[b]The White House
Washington D.C.[/b]


"Mr. Brewer, something's going on in the Oval Office."

Jeff Brewer, White House Chief of Staff, came out of his office and hurried down the corridor to the Oval Office, past the secretary who gave him the warning, when he heard shouts from inside the office. Brewer came in and saw President Norman and Vice President Reed in each other's faces, shouting and yelling as a pair of secret service agent tried to get between them. Even though Norman was at least four inches taller than Reed, the smaller man had both hands firmly on the president's lapel and pushing him downward until they were both face to face.

"He cut your balls off," Reed shouted over the din. "You made a deal with the goddamn devil, Norman! Do you know what you've done!"

Brewer put himself into the middle and, with the help of the two secret service agents, got the two men apart.

"The fuck is going on?" He finally asked.

"You two sandbagging sons of bitches are the problem," Reed shouted at Norman and Jeff. "You cut a deal with Wilbur Helms on Civil Rights and now everyone on Capitol Hill is laughing at the White House for giving in. That old fucker came into this office and clipped your balls!"

"I made a compromise," Norman said from behind the Resolute desk. "I have other legislation I want to see passed, Mr. Vice President, and I can't do that when the Senate is filibustering every bill that goes through Congress." Norman pointed a finger at Reed. "And you will address me by my title, especially in this office."

"Negroes are getting beaten and killed. A family died two weeks ago, little children were burned alive! And you have the gall to talk to me about being pragmatic. You are a sandbagging son of a bitch, [i]Mr. President[/i]."

"Do you want to know the deal I cut?" Norman asked, ignoring Reed's insult. Jeff knew the president was the better man and he would let it go, to a point. 

"You'll be hands off on any civil rights bills," said Reed. "Right?"

"[i]I[/i] will be hands off," Norman said with a twinkle in his eyes. "I will not interfere or be vocal about any civil rights legislation. My exact wording to Helms. I never said anything about you."

Jeff saw a change come over Reed. He straightened up from his hunched shoulders, his snarl seemed to disappear. And the anger melted away. Jeff could see that his mind was turning over the possibilities. Jeff could almost hear the gears turning in his head. 

"You want to be a big part of his administration, Rusell?" the president asked with a raised eyebrow. "This is your chance. You were an excellent vote counter and whipper. The Black Caucus are supposed to be working on a civil rights bill. Help them get it through the House, and especially the Senate, and you will get all the credit for it. I promise."

"Mr. President..." It was an odd thing for Jeff to hear the tone Reed now took. It was soft and reverent, so unlike the loud and demanding man Jeff knew the vice president to be. "I will do everything in my power to see it accomplished."

"Mr. President," the speaker on his desk buzzed. "CIA is on the line. It's urgent."

"I'll let you get to it," Reed said with a smile. He shook hands with the president. "Thank you, sir."

"Get to work," Norman said with a nod and a smile.

Just like that, Reed was gone from the Oval Office.

"There," Norman said to Jeff. "That should keep him out or hair."

"What if he gets it to pass?"

"He won't," Norman said as he sat down at the desk and started for the phone. "I'll make sure of it if I need to. If anyone is going to see that congress passes civil rights legislation, it's going to be me or no one at all."

Norman picked up the red phone and listened for a moment.

"What? When?"


----


[b]Galveston, Texas[/b]


The dance floor of the nightclub moved and shook, filled to capacity with young, black men and women dancing to the band onstage. Front and center was a young black man with an electric guitar, dancing as he played a loud and fast-paced riff. Behind him, a drummer, bass player, and two horn players tried to keep up. The words 'T-Bone & The Bone Patrol' were stenciled on the drumkit. T-Bone slung his guitar behind his back and grabbed the microphone in front of him. The crowd cheered and the band went into a holding pattern as he half-sung and spoke the verse.

"Man, I came home the other night and all my shit was out in the front yard. I said there couldn't be one thing going wrong, that crazy ass girl of mine. Let me go over here and see what's wrong with her this time."

From the back of the club, Sam Telford chuckled and blew cigarette smoke out his mouth.

