One Behind the Ear

By George Licata

You don’t wake up one day and become a Mafia hit man. It doesn’t happen overnight. This is a story about how a young football-loving American boy could end up a calculated killer, “strictly business.” It tells of a long and dangerous journey to becoming an assassin. A successful professional killer is made, not born. You get to experience his thoughts as he tries to justify the world of blood, sex, and death. You will live what he and the people of his world lived, from a young teen to an older wiser man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781684097968

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One Behind the Ear

George Licata

Copyright © 2017 George Licata

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-68409-795-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68409-796-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER ONE

We Already Know How This Will End

I could smell the blood before it was spilled. We had this conversation before, and once again it escalated to a full-blown argument. Threats were exchanged, and yes, he was twice my size, hence his name Tony Caboose. I hated this man, I loved this man, and I respected him in so many ways. This time it was different. The crew was present, a few made men and the Capo de Capo. Fifteen, maybe twenty, guys all crowded in a smoked-filled room.

They feel the heat between Tony and me. This is something that has been brewing for a long, long time. You can smell the testosterone in the room. A room full of drunken Italians ready for blood ready to gamble. The bets began to fly. These guys bet on everything. As I heard the betting in the background, I found myself saying crazy shit like I won’t have this argument again! You fuck! We finish it now! Looking back, this is crap that I didn’t need to say. I did anyway.

Caboose and I arrived to the social gathering one hour ago; we just finished a job together. We had chased down the last of a gang that did us bad. Caboose and I personally finished taking care of a long-festering sore. It took us over a year to remove the last of the infection. The gang we were after scattered across the globe to hide from us. It took some time, but we found each and every one of them. It was finally done, and we were ready to celebrate.

In fine Italian tradition we were arguing and drinking. We worked well together; my life depended on this guy and vice versa. Now we’re headed to the garage, and one of us is not walking out. I’m deciding if I want to cripple him or take him out. All the betters have their money on the Caboose except one. That’s Camillo, the Capo de Capo. He knows where I come from. He knows who I am. He chose me for this work. Camillo is taking all bets.

On my way to the garage, I stop, I pause, I appear to be hesitating, and this gets the bets doubling. These guys are in a frenzy, Camillo continues to take all wagers, and he gives me the look. I know that look. He just said finish it.

Caboose looks back at me. He thinks I’m getting ready to run scared. He tries to tower over me. This is his intimidation tactic. I’ve seen it many times before. It always works. Not this time. Caboose has the size. What he lacks is my quickness in movement and, most importantly, thought process. Caboose is mentally slow.

I’m gonna beat you to a fucking pulp His words are full of angry spit.

After you, little girl, I say. I let him get in front of me.

You’re fucking dead, he says, still spitting his words. He turns through the door and starts to go into the garage. As he passes by me, I grab the lamp on the table. I rip off the shade. I flick the lamp on and violently break the bulb at the top of his spine. Tony is muscular, so it wasn’t easy getting the wire electrodes deep into his spine. I knew that if I were to survive, I had to push hard into the spine before the electricity shorted out. I reached up and wrapped my left forearm around his throat, pulling him toward me. As I jammed my knee into the bottom small of his back to steady him, I could feel the electricity pulse through his body. I am pushing so hard I am straining. The electricity sparks down his spine. He starts to shake. The smell of burning flesh whiffs through the room. I know it’s working because he pees. I let up. His body drops to the concrete floor of the garage. The guys in the back of the room could hear the loud thump like a large sack of potatoes, dead weight. They were already counting out their cash to Camillo. Caboose is lying in his piss and going into convulsions.

The only sound in the room is the sound of the breaker popping, and I lose the electric juice. No problem, the heart in that large man on the floor is about to die. If I leave him to recover, he will more than likely be a vegetable, and that would be cruel. If he recovers, he will never forgive me, and I can’t have that. My back was to the crowd. Slowly, without giving notice, I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster. I placed the gun up my coat sleeve so it wouldn’t be seen.

I turned around to the stunned faces of twelve or fifteen dazed Italians, each trying to crowd the others to get a better look. I was looking for Gino and his brother Carmine. Caboose had taken them in when they had nowhere to go. They were his personal slaves. He was as close to a father figure as they had. They were loyal to only him. At first I didn’t see them in the crowd of gawking faces. I looked to the right perimeter. I saw Gino. Ten feet from me. I knew that Carmine would be on the left perimeter. I spotted him eight feet from me. They would get me into a cross fire.

