Fiction: A Mob Experience put in manuscript form or "One for the Trash" - by Brianroy

A certain start-up executive movie producer, who had to refinance his $9,000,000 film into an over-budget $15,000,000 bomb about a Sicilian American mob assassin, found that he could only re-finance the venture if he seriously read and considered a draft manuscript for inclusion written by a certain regional Bank President's brother-in-law.  The proviso stated that the Bank President would have the right to personally advise and assist in the creative completion of the current picture now being financed, and to insert new character(s), locations, dialogue at his own expense apart from the loan.  Being loaded with a net worth in excess of $57,000,000, the Bank President himself could have financed the film independently, but like most rich people, he gave himself a clause that if he lost money, he would be reciprocated by other means through the bank.   In fact, the Bank President made the terms of repayment so good, the executive producer was actually anxious to get back to his office to read the manuscript, so as to get production underway again before he had to release the crew.  He had less than 48 hours left to make a decision.  

   Upon returning to the office at 10am., the executive movie producer (through instructing his head secretary)  summarily cleared his morning  and afternoon of all calls and appointments,  and plopped down on a comfortable Italian Leather couch with a 10 oz. glass filled with ice and Glen Livet Scotch whiskey.  By the time he was finished with the Script, he, to his shock would find that he was so into the story, he absent-mindedly went through the whole 750 ml. bottle.  This is what he read.

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 Escape from Assassination:  by Artie "super-trucker" Manohovitz

On a lonely stretch of  highway somewhere north of Sacramento, California, I stopped off at a small roadside restaurant with a flop-house motel out back, serving up the usual American Menu loved by Commercial Truck Drivers and red-necks everywhere.  And boy, was I wiped out, tired.  It seated only about 30 people at the tables and booths, and had room for 14 more at the counter.  Only about a half a dozen fellow truckers and 2 or 3 locals were in the place on a cloudy and dark 2 am morning when I just about staggered, rather than walked in.  

No one was at the counter.  I bent over, heard and felt my back crack like someone does his knuckles, stood up straight as I felt the blood start circulating a bit more, sat down, and ordered an energy drink and a cup of coffee from the waitress.  I then  mused over the lunch menu for two or three minutes before deciding on a Triple Decker club with Roast Beef, Ham, Turkey, double bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickle, and cottage cheese on the side.  

I had just finished my 70 hours driving for the week with a mandatory 24 hour down time before I could be driving again, and I was wondering if I ever was going to get off this Long Haul nonsense and get a regular short haul job where I could go home every night and sleep in my own bed.  This Company Owned Long Haul with the anal driver managers having a snit every 45 minutes to a couple hours on you was really the pits.  But no matter how much I hated their guts, I was always mindful to never say I was "off the truck", because that is the language that means you quit, and you are stuck without a means home, and someone is being sent out to take the keys away from you. But at least I was my own person.  Too many scuzzy people were being paired up out there with the decent folks driving.  And boy, could I tell you stories...all of them true. 

     About 15 minutes after I ordered, a somewhat good-looking but slightly plump --  saying I could look,  but don't ask -- waitress served up the grub, and as I was slowly eating my cottage cheese with a fork, a middle aged white guy sat down at the counter two seats to my right.  He was about six foot with brown graying hair and blue eyes, and had a look about him that made me look around to see if one of the several mirrors in the place "cracked".    Sheesh. 

I noticed that he carried a Rosary in his left hand, and he set it down on the counter in front of him, and ordered a cup of coffee with a glass of milk on the side, which he used as his creamer.  

I looked over at him for a moment, and when he noticed me looking at his Rosary, I asked, 

"You Catholic?"

He looked downward to his left and then looked right at me, and said, "Nope.  Not really.  I guess you can say I have never been."

I put the question to him, "You mind if I ask why?  I just got off a long shift and I have a few hours before I can unwind for my next 24 hours off.  I see you got this Rosary...that's why I asked.  Wanna discuss it?"

I don't know why I asked the question.  Maybe because I was both bored and too tired to move.  The coffee was flowing, and I had nowhere to go except into a cold truck cab under half a dozen blankets and a short cot mattress type of a bed.  So I listened.  

