Honor Among Thieves

Elle Pepper

January 2006

As I sat silently in the passenger seat of the car I usually drove, I knew what Tessio must have felt on his last, long ride. In a situation like this, even a five-minute ride was long. The man beside me, trusted compatriot, friend--and executioner didn’t speak. His mind was probably full of many of the same thoughts mine was. How the fuck did it come to this?

I mulled that over for a moment. To be truthful, I had been greedy. I had tried to take what was not mine to have. I tried to out-business The Business. And when that didn’t work, I tried to kill my boss.

I thought about everything as the scenery went by unnoticed, I didn’t count the turns we made, I didn’t glance in the mirrors, as was my habit from being a driver for so long, I simply stared out the window and stroked the small prayer card that lay in my hand.

Saint Christopher was my family saint, he had always helped us out, but this time I knew my prayers were falling on deaf ears. I had made a promise on another saint, one I had failed to keep.

When I had first gotten out, I felt like it was my right to have a place, I had done my time, but I had a romantic, over-dramatized picture of ‘Our Thing’ in my head from too many long nights reading The Godfather, one of the few books in Ains that didn’t suck and wasn’t censored.

Pulling my mind back to the matter at hand, I focused on the driver. There were things about him I still couldn’t puzzle out, men respected him as much as they feared him, and yet, unless I did something stupid, he had never so much as raised his voice to me, and not just because I was his Godson.

His green glasses still hid his eyes, and for a moment I wondered what I would see when he took them off. Would it be that cold, smoking rage he was so well known for? Or was it that sad, almost melancholy rage that left him sobbing? Was I still a friend? I sighed and looked out the window again.

Geo-- no, I didn’t deserve to call him that anymore, Don DiMarco, always taught us to take our punishments, this was mine. I couldn’t let myself run from it. I wouldn’t let my surname become a curse again, even if it meant my blood, my life. I looked down at my hands. When had they become the hands of a killer?

I knew the score. Twenty-five of my own men, friends, associates, earners, were dead, a few by my own hand. I didn’t consider the cost when I made the decision. Now I had to. I had single-handedly upset the fragile balance of power in the city, and only this could prevent an all out war.

I was so preoccupied that though I saw the buildings, and the sunrise, it took me almost fifteen minutes to notice that we were driving in aimless circles, wasting time, neither one of us wanting to get out of the car. When I did notice that a five-minute ride had turned into twenty. I wondered at DiAmbrosi’s hesitation. The man I had once earned the right to call Matt was not known for hesitation. With him, an order was given, it was done, friend, foe, it didn’t matter, he did it.

It is strange how you notice things when you are sure you are going to die. The crispness of the air, the bright orange-red of the sun rising on a beautiful new day, the sound of the wind playing hide and seek around the skyscrapers. All these things seemed new to me. I even indulged in my one bad habit. I lit up and took a drag. The window obediently slid down a fraction of an inch to let the smoke out.

The normally-jovial man who sat beside me hadn’t said a word. DiAmbrosi was often talkative, and generally very convivial with the staff. I still remembered the day I had walked into his office clutching a business card, and asked him for a job. It had been what? Seven years?

"Vincezo," The younger man turned to face his Godfather who sat behind the big oak desk. "My word only goes so far. I couldn’t save your father. And if you screw up, I may not be able to save you. As far as I am concerned, I’m still ‘uncle DiAmbrosi’ I’ve helped you as much as I can."

The younger man had nodded. "I understand." Vince smiled. "I won’t betray you."

"And Vince," DiAmbrosi smiled. "Welcome to the family."

The black sedan finally rolled to a stop, neither one of us wanting to play out the tableau that we both knew was coming. In some ways, I felt like this cheapened the whole thing, like he should have just blown me away when he found out. But I knew how things went, he had to be sure, he had to know, after all, he wasn’t going to risk his life on the Don’s favorite for no reason. The figure beside me spoke at last, pointing to my black-and-blue hand. He half-nodded, "How is it?"

I tried to wiggle my fingers and grimaced, "Madonn’! It still hurts." I didn’t stop to ask pardon of the Virgin for using her name like that; it hurt too much. "Do me a favor," I allowed myself to forget, for a moment, this man was going to kill me. "Remember to break his hand too."

Mr. DiAmbrosi smiled. For a moment, he was just my friend. The man I had called Uncle for so many years, not the man who was going to end my life. "Don’t worry, I will."

Genuine concern crinkled his normally passive face as he looked me over again. He scanned me, from top to bottom, his eyes resting on the prayer card in my lap for a moment before he turned away, pretending to be uninterested.

Tony, one of the ‘house’ guards, had broken my hand, claiming I was resisting. I wasn’t, he was just pissed that I had betrayed the Family and wanted an excuse to hit me. Not that I blamed him at all. I probably would have done the same in his position. I was his sponsor, he looked up to me; and I had betrayed him.

