Death Wish: The Southern Ladies Mafia Go for Broke

By Jack Sparacino

Well into middle age now, the ringleader herself of the Southern Ladies Mafia, Carla "String Bean" D'Andrea, guides her team of gorgeous and provocative renegades in one last stretch of treachery. Only after realizing the depths of their depravity does the team finally seek redemption. Reigniting one's soul for good rather than evil is a challenging climb for anyone. For Carla, it was her Mount Everest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798892210034

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1: Rat Holed

Chapter 2: Sunrise Somewhere

Chapter 3: Celebration

Chapter 4: Streetwise

Chapter 5: Plan to Win

Chapter 6: Float like a Butterfly

Chapter 7: Take Four

Chapter 8: Cops and Robbers

Chapter 9: Streetwise

Chapter 10: Storm Clouds

Chapter 11: Southbound

Chapter 12: Blue Skies

Chapter 13: Eat, Drink, and Be with Mary

Chapter 14: Chicago Bound

Chapter 15: Lady in Blue

Chapter 16: Troubleshooters

Chapter 17: Shake 'Em on Down

Chapter 18: Dancing with the Devil

Chapter 19: Redemption or Bust

About the Author

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Death Wish: The Southern Ladies Mafia Go for Broke

Jack Sparacino

Copyright © 2024 Jack Sparacino

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-89221-002-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89221-003-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

This is the fourth volume up in a series that has drawn increasing attention, hopefully for the right reasons. I first wrote a story about the Southern Ladies Mafia that we published in my regular newspaper column in South Carolina some years ago. Before long, I had a dozen such stories out and began to realize that to more fully develop the characters, it was necessary to break away from a general family audience.

The result was the onset and then the development of a group of renegade women who embarked upon a life of violent crime, essentially out of boredom and an unbridled need for adventure. I found it fascinating that while female prisoners in the United States constitute only about 10 percent of the total population, it has been growing over the past decades. Some of these women were sentenced due to relatively minor crimes, at least compared to some of the vicious thugs in their midst.

Even after the Southern Ladies Mafia team devolved to ever lower depths, I never gave up completely on their potential to turn their lives around for the betterment of society. This even well after their juggernaut turned into a cascading and hideously violent rolling train wreck.

All of us make mistakes in life, and all of us can always become better human beings. That is the message that I tried to convey in this novel. Don't give up hope. Never give up trying. Our better angels are always singing and inviting us to join them.

Chapter 1

Rat Holed

Joe was reminded, not for the first time, that for such a violent business, it was filled with regular guys… But it was also a business that was populated by an equal number of pigs. Vicious oafs whose primary talent was that they felt no more for their fellow man than they did for a fly sputtering on the windowsill at summer's end.

—Dennis Lehane, Live By Night (William Morrow, 2012)

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

—Will Rogers

Carla String Bean D'Andrea, leader of the now infamous Southern Ladies Mafia, woke up sweating at three o'clock in the morning. She had been sound asleep dreaming of warm beaches and caramel-brown bodies until a pair of rough hands began to fondle her breasts and rub between her legs. Hard. She had been fantasizing about freedom and getting back into action with her once-vaunted team when she awoke to those hands. They belonged to Janice Paulson, her cellmate, thirty-five years old, covered in tattoos, meaner than a rabid, hissing coyote.

Carla had fallen a long way in the past year, from high-flying Southern Mafia queen to prisoner. She was housed on the top floor of the main tower at Suffolk County House of Correction at 20 Bradston Street in Boston. The top three floors of the main tower were reserved for women. Everything below them was filled with men. Dirty, disgusting, foul-smelling fucking men, raping each other in the yard or their cells day and night. The weaker ones were treated like human chattel by those with bigger muscles and bigger cocks. If the little guys didn't submit, the menu did not look good. Get shanked or strangled, maybe have their balls cut off and jammed down their throats or, in some cases, even worse. Those stupid-ass bloated guards were never around and paying attention when you actually needed them.