He said:  

 "Someone once asked me, why have I never been Catholic?  Well, truth be told, I was one for perhaps about a month.  I made the verbal pledge, probably when I was about 12 and didn't know any better,  but when I experienced the cost of that pledge, I took my vow back, and the local Catholic Priest disavowed me with what a writer might term as "hateful spite."  He actually used many less "F" bomb profanities than the evil nun who ran the others of his many acres perhaps 10 or more(?) acres of Church property which included a school and various other buildings.  But the fact remains, that even my friends never heard him particularly drop the "f" bombs on anyone until I said I would rather return to serving Jesus as a Presbyterian or Methodist or even as a Baptist truthfully, rather than support those who were slamming truck doors on people's hands like the two I saw up on the Boulevard do to another Municipal worker as I was being driven slowly by, or that of those who used the Sanitation department to kill and dispose of dead bodies on my trash route.  I'm sorry, but when I see the arms and legs and heads of three corpses still sticking out from underneath the crushing plate in less than 5 weeks, and another 5 or 6 in the next two years, twice on a major highway in plain sight, something is wrong.  And yeah, I know the difference between a mannequin and a real human leg." 

I asked, "Where was this?" 

He replied, "New Jersey in the 1970s.  All the time I was there, I was wishing I was growing up in the 1940s.  I mean, I really identified more with the music and the radio and stuff like that, you know?  I guess had I grown up in some place in the Mid-west,  some rural towns were still in between that and the 1950s, almost as if they were still frozen in time.  Me?  I got Jersey.  

    Yeah, I know when the one old gangster, an under-boss I think -- but I'm not sure,  died in something like 1971, he left money enough to pave every road in town, build a nice court house with a police station and library in the basement.  The mob there used the Town's Trash Company to sometimes transport their hired killers as well as temporarily transport or dispose of bodies at the County Landfill.   From what I recall, of all of the bodies or body parts I saw, not one of them had old skin, and they were all white folks.  One was a 19 year old blondish-orange haired gal I knew the age but after so many years I can't recall her name any more."

I cut in, "You mean the mob in New Jersey used the trash company to transport their hit men and dispose of the bodies at landfills?"

He coughed a couple times, sipped his coffee, and continued:

    "Oh yeah.  Actually, after I reported to the Police in the township where the Landfill was, and they found -- I think it was 3 -- yeah, something like that, 3 or so bodies at the dump, the mob switched to using 55 gallon drums of acid.  There were alot more bodies than that dumped over the previous two or so years by that time, but maybe the 3 or so were the only ones they could find.  I don't know.  Anyway, the 55 gallon acid drums may have cost more, but they were less likely to come back at you.  Rumor has it that is how they got rid of Jimmy Hoffa's body, but no one is supposed to have survived the cleanup of those who made the original hit, and then those guys got hit.  
    Anyway, the mob guys would stuff the corpse in the drum, fill it with sulfuric or some other kind of acid,  let him or her soak for up to a couple days, and then run either a tug or a very small freighter out of Perth Amboy or Hackensack, and dump the body about 200 or so yards or more off the Northeast point of Sandy Hook.  Sandy Hook is something like a 5 or 6 mile peninsula over in the middle of the state that juts out north into the bay toward New York.  I remember the Hook well, as  I did some training for yacht racing and that was our turn-around point when we did our drills.  Sometimes we would anchor off the North shore, dingy in and catch and cook flounder and drink beer.  When you're a kid drinking beer and eating camp-fire fish, being treated as and behaving as an adult on those kind of jaunts, its something you look kindly at, at first, anyway.  But things changed in for us in '75, because we were warned by various sources the we should never stop to go fishing off the Hook again unless you wanted to be part cannibal.  

    Between 1975 and 1979, I think the Mafia dumped 20 or 30 bodies over there just off the Northeast tip.  It got so bad, that if you ate flounder, even at a restaurant, let alone what a neighbor or relative might have caught, you made sure it wasn't from a trek way out to the north point of Sandy Hook, because you might be snacking on part of someone you know and not know it...if you know what I mean."

I think my mouth must have dropped open at this point, because he pointed to my plate, and said: 

"Good thing you finished your sandwich.  But if you need to hurl at any time, it'll be quicker for you to run outside than to get into that tiny bathroom to the back and to the left.  And the toilet is so small, I think they stole it from a first grade bathroom of an Elementary school somewhere.  Just so you know.  Outside is a much bigger target to not miss."   

 I leaned back and scratched my head, and looked that the waitress as she filled my coffee cup and gave me one of those 'what the hell are you guys talking about' looks.

The stranger then smiled and asked the waitress, "Free tonight sunshine?"

"Sunshine?" The waitress snapped back. "I ain't your sunshine and I'm NEVER free!"

"But honey!" The stranger said, "Your face is just so pretty you light up the room!  And how the grease just make your hair sparkle under the fluorescent light, its just like seeing...."     

