Post by James on May 12, 2008 20:20:15 GMT -5
It was Valentine’s Day. All was quiet around the United States with small everyday crimes taking place in the usual areas. Then the clock struck eight and ten simultaneous shots rang out through ten different counties through the tristate area; ten men fell to the floor of their homes with bullets in them; ten assassins walked out of the houses, holstering their weapons as they went.
Just like that, with those ten simple shots from silenced pistols, ten mob members were killed.
Ten years ago, on a beautiful summer day, Johnny Bailey of the New York Police Department was on patrol. It was a day that couldn’t have been nicer: not one cloud in the sky, no huge problems from around the world on the news. It was actually quite reminiscent of another day years before: September 11, 2001.
Johnny and his partner James had just gotten a call about a bank robbery only a block away from where they were so they rushed to the scene. Without waiting for backup they recklessly decided to take the larcenists themselves and ran into the bank.
As soon as they got into the building, Johnny and James had five guns trained on them coming from different directions. Their captors ordered them to drop their weapons and lay down on the ground. They did as they were told, laying down on the floor on their stomachs and put their hands on the back of their heads. Three minutes later four more police cars showed up followed closely by multiple news vans.
Miles away from the worries of the world, tall, brown-haired Robert Bailey was spending a romantic evening with his wife. He was head of the department for the Federal Bureau of Investigations that looked into all mob-related incidents. Whether it was a small misdemeanor or a mass murder, it fell under his jurisdiction. Still relatively young at thirty-eight, he’d been working for the FBI for eleven years when he took over as head of the department.
He and Marie had been married for six years. They sat and chatted idly over a candlelit dinner.
“How’s work Marie? Anything new?”
“Carol was found dead in her apartment, shot in the head. I heard that they went to question her boyfriend and he confessed right away to having done it. It’s such a shame, they were going out for a few years. I think she was expecting him to propose soon.”
“What was her boyfriend’s name again?”
“Alfred or Allen. One of those. I wonder why he did it.”
“Probably a closet psychopath. All in all, it’s a shame. Carol was a nice enough girl.”
“Yes.” There was a silence between them for a few moments where they both took several bites of their dinner. “How are things at the Bureau these days?”
“Dull. Same thing day after day. No variety at all. And what’s worse, there’s no challenge to any of the work that they give to me. I liked it better when I was a field agent and actually getting some action.”
“Be careful what you wish for, hun. I’m sure that things will get better for you soon. Just don’t go and get yourself into anything dangerous. I used to be so afraid when you’d tell me that you were going undercover for a while. I wouldn’t hear from you for weeks sometimes months at a time and I wasn’t sure what’d happened to you.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. With me behind a desk there’s nothing that’s going to get me. I haven’t seen any field action in years and the way things are going I’m not going to see any ever again. This way is more auspicious probably.”
“How so?”
“Well, there’s not much of a possibility of you becoming a widow this way.”
“Oh ha ha,” Marie said to him. “You could still die of a heart attack or something.”
“No, with you as my personal health advisor there’s no chance of that.” She grinned at him in a loving way. He grinned back. They finished their dinners and after a while went to their room where they started to watch a movie. After ten minutes or so, neither of them were paying any attention to the movie. Thirty minutes later, they both fell asleep.
The next day, Robert walked into his office late for the first time since the day he got back from his honeymoon. He sat down behind his desk and was reaching for his stack of mail when his phone rang. He looked over at the caller ID and saw that it was John Zabatino, head of the investigative branch of homeland security and his superior. He hastily picked up the phone and greeted him while trying to think why he was getting a call this early in the morning from him. Surely it can’t be because I was late. He wouldn’t concern himself with something like that, would he? he thought.
“Bailey, Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the past forty-five minutes. I have a new top priority case for you to lead,” Zabatino said. “Briefing in my office in ten minutes.”
Seven minutes later, Robert was sitting outside Zabatino’s office waiting to be admitted skimming through the day’s newspaper. He was reading the feature story about ten mobsters who had been killed the night before.
“Mr. Bailey,” came the voice of Zabatino’s secretary. Robert lifted his head to look at her as he folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. “Mr. Zabatino will see you now.”
