Old Lady (eBook)

Chapter 1

Tony Guardino, aka Tony Bok Bok,

aka Tony Chains

Tony Chains sat in his car, down the street from the meeting place. The location was Uncle Benny’s Cigar shop on New Dorp Lane in Staten Island. The meeting hour was set for three a.m., a perfect time for members of the underworld to get together without the wandering eyes of the public on them.

Tony had arrived an hour early and parked on the corner of the opposite street. Slouched in his seat and with an ever-present Marlboro dangling from his lips, he had a clear view of the storefront. He took a drag of his cigarette and let it settle in his lungs as his eyes stayed fixed on the shop. Upon exhaling, he contorted his lips to the side and blew a thin stream of smoke behind the passenger seat, as if not to give away his location. The cigarette smoke danced and swayed along the leather interior of the back seat.

A street lamp lit the desolate sidewalk in front of Benny’s, giving Tony a clear view of anyone coming or going. Tony sat, watching, waiting. Except for an ambulance siren in the distance, the streets were quiet and desolate.

When a green Impala slowed and stopped in front of the shop, Tony slid his cigarette into the mouth of an empty soda can that he was using as an ashtray. The cigarette hissed to its death upon hitting the fluid.

He sank lower in his seat, locking his eyes on the green sedan. He blinked in bursts, a habitual tic that he had developed when trying to concentrate. He would blink three or four times in rapid succession then lock his gaze for longer than normal without blinking.

The driver side door was opened and a dark-haired man in a black jacket emerged that he didn’t recognize. Blink, blink, blink. Then the passenger side door was opened and a man he did know came into view.

Dan Ditalia, the man who had requested the meeting with Tony. They exchanged a few words outside the car, and then Dan nodded toward the rear passenger door. Blink, blink, blink, blink. The driver in the black jacket came over to that side and proceeded to assist an older gentleman with a cane out of the automobile. Dan led the way as he unlocked the glass front door and held it open as the driver assisted the elderly man into the shop. The door closed behind them then opened suddenly with Dan popping his head out of the doorway to scan both directions of the street before closing it again. Blink, blink.

Tony erected himself in his seat, pulled out another cigarette from his pack, and lit it. He then reached behind his back to retrieve a black Glock pistol, tucking it away in his center console. He wasn’t getting whacked tonight.

He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but the math panned out. Tony was only two weeks out of jail after serving a nickel upstate. He made no moves on the street and ruffled no feathers.

Dan Ditalia, aka Double, was a longstanding friend and associate of his—they practically came up together in ‘the old lady’—but that usually didn’t mean shit when a contract was in motion. If you’re the target of a hit, it’s usually your friends and associates who are gonna put the holes in you. It’s just easier that way.

But it wasn’t going down like that tonight. As a matter of fact, Tony had anticipated the meeting a week or so before he got out of the clink. He had gotten word from his people. But Tony was no slouch. He’d had to be sure. He’d had to come early and see the layout for himself. Put his eyes on it. See who was coming and going.

Tony got out of his car, took one last, long drag of his smoke then flicked the butt. He crossed the street, heading for the cigar shop. Once in front, he tapped on the glass door with the wedding band on his finger.

***

In the old lady, Tony was a bit of a legend. One of the most respected members of the Altobelli crime family in New York City. But Tony Chains wasn’t always Tony Chains. He was born Antonio Emilio Guardino, to a pair of working-class Italian immigrants from the Carroll Gardens neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the eighties, when Tony was growing up, the neighborhood was a well-known mafia stronghold. A place where mob chiefs and soldiers settled from a variety of families and crews. In this environment, many young Italian boys looked up to those well-dressed and smooth talking gangsters. Tony had been no different.

As a teenager, he had been tall and lanky. With thick, nappy black hair and a small face flecked with beauty marks, he had looked like an ordinary shy neighborhood kid. But behind his slender frame was a drive to prove his worth to the local mobsters. Giving up on school early, he had spent all his days running errands for his neighborhood idols.

