"Why is that boring?"
"Because they also did it with Rocco, Carlo, Vito, and Guido. This is the fifth plan to kill me. Why?"
"Carli, you know that you're cuttin' into their territory. They gotta make the move on you."
"The move. Didn't you make the move on the secretary?"
"No, that's a different move."
"How am I cutting into their territory? I just run a weight-loss, quit-smoking, sexual-problem clinic. That's all I do. I only try to protect myself."
"Well, you know the guys do a little stuff on the side. Rocco's got some narcotics, Carlo's got some prostitution, Vito does a little extortion, and Guido breaks people's legs."
"That's a business? That's a territorial territory?" asked Vassily, panicked at what America would consider a profitmaking enterprise. He had heard capitalism had evils but had always assumed most of it was propaganda from the Kremlin.
"That's what they're in, and you should be taking your cut. It's good business, especially the narcotics. "
"I don't want to be in narcotics, prostitution, extortion, and breaking people's legs, Johnny," said Vassily. What had gone wrong? All he wanted was to live in freedom and then after he was mugged all he wanted was to live in safety. Now he had to deal constantly with these hairy animals, and people were always trying to kill him.
"We got to do the job on them first. We gotta lay it on them. We got to really bang them hard," said Johnny Bangossa.
"I suppose we will have to fornicate them," said Vassily, trying to get into the spirit of it all. But it didn't seem to work. There were a full half-dozen men he was supposed to kill. Considering his powers, he thought, there had to be a better way.
"I'll meet with them," said Vassily.
"They'll kill you on the way to the meeting," said Johnny Bangossa.
"I'll tell Vito, Carlo, Guido, and Rocco to stop."
"Vito, Carlo, Guido, and Rocco will start workin' with the others. And we'll be done for."
"Is there any way I can get out of committing murder?"
"What for, Carli? We can have the whole thing. If we win."
While Vassily did not see breaking legs as winning something, there definitely was a major advantage to living through the day. But he had seen these men work for him. Their collective IQ was insufficient to build an outhouse.
He had also seen that reason was not something that appealed to them. They had two emotions, greed and fear. Usually they showed these two emotions in a combined form, which was anger. They were angry all the time.
The moment any one of them realized Vassily was not the man they thought him to be, he would be dead. He thought of running again. He even thought momentarily of running back to Russia. But in Russia, once he got back, they might think of a way to keep him there forever.
Something about the size of a fingernail decided Vassily's course of action that day. It was not an especially imposing thing, being a dull gray, and was rather soft for a metal. It was an ugly little piece of lead. What made it such an important piece was how quickly it was moving, faster than the speed of sound. And even more important, it was moving very close to Vassily's head. Three inches. He felt the wind of it in his hair as he got into the rear seat of his limousine. It cracked through a large plate-glass window on Fifth Avenue, and Guido and Rocco had their pistols out almost instantly.
The man who fired the rifle was now speeding away in the rear seat of a car.
Vassily picked himself up out of the gutter and wiped the dirt off his expensive new blue suit. He was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. Always before in danger he could catch the eye of his attacker. But here he could be killed without ever seeing the man.
Like most people captured by fear, Vassily lost all sense of balance and proportion. He was yelling when he got his boys together. He wanted to know everything about his enemies. What were their habits, what were their routines?
And in that state of mine, he devised a simple plan that could be put into effect that very night. He took three leaders of his opposition and targeted them for death, even as he told them he wanted to make peace with them. He hated himself as he did this, but fear almost always wins over self-respect.
Slimy was the way he felt about himself, but he had no choice. He had one shotgunned to death inside an elevator where the man couldn't move. Fat Guido took care of that one. Another was machine-gunned in bed with his woman, and the woman was killed also. But the most vile part of it all was having one of his men, Carlo, pose as a policeman and shoot one of his targets on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, a house of worship, a place where people prayed.
By midnight, as the reports came in of one horrid deed after another, he found he couldn't took at himself in the mirror. Outside the plush living room of his Park Avenue apartment, Vassily heard noise. It was his men. He could always hypnotize them to believe they hadn't done these horrible deeds. He could have them know in their bones that this horrible day did not happen, but he would know. And one day, he might be so overcome with remorse that he would slip and fail to keep one of these men in a hypnotic state.
