Chapter 7 - The Gathering Storm in Brooklyn
While the Monteverdi estate settled into a quiet, fragile peace, the underworld of New York was boiling over.
In a dimly lit back room of an Italian social club on Mulberry Street, three capos from the remaining Brooklyn families sat around a green felt card table that smelled of stale espresso and gunpowder. Cigarette smoke hung in a dense, blue-grey haze beneath the low ceiling. On the table lay an open copy of the New York Daily News, featuring a small, back-page obituary for a fifty-two-year-old man named Marco Bruno, found dead of an apparent heart failure near the Yonkers bypass.
“A heart attack?” a heavy-set man named Salvatore grunted, slamming his fist onto the felt so hard the espresso cups rattled. “Marco had a heart like an ox. He could drink a bottle of grappa and run two miles up the docks without losing his breath. Contini cleaned house.”
“Contini hasn't been seen in public for a week,” a younger man named Vincent replied, adjusting the gold ring on his pinky finger. “And his estate up in Westchester is locked down tighter than a federal penitentiary. Word on the street is that Marco tried to run a double play with the feds, and Rafael caught him.”
“If Rafael is weak, if the federal grand jury in Brooklyn has him cornered about the orphanage payoffs and the old shipping routes, then the Contini family is ripe for the picking,” Salvatore muttered, his eyes narrowing. “We don't need a boss who hides behind a gardener and a maid. We need someone who expands territory.”
“Careful, Sal,” Vincent warned, leaning back into the shadows. “Contini may stay in that stone house on the Sound, but the men who work for him don't forget who pays their pensions. And rumor has it... he’s got a weakness now.”
“A weakness?”
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“A kid. And a woman who cleans his floors.”
Salvatore smiled, revealing a gold-capped molar. “Every king has a heel. Let’s find out how deep her roots go.”
