Chapter 3: Initiation

The smooth brass and schmaltzy piano of David’s ringtone blared out from the phone in his back pocket. He reflexively grabbed his phone, saw that it was from a private number, and immediately hung up. He thought nothing of it and quickly pocketed his phone. He ambled down the sidewalk towards the parking garage he remembered parking his car in.

After a minute or so, the phone blared out again. He checked it again and hung it up once again. He started to speed up his pace as he began to get nervous. He just wanted to get home and get back home. David shoved his phone into his pocket as quickly as he could once more.

Before he could pull his hand out of his pocket, the phone blared out a third time.

David seethed and quickly answered the phone by yelling “What is it? What do you want so badly that you have to call me three times in a row in the past three minutes?”

“Ah, Snowflake Gambler. We speak again. So, you’ll be keeping your word tonight, correct?” asked a deep voice with a weak Russian accent. It was a voice he knew from the previous night. David’s face began to contort with horror as soon as the eerie timbre of the mobster’s voice reached his ears.

“D-Dmitry…?” whispered David. He froze in place, the cold, stinging, bitter wind dancing on his skin. He became paler and paler as his thoughts raced in his head.

“Good. You remember. Well, keep your word. If you don’t, terrible things will happen. You know where to go at 10:00 P.M.— go the same place as last time,” commanded Dmitry over the phone. The receiver of David’s phone then hung up, and left David in the middle of downtown Boston with nothing but the chatter of passersby and the cacophony of cars zipping by in the streets.

“No, no, no,” muttered David to himself. He pocketed his phone one last time, buried his face into his chilly hands and hyperventilated. He stumbled over to the side of the sidewalk to make way for other pedestrians, and slumped down onto the cold, hard pavement beneath him. He had been trying to shove everything that had happened deep down inside, but these mobsters just wouldn’t let him.

David whimpered into his hands, unsure of what to do. “Oh…where did I go wrong?” he muttered to himself. He had done almost everything right up until that point. He racked his brain to think of where he could have possibly gone wrong in life, and the only real thing he could think of was his previous deep web gambling. Sketchy, sure— but legal to his knowledge.

Before he could gather his bearings, his thoughts were interrupted. “Ey, do you have some spare change?” begged a stranger who kneeled next to him. “I’m short a few quarters for the bus and—”

“Augh, I’m sorry, no, I don’t! I really don’t! Honest!” whined David. He got up and walked away from the panhandler and started to shake himself back into the task he had at hand. He hightailed it for the parking garage he put his car in the night before. By the time his feet landed in front of his own pitch-black sedan, he had the sinking feeling of yet another unnecessary payment. He ruminated for a few minutes before realizing that he now had to part with about $25.00 for leaving his car overnight. He began to berate himself for that decision, too. He now needed to withdraw from his savings this month.

David pulled his keys out from his pocket, opened his car door, and hopped in as quickly as he could. He pulled out from the parking spot and drove up to the ticket booth. With reluctance, he handed his debit card to the ticket attendant. As soon as he got it back, he drove through the jam-packed heart of Boston as quickly as he could, the skyscrapers receding behind him while the grungy and mediocre one-story buildings ahead came forward. When he parked in front of his apartment complex, he got out of his car, locked the door, and hurried back into his apartment.

David shifted his eyes back and forth while he stood at the front door, wondering if Amy or Zachary were home already. The TV was still on, paused on Amy’s new favorite show, but it wasn’t playing. David remained silent, to see if he could hear anything that would indicate that someone was home. After waiting for two minutes, he sighed a breath of relief and immediately went back to his modest and minimalist bedroom. He went around his room to grab a lot of the things that he wore the night before and piled them up in his left arm. As soon as he collected everything, he rushed out of the apartment once again, down the stairs, and back to his car.

As soon as David unlocked his car trunk, his briefcase with all his textbooks, his paperwork, and his laptop were still in there from the day before. Without hesitating, he also placed the foppish disguise he made on short-notice in there as well—top hat, coat, gloves, black and white brogues, tie, and a spare white dress shirt. He kept the gun in the overcoat, if he would only need it when he wore those clothes. He slammed the car door shut and hopped back into his car once again.

Normally, David would have just walked down the road to the nearby Walgreens if that was his only destination—but he knew that he would have to go back to Felt later that night, so he decided to take his car with him. As to be expected, he arrived within a few minutes, and stepped out of his car to go inside of the store to grab the same makeup he had borrowed from Amy, but picked to match his pale, cool skin tone better than Amy’s warmer skin tone. He knew he hadn’t made a purchase like this in a few years. He didn’t plan on getting back into this habit, but he didn’t really know what else to do. It was another $24.38 out of his bank account, but if he could even have a thin opportunity to hide his real identity from people who would be ashamed of the shady things he was on board for, he would take it.

