely got another word out before the two mobsters roughly grabbed him by the arms. The crazy prostitute was stunned and she almost screamed for help, but a flash of the revolver tucked away in Mike's waistband immediately shushed her up. Just to make sure she wouldn't say anything to anyone, Henry went and passed her a $100 dollar bill which she had no qualms of taking. The Fox was stunned by how the prostitute was just allowing him to be taken like this.
"What the fuck, babe?! You're not gonna get help?!" the Fox asked as he struggled in the mobster's grip.
"Fuck that! I'm getting a burrito!" the crazy prostitute smirked as she stuffed the hundred bucks in her pocket.
The crazy prostitute walked away before the Fox could say anything else. With the crazy prostitute pacified, Mike and Henry began to haul the Fox towards Sinner's Palace. They tried their hardest to look unsuspecting towards the other people on the sidewalk but the Fox kept trying to fight them off, so with a sigh Mike clandestinely pulled his revolver out from his waistband.
The Fox's eyes widened and he stopped his struggles after he felt something like cold steel be pressed against his back, right on his spine. It didn't take a genius to recognize that one of the mobsters was aiming a loaded handgun at him.
"Shut up. Stop fighting us. Relax... or I'll put two bullets in your spine and leave you to bleed on the sidewalk." Mike whispered a threat to the Fox's ear.
Now Mike wasn't actually going to shoot the guy since he remembered Ray's orders, but the threat worked and the Fox stopped all resistance. Satisfied, Mike put the revolver back in his waistband and both he and Henry resumed leading the captive sex club owner back towards his club. All they needed once they got inside Sinner's Palace was the Fox's office and a locked door.
They were sure that they'd have him convinced to sell in ten minutes or less...
Inside Sinner's Palace, Henry and Mike kept a rough but clandestine hold on the Fox's arms as they led him through his club. Getting in was far more easy than it normally could have been since the Fox waved the bouncer aside, and now they were just trying to get to the owner's office. However, they were getting a tiny bit distracted by the sights which surrounded them at that very moment.
Completely naked girls, caged girls hanging from the ceiling, girls wearing leather, girls grinding on dudes laps and on each other, laser lights, a huge bar, some great music playing on the speakers throughout the building... It was every lonely bastard's dream. The two mobsters were stunned by Sinner's Palace and they both made mental notes to come back sometime and find some girls to 'unwind' with.
If Mike and Henry weren't on the job then they'd sure as hell join in on the fun right at that moment, but alas Family business always comes first before pleasure. By then the two mobsters had let the Fox go and allowed him to lead them towards his office, but even so they still followed close behind in case he tried to run off. This greasy pimp wasn't off the hook that easy.
As he walked with Mike, Henry got distracted by the sight of a topless woman and another far-more-nude woman kissing each other on a guy's lap. His eyes were glued to the scene and he wasn't watching where he was going, so of course it was only a matter of time before he accidentally bumped right into some waitress and caused them both to fall straight to the ground. Henry heard the sound of glass being shattered and he knew he must've fucked up someone's drink order. Mike heard the commotion but he kept on walking with the Fox since he couldn't risk letting him have an opportunity to run.
Henry stood up and brushed himself off before he went to help the waitress up. As he helped her up, Henry got a good look at the waitress's face and he couldn't help but admire how good she looked.
"I'm so, so sorry about that, sir..." the waitress apologized as she was helped up.
"Ain't your fault, beautiful, I was, uh... watchin' stuff..." Henry shrugged after they got back up on their feet.
The waitress blinked before she glanced in the direction Henry was looking at before they bumped into each other. She almost immediately saw what drew his eyes and she began to laugh out loud at the sight of the two girls. She certainly couldn't blame him for losing concentration like that...
"'Watchin' stuff', huh?" the waitress laughed at the mobster's excuse.
"Can you honestly blame me?" Henry shrugged, laughing a little along with her. "Anyway, my name's Henry... What's your name?" he asked.
"Ashley..." the waitress introduced herself. Luckily for Henry, she thought he was pretty cute as well.
Henry smiled at Ashley before he looked in Mike's direction once more. He saw his friend was impatiently awaiting with his captive outside of his office, and to show how impatient he was Mike gestured to his watch as if he was telling Henry to hurry up with the girl. Henry nodded at Mike and he went back to trying to court Ashley. Both the mobster and the waitress hit it off nice, and by coincidence it just so happened that they were both single.
