Chapter 1

Mike Mahoney was a city boy and that city was the Big Apple with its ancient old rotting bridges and the never-quite-cleaned properly streets. Still, he loved the place of his birth and thanked the stars that he was from New York City and not some other shitty place with shitty baseball teams like Boston or Chicago. He had been to Boston lots of times and even out to the Windy City once when his uncle Danny had been pushed off a roof for owing too much dough to the elusive “Dagos” that still ran most things under the surface.

Mike was not the kind of guy that even used the word “Mafia” either pro or con because he had too much street smart to make enemies, when he had no reason to take a phony stand like one of those federal pricks with their lying lips and smiling faces. He was not the patriotic type either except on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day and he harbored the thought that all of those dopes in uniform pulling triggers like robots were dumber than dog poo for signing on the dotted line. For Christ Sakes, he had even thanked the pair of dark-skinned organization soldiers with the hundred dollar white-rose cross arrangement that simply said, “R.I.P.”. He didn’t really have any personal animosity to the unsmiling duo because they were merely doing their duty and just declaring it was strictly “business” and nothing personal was involved. It didn’t take a genius to see that his uncle’s people were none too happy about the recent “accident” and they were just chomping at the bit to bite some ass. It was a good thing that he was out there with his buddy, Vinnie G. to keep the lid on things.

Vinnie was one of those guys that never stopped smiling even when they were taking a shit, if you pardon the French. He wanted everyone to like him and that was hard to accomplish considering he seldom went anywhere without packing some serious heat in the event of unforeseen circumstances. Vinnie never really worried about trouble with the law because he was one of those lucky guys that had a guardian angel and impeccable connections inside the frigging Department of Justice down in D.C. Mike knew he wasn’t a stoolie, but the kind of juice he had was highly suspicious in certain quarters and better left unmentioned in this brief little story. He trusted him more than his own cousins who should all stay on the other side off the Hudson River and out of sight of the rest of the family until the day they died.

Mike saw that his aunt Rose was in her cups, but that was normal at an Irish funeral and things hadn’t changed in the slightest. She was born a Mahoney and married an Irish song and dance man visiting from Chicago to see the Broadway plays. His name was Patrick and everyone called him Paddy just like half the drunks down at the pub around the corner. There were lots of Paddy’s in my family and he had a hell of a time to keep them all straight in his mind. He looked over at her sitting close to the coffin, all in black, and still looking sexy as could be even with her mascara running and her head bobbing from a little too much spirits. For a skinny broad still in her thirties, she didn’t look half bad and that was a fact you could take to the bank and stick in a box with two keys. Mike remembered he was only eight years old on the day of her wedding and he had managed to look up her wedding dress when they were dressing her in the upstairs bedroom with all the mirrors. The sight of her lace-trimmed white bride’s panties caused him his first erection and he never forgot it.

Now she was sitting there with tears in her eyes and her legs crossed in the black silk dress saddened by the loss of a husband and no children to give her solace.

Mike made his obligatory condolences to Rose with Vinnie hovering silent at his elbow. She saw them and thanked them and then proceeded to ignore them much more interested in the steady flow of booze for all the guests.

“I am very sorry for your loss, Aunt Rose.”

She took a quick sip of her drink on her lap and smiled with that far-away look that made him think she wanted to be anyplace else but here at his uncle’s funeral.

“Thank you so much, little Mikey. You’re a good boy to come all the way out to see your auntie in her troubles.”

Mike made the hint of a grimace at the “little Mikey” because he thought he had lost that nickname a long time ago in the past.” He hated it because it made him feel like a small boy lost and with no chance to do adult things that made him a man in everyone else’s eyes.

He was glad to see Vinnie was on his “turned off” mode and that he was only watching and observing and not really listening to the silly things people at the funeral discussed.

The token Italian guests departed allowing one and all to breathe a sigh of relief because some of the Mahoney crowd was less than charmed by their presence and the sweet scent of violence hung dangerously low in the crowded room.

Mike reached out to steady Aunt Rose when she rose from her chair to move upstairs to the private quarters. He knew instinctively that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and needed the privacy of some quiet moments in her bedroom safe space. She leaned on him going up the stairs and he got the heat from her curved hip right on his muscular thigh and even up next to his groin and his waiting hard-on expectantly hoping that his aunt might want some consolation of a more physical kind.