He solemnly took the drugstore makeup to the cash register and refused to stare at anyone in the line or the cashier. David waited for the cashier at the counter to swipe his card and get the whole affair over with. After he got his card back, he walked out with his drugstore makeup in a plastic shopping bag, went back to his car, and threw it all on the passenger’s seat. He hopped back into the driver’s seat, and then swerved out of the parking lot, rubber squealing on the rough pavement. He wanted to get everything with the syndicate done and over with—but he felt the pangs of hunger grow from the depths of his stomach. David immediately pulled over to the nearest Starbucks for a cup of cheap black coffee and a simple bagel without really thinking about it, the hunger becoming too much to bear.

The soon-to-be syndicate gambler was also a studious law student and presumed that it was too early to don the clothes for his mafia outings. While thinking of this, he got out of the car, opened the trunk of his car, and pulled out a couple of textbooks from his current semester of law school—Criminal Law, and Tort Law. He formed a wry smile at reviewing criminal law while being slowly absorbed by people who were monstrous criminals themselves.

“Oh, the irony,” murmured David to himself. He shut the trunk of his car, locked it, and walked into the familiar, cozy Starbucks to order the meager lunch he wanted. He wasn’t proud of himself for spending yet another $4.02 at the register, but he decided to treat himself after dealing with the horrid things he saw the previous night. As soon as he got his food, he sat down at one of the two-seater tables by the window, set an alarm for 9:00 P.M., and cracked open the criminal law book. He slowly noshed on the food he purchased while studying in the window of time he normally would have spent in one of the many, many libraries around the greater Boston metropolis.

The time whizzed by as it always did whenever he entered the zone during his studies. His woes and worries about the mafia melted away while absorbed in the dense legalese that occupied him—all until the alarm he set took him from his trance.

David blinked for a few moments and then scrunched his face in despair. The illicit acts he was held to against his will came back to the forefront of his mind, but he was aware that it was crime or death. He closed his books, threw out the trash he had on his table, and stepped out to the parking lot in front of the modest Starbucks. He got into his car and maneuvered it behind the dumpsters of the Starbucks so he could begin to don what he was now deeming ‘mafia drag’. Bit by bit, he put the ensemble on again. He laughed in the rear-view mirror at the absurdity of what must have looked like being a trashy supervillain—if only to hide the feeling of humiliation deep down. In his heart, his overly flamboyant costume felt like it was the most accurate way to express how he truly felt about the whole situation.

Once David put on the finishing touches, he checked his phone for the time; it was 9:12 P.M. He crunched the numbers in his head and figured that he could make it back to Felt on time. He pressed the acceleration pedal, and the car zipped off.

The roads weren’t as terrible and crowded as they were the previous night, due to the subsided Halloween traffic, although Downtown Boston was still a narrow, crowded place to be in at night. Soon enough, David managed to navigate his way to the same parking garage near Felt. He gulped as soon as soon as he saw the same ticket attendant at the parking garage, but the other man said nothing to David. He then remembered that he saw a narrow and badly planned public parking lot with one spot around the corner when Amy drove him back and rerouted to park there instead. Amazingly enough, a spot was still available.

When David stepped out of his car, he walked towards Felt. In the distance, he saw Dmitry slav-squatting in front of the derelict gambling den. The young card-counting law student had to stifle a few laughs at this and strode forward.

“You actually have the guts to come back, Snowflake. I had my bets on you not showing up. Pity. It would have been amusing to dispose of you,” mocked Dmitry. He stood back up and cracked his knuckles. David flinched for a second. Dmitry homed in on that like a hawk noticing a rabbit from the sky before plunging for the kill. “Ohoho, don’t tell me that you’re scared that easily?”

“N-No…I just need to establish trust is all,” stammered David. He nervously looked down to the sidewalk for a few moments. “Now tell me; what am I supposed to do tonight?”

The stringy Russian mobster got to the point. “You’re going to have some things…explained to you…before you do anything. Carminio needs to trust you first.”

“So, you’re asking me to meet someone?” asked David. He looked back up and clasped his hands. He didn’t intend to join any kind of shady organization any time soon, but he knew that his only other option in this dilemma was death. With the knowledge David had the previous night, he was less inclined to fight the ethereal Russian gangster in front of him.

“That’s a short way of putting it, but sure, whatever you’d like to call it,” purred Dmitry. He pulled a smartphone of his own from his beaten up, brown leather jacket, and tapped on it a few times. “We’ll be heading to where we need to go shortly,”

David and Dmitry stood there in silence, patiently waiting for whatever car they were going to be waiting for. David took off the top hat from above his head, assuming Dmitry had just arranged for a car to whisk them off—and that his hat would probably be too tall for the car.

“Good. You finally took that stupid hat off,” mocked Dmitry once again. “The only people who wear top hats are try-hard douches and short people,” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and pulled one of them out.

