Boomslang (A SERPENTO CRIME FAMILY NOVEL)

Prologue

Napa Valley, California
16 years ago

Twice Tiny Dick pulled the trigger without preamble, getting the job done PD-fucking-Q. It didn’t make a sound. Or maybe it did, but Boom didn’t hear anything over the ruckus his heart was wreaking in his ribcage.

The Schiavone brothers had been knocked cold first before getting dragged to the basement of their sprawling mansion in the middle of that lush vineyard they’d owned for three generations. Tiny Dick had then ordered the men to bind their hands and feet with duct tape, and gag them with it as well. Boom saw no point in the duct tape — Giuseppe, Jr. and the younger Giancarlo had already been lying unconscious, blood oozing from the back of their heads — but he chalked it up to Tiny Dick’s Asperger’s. His myriad little quirks boggled the mind, but he was damn good at his job, so let the hijo de puta do as he pleased.

What Boom had just witnessed was probably one of Tiny Dick's unusual habits he had heard so much about growing up among his father’s underlings. They said Tiny Dick’s style was softcore stuff: his hits never knowing what hit them. No torture, no dismemberment, no flair or drama, and he didn’t do women or children. If torture was a requirement or if a body needed not be discovered, give the job to someone else. Tiny Dick didn’t do fancy, he just fucking did it. He was always in a hurry, wasting no time in any execution. He just went and did whatever needed to be done as quick as possible so he could get home and read Pablo Fucking Neruda to his freaking pet barracudas.

Of all his father’s men he was forced to interact with, Tiny Dick was the only one Boom could put up with. Pitted against the stereotypical Mafiosos he was associated with, on the surface Tiny Dick could pass for a saint.

Of course, Tiny Dick’s diminutive appearance and gentle manners were deceiving. He might seem soft and puny, but he was very prolific. Low-key and unintimidating, Marco Serpento saw Tiny Dick as an extremely valuable asset to the organization. He had smuggled the reserved Mexican as a scrawny teenager through the U.S. border some fifteen years ago. At fourteen, Richard Flores had already made quite a name for himself in the crime-infested streets of Nuevo Toledo. In the States, this man whose small and delicate-looking features had earned him the nickname ‘Tiny Dick,’ had quickly flourished after joining Marco’s organization, overtaking everyone who had been around much longer.

The Schiavone hit had been personal, not the usual business shit Boomslang ‘Boom’ Serpento’s father dealt with. Hence, his and his brothers’ presence, with Marco’s personal favorite capo as the ‘execution squad leader.’ Giuseppe, Sr. owed Marco Serpento, and he paid it with his sons’ lives.

Boom stared aghast at the dead bodies. A gaping hole on each forehead streamed blood, bits and pieces of gray matter splattered with red everywhere. His two older brothers, Krait and Cobra, stood beside him as Tiny Dick tucked his Colt .45 snugly back  in its holster.

“Don’t fret yourselves about it, boys. If it’s any consolation, they never knew what hit them,” Tiny Dick said. For a man who normally spoke so little, vocalizing sixteen words at one go was a fucking fiesta. With dead bodies to witness it.

“Never knew what hit them,” Cobra repeated with a nod.

But it did hit the sixteen-year-old Boomslang so hard he might as well have drawn the gun himself.

He turned to Krait, whose face was devoid of emotion, and presently Boom wished he could act as cool as his brothers and just not give a fucking damn. Their father’s cruelty and violence had always made him want to barf,  but these two hardly flinched at the crazy world they’d been born into.

“Yeah, it’s almost humane,” Krait commented, turning his back on the bodies and heading for the stairs leading to the exit door. “So you, TD. Good job.”

Tiny Dick said nothing.

Indeed, the finished job was exactly the sort Tiny Dick was noted for — ‘humane,’ at least by Mafia standards. He was no punisher; he saw no need in inflicting agony on the target. Killer bullets were nice because they didn’t cause pain. But contrary to popular beliefs, this was not an act of mercy. He was incapable of feeling it. He simply had  no taste for thrills and frills. He was just a guy who got the job done. 

He lacked the social skills. Save Boomslang whom Tiny Dick had developed a friendship with, all he cared about was his fish. He wasn’t very popular among his brethren in the crime family that Marco Serpento had founded in the Mexican gang-dominated streets of San Antonio in the early '80s. In the early days they used to call themselves the Snake Gang, but as they grew to become the massively powerful organization that they were now, they had begun to be known as the dreaded Serpento Crime Family. When the Family’s notoriety upgraded from dominating the seedy streets of San Antonio to wielding power state-wide, manifesting their influence over the big oil players themselves, the media had started to call Marco Serpento the John Gotti of Texas. He had surpassed the New York Mafioso since.

Tiny Dick nudged Boom on the ribs, jerking his head to the door’s direction. “Come on, Boom.”

Boom realized his brothers had gone. Light-headed, he wobbled out of the Schiavone family basement. The diminutive Sinaloan followed, yanking the door shut behind them.