Mob Ties

Over the past six months, Vinny the Shank had lived a very quiet and simple life as Frank Stratman. His routine was mundane and repetitive and very different than the fast paced life he’d come to adore in New Jersey, but he was grateful for it. Day in and day out Vinny, as Frank, would wake up, grab his newspaper from the front porch and fix himself a cup of coffee— black, no sugar and two unmeasured shakes of a powdered creamer. He’d then sip his coffee and read his paper by the early morning kitchen light before departing for work at the plant. From there, he headed home to retire. The store boy would have his groceries on the front porch by the time he arrived and he found himself excited about that. He’d learned to cook and on most nights he made a meatloaf while reading a book or watching a show on TV, though, he did avoid anything suspenseful or by Alfred Hitchcock. Minnesota living suited Vinny, or Frank, and though a part of him missed his friends from the city, he could see the beauty in the small town he now dwelt in and he treasured the tiny luxuries it afforded him.


I, however, live a life very opposite to my father’s. I enjoyed Jersey, so much so that I still speak to my friends back home. While he’s afraid to go anywhere except work, I spend my days making friends with the locals. Most nights, I go for pizza or burgers in the square with some of the kids from the local community college. I’m out of the house by dawn and home just before midnight. I hate Minnesota and the grocery boy and cable TV, but I love my father. And though this slower paced life has never suited me, I at least thought I’d get used to it eventually.

And then Wednesday happened.

It was an off day for the both of us. My boyfriend annoyed me the night before so I was home around 9. I was still irritated with him by the next morning, so slept in way past dawn. From my bed, I could hear Vinny, or Frank, coughing harshly and when the door still hadn’t opened and closed for him to collect the paper around 10am, I left my room to investigate.

“Vinny you alright?” I called from my doorway. His room was eerily silent, those strained coughs almost a distant memory.

“Yo, Vin!” I tried again. My father loved to laugh, so I figured, saying something comically would change his willingness to respond. Still, I got nothing from him.



“Dad?” I tried a third time. I only called him Dad when I was afraid something horrible had happened to him. He’d made it clear when I was 7 that I was never to call him Dad within earshot of another human being.

“It’s dangerous for both of us,” he’d said, “I could get killed and you could get kidnapped or you could get killed and I could get kidnapped… I’m not sure on the specifics, kid, but we just don’t want them things to happen, yeah?”

When he still hadn’t responded, I grabbed my Louisville from behind my door and headed to his room. Per the witness protection agreement, my Smith and Wesson had been left in police custody, but they said nothing about a bat. I slowly crept down the wood floored hallway to his room, my socks slightly sliding on the cold floor. The door was partially ajar—another unusual thing about the day. 

“Frank?” I whispered as I pushed the door open with my bat.

He groaned in response. Other than Vinny himself, the room was totally empty. My father laid in the bed with his left arm hanging off the side. His skin was a greenish color, his eyes were ladened with dark blue bags and the bags were embellished with a cream-colored crust. Drool escaped his mouth and began to neatly puddle on the floor. His body shook slightly as beads of sweat trickled down his forehead.

“You look awful,” I said pinching my nose to avoid the foul odor he omitted.

“Get… the… paper,” he groaned.

I rolled my eyes and headed towards the front door. It was just like my father to be sick when I was having a bad day.

But my father’s grotesque condition wouldn’t be the last strange thing that Wednesday produced. Right on the spot where Vinny’s paper normally sat, was a box, a package neatly wrapped in brown crepe paper with the letters “VS” written on the top in lazy black marker. I stared at it for a moment, pondering its existence while crouched down in the doorway of our brown brick home.

“It came from the sky!” My neighbor, who’d been staring at me for some time, finally yelled.

“The sky?” I yelled back.

“Yep! The sky!” He said, “Big black alien lookin’ thing put it there. I wouldn’t touch it.”

“Thanks Rick,” I said, finally deciding to bring it in the house. Making sure he could see me, I gently lifted the package and the newspaper it sat on and brought them both inside to the cold floor of my father’s room.

“Here’s your paper,” I said extending it up to him. He was in the exact position I had left him in, drool still puddling on the floor. He groaned as his fingers gripped the newspaper and slowly rolled to his back.

“What’s wrong with you? I asked.

“Dyin’” he said cavalierly, lifting the newspaper over his face so he could read it.

“Oh. Alright,” I said matching his tone, “I thought you said it wasn’t safe to order anything,”

“It’s… not,” he said breathing heavily as he flipped the page to the sports section.

“Well you got a package,” I said a bit annoyed, “It’s got your initials on it. I just don’t know why you get to order things, meanwhile I’ve missed several sales since we’ve been here.”

My father’s head slowly turned towards me and the package. He stared down at the box I carefully held cradled between my hands and knees on the floor before finally struggling to sit up.