“Excuse you? 5’10” is the statistically average male height. I’m average, thank you,” retorted David. He felt his blood boiling in his veins but restrained himself.

“So, you’re just a try-hard douche. Cool story, bro,” scoffed Dmitry. He put the cigarette pack back in his coat, and then pulled out a lighter. He deftly lit his cigarette and pocketed the lighter. “Oh, the Uber is already here. Unfortunate,” lamented the hardened gangster. He took a very long drag from his cigarette, burning through it in only a few seconds. Dmitry then threw the remaining cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it under his heavy boots. The mobster then exhaled the smoke he had just inhaled into the crisp air around them.

David stared at Dmitry for a few seconds in awe of what he just did. David felt his face blush against his will — not the cold autumn night winds around them, but because of what he just witnessed. He lightly covered his mouth and averted his gaze just before Dmitry grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the sleek black luxury car on the curb in front of them.

“Oy, what were you spacing out and staring at me for, Snowflake?” berated Dmitry. He cracked his neck to the side, then spoke with the driver about the destination. David half-heartedly listened to Dmitry, with cigarette smoke coming to mind. “…yeah, yeah, the one in Weston,” directed Dmitry to the Uber driver.

David, with his face still flushed from what he just saw, decided to only tell a half truth. “…I’m a former smoker. I’m sorry, but I was tempted to ask for a cigarette,” He placed his delicate hands on his hat, and placed the hat on top of his lap. He kept his eyes averted, focusing only on the top hat on his lap. He was telling the truth about being a former smoker, but he was lying about was what he wanted. David wasn’t interested in smoking another cigarette himself; he was interested in something else.

“Too bad. I’m not giving you one. Get your own,” chided Dmitry. He hunched over to tap away at his own cell phone, clearly texting someone.

“I said former. I wasn’t actually asking you for a loosie,” repeated David. He rolled his eyes to the side of the window and placed his elbow on the top of his top hat and supported his head with his face. He wistfully looked out of the tinted window, barely able to see much of what the driver was passing by. He was able to see all the muted city lights on the way and started to observe the lights illuminating the crowded streets. The traffic in downtown wasn’t all that busy, which surprised him until he remembered that it was a Sunday night. The city was still large, and it took them a while to reach I-90 going westbound.

Dmitry looked to the side for a few moments, and jested “Wow, you really look like an emo douchebag now.”

All David could bring himself to say was “OK then, whatever. I don’t see why it matters to you,” He pulled out his phone, turned it on, opened Google Maps, and put Weston into the app so he could get an estimated time of arrival for this whole event. The phone alerted him that it would be about 45 minutes, so he decided to pull up a digital textbook for his Contracts course on his own phone and started scrolling through that. David would have entered his usual studying trance if it weren’t for the fact that Dmitry requested the driver to start playing distinctive Eurodance that began to blast from the car speakers, the heavy bass rattling the entire car.

“Hey, Snowflake, you need to stay alert. Stop screwing around with your phone and prepare yourself for the initiation!” chastised Dmitry. “You can get back to reading whatever that was later,” The mobster poked at the power button for David’s phone and turned it off with one of his long, calloused fingers.

David was annoyed by this but complied. “Fine, fine,” He pocketed his phone again and decided to listen to the EDM that surrounded him. It was better than Amy’s own music tastes, but he hated to admit to himself that he shared some commonality with the mobster sitting next to him on the white leather backseat of a higher end Uber. He fell out of the habit of listening to EDM when he started to take his studies seriously a few years ago, but it was something he still appreciated from time to time. He started tapping his black and white shoes on the floor of the car in front of him, matching the rhythm of the song in half-time.

David nodded his head a bit with the song until Dmitry placed one of his gangly hands on David’s shoulder. “Stop. You’re just embarrassing yourself,” scolded the stern middle-aged mobster. “This should only get your blood pumping, not your muscles.”

David stopped, but wasn’t keen on how strait-laced this mobster was. “You must have the best personal life ever,” sniped David with the smoothest sarcasm he had laid out in a while. He managed to strike one of Dmitry’s nerves, and quickly regretted his decision.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have killed you yesterday,” growled Dmitry in the most guttural tone David had ever had the misfortune of sitting next to.

“Um…p-p-please don’t k-kill someone in my car…I would have to c-c-clean up the blood…” whimpered the Uber driver in the front. The driver had remained quiet until that point but had stopped Dmitry’s train of thought in that moment.

“Fair,” agreed Dmitry. The lanky mobster pulled out his phone and took a look at something that—even from the corner of his eyes—David recognized as the deep web site for the Black Light Gambling Den. Dmitry scrolled and navigated through the site, pulling up David’s very own impeccable, pseudonymous profile, complete with his near perfect gambling record.