After a few more moments of talk the two decided to take a chance and exchange numbers so that they could set up a date sometime. Ashley and Henry smiled at each other before Ashley gathered her tray and the surviving drinks and went back to her job. Henry watched as she walked away and he couldn't help but feel pretty happy, but alas he still had a job to do and he had to focus on that at the moment.
The young mobster hurried back to Mike and the captive Fox, and when no one was looking the two men practically threw the Fox into his office and hurried in with him. No one noticed any of this and Henry locked the door behind them so that they wouldn't have anyone walk in on what they were about to do.
Shoving the Fox into his own office chair, Henry cracked his knuckles and prepared himself as Mike stood guard by the door. The Fox didn't even get a word out before Henry socked him hard in the face, causing the Fox to yelp and hold his now-bloody nose. Mike couldn't help but let out a laugh at what he was seeing.
"FUCK!!! YOU BROKE MY FUCKING NOSE!!!" the Fox exclaimed before he let out a deep, very pained groan.
"Oh, I'm just getting started, motherfucker!" Henry growled, intending to let out some built-up steam upon this son of a bitch.
Henry roughly yanked up the Fox by his jacket and he pushed him against the walls of his office. The Fox tried to fight back but alas the punch he got in his face fucked him up bad, as everything around him was a bit blurred and he couldn't even stand straight due to dizziness. Henry wasted no time in taking advantage of the Fox's injuries and he pinned him against the wall, angrily pressing the club owner's head against it.
"Sinner's Palace is under Moretti control now, cagna! (bitch!)" Henry barked at the reluctant owner. "From now on you answer to Don Moretti! You pay him what you owe him and you always pay him on time! If you don't, then we'll come back and we'll make you pay!" he threatened.
"What?! B- But I can't agree to that! I need that cash!" the Fox pleaded with the mobsters.
Henry simply pulled the Fox away from the wall and pushed him straight into a glass display case full of stupid knick-knacks and photos of the business and himself. Mike's laughter only intensified as the Fox went headfirst into some glass shelves and doors, breaking every single bit of them. The Fox could only groan as he laid on the floor, his face and arms now cut up pretty bad.
As Mike's laughs finally died down for now, Henry stormed over to the Fox and he again yanked him up by his jacket. He walked the Fox over to his desk and pushed him down against it, roughly pinning his head on the oak. The Fox coughed up a little of the blood in his mouth onto his desk as Henry picked up a paperweight.
Flipping the Fox over, Henry raised the paperweight and he slammed it down onto the Fox's face. Then he did it again. And again. And again, and again, and again one more time just to be safe. Even Mike was a bit stunned at what he was seeing, although it was still funny to see this guy get his shit kicked in.
Dropping the now-bloody paperweight Henry allowed the Fox to slide down the side of his desk and collapse onto the hardwood floor. The Fox was allowed to gather his breath for a moment or two and to get his bearings again, and once he was sure the Fox could handle it Henry yanked him back up onto the desk. The Fox could barely stay conscious from the treatment he was getting from these mobsters... His nose was broken, he was sure at least one of his eyesockets was the same way, and his mouth was full of blood from several broken teeth.
Henry couldn't help but smirk. He had the Fox right where he wanted him...
"Now..." Henry began. "Are you gonna sign the contract Mr. Campbell, or do I have to keep going?"
About thirty minutes after Charlie lugged the Irishman into the freezer, Ray finally found time to get away from the register and the customers. The Moretti don headed back through the kitchens with a chair in his hands and a pair of pliers and some zip ties in his pocket. Charlie opened the door to the freezer for Ray since his hands were full, and after Ray went in he went to stand outside to make sure no one would walk in on Ray and the mick.
Ray glanced at the unconscious Irishman and shook his head with disgust. The guy smelled like liquor, vomit and shame... Anyway, Ray set the chair up in the far side of the freezer and then he went to get the mick in the chair. It wasn't too hard but Ray kept accidentally bumping into the slabs of meat and the crates of pizza ingredients and whatever else was stored in there.
The freezer was, obviously, fucking freezing, but Ray didn't care too much about the cold. The only thing he cared about right now was that this guy might have some good info in that half-drunken brain of his. Ray lugged the Irishman into the chair and he set to work on tying his ankles and his wrists to the arms and legs of the chair. This was good since the guy began to wake up as Ray finished the last zip tie.