"Shut up and drink your coffee!" She curtly said, cutting him off, as she poured a refill into his empty coffee cup and left to make her rounds to the other few customers that were there, who happily received it in mildly jovial anticipation.

"Where was I?" asked the stranger.

I answered, "I lost track.  You want to go back to 1971 when the under-boss died?" 

"Yeah, I guess." The stranger answered.  "Nah.  Let me fast forward to a year later, in 1972 or so, when another Mafia boss came around in a short limo, with an ice cream truck tailing behind.  He was dying of cancer, and had the Good Humor truck give out free ice cream.  I refused to accept, figuring I would adhere to the 'not taking anything from strangers' principle I learned at School.  You have to remember, that this was the era of Dick and Jane illustrated educationals to the kids for the last two decades or something, and alot of kids were drilled with the fear of strangers principle as a means to help protect them.  And when that failed, they could always open the Dick and Jane illustration book, and show Jane freaking out as the guy who kidnaps her is driving 80 mph and throws her out of a car and over the side of the cliff or something."

I interrupted, while trying to be funny,  "Did they ever make it into a movie?  Boy, that sure sounds like a lot of fun to watch!"

He replied, "Not that I know of.  You can't make stuff like that nowadays anyway.  The minorities would scream racism for not making Dick and Jane as Black or Hispanic or Asian, the Homosexuals would make the kids queer, the Liberals would have Dick and Jane having sex as 7 year olds together "discovering" themselves,  and the NAMBLA freaks and the Muslim fundamentalists would be wanting consensual sex between the kidnapper and a 7 year old Jane.  No, I think it's just all too politicized now."

'Too bad." I said,while still trying to be funny.   "I would have just wanted to see the part where the guy threw the kid out of the car and over the cliff at 80 mph anyway.  I'd be curious to see if they save the kid by landing her on a giant cactus, then having her grab onto a stranded bungee cord at the top of the cactus, and doing a bungee fall onto a skunk she flattens into the clay, and then runs up to the cops and the kidnapper now caught by the cops, and raises a big stink, or not."

With that remark, I might as well have said, 'My broker is E.F. Hutton.  And E.F. Hutton said...."   You could have heard a pin drop in the place.  The ambient music stopped.  The cook stopped cooking.  What people were talking all stopped talking.  Even the coffee stopped perking, and it looked like it was frozen at 2 cups, refusing to perk again until I said...."Just kidding!  I was just kidding!"

A trucker in the back booth remarked, "Boy, it's a good thing youse off the road.  You're delirious."

To which the waitress remarked, "He's not delirious, he's nuts!  What kind of responsible person wants to see a little kid thrown out of a car at 80 mph and think its funny?"

"But, it's only pretend and educational." I offered.  "All slapstick comedy and most television is make believe anyway.  I simply thought I was being funny!  I wasn't serious!"

A local remarked, "Well, that still doesn't make it right!"

"Sorry!"  I said.  "What if the kidnapper snatched a transvestite wearing a wig and fake boobs and threw him out of the car at 80 mph?"  I asked those of the restaurant.  The consensus was that it was more or less justifiable, but I was still in deep doo-doo with some pretty icy glares about a fictional kid remark. "Besides, he remembered it wrong.  Jane stayed a captive in the car until Officer Bob or somebody chased down the robber and saved Jane after a successful high speed pursuit.  She never got tossed out."

The guy next to me who was telling me all his stories then spoke up, "Just so you all know...I don't know this guy, and never set eyes on him before tonight!"

"Good thing!" snapped the waitress, "Good thing, or I'd be throwing you both out."  

  The Stranger then returned to his story:

    "1972, the under-boss is going up through the streets one by one in a short limo, followed by an ice cream truck, looking for anyone from kids on up to perhaps early high school age to give out free ice cream.   I carefully observed my manners, something I normally would not do with peers, but was careful to abide by with anyone who looked over the age of 60.  I refused, not once or twice, but 8 or 9 times.  

Telling the Ice Cream guy, the limo driver and then the old man in the back.  'I'm sorry, I am not allowed to take anything from strangers.'  

