The nice Tony that opened my car door for me had disappeared years ago. Instead, he would open and shut his own door and start driving or walking. I usually had to walk fast or run to catch up with him after I left the car. Tonight was no different than it had been. When we reached the front door of the building, he opened the door, telling me to hurry up, and once again told me to stay close to him and after tonight to forget about whatever I heard in there.
With every word he spoke, it made it more intriguing. We walked up a lot of stairs to a room on the right-hand side of the building and he opened the door. The four men that seemed to always be at the clubs, and nine more men that I hadn’t seen yet, were sitting in chairs, waiting for Tony to enter the room. He told me to go sit down and I did.
“Now that I’m here, I don’t want any one of you leaving this room for anything! I asked my dame to come with me for a reason, and each one of you will forget that you saw her here and not get the bright idea of bringing your dames in here as it won’t work with me!
“I don’t know if any of you saw the write-up in the paper today. It looks like the Masceno family are cleaning house, and I am sure that we are going to be their next target. Each one of you has a job to do, and I won’t repeat what that job is. If you can’t do it, or won’t do it, you will have to answer to me! I am sure that none of you want this.
“My underboss, Rocco in Chicago, has informed me that the Masceno soldiers have also attacked some of their soldiers, captains, and capodecinas. I might be making a trip there to talk to him. After tonight, for a while, we are going to meet somewhere else. Do what you are told and you won’t get hurt! Disobey me, don Reoney, and you will wish you hadn’t! Go do what I told all of you to do!” Tony spoke.
I had witnessed something that I NEVER thought I would ever see or hear! There was a part of me that was very confused, but I remembered reading a newspaper article during the time when I was staying at the motel—before I started working—about a mob family that they called Masceno. I wasn’t sure, but because of what I had heard, it looked to me like Tony was a Mafia boss and was running an organized Italian American crime syndicate. This would explain why he was so secretive and evasive whenever he left me alone during the day or night.
The old building was a place that they either went to hide out in or have a discussion such as the one they had tonight. It also explained why he called me his dame, and liked the sleazy clothes that he wanted me to wear. Being the manager of that store in the mall gave him an alibi of where he was when everything was happening in the city that involved him and his men. The manager job also made him look prestigious to others and also to the law.
The money that he had and gave to me was probably stolen. He and his followers were committing all kinds of crimes, along with many other syndicates that had their own men working for them. It looked like Mafia wars were happening and that is why Tony told his men to do their jobs and stay low from the Masceno family.
Finally, after all of these years being with Tony, I knew the truth. Now I knew what he meant when he told me that I was in it as deep as he was. Since I had been his dame for many years, automatically I was involved in his Mafia life. Because of tonight and knowing everything that I know now, I had been included even more in being a part of all of the destruction and chaos that had occurred and still would happen.