And like most interviews, if more comes out of his mouth, then fantastic.
“Very well.” He glanced at Mariano for a moment then moved his attention back to me. “It was roughly ten years ago. I was hired by the Coppola family to find the person who killed one of their cousins. As you might know, they have a history of unexplained disappearances.”
I sat forward in my chair and began to scribble on my notepad. He sure had started out with a bang.
“The cousin was connected to a mass murder that happened the year before, and the Coppolas suspected the northern syndicate had done it.” I shifted in my seat, wondering if he meant Elio’s family. “They wanted to know who they needed to go to war with. I started to dig, and—”
“How? Can you tell me where you even start such a process?”
“I start with the murder and work my way backward. First with the bodies, bodies don’t lie, unlike the living, and how I see them and where tells me a lot. Then I find out where they were that day, the day before that, and so on and so on. Plus, people tend to be chatty when beer is involved.”
“Okay.” I urged him on with a quick look.
“It took me about three days to connect all the dots, and it brought me to a local pub in Vasto. I sat down and had a drink to check the place out. I had come up with a theory on who I might be looking for, and rumor had it he hung out there from time to time. Two men soon drew my attention when I realized they were planning something. They spoke in code. Being the man I am,” he sat back, wanting me to appreciate his skill, so I granted him a nod and an encouraging smile, “I started to decode what they were saying. I saw a flaw in one of their ideas and pointed it out. A black eye and four drinks later, we got talking, and by the end of the night I was hired to help them plan the takedown of the Rosario family.”
“Wait?” I held up a hand, trying to follow. “What about the Coppola family?”
“I found out who killed their cousin,” he shrugged, “and also who was behind the mass murders the year before.”
“Did you turn that information over to them?”
“No.” He ran a finger along his chin without a shred of remorse. “Instead, I joined forces with the killers.” He laughed at that.
“So, itwasthe Santoro brothers who killed the cousin and did the mass murders a year before?” I eyed him as though amazed.
He smirked through another shrug and nodded. “They made me a better offer, and to be frank, the Coppola family are stupidly ruthless and are getting worse as time goes on.”
Every one of them is ruthless, in my opinion.
“Was there any blowback from the Coppola family? I can’t imagine they would just let you off the hook.”
“A little, but part of the deal was that the brothers would protect me and have ever since. Plus, at that point, the Coppola family suddenly went quiet. Their attention moved off me and focused elsewhere.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Yeah,” he nodded in agreement, “it made things easier.”
“What do you think happened?”
“There was a rumor that someone from their family had been spotted that they thought was dead, but nothing really came of it. Whatever it was, I never heard. They kept a tight lid on it within their family.”
“I see.” I scribbled more notes down and drew a quick timeline while more questions bounced around my mind. “So,” I held my hands up with my pen balanced between two fingers and my thumb. “So just to clarify, you’ve now joined forces with the Santoro brothers, andtheirfocus is the Rosario family. Not the Coppola family.” I tried to move the story forward.
“Correct.”
“Did the Rosario family do anything to you?”
“Personally? No.”
“Then why help kill innocent people?”
“There’s no such thing as innocent people. Everyone has crimes, guilt, skeletons in their closets. The Rosarios were ruthless, showed no mercy to those that probably deserved some. They did terrible things to good people and bad. That’s life.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what Elio’s family was considered. Were the Capri family as ruthless, or were they as bad as the Rosarios and Coppolas? Did they kill innocent people to get what they wanted, too?
“Let me explain my involvement with the brothers, as I can only imagine what’s running through your head right now.”
“Please.” I welcomed any more information he could give me to make sense of all this.