The Irishman's eyes opened and he looked around with a very blurred vision. The last thing he remembered was that he was emptying his lunch in some dirty alley somewhere in the Bronx... now he was cold? But it was summer... Christ, and his head was killing him.
"W- Wha...?" the Irishman groggily asked himself as he looked at his surroundings. "W- Where... the fucker...? Where's that bitch I was in...?" he slurred.
"Whatever whore you're talking about ain't here, dipshit." Ray frowned as he stepped back from the chair, glaring down at his captive.
Outside the freezer, Charlie continued to keep guard against anyone who may try to get into the freezer. Luckily the freezer had some thick, steel walls, so there was no chance anyone outside was going to hear anything going on between Ray and the Irishman. A few bus boys and a chef went past Charlie at one point or another, but thankfully none of them needed to get into the freezer.
Inside the freezer, Ray was trying to give the Irishman a chance to squeal on Conway without having to hurt him. However, the Irishman was pissed off at having been snatched off the streets like a dog. However, his anger only intensified as he recognized his captor as being none other than Don Moretti himself. The fuck was Don Moretti kidnapping Irishmen for? The warehouse that got torched in Yonkers wasn't enough for these wop cocksuckers?!
"What's your name, kid?" Ray inquired as he pulled his pliers out of his pocket, examining it.
"Fuck you, Moretti." the Irishman growled defiantly. "You think you're gonna get away with doin' all of this? Burning Conway's warehouse? Snatchin' one of his boys off the streets? You're putting yourself in a lot of shit, same with your men..."
Ray chuckled as he set the pliers down on a shelf next to his captive. "If anyone's gonna be in a lot of shit then it's you in a couple of minutes, buddy..."
The Irishman struggled to get out of his zip ties as Ray went to look through the freezer for anything else which could be useful. Normally he didn't bother with messy business like this since it was Paulie's job, but alas sometimes you just have to do the dirty work yourself even if you're a mafia don. The Irishman tried to bite through the zip tie on his right wrist but unfortunately for him it didn't help at all.
Meanwhile, Ray kept up his search but unfortunately he didn't find much that could be useful in a situation such as this. There was a few things in his office but he simply didn't want to go through the effort of looking around for them. Therefore, Ray was just gonna have to rely on the pliers and his two fists to get this done...
The Conway goon stopped his struggles against the zip ties as Ray came back to him and picked up the pliers which he set on the shelf. Ray was sure he'd get the guy to crack, but in contrast the guy himself wasn't afraid of this dago motherfucker no matter if he was a don or not.
No matter how tough he thought he was, this Irishman had no idea what he was about to face.
After the mess at Sinner's Palace, Henry and Mike drove back to Mama Moretti's to let Ray know that the Fox agreed to sell a partnership of the business to the Moretti Family: allowing the sex club to become a part of the Family's prostitution ring. The two beamed with pride as Henry parked his car outside the restaurant. The Fox was left as a mess but he wasn't going to die, so it was basically a lot of harm but no foul for the mobsters.
"You notice that the motherfucker actually pissed his pants?" Mike chuckled about the Fox as he shut his door.
"You kiddin' me? You know he shit himself too, right?" Henry responded as he and his friend walked up to the front door.
The two Moretti underbosses shared a laugh as they headed into the restaurant together. The place was busy as fuck today and every table was taken, and the bar was so packed that it was almost like a clown car. Henry and Mike made their way past the waiters and waitresses and all of the tables of customers in an effort to get to Ray's office. But as they walked, Mike accidentally tripped on the leg of a chair and he landed right on his face.
Mike cursed in pain after he fell and he slowly started to get back up, but then he felt a hand on his arm trying to assist him onto his feet. Mike turned and went wide eyed when he saw that it was some pink-haired teenage girl who helping him up. Pink hair? What the fuck? It certainly didn't look like it was dyed... Although thanks to the crazy prostitute this wasn't the weirdest thing he's seen all day...
"Are you okay, sir? That looked like a nasty fall..." the pink-haired girl said with concern.
The rest of the girl's friends watched from their table as she helped Mike back up to his feet. Mike himself continued to look bewildered about the girl's hair but he nodded at her question and he brushed himself off, allowing the girl to let go of his arm.
