Work Text:
TOP SECRET/FIRSTLIGHT/SUMMO SECRETUM
EYES ONLY
Copy ONE of ONE
Surveillance Transcript JT3303-X-09-12-2013
Analyst’s Cover Note:
The following is the transcript of an audio recording obtained by a law enforcement Joint Taskforce investigation targeting organized crime groups in the Greater Los Angeles area. The recording device was covertly placed in the back room of “Il Maiale Felice,” an Italian delicatessen on East Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, suspected of acting as an organized crime business front and meeting place. The target of this investigation was Salvatore “Sally P” Puttanesca (SP in the transcript), an individual suspected of involvement in the Los Angeles Crime Family and separately identified by FIRSTLIGHT HUMINT sources as a probable blankbody. Key words in the recording were automatically flagged for referral to FIRSTLIGHT in accordance with Classified Executive Order 13218. Voice pattern analysis strongly indicates another of the individuals recorded (RA in the transcript) to be Richard “Ritchie Ducks” Abruzzo, an organized crime associate known to act as a driver and bodyguard for Puttanesca. The identity of the third individual in the recording (Y in the transcript) remains unknown, as do the identities of the other individuals under discussion. Investigations continue, including the use of covert HUMINT sources and SIGINT analysis, in an effort to identify these individuals.
Transcript:
00.00.00
SP: What the… What the fuck? Who… Who the fuck is this? Ritchie…
RA: Holy shit, where did he…
Y: Greetings of the evening to you, good sirs.
SP: Where did you…
RA: Sally. Sally. Look at his fucking face! What the…
Y: Please, sirs, do not be alarmed by the grotesquery of my appearance.
SP: Are you what I think you are?
Y: That, sir, would very much depend upon what you think I am.
SP: Guess that explains how you managed to get in here without no-one seeing you. Don’t expect it to be so easy getting out again.
RA: Sally, you want me to…
Y: Mr Puttanesca, I would ask that your associate put up his firearm before anything unpleasant occurs. It would only end badly for him.
SP: It’s okay, Ritchie. I want to hear what this, uh, gentleman has got to say. If he was going to make a move, he would’ve done it by now.
RA: Sure, Sally.
Y: My deepest thanks to you, sir. I find meaningful conversation to be greatly facilitated when weapons are not bandied about.
SP: So, you, uh, you with Golden? You look like one of his.
Y: Alas, I cannot claim any personal acquaintance with Mr Golden or his people, although I am of course aware of him and his work. He has a reputation within our clan.
SP: I’ll bet. So, if you ain’t with Golden…
Y: I come to you at the bidding of my master, who would have visited you in person were he not, unfortunately, currently indisposed.
SP: Well, I guess that’s too fucking bad. So, uh, your master…?
Y: Prior to his…indisposition, my master expressed his desire for me to convey his sincere compliments, and a message, to a Signor Bruno Giovanni, whom I believe you will be able…
00.01.00
SP: Uncle Bruno? Look, I get the impression you’re kind of new in town, so let me explain a couple things. Uncle Bruno, he, uh, he ain’t around no more. Him and a lot of the other old-timers from the family. Things have changed around here. The guys from Venezia, the ones who are left, they don’t like to get their hands dirty the way they used to. Us Puttanescas got our own thing these nights, we ain’t no fucking errand boys. So, you got a message for us, you’re giving that message to me. Understood?
Y: You elucidate the current state of affairs most eloquently, sir. My apologies, it can prove so difficult to remain abreast of current affairs when one is engaged in demanding and time-consuming work such as ours.
SP: Tell me about it.
Y: If I understand you correctly regarding Signor Giovanni, please allow me to extend my heartfelt condolences.
SP: Ah, no-one misses that creepy old fuck. Now, you were saying…?
Y: Ah, yes. My master wished me to establish contact with Signor Giovanni as he believed he was the probable…superior of several individuals with whom we have encountered some recent difficulty.
SP: You don’t say? And what might this, uh, difficulty be?
Y: Without wishing to be thought of as indelicate, Mr Puttanesca, I believe some of your…soldati, is that the term you use?
SP: You been watching the fucking Godfather or something?
Y: Some of your men, shall we say, recently attempted to bring harm to an individual in whom my master and myself maintain a certain interest. I was forced to intervene with physical force.
RA: Oh shit. This is the guy, Sally. This is the guy who fucked up Vinnie and Mike!
00.02.00
SP: That right? You’re the guy who put two of my crew in the hospital the other night? We thought it was that fuck Heartwood. And now you got the fucking nerve to just walk in here like…?
Y: It was a most unfortunate turn of events, to be sure, but unavoidable since your men would not entertain my entreaties to abandon their intentions. We could not afford to lose the individual in question, regardless of what he may have done to incur your no doubt justified displeasure. He is integral to our design.
