The Brown Tapes [ON HIATUS]

His name was Tony. Tony Starks. Now, I know, children, that that’s very close to your favorite superhero, Iron Man. But Iron Man didn’t exist back then, and his name is Tony Stark. The more important man, the man I wish to tell you about, his name was Tony Starks.

Tony’s story begins with him in his fought-for position of lieutenant in the DeLuca crime family. In the old days, the rank of lieutenant was one level below underboss, and three levels below don. Everything in the DeLuca organization was connected, like a family. But I was the only one that knew their secret. The family was modeled exactly after the Greek Olympian family. None of the bosses, underbosses, or lieutenants knew this, but they were all in their specific position for a reason. It had to do with their divine lineage.

For example, I am a boss because of the fact that I am a direct descendant of one of the Twelve Greek Olympians. The underbosses are usually demigods, and the marriage that heads the family is comprised of a son of Zeus and a daughter of the famous Carlo Gambino, one of the five most famous mobsters in all of time.

Everyone wanted to be the don, but there could only be one, Franco Fulmine, that son of Zeus I mentioned earlier. No one knew why one of the underbosses like me wouldn't try to make a move for the throne. But that's because no one knew about the divine connection our mob had. So Tony should have been happy. But he was restless. He shared his restlessness with his best friend, Luciano Verdi. It was almost as if he suspected our connection to the gods. But I refuse to believe that. They were just in charge of taking care of the product. That’s where his story begins.

_______________________________________________________________________________

“They’re late,” Tony noticed, his voice flat and uninterested.

He was usually uninterested, except when the bosses were around. Then, he was hungry. Tony felt disrespected. He had been working for the DeLucas for over a decade, since he was twelve, and they had only moved him to a lieutenant.

He should be a boss by now, he thought.

“I know that!” Luciano said back to him, both answering Tony’s remark and reading his mind.

Luciano was a special man for the DeLucas, an assassin. He was young, though, still building a reputation. People still said that his jawbone was sharper than his knives. Luciano was also jumpy all the time, but that was part of his position. He had dark grey eyes that could scare the life out of a newborn baby, and he always had a knife on him. Although guns were coming out with very quiet “suppressors,” he preferred the old-fashioned ways.

“But they’re always late,” Luciano said, looking nervously around the harbor. The harbor was stinky, damp, and almost always too cold or too hot. The harbor was also on the south side, the so-called “bad side.” Tony had no idea why it should be called bad. The only reason the little old ladies and their young grandchildren didn’t feel safe to play on the streets of the south side was because the mobs had their headquarters there.

The city of Licce was, in effect, split into two sides. The affluent, safe north side, where the lawyers, bankers, and millionaires lived with their model girlfriends and their expensive cars; and the south side, filled with slums, dirty, cramped, small houses where the people there worked tirelessly for every cent they earned. The city was split in half by the twisty Il Norte River, with only a few bridges crossing from side to side. It was as if the rich northerners didn’t even want to be associated with the southerners, and vice versa.

Finally, after another hour of waiting, Tony saw the freight ship over the horizon.

“Finally!” He said, waking Luciano up. Being so jumpy made you tired all the time, so Luciano was frequently taking naps when he wasn’t slitting throats.

“I’m going to kill the captain of that stupid boat,” Luciano grumbled, but Tony reminded him,

“Hey, he’s from Columbia. How are you going to threaten him if you don’t speak Spanish, eh?”

“I’m still going to kill him, whether I threaten his family in Italian or Spanish. I don’t care,” Luciano responded, and Tony chuckled softly,

“You are quite possibly the funniest man in the DeLucas.”

When the boat docked, Luciano woke up the third man in their party, Luca, and told him to go speak to the captain. Luca was born in Belgium, and had trained in many different languages. The DeLucas called him the Translator. He could speak enough words in over a hundred languages to get a drug transaction completed. He had black hair that always flopped in front of his kind brown eyes, ad he was incredibly young, so the DeLucas all treated him like a younger nephew.

As mentioned before, Tony was in charge of taking care of the product when it arrived. That product was 85% pure cocaine, straight from the Columbian fields. The stuff could get you so high that you wouldn’t feel normal for a week after your first use. Tony was in charge of getting it from the docks on the river to the headquarters farther south. An easy job, with easy money. But it wasn’t enough for Tony. That’s why he brought Luciano along. He wanted someone to sympathize for him.

After Luca returned, the captain himself drove the cart with the half-ton, as agreed. Once the five pallets were in the back of Tony’s truck, and covered with two layers of drop-cloths to hide them from sight, the captain bowed hastily to Tony, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. Tony couldn’t understand much, but he got the message. The captain was asking for Tony to please not kill everyone in his family, and Tony wouldn’t have to pay for the drugs.

