Some Saints Sin

By Paul Corelli and Santo Cavelli

Corona, Queens in the mid- to late-1900s was a place where law-abiding families co-existed with Families of a different nature. The Made men of the neighborhood received as much admiration and respect as the average working class because they were loyal to their employees, and their employees were certainly loyal to them. In many cases they donated time and money to benefit the neighborhood. But the average person didn't ask a Made man what he did for a living, because he already knew, and in case the question was actually answered, it could make him an accessory.
Frankie Tancredi ran two very successful enterprises during that time and employed many local men who in turn supported their respective families in style. However, there was no overlapping of his two operations; you either worked in his four-star restaurant or you were a member of one of his crews and worked for the Family. Frankie wore two hats, but never both at the same time.
Santo Cavelli and Vinnie Calzaretta were born in the sixties and had known each other for so long they couldn't remember when they first met, they were always close friends, almost brothers. Growing up in this neighborhood gave the two a familiarity with Made men and police officers, since both lived there. They were heavily involved with Frankie's second, unspoken enterprise, rising from simple numbers-running and taking bets on behalf of the Family, to rearranging the kneecaps of deadbeats and other muscle work. The money was good and the girls plentiful, as long as you had the money. This beat sweeping up in a pizzeria all day.
Santo's non-mob friends have some influence on him and he starts to question what he is doing with his late teen and early adult life. So when a bullet whizzes past him, courtesy of a rival gang member, he realizes he has to get into another line of work because the retirement plan of his current occupation is not so nice. In a quirk of fate, especially for a Corona tough-guy, Santo enters the police academy and rises through the ranks, eventually becoming a decorated Detective First Grade doing undercover work in both Vice and Narcotics and becoming a star of the NYPD. He enjoys this life and feels like he is making a difference for society. Still living in Corona, he occasionally sees his contemporaries but now is careful about socializing with them.
Vinnie Calzaretta also rises in his chosen field eventually achieving his personal goal of becoming a Made man. He marries his childhood sweetheart and they raise a family in Corona. The boyhood friends rarely speak to each other and even then, only when they accidentally happen to be in the same place at the same time. Those moments are very strained for both as their old friendship and present occupations prevent them from getting too involved in each other's current life.
Santo enjoys being an undercover police officer, the danger is an aphrodisiac, but the endless wave of drug dealers and killers starts to take its toll and he is reverting back to the edgy person he was when he worked as a member of Tancredi's crew.
In his mid-thirties, he meets the girl of his dreams after thinking that he would be single for his entire life. They fall madly in love and plan a life together. But tragedy strikes when in one of those chance meetings with characters of his shady past, his future wife gets shot in a cross-fire by one of Vinnie's thugs.
In the following months, Santo goes into a deep depression but when he regains his senses, he slowly reverts back to his teenage persona and becomes a hard-edged vigilante bent on retribution. Santo spends the next few months tracking Vinnie's movements and meets Vinnie in a secluded place. Both are armed, both are angry, and both will do what ever they have to do to live.
The boyhood bonds are strong, but faltering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667816029

Book preview

Book 1

Santo Cavelli

1999

Chapter 1

Santo Cavelli decided he was going to have to learn to keep his mouth shut.  Being an undercover cop was a stress-inducing occupation but he had to learn to better control his emotions.  Just do your job and move on will be his new motto.  But that was a difficult discipline for him.  He always was very vocal about his feelings.  It helped him with his work.  The work he loved.  Dangerous sometimes, but also fun.  In fact, to Santo it was more fun than danger.  That’s why they called him the nut job from Spaghetti Park.  Not to his face, of course.  But he knew it, he heard the rumors.  And he liked it … sort of.  At least most police officers left him alone.  Even those on his own team.

    But Santo just didn’t feel good about his new surroundings.  This was Manhattan South and he didn’t sense the support he was used to from the cops in Queens Narcotics.  He knew these guys didn’t care about him.  And why should they?  He was different, a hot-shot from Corona and they didn’t like the idea that he was assigned to them.  They knew he was being punished by his superiors back in Queens; they just didn’t know why.  Santo was aware his reputation preceded him, earned or not.  Cops always had a way of knowing about these things.

