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bedlamsbardSo, I've been thinking. This is, as most people know, probably a bad move, because sometimes things get overanalyzed, which is sometimes Not A Good Thing. Anyway, what I've been wondering is: Are the original characters in Omerta overpowering the canon characters? I mean, seriously, this is fanfic. It's not set in my own original universe, it's someone else's universe that I'm borrowing to play around in. And yet, in Omerta, a significant portion of the plot takes place out of the view of our canon characters. Somewhere around half the chapters are told from the POV of original characters who have very little, if any, base in canon, including Carmine d'Alessandro, Nick Bonasera, and Ace Aciello. The main plot isn't targetting the Crime Lab, it's targetting the Constantine and Pagliuca Families - more original characters. The Crime Lab just has the bad luck to get caught up in it. At this point, I'm seriously worried about whether or not I'm neglecting the canon characters. People come to fanfic not for the OCs, but for love of the canon product, and I can't help but wonder if I'm on the border between going way too far into my own universe and keeping within the bounds of canon. And it's stressing me out. So, um, I'd really like to hear your opinions. I'm also curious about where you guys think Omerta is going, based on the clues I've dropped so far.
*cough* Also, here's Omerta 13. With, ah, more original characters. Yay for Carmine?
Carmine leaned against the police car with his arms crossed, one eye on Val and Ace, the other on Stella Bonasera where she stood talking to Mac Taylor by the one remaining ambulance. Val and Ace were arguing fiercely, and it looked like Bonasera and Taylor were doing the same thing. Funny how these things worked out.
He was very much aware of the gun at the small of his back, concealed by the fall of his leather jacket, and the knives up his sleeves, as always. Useless vanity, Ace called them sometimes, and maybe he was right, but they were the one weapon Carmine had always been comfortable with. Knives don’t misfire, don’t run out of bullets, don’t hurt you from a hundred yards away with a laser scope. They were dependable, and understandable, and simple. All the maintenance they took was a sweep of cloth, rough or soft, to clean them of blood, and a few minutes with a whetstone. Hand to hand weapons, for certain, but when you got that close to another man you needed every advantage you had to kill. Carmine didn’t pull them in barfights, didn’t pull them unless he meant to use them or to make a point. Guns were toys in the right hands, but knives were an advantage and an asset and always would be. And no one could deny that they had definite flair, old-fashioned and impractical though they might be. They had history, and they kept the stain of blood on them no matter how you cleaned them. Carmine seldom regretted his kills, but he needed to be reminded of them, sometimes. And a gun couldn’t do that, not to him. Guns were too impersonal, and it was only the animals you put down from far away. Men you needed to look in the eye when you killed them, or when you gave them a reminder of what not to do. Knives left scars. Guns left bodies. And there was a very sure difference there that Carmine understood. Joey didn’t, Ace didn’t, Val probably didn’t, but Carmine did. And that was what mattered. And why he carried knives as well as a gun. Reminders, as well as self-defense. For him, and for others. He’d seen the fear in the Wren’s eyes when he pulled his knives – seen it and relished it – and known a gun would never evoke that kind of terror in someone who’d survived a gunfight. Carmine remembered, and the Wren remembered, and God and he alone knew who else among the Families did.
“What about Joey?” he asked when Val and Ace came to a break in their argument.
“He definitely didn’t kill Darin Pagliuca,” Ace snorted. “Seein’s how he’s not dead and all.”
“I know that,” Carmine snapped. “I was with him all evening, only the cops don’t believe me. Damned if I know why.”
“It’s probably the hair,” Ace said. “Redheads, ya’ know, you can never trust ‘em. Especially a redheaded Italian; you never know what’s in the gene pool.”
“This coming from a blonde Sicilian –”
“Stop it, you two,” Val said. “Will you ever lay off each other?”
Carmine considered this for maybe half a heartbeat. “No,” he said. “But Joey –”
“I’ll talk with Detective Taylor,” Val said. “He didn’t do it, I’m sure of that, at least. Anything else that’s happened in the past week –” He let the words hang in the air.