"Sir? Are you okay? Are you injured?" the pink-haired girl asked again.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine... Thanks for the help, kid." Mike said to the girl with appreciation.
The pink-haired girl nodded and turned to go back to her table, but Mike stopped her before she could. This girl was polite and that was a very nice change of pace from the people he usually dealt with throughout New York City, and luckily for her Mike was also a very generous man from time to time whenever he was in a good mood. The pink-haired girl and her friends watched as Mike reached into his pocket, and before any of them knew it Mike had pulled out a $100 dollar bill and he set it down in her hand, patting her shoulder.
"Don't spend it all in one place, kid." Mike chuckled before he walked away.
The pink-haired girl blinked with confusion as she looked at the hundred bucks in her hand and all of her friends looked just as stunned as she was. She helps a guy off the ground and he gives her $100 dollars for it? Something was definitely fishy about that guy...
In any event, the teens were pretty time-consumed and they couldn't stop to worry about the cash at the moment. They had to get to their hotel and check into their rooms within the next hour and a half, and knowing the traffic heading into Manhattan they were going to be cutting it pretty close. Either way they had a few days to kill as tourists in New York City before they'd head south to do the same thing in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C., and then they'd sight see all the way down the rest of the East Coast and to Atlanta so they could meet up with their friends.
As the teens paid for their meals and left to get to their hotel, Mike and Henry walked through the kitchen and they went to Ray's office. To their surprise he wasn't in there, but then they noticed that the young Charlie Testa was standing outside of the freezer as if he was a guard. What the hell was this...?
"Charlie?" Mike asked with surprise as he and Henry approached. "What the hell are you doing here? Didn't I tell you to go and handle that thing with the laundromat in Newark today?" he inquired.
"Yeah, I already dealt with that, but, uh... I kinda got into a situation." Charlie awkwardly replied to his boss.
Before Mike could ask what Charlie did this time, the freezer door opened. The two mobsters saw a chilled Ray was poking his head through the door as if he heard the talking outside, and he smiled when he saw it was his loyal underbosses.
"Hey, there you two are!" Ray smirked at his men. "How did all of that business over in Queens go? Did Campbell sign over the club to the Family?" he asked.
"It took a bit of 'convincing', but yeah, the Family owns Sinner's Palace now. Sam just has to go over there and sign the contract." Henry replied with a shrug.
"That's great. You guys did real good out there." Ray praised his guys before he looked over his shoulder, as if he noticed something.
Ray hurried back into the freezer and the sound of a scuffle could be heard. Charlie continued to wait outside as Mike and Henry rushed in to see what was happening, although they weren't really prepared to meet the sight of some tied-up guy who was half-frozen and half-beaten to death. The guy was zipped-tied to the chair and he was laying on the floor after the chair tipped during an attempt to escape. Ray, however, wasn't gonna let him off that easy.
"Hey, where do you think you're going, buddy? Is my hospitality not enough for you?" Ray joked to his captive as he righted the chair.
Henry and Mike got a good look at the poor bastard. They did some bad shit to the Fox earlier, but that looked like nothing compared to what Ray seemed to have done to this guy. The captive had several teeth ripped out by the bloody pliers in Ray's hand and the guy's face was beaten worse than how the Fox's was. One of his kneecaps was definitely shattered and one of his eyes was beaten so badly that it looked like mush now. There was no way he could see out of that eye ever again...
"F- Fuckin' psycho!!! I didn't do anything to you!!!" the captive groaned, half-panicked and terrified by the mafia don's treatment of him.
"Nah, you didn't... but your boss did." Ray retorted with a grin.
Ray laughed a little bit as he watched the captive try once again to get out of his zip ties. This try ended in failure just like the last 20 or 30 times, but it never got old for the mafia don who was torturing him. Ray turned to look at his two confused and unnerved underbosses, and as he looked at them he ceased his laughter and gestured back over to the guy tied up in the chair.
"Boys, meet my new buddy Daniel Pearse." Ray introduced the captive Irishman. "Daniel here was kind enough to let me know that he's a high-ranking made man in the Conway Mob. He's met our mutual friend Gerald Conway before." he added.
"What's he doing in here, boss?" Henry inquired.
