What in the world made three authors want to knock off their publisher?
May 2015 has come and gone, and this book is now available in Kindle, paperback and audio. Just check it out on Amazon
You can listen to a sample audio track on Amazon.
Here is a sneak peek:
PROLOGUE
Los Angeles Times, Tuesday,
April 5, 2011
By John Grant, Organized Crime Reporter
Tony “The Nose” Mancuso, the top mobster in Los Angeles, answered the knock on his
door at around 8:00 p.m. last Friday
night, and it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. He is believed
to have invited his guest into the living room. Seconds later, the visitor shot
Mancuso once in the back of the head
with a .38 caliber pistol, killing
him instantly. After he fell to the
floor, face down, his killer rolled
him over and fired five more rounds into his face, nearly obliterating it. In fact, the damage was
so great he had to be identified by his fingerprints, and it will be a closed- casket funeral. This is the theory being put forward by the police, based upon their preliminary investigation and the coroner’s autopsy report.
So what we have is an apparent Mob hit. The cops should have no shortage of suspects. It has been
widely known that there were a number of crime
figures and organizations that wanted “The Nose” eliminated for one reason or another. Take Nose’s ambitious underling Brutali Bonano, for example. He
didn’t agree with his bosses’ management style and thought he could do a better job. Was he behind a hostile takeover? Or how about the Bloods? I’ve
reported in the past that the gang wasn’t happy about the amount of tribute Mancuso demanded for keeping his hands out of their drug operations.
The excessive violence used in the killing
opens another possibility. But for his huge schnoz, Mancuso was considered
handsome and had a swashbuckling image, much
like the late Errol Flynn. Could the destruction
of his face be a message from the husband or boyfriend of a woman he’d
become too friendly with? Whoever pulled
the trigger may have been sending a
message. Because he certainly saw to
it that the deceased gangster would as
no longer be appealing to look at.
Yes, investigators will have plenty of
avenues to pursue. One person who might be
able to put the investigation on the
right track is Mancuso’s wife, Maria, but it’s been
rumored that she hasn’t been seen
around their home or anywhere else, for some time. According to the police
report, she wasn’t at the residence when officers arrived on Saturday in response to an anonymous call of shots fired. Was there marital discord? Is she
being treated somewhere for a health issue?
Nobody seems to know, or if they do,
they aren’t saying. I’m sure the cops want to talk with Maria. Maybe
her late husband’s associates would like to have a few words with her, as well.
The big question is, of course, who killed Tony “The
Nose?” The second question is, where is Maria? If she can be found, she may very well have information that will be key in answering the first question.
ONE
June,
2015
Vincent Vitali, CEO of Vitali Publishing, opened the door of a
compartment in the left pedestal of
his fancy mahogany desk, pulled out an inlaid Spanish Cedar humidor and
selected a Cuban cigar. He rolled it under his nose for a moment then, in one quick motion, clipped the end with his gold cutter.
Savoring the Havana, he tipped his
leather desk chair back at a
comfortable angle and actually managed
to get his feet up on his desk. This
was no simple maneuver for a guy his size, but he had learned that if he put
his feet up, it made the people sitting opposite him feel insignificant.
Vinny tipped the scales at just over four hundred pounds, distributed evenly over his five-foot-seven frame, which had earned him the nickname Fat
Vinny. As he sat there glaring at the
man and woman seated across from him, he
drew on the cigar and blew smoke in
their direction. “You call
this piece of crap finished? It’s not the book I thought it was going to be.” He rubbed the cigar around
his frog-like lips and let out a disgusted sigh.
Danny Garrett leaned forward, his body language tight.
“Well, you thought wrong, then. This is the book we signed a contract to write. We’re willing to do some minor touchups, but you’re the one who gave us the assignment. You sat in on the
development meetings. Now you have the nerve
to say it’s crap? What exactly did you
expect?”