“Thank you Ms. Coleman,” he replied as he walked past her through the double doors into the branch head’s office. John Zabatino was seated at his desk sorting through some papers. He glanced up quickly then picked up a folder that he had set aside and held it out to Robert who sat down across from him. Robert took the folder and began flipping through it. After reading the newspaper article, he wasn’t at all surprised to see the case he’d been assigned.
He opened the folder and saw that it contained abridged profiles on the men who were killed. He flipped through them and absorbed the ten names and knew what family they were from right away because they were so well known. A few pages had pictures of the individual, the rest had a box where the photo with the words UNAVAILABLE printed inside it.
“As you can see Bailey, I’ve assigned you to the mass mob murder case. What do you know so far?”
“Well, sir,” Robert responded, “of the five major families, four of them lost at least one member last night. All of the men that were killed were also very important to their families in some way or another. The only major family that did not suffer any losses that we know of are the Yutakas.”
“Do you think it was them?” Zabatino asked despite the fact he knew his best agent too well for him to think that simple; next to his undying persistence to solve a case, Zabatino’s favorite thing about Bailey was his predictability of merely making a note of obvious things then looking for, and finding more often than not, the more obscure ones.
“No, sir. It seems too obvious to have been them,” Robert replied confirming Zabatino’s thoughts. “I think that it is an even smaller family who is behind this.”
“Do you have any particular one in mind?”
“No, there are too many possibilities.”
“What’s you next plan of action then?”
“I suggest getting started on these profiles, sir, and beginning the investigation,” Robert said as he rose from his chair.
“Right, keep me updated. If you find anything, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he walked back to his office, Robert was deep in thought. He was looking over the profiles in the folder but not taking in any information printed on them. Most of the things on them were well known to him already; if there was anything else he wanted to learn about them, it was up to him to dig them out of the vast FBI files. Despite this, his mind wandered and dwelled on other things.
It wasn’t until someone called out his name from down the hall that his train of thought was broken. He turned around and saw his two old friends and coworkers Sean Williams and Tom Whiting.
“Hey guys,” Robert said to them.
“We heard that you got the mob murder case.” Robert nodded to show that they heard correctly. “Figures. You always get those cases. Do you need any help with it?”
“Well, as I just got assigned to the case about five minutes ago, no, not yet. But you’ll know if I have.” They both gave him a friendly grin, then said they had to get back to work and went back to their offices. Robert went back to his own office and sat down at his desk and, even though he knew all the information already, he read through the profiles.
The first mob member’s profile he looked at was from the Alunzio family. The Alunzios, as Robert knew from past research and common knowledge, was the second smallest of the “big five.” Robert once knew someone who had mistakenly angered the Alunzios. The man never walked again and one of his arms was left useless once they were finished with him. The Alunzios, however, being the smartest of all the families, could not be found guilty of any charges.
Joseph Roomette had been a young man at the age of twenty-nine. He was the smartest tactician in the family. As such he was the head of the concealing of the family’s operations.
The next profile he looked at was the Alunzio’s Steven Partanna. He was the Alunzio’s most reliable, respected and successful hit man, their “Luca Brasi” of sorts. His hits were well-known throughout the FBI. Again, due to the Alunzio’s secrecy and Roomette’s genius, no charges could be made to stick to him.
The Alunzios’ last casualty was Vincent Capaci. Capaci was the Consigliere, therefore a very important part of the family, second only to Alunzio himself. Not only would his death send a wave of shock through the surviving members of the family, it would anger them because it came in a time of peace.
John Gallo was almost as important to the Vannuccis as Capaci was to the Alunzios. He was more of a sub-Consigliere. Vannuccis liked to consult both Gallo and his Consigliere before he made a decision. More often then not he went with his Consigliere’s advice, but he respected and respected Gallo’s input.
Vannucci’s Consigliere was Antonio Lentini, another victim from the previous night. He and the Don had made all the decisions on what the family did together: drafted hit lists; ways to make money; what to do with that money; overall administration of the family. Following his death, Robert knew, the Vannuccis wouldn’t keep a low profile for long.
Hishkawa Toshi, Okabe Michinori and Imamura Heizo were all part of the Japanese Masayoshi family. The Masayoshi family was known for having these men who were madly renowned as the best hit men in the mob world closely followed by Steven Partanna. The only men who were considered more deadly in the United States by either the FBI or the mob world were trained snipers and Marines.