Ace finished the sentence for him. “Nobody’s got a fuckin’ clue what’s goin’ on,” he said. “I’m not even sure the Pagliucas know. The only thing I know for sure is the Patrisos are behind it, and there’s no way to prove it.”
“Whackjob’s –”
“An independent contractor, and everyone who’s anyone knows that. It means that he’ll work for the highest bidder, and he’s a dumb fucker that oughta have been put down a decade ago. I can’t imagine why no one ever bothered.”
“Probably because he’s another one of Fat Freddy’s by-blows,” Carmine snapped. “Guy’s gotta be the only don in history that could field an entire family outta his pants, no joke. Half the family’s made up of his kids or grandkids, I swear to God. And the other half’s made up of the brothers and fathers and other male relatives of the women he’s slept with.”
“He swears to God,” Ace said to no one in particular. “Oooh, I’m impressed.”
“Shut up, Aciello.”
“Make me, d’Alessandro.”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Val said again. “I swear, I have no idea why I put up with you –”
“Neither does Astra Pagliuca,” Ace said. “Only with you, not me and Ace. She really doesn’t like you, you know that?”
“What else is new?” Val sighed. “None of the Families like Constantine. Liking me is a little too much to ask for a couple hundred psychopaths that have watched The Godfather one too many times.”
“Look who’s talkin’,” Carmine said.
Val gave him an icy brown-eyed glare. “It’s a classic, and it has its points. On the other hand, I live the life, I don’t need to see the Hollywood version.”
“Joey watches The Sopranos,” Carmine pointed out.
“Joey also watches American Idol and insists it’s high art and deserves an Emmy,” Val pointed out. “His views are hardly Academy material.”
“Joey makes a habit out of throwing things at the television,” Ace said. “There was that one time when the first thing that came to hand were a pair of your knives –”
Carmine glared. “Yeah. He used that as an excuse to buy a plasma screen TV. You know how long it takes to pick glass outta carpet?”
“I wouldn’t know, I had business in Philly the next day –”
“Ha. Business, you say, you just wanted to go see if you could get Navidad Borges to turn on Ralph Anastasia.”
“Okay, so that was a dumb decision. I didn’t know he was fucking the woman –”
“Come on, Ace, you should have known it was Navidad you wanted to look at, it was Martin. The kid turned his dad over to the Rossi-Prete in a heartbeat because Ralphie was cheating on his mother with a fuckin’ Puerto Rican. Christ knows I woulda been pissed –”
Val cleared his throat. “That,” he said, “is old news and hardly has anything to do with what’s going on today.”
Ace rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on, Val,” he said. “Swear to God, I don’t got a clue. All I know is that Darin Pagliuca’s alive, and that Patriso set this job at least up to try and frame us. I heard a couple of soldiers talkin’ about it, right before I shot ‘em, so they ain’t really up to testifying in court or in front of the Commission.”
“What about the two that were taken alive?”
“NYPD already hauled ‘em off before you arrived,” Ace said. “Trust me, only time we’ll ever see them again’s in court, now that NYPD’s got their hands on ‘em.”
Carmine shook his head, raised a hand to run it through his hair and met with only the short fluff of his buzzcut and the thick knot of scar tissue there. “Christ,” he muttered, and stuffed his hand back in his pocket. “What the hell’s Patriso trying to pull with the Pagliuca?” he demanded, louder. “I mean, that’s pretty much beyond stupid. They’re the most powerful family in New York – and Nicky Pagliuca’s head of the Commission, so it’s the equivalent of walking suicide. Especially since they left Astra alive.”
“They were about to kill her,” Ace snapped. “Whackjob had a cleaver in one hand and a knife in the other –”
“You’d think Fat Freddy would be smart enough to hire someone other than Whackjob Cestra if he wanted a job done clean and quick,” Val said. “I mean, it’s common knowledge that I don’t hire hits done, but even if I did, two bullets in the back of the head is enough to get it done. I don’t hold with torture, and the Commission knows that. I haven’t gotten sloppy in my old age –”
Carmine grinned at the outraged tone in his voice. Constantine he might be, but Val sometimes took other people’s views of him too seriously – which, being head of the most despised family in the city, didn’t serve him particularly well. “Fat Freddy’s gone off his rocker,” he said. “That’s common knowledge. I’ve just been waiting to see how long it’ll be before the Commission kicks him off his throne.”