SP: Who? Heartwood? What the fuck…?
Y: Yes. Mr Heartwood is important to us.
SP: You his fucking bodyguard or something?
Y: We of course respect your right to manage your business affairs in the way that seems best to you, with but one humble caveat. We will not tolerate any further attempt by you to injure or kill this man.
SP: Will not tolerate? (Laughs) Will not fucking tolerate? Ritchie, can you believe the fucking set of balls on this guy?
RA: It’s fucking unbelievable to me, Sally.
Y: That is the message which my master asked me to deliver to Signor Giovanni, but in light of Signor Giovanni’s apparent untimely demise, I am now delivering it to you, Mr Puttanesca.
SP: Yeah? Well, uh, you can tell your master from me he can go fuck himself.
Y: Oh, my.
00.03.00
SP: Heartwood’s a dead man. He disrespected me, and my family. We can’t let that go. Examples got to be made, you understand?
RA: That lanky fuck took money from Sally to ice that guy. It was a, what do you call it? A fucking verbal contract.
SP: Right.
RA: Not our fault he got cold feet when he found out the guy wasn’t dealing crack to schoolkids like we said. We were just trying to, like…?
SP: Motivate him.
RA: Right, Sally. Motivate him. It was a white lie.
SP: Yeah. Kid’s got talent for the work, don’t get me wrong, but he’s got a weak stomach. We had to, uh, sugar coat things for him a little, to get him riled up. Sure, he got pissed when he found out. But that don’t excuse him taking my fucking money and then going on the lam. That ain’t the action of a professional looking to build a reputation in this industry.
RA: Right, Sally. Totally fucking unprofessional attitude.
SP: And now I got to go find another guy, and pay him too, if I want the first guy taken care of. Not to mention the trouble and expense of dealing with Heartwood. And then there’s all the punks on the street who might now get it into their dumb heads that it’s somehow okay for them to fuck with me and my crew. So no, I’m not going to just forget this just because your fucking master asks nicely, pretty please, with his fucking pinkie stuck out.
Y: Well, sirs, in that case it appears we are at what is commonly referred to as an impasse. That is most unfortunate. For you.
00.04.00
SP: (Laughs) Like I said, the fucking balls on this guy. Okay. Okay, if I were to decide, and it would be me deciding, that I could let this slide, with the, uh, inconvenience to my business and damage to my reputation that might result, what would your so-called master be able to offer me by way of compensation? Because either way, I’m getting paid back for this clusterfuck, in money or in blood. If not by Heartwood, by you. So, make me an offer.
Y: Ah yes, I see. It appears, sir, that I misunderstood your aggressive tactics of negotiation. It is most gratifying that we will not have to resort to further unpleasantness in the immediate term. If that is indeed the case, I believe my master would be willing to make you a most generous offer in return for Mr Heartwood’s continued health and safety.
SP: I’m waiting.
Y: If you will indulge me, sir, I will attempt to explain my master’s thinking on this matter. It is not always easy to translate the thoughts and motivations of one so…seasoned into terms those of us with fewer years behind us can easily understand. As you may know from past dealings with your own clan’s anziani, our elders are not like us. Not anymore.
SP: You can fucking say that again.
Y: What did I mean when I said that Mr Heartwood is integral to our design?
RA: I don’t know, what the fuck did you mean?”
Y: I meant simply that. My master is by profession an architect, a builder.
00.05.00
Y: He is a designer, who works towards purposes that seem mysterious and esoteric to those of us of lesser wisdom and vision. I have studied under his tutelage for many years in an endeavour to understand those purposes, and even now I fear my insight is merely as that of a child compared to my master’s awe-inspiring apprehension of the truths of this world and its underpinnings.
RA: Get to the fucking point.
SP: Hey, Ritchie. Let the guy talk. He’s fascinating me here. I don’t know what he’s saying, but I like the way he says it. It’s very, uh, calming.
Y: I am very glad that you find it so, Mr Puttanesca. In ages past, the kine of Europe built great monuments to the universe and its mysteries, which they perceived through the prism of their religion and their God. They raised great spires to the sky, in an effort to touch the heavens themselves, to connect themselves to creation. You perhaps have seen these titanic achievements, towering even now above many of the towns and cities of that continent. Notre-Dame de Paris, Notre-Dame de Chartres; many, many others.
SP: You’re talking about, uh, cathedrals, right?
Y: Quite so, Mr Puttanesca. Quite so. My master and his disciples began their work in the same time and place as the cathedral builders, but their concern was not the heavens. No, quite the opposite in fact. Where the kine raised spires, the Cainites burrowed deep. They delved and tunnelled and shored and suckled at the very veins of the world, in pursuit of a different kind of mystery, in search of the sacred geometry of darkness. In search of oblivion.
