Excerpt
“And this is where we first learned our trade, Charlie,” Fat Theo chuckled nostalgically as he pushed Charlie Gibbons reluctantly into the processing room of the Wharf Street Meat Packing Company. His custom made lambskin coat and gold rings told just how far he had come from those days. “We was just kids, eh Garth?”
     “We were at that,” Garth Moody replied.
      Surrounded by gray tiled windowless walls and damp chill air, Charlie’s eyes flickered between the hanging skinned carcasses to the stainless steel tables and power saws, slicers and cleavers. He shivered more with fear than cold. This wasn’t going to end well.
     “And now we own the joint,” Theo continued and took a couple of power jabs at a meathooked pig.  God bless America, am I right?”
     “Amen,” Garth agreed.
     These two minor league goombas had hacked and beat their way up from street thugs to barely legit businessmen all at the rocket speed of 40 years. They were both balding, gray slicked back hair, and faces creased with hard lines that betrayed what nasty lives they’d led. Fat Theo’s head poked out the top of his coat like a boil with a doorknob nose holding up thick rimmed glasses and a fleshy sneer that he passed off as a smile. Garth appeared more how you’d expect a mobster in a meat locker to look: last year’s off the rack suit under a worn brown trench coat and Popeye Doyle pork pie hat. Unshaved cheeks bracketed the rough goatee favored by so many men these days.
     Okay, Charlie thought, I lost my temper, sure. But fahchrissake why they gotta bring me here? Unlike the old men, Charlie was in his prime, largely unmarked by time, tall and well groomed. Good looking in a slick salesman sort of way. His ambition was to rise up the gangster food chain like Theo. Noble goals for small minds. Right then, however, he wasn’t sure if he’d survive the night with all the glistening toothy saws and sharp knives hanging on the walls. Casual as he could manage given the circs, he said, “Geez, Theo, I didn’t know you guys were packers. Did you start on the loading docks or work the line?”
     The two wiseguys laughed. A mighty joke.
     “We didn’t pack meat,” Theo told him, landing another jab on a dead cow. “We brought douchebags such as yourself here who needed a tune up when they didn’t cover their bets. Back when Jimmy C was just a bookie. Fun fact: Did you know, you can’t hear a thing with that door shut? And all the tools we ever needed are right here.”