City of Red | Part 1

Chapter 2 | To Be Made: Part 2

The docks were alive. Fishing boats were berthed all the way up and down the boardwalk and the markets were packed. Typical for most Saturdays.

Tommy arrived at Dorsey's fish market located on the south side of Alex Bay. A dangerous area if there ever was one. The whole south side of Cold Harbor City was where the Brown Crowns and Latin Lords operated. They were the power structure in that part of the city, but only at the mercy of Vinnie Scarlatti.

Vinnie had met with the leaders of both gangs several years earlier, right there at the south side docks and told them to their faces, "you do what you do, but only in south side. If your bullets and your drugs and your whores spill into my territory, we'll burn you down. That's my price, plus a renter's fee."

The mobster's threat had been the glue that bound chaos behind a wall of relative peace for decades. A tenuous promise, but a serious one all the same.

Tommy approached four black men sitting at a table made of two stacked wooden spools. They were playing cards and smoking joints when one of them recognized him.

"Tommy Scaramucci! As I live and fucking breath."

"Scooter, just the man I came to see."

"Who? Me? Alright, alright. I'm out fella's." Scooter laid his cards down and the other three boasted about how he was scared to lose more money. "Ya'll keep talking that shit, now. I'm gonna be right back then we gonna see how loud you is. Follow me, Tommy."

Scooter led Tommy through the back of Dorsey's market, through the warm storage and finally inside the freezer, surrounded by frozen boxes of fish.

"What?" Scooter said.

"We're in a freezer."

"I assumed you came for business."

"I did."

"A'ight then. We doing the business in here. What d'ya got?"

Tommy pulled out the satchel he lifted from the armored truck and handed it to Scooter. "Can you move them?"

"Motherfucker, a bag of diamonds?"

"Yeah, now can you move them?"

"I can move anything. Thing is, I don't know shit about no diamonds. To me it's just pretty dust, but I know a guy that can look at it for us. He can give us a price on the lot then we can talk cheddar."

"Where's this guy at? Let's go right now."

"Right now? Oh we can't go right now. He busy."

"Okay. Well, just give me the diamonds and I can come back when he's not busy."

"Nah, can't do that. I should keep these till the brotha's free. You can come back tomorrow, dig?"

"I'm not leaving the diamonds with you and I ain't staying here any longer than I need to. So give me the fucking diamonds back and I'll just come back another time."

"Tommy, I like you. Don't make me have to get violent. I hate doin that shit, especially to motherfuckers I dig."

"If you don't put them in my fucking hand I'm gonna be the one who gets violent."

"Motherfucking I-talians, always the one's that wanna get froggy. A'ight then. I warned ya."

* * * *

BANG, BANG, BANG! BANG, BANG, BANG!

"Alright, alright, I'm coming! Stop banging on my door. Jesus fucking Christ!" Tommy got off the couch and staggered to his apartment door.

"Holy shit!" Pauly said. "What the fuck happened to your face?"