What wine to toast the Dapper Don's passing?

[zenda2]

We always had a 'low profile' mafia gang here since the olden days. They skimmed this and that, took their profits, kept the Chicago mob at bay, kept the lid on their neighborhood, and spent their leisure time playing games with the Teamsters retirement funds (See the movie Casino...that's them). But they got greedy and got into a little war over parking lots in a bar district, of all things, and started blowing each others bars up. And during the fracas one low-level 'mafia soldier' family decided now was the time to put a big shiv in the back of the local Don, because he'd had their old man killed in the olden days and let one of these 3 brothers go to the joint for another guys crime.
So these lowbrows started blowing up MORE stuff, shooting at random mafia soldiers and sowing distrust and confusion among the real players and causing a brief but bloody shooting war while everyone got 'payback' on everyone else for everything, from the beginning of time, amen.

Normally, the local cops & newspaper would have said 'Oh, it's just Drizzlybutt Sammy and No-Nads Jimmy' or whatever wacko names they went by, and let the 'mystery' be, but...a new reporter had just joined the K.C. Star, one who was out on recog.(sp) from the state prison (because an editor thought the guy wrote well on the prison paper and pulled some strings with the parole board.) And the guy went into a bar during this war and said "Hey Louie the Lipdrool, what's up? Who's doing what to whom, and why?" And Louie, who'd done time with the guy, told him the story and why not? It's his old pal. Louie kept telling the story during the next month or so (tho' it eventually cost him his life).

Our reporter took some notes and told his editor 'the Don is at war over parking lots in the River Quay, and it's really stupid because they already had all the money in the area and parking is free'. The editors had a meeting. And for once on a paper with an official 'ignore 'em, they're just local boys having fun, there is no Cosa Nostra' policy, the editors decided 'these are the real goods, we know who, what, when, why, how. Phone your wives, have her lock the door and print the story'.

The head of the local mafia family woke up to find that his name was all over the front page (which NEVER happened here) with printed allegations that he'd backed these bombings, those shootings, this death, that fraud. A few more people were found in car trunks at the airport, and a few masked men walked thru a restaurant shooting the members of that lowlevel soldier family in broad daylight...but the bombings stopped. And the FBI suddenly found people willing to talk about stuff that had always been 'just how we do bidness'. The big guys went to jail. Louie the Lipdrool got wacked, of course, even tho' he was just having a conversation in a bar with an old buddy from the Pen. And the Teamsters Union found someone else to play games with their pension funds. But by gosh, the Chicago Mob is still at bay.

Want to read a 'names changed to protect the guilty' version of this story? Look for a book called 'I speak for the Dead' by J. J. Maloney. He's the prisoner/reporter, and a pretty brave man. And I'm drinking to HIM, not the (skoal)dipper Don.

[This message has been edited by zenda2 (edited 06-12-2002).]