“Aside from the inconvenience of cleaning your viscera from the seats—consider your own brilliant gambling skills your salvation, Snowflake. I just reminded myself of why I spared you,” beamed Dmitry. He gave David the most ominous, full-toothed grin he had ever seen. It was even worse when he saw a silver grill in that horrifying smile—of all the things David expected to see up close and in person, a custom-made grill with decorative vampire fangs wasn’t one of them. “And we’re here. Even better,” added Dmitry. David clutched onto his hat tightly, feeling like it was the only thing that could bring him comfort at that moment. He then pushed the collapsible hat down and placed it under his arm.

The two stepped out of the car, arriving at a Georgian revivalist mansion with a large circular driveway, an even more expansive front yard, and a fountain with a duplicate statue of Michelangelo’s David in the middle. The living, breathing 21st century David could only stare at the residence with a sense of awe and fear. He immediately knew that a residence like this would normally cost something in the realm of millions of dollars. He also started to wish that he didn’t share the same name as the iconic Renaissance statue replica that stood before him.

Dmitry waved for David to come forward to the large double doors in front of them. David walked behind Dmitry, his dress shoes tapping lightly against the bricks and mortar on the ground beneath him. Dmitry walked up to the doorbell and rang it without hesitation. The duo stood there for a few minutes, until a man that was dressed in a well-tailored, Italian cut suit opened the door. This stout, older man appeared to be in his fifties that was somewhere between David and Dmitry’s height.

“Hello, Dmitry. I see you’ve brought the recruit here, as promised” greeted the older man.

“Indeed,” answered Dmitry as he wiped his clunky boots on the welcome mat. He shoved his hands into his leather jacket and stepped onto the pristine white tiles inside the mansion. “Well, what are you waiting for, Snowflake? Let’s get this over with so that I can put you on your assignment already,” commanded Dmitry.

David looked down to the mat by the front door and noticed that it was decorated with an intricate pattern, as to be expected of such an impressive home. He wiped his own shoes a few times before he looked back up, nodded, and greeted the older man with as much humility as he could. “Thank you for allowing me into your home.”

“Of course. I always welcome new blood with open arms,” answered the older man. He waved for David to step inside. He looked around for a coat hook or something like one to hang his hat on and found a hat rack by the front of the door. He placed it there before leaving it behind.

The interior of the mansion met David’s expectations; once he stepped out from the short front hallway, the spacious front lobby had while marble tiling everywhere, and what appeared to be gold railing for the stairs that lead upstairs. The ceiling had several chandeliers, and intricate molded patterns on the pristine surface above. There were a couple of small, duplicate statues of Michelangelo’s David by the corners of the hall, which made him wonder what on Earth the owner’s obsession with that specific Renaissance statue was about. Whether it was just because it was a cultural short-hand for “class and dignity” that didn’t actually mean anything significant, or if the owner was truly a fan of the statue was a mystery to David—and it was a mystery he wasn’t interested in solving.

“Hurry up. You shouldn’t leave the boss waiting,” urged Dmitry. The Russian gangster made haste to the second open hall in front of them, wanting to go to the back lobby with the sliding glass door on the back wall.

“You don’t need to speak for me, Capo Dmitry,” corrected the older man. He looked back to David and explained himself. “Allow me to introduce myself. I—am Carlo Russo, the head boss of Carminio. I can override any orders that Dmitry gives you. Capiché?”

“Yes, of course,” agreed David. He was taken aback by how mild-mannered the head boss of the entire gang was before now. He had assumed that Carlo was a mere butler and regretted that his first impression was wrong. He was also impressed by how genteel he seemed and wished to have the same amount of charisma when he became an older man. “Of—of course! Although, I would like to ask you a question—if you don’t mind, of course,” requested David.

“Ask away,” said Carlo. The kingpin smiled warmly.

“I presume that this isn’t a strictly Italian mafia, correct? That would disqualify me immediately, wouldn’t it?” asked David. Carlo heartily laughed upon hearing David’s question, to which the young card-counter glanced immediately winced. He wondered if he asked a stupid question in that moment. He thought about it, and remembered that Dmitry was clearly Russian, even if Carlo seemed like he was the descendant of assimilated Italian-Americans. David disliked receiving stupid questions as a teaching assistant and figured the same would apply to a gang boss.

“That’s a very good assumption, young man. You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s difficult to find good new recruits these days. Many mafias have opened the gates to those who are willing and able, and if Dmitry’s word is true—you have an uncanny tendency of winning poker games. We could use that,” answered Carlo.” The older man gestured to the room that Dmitry had walked toward and issued an order. “Your initiation will start in the back yard, by the pool side. Come with me.” The aged gang boss followed Dmitry to the back, and David did as he was ordered.

“It’s a bit cold to go into a pool, isn’t it?” asked David while walking with Carlo.

“I assure you; you won’t be going into the pool,” said Carlo while opening the sliding glass door at the back of the room.

Next Chapter: Duress