Detective Fog and the Mission Pigeon

Chapter 13. About Six Months Ago

May 21st, 2015

Paul Aniston really wanted to be a button man.

Screw climbing the ranks of pushing drugs, managing girls, handling rackets, collecting from gambling rings. He didn't want to be a slammer, beating up extortion victims, or a bodyguard; he wanted to be a human bullet. His heroes were killers like Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza, and Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski.

But you couldn't just go around killing people to climb the ladder; you had to do as you were told and never ask anybody for anything.

Still, the next man up from him was Nicholas Minardos, and Minardos knew Paul was aching to prove himself. Paul expected his first hit order to be knocking off someone who hadn't paid up to Sigler's mafia after three warnings — or maybe two warnings, he didn't really know how it worked but assumed there were some number of warnings.

He'd knock off some debtor, maybe some drug pusher who was late with the money for some reason or other. Someone to make an example of, but not anyone you would have heard of. Not anyone dangerous or anyone important.

The mayor. The frigging mayor. Nick Manardos came up to Paul in a goddamn diner, sat down next to him, and told him over a bacon cheeseburger, "Your big break is here, Paulie. You're going to do Mayor Banikas. Hey, don't freak out. Stop freaking out. I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it, and you're going to get away with it, and then you're going to start the career of a real mafia hitman. You'll be a legend, except for the fact that you'll take this to your grave, the grave of an old fat retired mobster who went in his sleep like Giovanni 'The Pig' Brusca."

"Brusca did life in prison. And he was an informer." Paul spat on the less than immaculate floor tiles and received a dirty look from the boy behind the counter. "And they didn't let him out of the clink even when he gave up everybody whose name he could remember."

"Well, I guess any guys we've heard of were either killed or serving life in prison, but that's the idea. You wanna be like the guys we haven't heard of. The ones who got away with it, for example, whoever did Gus Greenbaum. Be just like him. Although I'm not going to recommend the throat-slitting route, not on your first job."

Paul paled, the reality beginning to sink in; he was going to kill a man, and Nick was talking about it at full volume in a brightly lit, medium-busy burger palace. "What the frig?"

"Jimmy 'the Hat' Lanza," said Nick, "lived to be one hundred and three years old."

Not a week later, Paul was invited into the back room of Daedalus Bar, the first time he had been back there. Usually, a host led him to the gambling room in the basement to take his package and drop off his cash. Upstairs was Mena Sigler's office, which he aspired to one day enter, but this was an accomplishment deserving a cigar, and he was offered a cigar by his good friend Jason Nakos soon as he came in the door.

The back room was like an old speakeasy; you had to speak a password to get in, and everyone spoke easy. It wasn't the rambunctious late-night party spot; it was the room where business was handled, plans were discussed.

Smoke obscured everything like indoor fog; Paul was too young to have ever been in a smoke-filled bar. Four people were seated at a round table toward the back of the back room, and, including Jason, there were six bodyguards. Two hatstands were filled. Paul and Nick added their fedoras to the last pegs and joined the table, taking seats when they were invited to.

Sofia Ioana was the underboss, and she was in charge of this meeting. The other three at the table were Jack Costas, Hugo Zane, and Jennifer Makris. Every one of them smoking a cigar. So many people to discuss the assassination of San Francisco's mayor. Far more ears than Paul would have wanted.