"Went up in the house and she's sitting looking all crazy I said 'What's wrong baby?' She said 'You don't love me.' I said 'You know I love you.' She said 'No you don't. You stay out all night with yo friends, drinking and carrying on and you don't even think to call and let me know where you at' I said,'Well hold on a minute baby. Let me tell you one more time and maybe you'll believe me', so I told her something like this:"

T-Bone whipped the guitar back around and started playing a furious riff that sounded to Sam like a mix of the old blues standards and what they called rock and roll, but the rock and roll he had heard wasn't this fast or this aggressive. He kept his face close to the mic as he howled the chorus.

"I said I love you baby until the day that I die! I Spell it L-O-V-E. C'mon girl why you do this? You know I love, I love you, I love you! You know I tell you!"

In a flash, the guitar was back around T-Bone's back and he was clinging to the mic as he spoke again. Sweat was pouring off his face as he spoke again.

"I said c'mon baby let me back in the house. You know I love you. She said 'You don't even buy me presents'
'Yeah, I did. I bought you a box of chicken but I ate it on the way home.' She said, 'You don't even know my name!' 'Yeah it's Melissa.' She said 'No dumbass, it's Roxanne. Spell it out for me' Damn, man. Hold on. So I had to tell her something like this:"
 
This time, T-Bone danced to the beat in a strange duck-hop as he went into a guitar solo. He ran from one side of the stage to the other as the crowd went wild. He returned back to the mic, throwing his head back and slinging sweat across the stage, to belt out the chorus. 

"I spell it R-O-X-A-N-N baby! Her name is Roxanne and she's rocking my world. You know I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her, and so I tell her!"

From the back of the club, Sam got the attention of the bartender and passed him a note and his business card. T-Bone Harris was a name he had heard for years now, but he'd never had the pleasure to see him in person. Now that he had, Sam knew what all the fuss was about. The Bone Patrol was average at best, but T-Bone was the real star. He was raw and gritty, but the sound he had was something Sam had never heard before. He knew that with T-Bone, he could make something the world had never heard before. 

"I thought we was going to make some love but I heard a knock at the door... I was like, 'G-God damn. Who is it man?" White man said, 'I apologize for knocking so hard. This is Dallas PD, we're looking for T-Bone Harris.' I said 'Hold on. He's in the back. Let me go get him for you.' So I went to the back of the house, man my woman's sitting there and says 'Where you going?' I said 'I gots to go!'"

A large smile broke out on Sam's face as the band went into the home stretch of the song. Sam was almost a hundred percent certain he'd found another star for the Champion Records Pantheon. 

"I started running! I started running from that white man. He gonna take me away for the whole century!"


-----


[b]Brooklyn[/b]


Anthony Fortunato didn't make eye contact with Johnny Legarrio for a solid five minutes. The old man ate his cannolis in silence while Johnny looked on with a growing sense of unease. Armed men flanked both sides of Johnny and Fortunato. Johnny was not here under his own free will. Fortunato had ordered the meeting with Johnny after news of the fiasco in Chicago started to flow through the underworld. That heist gone wrong ended in three deaths, one of them a CPD lieutenant killed by Johnny's own hands. 

Fortunato ate his dessert in silence while Johnny looked on. They sat at a table on the back patio of Fortunato's impressive mansion home. The two bodyguards watched the scene impassively, their guns never far away. Johnny wanted to say something, but he knew better. The diminutive little man with the big glasses was not someone you interrupted. The organization Johnny worked for -- some called it the Mob, the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, even The Outfit -- was a Byzantine tangle of alliances, families, and rivalries. But one man always stood above it all as the clear leader of the syndicate. This man,[i]capo di tutt'i capi[/i] or boss of bosses, was calmly finishing his cannoli and kept Johnny waiting. 

When it came to power, Anthony Fortunato was quite unlike anyone Johnny had ever met from the Life. Most guys, from mid-level mobsters all the way up to guys like Bobby C., always wore their power on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They had to remind you how rich they were or how influential they were. Fortunato had none of that. The man radiated power, it enveloped him like a sheet. He controlled a shadow economy with a GDP the size moderately sized European country. At his command was an army of wiseguys and button men who could take care of any problem or person within reason. People thought President Norman had power? This man, this short and skinny old man with big glasses, had real power.