"Charlie swiped him from the Bronx. Didn't bother to ask for permission or anything, but since we've got the guy now there's not really much else we can do but see if he's got some juicy stuff to tell us." Ray shrugged.
Mike went wide eyed at this revelation but then it settled into a deep frown as he looked back at the door. Charlie really fucked up this time... But, if Ray wanted to see if this Irishman knew anything important, then maybe the mick still had some sort of a use for the Moretti Family. Who knows? Maybe the mick knew something that could be useful about the Conway Mob.
Ray, meanwhile, had turned his full attention back to his captive. The Irishman was absolutely terrified at this point and the pain was close to unbearable. But even so, Ray still had a thing or two to ask Pearse.
"Alright, Pearse..." Ray began as he slowly turned the bloody pair of pliers in his hand. "You have any idea where Gerald Conway's gonna be in the next few days? Or how about his rackets? Are any of 'em weak enough to be taken? Fuck, do you know anything that can be useful for us?" he inquired.
"I- I already told you what I know, dude! I swear that I don't know anything about his rackets or anything like that!" Pearse coughed up a little blood as he spoke.
The Moretti don simply nodded in silence at what Pearse said, although he didn't believe a single word of it. He knew Pearse still had something still locked away in that head of his and he was damn sure gonna find out what it was... Pearse's eyes widened as he watched Ray bring the bloody pliers back down to his restrained left hand, and before Pearse could say anything Ray had already used it to break the ring finger on his left hand. He felt nothing short of agony from his finger being bent completely backwards at the joint.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Pearse screamed as loud as he could from the pain.
"YOU WANT ME TO KEEP GOING?! YOU GOT NINE MORE!!!" Ray warned the captive as he readied the pliers on another finger.
Henry and Mike watched the scene with interest as Pearse whimpered and sobbed. His hand was on fire. His ruined eyeball and eyesocket was in agony. Most of his body was in terrible pain and he definitely couldn't take any more of Ray's treatment... and he knew it. He hoped that Mr. Conway and everyone else in his crew would be able to forgive him for what he was about to say...
"N- No! I- I'll talk... I'll talk..." Pearse choked out.
Ray hesitantly pulled the bloody pliers away from Pearse's hand and he gave the Irishman a chance to say whatever he was going to say about the Conway Mob. Pearse had to take another moment or two to find the strength to even speak, but Henry, Mike and Ray were patient enough to let him collect himself. Who could blame him? He's been through some serious shit today...
"O- Okay..." Pearse finally began to say. "M- Mr. Conway's been having some... some financial troubles, lately... B-Bad ones, from what I've heard... and he's planning somethin' big to make it all up..." he explained.
The three mobsters were intrigued with what they were hearing. Conway's planning something big soon? What was it?
"H- H... He's doin' a robbery... A huge one. H- He said there'll be enough to go around for everybody..." Pearse explained, albeit fearfully.
"A robbery? What's the take?" Ray asked with a sudden frown.
Pearse went silent again and he became reluctant to keep talking. This was bad news for him since Ray's patience was starting to run out. Henry and Mike both cringed as Ray readied his bloody pliers and moved them to the middle finger on Pearse's left hand. Before Pearse could say anything, Ray had already jerked the captive's middle finger back and broke it just like how he did his ring finger. Again, Pearse felt nothing short of excruciating pain.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKOKAY!!! OKAY!!! JESUS, STOP!!!" Pearse screamed out. "A- Armoured cars full of cash!!! That's what Mr. Conway's plannin' to take! They're comin' outta the West Point mint and they're full of old bills that're supposed to get sent to Fort-Worth so they'd be replaced and destroyed!" he explained.
"Old bills, huh? That sounds like it could be a good take for Conway..." Ray muttered under his breath before he decided to ask his next question. "When's the robbery gonna take place? Where, even? How many guys is he sending after those armored cars?"
"I- I don't know!" Pearse exclaimed, dreading at whatever might happen next.
Ray didn't even bother with hearing whatever Pearse's next bullshit excuse was, so again he readied his pliers. Ray pressed them against Pearse's index finger on his left hand and he bent it back just like he did to Pearse's ring and middle fingers: breaking it with a crack that was just as loud and audible as the last two were. And, of course, it was also just as painful as those two were.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHIDON'TKNOW!!!IDON'TFUCKIN'KNOW!!!I-ISWEARIT!!!ISWEARIT!!!" Pearse screamed in agony at having a third finger be broke.