Back then we all carried our pieces in shoulder holsters. We never got into occasions that required a quick draw. Except now. They expected me to reach into my coat to get my gun. They would be assured that one of them would kill me. I saw Gino begin to move his right hand upward. I let my gun drop into my hand. I took aim and hit Gino in the throat. He didn’t have a chance.

Some of the crowd fled back in the house. The rest hit the cold concrete floor. Carmine was just getting his hand on his gun. I hit him in the gut. The impact bent him over. He looked up at me and tried to continue pulling his gun from its holster. My next bullet entered his body from the back of his head. It followed his spine downward, blowing it to shreds as it tore through. I looked back to Gino. He was spiraled out on his ass in front of a wooden workbench. Bloody pieces of his throat were on top of the bench. Gino’s eyes were wide open as the blood gurgled from his neck. If he attempted to move, the gush got bigger. Gino knew he was slowly dying. It eventually bubbled down to a trickle. Gino’s was dead, but his eyes stayed wide open.

When it was all over, heads peeked slowly through the door. Men picked themselves off the garage floor. The ones living. I watched for sudden movements. I think we all felt this was finished. I put my gun back in the holster.

Caboose is down and done. Caboose’s boys were laid out in the garage, their last pints of blood draining down the metal floor drain. The living was stunned as they counted out large bills to Camillo. I looked at the Capo de Capo.

Fuck! Angelo! I should have known, what the fuck was I thinking, fuck! he says. All the while he works the room collecting his winnings—grinning from ear to ear, smoking that cigar, talking with that raspy voice. Gracias, it’s a pleasure to do business with you gentlemen.

What did ya want, what the fuck, what was I gonna do, I wasn’t gonna be the cocksucker on the floor, and now I need to finish this, this has to end, tonight! I yelled. My blood was still pumping hard.

Camillo hesitates. He finishes counting the cash, hundreds and some Cleveland’s. It was well over three hundred bills. He looked up at me.

You take care of this mess. And this place had better be fucking spotless. Get Sal. He heads to the front door. He turns back at me. I’m going home. And out the door he went.

I look at the men who were left at the party. Most were leaving quickly.

Five large for anyone that helps me get this fuck in his car trunk. I get three guys. Turns out he won’t fit in his car trunk, a big caddy, go figure, the big fuck, so we lay him out on the backseat. I sent one of the guys to get Sal. Sal had the cleanup crew. It’s what he did. I got in the car and headed out the long driveway with what was left of the Caboose. His heart was beating, barley. I think he knew what was happening. Sal can take care of the other two guys. I never liked either one of them. I owe this to Caboose. Every so often he makes an audible gurgle. As I reached the end of the drive, I see Camillo’s car parked down the street. I pulled up. We rolled our windows down.

What’s up? I said. He was counting money. He had some rolled bills, wrapped in a rubber band. He tossed it to me. Ten thousand, you earned it, Joey and Tino, the two made men, bet fifty grand each. Stupid fucks.

He looked at me, grinned, and tossed in another roll of bills. Give that to Sal. He cost more than you. Come by tomorrow at three. Hey, you did well, never lose your head, have a plan.

Sorry.

What the fuck you sorry about?

I know Caboose is big in your life, didn’t you adopt him in Italy? I sure as fuck know he won’t be easy to replace. He was fucking loyal to you like a goddamn oversized lapdog. Camillo looked at me for a few seconds.

You’re right about a fucking oversized dog. Ah shit! Call it what it is. You did what other guys wanted to do. The difference is you knew the outcome before it started. The others they hesitated. He who hesitates first, dies first. He went one way. I went the other.

I drove about two hours to a spot that Caboose and I used before. I thought it fitting. He showed me this spot. It was his favorite place to dispose bodies. It is the deepest swampland you ever want to see. And it’s in some trust fund baby’s name. He’s rich and either drunk or drugged up or both. The asshole doesn’t know he owns this piece of land. The lawyer that handles his affairs will keep it that way.

I try to make each job as simple as possible, and this was no exception. I could tell that Caboose was regaining his facilities. He wasn’t slobbering on himself as much now as he was earlier. He was still paralyzed. His eyes were getting clearer. Good, because I want him to know who won this argument. I looked him in the eye and said, You don’t look too good.