“My initials?” He said a bit quicker, his already pale complexion growing lighter.

“Yeah…” I said showing him the box, “V.S.: Vinny the Shank,”

I paused, suddenly understanding what he caught immediately. Who would be sending a package with his mob nickname on it, unless they knew who he really was?

“Franny get away from that box!” My father coughed out, stumbling from his bed.

I dropped the package and backed to the corner of the room Vinny stood in.

“How did they find us?” I breathed out, my hands beginning to tremble.

In response, my father doubled over, coughing.

“Vin, you gotta get back in bed,” I said helping him sit on the edge of his mattress.

“And let them come in here and take you? Never.” He protested trying to stand. His body, however, refused, and all at once he weakly collapsed into the thick comforter, his legs still planted on the floor.

“I’m a big girl. I can handle myself,” I said struggling to lift his oversized legs back onto the mattress, “Besides, we don’t even know who’s coming, or when, if we don’t know who sent the box.”

“That’s true,” he conceded, finally relaxing a bit on the bed, “Johnny One Eye is more of a choker than a shooter. You’d have a better chance with him than Two Gun Sal,”

“You think Uncle Sal would shoot me?” I asked a bit hurt.

“You’re the daughter of a rat. I think he’d shoot me and make you watch… then he’d shoot you,”

I shrugged. It was a fair point.

“Maybe we should open the box then?” I asked holding the string that was delicately tied around it.

“No!” My father said suddenly, prompting a hard cough from him. He caught his breath and speedily waved in my direction.

“Don’t open it,” he puffed out, “If it was Charlie Boom its definitely a bomb,”

“Wouldn’t a bomb have gone off by now?” I asked sliding away from the package.

“Not one of Charlie’s,” Vinny smiled, “Charlie did some sorta magic with the strings on his packages. The box only went boom when the bozo actually opened it. Good ‘ol Charlie. I miss him.”

I nodded. Uncle Charlie made the best apple pies. I missed him too.

“Okay so if we can’t open it we gotta think about something else. The brown paper look familiar?” I asked holding the box to him carefully.

“Not unless there’s meat inside. That’s regular butcher paper,” he shrugged.

“Doesn’t Uncle Alvin run a meat spot?” I asked, “Could be him.”

“Nah,” Vinny laughed, “It aint Alvin the Axe. Remember? After he lost his thumbs he sold the shop and bought a flower shop,”

“That’s right!” I laughed, “That’s where he met his third wife! What was her name?”

“Loretta,” Vinny smiled much too widely, “What a woman. She was almost your mother you know!”

“How?” I asked rolling my eyes, “I was ten when they met.”

“Stepmother, kid” my father laughed.

I paused.

“Vinny… did you and Loretta… you know?” I asked cautiously.

“That’s a very adult question,” my father said sternly.

“I’m not joking Vinny!” I said, my breath beginning to quicken, “Because if you did, this cold you’ve got is probably a lot more serious than we thought!”

“What are you babbling about, Franny?” My father said, his body beginning to shift to the right side a bit as his words slightly slurred.

“Have you done anything different? Ate anything or drank anything strange?” I asked holding his face between my palms.

“No… well the grocery boy put an extra Coke in my bag, but that’s it,” he said, his eyes beginning to close.

“Dad, I think you were poisoned,” I said tapping his face to keep him awake. “Which means they do know where we are,” I breathed to myself.

“Who poisoned you?” My father said deliriously.

“Dad? Dad!” I said frantically as my father slumped over. He was still breathing but completely unconscious.

I would have to figure out what to do on my own. I wedged a plank of wood between every opening in our house; doors, windows, even mouse holes. I positioned my bat against my shaking leg as I sat with my notebook at the kitchen table. If my father had been poisoned then I knew three things for sure:

One, Loretta the Dame would have been apart of it. Slow acting poison was her specialty. It was one of the things Uncle Alvin, and apparently my father, loved most about her.

Two, the package and the poison were connected, meaning Loretta had to know the sender personally or at least they’d have a common reason to want my father dead.

And three, and most importantly, I was next. I stayed away from food and drink, unsure of what was contaminated, as I scribbled my thoughts onto a blank notebook.

The neighbor said it was a “big black alien lookin’ thing” from the sky, right? So the facts told me whoever sent the package used a drone and butcher paper and knows Loretta. But butcher paper is too easily accessible to limit to butchers. Which left me with only two clues; who could build a drone that would also know Loretta? Pauly No Legs was an electrician, so I’m sure he could figure out how to put together a drone, but did he know Loretta? Probably not. Loretta was high class and Pauly… well Pauly was slummy. There was Fats. Fats and Loretta were cousins, I think, so I’m sure her enemies were his, but could he make a drone? I doubted it. Fats was great with an AK but he was still an idiot. When I was 8, I showed him a picture of Mickey Mouse that I’d colored and he asked me how I knew someone so famous. I thought he was joking until he asked me to have Mickey autograph a t-shirt for him. Then he gave me the shirt he was wearing. So Fats was highly unlikely.

