Detroit Noir

Flash Fiction by Drew Bufalini

Danny Bonbono parked on the Belle Isle beach in his Escalade nervously puffing a cigarette, rethinking for the trillionth time the wisdom of going behind his Family’s back. His father would either be proud or murderous. Launching a new Family on the backs of his enemies was ambitious. There wasn’t a bookie in town who would take that bet. The arctic wind roared across the Detroit River, blowing serpentine lines of dry snow across the icy tarmac dividing the two countries. Then,boing! boing! His ringtone.

The green light.

The Chinese were ready.

Danny idled onto the river ice. Two black SUVs tailed him stealthily.

Tonight was the night Danny envisioned his empire beginning. His Family would be clueless. He would operate only in the digital world, never poaching their meat and potato fortunes. Their way of organizing crime was killing them slowly. Danny would democratize the underworld. Everyone with ambition and half a brain had membership and leadership potential. Forget the Italians versus the Irish versus the Chaldeans business. Danny would become Boss of the melting pot mob America was promised.

The drive was treacherous. The river beneath his wheels churned up a sheet of ice and tossed it into the air. Caught just right by the current and the wind, the ice could stack three stories high in less than a minute, burying any smugglers out for a midnight spin. Danny and company reached Windsor in ten minutes of white-knuckle driving.

The shipping yard operated twenty-four hours a day and employed hundreds of people, most of whom dressed like it was Alaska. Danny’s crew fit right in. He oriented faster than a bloodhound, quickly zeroing in on the shipping container by understanding the labeling nomenclature. His boys were hot on his heels. He gave the door a quick rap, which was answered by three armed Asian men. Two young and cocky types along with a significantly older, in an elegant shark-skin suit, greeted them. He was missing an ear. Perhaps he was a consiglieri along to peep the first buy?

“Ni hao,” Danny said by way of Mandarin for Dummies.

“Buonasera,” Declared an older man missing his left ear.

“Let’s skip the niceties and get down to business” One of the younger hoodlums grunted nervously.

“Our cash for your microchips.”

The kid who turned out to be the boss chuckled derisively, “You mean my father’s microchips for your father’s currency, no?”

Danny dumped the contents of the duffels on the table, and they began counting.

Each bundle contained two-hundred $100 bills. One $100 bill in front, one in back. Worthless green paper in-between. There were two hundred bundles on the table. Then, one of the Asian hoodlums smelled the money by flipping it under his nose and inhaling. The bundle slipped from his hands and fell onto the floor. The counterfeit bills exploded into view. The damage was done. The jig was up. This would be a one-way trip across the ice, Danny thought.

Two Asian men with silenced AK-47s materialized from the back of the shipping container – each laser targeting an Italian. Danny caught a flash out of the corner of his eye and laughed maniacally. The Asians looked bewildered. They didn’t know the Danny’s plans.

Gunfire and pandemonium. Chaos. That’s what. Danny backed out of the shipping container just in time for Andrea, his bullseye-every-time cousin from Rome, to remove his human obstacles.

Silently, the microchips were loaded into the back of Danny’s SUV. His initial plan was to spread the score between the three getaway cars. But a funny feeling made him change his mind at the last minute. His Nonna told him never to keep all his eggs in one basket, but this was $2 million worth of eggs. He felt safest holding the entire basket.

The heist had taken only minutes, but night’s veil had already begun to lift. Danny drove slowly, avoiding dark patches and ice stacked high. Halfway across the river, he heard what sounded like a shotgun blast and felt the force of an earthquake rocked his Escalade. The shot echoed between Detroit and Windsor, through the canals and into the post-industrial-age neighborhoods, between the river and Lake St. Clare looming large to the north.

The ice opened perilously before Danny. He spun the wheel and managed to avoid getting swallowed in the black, icy maw and winding up a human popsicle. Thinking only of the end game, he accelerated slowly until his wheels tread US soil again. The ice had broken up completely and all evidence was either at the bottom or progressing toward the lake on an island of ice. He had lost four men and two Escalades. He was on his own – and glad he had the foresight to hang on to all the microchips.

When Danny caught his breath and attempted to return to his Escalade, the older Asian man missing his ear appeared out of nowhere and placed a revolver against his temple. “Might I borrow your car?”

This wasn’t a night for chances. This was his night. Danny spun around so quickly he didn’t bother aiming, but his dagger still found home in the throat of his stowaway and would-be assassin.

He gave the old man a salut from his flask and drove to the warehouse where the microchips would be integral in his dark net casino.

Then he called his father.

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Bio: Drew Bufalini is a disabled freelance writer who has been living off his pen for roughly two hundred years. Mostly as an advertising copywriter. He has imagined, and brought to life, campaigns for many well-known national brands (portfolio: http://www.drewbufalini.com). As a fiction author, he has published flash and short fictions in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Freedom Fiction Journal, Bristol Noir, Literary Heist, Gargoyle Magazine, Literary Yard, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Aoide Magazine, and Close to the Bone. Drew lives with his wife and crazy puppies outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Cover photo by:pexels

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