I rolled him over onto his stomach, his hands still bound. I pulled out my gun and attached the silencer. I put the barrel of the gun firmly behind his ear, and I pulled the trigger. About that time my man Vito rolled up. We shoved the car in the swamp. It went down quickly, and it was over. I handed a pile of bills to Vito, and we drove away mostly in silence. At some point I turned to Vito and said, Fuck, man! I’m going to miss that bastard! Vito laughed. So did I.

At home I drank scotch and smoked a joint waiting for sleep to come. At some point between a sip of scotch and tokes of pot, I asked myself, how the hell did I get here?

It started when I was six years old, but I was not aware of that fact when I was six. I had plenty of time to think because sleep is hard after a job. I usually get to sleep ten or twelve hours later. Once I digest all the information, I put the guilt to rest. It’s not hard to take a life. It’s living with it that needs dealing with. And for me, it’s business.

CHAPTER TWO

How Did I Get From Here to There

Let’s go backward in time? Growing up in a Sicilian American family, I knew about the Mafia. It was in my family, relatives. I knew my family benefited from it from time to time. We had a lot of great things. We needed a sofa and it mysteriously fell from a truck. Refrigerator stopped working—a new one fell from a truck. I grew up thinking that truck drivers were idiots. But like most first-generation Italian American families, my parents kept the Mafia behind closed doors. It was okay for them but not okay for us. Dad never gloated on it. And he never talked about it outside the family. This wasn’t unusual in my large family.

My uncle Mike, on the other hand, was your stereotypical family godfather. He spoke Italian. He gave a lot of orders to the rest of the family. And they mostly listened. He always had a lot of money and threw large feasts. WWII navy vet. A talented artist. On New Year’s Eve, Uncle Mike’s house was the place to be, booze and food endlessly. Adults party on one level of the house. Cousins and friends fourteen years and younger party in the basement. The older cousins were expected to watch out for the younger cousins.

We were allowed to drink. However, being too drunk was not an excuse if one of the younger cousins was to get hurt. Watch out for your cousins. That was the rule. The wrath of God was no match for the wrath of family. God can’t hit you; family can. Uncle Mike dabbled in many businesses that were all successes. He was very generous. Christmas was unbelievable. I loved him, I admired him, and I worshiped him. Uncle Mike had twenty-three nieces and thirty-six nephews. I was his godson, his first of many. Aunt Eddie, his wife, I was her godson, her first of many. They both had the honor of being asked to godparent many children; however, I was the only child that they godparented together. In an Italian family, this is an honor, and I knew it. My Christmas present was always the biggest.

When I was six, my uncle started taking me to what he called the Bankers home. It was not unusual for my family to be intertwined with my uncle’s family. If we weren’t at their house, they were at ours. We lived next to each other. It was also not unusual that my uncle could without any notice tell my parents that he is taking me to do business, the store, the hardware, wherever he was heading. We all were used to it. My cousins that I loved, my brothers that learned to get over it. It just became a thing.

I don’t remember the first time that I went to the Bankers house. I only remember going there many times. It was in the very rich, old, exclusive neighborhood. Large houses, large then and large now. Old brick, big open rooms. Houses out of TV and Look or Post magazines. I remember this because we did this for maybe six years.

After driving through the guard station, we drove to the house built from old stone and marble. Four stories, ivy vines growing at will, unfettered, covering the sides of the house. Tall old trees lined the driveway. We never went to the front with its oversized porch and the large double doors. Always the back entrance. After pulling up in the back drive we walked through an endless grape arbor. I can still smell the aroma of the concord grapes to this day.

Uncle Mike never knocked. We walked right in to the kitchen. We were expected. The routine was mostly the same. The Bankers wife watched me while Uncle Mike went off to some other part of the house. The kitchen was almost as large as the entire first floor of the house that I lived in. It had everything. I don’t recall the Bankers wife’s name. I remember calling her ma’am. Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. That kind of thing. And entertain me she did. We made cookies, candies, pasta. There was an endless supply of sausages, pepperoni, and cheeses. They had the first color TV that I ever saw. We stayed on average of two hours. I judged this on the TV shows I watched. I could have stayed longer.

When business was finished, we left the same way we came in, out the back door. Sometimes I meet the Banker. He would put dollar bills in my hand, say some Italian stuff, and laugh. He had a gruff voice. He was slightly younger than my uncle. I don’t remember the Bankers name. I knew that there was a child or two in the house because I played with their toys so many times I couldn’t count. However, I never met or saw them.

When we got home, I didn’t say anything. From the beginning going anyplace with my uncle, my instructions were, "Don’t tell anyone where we went or what we