"Will you shut up out there, I'm trying to watch TV," came Beth Marie's voice.
"Why didn't you tell me about Giordano, out-on-the-coast Giordano?"
"What Giordano?"
"Giordano who was killed today. Dreaming, huh? I was dreaming that last time, huh? Dreaming. Those guys was frigging crushed to death."
"I didn't hear nothing."
"Don't we get word no more? What is this? I could be killed in my sleep. Dreaming, huh? I ain't sleeping in this house. We're going to the mattresses," said Deussio, meaning his crime family was preparing for war.
"Against who?" said Sally.
"Against what, you mean," said Johnny Deuce. "Against what."
"Yeah. What?"
"We don't know what, dummy," said Johnny Deuce and he slapped Sally hard in the face and when Beth Marie complained again about the noise in the hall, he told her to go finger herself. Sally did not protest the slapping assaults against his pride. The closer one got to John Deussio, the less one became affronted by his famous temper and the more one appreciated an artist.
Deussiq had raised the level of mob war in the midwest to exquisite craftsmanship. Neat surgical strikes that took out precise portions of organizations and left profits undisturbed.
A group of bookmakers on Front Street in Marietta, Ohio, who thought profits did not have to be shared totally with St. Louis connections, learned one night the folly of independence. Each one found himself in a warehouse, tied but not gagged. In this way, he was able to hear the shock sounds of friends he knew. In the center of the warehouse was a man stripped nude. When a spotlight flashed on his face, they saw it had been the man who had promised them protection from St. Louis for a far smaller cut than they had been paying St. Louis. The man was swinging from a rope. The searchlight lowered and they saw a reddish wet cavity where his stomach had been. They heard their own groans and sobs and then the lights went off and they were all in darkness.
One by one, each felt a cold edge of a knife press against his solar plexus, felt his shirt buttons be unbuttoned, and waited. And nothing happened. They were escorted out of the warehouses, untied, and taken, shaking, to a hotel suite where food was laid out in abundance. No one was hungry. A fat man with stains on his shirt and great difficulty in speaking English introducted himself as Guglielmo Balunta; he worked for people in St. Louis who provided these gentlemen services and he wished, what was the word for it, to toast their health and prosperity. Excuse his poor English.
He was worried, he said, because animals were about. They did awful things. They were not businessmen like him and his guests. All they knew was kill.
Cut stomachs and things. This did not help business, did it? Everyone in the room assured Balunta it sure as hell didn't. No.
But Balunta had a problem. If he couldn't return to St. Louis and assure his people that they would get their cut, they would not listen to him. These animals always have their ears for violence. He needed to bring something home, he said, some pledge of good faith, that business would continue as usual. Maybe a little better than usual.
Men who just minutes before could not control bowel or bladder assured their host he spoke very good English even if all the words were not in English. The increased cut, well, yes, it seemed reasonable. Fear made many previously unacceptable things reasonable.
The success of this was only a small part of Johnny Deuce's genius. For not only had he arranged it that not one bookmaker was hurt and thus no profits were lost for the day but he saw great possibilities and he shared his reasoning with Guglielmo Balunta. They spoke in a Sicilian dialect, although Johnny's was not good, having only learned it from his parents.
There were times, said Johnny Deuce, that offered incredible opportunities, just because no one else had thought of them. Balunta waved his hands, indicating he did not understand. Johnny, driving their car back to St. Louis-he had asked to take Balunta alone personally-had difficulty talking with both hands on the wheel, but he continued.
Balunta was in for a very nice cut of the increase from the gambling in Marietta. Not much. But enough of a causa bono for contentment.
Balunta assured Johnny Deuce that he too would be rewarded for his brilliant work. Johnny Deuce said this was not the point. Who was the one man in the organization most trusted now by the top man in St. Louis? It was Balunta, of course. He had just done a good job.
But some day, Johnny reasoned, Balunta would be offended by what was given him. Some day he would be cut out of something that belonged to him. Some day he would have grievance against his boss.
Balunta said this would never happen. He was close with the don. And he held up two stubby fingers. Especially now that he had brought this small southern Ohio town into line so neatly. Especially now.
"No," said Johnny Deuce. "I am young and you are old but I know as surely as the sun rises that disagreements occur in business." And he named incidents and he named names and even pointed out that Balunta had gotten his own position because his predecessor had had to be eliminated.
This was true, admitted Balunta. And it was here that Deussio's strategic brilliance began to show. When you have this disagreement or trouble, or even when they are on the horizon, how hard will it be to get to the top people? And when he said "get to" he took one hand off the wheel and pointed it as if it were a gun.
Very hard, agreed Balunta. He conceded that they might even get to him first. In fact, probably. Which was what kept most people in line.
"Now tell me," said Deussio, "what does the horizon look like now. You said it yourself. Clear."
"You're the guy coming home with the bacon," he said, lapsing into English. "You're the guy who's due a bigger cut. You're the fucking hero."
"So what you saying, Johnny Deuce?" asked Balunta.
"We hit the top now."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta. "This is a big thing. Too big."
"It's either you hit them now while you got the advantage or they get you when they have it. I admit, it's a hard choice. But you do the hard thing today when it's easy or you take the hard thing in the face tomorrow. When it's tough. Frigging tough. You know I'm right."
Balunta was quiet as the car went through the countryside. And Johnny Deuce further showed his genius, a genius that would give most of the midwest mob quiet for more than a decade.
He began by telling Balunta he knew what Balunta was thinking. If this young man is willing to have me go against my boss now, wouldn't he, at the moment of success, do the same thing to me?
Balunta said he was thinking no such thing.
"But I would be foolish," continued Johnny Deuce. "If I go against you, then my number two would see this and go against me. Now if I do not go against you, my number two will worry what you will do if he succeeds with me. I am the only one who can stop what I have started and I have a vested interest in doing so. You are going to give me a very big piece of the action from the outset. A very big piece. Together we have no worries. We will work things out for both our safeties."
But everyone, Balunta pointed out, wants it all.
"Everyone who doesn't know that all of it is a oneway ticket to the marble orchard," said Johnny Deuce. "You'll see. It'll work if we share. If we share, we're strong."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta and Deussio knew that this was a "yes." For ten days, bodies turned up downstream in the Missouri, shotguns bloomed from the front windows of cars, brains were blown into dinner linguine. Deussio struck so fast and so quickly it was only when the St. Louis wars, as they were later called, were over that those who mattered knew where the killing had come from. And by that time, it was Don Guglielmo Balunta.
Johnny Deuce's talents and his proven loyalty created a new order from St. Louis to Omaha. Such was Don Guglielmo's trust in his young genius that when others would come to him with stories of the crazy things that Johnny Deuce did, Don Guglielmo would say: