As a young man, Louie the peach watched in awe as bosses, big
bosses long thought to be untouchable, fell one by one, sent to prison for the
remainder of their lives. He watched as others simply turned informant while
droves of tough guys faded into the abyss.
In the end, when it was over, Louie the Peach, was left with
hacking out a living in low-level scams and running a chop shop out of the
garage in his house, under the guise of a used car dealership. He never
married. He vacationed in Florida once a year and he played the lottery daily.
You never know.
It happened that one Monday evening Louie was having his dinner
at the Valley Diner when he felt someone staring at him. He looked across the
counter and saw Butch Rienno, a mob big shot out of New Haven, smiling at him.
He knew Rienno from around, he was a boss and although Louie the Peach had seen
him plenty of over the years, he never spoke to him nor had any dealings with
him but only because Rienno worked out of New Haven. They were about the same age,
in fact, they looked alike, both short, stocky, bald and wore their ill-fitting
clothes with a sort of resentment.
Rienno locked eyes with Peachy and whispered, “You know who I am
right?”
“Sure” the Peach answered “Of course”
Without looking up from his coffee, Rienno continued in his
hushed voice “Lower your eyes, don’t look at me, just listen.”
“Okay,” the peach responded and lowered his gaze to the counter.
“You speak Italian?”
“Me?” the peach asked.
“Who in the hell would I be asking that too?”
“Um…I…I use to…when I was a kid….I”
“Never mind, never mind….just listen. There is a pair of car
keys next to my cup. You see them? Okay. I’m gonna leave. When I do, you wait
for an hour. Take the keys and go out to the blue caddy. Get in, drive to your
place, your chop shop operation. Park in there. Once you are inside, open the
trunk. There are some objects in there. Take em out and hide em. Then chop the
car. We’ll contact you for them in six weeks, maybe more”
Then the portly hood pushed himself off of the stool and waddled
out the door into the parking lot and climbed into the passenger side of a red
caddie that then sped away”
So the Peach did what he was told. He sat at the counter waiting
for an hour to pass. He didn’t want to, but he did. It was about a half an hour
into the wait when the waitress turned up the volume on the television set that
was attached to the wall over the cash register.
“We interrupt our regular programming to report this breaking
story happening now in Birmingham. Connecticut State Police and agents from the
Federal Bureau of Investigations have killed alleged New Haven-based Mafia Capo
Butch Rienno in a gunfight which occurred roughly thirty minutes ago.
The melee started when a Birmingham police officer pulled the
car that Rienno was riding in for having without dated plates. The Police have
confirmed that the car’s driver, alleged organized crime member Robert “Bobby
Boy” Donato drew a gun on the officer while attempting to speed away. Both
Donato and Rienno were killed in the ensuing gun fight.
The FBI confirmed that Butch Rienno is their primary suspect in
the Thayer Gallery art robbery. The FBI believes that Rienno had an overseas
buyer for stolen high-end paintings through a fence in Europe who would sell
the goods to buyers in France. Based on that, the bureau speculates, the Mob’s
bosses had given Rienno permission to rob the Thayer Gallery in New Haven last
month. The stolen works have a value of at least $500,000,000 making that
robbery is the largest art heist in history. More on this later”
“Wow!” a voice bellowed out from directly behind the Peach who
turned, startled. It was a cop staring up at the screen. The cop looked down at
Peaches pale white face and realizing he had nearly given him a heart attack
the cop placed his shoulder on Peaches shoulder and said 500 million! Imagine
that? How’d you like to get your hands on some of those paintings?”
The Peach panicked. It was a set-up. They had been watching.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it” he bellowed and threw up
his hands.
“Yeah, me either”, said the cop with a wink and then turning his
attention to a house painter who walked in the door said “O’Donnell!” and
walked away to greet the man.
The Peach was rattled.
“Now what?” he mumbled. He looked out the window and across the
parking lot to the Blue Caddy. It took him two seconds to decide that he wasn’t
getting into that car. The feds were probably all over it, watching with
binoculars from nearby rooftops. A sharpshooter would kill the second he placed
the key in the ignition. Then he’d be standing in front of Satan with fire all
over the place.
“I’ll go to hell” he whispered.
“We’ll still find you in hell” The Peach turned his head and
look at Butch Rienno sitting in the stool next to him. There was a large bullet
hole in his forehead. “You got your orders. From me. A Capo. Do what you're
told. Because when we come to collect those object we entrusted to you and
there not there….oh Mama Mia”
“Yeah, but your dead” Peach said.
“Yeah, I’m dead but not the hundred other guys in this operation
we got here. You know how many of them are going to come out of the woodwork
looking for those object we got stashed in that car?”
“No” the Peach shrugged.
“All of them. Plus a couple of hundred wise guys from down New
York. And when you tell them “I don’t have what you want”….. oh Madone! You’re
gonna wish you went to hell”
“What’s in the trunk?” he asked.