Onishi Noboru was the Masayoshi’s older version of Joseph Roomette. He was forty years old and his only advantage over Roomette was experience. There was no doubt to anyone that Roomette was smarter. Nonetheless, he was a vital part of the Masayoshi family.
The Bogdanov family had only one casualty: Alexei Bogdanov, the head of the family. He left behind four sons, none of whom had great, if any, control of their tempers. Robert’s mind wandered and settled on the The Godfather. Soon, he began to think, the four Bogdanov boys will have a quarter of New York on fire. By tomorrow the entire tristate area will be a war zone.
In the past few months, all had been pretty calm between the families. Robert knew the time of peace was over. Now that four of the families lost extremely important pieces of their puzzle, all hell was bound to break loose. In a few days the New York Governor Julek Rutkowski would declare a state of emergency and the military and national guard would be rolling around the streets with shoot-on-sight privileges soon after.
Robert spent the next hour rereading the profiles and memorizing everything on them. Then he turned to his computer and brought up five separate files. Each contained information on the five families. He began to read them over in order of the smallest to largest.
The Yutakas controlled much of the businesses in West Pennsylvania. The FBI have been unable to get any hard evidence to prove it, but it is believed the Yutakas to ship a lot of narcotics in and out of a select few of these businesses. It is also believed that they also hide the bodies of some of their victims who they never want found under the basements.
The Vannuccis controlled a good portion of South Jersey. A few casinos and at least six restaurants were known to be linked directly to them. At docks scattered all around Cape May county, the FBI knew the Vannuccis to own two yachts, and around twenty other smaller boats. The FBI suspected that they used these to dispose of some of the corpses they produced.
The Bogdanovs were prominent in East New York State. The Bogdanovs owned, among other things a shipping corporation. Their largest freighter, the Bogdanov, has been searched no less than ten times by FBI agents. Every crate was thoroughly searched but to no avail each time. Despite this, the FBI still strongly believes the Bogdanov family uses it and the company for shipping narcotics along with other black market items into the United States.
The Masayoshi family was easily the most widespread of the five. The majority of their operations were focused in upstate New York, but they owned ships in Central Jersey, and businesses in East Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut and even Canada. Their main source of income was narcotics but the FBI also thinks that they have several mayors, governors and at least one senator on their payroll, enabling them to get a vast number of construction and corporate outlets set in place with relative ease.
The Alunzios were, in manpower and income, by far the largest of the families. Their prime source of income came, not through narcotics as most of the others, but from seemingly legitimate throughout the tristate area. They were centralized mainly in West New York State but they owned a large portion of property throughout North Jersey. The FBI knew them to own an estate on Long Island where an essential structure to the management of their businesses was. The FBI also knew from past sources within the family that they paid off a few senators and congressmen, but cannot find any trace of it. Even with constant tails on various Alunzio members and suspected officials paired with numerous tapped phones, they have yet to uncover any association between them.
None of the families came directly out of New York City. They all had various properties around it, but the FBI had been doing a good job of keeping most of their holdings out of the Big Apple itself.
This is unbelievable, Robert was thinking. How is it possible that ten of the most important men in the mob world were all killed in one night? Where were the men who were supposed to be protecting them? Wait. Could that be it? Are they...
Just then there was a knock on the door to his office, interrupting his thought. Robert looked up as his secretary walked in holding another manilla folder.
“Morning Terry.”
“Good morning Mr. Bailey,” she said. She saw Robert eying the manilla folder in her hand. “Coroner’s reports on four of the victims from last night,” she continued, lifting it up. She walked over to the desk and handed it to him.
“Thanks Terry.”
“You’re welcome Mr. Bailey.” She smiled and went back out of the office to her own desk.
Robert, alone again, tried to regain his thought from before her interruption. After ten minutes he gave up. What he was thinking was gone. He sighed, opened the folder she gave him and began reading the reports on Alexei Bogdanov, Joseph Roomette, Steven Partanna and Vincent Capaci. They all took a single bullet to the head killing them instantaneously.
