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Christopher he spoke so disdainfully of was the son of Carmine Gambino. Carmine had been a Capo as long as my Pop had been the boss. He had also come over from Sicily the same year as the three reigning leaders of the family. Because of his father’s status, Christopher was made young, like me. He was like a machine as a soldier. He had no emotion and no regrets about anything he did. He spent a few years in prison because he had taken the rap for something that went down in the family. In Carmine’s defense here, Christopher had saved a lot of people in the family from going down at that time. He was what we referred to as a “stand-up guy.” That was someone who risked personal harm or misfortune rather than rat on the family. It was a big deal, and if it had been anyone but Christopher he probably would have been considered for the promotion ahead of me. The problem was that aside from doing whatever he was told to do and being willing to do time, Christopher was basically a moron. He ran a lot of drugs when he was a kid and he sampled a lot of product. That led to burnt brain cells and impulse control issues. None of that was conducive to being the boss.
    “So do you think Carmine is angry enough to have taken it as far as killing Lucio?”
    “No, Carmine is hot-headed but he’s not an idiot,” Tony said.
    “What about Christopher?” I asked. “He is an idiot.”
    Tony let out a raspy laugh and then had a coughing fit. I think I almost saw Sal lick his lips like the cat that waited for the canary to die. When he finished coughing he said,
    “True, but Christopher only does what he’s told. He’s not smart enough to do otherwise. If Carmine didn’t tell him to do it, he wouldn’t have.”
    “I will have to talk to my crew. We have a meet tomorrow. As far as I know there haven’t been any problems. I doubt they would have kept it from me if there were.” My crew worked the north side. We did all the collections, ran three legitimate businesses, and made sure that no one was trying to muscle in on our territory. Unless one of my guys was holding out on me…and I doubted it, things had been running smoothly. “What about the cops? What are they saying?”
    “The Zebra’s figured out who Lucio was and turned it over to the First Bunch of Idiots. I doubt we’ll get much feedback from them.” Tony spat out his derogatory terms for uniformed officers and the FBI. The only thing he hated more than a cop was a rat. I loved Tony, almost as much as I had loved my papa, but I did hope he reached the end of his life before I did what I had to do. He was the one person left alive that I truly cared what he thought.
    We talked some more about family business and who was going to be made soon and who would probably only stay an associate for life. Some guys just didn’t have what it took to be soldiers, but they were useful for other reasons. We batted around a few ideas about who might be pissed enough at me to send a warning, but nothing concrete came out of it. As we wrapped up the meeting Tony said,
    “I’ll reach out to Paulie.” He still got that sad look in his eyes when he said Paulie’s name. Paulie was Tony’s son, Paul. Paul’s first sin against his father had been dropping Tony’s last name and taking his mother’s maiden name: Labruzzo. He’d done that so that he could pursue his second sin without being recognized by his name. He wanted to be a police officer. He’d graduated the academy twelve years earlier and worked a beat in Queens for eleven. He’d just made detective this past year and was now working vice in the Bronx. The only reason Tony would even consider reaching out to him was because right after he got his gold shield, Paulie had come to his father and warned him about a sting operation that would have ended with Tony and several other higher ups, probably my Papa as well, in a private cell out on Riker’s Island. Paulie swore to his father that would be the one and only