“That means Big Sammy Marione will probably become boss,” Ace snapped. “And everyone except Fat Freddy knows he’s in Blue Eyes’ pocket. Sammy might be boss, but Blue Eyes’ll definitely be underboss. And he’ll be the power behind the throne, so to speak.”
“Carmine Gallo’s consigliere now –”
“And he’ll stay consigliere. Swear to God, Carmine, I got spies all across the Families, I know what I’m talkin’ about here.”
“Oooh,” Carmine said, and grinned. “He swears to God.”
Val put his head in his hands, saying in despair, “You two. You’ll never quit, will you?”
“Chances are, no,” Carmine said. “Christ, Ace, Astra Pagliuca. I can’t believe you never told me that. Astra fucking Pagliuca. The capo di tutti fucking capi’s daughter. How the hell did you do that?”
Ace shrugged, but there was a pleased little smile hovering around the edges of his mouth, like he couldn’t quite believe it himself and was definitely proud of himself for doing what Carmine would have sworn an hour ago was impossible. “She wanted a little adventure, I guess,” he said, preening a little. “It’s not like she ever told me anything that would really harm Pagliuca, but –”
“Christ,” Carmine said again. “So that’s how you’ve known all that crap about the higher-ups in the Families. I still can’t believe it. Astra Pagliuca. Joey’s gonna fucking kill you when he finds out.” He grinned. “He owes me a hundred bucks,” he added.
“What?”
“We had a bet goin’. Which family you had had the highest-rankin’ informant. He said the Dellacroce, I said Pagliuca. And he owes me money now.”
“You never told me that,” Ace said accusingly. “Jeez, if I’d known you stood to make money off’a my spies…I woulda worked harder at gettin’ someone in with the Dellacroce.”
“I can’t believe you’re gambling on Ace’s agents,” Val said, smiling.
Carmine grinned at him. “You should try it sometime, Val,” he said. “It’s pretty fun. Hey, we never figured out if you had someone in with the Dell’ferrare or not.”
“The new Boston family?” Ace said, raising his eyebrows. “There’s fewer people in the Dell’ferrare than there are with us, and that’s sayin’ something. Jimmy Dell’ferrare knows all’a ‘em, too, and they’re dead loyal to him, so that’s pretty much a no-go. I got a couple periphery guys, but no one inner circle, and no one made. You might like Jimmy, Val. He’s young, but he’s smart and he’s got a clue and it pretty much looks like he’s got hold of Boston pretty firmly.”
“Crap,” Carmine said. “I owe Joey Rangers tickets. I hate the Rangers. I’ll ruin my rep as an Islanders fan forever soon as I show up at a game.”
“Ha,” Ace said, and sounded satisfied.
“Screw you, Aciello.”
Ace flipped him off. “Right back atcha, d’Alessandro.”
Carmine shot him the bird and Val made a small, depressed sound.
“Hey,” Carmine said, punching him lightly in the arm. “We’re still on your side, Val. Always will be, right? Not like d’Alessandro or Dellacroce’d take me back anyways.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Val said, and he smiled at Carmine, then at Ace behind him.
“Nice little happy family you guys got there,” Stella Bonasera said, strolling over with a stitched and bandaged Mac Taylor at her side.