Robert looked at the photos from the scenes of the murders and the coroner’s photos. One of them seemed to have been shot at point blank range in the center of the skull, rendering him unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the caption, Robert would have never recognized the man as Alexei Bogdanov.
Jeeze, his shooter can’t have had the gun more than two feet in front of him. Looks like the bullet caught him right on the point of his nose. He stopped looking at the photographs and went back to the reports. It was the second time through that he realized the times of death were all identical. This was a very planned out deed. So far everything they, whoever they are, have done, they did flawless.
At nine o’clock, Robert punched out for the night and headed for his Lincoln Navigator. He just got into it and backed out of his space when Mathew Fantanic, another agent, pulled in. Robert waved to him as they passed, Mathew didn’t return it. On the way out of the lot he wondered if Mathew had ignored him or simply had not seen him.
“Call home,” Robert said outloud. The Navigator’s built-in computer picked up his voice and dialed Robert’s house. After a few rings Marie answered.
“Hi Robert. Are you on your way home now dear?”
“Yes Marie, I’m pulling onto the turnpike now. I’ll be home in about twenty minutes.”
Okay, I’ll see you then. Love you.”
“I love you too hun. See you in a few.”
Most people loved to leave work and the hassles it caused behind when it was time to clock out, but Marie and Robert were trying to get a family started. Robert was not so thick minded to believe that he could protect his family from everything, but he often said, “Getting rid of some of the scum in the world is better than having all of it there.”
At half past nine, he pulled into the driveway of his cape cod home. When he got out of his car, he looked up at the sky and noticed a threatening black cloud hovering overhead. Just what we need, more rain. As if the ground and my basement weren’t saturated enough. He walked up to the house and, even though he knew Marie habitually locked the door unexceptionally, he reached for the knob and turned it out of habit. To his great surprise, when he turned it, he discovered it unlocked. He let it pass out of his mind however. She probably hasn’t gone past it in a while or something i guess.
“Marie,” he called, “I’m home.” He threw down his keys and hung his coat in the closet. “Marie,” he called again, starting to wonder why she didn’t answer him. Marie was never one to rush to her husband as soon as he walked in the door, but she never outright ignored him.
“Marie?” he yelled. He stood as still as a tree on a windless night for a moment. When he heard nothing, he became worried and reached for the drawer on the nearest table to the door. He thrust it open and pulled out the 9 mm caliber pistol he kept inside.
Just like that, with those ten simple shots from silenced pistols, ten mob members were killed.
Ten years ago, on a beautiful summer day, Johnny Bailey of the New York Police Department was on patrol. It was a day that couldn’t have been nicer: not one cloud in the sky, no huge problems from around the world on the news. It was actually quite reminiscent of another day years before: September 11, 2001.
Johnny and his partner James had just gotten a call about a bank robbery only a block away from where they were so they rushed to the scene. Without waiting for backup they recklessly decided to take the larcenists themselves and ran into the bank.
As soon as they got into the building, Johnny and James had five guns trained on them coming from different directions. Their captors ordered them to drop their weapons and lay down on the ground. They did as they were told, laying down on the floor on their stomachs and put their hands on the back of their heads. Three minutes later four more police cars showed up followed closely by multiple news vans.
Miles away from the worries of the world, tall, brown-haired Robert Bailey was spending a romantic evening with his wife. He was head of the department for the Federal Bureau of Investigations that looked into all mob-related incidents. Whether it was a small misdemeanor or a mass murder, it fell under his jurisdiction. Still relatively young at thirty-eight, he’d been working for the FBI for eleven years when he took over as head of the department.
He and Marie had been married for six years. They sat and chatted idly over a candlelit dinner.
“How’s work Marie? Anything new?”
“Carol was found dead in her apartment, shot in the head. I heard that they went to question her boyfriend and he confessed right away to having done it. It’s such a shame, they were going out for a few years. I think she was expecting him to propose soon.”
“What was her boyfriend’s name again?”
“Alfred or Allen. One of those. I wonder why he did it.”
“Probably a closet psychopath. All in all, it’s a shame. Carol was a nice enough girl.”
“Yes.” There was a silence between them for a few moments where they both took several bites of their dinner. “How are things at the Bureau these days?”
“Dull. Same thing day after day. No variety at all. And what’s worse, there’s no challenge to any of the work that they give to me. I liked it better when I was a field agent and actually getting some action.”
