the mighty mighty

“Big G” set up shop in the back of a deli twenty years ago, because he saw it in a gangster movie and thought it set the right tone, and never left. His first name is Gianni, which accounts for the G, and he weighs in at over 300 lbs.

Which accounts for the big.

It was a day like any other day, insomuch as he was running his criminal empire behind a cluttered wooden desk that looked like it was at least fifty years old, when his phone rang. A phone, it’s important to note, that was not a state-of-the-art cell phone, far from it, but an old-fashioned black rotary dial phone. Apparently there was a phone just like it on the desk of a different gangster movie he’d seen growing up.

He was being told some bad news. One of his drivers had been involved in a minor traffic accident, but his car was unable to leave the scene. A car loaded front to back with drugs. Bow to stern. Choked with the stuff. There were a couple of other cars involved and the police had just arrived on the scene.

“Leave no witnesses” was all he said and hung up the phone.

Without going into too much detail, the desk, in addition to looking cluttered, also looked a little greasy. As if countless sandwiches has been consumed on it without the benefit of wax paper or plastic wrap underneath them.

A little while later the phone rang again.

There was a complication. A local TV news crew happened to be driving by at the time and had stopped to shoot some footage.

“Which station?” he inquired.

It was a small local station.

“And how many viewers does their six o’clock news have?”

It was not very popular. Its ratings sat somewhere between Hockey Tonight and an Andy Griffith Show rerun.

“Like I said, leave no witnesses.”

He returned to rummaging through the drawers of his desk for a pen that worked, after ordering the execution of several thousand people. He could never find a pen when he needed one.

The phone rang again.

“What now?” he asked, clearly annoyed.

More bad news. Apparently the major-market news station had picked up the story from their affiliate and planned to air the footage to the entire New York City market.

“I see.”

The problem was that his people typically bought his pens in bulk from a local office supply store. While the cost was very low, the pens were shit. After only a few uses they would stop working. His trash can was literally overflowing with useless pens. “Penny wise and pound foolish” he muttered under his breath.

His attention returned to the situation on the other end of the phone. “Like I said earlier, leave no witnesses.”

His pronouncement was met with silence. No doubt the man at the scene of the accident was mulling over the logistics involved with killing every man, woman and child in the tri-state area. Gianni’s crew currently sat at about two hundred. Four if they called in a few favors.

“Is there a problem?” “Big G” asked.

Finally he heard “No boss.”

“Then get it done” and with that he hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. One of his associates had recently bought him a nice Montblanc ballpoint and he wondered where that had gotten to. “Is it got to or gotten to?” he wondered to himself. He was puzzled because gotten is typically used when referring to the process of acquiring something, while got is used when referring to something you own. Currently he was trying to acquire something that he already owned.

A real chin scratcher.

He stood up and went in search of a pen, blissfully unaware of the trouble he had recently got and gotten himself and his associates into.