"Have you ever been to New York, John?"

Johnny almost jumped when Fortunato finally spoke. His voice was soft but thick and deep. He adjusted his glasses and looked at Johnny with his eyelids half closed. 

"I lived here briefly," Johnny replied. "Couple of years after my father died I moved here."

Fortunato lit up some foul smelling Turkish cigarette. Johnny figured that was the cause of the man's smoky voice. The old man turned his gaze towards the view on the back patio. They had a perfect view of Manhattan from across the river. 

"I came here as a baby in 1902." He pointed a wrinkled finger to some spot Johnny couldn't make out. "There. I grew up there, Little Italy they called it. It was a sovereign country on American soil, a neighborhood that was home. I didn't leave Little Italy until I was sixteen and I barely knew how to speak English. It was a place where people took care of each other. But then, the Italians moved out and the Chinks moved in and it went to shit."

"Way of the world," Johnny said with a shrug. "Dagos get good jobs and flee to Brooklyn so Chinese move in. They'll get good jobs and go somewhere else and some other group of people move in. Before it was the Italians it was the Irish. It goes around and around and around."

Fortunato chuckled. "How old are you, Johnny?"

"Thirty-one."

"Fight in the war?" Fortunato asked with raised eyebrows.

"I wouldn't call what I did fighting," he said with a tight jaw. "It was something worse."

"War...," the little boss said before nodding. "War has put our rackets in an awkward position, Johnny. Before, we had connections in Europe that would smuggle across the ocean things that we needed, products and services. In return we would send them money an other various items. But our pipeline across the Atlantic has become perilous do to the war in Africa. So we have adapted. Now our friends in Europe have become our friends in Russia and now we use the Pacific. The only problem with that is that we have no adequate distribution in the West, but we are working on it."

Fortunato beckoned one of the men over and whispered in his ear. The man nodded and darted inside the house. Johnny watched him leave before turning back to Fortunato.

"You know Frenchie Gallo, my guy out in Arizona?"

Johnny shrugged. "I know of him, but I don't know him personally."

"Frenchie is setting up new territory in the Southwest. Sun City will serve as the base for that territory, but he has pressing responsibilities. Things that he can't take up himself since he needs to stay legitimate for gaming and liquor licenses. I want you to go out there and establish and strengthen our criminal rackets through the South and Midwest."

Johnny shifted in his chair. He was expecting many things when he'd been summoned to New York for this meeting. But this? This wasn't one of them. Up until the summons, he wasn't aware Don Fortunato even knew he existed.

"Why me? You got hundreds of made guys here in New York you know better and probably trust more."

"Let me answer your question with a question. The unfortunate mess you encountered after that bank robbery. Do you think this police lieutenant you killed was acting alone? Or did he have an accomplice?"

The old man's eyes didn't move an inch as he looked at Johnny. He could see through the younger man as if he were made of glass. Of course Johnny had harbored those suspicions since Bukowski had joined the crew. No, joined wasn't the right word. Jammed into the crew on Bobby C's insistence. And the one guy Bobby had demanded be on the job was the one who betrayed them? The one who tried to kill Johnny and take the money?

"What do you think?" Johnny finally answered.

Fortunato's face broke out into a soft smile.

"I hate Bobby as much as you do, Johnny. He is a pig who has no sense of restraint or mercy. He is not a gentleman, but an animal. But as of right now he is untouchable, even for a man like me. He has powerful friends and allies in the Syndicate and the political reality of the situation is a tricky one. One day, it will not be so tricky and there will be a simple solution to our problem. Chicago is not safe for you, even if Bobby C. were not your enemy. You still killed a police officer. I am told you are a smart man and a good earner. You are a good ally for me to have. I do not want to lose you, and if you do a good job in Sun City you may get the chance to return home and take care of our mutual enemy. Anybody in our organization can be clipped for the right amount of money."

Johnny reached out and took the Don's right hand into both of his.

"Thank you."

"If you want to thank me," he said softly. "Make me lots of money. And get some sun while you're in Arizona, you're too pale!"