    Just look at this situation, he mused.  He was the only round eye in the group.  The other cops on this team were Chinese.  How dumb is that?  He just didn’t fit in.  Going undercover all by himself was the only way this would work.  Being seen in public with this group would be a sure giveaway.

    He remembered old television shows that always had a black cop and a white cop driving in an unmarked car, probably more to satisfy the networks or the civil libertarians than for portraying reality.  How unmarked was that?  Driving through Bedford-Stuyvesant or Crown Heights, Brooklyn?  A white guy and a black guy would never be sipping coffee together in a car in those neighborhoods.  That would be like saying, Here we are folks!  Your local cops.  Run and hide, you muthafukkerrrrs!

    Santo clipped a pager to his belt.  Actually it only looked like a pager.  It was called a KEL and it really was a device that provided one way transmission back to his team in an unmarked van so they could hear everything Santo said or what was said in his presence.  The reason for the one-way transmission was in case something happened in the van that made a noise, it wouldn’t play on the pager and blow his cover.  He looked into the closed window of the van at a Chinese cop named Harry and pointing to his ear mouthed the words, Can you hear me.  Harry replied with his fingers, Five by five, meaning everything was working.  The Sergeant leading the investigation was standing next to Santo and said, Five minutes.  That’s all the time we’ll give you.  Then we come in.  This was a prostitution bust and all Santo had to do was make payment with the recorded money he was carrying or just get a verbal consent on the wire. 

    But what Santo didn’t know was that the communication back to the van wasn’t working.  Harry only said that because he was sure he could get it on line.  He never did.  Since it only provided one way communication when it did work, after Santo left to go to his assignment, his backup didn’t know what was going on and Santo didn’t know he was on his own.

    Santo knew this was dangerous work, especially since he went into these situations without a weapon but he always believed he was more dangerous than those he came in contact with.  They didn’t know what he was capable of.  He did.  When he was 15 years old he made it to brown belt status in Shotokan Karate.  He would have made it to black belt but after an argument with his instructor he decided not to pay the $120.00 fee to have his name written on the board.  Typical hot-head Italian.  So, while he beat all his required competition, he wasn’t officially a black belt.  But it did make him fearless when dealing on a one-to-one basis with whom he came in contact with.  During his police career, his fellow officers always thought Santo was a good cop, but maybe a little edgy. 

    He left the unmarked van and started the two-block walk to where the take-down was to be.  Ahead he could see two black Chevy Yukons with dark windows.  Real subtle, he thought, but they were a block away from his target and wouldn’t be noticed.  It was about 6:30 in the evening and there was still a slight glow from the sun on the horizon, the end of another beautiful and unusually warm spring day and the start of another operation.

    During the five-minute walk Santo went over in his mind the reason he was exiled to Manhattan South.  About two weeks earlier, while with Queens Vice, he was given the assignment of busting a gambling operation in Jackson Heights.  Being that it was in an Italian neighborhood, he had dressed himself in a black leather coat, black Addidas sweat pants, a white guinea T-shirt, white Puma sneakers, topped off with a pork-pie hat.  He held a lit cigarette … not to smoke it, since Santo didn’t smoke … but as a prop.  He did his best to blend into the neighborhood and look like a typical local punk.  He knew there would be surveillance cameras watching him when he got to the door of the target building and he would not be able to get in if he even slightly looked like a cop.  He went into this operation without any communication but his ghost, an undercover who was wired watched his every move while walking on the opposite side of the street along with Santo and reported back to the unmarked van around the corner.

    Santo walked up to the building and put the unlit cigarette out against the red brick doorway.  This was just to give the person who was on the other end of the camera time to size him up.  He rang the buzzer and waited.  After about five seconds the door buzzed and Santo pushed it into the building. 