Looking at Garrett, a former FBI agent with
a string of successful books behind him, Vinny sensed he was not one to be
bullied. The word was Garrett left the Bureau twenty years earlier after his
cover had been blown, and he narrowly
missed being taken out by a psycho
mobster. Though from what Vinny heard, he was still a tough guy.
Danny’s co-author Margaret Stanton added, “Look, Vinny, you wanted the memoir of a
Mob wife; you got the memoir of a Mob wife and, I might add, our proofreaders thought it was really good.
They want a copy as soon as it comes out. We’ve even spoken to producers of a few of the hot talk shows and there’s a good possibility of national TV
exposure. So what’s your problem?”
“My problem is—” Vinny paused, trying
to look menacing, not realizing to Danny and Margaret he probably wound up looking like a frog puffing on a cigar.
He continued, “There are no investigative interviews. Did you contact Tony’s brother? There must have been bad blood there. Don’t you hacks know “The Nose” stopped talking to him in ‘95? A confidential source told me the brother turned
Mancuso in to the FBI. What about the Mob bosses
his widow rags about in this piece of
garbage? Did you even make an effort
to contact them? The way it stands
now, it’s her word against theirs.”
“Exactly!
A memoir is a person’s memory of events.
This is what you asked for. Maria’s memoir,”
Danny said.
Vinny felt a flush inch up its way from his neck to his face. He
took his feet off the desk, leaned forward
and snatched the thick manuscript from the
desktop. Waving it at Danny and Margaret
he countered, “Don’t try to confuse
the issue with this memoir bullshit. You
listen to me, and you listen good. I
want you to talk to the first wife.
The one he supposedly beat to a pulp. The one your Maria Mancuso says in here—”
He stopped for a moment and opened the manuscript to a bookmarked page, held it up and
read, “After he clocked me on the side
of my head, I swore someday I’d pull a
gun on him just like first wife Concetta did. She shot him in the foot. I’d aim higher.”
He narrowed his eyes and continued to glare
at the authors, then jabbed the page
with a fleshy finger. “Why would
anyone take her word for this? Who would believe this babe Concetta actually had the guts to plug a made man.
Was there a police report? If there was,
did you get a copy of it? Hearsay. It’s all just hearsay. This whole damned
thing. I want interviews—forget this fuckin’
memoir business. Understand?”
After his tirade, Vinny threw the manuscript down with a thud and
leaned back in his chair.
Fat Vinny delighted
in the feeling of power over others,
or as he called it, “the big
impression.” Cuban cigars were part of the picture. Wanting to show Danny he could get anything he wanted, he reached into
the humidor and offered him a cigar. “Bet you never smoked one of these.”
Danny smirked and said, “No I haven’t and
never will. Thanks but no thanks.
Don’t you know how bad they are for
your health?”
Vinny’s fingers were in lots of pies
including an auction business, a travel agency, a company that manufactured
some kind of special glassware and stuff for the Las Vegas and Indian casinos, but nothing that gave him the prestige he wanted. He’d thought getting into the publishing
business would make him look refined
and give him what he craved, but this
wasn’t prestige. This was shit. Who did this pissant think he was
to talk to
him like that!
It had seemed so easy. He’d hired a few people to do book designs
and formatting, and a guy who claimed he knew
how to manage everything related to
promotion, but actually knew little or nothing when it came to
selling books. With Vitali Publishing now a reality, Vinny was sure it would give him a classy image. That’s
why he couldn’t accept that his blockbuster
exposé of the guy who’d knocked
off a notorious Mob boss had turned
into a fuckin’ fairy tale cooked up by Tony ‘The Nose’s’
widow.
His
voice dripped venom as he hissed, “Have it your way. Most
people would fall all over themselves for a
chance to
get their hands on one of these.” He jammed the precious Cuban cigar back in the humidor. “Forget
it. Let’s
talk about what you’re here for. This fuckin’ manuscript.”
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