Carla further awakened just enough to throw a karate punch into Janice's throat. Her eyes spewed fireworks as she struggled for breath. Carla put a choke hold on her and twisted her neck just hard enough to snap it. It sounded like she had broken a loaf of stale Italian bread. Janice collapsed on the cell floor and tried to rise, spitting blood. The back of her brain knew that she would never walk or speak again. Carla leaned over and asked what she was thinking. She croaked the words Help me or something like that.

Help you how, you stupid asswipe? Help you stand up? Fix your crooked neck? How about I just put you out of your misery right now and stand on your throat? Would that help?

Carla put her right foot on Janice's neck and leaned in. As she watched the gross piece of shit take her last breath, her inner attorney kicked into high gear. She knew she hadn't done herself any big favors by killing her cellmate. She figured her only chance to survive this incident was to claim some form of self-defense. If it could work in the Orlando Carsoni case, that fucking vigilante kid, it would work here. And she was a lot prettier that that loser twerp. The problem was, she was uninjured. Assaulted, yes, but not physically injured. At least not outwardly.

A month ago, she had traded a pack of cigarettes to Doris Jackson for a belt buckle, which she kept under her mattress. She pulled it out in the dark and felt the tip of the tongue. Sharp enough, she figured.

For a woman who traded on her looks every day of her life, it was a question of how deep to make the cuts. Deep enough to look like she had been hurt, but not deep enough to leave any permanent scarring. She dragged the tongue of the buckle over her left arm and shoulder, then her neck and stomach. It hurt her plenty, but she wasn't convinced it was enough, so she went over the same areas a second time. Hard enough to draw blood. The pain tore through her like a category 4 hurricane hitting her hometown, Charleston. She closed her eyes and felt tears running down her cheeks. In a perverse way it felt good, knowing that she now had a defense. She dropped the buckle onto the floor after wiping it and leaving Janice's prints on it, then collapsed onto her bed. Blood seeped into the mattress. It was warm and sticky and smelled like copper and the death of a human soul.

At five o'clock that morning, the guards made their rounds. Breakfast was at six o'clock, and heads had to be counted. No quality-of-life considerations, just how many inmates were still breathing; how many could make it to the cafeteria under their own steam; how many could choke down a few mouthfuls of cold powdered eggs, sticky oatmeal, and stale bread. Drink a cup of institutional coffee. No cream or even powdered coffee creamer, not even enough sugar to go around. Just cheap shit coffee worse than even Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' would have been heaven. Well, what do you expect in prison, Four Seasons cuisine?

How about Ruby Tuesday, Appleby's, or even IHOP slop? Nice try. Popeye's? Arby's? You must be dreaming. Fred's Come as you are snack house, well, maybe.

Suffolk County House of Correction was a standing joke in the surrounding community. Correct what, pray tell? Bad habits, terrible behavior, psychological disturbances? Keep dreaming. It was a fucking prison, plain and simple. The facility was built in 1990 at a cost of $115 million. It included thirty-two housing units and 674 cells.

It boasted that more than twenty thousand medical appointments occurred yearly and that over five thousand meals were served in its modern kitchen facilities, which roughly translated into no exposed lead pipes, massive squads of roaches, or big-ass rats. And, of course, indoor plumbing. At least that was how the inmates saw things, no matter what the PR pukes said. Fuck my ass, this is reality and it sucks. This is a fucking jail and don't try puttin' no lipstick on no fuckin' pig, get me?

Carla wasn't surprised when one of the ace guards, Brian Lisbon, noticed a pile of human excrement, his term, on the floor named Janice Paulson. Stuck to the floor in point of fact, her eyes rolled back under her lids. Carla thought that ole Janice actually looked better dead than she had in real life. She had to pinch herself to keep her sometimes hair-trigger mouth shut. Instead, she had rehearsed a few lines in her head in the hours before and let forth.

Gosh, Mr. Lisbon, it's just horrible what happened. She attacked me at about three this morning, hard, and I had to protect myself. You can see what she did to me with that belt buckle over there. Gouged me again and again. I screamed for her to stop, but she was possessed by some demon force. She was a monster, and I was never anything but nice to her. Even taught her a little bit about the law here and there, tried to make her understand the gravity of her crime. The homicide that landed her in here in the first place. Actually, the second rap as I recall. So what happens next, Mr. Lisbon?

Two floors down from Carla were all men. Actually all animals, with