     The limo driver had a fit.  He pulled a black super .38 revolver with dark tannish grip, waved the gun in my face threatening to kill me or my brother or those neighborhood peers with me if he didn't find out where I lived, and then seeing we were virtually in front of the house, proceed to wreak havoc.  He kicked and then gun butted the storm door glass, broke the living room bay widow with the butt and barrel of his gun with 3 or 4 whacks, walked over to the family car and broke out the headlight, yelling that his boss was "a sick old man...he's dying of cancer!", then scared the family cat in the hedges, and failing to kick the cat, kicked a one foot deep gash into our new aluminum trash can which the town demanded we replace the old heavy ones with (which he would have happily broke his foot on, but because of a stupid town ordinance, did not).   

    At that point, I turned to the old man and yelled, 'I hope you die, and go to heck!'   At that point, the limo driver cocked his piece, pointed it at my head, and asked the old guy for permission to shoot this kid (meaning me).  The under-boss asked if I would take it back.  I said, no.  He said that he could order the nice man to shoot me.  I said, 'Even if he does, I get to go the heaven and he really goes to heck, only he gets to burn even more.  Go ahead and shoot!'  The under-boss told his driver twice to get in the car and drive on, having a sour look on his face, as if suddenly at that point the under-boss realized for a moment, knowing he couldn't 'Ice Cream' his way into heaven; but he kept on going around giving Ice Cream away anyway, until it all ran out, I guess.  Later that day I ran into over a dozen others I went to school with who  said he came their way and they got two pieces of ice cream each.  When they heard how I almost got shot and that made the under-boss give away two pieces to each of them, the only lament was that I didn't get shot, because then he would have given away the whole truck, and they could take home dozens of ice creams to share with their families or "pig out for days".  Boy, was I loved.  Eh.          

      I have had those who brought me within the Church and Community of Roman Catholicism seeking my conversion when I was younger, but the association between them and members of a certain Sicilians-only New Jersey crime family, and various other experiences I encountered within and without Roman Catholic Church property assured me that I could never accept any Institution that saw me and others as expendable and human property to be beaten, commanded as if a slave, or any of the many inhuman indignities that they sought to do to bring me and others of that Community into subjection."

"You have a grudge with the Roman Catholics, and carry around a Rosary?" I asked.  

"First off, the Rosary I have here isn't mine.  It belonged to my wife from a time before we were married.  She left Catholicism to be a Pentecostal Presbyterian with me.  We were married 22 years, and three days ago we had her wake.  We have two kids, one of each, both in the military.  He's in the Airborne, she's with the Marines.  We're very proud of them both.  This Rosary was given to my wife by her grandmother when she was graduating high school, and only a few minutes before coming in did I realize it was in my coat pocket.  I put it out so I can look at it and remind myself so I don't forget to mail it in the morning.   

Secondly, I am a Mafioso hit survivor, no thanks to the Roman Catholic Church who supported the contract on my life I lived through, although only a teenager and put there because of a few perceived words of "disrespect", and refusal to turn on a friend who made me his blood brother to help shield me from being collateral damage.  

  

In 1973, (about  the time I saw the landlady's high school son push his best friend off the top of a 13 story building one February morning), after escaping an attempted execution on his life and killing the guy who tried to shoot him in the head with a .22 short automatic pistol from behind;  a Lieutenant with the local Sicilian mob I called “Cappo”, went to prison.  In 1979 he came back, and looked me up to thank me, but someone else had his old job promised open to him when he came back...only it wasn't open to him anymore, even though it was the same godfather-like boss.  He tried to have me be considered a Consiglieri, but I couldn't keep an all "A" grades.  Even with an extension to June of 1974 to correct it.  I just wasn't smart enough to be considered for sponsorship,even if I got them up all the way and kept them there.  

Anyway , after I had saved his life, in 1973 Cappo made me a blood brother much like you see kids do or in a Western movie, a slice on two thumbs and a tight handshake and pledge, a few words of Sicilian like one of my grandparents, and saying I was under his protection.  For a little while after he went away, there was trouble.  Then one of my grandparents brothers came out of the wood-work.  He ran books for the Bonano family, and had a sound-proof room, put his son through 5 years of Yale University, the works.  And for a while, they let me be.

 The Lieutenant who took over the area which “Cappo” once ran, was supported by the local priest.  For whatever reason, in 1979 after Cappo got out, that Lieutenant with the blessings of the priest decided to put out a $500 machete death contract on my life.   But the contract was also given the proviso that if you were 100% Sicilian and one of the prospects, a successful hit on me, while using a machete, would get you in...or as the mobsters put the initiation rite of passage: "made".  