“Be careful what you wish for, hun. I’m sure that things will get better for you soon. Just don’t go and get yourself into anything dangerous. I used to be so afraid when you’d tell me that you were going undercover for a while. I wouldn’t hear from you for weeks sometimes months at a time and I wasn’t sure what’d happened to you.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. With me behind a desk there’s nothing that’s going to get me. I haven’t seen any field action in years and the way things are going I’m not going to see any ever again. This way is more auspicious probably.”
“How so?”
“Well, there’s not much of a possibility of you becoming a widow this way.”
“Oh ha ha,” Marie said to him. “You could still die of a heart attack or something.”
“No, with you as my personal health advisor there’s no chance of that.” She grinned at him in a loving way. He grinned back. They finished their dinners and after a while went to their room where they started to watch a movie. After ten minutes or so, neither of them were paying any attention to the movie. Thirty minutes later, they both fell asleep.
The next day, Robert walked into his office late for the first time since the day he got back from his honeymoon. He sat down behind his desk and was reaching for his stack of mail when his phone rang. He looked over at the caller ID and saw that it was John Zabatino, head of the investigative branch of homeland security and his superior. He hastily picked up the phone and greeted him while trying to think why he was getting a call this early in the morning from him. Surely it can’t be because I was late. He wouldn’t concern himself with something like that, would he? he thought.
“Bailey, Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the past forty-five minutes. I have a new top priority case for you to lead,” Zabatino said. “Briefing in my office in ten minutes.”
Seven minutes later, Robert was sitting outside Zabatino’s office waiting to be admitted skimming through the day’s newspaper. He was reading the feature story about ten mobsters who had been killed the night before.
“Mr. Bailey,” came the voice of Zabatino’s secretary. Robert lifted his head to look at her as he folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. “Mr. Zabatino will see you now.”
“Thank you Ms. Coleman,” he replied as he walked past her through the double doors into the branch head’s office. John Zabatino was seated at his desk sorting through some papers. He glanced up quickly then picked up a folder that he had set aside and held it out to Robert who sat down across from him. Robert took the folder and began flipping through it. After reading the newspaper article, he wasn’t at all surprised to see the case he’d been assigned.
He opened the folder and saw that it contained abridged profiles on the men who were killed. He flipped through them and absorbed the ten names and knew what family they were from right away because they were so well known. A few pages had pictures of the individual, the rest had a box where the photo with the words UNAVAILABLE printed inside it.
“As you can see Bailey, I’ve assigned you to the mass mob murder case. What do you know so far?”
“Well, sir,” Robert responded, “of the five major families, four of them lost at least one member last night. All of the men that were killed were also very important to their families in some way or another. The only major family that did not suffer any losses that we know of are the Yutakas.”
“Do you think it was them?” Zabatino asked despite the fact he knew his best agent too well for him to think that simple; next to his undying persistence to solve a case, Zabatino’s favorite thing about Bailey was his predictability of merely making a note of obvious things then looking for, and finding more often than not, the more obscure ones.
“No, sir. It seems too obvious to have been them,” Robert replied confirming Zabatino’s thoughts. “I think that it is an even smaller family who is behind this.”
“Do you have any particular one in mind?”
“No, there are too many possibilities.”
“What’s you next plan of action then?”
“I suggest getting started on these profiles, sir, and beginning the investigation,” Robert said as he rose from his chair.
“Right, keep me updated. If you find anything, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he walked back to his office, Robert was deep in thought. He was looking over the profiles in the folder but not taking in any information printed on them. Most of the things on them were well known to him already; if there was anything else he wanted to learn about them, it was up to him to dig them out of the vast FBI files. Despite this, his mind wandered and dwelled on other things.
It wasn’t until someone called out his name from down the hall that his train of thought was broken. He turned around and saw his two old friends and coworkers Sean Williams and Tom Whiting.
“Hey guys,” Robert said to them.
“We heard that you got the mob murder case.” Robert nodded to show that they heard correctly. “Figures. You always get those cases. Do you need any help with it?”
“Well, as I just got assigned to the case about five minutes ago, no, not yet. But you’ll know if I have.” They both gave him a friendly grin, then said they had to get back to work and went back to their offices. Robert went back to his own office and sat down at his desk and, even though he knew all the information already, he read through the profiles.