00.06.00
Y: You, Mr Puttanesca, as a scion of Cappadocius, however distant, must know a little of that of which I speak.
SP: Oh shit. You mean…?
Y: I most assuredly do. That endless night your elders spoke of, my master has seen it. He has bound it and defined it within his design. And not only that. There are many different mysteries beneath the earth, and through our work, which is no longer confined to Europe but now spans the world, we give them corporeal form, length and breadth and angles carved in stone and brick and mortar. We make it possible to wield them. We may be an obscure sect within a sect within a sect, but one night, and if we read the omens accurately that night may not be very far in the future, many, many people are going to want to be on our right side. Many people are going to wish, too late, that they had extended the little courtesies we politely asked of them.
RA: Is that some kind of a threat?
Y: A threat? No, sir, a mere statement of fact.
SP: Ritchie, shut the fuck up. You, you still ain’t made me an offer, or told me why this Heartwood is so important you’re willing to come here tonight bargaining for his life. He’s a schnook, a nobody. Why’s he so important?
00.07.00
Y: As I have tried to explain, I am not privy to all of my master’s plans or whims, but he has let it be known that Mr Heartwood is important to him, as part of his design for this city. He first came to my master’s attention a few years ago, in New York City, where my master has long maintained certain interests. He has been marked from that moment. We have followed him since then. We arranged for him to come here to Los Angeles, although he did not know it and believed he came here of his own will, and very soon he will take his place in my master’s design, a cog in a mechanism many years in the building. A tiny part of a great and complex whole, to be sure, but every tiny part is important.
SP: That sounds real nice. Don’t get me wrong, that sounds great, but… I’m going to ask again, what’s in it for me?
Y: Apart from my master’s goodwill, which cannot be undervalued, there is also the matter of Mr Heartwood’s moral correction. Do not assume that becoming part of our design will be something he will enjoy, or which will not involve a certain degree of suffering and mortification on his part.
SP: You’re saying…?
Y: I am saying, in your idiom Mr Puttanesca, that either way, Mr Heartwood is a dead man.
00.08.00
SP: Okay, I like the sound of that. He’s crossed you too, don’t surprise me to be honest, and you want the pleasure of taking care of him personally. All right, we can do business. What are you planning to do to him, though? It’s got to be messy. It’s got to send a message.
Y: Ah, Mr Puttanesca. Dear me. You understand my meaning…imperfectly, but I fear it is as close as we are going to get to achieving a rapport on this. Yes, as you may have heard it said of my clan, it is our not infrequent practice to administer the embrace in order to reform an individual, to teach them a moral lesson, to change them for the better.
SP: Right. Right, I heard that about you guys. You take someone who’s, like, uh, beautiful on the outside and fucking ugly on the inside and you make them, uh… No disrespect, but ugly on the outside and, uh…
RA: I don’t know, Sally, I wouldn’t say he was… I mean, he’s no fucking Chris Hemsworth.
Y: You state it crudely, Mr Puttanesca, but your analysis is not incorrect. Mr Heartwood has done many…reprehensible things in his comparatively short life. Setting up shop in your city as a killer for hire is, believe me, one of the least of them. He has long since been dipped in blood. He has used people, treated them as accessories to his personal quest for knowledge and power.
00.09.00
Y: He has harboured great pride in his heart, thought of those around him as lesser than he, unworthy of him…
SP: Well, who hasn’t? Huh, am I right? Huh? (Laughs)
Y: Ha. Yes. I think on one point, we are in accord, Mr Puttanesca. Mr Heartwood needs a lesson. And he will receive that lesson from us, at my master’s behest. He will lose everything he currently has. He will be severed from the world of the living, subjected to the agonies and trials of metamorphosis. The things he takes for granted now will seem as precious lost treasures to him, and he will have no purpose and no hope other than to play the part my master has decreed for him. Will that satisfy your desire for recompense, Mr Puttanesca?
SP: But no-one is going to know. People got to know what happens when you fuck with Sally P.
Y: You can tell those people whatever you wish. Mr Heartwood is not going to resurface to contradict you. Not in his current form. If anybody were to see him after that, their own eyes would confirm to them that he had been most sternly punished for his past transgressions. I can assure you very confidently of that.
SP: All right. All right. Let me think about this.
00.10.00
SP: Come back tomorrow night and I’ll give you my answer.
RA: Sally…
SP: Ritchie, I got to think on this.
Y: That is acceptable to us, Mr Puttanesca. You will hear from me again tomorrow night, at a precise time of my choosing. Until then…
SP: Don’t you want to know where I’ll be tomorrow night?
Y: Do not concern yourself with that, Mr Puttanesca. I will find you.
(Transcript ends)