Chapter 7 - The Council of Three Families
The sit-down was called for Thursday night at *Il Mulino* in the Village.
The restaurant was closed to the public. The green blinds were drawn, the neon sign turned off, and four uniformed police officers from the Sixth Precinct—men whose mortgages were paid through an LLC registered in Delaware—stood at the corner of West 3rd Street, directing traffic away from the block.
Vincent Caruso arrived in his 1988 Fleetwood.
He did not bring an army. He brought Paulie, Gianni, and, to the absolute horror of every capo in Manhattan, he brought Rachel and Emma Dawson.
"Vincent," Silvio hissed, intercepting them under the green awning. His voice was shaking with an apoplectic fury he couldn't quite mask. "What is this? This is a Commission meeting. We're talking about the piers, the concrete contracts, the Moretti problem. You don't bring women. You don't bring *her*."
Vincent did not stop walking. Silvio was forced to scuttle backward like an overweight crab to avoid being trampled.
"The meeting concerns my household, Silvio," Vincent said, his voice flat as a frozen pond. "The household attends."
Inside, the restaurant smelled of garlic, old red wine, and the sweat of twenty men who knew that someone wasn't going home tonight.
At the center table sat the representatives of the two other major factions: Don Carmine Lucchese, seventy-eight years old, breathing through an oxygen tube that ran to a green tank beside his chair; and Sal "The Barber" Castiglione, a sharp-featured man with manicured nails and eyes like two drill bits.
Marco Moretti was already there.
He sat at the end of the table, flanked by four young shooters from Bensonhurst. He had a glass of anisette in front of him, and he was tapping his signet ring against the rim with an arrogant, rhythmic *tink-tink-tink*.
When the door opened and Emma walked in, holding Vincent’s index finger, the ring stopped tapping.
Don Carmine blinked his watery, yellowed eyes, his oxygen machine clicking with a rhythmic *hiss-shuck*.
"Vincent," the old man wheezed through his plastic mask. "What is the meaning of this theater?"
Vincent pulled out a chair—the one right in the middle, facing his nephew.
He lifted Emma into it.
"Sit here, Emma," Vincent said gently. "If anyone speaks too loudly, tell me."
He sat down beside her. Rachel stood directly behind the chair, her jaw set, her hands resting firmly on her daughter’s shoulders. She was terrified—every fiber of her being was screaming that she was in a den of rabid dogs—but she had looked into Vincent’s eyes in the car.
*They are only men, Rachel,* he had told her. *And most of them are cowards when the lights are on.*
Marco laughed. It was a high, ugly sound that had no meat behind it.
"The old man has completely lost his mind," Marco said, looking around the table for support. "Look at him! We got the feds building a RICO case on the waterfront, we got the Colombians pushing into Queens, and he brings a scrub-woman and her brat to a Commission sit-down! He’s senile, Carmine! It’s time to put him out to pasture!"
Silence fell over the room.
Sal the Barber didn't laugh. He looked at Vincent’s eyes. He had known Vincent Caruso since they were fourteen years old running numbers for old man Maranzano. He knew that when Vincent was truly dangerous, he didn't raise his voice; he stopped blinking.
Vincent reached into his coat pocket.
Marco’s four shooters reached under their lapels.
Paulie and Gianni didn't draw. They simply took two steps sideways, clearing their fields of fire with the practiced economy of men who had done this in alleys, in basements, and behind churchyards.
Vincent did not pull out a gun.
He pulled out a thick manila folder tied with red string.
He dropped it onto the white tablecloth. It landed with a heavy, dull *thud*.
"In that folder," Vincent said, his voice level and cold, "are the deposit slips from the Banco di Napoli in the Grand Caymans. Account number four-zero-two-eight."
Marco’s face lost every drop of its color.
"That account," Vincent continued, "belongs to a company called *Vanguard Logistics*. Over the last eighteen months, six million dollars has been skimmed from the docks in Red Hook. Not from the union. Not from the shippers. From the Caruso family treasury."
He looked at Sal the Barber.
"And forty percent of that skim," Vincent said, "was transferred to the Castiglione crew in Staten Island."
Sal the Barber’s manicured hand froze on his water glass.
"Vincent," Sal began, his voice dropping an octave. "That was a business loan—"
"Quiet, Sal," Vincent said softly. "You can explain your business loans to Don Carmine when I am finished."
He turned his eyes back to Marco.
"My nephew," Vincent said, "thought that because I lived quietly, I had stopped reading the ledgers. He thought that because I didn't beat my men in the street like an animal, I was too old to count the bodies."
Marco was sweating now. The grease was shining on his forehead under the low lights.
"Uncle," Marco whispered, his arrogance collapsing into the pathetic whine of a cornered thief. "Uncle, it was a mistake. We were setting up a reserve—"
"You went to my house," Vincent said.
Emma watched, her fingers twisting the edge of the tablecloth.
"You sent a broken, drunken dog to my door to frighten a woman who works under my roof," Vincent said. "You brought the stink of the gutter into the house where my daughter died."
Don Carmine leaned forward, his old lungs rattling inside his ribs. "Is this true, Marco?"
Marco didn't answer. He looked at his four shooters.
They didn't move. They were looking at Paulie, whose right hand was buried deep in his overcoat pocket, the fabric bulging with the outline of a twelve-gauge street-sweeper.
"Emma," Vincent said, not taking his eyes off Marco.
The child jumped slightly. "Yes?"
"What did you tell me the boss does?"
Emma swallowed. She looked at Marco, whose eyes were wide with a terror he had never imagined possible. Then she looked at Vincent.
"The boss stops bad things," she said clearly.
Vincent nodded once.
"That’s right," he said.
He looked at Marco’s four shooters.
"Leave the room," Vincent said.
May you like
The four men didn't hesitate. They didn't look at Marco. They turned on their heels and walked out into the rain, leaving the door swinging behind them.
***
