“You got a job for us?” I asked, dropping onto a chair.
“God forbid we have a little small talk before we get down to business,” Luca said, shaking his head. But because he knew me, and because he benefited almost as much as I did from my workethic, he shrugged. “But, yeah, I have a job for you. But it’s a little unconventional.”
What in our business wasn’t? It wasn’t like we were paper pushers. We imported illegal shit for our own criminal empire… as well as other organizations who used our docks for a fee.
“Unconventional how?” Domenico asked.
“It would be asking you to leave town. The area, actually.”
“What? Do the New York Families need us for something?” I asked.
“No, not exactly. Right idea, wrong location.” It wasn’t like the mafia was limited to New Jersey and New York. But as far as I knew, we didn’t have strong connections to the families in Chicago, Philly, Detroit, or Boston. “Do either of you remember Uncle Luigi?”
The name had a familiar ring, but I couldn’t make any connection.
“Luigi. Did a life bid for a double homicide,” Domenico supplied.
“Right. He was a big deal during my old man’s reign as boss. Back before we stabilized as an organization.”
I had heard stories from some of the old-timers about how it had been the wild west from the seventies until the nineties. So many murders (both of our own people, and us needing to take out enemies) and a bunch of arrests.
“Thought he died in prison,” Dom said.
“He did. Over in Illinois, where they shipped him to isolate him from the Family. But when he first went away, he had a wife and kids. Because she wanted to be closer to the prison, and because shit was so dangerous around here at the time, his wife decided to relocate. So those kids were raised far away from any of us.”
“Until?” I prompted.
“Until one of the sons decided he wanted his Family heritage back.”
“So he’s back in town,” I said.
“Not exactly, no. I did have a meeting with Remo when he first moved through this way. But he made it clear he didn’t want to work in Navesink Bank.”
That made sense.
Navesink Bank was a relatively small pond. And it was already teeming with fish. There was no real upward mobility here.
“He wanted to be a boss somewhere else,” Dom concluded.
“Something like that, yeah. It’s understood that when it comes to this state, I’m the boss. But he wanted to start his own Family that would operate independently but would kick up to us.”
If this Remo guy could get his crew up and running, that could mean a lot of money to our Family.
And if I could be a part in making this new venture successful, Luca was the kind of boss who would cut me in on the kick-up indefinitely. That was the kind of thing that would allow me to scale back on my current workload. It was steady retirement money. It was stability.
“Where is he looking to take over?” I asked.
There were a lot of untapped big cities in Jersey that were run by smaller organizations. Ones that would be easy enough to move out so Remo could take over.
“Atlantic City,” Luca said.
There was a small burst of laughter from Domenico.
I didn’t know if that was a laugh at the cliché nature of the destination, or because he knew how contentious the area was when it came to crime.
I mean, there were times when the mob basically owned Atlantic City.
During Prohibition, for obvious reasons.