Although Tony had looked feeble, his track record for getting into the mix proved otherwise. At sixteen, he’d been arrested for beating up a Hispanic kid who had wandered into his predominantly Italian neighborhood. When the cop who arrested him asked him for his name, he had responded, “Fuck you.” Through connections, those charges had been dropped.

At eighteen, he’d been arrested for possession of stolen goods, and when his public defender had tried to persuade him to make a plea deal, he’d responded, “Fuck you.” Through connections, those charges had been dropped.

At twenty, he’d been arrested for possession of an illegal firearm. When he had gone before the judge for arraignment and was asked how he would plead to the charge, he’d told the judge in his thick Brooklyn accent, “With all due respect, Your Honor, fuck you.” He did two years for that one.

But it wasn’t his ability to tell people to go fuck themselves that made him a legend. Tony was incredibly smart and had a knack for seeing all the angles. He came up under Jerry “The Germ” Grimaldi, a soldier in the Altobelli crime family. Jerry had been a thirty-nine-year-old loan shark who had taken Tony under his wing, wanting another enforcer to collect his debts and, if necessary, break some bones. But Tony had more to offer than beating up Jerry’s deadbeat clients, a fact that, at first, frustrated the shit out of Jerry when he had first taken Tony under his wing.

On a few occasions, Tony would come back from a “collection” with no money or broken bones to report. “Give me some time on this. I’m working an angle,” he would tell Jerry, who would usually fly off the handle if some twenty-three-year-old kid spoke to him in that way, especially regarding his money. But Jerry had seen something in the young man. He could almost see his brain cooking something up, and he’d been curious to find out what it was.

And he soon did. The scheme had been even scarier than Jerry had imagined, because it meant parting with more of Jerry’s money. What he had proposed was using his loan shark customers’ identities to create new accounts in various banks. It usually meant paying off some outstanding debts the customers already owed those banks, which was the point of them going to a loan shark in the first place. When Jerry heard that part he went berserk. “You want me to pay my fuckin’ customers’ debts off, instead of them paying me? Are you fuckin’ worthless or what?” Jerry had shouted.

But Tony was smart, and he could see all the angles. He went on to explain that once the customer was in good standing, he could proceed to take out loans from those banks, with no intention of paying them back. He pointed out that The Germ could use those accounts to stash his loan shark money in, instead of his mattress. Also, if he wanted, he could purchase assets through loans and lines of credit that would never be in his own name.

Tony had been one of the first mob guys to introduce identity theft before it had become a common criminal practice. The variety of schemes were endless. Tony had made Jerry a very wealthy man, and both men’s stature grew in the eyes of the Altobelli family.

When Jerry realized he had more than just a young hoodlum under his wing, he’d begun to teach Tony the protocols of gangsterism. He’d taught him the roots of the Altobellis and the command structure of the family.

A crew of associates were run by a made soldier or button man. That made man would report to a captain, and the captain to the underboss, and from him to the boss; that boss being Dominick Altobelli, who had in his command at the time around ten crews with roughly one hundred and fifty captains, made men, and associates combined. The crime family was based in Brooklyn but proudly served all five boroughs of New York City. In the family, any spoils from crimes under the umbrella of the Altobelli’s protection had to be shared up the ladder. And since Tony’s father was Italian, he, too, could one day become a made man if he proved his worth and loyalty.

By the age of twenty-four, Tony had been at the center of a dozen financial schemes that enriched not only Jerry the Germ’s crew but other crews, as well. Many soldiers from the family sought out Tony’s advice on how to make simple short-term schemes more fruitful. As only a mere associate in the family, this was unorthodox and considered a high honor as all throughout the family Guardino was sought out as an adviser to go over other crews’ criminal enterprises.

Like when Frank “the grease” Borreli had Tony check out his cigarette smuggling operation. Borreli ran un-taxed cigarettes from Virginia and sold them by the case and cartons at a deep discount on the black market. After reviewing the operation, Tony had gone out and stolen Borreli a machine that applied New York state tax stamps onto the packages of the smokes. This way, the grease could sell the now “legal” cigarettes just...