Carmine gave the senior detective a long glare. “Nice look you got there, Detective Taylor,” he said, and saw Val’s mouth quirk in a scowl. They said he was the diplomatic one, but he’d never really figured out how exactly he’d gotten that reputation. Or who the mysterious “they” were. Probably the same they that were convinced the fall of the Rocchegiani Family was a cunning plot engineered by John Valachi, because hey, the guy really wanted to spend the rest of his life and a couple other lifetimes in prison, because the Lancione Family had put a hit out on him for framing Manny Caprio. This was obviously a big misjudgment, because (a) Manny Caprio had definitely been Lancione boss when he went to jail and was thus guilty of every crime that the prosecution had accused him of, (b) the Rocchegiani had never really given a fuck about the Lancione anyway and definitely wouldn’t have been afraid of them if they had had the guts to try and put a hit out on the capo di tutti capi, which was pretty much a death sentence in itself, and (c) John Valachi was too smart to think that serving a life sentence in Sing Sing would get him away from any hitmen the Lancione could hire, if they’d hired any, and he definitely hadn’t wanted his family to take a steep tumble downhill, because he still made money from everything they did, even in prison. Valachi had been conceited, but he’d been smart along with it, and he’d cared for his family almost as much as his own reputation, which was already shot to hell thanks to the newspapers. That, and Carmine had never been much of a fan of conspiracy theories, having had to live through the real thing everyday of his life.
“Mr. d’Alessandro,” Taylor said, lips thinning. “Mr. Aciello. Mr. Constantine.”
“You need something, or you just here to badger us?” Carmine demanded. He didn’t like Mac Taylor. At all. It probably had something to do with the way he’d snapped at Danny last night, and the total lack of any emotion except a kind of distant insulted outrage he showed.
Bonasera shot him a sharp, angry glare. “Shut up, pal. I know someone holding paper on your ass.”
“Bet you don’t,” Carmine said, stretching and hearing as much as feeling vertebrae pop. “I’ve never taken a fall.”
“Yeah, well, we can change that real fast.”
“Carmine,” Val snapped, and the same time Taylor said flatly, “Stella.”
“Sorry, Val,” Carmine said, not really meaning it and knowing that Val knew it.
“Mr. Aciello, we’d like to talk to you in private,” Taylor said. “And Mr. Constantine as well, but not at the moment.”
Ace stood up, rubbing the kinks out of his bad wrist, which had nerve damage he’d gotten five years ago when Dogface Calase had tried to take him with him to the grave. “I’m all yours,” he said. “Figuratively speaking. If you wanna haul me off to prison, now, that’s another story.”
Bonasera gave him a considering, unhappy look. “Not at the moment,” she said, and didn’t sound particularly happy about that fact.
“Just talk,” Taylor said, and spread his hands.
“Those,” Carmine said, “are famous last words.”
Also, there's an awesome article with Devin Grayson here, who I barely know of except for the fact she's evidently a Batman writer. I'm a Marvel girl, not a DC one, and my interest in DC only extends to the Bat-family, which I know very little about, but it's still a really really good article, especially her answer to the good day/bad day question.
*cough* Also, here's Omerta 13. With, ah, more original characters. Yay for Carmine?
Carmine leaned against the police car with his arms crossed, one eye on Val and Ace, the other on Stella Bonasera where she stood talking to Mac Taylor by the one remaining ambulance. Val and Ace were arguing fiercely, and it looked like Bonasera and Taylor were doing the same thing. Funny how these things worked out.
He was very much aware of the gun at the small of his back, concealed by the fall of his leather jacket, and the knives up his sleeves, as always. Useless vanity, Ace called them sometimes, and maybe he was right, but they were the one weapon Carmine had always been comfortable with. Knives don’t misfire, don’t run out of bullets, don’t hurt you from a hundred yards away with a laser scope. They were dependable, and understandable, and simple. All the maintenance they took was a sweep of cloth, rough or soft, to clean them of blood, and a few minutes with a whetstone. Hand to hand weapons, for certain, but when you got that close to another man you needed every advantage you had to kill. Carmine didn’t pull them in barfights, didn’t pull them unless he meant to use them or to make a point. Guns were toys in the right hands, but knives were an advantage and an asset and always would be. And no one could deny that they had definite flair, old-fashioned and impractical though they might be. They had history, and they kept the stain of blood on them no matter how you cleaned them. Carmine seldom regretted his kills, but he needed to be reminded of them, sometimes. And a gun couldn’t do that, not to him. Guns were too impersonal, and it was only the animals you put down from far away. Men you needed to look in the eye when you killed them, or when you gave them a reminder of what not to do. Knives left scars. Guns left bodies. And there was a very sure difference there that Carmine understood. Joey didn’t, Ace didn’t, Val probably didn’t, but Carmine did. And that was what mattered. And why he carried knives as well as a gun. Reminders, as well as self-defense. For him, and for others. He’d seen the fear in the Wren’s eyes when he pulled his knives – seen it and relished it – and known a gun would never evoke that kind of terror in someone who’d survived a gunfight. Carmine remembered, and the Wren remembered, and God and he alone knew who else among the Families did.