“Oh not much, about a half billion in artwork. It got misplaced
into the trunk from the Thayer Gallery”
“How’d it get misplaced in the truck?”
“It leaped in on its own. It’s very motivated art I stole it,
how do you think it got there? That cop and that guy are looking at you”
Peach moved his gaze from Butch Rienno, and his bullet wound and
caught the cop and O’Donnell the painter looking over at him. He nodded, smiled
and returned his gaze to Butch Rienno’s bullet wound.
“Does that hurt?”
“What’s that?”
Peach pointed a finger to the large bullet hole in Rienno’s
forehead head.
Rienno narrowed his eyes and then felt around his face until he
found the hole with his palm.
“Oh that!” he smiled “Naw, not really….a little bit, but,
truthfully, it went in and out so fast, I didn’t feel anything. It doesn’t look
so good though does it?”
“Well, you know” the Peach lied “As far as bullet holes go, it’s
not bad. I seen worser”
“Look kiddo,” Rienno said in a fatherly tone “We brought that
art stuff up here because New Haven is real hot right now. You got ten million
thousand FBI looking around rocks for these painting because, and may I add
unbeknownst to me, several of them were on loan from some country with like,
Chinese people in it, something like that. So we brung it up here because it's
too hot to take anywhere else and the cops would never think of coming to this
one horse town to look for anything”
The hoodlum stopped speaking and looked across the counter at
the pie display. “I wish I could have a piece of that”
“Go ahead” the Peach answered “I’ll buy it for you. Go ahead. I
didn’t know ghosts could eat”
“They can’t. But I’m not a ghost. I’m your conscious. Big
difference. Rienno replied tiredly “I’m here because your over-stressed. Ghosts
show up because…..I don’t know why ghosts show up, anyways, look at the situation.
If you go out there and get into the car and take off one of two things is
gonna happen. One, nothing will happen. You go home stash the painting like I
told you, few months, some very grateful New York guys show up hand you fortune
in cash and you’re in the shade with them for the rest of your life. Or, two,
you start to drive away, and the FBI nabs you before you could blink. But
that’s not gonna happen and I’ll tell you why. They want the paintings, not
you. Right now, as far as the feds are concerned they got their guy…..me…..now
they paintings. What happens next is up to you.”
The Peach weighed both arguments, turned to dead Butch Rienno
and asked: “You com’n with me?”
Rienno shrugged “What choice do I have?”
The ride to his grey ranch house at the end of Oak Lane was
uneventful. No cops, no FBI, no problems. He pulled into his garage where he
had torn apart hundreds of cars over the past and sold them for parts.
He climbed out of the blue caddie, waddled to the back of the
car and before opening the trunk, he reconsidered and walked over to hidden
drawer on his walk bench and took out a .38 revolver he kept hidden there and
returned to the trunk.
Butch Rienno reappeared standing next to him, staring at the
trunk.
“You gonna shot the trunk? Put it out of its misery?” he asked
Holding the pistol in his right hand and aiming dead ahead he
opened the trunk with his right hand and when it popped open he took a giant
step backward. Lying in the truck were a dozen or more painting, some rolled
up, others lying flat. The Peach walked back to the car and looked over each
painting. They were heavier than he thought they looked.
“Sirens.” he said
“Lots of them. Four at least, maybe six,” added Butch Rienno
“Headed down a dead end street.
“It’s a raid.” The Peach said. His breath was short. His heart
started to pound.
“The FBI.” Rienno “They are to you.”
“No!” the Peach screamed “They were on to you! They must have
had a tail on you
when you was in the diner.”
The Peach did a quick calculation of the number of crimes
committed in stealing the painting. It added u to a minimum 25 years in federal
prison.
“Twenty-five years ain’t all that bad,” Rienno said.
“Not when your 72 years old” The Peach yelled back and then he
really, really panicked.
He had two options. Become forty years young or destroy the
evidence. He decided to destroy the evidence, 13 magnificent works of art that
will never be replaced and when he lit the match the Gods gasped and then they
cried.
What Louie the Peach learned that night was that 500-year-old
art works burns very fast. In a matter of seconds, flames engulfed the pictures
and destroyed them. One particularly hot spark flew
The city fire department gave Louie the Peach of commendation for
gallantry in assisting them in fighting the fire that destroyed his house,
garage and car. The fire chief made a solemn apology for not arriving to the
scene early so they could have kept the electric power fire from burning his
home. Someone, deeply moved that a man of Louie’s age should have to start over
again, set up a go-fund me page that brought him $50,000.
The insurance companies representing the utility company, under
intense public scrutiny, settled the case without an investigation and handed
Louie several million dollars for the destruction of, as his lawyer put
“His beloved and much bemoaned domicile” and the loss of six stolen cars that
he was in the midst of chopping down for scrap and parts when the fire and a
very good lawyer miraculously converted them into “irreplaceable used cars”.