    As he let door go, he quickly glanced up to make sure there weren’t any cameras inside the vestibule.  Feeling confident, he dropped a stick he was carrying up his sleeve on the door threshold to keep it from closing and locking so his team could follow him into the building after he got the second door open.  He didn’t have to place a bet or anything, all he had to do was get both doors open.  Finding the telephones and various betting equipment on the premises would be enough to close the place down and get everyone arrested.  Santo was armed with his funny gun, definitely not NYPD standard issue.  He carried a .380 Walther PPK into these operations.  It was small enough to hide in his side pocket but was deadly if it had to be, especially at close range.  Santo’s version was silver with ivory handles.  He also had a cheetah skin holster for this weapon, specially made for him by a tailor on Manhattan’s Orchard Street.  Although tonight, as with many undercover operations, he left the holster home and carried the gun just inside the waist band of his pants in his Thunder Underwear, briefs that were specially made with a pocket to hold items, in this case, his gun.

    Entering the vestibule he was greeted by a staircase leading to the second floor with no other door on the main level so he walked up the single flight of stairs and came to a single door with a small eye-level window.  A slightly built man let him in and he stepped into a large, noisy room.  Men were milling around, reading the racing sheet or looking at a large blackboard.  A couple of televisions were on.  Some had racing from different parks while another had the local news.  Santo quickly looked around and walked to a chalkboard as if to check out the day’s racing and give his team a chance to get to the second floor.  He figured there were three or four workers plus a few men betting their salaries on a dream.

    When Santo crossed the room, the man who had unlocked the upstairs door, now locked it and went about his work near one of the tables.  Through all the noise on the second floor Santo could hear the low thud of the front door opening hard against the wall and the thumping of many footsteps running up the stairs.  Everyone in the room, workers and betters, were accounted for in his mind so Santo jumped up on one of the tables, gun in right hand and his shield hanging around his neck on a chain, and yelled, Police.  Put your hands up.  After a one second pause he added, You’re all under arrest.  He remembered Cary Grant saying that last sentence in the 1934 movie Gunga Din, as he entered a large cave with thousands of Thugee assassins.  The ridiculousness of that situation always came back to him and he used it on many occasions.  He waved his left hand into the room as if to beckon in his men from behind and said, Take ‘em. 

    Nothing happened.  No team.  No noise.  Everything was silent. 

    Santo realized he was all by himself.  Glancing at the door he could see his team looking in the window like kids outside a candy store while everyone in the room froze like statutes.  But it only took the team two seconds to smash the door down and enter the room.  A man behind the counter ran to a back room and Santo jumped off the table after him.  He slammed a door shut but Santo kicked it open, busting the cheap handset lock.  Leaping into the room he saw the man reaching into a closet for what looked like a shotgun.  Santo jumped on top of the man and slammed him to the floor.  He put his Walther into the back of the man’s head, grabbed his dark black hair and screamed, I’m a cop.  Don’t do anything stupid.  Then he added with a smile in his voice, Didn’t I just say you were under arrest?

    By this time one of his team had entered the back room and Santo realized that the guy he was holding face down, who he surmised was in charge of the operation, was somebody he knew.  It was Enzo Martini, from the old neighborhood, a local Corona boy who went in the opposite direction of Santo.  Enzo was involved with the local Family, and specifically, Frankie Tancredi, a local capo.  ‘Fuck,’ Santo mumbled to himself in disgust.  Enzo didn’t recognize him because Santo held his nose to the floor and he wanted to keep it that way.  Still holding his head down, he handed him off to his team and quickly headed out of the back room for the staircase.  It was normal for an undercover to get out as soon as the team arrived to minimize the possibility of being remembered or recognized on subsequent operations.  But Santo had another reason to exit.  He knew this person, and he realized there was a high probability that he knew others in the room.  He went to school with Enzo’s younger brother and the Martinis lived just six blocks from his parent’s home.  The bigger problem was that this operation was part of Frankie Tancredi’s gambling empire.  Tancredi was a person he had relations with in his youth.  Santo did things for him that he tried to forget, being that he was now a cop.