“Vai via,” Tony said impatiently, waving his hand towards the ship. The captain did as he was told, kissing Tony’s ring with a tear in his eye. His family was spared. He went away.

“Let’s go,” He told Luciano and Luca, and they piled into the front of his truck. Once they were on the road, Luciano started to look at the houses they passed, scowling. Eventually, Tony asked,

“Enjoying the scenic route?”

“Shut up!” Luciano said, almost whining, “this town is una pezza de merda.”

“You’re noticing this just now?” Luca asked, keeping his eyes on the road and laughing, “This town has been una pezza de merda since long before you were born, Luciano.”

“I know that,” Luciano said from the middle, “But I’m just saying that life could be better for these people. They could have real jobs, make good money. They wouldn’t have to live in this crap-hole.”

“Yeah,” Luca grumbled, “We know.”

All three of them knew what it felt like to be broke. To have nothing to eat for days in a row. To not know where multiple members of our families were. To have to beg on the streets for a lousy can of soup.

“What are you gonna do about it, eh?” Tony asked, “What can you even do to help those people? You work for la cazzo famglia, for Christ’s sake!”

“Hey!” Both Luca and Luciano scolded.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” apologized Tony. He crossed himself and asked for forgiveness from God for taking his name in vain.

“Look who’s talking, though,” Luciano said, “You’re the one who’s trying to get promoted in la cazzo famiglia, if I’m correct.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Tony, “So what if I want to become a don? If I’m a don, I’ll have the power to change the city.”

“Yeah,” Luciano said, “You could change it for good.”

“Yeah,” Said Luca, warming up to the idea, “you could threaten the lawyers to improve the living condition on the South Side. You could even get a proper police force down here.”

Both Luciano and Tony roared in laughter at that.

“Luca, you stupido idiota! We do illegal things! Why would you want a police force in the South?”

Tony was having trouble breathing between laughs.

Luca just kept his head straight ahead, focusing on the road. And Luciano and Tony kept laughing.

“Anyways,” Tony said, “why are we even worrying about the conditions in the South? What do we need right now?”

Luciano knew the answer to that question in a heartbeat. “We need money,” he grumbled, conceding Tony’s point. They couldn’t do anything to improve the city without a little dough.

“Couldn’t hear you,” Tony said, “What do we need right now, again?”

“Money,” Luciano enunciated.

“That’s it!” Tony laughed, ruffling Luciano’s hair, “See? With that mentality, you’ll be a boss in no time!”

“Shut up, Tony!” Luciano said, grinning.

_______________________________________________________________________________

They rode on until they saw the warehouse. It had originally been a steel and glass smelting factory, but it had been abandoned after an industrial accident. All the equipment was still there. They met one of the three bosses there, the original assassin for the DeLucas, a man named Giuseppe. But no one called him by his real name. everyone called him the Viper.

“You’re late,” the Viper remarked, as disinterestedly as Tony had, three hours ago on the docks.

“So sorry, capo,” Luciano apologized while Luca sprinted to find a forklift to get the product out of the back of the trailer. Luciano had to be nice to the Viper, because the boss was training him on how to be the next great mob assassin.

“Tony?” the Viper asked, nodding at Luciano to accept his apology.

“The Columbian was late. But he gave us a good—”

“He gave you a good price?” the Viper asked, his face a complete mask.

“Well, not exactly,” Tony admitted, “we gave him…an incentive.”

“Vedere! È per questo che non lascio nuovi ragazzi gestire posti di lavoro! See! This is why I don’t let new guys handle jobs!” the Viper sucked on one of his classic cigars and breathed out, rubbing his face with his other hand.

“Tony, you have to build relationships with the sellers, or they won’t come back. You think we can threaten them in Columbia? Hell no! That’s their turf!”

“I’m sorry, capo,” Tony growled, and the Viper said,

“It’s okay,” the Viper sighed, “just hope that skipper doesn’t break his contract with us, eh?”

“Si, capo,” Tony said, and then Luca shouted from the back of the warehouse,

“All done!”

“Good,” the Viper said, “now, you three, go home. I have calls to make.”

“Yes, sir,” Luciano and Tony said in unison.

Then, all three of them piled into the truck, sighing heavily in frustration that they had somehow messed up, relief that the Viper hadn’t been too angry, and tiredness from a long, boring day.

Notes

I'm not going to say 'here goes nothing' because I have been thinking about this idea for a few months. I was really inspired by the album 'Twelve Reason to Die: The Brown Tapes' by Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah. So, this is my interpretation of that album as put into the context of every character being related to the Olympian Gods.

Enjoy,
Grafon

Also, everything in italics that's in Italian is probably going to be a cussword, or a colloquial expression from Italy, to keep this PG-13.