The Anarchist
Chapter Seven - The Great Betrayal of 1971
Liberty City's underworld during the seventies was a far cry from today's myriad of clans, hoods and lowlifes. Back then the criminal organisations were truly organisations. It was the Italian or rather Sicilian-Americans that dominated Liberty in the form of the Cicci mafia.
Don Cicci was one of them great leaders you read about in books and see in the movies, he held together a number of families over Liberty's number of districts, and evoked the adoration and respect of the qualified and the everyday citizens. To be honest though I never really got to know the guy, he was always in the distance. My dealings were him were strictly formal, such as the acknowledge of me becoming qualified. The Cicci family grew from Saint Marks marketplace, the hardened and earthy migrants from Sicily who had witnessed countless brutalities at the hands of the original Mafia were the lifeblood of Portland's fledgling district. Weary of small-time extortionists harassing their weaker friends and stallholders, three of the prominent businessmen forged Liberty's first main Mafia, they were Nuno Cicci, Salvatore Leone and Sonny Forelli.
I first became involved with the Cicci organisation round about the time I hit twenty, selling newspapers lost its charm fairly rapidly and it was a chance encounter with Sonny Forelli that changed my career. The guy oozed charm and confidence, I thought to myself here is a man that's going places and I wanted to go with him. I started off as a driver, pretty low-key, it mainly consisted of chauffeuring the senior members of the Forelli regime around. I should probably explain these regimes. Cicci had divided his organisation into two regimes headed by Salvatore and Sonny, Sal ran the traditional areas of business like the gambling and protection rackets, Cicci chose Forelli to govern the areas that were less traditional. Sonny's main dealings were in vice and then narcotics, Cicci purposely distanced Sonny and moulded the regime into an image that was less public than Sal's. Cicci was clever enough to see where the future of the family lay, but didn't want its unsavoury reputation too near to him. This was a major sore point with Sonny, although it wasn't a personal approach by Cicci to distance Sonny, it inwardly annoyed the hell out of him. Sonny lived for sex and drugs, he was immersed in them and ran business out of them beautifully, Cicci's distancing of Sonny was in a way a compliment as the guy had done so damn well! With the family split the way it was the was a fair bit of rivalry between the regimes that was for the most friendly, but had the potential to burst into something ugly, it was for this reason that Cicci liquidated his own regime and used these men to dilute the other two, so to maintain a sense of neutrality.
Like I said, I started off as a driver and I stayed that way for some months until I was forced into a state of action that was far more involving. It was just an average Wednesday night, and I was taking Sonny to some girl's place near the docks like usual. What I didn't know was that Sonny had leant pretty heavily on some pimps earlier that day, well, by 'leant' I mean Sonny had left one of them with a permanent limp through the aid of a baseball bat. Anyway I pulled up at this hooker's apartment, leaving Sonny to lumber out of the vehicle and plod inside to satisfy his urges. He'd only been gone a few minutes when a car roared to a halt behind me, I'd glanced in the mirror to spot three pissed off looking guys clamber out the car, and I noticed that one had a distinct limp, but that hadn't prevented him wielding a sawn-off shotgun. Thank Christ the punk had a lousy aim, he fired the first shot over the car giving me enough time to leap out and seek refuge behind a wall surrounding the apartment block.
'OK you guinea bitch, you and your pal upstairs are gonna pay for the fact I now walk with a fuckin' crutch!' the guy with the limp bawled. I didn't dignify him with a reply but fumbled for the pistol in my jacket pocket. The wall I was hid behind was about seven foot tall with a cast-iron gate that I'd slammed shut, it was the only thing protecting me. I heard the other two making their way towards me, so I readied myself and sprinted for the gate. I dove through the air from one part of the wall to the other firing fiercely while passing the gate. I heard one of the pimps hit the floor crying in agony. The other burst through the gate but I was more than ready, three shots in the chest saw him off, leaving just my friend the cripple on the other side of the wall. I decided not to waste any time and grabbed the dead pimp at my feet, the lone survivor was obviously waiting for me to pop my head round the side of the gate to blast it off my shoulders, so I hurled the body instead. The cripple fired through instinct giving me time to dash round and take aim at his good leg. I left him to writhe on the floor in agony and waited for Sonny to come down and investigate the noise, I wasn't waiting long. Sonny promptly appeared and instantly recognised the punk on the floor,
'Well whad'ya know! It's my limping friend Benny! Tommy pass me that crutch he dropped will ya?' I tossed the crutch to Sonny, which he used to administer a sound beating. Benny was smashed to a pulp and choked on his own blood, spluttering and gargling to the end, soaked in a shade of crimson.
That incident with the three pimps allowed Sonny to see my true potential, if I were to use his words. In truth though I was thrilled that he'd taken such a liking to me, God I was dumb back then, but then we all are till are eyes are opened, and mine were opened big time. So I started to climb the career ladder, within a year I went from driving cars to whacking people, there's nothing like professional killing to harden the heart. It's them good old days in the death profession that's produced the fine shining example to society I am today. And the best lesson I was given by life was on May 2nd, 1971, the day of the Harwood Massacre. By 1971 the balance in the regimes had reversed, the narcotics trade had boomed and Sonny was now commanding more men and holding more blocks than Sal. It had been a gradual thing over five years or so and Sonny was now practically second-in-command behind Don Cicci. Where was I? Well I was right next to Sonny on that climb and I loved it, the power I had and the respect I commanded, it was great! Little do I know that Sonny had loftier ambitions and he was more than willing to screw everyone else to achieve them. On the day of the massacre Sonny came to me and gave me a job, 'We've got a problem' he said. 'Some Sicilian upstarts have arrived in Portland and have started leaning on my men. Go and make an example of them. And Tommy, make it messy, NO ONE EMBARRASES ME, NO FUCKING ONE!' He left the address with me, an apartment block in Harwood. That night I went to Harwood and shot the shit out of about five people. Excuse my inaccuracy; I struggle to remember specific details on a hit. The press the next day reported eleven dead, eleven! Now I'm no fucking mathematician but I can determine the difference between half a dozen and a dozen for Christ's sake! The other five or six that were found weren't just unknown Sicilians new to Liberty, they had ties to the Don. There was Cicci's two nephews and his godson discovered lifeless in that apartment. Before anyone had got wind of this the next morning I'd mouthed to some of the guys in the family where'd I'd been that night. That next day was a whirlwind, I woke up to a squad of LCPD storming my pad and I was thrown in the nick before I'd opened my eyes properly.
What happened after that was never clear inside, I waited fifteen years until I was given the full and complete story. My 'killings' triggered a war in the Cicci family that Sonny was more than ready for. The family was ripped apart, Cicci was gunned down, body after body was found in the water and it was all at the hands of Sonny Forelli. I figured out pretty sharpish Sonny had set me up so I kept silent, played stupid and waited...
Vince had listened intently to Tommy's account, and was fascinated to learn the truth about the Harwood Massacre and its link to the Mattress Wars of the seventies. What Tommy had told him, had been told to no one else. Vince could see in Tommy's eyes that hurt and hatred still burnt from Sonny's betrayal, a flame that wasn't extinguished even when Tommy slain Sonny fifteen years ago in Vice. 'What a fucked up life' Vince thought, a thought inwardly shared by Tommy.