Betrayal. That word hit like a knife in the ribs. I could still remember the look on Don DiMarco’s face when he had called me in for a talk. I had known I was in the shit when he called for me to close the door, and had DiAmbrosi stand guard outside.

My eyes had been immediately drawn to the pistol on his desk. And I stood there, trying not to shake myself to pieces as I calmly told my Don what I had told my Godfather. That I had betrayed them both.

He didn’t say anything when I was finished, he just shook his head and hit the call button for DiAmbrosi. His eyes didn’t leave me as he spoke clearly, in Italian, the language all such business was concluded in. "Take care of it." He looked over at my godfather and spoke the last word. "Quietly."

The pain as I moved my hand again brought me back to the present as I looked sheepishly up at DiAmbrosi and winced. At his insistence I had taken something for the pain, just enough to take the edge off, not enough to totally deaden it, and certainly not enough to muddy my mind.

I wanted to be clear-headed. I was being retired quietly because I was a friend—a personal friend, of the Don. My reasons for being clear-headed were multiple. One, in some sick, tortured way, I thought it appropriate to know I was going to die, and how. For two, I had already dried out from this stuff once. And, lastly, I considered the pain some of my penance for what I had done.

The don had made clear my execution was not to be public; which was unusual. But he wanted to save me some dignity after what had been done to my father and my family when I was only fifteen. Also because I had come to my friend about what had happened. I knew better than to let him find me out. That would only make my death worse. And running would have only made me die tired. No, this was how it had to be. Blood for blood.

Geo had tried to give me a pass, but we both knew he couldn’t. He would lose respect, and there would always be that nagging fear in the back of his mind that I would try it again. I was too good of a Catholic to kill myself, so instead, I settled for silently cursing myself as I waited to die.

"Tell Geo that it wasn’t personal." I said around the lump in my throat. "I still respect him, but it was a business deal I couldn’t pass up." The stoic man nodded and paused as he watched me get out of the car. I got the feeling that he was memorizing me. "And, tell him I took my bullet willingly."

He sat forward, a gesture of impatience. He was angry, I had pushed too hard, too far. He wanted me out of the car. He didn’t move to help me out; he didn’t even reach out to open the door for me. I had reminded him of the betrayal.

I could read it on his face, he was too angry to help me out of the car, he wanted me to flounder with my broken hand for a few minutes, but he wasn’t angry enough to pull me out and shoot me here. No, he wanted me to choose to get out. He was a congenial, even to those who had done what he considered the unforgivable. He was a man who lived and died by his word, I had broken mine; that made me scum, less than scum even. It made me a traitor, and himself a poor judge of men.

In some small way, that made me fear and respect him more. Fear because I knew just how vicious this man could be. I had driven him to places where "business" and men, were taken care of; I had even helped on a few. But respect, because he trusted me at my word. Even after my betrayal, he trusted me. In his position I wouldn’t have. But maybe that was the point; he was a better man than I for all of this. He kept his promise; he didn’t betray it, or the oath he made with his own blood.

I could almost put myself in his place, I would’ve dragged the person kicking and screaming out of the car and wasted them right there. I could see that cold anger DiAmbrosi was known for, the type that could stew for years before he found an opening to put a knife in your back for betrayal. To him, that was not a venial sin, but a mortal one.

I reached for the door handle, jumping when a passing car hit an old soda bottle lying in the road. There was not usually any traffic here, and what few cars did pass our way, were driven by people who knew better than to speak of what went on in the Heights. For a second I wanted to check to see if I had been shot, but I knew him enough to know I hadn’t.

I did, however shoot him a wary glance as I scrambled out of the car, his hand tapping idly on the doorframe. I had remembered that he carried a small dagger with him at all times, the type made for ‘home protection’ but he used it for ‘wet work’ up close and personal calls from the Seacove Executioner. We all suspected DiAmbrosi’s other profession, but I was one of the few who knew.

I shivered remembering the night I had met the myth. The only time DiAmbrosi dressed in black. He was a totally different man. Colder, more deadly. I had opened the door to an apartment, my friend had called me over because he said someone was after him. It took me only a moment to realize what was going on. The figure in black had just looked at me, and I knew he was giving me the choice. Live or die. I turned around and walked away. I wasn’t about to face the myth himself. I let my friend face that nightmare alone, and never regretted it.

When I asked my Godfather about what had happened, he shrugged. "I guess he met the myth." Was all he would say. He acted like he didn’t even know what had happened. It was almost as if he didn’t remember.

I shivered, wondering if I had pissed him off enough to earn a visit from that merchant of death himself. I hoped not. Whatever would happen to me in hell would have been kind compared to what he could do to me.

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