The Family Corleone by Ed Falco

pulled one of the choppers out of his duffel bag and handed it to Sonny, who held the tommy gun by the stock and then wrapped his fingers around the polished wood grip welded to the rifle barrel. The grip was carved with grooves for the fingers and the wood was solid and warm. The round black metal magazine at the center of the gat, an inch in front of the trigger guard, reminded Sonny of a film canister. Sonny said to Nico, “You got them from Vinnie Suits in Brooklyn?”
    “Yeah, of course. Just like you said.” Nico looked surprised at the question.
    Sonny faced Little Stevie. “Then they’re not no rejects,” he said. To Nico he said, “And my name never came up, right?”
    “For Christ’s sake,” Nico said. “Did I suddenly become an idiot? No one mentioned your name or anything about you.”
    “My name ever slips out,” Sonny said, “we’re all done for.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cork said. He started the car and pulled out of the alley. “Put those things away or some flatfoot’ll be giving us trouble.”
    Sonny put the gat back in the duffel bag. “How many magazines did we get?”
    “What’s on it now and one extra for each,” he said.
    Sonny said to the twins, “You palookas think you can handle these?”
    Angelo said, “I know how to pull a trigger.”
    Vinnie said, “Sure. Why not?”
    “Let’s go over it.” Sonny nudged Cork. The Nash pulled onto the street and he leaned into the back. “Big thing is,” he said, “like before, fast and loud, so that everybody’s confused but us. We wait till the truck’s loaded. There’s one lead car and one trailer. Soon as the lead car passes, Cork pulls in front of the truck. Vinnie and Angelo, you get out throwing lead. Shoot high. We don’t want to kill anybody. Me and Nico go right for the cab and get the driver and whoever’s riding shotgun. Stevie’s got the back of the truck, in case somebody’s there.”
    “But nobody’s gonna be there,” Stevie said, “right? You haven’t seen anybody riding in the back?”
    “Alls that’s in the back is liquor,” Sonny said. “But you never know, so be ready.”
    Stevie took a tommy gun from the duffel bag and tested the feel of it in his hands. “I’ll be ready,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I hope somebody’s back there.”
    Cork said, “Put that away. And don’t go giving nobody lead poisoning if you don’t have to.”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll shoot high,” Stevie said, grinning.
    “Listen to Cork.” Sonny let his stare linger on Stevie, and then went on explaining the plan. “Once we’ve got the truck, we head out down the alley. Cork follows us, with Vinnie and Angelo still making a racket.” To the Romeros he said, “If they try to follow us, shoot for the tires and the engine block.” To everybody he said, “The whole thing should be over in a minute. In and out, and a whole lot of noise. Right?”
    “Good,” the Romero brothers said.
    “Remember,” Sonny said. “They don’t know what’s going on. We do. They’re the ones confused.”
    Cork said, “Confused as a hungry baby in a room full of strippers.” When nobody laughed, he said, “Jaysus! Where’s your sense of humor!”
    Stevie said, “Just drive, Corcoran.”
    “Jaysus,” Cork said again, and then the car was quiet.
    Sonny took a chopper from the duffel bag. He’d been dreaming about this night for a month, ever since he’d overheard Eddie Veltri and Fat Jimmy, two of Tessio’s guys, mention the operation in passing. They hadn’t said much, just enough for Sonny to figure out the shipments were whiskey from Canada, they were unloading at the Canarsie piers, and the whiskey was Giuseppe Mariposa’s. After that it was easy. He hung around the piers with Cork until they saw a couple of Hudson straight-eights parked on the docks alongside a long Ford pickup with a stake-bed covered by a blue tarp. A few minutes later, a pair of sleek speedboats came along, cutting cleanly through the