The first mob member’s profile he looked at was from the Alunzio family. The Alunzios, as Robert knew from past research and common knowledge, was the second smallest of the “big five.” Robert once knew someone who had mistakenly angered the Alunzios. The man never walked again and one of his arms was left useless once they were finished with him. The Alunzios, however, being the smartest of all the families, could not be found guilty of any charges.
Joseph Roomette had been a young man at the age of twenty-nine. He was the smartest tactician in the family. As such he was the head of the concealing of the family’s operations.
The next profile he looked at was the Alunzio’s Steven Partanna. He was the Alunzio’s most reliable, respected and successful hit man, their “Luca Brasi” of sorts. His hits were well-known throughout the FBI. Again, due to the Alunzio’s secrecy and Roomette’s genius, no charges could be made to stick to him.
The Alunzios’ last casualty was Vincent Capaci. Capaci was the Consigliere, therefore a very important part of the family, second only to Alunzio himself. Not only would his death send a wave of shock through the surviving members of the family, it would anger them because it came in a time of peace.
John Gallo was almost as important to the Vannuccis as Capaci was to the Alunzios. He was more of a sub-Consigliere. Vannuccis liked to consult both Gallo and his Consigliere before he made a decision. More often then not he went with his Consigliere’s advice, but he respected and respected Gallo’s input.
Vannucci’s Consigliere was Antonio Lentini, another victim from the previous night. He and the Don had made all the decisions on what the family did together: drafted hit lists; ways to make money; what to do with that money; overall administration of the family. Following his death, Robert knew, the Vannuccis wouldn’t keep a low profile for long.
Hishkawa Toshi, Okabe Michinori and Imamura Heizo were all part of the Japanese Masayoshi family. The Masayoshi family was known for having these men who were madly renowned as the best hit men in the mob world closely followed by Steven Partanna. The only men who were considered more deadly in the United States by either the FBI or the mob world were trained snipers and Marines.
Onishi Noboru was the Masayoshi’s older version of Joseph Roomette. He was forty years old and his only advantage over Roomette was experience. There was no doubt to anyone that Roomette was smarter. Nonetheless, he was a vital part of the Masayoshi family.
The Bogdanov family had only one casualty: Alexei Bogdanov, the head of the family. He left behind four sons, none of whom had great, if any, control of their tempers. Robert’s mind wandered and settled on the The Godfather. Soon, he began to think, the four Bogdanov boys will have a quarter of New York on fire. By tomorrow the entire tristate area will be a war zone.
In the past few months, all had been pretty calm between the families. Robert knew the time of peace was over. Now that four of the families lost extremely important pieces of their puzzle, all hell was bound to break loose. In a few days the New York Governor Julek Rutkowski would declare a state of emergency and the military and national guard would be rolling around the streets with shoot-on-sight privileges soon after.
Robert spent the next hour rereading the profiles and memorizing everything on them. Then he turned to his computer and brought up five separate files. Each contained information on the five families. He began to read them over in order of the smallest to largest.
The Yutakas controlled much of the businesses in West Pennsylvania. The FBI have been unable to get any hard evidence to prove it, but it is believed the Yutakas to ship a lot of narcotics in and out of a select few of these businesses. It is also believed that they also hide the bodies of some of their victims who they never want found under the basements.
The Vannuccis controlled a good portion of South Jersey. A few casinos and at least six restaurants were known to be linked directly to them. At docks scattered all around Cape May county, the FBI knew the Vannuccis to own two yachts, and around twenty other smaller boats. The FBI suspected that they used these to dispose of some of the corpses they produced.
The Bogdanovs were prominent in East New York State. The Bogdanovs owned, among other things a shipping corporation. Their largest freighter, the Bogdanov, has been searched no less than ten times by FBI agents. Every crate was thoroughly searched but to no avail each time. Despite this, the FBI still strongly believes the Bogdanov family uses it and the company for shipping narcotics along with other black market items into the United States.