The noise increased outside his living room. Were they in a state of rebellion, revolted by the horrors they were forced to commit, horrors that even for gangsters had to wrench their souls?
Suddenly the door burst open and there were Johnny Bangossa, Vito, Guido, Rocco, and Carlo, and they were all coming at him. Johnny was the first to grab his right hand. So stricken was he by his guilt that Vassily failed to make eye contact and convince Johnny he had never done such a horrible thing as to machine-gun a man in bed with his lover.
Vassily closed his eyes and waited for the first horrible sensation of death. He felt something wet on his right hand. Then he felt something wet on his left hand. He couldn't pull his hands away. Was this some form of liquid poison?
He waited for it to penetrate the skin. But there was only more wetness. He heard a strange sound at one hand. All right, he thought. Poison is not the worst thing. There are worse ways to die. Being shotgunned in an elevator is a worse way to die. Being machine-gunned while making love is a worse way to die. Being surprised by a man posing as a police officer shooting you on the steps of a house of worship is a worse way to die. Perhaps poison is too good for me.
But he was not dead. He could not free his hands, but he was not dead. He heard the noise of kissing coming from the ends of his arms. Smelled the horrible oils his boys used on their hair. And felt lips caressing the back of his palms. He opened his eyes.
Vito, Guido, Rocco, and Carlo were bumping heads trying to be the first to kiss his hands.
It was a form of honor, he knew.
"You really did it, Carli. You're wonderful. You're a power now. You got respect. You always had our love, brother. Now you got our respect. And the respect of New York City," said Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa to the man he thought was Carli Bangossa.
"We're a major family now," said Guido, who allowed as how for his wonderful services that day, he should be made a caporegime. And so did Johnny, Vito, Rocco, and Carlo.
"Certainly," said Vassily. Only later was he informed that he had just given these five thugs the right to recruit and organize their own crime families under his general command.
The bodies were still warm when the New York media began analyzing the results. Dealing with the brutal killings like some ball game, they announced a new player making a brilliant move. None of the inside sources knew for sure who this new Mafia don was, but he had shown himself to be a brilliant strategist. In one master stroke he had immobilized the other families who were now suing for peace. And an informed source indicated this organizational genius was collecting the remnants of the other temporarily demoralized crime families.
Vassily Rabinowitz realized now he was some kind of hero. What he had considered a form of degradation was genius here. Who knew, maybe he would even like breaking legs for a living, if they broke cleanly and did not create too much pain and blood.
He wished his mother could see him now. She would have to agree he was not the most reckless boy in town as he had been called back in Dulsk, before he allowed himself to go to that village in Siberia, before all this, when he was just a simple ordinary lad. He wondered if he could get his mother out of Russia, perhaps set her up here. Maybe as the mother of a don, as he understood the head of a "family" to be called, she would be called a donna. There were women here of that name. He would be Don Vassily and his mother would be Donna Mirriam.
When General Matesev's first unit hit the Rabinowitz office of Fifth Aveuue the following morning, they made their way through a long line of customers, pushing aside the secretary, and opening the door to the inner office, using an old technique for city warfare. You didn't rush into a room. You threw a hand grenade into the room first. They you looked to see if anyone was in there.
When the first unit had determined there had been a kill in the office Vassily Rabinowitz had been using every day for the last few weeks, the second unit quickly followed with bags, suction equipment, and various specimen collecting devices. Quickly the remnants of what had been a person would be whisked out of that office into a truck that was really a laboratory. What they wanted from the remnants of a person was blood type, cell type, and fingerprints if they were lucky. If they got a whole face, so much the better.
But General Matesev was not going to risk anyone talking to this man who could turn even the most hardened minds of the finest KGB officers. Kill first, identify second, return to Moscow third, the mission accomplished. One had to keep things simple.
Unfortunately the first wave found only shattered furniture and windows. No one had been in the office.
"Mr. Rabinowitz is not seeing anyone," said a secretary, getting up from behind a desk. People were now scattering in the hallways and screaming.
"Where is he?" demanded the unit leader of the fourteen men of the lead squad of the Matesev force.
"Won't do you any good. You can't get an appointment."
"Where is he?"