When the screaming from the trunk became too loud Pablo was the most pissed because it was spoiling his music. He ran around to the back of the car like a man possessed, banging on the trunk with his fists.

“Shut the fuck up, SHUT THE FUCK UP…”

I think the only thing that stopped him shooting into the trunk was the fact that it was Frank’s car and he was touchy about things like that and not because he’d seen one too many F.B.I. specials but because it was a Mustang.

I pushed Pablo away and told him to get some air. He wandered off to the side of the road and kicked a log.

“The Doors,” he moaned, “Kenny Fucking Rogers I could understand but The Doors!”

He was pissed all right. Turns out he’d been driving around all day with Frank looking for the guy. Frank liked his country and he must have heard The Gambler about a hundred times. Lesser men would have lost the will to live.

Frank opened the trunk and fixed the flashlight on the guy. He was still hog tied and his wrists were bloody where he’d been struggling against the rope.

When he saw us he stopped crying and started begging. It was the same old shit they always say.

“…I’ve got money… in my wallet…”

“Do we look like Niggers?”

I pressed my gun against his head and told him if he didn’t keep quiet I’d shoot up his ass ’till I blew his head off and we didn’t hear another peep from him ’til we got to the cabin.

Fat Tony was his name and he’d pissed the boss off by trying to deal out of The Cuba Lounge. Right on our own fucking doorstep. Unbelievable.

At the cabin Mickey Boosh and Marko were out on the porch standing guard. They were bored out of their tiny minds. Friday night in the sticks was not their idea of a good time. If we’d have been a legit corporation in today’s candy assed culture I’m sure they could have sued for ‘meniality’ or something.

The boss came out in a big towelling robe and we hauled Fat Tony out and dumped him on the ground. I don’t know if you ever saw any photographs of De Silva from those days. He was real menacing, even in a dressing gown, and when he stood there in the moonlight with that insane grin plasted all over his face Fat Tony just wet himself and started blubbing. The boss had that effect on people; he looked evil, with his shaved head and that shark like smile. He came to his decision quickly and wasn’t going to bother talking to a jelly all fucking night.

Tossing a cigarette away he turned to Pablo and said: “Shoot him in the head.”

Pablo needed no further invitation and before any of us could blink he put a bullet through his temple and the guy’s head exploded like jam pie onto the back of Frank’s car.

“Shit,” said Frank looking at the mess. Pablo smirked.

“Good job,” said the boss strolling back to the cabin.

I went to ask Carlos where to dump the body. He was playing cards and as usual he was taking a beating. I liked Carlos, he was the boss’s right hand and he was from our neighbourhood. Outside he couldn’t believe we’d killed someone so close to the boss.

“So who the fuck is this anyway?” he asked.

“Fat Tony,” I said, “you know the guy from The Cuba.”

“That’s not Fat Tony. He’d never be seen dead in such a cheap suit.”

“Sure it is, the boss just came out and talked to him,” I said.

“Listen,” said Carlos seriously, “The boss has never even seen him.”

Frank bent down over the body and fished the wallet out of the guy’s jacket. There was about ten bucks and a membership to a gym. It never ceased to amaze me with these fat guys, you never caught them with memberships to ‘The Lard House’ or ‘The Greasy Cake Club’. It turned out his name was Anthony Coen. “Sure, Fat Tony, Tony Coen,” I said hopefully.

Pablo started laughing.

I hadn’t been there when the guys had picked him up. They’d been driving around all day looking for him, slowly pissing each other off and listening to Kenny Rogers when Pablo had jumped from the car and ran down a side street. According to Frank he came back five minutes later dragging the guy by his pony tail. They gave him a bit of a work over and tossed him in the trunk. Then they picked me up.

It turned out Frank didn’t really know what Fat Tony looked like either.

“Why did you shoot him in the face?” asked Carlos.

Pablo shrugged, “The boss asked me to.”