The Masayoshi family was easily the most widespread of the five. The majority of their operations were focused in upstate New York, but they owned ships in Central Jersey, and businesses in East Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut and even Canada. Their main source of income was narcotics but the FBI also thinks that they have several mayors, governors and at least one senator on their payroll, enabling them to get a vast number of construction and corporate outlets set in place with relative ease.
The Alunzios were, in manpower and income, by far the largest of the families. Their prime source of income came, not through narcotics as most of the others, but from seemingly legitimate throughout the tristate area. They were centralized mainly in West New York State but they owned a large portion of property throughout North Jersey. The FBI knew them to own an estate on Long Island where an essential structure to the management of their businesses was. The FBI also knew from past sources within the family that they paid off a few senators and congressmen, but cannot find any trace of it. Even with constant tails on various Alunzio members and suspected officials paired with numerous tapped phones, they have yet to uncover any association between them.
None of the families came directly out of New York City. They all had various properties around it, but the FBI had been doing a good job of keeping most of their holdings out of the Big Apple itself.
This is unbelievable, Robert was thinking. How is it possible that ten of the most important men in the mob world were all killed in one night? Where were the men who were supposed to be protecting them? Wait. Could that be it? Are they...
Just then there was a knock on the door to his office, interrupting his thought. Robert looked up as his secretary walked in holding another manilla folder.
“Morning Terry.”
“Good morning Mr. Bailey,” she said. She saw Robert eying the manilla folder in her hand. “Coroner’s reports on four of the victims from last night,” she continued, lifting it up. She walked over to the desk and handed it to him.
“Thanks Terry.”
“You’re welcome Mr. Bailey.” She smiled and went back out of the office to her own desk.
Robert, alone again, tried to regain his thought from before her interruption. After ten minutes he gave up. What he was thinking was gone. He sighed, opened the folder she gave him and began reading the reports on Alexei Bogdanov, Joseph Roomette, Steven Partanna and Vincent Capaci. They all took a single bullet to the head killing them instantaneously.
Robert looked at the photos from the scenes of the murders and the coroner’s photos. One of them seemed to have been shot at point blank range in the center of the skull, rendering him unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the caption, Robert would have never recognized the man as Alexei Bogdanov.
Jeeze, his shooter can’t have had the gun more than two feet in front of him. Looks like the bullet caught him right on the point of his nose. He stopped looking at the photographs and went back to the reports. It was the second time through that he realized the times of death were all identical. This was a very planned out deed. So far everything they, whoever they are, have done, they did flawless.
At nine o’clock, Robert punched out for the night and headed for his Lincoln Navigator. He just got into it and backed out of his space when Mathew Fantanic, another agent, pulled in. Robert waved to him as they passed, Mathew didn’t return it. On the way out of the lot he wondered if Mathew had ignored him or simply had not seen him.
“Call home,” Robert said outloud. The Navigator’s built-in computer picked up his voice and dialed Robert’s house. After a few rings Marie answered.
“Hi Robert. Are you on your way home now dear?”
“Yes Marie, I’m pulling onto the turnpike now. I’ll be home in about twenty minutes.”
Okay, I’ll see you then. Love you.”
“I love you too hun. See you in a few.”
Most people loved to leave work and the hassles it caused behind when it was time to clock out, but Marie and Robert were trying to get a family started. Robert was not so thick minded to believe that he could protect his family from everything, but he often said, “Getting rid of some of the scum in the world is better than having all of it there.”
At half past nine, he pulled into the driveway of his cape cod home. When he got out of his car, he looked up at the sky and noticed a threatening black cloud hovering overhead. Just what we need, more rain. As if the ground and my basement weren’t saturated enough. He walked up to the house and, even though he knew Marie habitually locked the door unexceptionally, he reached for the knob and turned it out of habit. To his great surprise, when he turned it, he discovered it unlocked. He let it pass out of his mind however. She probably hasn’t gone past it in a while or something i guess.
“Marie,” he called, “I’m home.” He threw down his keys and hung his coat in the closet. “Marie,” he called again, starting to wonder why she didn’t answer him. Marie was never one to rush to her husband as soon as he walked in the door, but she never outright ignored him.
“Marie?” he yelled. He stood as still as a tree on a windless night for a moment. When he heard nothing, he became worried and reached for the drawer on the nearest table to the door. He thrust it open and pulled out the 9 mm caliber pistol he kept inside.