The limousine stopped in front of the Boston bar, and Naughty looked nervously at the entrance.  The driver was one of Mick’s men, and Naughty was in the backseat, like he always was, waiting on the boss.  But he had company this time: Mick and Charles were back there too.  And Mick had a gun trained on Naughty.

“One signal to anybody,” Mick said, “or one false move, and you’ll be roadkill before you can warn anybody.  Understood?”

Naughty nodded.  “I got it,” he said angrily.  “Why you got to keep telling me that?  I got it.”

And then he got out, to open the door for his boss.

Arnie Palmer came out within seconds, hurried across the sidewalk, and got into the limo without giving Naughty, or his driver, a second look.  It was their routine.  He had no reason to suspect any changes.

Until he got in the limousine.

As soon as he saw Charles Sinatra, but especially Mick Sinatra in that backseat, his body recoiled.  “Shit,” he said, and attempted to back back out, but Naughty forced him back in and slammed the door shut.  And the driver drove off.

“What are you crazy?” Arnie asked Naughty after being pushed back inside.  “What are you a rat?  You working for Mick the Tick now?”

“Just shut the fuck up and listen to them,” Naughty said.  “They know what happened.  They know what you ordered.”

“What I ordered?” Arnie asked.  “What the fuck I ordered?”

“So this is how we’re going to play it, are we?” Charles asked.  “We’re going to play the dumb game?”

“I want to know why you targeting me?” Arnie asked.  “I don’t know what Naughty told you, but it’s all lies.  I work for Pete Brazzano, what the fuck?  You know he has a truce with you.  Why would he do anything to harm your brother?”

“Who said he did anything to harm my brother?” Mick asked.

Arnie realized he had spoken too soon.  But he knew he had to stay with it.  “Why else would he be with you out in the field?  Everybody knows you work alone.”

“Why did you ambush Angelo and my brother?” Mick asked.  “Why did you order that explosion at my brother’s house?”

“What ambush?” Arnie asked.  “What explosion?  What did Naughty tell you?”

“Ah, boss, what are you blind?” Naughty asked him, irritated.  “You think Mick Sinatra is going to be sitting in this limo ready to take us out because we didn’t have nothing to do with nothing?  He knows what we did already.  Stop playing dumb already.  Just tell the man what he needs to know.  We’re fucked anyway.  Knock that dumb shit off.”

Arnie was seething inside.  But he was convinced he was untouchable.  He was too high-ranking in Brazzano’s organization for Mick to lay a glove on him.  Mick was the titan in the underworld, but Brazzano was big too.  Fucking with his underboss would come with a price.  “I don’t know what Naughty told you,” he said again, “but it’s a pack of lies.  I had nothing to do with no explosion.  I had nothing to do with no ambush.”

“We want a meeting with your boss,” Mick said.  “Set it up.”

Arnie laughed.  “Are you fucking kidding me?  I can’t do that,” he had the nerve to say.

Even Charles looked at him.  He was already inwardly enraged just to be in the same car with the man who ordered death and destruction on his family.  It took all he had to just remain in his seat, and not down this asshole’s throat.  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked him.

“I’m not leading no enemy to my boss’s camp,” Arnie said. “That’s what it means!  You come at me like this, with guns and shit, and I’m not supposed to be offended, Micky?  You and Brazzano have a truce.  Why you wanna break it?”

“Cut the shit, Arne, before I lose my patience.” Mick said.  “Set up a meeting with Brazzano, and set it up now.”

But Arnie leaned back.  “I’ll die before I rat out my boss.  I’m not like Naughty.  I don’t snitch.  I don’t set up my boss for a takedown.  This stunt you just pulled ain’t gonna get Peetie Brazzano’s attention.  This won’t get his attention.”

Charles grabbed the gun out of Mick’s hand before Mick could react, which astonished Mick.  Charles placed that gun to Arnie’s forehead.  Arnie and Naughty both jumped back.  “Maybe that stunt won’t get his attention,” Charles said, “but I’ll bet you this one will.”  And Charles pulled the trigger, and killed Brazzano’s underboss.

Everything changed when Arnie’s head fell back, shattered and bloodied, and then lobbed forward.

Mick was shocked by Charles’s action, but Naughty would never know it.  “Take us to Brazzano,” he said.  “Or you will most definitely be next.”

But Naughty shook his head.  He was petrified now.  “I don’t know where to take you,” he said.  “I worked for Arnie.  I never had access to Brazzano.  I don’t know nothing about his schedule or his whereabouts or none of that shit.  None of us knew.  Arnie kept that a well-guarded secret.”

“That’s a shame,” Mick said.  He knew they had to send a message a different way now.  A way that normally would have automatically meant all-out war.  But as far as Mick was concerned, it already was.  “That’s a very, unfortunate shame,” he added to Naughty, and then shot and killed Naughty with a second gun Charles didn’t even realize he held.

Then Mick pressed the intercom button.  “Go back to the bar,” he ordered the driver.

When they arrived at the bar, Mick looked at his brother.  “You’re ready?” he asked him.

Charles nodded.  “Am I ready to take out the assholes who tried to take my family out?  Oh, yeah,” he said, and he and Mick got out.

They were armed to the teeth, especially Mick, whose long, white coat hid many compartments and many weapons.  But when they first entered the relaxed bar, a bar everybody in the neighborhood knew wasn’t the kind of bar anybody could just walk into, Mick and Charles looked like two guys off the street who had stepped through the wrong door.  One of Arnie’s men, the one running a card game, was about to tell those jokers to scram; that they weren’t serving customers there.  Until he realized who one of those jokers were.

“Motherfuck it’s Mick the Tick!” he yelled, alerting everybody, and all of the men began putting down their cigars and cards and reaching for their weapons.

But it was too late.  Way too late.

Mick and Charles stood there firing, in rapid release, killing all but one of them before the first weapon was drawn.  They left one to be the messenger.  But not before checking the back, in case somebody else was in the building.  They checked upstairs too.  But only the messenger remained.

They left the bar and headed back outside.  Once inside the limo, they kicked first Naughty, and then Arnie, out onto the sidewalk.  It was a definitive message they wanted Brazzano to get loud and clear.

Mick nodded.  They were done.  And the limo took off.

By the time Peetie Brazzano would learn that his long-time underboss wasn’t at the barber shop, but was lying dead like a rat right outside the bar Arnie used for years as his base of operations, the limo would be long gone, and well on its way back to Jericho.