The Moretti don was almost ready to break the last two finger's on Pearse's left hand, but he relented as he slowly started to realize that Pearse was probably telling the truth. It made sense that Conway probably wouldn't have told him the finer details of his heist plan... With a sigh, Ray set his bloody pliers on the shelf again and he finally ended the interrogation. Pearse had told him everything he needed to know...
Panting from sheer exhaustion, the tortured Pearse glanced down at his tied-up left hand and he shuddered at the sight of three of his fingers bent all the way backwards. He was close to tears and he just wanted to go home... He wanted to go home, he wanted to go to his kids... He didn't want to have anything to do with Gerald Conway or Ray Moretti anymore.
"L- Look..." Pearse began to say. "Look, y-you heard everything you wanted to know, right...? Ain't ya gonna let me go now...? I- I told ya everything I could, Ray..." he practically begged for his life.
Ray, Mike and Henry all glanced at each other as if they each asked what the other two wished to do. But after another moment Mike and Henry glanced at Ray and decided to let him choose Pearse's fate. It didn't take long for Ray to decide, so with a smile he went to pat Pearse on his shoulder.
"Of course, pal..." Ray lied to the Irishman's face. "Just give me a minute to untie ya and we'll let you go home."
Pearse felt extraordinarily relieved to hear this. Ray gave a warm smile to his captive and he patted his very-sore shoulder before he went behind the chair, clandestinely reaching behind his back for something. Before Henry or Mike knew it, Ray had already pulled a snub-nosed revolved from his waistband and he started to Pearse as hard as he could on the back of the head. He did this over and over again just to make sure Pearse would die...
Ray only stopped hitting the captive after the butt of his gun was covered in his blood. Hell, Ray had hit him so hard and so fast that he was even out of breath a little bit, but at least now the Irishman wouldn't be a problem. He certainly wasn't gonna breath a word about this to Gerald Conway... or anyone else for that matter.
"Fuckin' bog-trotting cocksucker..." Ray muttered an insult at the dead captive as he set his bloody gun on the shelf next to the pliers.
"You think he was actually tellin' the truth about that plan of Conway's? The armored cars leaving West Point?" Mike inquired.
Ray shrugged as he used a rag to wipe the blood off his hands. "Honestly? I've got no clue. Hell, I don't even know if we'll actually do anything with this info, but I'll definitely have some guys look into it at least. There's probably gonna be some time before this heist of theirs happens and that'll give us an opportunity to find out the details. I'll handle it, guys, don't worry..."
Mike and Henry nodded as their boss went to knock on the freezer door. Within seconds it was opened and Charlie hurried inside to see if he had to help with the interrogation, but to his disappointment he saw that it was already over. Ray, however, actually did have something that Charlie could help with. It was doing every last fucking bit of the body disposal which now needed to be done.
"Deal with this mick." Ray instructed with a frown as he pointed at the corpse. "I'm not helping you. Mike isn't helping you. Henry isn't helping you. This is your mess and you're not gonna come back here until the mick is long gone... got it?"
Nervous due to his boss's attitude, Charlie merely nodded and he hurried over to the body so he could do away with the zip ties. Ray didn't bother to stay as he still had to deal with customers in the restaurant today, so he put on his best face and went back out to the register. Meanwhile, Henry and Mike stayed behind solely because they wanted to watch how Charlie could get the body out of the freezer, down the hall, and out into the trunk of his car.
It was gonna be a lot of effort. Hell, Charlie took several minutes just to get the zip ties off of the corpse, and this was even with a pocket knife which he had with him. Mike and Henry were trying their hardest not to laugh as Charlie awkwardly dragged the body out of the chair and over to the doorframe, where one of its pant legs accidentally got snagged on the corner of the door. Charlie groaned at this but it only took him a couple of seconds to get the leg unstuck.
The minutes rolled by and Charlie was already feeling tired by the time he got the corpse halfway down the hallway. The two underbosses looked upon Charlie as a complete amateur when it comes to body disposal...
The two mobsters reluctantly went to go and help Charlie take the body back out to his car. If they watched any longer then they'd have probably just laughed at the kid. Anyway, it was much easier now that three men were moving the corpse and with Mike and Henry grabbing Pearse's arms and legs Charlie didn't have to drag the mick on the floor. There was a little bit of blood on the ground from how Charlie dragged him, but it wasn't anything a mop couldn't handle.
