He is not physically intimidating. At five foot eight, and an overweight one ninety nine, with a big gut, he is far from a physical specimen, and he looks like you could outrun him. But somehow you just know not to fuck with this man when you see him. Danny could see his pinky ring flash the sun as it rested by his hip. He wore shiny dress pants and jacket, perfectly creased, and a black turtleneck. His shoes were light and crocodile skin, hardly the shoes of combat, and they looked like they would come off if he had to run or kick with them. But somehow you just know not to mess with him. Everyone here seems to know it too. There is nobody within twenty feet of him – nobody - as he just stands there, surveying, taking it all in, silently grimacing. He has killed at least thirty or forty guys, Danny figured. The street legends in Bay Ridge say well over a hundred, and even that may be true. But one thing is for sure: Mort’s brother, Benny Big Balls has definitely had gallons of blood on his hands. And it was all business.
That’s what makes him so scary. Guys like Big Balls no longer care about themselves, no longer care what happens to them. They lose their normal sense of fear: fear of pain, fear of death, fear of the pain of death. They walk around every day free of such fear. This makes a true sociopath; someone who doesn’t care about your pain, or your death, or about torturing you slowly to death in the mob’s dreaded laboratory in Soundview in the Bronx, or in their infamous workshop in Canarsie, Brooklyn; where so many victims have screamed and screamed until life mercifully left their altered and punctured bodies. The place in Canarsie had soundproof walls; and tables and tool racks, holding all sorts of horrible implements. The rumor was there were even doctors on the payroll, who would prolong life through bleeding control, and drug dosing. Amphetamines to heighten the senses and maintain alertness, were just one way the mob assured a fruitful session at the table, where they went at their jacked-up victim the old-fashioned way: with a saw, power-sander, blowtorch, and pliers.
Danny had heard a lot about the mob’s workshop growing up, and people in the neighborhood were sure it really existed. It was a top secret place, though. Danny’s dad and even Uncle Nico never knew exactly which building in Canarsie it was, but they figured it was among the mob properties a couple blocks off the main avenue.
When Danny saw the figure that he would recognize an instant later as Benny Big Balls, the first thing that caught his eye was the pinky ring. It flashed at him, giving him no choice. The man was just as Danny remembered him, but his face looked older, fuller, grayer. Feeling the back of his neck tingle and a sheen of perspiration just begin to insulate him from his shirt, Danny stared at the man’s hands. His mind wandered to all of Benny’s victims; and the blood that had been on those hands. How much blood? “God that’s incredible,” whispered Danny. Those hands: human hands; capable of such horrors. They were pudgy and hairy at the knuckles, and could have been just about anybody’s. But these were the hands of a sociopath name of Big Balls. Danny shuddered as he thought of how many had died at those hands.
What the fuck is he doing here? Danny continued to scan the crowd, and take a few more steps toward the warehouse door, where the line began. He stopped and glanced back at Benny. He didn’t want to make eye contact with him, but he wanted one more look: at his posture, at his body language; anything that would tell him why this scary important man would be here. He looked like he was here to observe, take it all in. Danny couldn’t imagine a guy like Mort’s brother actually participating in this stuff. Danny took it as a sign of some significance, albeit a scary foreboding sign, that Benny had heard of ‘AMG’, and that he felt he had to keep an eye on something or somebody here. Maybe some of his soldiers were going to be here? Danny’s mind raced with the possibilities. Regardless of the reason, there was Benny ‘Big Balls’ Mortadella: little brother of the most feared crime boss in the city, an underboss to perhaps the most powerful man in the country. A man wired directly into City Hall and the police for the last three decades: in the flesh.
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