    Santo quickly walked through the main room, which by now was filled with uniforms rounding up all the workers and the few betters who couldn’t get out.  In the downstairs hallway, just a few feet from the front door, he was passing the approaching Lieutenant Raymond Servino, his immediate superior, and Inspector Guering, who was in charge of this bust. 

    Hey, Santo.  Good job, said Inspector Guering.  Santo lost his composure and responded in a very loud voice, You knew who I would find here.  I know these people and they know me.  Why the fuck did you send me in here?  Then turning to Servino he added, Couldn’t you get an Italian from Brooklyn?  You playing fuckin’ games with me?  If I was recognized, I could be dead by tomorrow!  What the fuck!  Santo continued out of the building without waiting for a response.

    Nobody talks back to an Inspector like that, and not one who’s been with the force as long as Inspector Guering, and especially not from a three-year police officer.  But Santo was steaming mad.  He was put in a position that could have been very dangerous to his future undercover operations and perhaps to his parents who live in Corona with the very people he just nailed.  One week later he was banished to Manhattan South Vice as one of the few white guys in the group and specifically into an all-Chinese team.  That was intentional, he thought.  He stood out like an olive in a bunch of lemons.  He suspected that he would get all the bizarre operations as punishment.  Mouthing off to a superior will make that happen.

    But back to the job at hand.  He had to concentrate on this operation and forget the past, as hard as that was to do.  That would only make him madder and he had to keep his wits about him.  Santo approached the target and glanced around.  He was able to spot his ghost, walking across the street, pacing along with Santo but never looking at him.  He went over in his mind what he expected to find and what he might have to do in an emergency.  Entering the building he scanned the list of building’s occupants and ran his finger down the bell buttons until he found what he was looking for, Sashay Fabrics, fifth floor.  Even Hollywood wouldn’t write this, he thought.  Three weeks ago a complaint came into Vice about a house of prostitution working in this mid-town building that placed ads in the Village Voice.  The takedown was assigned to his team and Santo was the person who was going to get the consent or a money exchange.  So just about an hour ago he answered the ad for Personalized Massages by Professionals, which appeared from time to time.  In fact, The Village Voice was a great source for leads.  Somebody was always advertising something illegal, men wanting women, women wanting men, men wanting men, along with pictures of women in bathing suits or lingerie.  The Voice couldn’t always tell the legitimate from the illegal, so try as they might, many of the ads got past their scrutiny.  Santo didn’t understand why they wanted him on this since they had known about this operation for weeks.  Why wait for him to get assigned to the 7th precinct?  Why not just hit it themselves.  He was a little uneasy about this and he sensed he didn’t know the whole story.

    He pressed the buzzer, making sure not to speak to his wire because a camera mounted in the lobby, for all he knew, could also be equipped for audio.  Within 10 seconds a voice came out of the speaker, Yes?  What do you want?  Holy shit, thought Santo.  What the hell was that?  Man, woman, or a gay Bull Moose, if there is such a thing.  Santo answered, It’s Mikey, Fat Dom said it would be cool to come here.  I called an hour ago.  Said I would be here about seven.

    The lyrical voice answered, Yes, I remember.  I’ll send the elevator down.

    Santo approached the elevator door and waited.  He could hear it creaking down to him.  As it opened, he hesitated before entering the car, glancing around the interior for possible security cameras.  He wasn’t sure if the elevator had audio so he kept quiet.  As the elevator door closed, Santo thought to himself, ‘Shit!  The elevator is a freaking lock-out.’  Once the elevator was on the floor of its destination, it would stay there until a tenant sent it back down.  A visitor couldn’t call for it in the lobby without announcing who they were.  This made the building secure since it was only accessible with a tenant’s approval.  Therefore, his back-up could not come up via the elevator unless somebody sent it back down.  And why would they.  Santo could wind up being alone on the fifth floor and he didn’t know what he would find when he got there.  As the elevator rose Santo, still not sure if the elevator was miked, began to sing the Jefferson’s theme song.  He modified it a little as he sang to himself at a level he thought was loud enough for the pager to pick up without being obvious, Well, we’re movin’ on up, To the east side.  To a fifth floor apartment in the sky-I-I.  But, of course, his team in the van didn’t hear anything.