We stood around wondering what to do. Sure, we all knew Fat Tony, he was the guy who was moving in on the Cuba Lounge. We had seen him around a hundred times, whether we took any notice of him was another matter. Could I pick him out in a crowd? No. Could Frank or Pablo come to that? Probably not. He was just this guy. To tell you the truth I knew a couple of Fat Tony’s and when I first heard about the Cuba thing I had to ask which one. It wasn’t Fat Tony who worked for the Chico brothers. It wasn’t Fat Tony from up town. It was Fat Tony from The Cuba, you know, the ‘other guy’. Pablo had probably just jumped the first fat guy who was walking down the road and answered to Tony. UN-FUCKING-LUCKY. But how did we know?

Pablo played it cool. “It sure looked like him,” he said with a big grin. “Maybe his good suits are at the cleaners.”

“I should take you to the fucking cleaners,” growled Carlos.

“He has a point,” I said reluctantly, “you know, if you’re just going off the suit…”

“It’s not just the suit, Tony likes gold, lots of it and he’s bigger and he’s definitely not Jewish.”

“How do you know he’s not Jewish?” asked Frank.

“Because I’ve met the guy and he’s fucking Irish that’s why I know he’s not fucking Jewish.”

“Well how do we know this guy is Jewish?” asked Pablo.

“Because he works at the synagogue you fuck-nut.”

“His name’s Coen,” I explained, “It’s a good bet.”

Pablo wasn’t having any of it. “What if it’s fake ID?” he said with a smile pulling at the corners of his eyes. “I’m no expert,” he continued, “but the name Coen on a couple of bits of plastic don’t mean he’s a Jew. I eat a lot of pasta and it don’t make me Italian.” He was right. We hadn’t a clue.

“If he’s Jewish then that means he must of had the chop,” I said.

Now you’ve got to remember that I was just a kid in those days and I hadn’t learnt yet to keep my mouth shut so when I said what I said I didn’t realise what I was suggesting.

“You are one sick fuck,” said Frank running his hands through his hair.

We stood in silence for what felt like eternity, wishing that I’d kept my big mouth shut. Eventually Carlos nodded at me, “OK kid, go on.”

I looked at Frank and Pablo and they just stared right back, their eyes broadcasting that there was no getting out of it and I’d only myself to blame.

I knelt down on the dirt and undid his belt. It was a struggle even though he’d cut extra holes to accommodate his bloated stomach. I had to sit on his legs and work both my hands around his huge ass and hook my fingers into his flesh to pull down his pants. His skin was clammy with sweat and it was like touching old soap. When I finally got them off a smell of piss and shit punched me in the face.

“Hey!” shouted Mickey Boosh from the porch, “I always knew you Puerto Ricans were Faggots!” He and Marko began laughing.  Friday night was starting to look up for them after all I guess.

Frank and Pablo told them to go fuck themselves and I stood up and gave them the finger.

“The guy hasn’t even got a dick,” said Carlos staring down at the dead guy’s crotch. His pubic hair was like seaweed and he must have had a dick the size of a peanut. “Hey Mickey, why don’t you come down here, we need a hand.”

As soon as Mickey heard the tone of Carlos’s voice he stopped laughing. He was Italian and none too smart, a complete muscle freak. If there’d been a Mr Mob competition he’d have organised it, the big dumb goof.

Carlos was always touchy about what anyone said about us; we were just beginning to get ahead in the organisation at that time and it wasn’t easy. The Italians still ruled as a matter of course and the Irish had their cop connections but what did we have? Our people still bought live fucking chickens for Christ sakes. It pissed him off. Nine times out of ten it was our guys who got their fingers burnt in the fires, it was our guys who got shot first. We were the canon fodder hench men, the first guys to die. That’s one thing the movies did get right.

Carlos had a word in his ear. “What’s that you saying? ” he said real menacing. “It sounded like you were calling us all queer.” Mickey shook his head and stared at the ground. Big dumb guys like Mickey were always like this, deep down none of them had any balls.