“What about Joey?” he asked when Val and Ace came to a break in their argument.
“He definitely didn’t kill Darin Pagliuca,” Ace snorted. “Seein’s how he’s not dead and all.”
“I know that,” Carmine snapped. “I was with him all evening, only the cops don’t believe me. Damned if I know why.”
“It’s probably the hair,” Ace said. “Redheads, ya’ know, you can never trust ‘em. Especially a redheaded Italian; you never know what’s in the gene pool.”
“This coming from a blonde Sicilian –”
“Stop it, you two,” Val said. “Will you ever lay off each other?”
Carmine considered this for maybe half a heartbeat. “No,” he said. “But Joey –”
“I’ll talk with Detective Taylor,” Val said. “He didn’t do it, I’m sure of that, at least. Anything else that’s happened in the past week –” He let the words hang in the air.
Ace finished the sentence for him. “Nobody’s got a fuckin’ clue what’s goin’ on,” he said. “I’m not even sure the Pagliucas know. The only thing I know for sure is the Patrisos are behind it, and there’s no way to prove it.”
“Whackjob’s –”
“An independent contractor, and everyone who’s anyone knows that. It means that he’ll work for the highest bidder, and he’s a dumb fucker that oughta have been put down a decade ago. I can’t imagine why no one ever bothered.”
“Probably because he’s another one of Fat Freddy’s by-blows,” Carmine snapped. “Guy’s gotta be the only don in history that could field an entire family outta his pants, no joke. Half the family’s made up of his kids or grandkids, I swear to God. And the other half’s made up of the brothers and fathers and other male relatives of the women he’s slept with.”
“He swears to God,” Ace said to no one in particular. “Oooh, I’m impressed.”
“Shut up, Aciello.”
“Make me, d’Alessandro.”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Val said again. “I swear, I have no idea why I put up with you –”
“Neither does Astra Pagliuca,” Ace said. “Only with you, not me and Ace. She really doesn’t like you, you know that?”
“What else is new?” Val sighed. “None of the Families like Constantine. Liking me is a little too much to ask for a couple hundred psychopaths that have watched The Godfather one too many times.”
“Look who’s talkin’,” Carmine said.
Val gave him an icy brown-eyed glare. “It’s a classic, and it has its points. On the other hand, I live the life, I don’t need to see the Hollywood version.”
“Joey watches The Sopranos,” Carmine pointed out.
“Joey also watches American Idol and insists it’s high art and deserves an Emmy,” Val pointed out. “His views are hardly Academy material.”
“Joey makes a habit out of throwing things at the television,” Ace said. “There was that one time when the first thing that came to hand were a pair of your knives –”
Carmine glared. “Yeah. He used that as an excuse to buy a plasma screen TV. You know how long it takes to pick glass outta carpet?”
“I wouldn’t know, I had business in Philly the next day –”
“Ha. Business, you say, you just wanted to go see if you could get Navidad Borges to turn on Ralph Anastasia.”
“Okay, so that was a dumb decision. I didn’t know he was fucking the woman –”
“Come on, Ace, you should have known it was Navidad you wanted to look at, it was Martin. The kid turned his dad over to the Rossi-Prete in a heartbeat because Ralphie was cheating on his mother with a fuckin’ Puerto Rican. Christ knows I woulda been pissed –”
Val cleared his throat. “That,” he said, “is old news and hardly has anything to do with what’s going on today.”
