Bullet to the Abdomen - Chapter 1
Chapter 1 of Cannoli Lupo's autobiography, "Bullet to the Abdomen: The Story of the Immortal Mobster."
Everyday when I rise from my bed and go to face the mirror to look myself over for an early-morning inspection, I see patches of my fur, riddled all along my torso up to an inch above my left nipple. They're different in color, as if they were just glued on while I slept. They're actually scars, made decades ago. I trace them with my fingers, and every single day, I've been reminded of how I got those scars.
I was born in Detroit, Michigan sometime in 1915. The exact date, I don't recall. At the time, it had many different immigrants, including Italian. That was us; Italians. My mother and father were both from Sicily, and they came here in 1913, before The Great War. It was at my father's insistence. He's always had a thing about him. Something that helped him foresee danger up to a few years ahead.
My father was a large man, not essentially one who was fearful. He once told me that he fought an entire pub of micks. I personally think it's bullshit, but if it wasn't, I wouldn't be surprised. Dad made sure that my mother, who was exceptionally smaller than he, was kept safe. She had been in abusive relationships, from one of which my father saved her. They were married sometime in 1898.
I'm sorry. I don't know all that much about their background. Most of my memories were of my mother making large feasts almost everyday. She stayed home while my father worked at the docks on the riverfront. After work, he would have a beer or two, sometimes with a coworker, and other times by himself. He'd come home afterward. And that's how it went all the time.
........
Again, I apologize. I don't talk about my folks. They were very....mundane, to put it reasonably. I was following the same path they had chosen. From 14 to 18, I was employed at a local grocery store called....Linguino's if I remember. Man, he grew the nicest-looking food, and the taste was aligned with the beauty, even with the Depression hitting us the way it did. I was paid about 50 cents an hour. I laugh as I think about how that little bit of money went a long way back then. Roosevelt had been inaugurated at the time I turned 18. It was at this time that I met Sparky Rustin. He was the leader of the Rustin gang, and he came into shop that one day. He was one hell of a character. He came in with a royal blue suit with steel-tinted pinstripes. His swagger was magnificent, a boon I'll never forget to see him. I stood there, like some fat kid in the taffy shop, Sparky Rustin, shopping here! He bought a few dozen apples, and that was it. When I had finished loading his purchase into the car next to his mistress, Josephine, he gave me a crisp $20 before getting in and burning off.
I know these days, $20 can't even really buy you a good dimebag, but that was the biggest amount of money that was ever given to me. To put it a certain way, this was a whole week's worth of wages. Something boiled deep inside me. Something that had disrupted the cycle that my father, grandfather, and his father before him had adhered to for what seemed like eons. (It may have been) This something changed my way of thinking, causing me to make a rash decision that would affect me even to this day. I suffer the well-played consequences of my actions of that day. I immediately quit my little measly job, with the best regards to Mr. Linguino. I packed up my bags and struck out on my own.
The only problem was that I didn't know where in the hell I was going.