As my list narrowed I chewed the end of my pencil in deep thought and rocked my chair backwards. I sighed, feeling hopeless, as I exhausted the list of my father’s colleagues. While I searched for answers, Vinny began to stir again. His cough became a wheezy hack that worried me. Regardless of who the sender was he would need a doctor soon, but my father hated doctors and he was sure calling one would blow our cover. I could call the Sheriff, but if the package sender saw police arrive, they may decide to just blow the house up with an officer in it. There was a mob doctor I could call, but I had to be sure he wasn’t against us first. Which put me back at square one: figuring out the package sender.

Maybe I was thinking too big. What if the sender didn’t make the drone, what if they bought it. But which mobster could just waltz into a toy store without landing on Jersey PD’s radar? I tilted my head back as names danced around my head before finally landing on the one that made the most sense.

“Toy Man,” I whispered aloud, steadying my chair.

There were rumors that Jack Gianni, or Toy Man, was the step brother of Loretta the Dame. But Loretta said her father was killed in a hit when she was 21 and her mother never remarried, so that gossip never actually made sense. But the whole thing could have been a cover. Toy Man and his brother, Don, co-ran an orphanage before Don was sent to prison six months ago, which meant Toy Man had access to children’s toys, like drones.

“Vinny!” I exclaimed running into my father’s room to share my theory with him.

I found him curled into a ball in bed in a pool of his own sweat. The smell he was emitting grew more pungent as he wheezed into himself.

“Dad?” I whispered approaching him.

A knock at the door silenced my worried thoughts and replaced them with paranoid ones. I tip-toed into the kitchen where I left my bat and positioned myself behind the counter, ready to strike.

“Who is it?” I called.

“Marvin!” The voice rang back. My boyfriend had the best timing. I dropped my bat, removed the wood plank and flung the door open embracing him warmly.

“I came to apologize but I see I’m already forgiven,” Marvin joked.

“I need your help,” I whispered loudly. I looked deep into his eyes, hesitant about saying what I wanted to say before sighing and blurting it all out. In what seemed liked seconds, I told him everything: who my father really was, why we were in Minnesota, who I suspected were behind the hit and the suspicious package and that my father would die without a doctor.

“Dang,” Marvin sighed when I finished.

“Hard to believe, right,” I laughed nervously.

“No, it’s not that,” Marvin said stepping closer to me, his hand frustratedly rubbing his brow, “I just really didn’t want any of that to be true.”

His grip tightened on my arm as he pushed the mouth of a gun into my waist.

“See, your father is here because he’s a rat,” Marvin said, a Jersey accent rising up in his throat, “and my father isn’t here because your father's a rat. You’re not the only one with secrets doll face,”

“Marvin, please,” I whined.

“Marvin? Who’s Marvin,” he joked, “The name is DJ, but your pops would know me better as Donny, Don Knuckle’s kid. See, when your pops sent my old man away, I had nothing left. I moved here with my aunt trying to get away from everything, be a better person, you know? And when I met you I couldn’t believe my luck meeting this gorgeous girl; it was like my birthday everyday. But last night, you slipped up. You called your old man “Vinny”, to which I thought, ‘that’s odd. She said his name was Frank.’ So I did some digging and I still couldn’t be sure it was him until that beautiful confession you just made. So now, I think its only fair I take from you what he took from me. I really hope this doesn’t put a wrench in our relationship, cuz I like you Franny,”

I was struggling to free myself from his grip as Marvin, or DJ, dragged me toward my father’s room, when a knock on the door stilled us both. He pushed the gun deeper into me to ensure my silence when the visitor entered.

“It’s open!” He yelled in his fake Minnesota accent, while positioning us like a happy couple cuddling against the counter.

Mrs. Swanson, our neighbor to the left walked in cheerfully.

“Hi kids!” she sang in a jolly way, “I came to ask if you’d gotten my mail by mistake. My sister let my nephew use his new toy to deliver it and, well, I think he may have brought it to the wrong house. It's quite an embarrassing package actually. My intimates are in there,”

“Is that it?” I asked pointing to the package on the table.

“Yes!” She exclaimed excitedly, “See? V.S. for Mrs. Victoria Swanson! Thank you kindly!” She grabbed it and turned to leave, but not before standing in the doorway and sweetly asking, “How’s your father doing? I heard the plant shut down this week since a few of the workers contracted walking pneumonia.”



I stared blankly at our neighbor.

“He’ll be better soon,” I said as kindly as I could. Then she smiled at Marvin, or DJ, and I, and closed the door.