Mike opened the back door to the alleyway and the three men carefully walked down a few steps with the corpse. Mike almost tripped on the last step but luckily he regained his footing. If they dropped the body now then it wouldn't end well for any of them...
The three made it to the trunk of Charlie's car and the young mobster popped open the trunk for them. Alas, that's when Charlie realized that before he kidnapped Pearse he had picked up several suits from a tailor in Midtown Manhattan. Very expensive suits... Hell, they were so pricey that they were the exact reason why he tossed Pearse in the backseat instead of the trunk in the first place.
The other two mobsters picked up on Charlie's reluctance to ruin his expensive suits with an Irish guy's blood, but alas for him they were on the clock and after the shit with Sinner's Palace they just wanted to head home. So before Charlie could move the suits to the passenger seat, the body was tossed into the trunk by Henry and Mike. Charlie was going to protest but the glares he got from the two mobsters shushed him immediately.
"Sucks about your suits..." Henry said with an unsympathetic tone.
Charlie knew better than to respond to what Henry said, but it was still a real bummer that the suits were ruined. They practically cost a fortune and he never even got the chance to wear any of 'em...
Mike shut the trunk of the car and he looked at the young mobster. "Alright, so your best bet is that you're probably gonna want to take the mick over to Paulie's place. He'll probably know what to do with him... you know where it is?" he inquired.
"Yeah, I think I remember... Staten Island, right?" Charlie asked just to be sure.
"Yep, over on Richmond Terrace." Mike replied with a nod.
Charlie nodded and he readied to head out to Staten Island. With luck, Paulie was there and already finished with the stuff he had to do in Long Island today. The exhausted Mike and Henry bade Charlie goodbye and they headed out of the alleyway together so they could get back to Henry's car and head home. Charlie pulled out of the alleyway seconds later, and with that he set out for Staten Island...
Charlie drove his car and his recently-deceased captive away from Ray's restaurant like his don asked him to do. Having left Brooklyn and went down Interstate 278 into Staten Island, Charlie was on his way to the scrapyard owned by Moretti capo Paulie Marcano. Charlie wasn't really sure what to do with the corpse of Pearse and Marcano was really the only thing that was coming to mind on body disposal, so hopefully he was at his scrapyard today.
The young Moretti associate drove through Staten Island until he reached Mariner's Harbor. Once there he drove down Richmond Terrace until he got to Paulie's scrapyard, a small place but still a good asset for the Family. He saw that the gates to the scrapyard were open so he drove straight in, and he carefully made his way past the rows of old cars and stacks of crushed cars until he got to a clearing with a huge car compactor and a few buildings.
Paulie Marcano rubbed some oil off his hands with a rag as he stepped out of his garage for some fresh air, having worked on the engine of a Subaru from 1990-something. However, he saw the familiar car of young Charlie Testa approach, so he waved the kid over to a nearby spot where he could park. Charlie did so, and Paulie tossed the dirty oil-stained rag onto a toolbox before he went to see what the kid came here for.
Charlie got out of the car and he hurriedly walked over to meet with Paulie. The Moretti capo was in the middle of repairing a car and he was anxious to get back to it, so hopefully whatever Charlie needed could be quick.
"What're you doing here, kid? Mike send you?" Paulie inquired to the young mobster.
"Nah, the boss did." Charlie replied with a nod. "I- uh... I've got a problem that he told me you could probably help with..." he awkwardly added to the capo.
Ray sent the kid to his scrapyard? If it was Ray who needed something then whatever it was was far more important than a car engine. Paulie wanted to know more but Charlie simply gestured back over to his car. Paulie guessed almost immediately what was going on... Without saying a word Paulie walked over to Charlie's car and went straight to the trunk. Charlie unlocked it for him and the capo opened it.
Inside was the bloody and bruised Irish corpse.
Paulie silently stared at the corpse for what seemed like minutes before he slowly shut the trunk. He stared at the trunk for another moment or two before he turned to look at Charlie again, only this time with a blank expression on his face.
"You do all of this or did the boss?" Paulie inquired out of curiosity.