I was down at the harbor, using a public restroom one night around 7 or 7:20 pm during the Fireman's Carnival (with a poor turnout because it rained earlier that day, as I recall).  The only public restrooms open were located under the Pilot house.    Anyway, I peek checked through the open window and carefully through the door and around behind me before going in (because I had previous fought off several other muggings at both Shea and Yankee Stadiums made at the restroom).   I had just finished and was washing my hands when a stocky figure, about 5'8" slammed the restroom door open, wearing a dark leather jacket, a blue t-shirt,  and blue jeans.  He was a Sicilian American with black wavy -- but curling at the end -- hair and brown eyes. 

 He entered carrying a sheathed machete in the middle of his left hand, and when he saw me, he unsheathed it and declared my death was sanctioned by $500 contract, but it wasn't about the money.  He told me specifically that my upcoming death in the next few seconds would have him “made” and it was "business, nothing personal".   The guy then proceeded to attack me with the machete.  I fought him off with a cunning use of my high school jacket, twice struck the flat of the blade away with blows I don't know how I landed,  and was able to drill him in the face using the proper technique of supporting those blows with my hip and body weight behind them, landing some perhaps 5 or 6 perhaps lucky punches.  However, being only about 150 lbs at the time, it looked for a moment like I would never get past him, let alone knock him down or out, and that I was about to be "dead meat" if I didn't come up with something else, or someone come in and save me.   But even with a speedy in and out tactic and quick foot-work, using every technique I could muster from the near 1200 fights I had from early childhood to that point in time,  he was seemingly more determined to kill me than I was to live, and I was unable to escape."

 

"1200 fights?" I interrupted.  "You're exaggerating a bit are you?"

 Not in the least.  I averaged about 150 -200 fights a year, sometimes 3 or 4 or 5 in the same day, for the previous 8 years; and I was 14 at the time.  I almost got kept back a grade at one point because all of the concussions and mild or temporary swelling brain damage  I suffered sometimes.  Hell, when I was 12, I had my head bead about with bricks and rocks so bad, that my head swelled and bloated up like a soft melon.  I could literally press my gently on my mushy head, and poke between the separations in the plates of my cranium.  It was that bad.  It took 3 weeks for the swelling to go all the way down before my head was almost normal again.  

       All I had to do sometimes is walk on the same block, and I had others 5 and 6 years older to 28 year olds attacking me for no reason.  Or sometimes it was because their second, third, or fourth cousin in town lost a fight to me and it was "family honor".  Whether I won or lost, the fighting never seemed to stop because much of the town was too inter-related, and I don't mean the Italian section which I did not live in.  At worst, you contended with a brother or immediate friend and the second round was it.  But with the rest of the whites in town...good riddance.  It was if it was some kind of Irish-German-Scandanavian blood feud that marked you for life, even if you got along in sports or class, that was if a separate issue.  Once you were marked, you were always going to be a "temporary", never a permanent friend because of this blood-feud thing of never really forgiving. But then again, I had a sometimes really gave lip, and that probably got me in about a third of the al

"What about the guy with the machete?" I continued.

I figured I had anywhere from 10 to 90 seconds to live, as my very best punches only wobbled and knocked my attacker off in the wrong direction, and I could not maneuver him because I had to also avoid the swinging machete which arm was always just out of reach.  Suddenly Cappo came in, and words were exchanged.  The assassin declared his authority and demanded his right to fulfill his contract, but Cappo told me to go.  I told Cappo to get him from that side and I would get him from this.  He said go.  I gave Cappo my jacket and told him to wrap it around his left arm.  He had it in his left hand as the assassin lunged and Cappo caught him by the wrist and they twist and twirled exchanging what I perceived to be two or three blows.  Cappo yelled, “Leave, leave, and never come back!”   I ran the shortest route home I knew how, dodging into the shadows and behind trees and into bushes at the slightest sign of pedestrians or headlights within a block and a half away.  

 I made it home, and watched for signs of anyone coming with a baseball bat in hand or very close by.  But no one came.  The next morning, I went down to the public facility, this time using my dark green Schwinn 10-speed, thinking it couldn’t have happened.  A crowd of about 30 to 40 people had gathered as the police investigated.  My jacket was in a pile on the floor, blood on top of it, as far as I know, and there was a pool of blood.  I wasn’t there 90 seconds before a strong hand gripped the shirt on my left shoulder, and the very familiar voice sternly said, “What the hell are you doing here?  I told you to never come back!” 

Cappo pulled me away from the crowd, but I sensed that three or four people turned their head slightly as though to try to be listening over the talking and murmurs of the rest of the crowd.

Cappo said,” This is no place for you.  What are you trying to do, get us both killed?”