    The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the elevator inner door slid into the left wall.  Santo was now facing the door to the apartment, which looked like a front door you would find on many homes.  He opened this door into the apartment and said to no one in particular, but loud enough for the pager, Fifth floor.  Cool door.  Although the room he entered was dimly lit, he could see that it was well-appointed, if not sparsely decorated.  On the right was a window that he assumed was the front of the building with a chair to the left and a potted plant on the floor in what was obviously a heavy urn, considering what the dirt in the urn probably weighed. 

    As he turned to walk into the room, a tall figure dressed in a skin-tight, gold sequined dress with a low, scooped neckline was standing next to a large, ornate desk.  The dress was hemmed about seven inches above the knees with long, slender legs in four inch heels exiting below the hem.  The dimly lit figure beckoned Santo over to the desk that was situated ten feet from the elevator door.  As Santo sized up the dress’s occupant it became obvious this was a guy in drag.  Tall, somewhat muscular in the arms, lean but taunt, and squeezed into that dress.  Those legs would fool anybody, he thought, as long as you didn’t look up.  This was the most muscular female he ever saw.  His hair was a black wig combed over to one side like a fashion model from the fifties.

    My name is Veronica. How can I help you, He cooed in a falsetto voice?

    Santo, not taken aback by this since he had seen worse stuff in his five years of undercover assignments, answered, Yeah. Yeah.  Fat Dom told me this place was cool.  That I could have some fun here, you know.

    No, I don’t, Veronica said in a high-pitch voice, almost like a song.

    Well, you know, like, like a blow job, Santo stuttered.  He was trying his best to not sound too composed.  He wanted Veronica to think this was something new for him.

    That can be arranged.  Sit down honey.  Do you want a drink?  Beer or soda?

    Yeah.  I’ll take a beer.  Veronica then went into another room and in a short time came back with a twist-off Budweiser."

    How much, asked Santo, looking him up and down in a sexual stare?  He noticed that this man’s bosom was full and didn’t appear faked.

    The beer is free honey.

    No, no.  For you?

    One hundred dollars.

    Okay.  Here’s a hundred.  Santo pulled out a roll of money that had been recorded, pealed out two fifties and handed it to Veronica.  Once madam Veronica verbally acknowledged that sex was for sale, the hook was in and Santo just had to stall until the backup could make it up to the fifth floor.  Taking the money was just icing on the cake.

    So, is it you or do you have others here?  Do I get to pick who I want?  And, how about more than one of you?  I mean, you know, hey, I never did this before, help me out here.  Santo knew from experience that there would be more than just the one guy who greeted him, but he wanted to know how outnumbered he was in case trouble started, and he wanted the cops in the van to know what to expect.  Glancing around the room, Santo realized that the elevator and the fire exit were the only ways in or out.  The elevator was the type where the door slid open into a pocket in the wall, typical of all elevators but the door to the apartment itself opened inward like the front door to a house.  This feature gave a more home-like environment to the apartment but in its current opened position, the elevator could not be sent down.  Backup would not come from that direction.  A quick glance at the fire exit gave even more bad news, he noticed that it was welded shut.  He was on the fifth floor with a transvestite, or a transsexual, he wasn’t sure which, all by himself, with no desire to go through with what his host thought he was there for.  Without a weapon he couldn’t just declare everyone under arrest because they might have a weapon.  He didn’t think that was likely, but he had to expect every possibility.  Also he noticed that the only weapon he could use was the planting urn he passed as he entered, since the room was mostly devoid of furniture except for very large pieces.  Not even a table lamp to use as a club.

    Sure, handsome.  There are others here.  You can pick another.

    Santo cringed when he heard Veronica call him handsome.  What would Mom say, he thought? 

    Well, let’s see whatcha got, said Santo.

