"You rob from others. I rob from you. It is a dog-eat-dog world."
"All I got is five hundred bucks to my name," Carmine had protested. "If I give it to you, I got nothing left."
"So? You go rob again. Around and around goes the music, but thirty percent always ends up here," said Don Pietro, smacking a greasy hand on the worn black walnut table. He left a palm print that could be fried and served up whole.
Having no choice, Carmine Imbruglia did as he was ordered. The more he brought to Don Pietro, the more Don Pietro asked for. The percentage jumped from thirty to thirty-five and then to forty.
"This is fuggin' worse than inflation," Carmine complained to his wife, Camilla, one day.
"Then get a job."
"How'm I gonna fuggin' become an amico nostro if I bail out now?" had demanded Carmine, who had a dream. And was terrified of physical labor to boot.
One day, as Carmine dumped a pile of bills and loose change on the dark greasy table in the back room, Don Pietro spoke up with his hand deep in the ever-present grease-stained bag of green peppers.
"I'm gonna make you, Carmine," he intoned.
"You're already making me," said Carmine sullenly.
"No, I'm gonna make you one of the guys."
"Will it cost me?" asked Carmine suspiciously.
Don Pietro popped a fried pepper into his mouth and casually indicated the money on the table. "What you just paid is the final installment."
Carmine perked up. "Does that mean I don't gotta pay you a percentage no more?"
"No," returned Don Pietro. "It means that from now on you, Carmine Imbruglia, steal when I say you steal, from who I say you steal from, and you give me all the swag you steal. I, in turn, give you a percentage."
Carmine squinted in the dimness of the alcove. "How much?"
"Twenty. "
"That's fuggin' highway robbery!" shouted Carmine Imbruglia, who was instantly surrounded by a dry moat of pinstripes.
"Or I can have you shot in the face and stuffed into the trunk of a crummy Willys," said Don Pietro casually. "You make the choice."
"Twenty sounds fair," Carmine mumbled.
The next day in a house in Flatbush where the curtains were drawn to create a kind of sad gloom, Carmine Imbruglia was officially inducted into the Mafia.
The induction was done in Sicilian, which Carmine did not understand. For all he knew, they were inducting him into the Portuguese navy.
When they pierced his trigger finger with a needle, he cried at the sight of his own blood. Laughing, they lifted Carmine's bleeding finger to Don Pietro's pierced trigger finger. Their blood mingled.
When it was over, Don Pietro asked, "What is your street name?"
Since Carmine didn't have a street name, he made one up.
"Cadillac. Cadillac Carmine Imbruglia," said Carmine proudly.
Don Pietro considered this for some moments. "No, no good,"
"What's fuggin' wrong with 'Cadillac Carmine'? It's a fine car. "
"I own a Cadillac," explained Don Pietro, patting his pockets absently. "How will it sound if I'm asking for you, and they bring around the car? Or vice versa. I ask for my car and I get you. No, this will not work. You must have a more fitting name."
"Why don't you fuggin' get another fuggin' car, then?"
"Fuggin," said Don Pietro thoughtfully. " I like the sound of this. Yes. You will be known henceforth as Fuggin."
" I don't fuggin' wanna be called Fuggin. What kinda name is that for a fuggin' wise guy?"
"You can accept 'Fuggin' as your name or you can accept only ten percent of all the money you steal for me," said Don Pietro, looking around for his greasy paper sack. He found it in the vent pocket of his suit, which was mysteriously spotless, if hopelessly wrinkled.
" 'Fuggin' is fuggin' spelled with two fuggin' G's, not three," said Carmine (Fuggin) Imbruglia in a sour voice. "Everybody remember that."
"That is good, Fuggin," said Don Pietro. "Now, the first thing I ask of you as a soldier in this thing of ours is to get me a few shrimp cocktails."
"What do I look like, a fuggin' waiter?" exploded Carmine.
"No, you look to me like a man who has respect for his capo," Don Pietro said evenly.
Listening to the steel in his capo's voice, Carmine Imbruglia swallowed once and asked, "How many shrimp cocktails you want?"
"One truckload. I understand there is one leaving Baltimore for the Fulton Fish Market at two o'clock this afternoon."
"Oh, swag," said Carmine. "Why dincha say so? I can handle this."
It was not easy. The truck was a sixteen-wheeler and Carmine's aging Volkswagen Beetle was not up to forcing a sixteen-wheeler over to the side of Interstate 95.
So Carmine executed the only strategy available to him. With the driver's door open, he cut in front of the truck, jammed on the brakes, and dived for the shoulder of the road.
In a grinding cacophony, the Beetle disappeared under the truck's front grille and bumper, lodging under the cab like a bone in a rottweiler's throat. The sixteen-wheeler jackknifed to a stop, rubber burning and smoking.
"Okay, stick 'em up," said Carmine to the driver.
The driver was obliging. He got out of the cab and stood white-faced as Carmine climbed behind the wheel. He got the engine started. He pressed the gas.
The truck lurched ahead and stopped amid a squealing of tormented metal.
"What the fug's wrong with this pile of junk?" demanded Carmine.
"The pile of junk under the cab," said the white-faced driver.
Carmine remembered his Volkswagen, which he had intended replacing with his share of the shrimp. Without the shrimp, there would be no replacement. And without wheels, his career as a wise guy was finished.