Robofootball: Doublespin

“Okay boss, lemme get Vinnie, I like the kid, he’s tough as they come, doesn’t say much, doesn’t have to talk about how tough he is, and the other boys respect him.”

“That’s good Thomas, isn’t he related to Pete?” Most men called him Tom, but he would never solicit nor correct the Don.

“Yeah I guess, nephew of a cousin or something like that from the Old country.”

“Sicily?”

“Of course.”

“All right, it’s good that he can keep his mouth shut, loose lips sink ships. Better to be weak and closed mouth than tough with a constant yapper.”

“This kid is both, tough and quiet.”

“Sounds like a good Sicilian, they don’t breed ’em like that anymore. They come here, easy girls, easy money, and fast cars. They forget what it’s like to plow hard ground with a stubborn mule.”

“Yes, you are right of course Don Berzzini. I think this kid Vinnie put some time in on some rough ground.”

“Make sure he has guns and knows how to use ’em. If the Purple Gang shows up, I want him to do the shooting this time.”

“A Tommy?”

“Nah, not yet, let he kid prove himself with a good old American Colt .45, in fact, give him two, and one each for his crew. Have him round up a couple of his friends, give him a little initiative.”

“Enough rope to hang himself?”

“Every man’s gotta die.”

“As you wish.”

“All right, that’s all; go with God as the pope would say.”

Tom Licavoli grinned and nodded which was more of a slight bow in reverence to the old man. He thought to himself that God and the pope weren’t all that involved in the mob’s activities. With a few billion people on the planet, what god would really have the time or inclination to get involved what was nothing more than ants below?

Tom Licavoli and his brother Pete were young Capos in Don Berzzini’s Detroit mafia and the Roaring ’20’s a century ago in the time of Prohibition was the biggest boom in the cartel business prior to the emerging drug culture later in the 20th century. The problem Berzzini was having was with supply. He couldn’t get enough to sell at double and even triple the prices of what he paid for it in Canada. His last boat travelling the short distance across the Detroit River was hijacked by the notorious Purple Gang, a bunch of Jews led by 4 Bernstein brothers. It was almost embarrassing, but the organized crime activities of the Jews were often ignored in history compared to that of the Italians.

The Purple Gang patrolled the Detroit waterfront, seeking out rival smugglers to steal their liquor. They were brutal in that they often shot their rivals and then simply took the booze. Not only did they sell it at an exorbitant rate, but they didn’t have to pay for it in the first place. In a way, it was like double dipping. They had little trouble with police; after all, the original smugglers certainly could not contact or report them to protest. The Purple Gang even supplied Al Capone in Chicago with Canadian whiskey and had warned Capone to stay out of Detroit. Capone heeded their warning and used them as agents rather than go to war against them.

Working among the heavy clay and stones on the side of one of Sicily’s rocky hills was back-breaking labor at best. All it took was a little drought and the crop yields were almost nonexistent except for a small grove of 200-year old olive trees planted by some dead Verlucci ancestor. Vincent Verlucci’s father died when he was 14. The elder Verlucci, while attempting to fix the broken harrow with the horse still attached to the bit, bled to death when one of the blades severed an artery in his upper left thigh. Some gun shots had gone off into the distance and the old worn out draft horse bolted at the sound with most of his father’s leg that had been wedged against the metal frame and broken blade within the plow. It cut so deep and jolted so hard that the femur shattered. A piece of bone nicked the artery. Vincent still had nightmares seeing his father dragged around at a most unnatural angle with his twisted leg up his back and ankle wrapped around his neck, all the while with blood spraying like a broken fire hydrant.

Vincent’s mother sent him off with a few hundred liras, about $52 in American dollars, all that she had. He was able to secure passage on a ship headed for Ellis Island. The money wasn’t enough for fare but he got by as a deck hand on the boat, scrubbing filthy bathrooms and mopping floors to make up for it. The only asset or connection that he could claim was his mother’s relationship to the Licavoli Clan. They got him the job on the boat and passage to Detroit from New York via payment to the Giordano Family who were waiting for him as couriers and pseudo-parents at the docks in New York City.

Vincent Verlucci started his own career in the New World in one of Don Berzzini’s restaurants. He swept the floors, cleaned the tables, hauled up the liquor from a locked concrete block storage room in the basement, and basically did what he was told with no back talk, not ever. He listened, was respectful to his elders, spoke little, but did have a knack for language. English came easy for him and part of it was due to his age. A few months on the job and he could get along fine with greetings, good-byes, and phrases. When brothers Marcus and Julius arrived, he would serve as their makeshift tutor and later as their captain.

“Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.”

John F. Kennedy