    Veronica turned to a doorway that was covered by a dark curtain.  He moved the curtain enough to whisper to whoever was behind to come out.  Two men entered the room, each dressed in drag, each dressed in what would probably look vexing on a well-shaped female but somewhat odd on them. Transvestites.  Holy shit, thought Santo. These guys weren’t just transvestites, they were transsexual men, two-thirds of the way to becoming a full-fledged broads.  I’ll bet the bastards in the van are laughing their asses off right now.  They knew all along what I was going to find here.  It’s too embarrassing for a Chinese man to go undercover in a fag prostitution ring, so they send in the nut from Queens.

    Santo kept talking to stall for time.  What’s your name gorgeous?

    The first in the lineup answered, I’m Devine.  ‘Of course you are,’ thought Santo.  Well how about you, and what’s your name, Santo asked as he pointed to the other?  Ashley, responded a tall, slender black man who was wearing a blond wig.  Santo did all he could to not shake his head.

    Well, where do we go?  Is there a room or something where we go, asked Santo?  Then he turned to Veronica and asked, still trying to stall, How much is this gonna to cost me?  Is the hundred a flat rate per person or do I get some kinda group discount.

    Hundred dollars each, answered Veronica.

    Santo figured that he wasted about four minutes so he had to slow this down a little while he figured out how he was going to get the elevator back down to the lobby.  Okay.  Let’s see, two people, you and Devine, so, that’s 200 bucks.  Santo again took out his roll of marked bills, pealed off two more fifties and attempted to give it to Devine.

    How about $150 for both of you?  Veronica reached out, grabbed the two fifties and put it into a small, attractive wooden jewelry box on the desk.  No group rates.  $100 each.

    Okay.  Can’t hurt for trying.  You got a bed back there or something?  Do I do you … or do you do me?  Do we all jump in bed together?  How does it work?

    Either way, said Veronica, who started to loosen the zipper on his gold dress.  Get undressed and let’s go into the bedroom and let nature take its course.

    Santo realized that Veronica was the Madam and as such probably didn’t do tricks but just ran the operation.  But he/she was willing to jump in bed with him and so he found this a little flattering in a weird sort of way.

    Santo took off his shoes and slowly placed them in the corner under a convenient clothes hook.  He tried to look like he was embarrassed in order to give his backup enough time to get to him, if they could get to the fifth floor.

    You know, I’m married and never did this before.  I never had a man suck my cock, but I’m willing to try.  You don’t have any cameras around here or anything, do you?  He stood up and gestured at that comment to waste some more precious seconds.  If so, I gotta know now because I can’t have anybody find out about this, especially my wife.  Santo wasn’t married but he found it convenient to invent a wife so as to waste some time.

    No cameras, just us, answered Veronica who let his dress drop to the floor and was now stripped to his tight fitting panties and well filled-out bra.  The one called Devine was already naked.  Holy shit, thought Santo, the queer is hung like a donkey.  And he’s got tits a burlesque queen would be proud of.  Those cock-suckers in the van knew this was really a transsexual prostitution operation.  These guys are halfway to real women. 

    This gave Santo subject matter to use to stall for more time.  So, when did you get your tits done?

    You like them?

    Yeah, nice job.  But I’ll admit it’s a little confusing.  You gonna have your cock chopped off or is this how you wanna be?

    We’ll get around to the rest in due time.  Do you have a problem with this?

    No.  I ain’t got no problem, it’s just different, that’s all.  Where the fuck is my backup, he thought.  It’s like, I don’t know who’s fuckin’ who, he added with a smile on his face.  He didn’t want to piss anybody off, just stall for time.  He saw Veronica smile so everything was still cool.

    Trying to stay normal, Santo shrugged his shoulders and started to remove his shirt.  Damn, he thought.  Too bad it wasn’t winter, I would have had more clothes to take off.  It’s fuckin’ 70 degrees outside.  Santo folded his shirt and placed it on the shelf above the clothes hook.  He figured he already wasted seven or eight minutes.  Time was standing still for him.  He watched the Devine-guy reach for some K-Y jelly from a shelf behind him and remove the top.  He had to keep talking.  What’s that, he asked him, knowing full well what that was for?