"The boss." Charlie replied with a shrug. "I'm the one who snatched the mick from the Bronx, though. He made my trunk smell like liquor, puke and piss, but-"
That's when the two suddenly heard the sound of banging metal coming from inside of Charlie's car. Both Charlie and Paulie looked directly at the trunk of the car and they immediately guessed what the problem was: the mick inside wasn't dead. He was hurt bad, but he definitely didn't sound like he was dead. The banging only grew louder and louder as the two men cautiously approached the car.
"You hear that...?" Charlie quietly asked the capo.
"No fucking shit I hear it, kid..." Paulie frowned in a normal tone of voice.
The banging kept on going and both Charlie and Paulie weren't really sure what to do at first. Getting rid of a corpse was one thing, but if this guy was alive then there was a chance he could be strong enough to fight them. For all they knew he could've found something in the trunk to use as a weapon, and the second they open it up they could get their throat slashed open by something sharp or get their skull caved in by something solid.
"What do we do, Paulie...?" Charlie cautiously asked as they stopped in front of the trunk.
"Take the car and bring it 'round back behind my shop. I've got an idea..." Paulie instructed.
Charlie nodded and he went to get back in his car as Paulie headed back into his garage. It didn't take long for Charlie to drive the car to the rear side of the building and from there he backed up the car so that the trunk would face the back door of the building. Paulie came out of the back door just a few seconds after Charlie shut off the engine, and the young mafioso got out of the car and hurried over to the trunk to stand with the capo.
Paulie was holding two things in his hands. In his left hand he held a solid-looking pipe wrench, and in his right hand he was holding a 9 millimeter Beretta pistol which had a silencer on the barrel. It didn't take the brightest mind to guess what Paulie intended to do about Pearse.
Cautiously, Charlie went back to the driver's seat and he reached into the car, setting his finger on the button which would pop open the trunk. He locked eyes with Paulie through the back window and he awaited his word to open up the trunk. After a few moments Paulie gave Charlie a nod, and then Charlie pressed the button and opened up the trunk.
Almost immediately Pearse tried to climb out the back of the trunk, but he only got halfway out before Paulie hit him right on the top of the skull with the pipe wrench. Now that he was stunned he was easy prey, so Paulie pulled him the rest of the way out of the trunk and then he hit him directly in the face with the wrench one more time. After he was sure Pearse was stopped, he pressed the tip of the silencer against Pearse's skull and he pulled the trigger three times: blowing the Irishman's brains onto the asphalt below them.
Daniel Pearse was no more...
"It is what it is, motherfucker..." Paulie muttered an insult at the dead Irishman.
"Fuck, Paulie..." Charlie gawked at the mess which was made.
Paulie chuckled at the kid's reaction as he set the pipe wrench and the pistol on top of an oil drum next to the back door. He briefly wondered how he was going to deal with disposing Pearse's corpse, but then he remembered he had a good tool for the job. So, Paulie went over to Pearse and he grabbed the dead Irishman by the legs, and he strained a bit as he started to drag him away to a nearby shed.
"What're you doing with him?" Charlie inquired out of curiosity.
The capo simply pointed out to the waters of Newark Bay, which could easily be seen since it bordered with the back of his scrapyard. Charlie was confused and at first he thought that Paulie intended to simply throw the mick in the water, but Paulie sighed and he gestured back over to the shed again. Charlie could see that a part of it was being held above the water by a series of stilts.
"I'm gonna throw the mick in a chum maker I've got..." Paulie explained to the young mobster. "Trust me, the machine I've got'll carve him up real nice..." he added.
"Goddamn that's fuckin' messed up..." Charlie shuddered at the thought of the chum maker being used on a human corpse.
Paulie simply laughed at Charlie's reaction. "Fish gotta eat just like everyone else, kid!" he laughed.
Now feeling extremely queasy from the thought of Pearse in a chum maker, Charlie simply went back to his car without another word. He certainly wasn't gonna stay to watch what'll happen in the chum shed in the next few minutes... Even so, he had to admit that this was a helluva way to dispose of a corpse, even if it was not what he thought was gonna happen. At all.
Paulie opened the door to the shed with his foot and dragged Pearse towards the chum maker as Charlie drove away, deciding to head back home so he could try to forget everything that happened today. However, the Moretti capo's messy work had only just begun...
Needless to say: Charlie wasn't going to be eating a fish for a very long time...