Ace rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on, Val,” he said. “Swear to God, I don’t got a clue. All I know is that Darin Pagliuca’s alive, and that Patriso set this job at least up to try and frame us. I heard a couple of soldiers talkin’ about it, right before I shot ‘em, so they ain’t really up to testifying in court or in front of the Commission.”
“What about the two that were taken alive?”
“NYPD already hauled ‘em off before you arrived,” Ace said. “Trust me, only time we’ll ever see them again’s in court, now that NYPD’s got their hands on ‘em.”
Carmine shook his head, raised a hand to run it through his hair and met with only the short fluff of his buzzcut and the thick knot of scar tissue there. “Christ,” he muttered, and stuffed his hand back in his pocket. “What the hell’s Patriso trying to pull with the Pagliuca?” he demanded, louder. “I mean, that’s pretty much beyond stupid. They’re the most powerful family in New York – and Nicky Pagliuca’s head of the Commission, so it’s the equivalent of walking suicide. Especially since they left Astra alive.”
“They were about to kill her,” Ace snapped. “Whackjob had a cleaver in one hand and a knife in the other –”
“You’d think Fat Freddy would be smart enough to hire someone other than Whackjob Cestra if he wanted a job done clean and quick,” Val said. “I mean, it’s common knowledge that I don’t hire hits done, but even if I did, two bullets in the back of the head is enough to get it done. I don’t hold with torture, and the Commission knows that. I haven’t gotten sloppy in my old age –”
Carmine grinned at the outraged tone in his voice. Constantine he might be, but Val sometimes took other people’s views of him too seriously – which, being head of the most despised family in the city, didn’t serve him particularly well. “Fat Freddy’s gone off his rocker,” he said. “That’s common knowledge. I’ve just been waiting to see how long it’ll be before the Commission kicks him off his throne.”
“That means Big Sammy Marione will probably become boss,” Ace snapped. “And everyone except Fat Freddy knows he’s in Blue Eyes’ pocket. Sammy might be boss, but Blue Eyes’ll definitely be underboss. And he’ll be the power behind the throne, so to speak.”
“Carmine Gallo’s consigliere now –”
“And he’ll stay consigliere. Swear to God, Carmine, I got spies all across the Families, I know what I’m talkin’ about here.”
“Oooh,” Carmine said, and grinned. “He swears to God.”
Val put his head in his hands, saying in despair, “You two. You’ll never quit, will you?”
“Chances are, no,” Carmine said. “Christ, Ace, Astra Pagliuca. I can’t believe you never told me that. Astra fucking Pagliuca. The capo di tutti fucking capi’s daughter. How the hell did you do that?”
Ace shrugged, but there was a pleased little smile hovering around the edges of his mouth, like he couldn’t quite believe it himself and was definitely proud of himself for doing what Carmine would have sworn an hour ago was impossible. “She wanted a little adventure, I guess,” he said, preening a little. “It’s not like she ever told me anything that would really harm Pagliuca, but –”
“Christ,” Carmine said again. “So that’s how you’ve known all that crap about the higher-ups in the Families. I still can’t believe it. Astra Pagliuca. Joey’s gonna fucking kill you when he finds out.” He grinned. “He owes me a hundred bucks,” he added.
“What?”
“We had a bet goin’. Which family you had had the highest-rankin’ informant. He said the Dellacroce, I said Pagliuca. And he owes me money now.”
“You never told me that,” Ace said accusingly. “Jeez, if I’d known you stood to make money off’a my spies…I woulda worked harder at gettin’ someone in with the Dellacroce.”
“I can’t believe you’re gambling on Ace’s agents,” Val said, smiling.
Carmine grinned at him. “You should try it sometime, Val,” he said. “It’s pretty fun. Hey, we never figured out if you had someone in with the Dell’ferrare or not.”
“The new Boston family?” Ace said, raising his eyebrows. “There’s fewer people in the Dell’ferrare than there are with us, and that’s sayin’ something. Jimmy Dell’ferrare knows all’a ‘em, too, and they’re dead loyal to him, so that’s pretty much a no-go. I got a couple periphery guys, but no one inner circle, and no one made. You might like Jimmy, Val. He’s young, but he’s smart and he’s got a clue and it pretty much looks like he’s got hold of Boston pretty firmly.”