” I was just joking with the kid,” he said nervously.

“It didn’t sound like that Mickey, in fact it was pretty fucking insulting.”

“But…” he muttered staring at the ground, “he, uh, pulled the guys pants down…”

“So what, you thought this was like a sex situation?” asked Carlos. Mickey just shrugged. “That’s pretty fucked up Mickey. Is that what you think queers do, cluster around dead fat guys? Queers are just guys like you, they like looking at other men, showering with them. Kind of like what you do down the gym. Are you gay Mickey is that it?” Mickey shook his head. “Well seeing as you’re not gay,” continued Carlos, “you wont have a problem helping us out because we need to know if he’s got a foreskin so we can know if he’s a Jew. So I want you to get down there and find his dick.”

“I ain’t touching his dick,” he said scared.

Pablo pulled out his gun and made sure there were bullets in it, real obvious like, and he sank slowly to his knees. His face was a mixture of fear and disgust and when he found the guys piss wet maggot we made him pull it out so we could see it was circumcised. I don’t think any of us had seen a dick like it before, it’s not like we’re specialists or anything, but it was so small and warty. As he held it out Mickey started crying until tears were flowing down his cheeks.

“You fucking faggot,” said Pablo.

After that night things didn’t go right for him ever again.  He took it personal and it got to him when the guys brought it up for fun. ‘You whacked off any more dead guys Mickey?’ someone would always ask real innocent like. He was scarred for life. Even when it was forgotten he thought people were laughing at him behind his back. He started getting crazy, running around with any girl he could get his hands on, trying to prove to the world he wasn’t gay or something. Then one day he blew his brains out in his mother’s garage. Suicide.

We drove back to town and went straight to The Cuba Lounge. No-one had seen Fat Tony. It was bad news; he was still swanning around somewhere, a huge walking finger in the face of The Boss. We had to find him and bump him off before anything happened. Things could turn nasty for us real quick.

We spent all night driving round, talking to the wise guys, the pimps, the dealers, the whores, the junkies and the johns. Turns out everyone knew Fat Tony and no-one knew him at all. He was the bald guy, the short guy, the black guy with the hat, the Mexican with the limp, the fat queen with the feathers, he wore fur, he had an eye patch, he had a lisp, he was big Al’s bagman, he chewed so much tobacco he had black teeth, he dealt fake ID out this cafe, he sold H in another, either Fat Tony was the busiest crook Manhattan had ever seen or there were an army of Fat Tonys, all of them scum bags, some of them not even called Tony, some of them not even fat. By six the next morning we still hadn’t found him.

The next day word got out about what had happened and some young hoods who were looking to do better than us and impress the boss picked up this other Fat Tony, a small time shill from Coney, and killed him and drove the corpse around to the boss’s downtown club. Needless to say the boss wasn’t pleased. Then some other fat guy went missing from Brooklyn and still another one turned up headless in the park. It got ridiculous. Someone said our boss had a thing against fat guys, that he’d lost his mind. As if he wasn’t pissed enough already. They were all unconnected events but the press got hold of it as they’re liable to do in the summer when there’s no news and before we knew what had happened there was that big panic thing. Fat guys started going around in gangs. Restaurants started closing because their best customers were slimming. It was all whipped up by the media and when that sicko actually started killing fat guys it just got crazy because then they actually did have someone targeting porkers. It was mass hysteria. The killer had probably only started because of all the coverage in the first place. It’s a sick old world.

Somewhere in all the confusion, the Fat Tony from The Cuba disappeared. To his dying  day Pablo swore he’d whacked the right guy. Me, I don’t know what to think. Maybe he didn’t exist so much in the first place.

The boss never really trusted us again after that. Whenever we saw him he mentioned it, like we were just going to keep bringing him dead fat guys or something, like that’s all we did.