“I’m sorry.”  I said, looking downwards before looking back up at his face again.  “I couldn’t believe it happened.  I thought it was a nightmare.  When I woke up and saw my jacket was gone…”

At that point Cappo turned me around swung his foot at me and just about kicked my ass as I sprinted several steps away. 

“Get your ass outta here!” Cappo growled as he gritted his teeth.

“And don’t let me catch you anywhere past the Nightclub on the other side of this parking lot ever again.” 

Over the next few days I was tailed around town by two men in an American made black four door sedan.   Sometimes I was out walking or jogging from place to place, sometimes I was riding my 10 speed, and twice I was coming home from school. 

 "Oh, no."  I muttered to myself, and then asked the waitress if they sold any large or stiff alcoholic beverages?   All she could do is roll her eyes and crack that the only stiff drinks they serve has to do with "old coffee".   When I tuned back in, I found the guy still on his trip down memory lane.  He continued.

On or about the Thursday after surviving the weekend, I got off the bus a few blocks from home.  I had to walk past a funeral parlor on an estate, and there they were waiting.  Two guys jumped out of a black four door sedan carrying guns and running towards me.  One was carrying a snub nosed .45 and the other a sawed off pump-action shotgun.  

I had been doing my homework in each of the following classes I had throughout the day, so as to free myself of taking any books home in case I had to run.  That decision saved my life yet again.  Before they knew it, I was running full blast among the trees of the estate, dodging and weaving left and right, crunching the leaves and acorns, and really flying.  I made a v-line through peoples back yards I have never been through before, scared some ugly old fat woman walking around half naked in her nightie, leaped a doberman pincher and then a German shepherd before they knew what past them, and for the first time in my life hurdled...hurdled, mind you, a 5 foot fence.   

The would be assassins ended up watching the house, and I wasn't able to go home until well after dark, and then only through the cellar.  On Friday they spotted me, chased me into my own home with the same guns, but I evaded them by a quick weave in and out of the attic.  As I ran away, I could hear an old guy yelling for the goonbas to come out and chase me down the street." 

At that point I stopped him and put to him, "You would think they would have taken your family hostage.  Why didn't they?"

"I don't know.  The year or two before that, the guy with the snub .45 took the town Police Lieutenants wife hostage.  He was really on an anti-mafia anti-crime wave.  And for a while, maybe 6 months, many of us were really feeling safe.  But then one day, there was this guy from the mob who walked right up to Mrs. G. in the driveway as she was gathering her groceries out of the car.  Right in front of me and several others from the next neighborhood over who happened to be passing by.  We had the cops called, and could hear the screaming by the guy that he was going to kill her because her husband refused the pay-offs.  The stand-off lasted about 5 hours, and it was this same guy with the snub .45 revolver that came out in cuffs.  He was maybe 30 lbs. lighter then, but it was the same guy who would be chasing me with a gun just a few years later. 

     After that guy came out and the hostage stand-off ended, in in the weeks and months after,  regardless of the fact that Mrs. G went from a happy friendly out-going housewife and turned into a hostile recluse, Mr. G. came into all sorts of money, made Captain and then Police Chief, and he most certainly could no longer be trusted.  He was one of them.  If you told him anything, it was like the next 10 seconds later, he was telling the mob.  But maybe part of the agreement for him to cooperate was to lay off whoever they were afters families, I guess.  But really...I don't know.

But once Mr. G. went corrupt, bodies started showing up in the back of the town's garbage trucks.  I mean, I would bring out the trash, and there would sometimes be a body, whether it was a dead 19 year old girl or or this or that guy half crushed up under the crusher plate.  Sometimes just a limb.  After 6 or 7 months from the time Mr. G. went corrupt, you got to know when a hit was going down when certain substitutes were on the back of the Municipal garbage trucks. But nobody talked about it, or if you started to, they put their hand over your mouth, pulled you aside, and whispered for you to shut up or they would kill you themselves, because to talk about it would get them and their whole family killed.  And with that you most certainly would walk away with at least a few bruises so as to know they were serious about what they were saying to you, the big mouthed idiot who was going to get everyone killed if you didn't shut the hell up. 

 -----------------------------------

At this point the executive producer stopped reading, even though he wasn't even half-way through the darn thing, and threw the manuscript in the trash.  He then  ordered his secretary to issue lay-off notices, and to also call his attorney.  He would rather file bankruptcy than to put that hogwash of a manuscript in his blasted picture! Like it ever REALLY could have happened! Yeah, right.