21st Century Gangster

Crime Fiction by Jack Bristow

“What were the rules of your business, Mr. DaVinci,” the Millennial YouTube host asked me, a benign smile permeating his face, a gleam in his turquoise-marble eyes.

I thought about the question long and hard.

Rules: We lived by them, we died by them.

In La Costa Nostra there used to be rules you had to abide by: Never get involved with a made member’s wife or daughter—doing so could result in two behind the ear. If the boss summons you, even if it’s 3 AM in the afternoon, you don’t grumble, you don’t bellyache, you discreetly slip inside your blazer without waking the wife and kids, and you tote your ass to the Ace of Spades club in downtown Mulberry street. Failure to do so in the life will result in getting clipped. Don’t get caught profiting off drugs. You get caught profiting you get garroted in backroom of some dingy restaurant in Staten Island. Breaking the code of secrecy, Omerta, would also very rapidly diminish your longevity.

“The rules of our business are simple, Dennis: You keep your mouth shut. You never break the rules. You deal in drugs and get caught, you’re worm-food. You never break the rules.”

Dennis Yates smiled broadly. He was happy and I understood why: He had a genuine Mafioso in his recording studio basement. The walls of this dingy little dungeon were filled with posters from popular Mafia movies: Goodfellas. Donnie Brasco. Casino. Beside the posters was a medium-sized bookshelf, filled with true-crime books penned by the likes of Nicholas Pileggi, George Anastasia and Peter Maas. The guy had known a lot about La Cosa Nostra, but all his information had been garnered secondhand: from books, podcasts and movies. Here, sitting in Yates parents’ basement beside Yates, was erstwhile hitman Danny DaVanci donning a pair of wraparound Prada sunglasses, a dark blue sharkskin jacket and a pair of slacks, spilling never-before-heard stories about a secret society that is secret no longer.

Had my old man still been among the living, he’d have clipped me himself for speaking to Yates. Years back, Cosa Nostra was something different entirely. You never, under any circumstances, divulged secrets of the life to interviewers. Doing so would have gotten you killed in a red-hot minute. But this thing of ours was strongest in my father’s generation, and his father’s generation. Now, thanks to unconstitutional laws like that punk Blakey’s RICO–The Racketeer and Corrupt Organization Act–our secret society has been dealt a tremendous blow. Guys started singing louder than Aretha Franklin and jumping ship. Our thing became a thing of the past. We didn’t just grow up, we evolved.

“We even stopped killing people,” I told Yates at one point during the interview.

Yates did a double-take. “The Mafia has stopped killing people?”

“The Italian-American Mafia has stopped killing people,” I retorted sharply.

“You hear that, ladies and gents? The Mafia no longer kills people,” Yates roars into his Goliath microphone. ” This is an exclusive bombshell. You heard it first on the Dennis Yates Mob News podcast.”

Yates and I are an unlikely pairing but despite our differences—or maybe because of them—we get along swimmingly. The kid wrote me a nice email after I got out of Lewisburg. No, I never dropped dimes. No, I never fingered anyone. I had kept my mouth shut for three years. Uncle Sam had incarcerated me on some bullshit charges- racketeering. Racketeering falls under a broad range of categories. If they want you, they get you. They don’t play fair. They didn’t even catch me on the big stuff, the stuff that would’ve sent me away indefinitely. They didn’t send me to college over the 10 murders, or shell companies I had secretly run in the Bahamas or the point shaving scheme with the college basketball players.

Naturally, I couldn’t divulge everything to Yates.

“So if you don’t murder people anymore, how do you keep them in line?”

“Ostracization,” I replied.

Yates looked perplexed. “Ostracization? Please explain, Danny.”

“Well, a lot of people in the life would rather be dead, than to be exiled from this Thing of Ours. Forget about it,” I flung my hands in the air for dramatic effect. “Think about it, Yates: One day you’re schmoozing with celebrities and starlets, donning 2,000 dollar Brioni and Sharkskin suits and the next day you’re flipping patties at Jersey Burger. You have been whacked figuratively. You have been cut off from the borgota.“

“Hear that, ladies and gents!” gushed Yates. “Danny DaVanci is spilling secrets of modern day La Costa Nostra. “Danny, we got a lot of questions for you in the YouTube chat,” Yates said, squinting his eyes at the computer screen.

“Shoot,” I said, nonplussed.

“Sally Bachman from Matoon, Illinois, asks: Danny why are you so handsome!”

“I just am.”

Yates smiles a toothy grin. “Yo Danny D: You were rumored to have executed Ronaldi
Bingman, Davanci family associate, with a shotgun to the stomach. Care to elaborate?” asks Jose Carlos from Mesa, Arizona.

“I have never been convicted of Jose’s shootgunning so, unfortunately, I am unable to comment on that publicly.”

Yates narrows his eyes at me. “You plead the fifth, Danny?”

“I plead the fifth,” I said, winking at Yates.

“We know you love your wife of 18 years Marianne, but we just want to know how many goomars you currently have on the side, Danny?” asks Martha H from Mars, Pennsylvania.

“I plead the fifth,” I said once again, all the while flashing five digits from my hand to Yates. Yates chuckled unabashedly.

“Well Danny DaVanci, it has been an honor having you on the show. You are a national treasure.”

I extended my hand. “Same to you, Yates. I love this here studio you have. I love what you’re doing by educating everyone on La Costa Nostra. Keep up the good work!”

We hugged and gave each other LCN-style, kisses on the cheek.

“This is the life,” I said to myself, as I got inside my new Tesla.

Next week I have a busy schedule: Monday and Tuesday Interviews with TMZ, YahooNews.com and The New York Times. Wednesday, I speak with an unnamed director about a major motion picture based on my life.

Turning a sharp left on Mulberry street, I looked outside the window, thinking about my father, and the old neighborhood. At one time my old man, Jerry DaVinci used to prowl these streets. A genuine man of respect. What would dad say to me if he were around today, doing all these interviews, spilling all LCN secrets? He’d ring my neck, that’s what he’d do. He might very well pump two in my head himself. “Danny, Danny,” he’d say to me, slapping my face. “This is a secret society, and you’re blowing the lid off it, you’re breaking omerta! You have changed.”

To which I would retort: “I haven’t changed one iota pop. It’s Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra has changed. It has evolved.”

Evolved—I love that word when it was applied to the life.

I, Danny DaVanci, have evolved.

I am a 21st Century gangster.

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Bio: Jack Bristow is a writer/actor from Lancaster, California. Bristow’s work can be read in Saturday Evening Post, Huffpost, the Orange County Register and elsewhere. Virtually all of Bristow’s fiction tilts in the crime category. In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction novels and books, Jack is also an Elvis impersonator on the celebrity greeting website Cameo and he does acting gigs and collaborates on screenplays in between the writing of his articles and short stories. Later this year you will be able to see JB as mobster Jimmy Mocos in Elias Perez’s revolutionary horror/science fiction film “Mocos.”

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