“Crap,” Carmine said. “I owe Joey Rangers tickets. I hate the Rangers. I’ll ruin my rep as an Islanders fan forever soon as I show up at a game.”
“Ha,” Ace said, and sounded satisfied.
“Screw you, Aciello.”
Ace flipped him off. “Right back atcha, d’Alessandro.”
Carmine shot him the bird and Val made a small, depressed sound.
“Hey,” Carmine said, punching him lightly in the arm. “We’re still on your side, Val. Always will be, right? Not like d’Alessandro or Dellacroce’d take me back anyways.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Val said, and he smiled at Carmine, then at Ace behind him.
“Nice little happy family you guys got there,” Stella Bonasera said, strolling over with a stitched and bandaged Mac Taylor at her side.
Carmine gave the senior detective a long glare. “Nice look you got there, Detective Taylor,” he said, and saw Val’s mouth quirk in a scowl. They said he was the diplomatic one, but he’d never really figured out how exactly he’d gotten that reputation. Or who the mysterious “they” were. Probably the same they that were convinced the fall of the Rocchegiani Family was a cunning plot engineered by John Valachi, because hey, the guy really wanted to spend the rest of his life and a couple other lifetimes in prison, because the Lancione Family had put a hit out on him for framing Manny Caprio. This was obviously a big misjudgment, because (a) Manny Caprio had definitely been Lancione boss when he went to jail and was thus guilty of every crime that the prosecution had accused him of, (b) the Rocchegiani had never really given a fuck about the Lancione anyway and definitely wouldn’t have been afraid of them if they had had the guts to try and put a hit out on the capo di tutti capi, which was pretty much a death sentence in itself, and (c) John Valachi was too smart to think that serving a life sentence in Sing Sing would get him away from any hitmen the Lancione could hire, if they’d hired any, and he definitely hadn’t wanted his family to take a steep tumble downhill, because he still made money from everything they did, even in prison. Valachi had been conceited, but he’d been smart along with it, and he’d cared for his family almost as much as his own reputation, which was already shot to hell thanks to the newspapers. That, and Carmine had never been much of a fan of conspiracy theories, having had to live through the real thing everyday of his life.
“Mr. d’Alessandro,” Taylor said, lips thinning. “Mr. Aciello. Mr. Constantine.”
“You need something, or you just here to badger us?” Carmine demanded. He didn’t like Mac Taylor. At all. It probably had something to do with the way he’d snapped at Danny last night, and the total lack of any emotion except a kind of distant insulted outrage he showed.
Bonasera shot him a sharp, angry glare. “Shut up, pal. I know someone holding paper on your ass.”
“Bet you don’t,” Carmine said, stretching and hearing as much as feeling vertebrae pop. “I’ve never taken a fall.”
“Yeah, well, we can change that real fast.”
“Carmine,” Val snapped, and the same time Taylor said flatly, “Stella.”
“Sorry, Val,” Carmine said, not really meaning it and knowing that Val knew it.
“Mr. Aciello, we’d like to talk to you in private,” Taylor said. “And Mr. Constantine as well, but not at the moment.”
Ace stood up, rubbing the kinks out of his bad wrist, which had nerve damage he’d gotten five years ago when Dogface Calase had tried to take him with him to the grave. “I’m all yours,” he said. “Figuratively speaking. If you wanna haul me off to prison, now, that’s another story.”
Bonasera gave him a considering, unhappy look. “Not at the moment,” she said, and didn’t sound particularly happy about that fact.
“Just talk,” Taylor said, and spread his hands.
“Those,” Carmine said, “are famous last words.”
Also, there's an awesome article with Devin Grayson here, who I barely know of except for the fact she's evidently a Batman writer. I'm a Marvel girl, not a DC one, and my interest in DC only extends to the Bat-family, which I know very little about, but it's still a really really good article, especially her answer to the good day/bad day question.