    Just something to make things move nicely, answered Veronica.  Santo looked at Veronica in his female underwear and still thought he had nice legs, but the bulge in his crotch was getting bigger, as were the hairs on the back of Santo’s neck.

    Who goes first? asked Santo, still looking for a way to stall.

    Doesn’t matter, answered Devine.  Why don’t we go into the bedroom.  There’s a king size bed there.

    Okay, said Santo who was now slowly removing his pants.  He dropped his pants on the floor and made it look like an accident.  Oops, he said.  My wife will kill me if I mess them up.  They were a Christmas gift from her last year.  Santo was sure they thought he was a big wuss.  But he didn’t care, in his mind he wasted another minute and a half.

    Veronica said, Stop talking and let’s fuck.

    His backup knew when Santo made the appointment an hour ago that the name of the company was Sashay Fabrics.  They realized the elevator wasn’t going to be the way up, so seeing the name on the lobby buzzer, they made it to the fifth floor of the fire stairwell and decided that Santo had enough time.  Then they found that they could not open the fire door so they started to hit it with a battering ram, not knowing it was welded shut.  Bam.  Bam.  Everybody in the room stopped still.  Veronica asked, What’s that.

    What’s what, said Santo, standing in the middle of the room in nothing but a pair of black briefs as if he didn’t hear anything.  Bam, Bam.

    Devine screamed, Somebody’s trying to break in. Bam. Bam.

    Ashley added, Somebody’s trying to rob us.

    It’s just my guys finally coming to save my ass, thought Santo.

    Are you sure it’s robbers, asked Veronica, who moved over to the large desk?  Bam. Bam.

    What else can it be, said Ashley?  Bam. Bam. 

    Veronica reached into the top drawer and pulled out a gun, a very big gun.  Then he picked up the telephone and called 911.  Hello, police?  Santo couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  He’s calling police emergency, with a gun in his hands.  How fuckin’ crazy it that?  We’re being robbed.  People are trying to break in my back door.  Then he gave the address of the apartment, dropped the phone on the desk and pointing the gun toward the elevator said, Let’s get out of here. Bam. Bam.

    As the strange group headed to the elevator Santo ran to the desk where Veronica dropped the phone, knowing that police emergency would stay on the line.  He picked up the phone, gave his undercover shield number and said, 1013, gun on the premises.  He put the phone back on the desk and went to the elevator.  1013 was code for a police officer in trouble.  The dispatcher located at Central Station in Brooklyn called the Emergency Service Unit in the area, New York City’s elite tactical force, and told them that a police officer was held captive.  In very few seconds sirens were wailing on the streets of New York City headed toward 43rd Street.  Bam. Bam.  The guys on the back stairway were still trying to break the door down.

    Veronica aimed the gun at Santo but was really just gesturing with it.  Let’s get out of here.  Bam. Bam.  The three almost-women ran to the elevator.  Devine hopped there since he was trying to pull up a pair of draw-string sweat pants.  Santo knew that if they went down the elevator with one of them brandishing a gun, they were signing their death warrant.  There would be rookie cops assigned to the lobby whose sole job was just to watch the elevator door.  If they saw someone with a gun, and if that person didn’t drop it immediately, they would light ‘em up!  Then it would become a job for the Medical Examiner, Internal Affairs and tonight’s TV News special alert.  As they clamored and hopped to the elevator, Santo grabbed the door that had been wide open into the apartment and held it making it impossible for the elevator to leave the fifth floor.  Bam. Bam.  ‘The fuckin’ door is welded shut you assholes,’ thought Santo.

    Veronica aimed the gun at Santo’s hand since this was the only part he could see from inside the elevator.  Let go of the door, he screamed.  His voice was getting deeper, losing its falsetto sound. 

    No, no.  There’s another one of you girls here.  She’s under the bed, Santo lied to stop