[ WP ] `` Wait a second ... Is anyone here NOT an undercover cop ? ''

The Don sat at the head of the table, stroking this beard, smoking a cigar. His suit was tailored and fit him like a glove. His rings gleamed in the light of the expensive chandelier that shone above his head. He waved his hand lazily, signalling that he intended to speak. The other three men at the table, Killer Joe, Sweeney the Swindler, and Kilo-Dealer Kevin, all ceased their chatter. They listened, waiting for the Don to speak, perked up with anticipation. 
 
 `` So,'' said the Don. 
 
 His words hung in the air like the scent of his cigar, whose smoke was curling in slow silver rings, widening, dissipating, disappearing. 
 
 `` Gentlemen,'' he said. 
 
 The men knew that his dramatic pauses, his tension-building silences, were the prelude to some great announcement. 
 
 *This is what I've been waiting for, * thought Killer Joe, more properly known as Officer Joe Molloy of Bookem County. 
 
 Joe had been working undercover as an assassin for hire in order to infiltrate the Don's network for the past three years. All the `` killings'' he had performed at the behest of the Don's cartel had actually been staged. Joe had not killed a single person during his time undercover. 
 
 Joe was currently wearing a wire. He was finally partaking in a secret meeting with the Don and his higher ups, and would finally, he hoped, be asked by the Don himself to do something illegal ( he had only ever been assigned jobs by the Don's henchmen ). By getting the Don on tape, Joe could bring him down along with the other two men present, thereby crippling the Don's whole operation. 
 
 `` I've gathered you all here today,'' said the Don, `` for a very special purpose.'' 
 
 *Oh good-ee! * thought Sweeney the Swindler, more properly known as Detective Lawrence Sween, of Cookem County. He had been posing as an ex-lawyer turned advisor for the Don's organization for the past three years. He had, only yesterday, been told he would soon receive access to all the Don's organization's paperwork, which, he hoped, would outline all the Don's illegal operations. As long as this meeting went well, by tomorrow, Sweeney would be given the key to the motherload, a vision of the paper-trail that led from each of the organization's illegal activities to the Don himself. With that information, Sweeney could cripple the Don's whole operation and send the Don, along with the other two criminal higher-ups present, to prison. 
 
 `` There is a certain,'' said the Don, `` shall I say -- problem that will need solving. And I think the three of you might be able to work together in order to solve it.'' 
 
 *Just do n't push the `` call for backup'' button until he's revealed his dastardly plot, * thought Kilo-Dealer Kevin, better known as Special Agent Kevin Levin, of Hookem County. *You've come too far, infiltrating not only the Don's network, but the networks of his major suppliers in South America, to screw this up by pressing the button too early. Just do n't mess this up, aim the microphone of your wire well by sitting up straight, and wait till he says something incriminating. Once he does, then press it -- backup will storm in, and you can bring him, and the other two knuckleheads sitting here, down. * 
 
 `` But I want the three of you,'' continued the Don, `` whom I trust, to see this problem as an opportunity. An opportunity to take charge of your own destinies, to become the men you were born to be, to become great.'' 
 
 `` What is it Don?'' 
 
 `` Yes, please tell us.'' 
 
 `` We're all ears, sir.'' 
 
 `` The first thing I have to say is directed at Sweeney. Yesterday, when I told you I would be giving you access to all my organization's paperwork, I was not lying, though I was concealing my true purposes. Although you will have access to all my organization's paperwork, you will have no more access, strictly speaking, than anyone else.'' 
 
 `` I do n't understand,'' said Sweeney. 
 
 `` I've burnt all my records,'' said the Don. `` Every last one. And I've cut ties will all my previous associates. I wanted this to be a clean break, you see.'' 
 
 He paused amidst the great astonishment with which the room vibrated, and then recommenced: 
 
 `` My organization is being dismantled, piece by piece, as we speak. By tomorrow, there will be nothing left of it, and certainly nothing left to lead any busybodies back to me. Any problematic members who knew too much have been taken care of. By tomorrow there will be only a vacuum and an insubstantial memory of this great syndicate of which I was the head.'' 
 
 `` B-b-but why?'' stuttered Killer Joe. `` Why dismantle your whole operation? You're the Don of the West Coast, for god's sake.'' 
 
 The three undercovers were panicking. Everything they had worked for, all they had risked over the past few years, would all be for naught if the Don pulled out of his operations like this. 
 
 `` You see,'' said the Don, dreamily, `` I've fallen in love. Deeply, madly in love. I've made enough money by now. And I've hidden it well enough throughout the globe so that my love and I will never want for anything. And even if I had no money, I would never want for anything anyways. I need nothing but her. She is the light of my life, you understand.'' 
 
 `` But you said --'' interjected Kilo-Dealer Kevin. 
 
 `` I know what I said,'' interrupted the Don not unkindly. `` I would never love again, after those -- those pigs! those bastards! -- shot up my house and killed my first wife. But the fires of hate will consume you if you do not let them ebb and burn away. Consume you utterly! Life is too precious to let such fires burn away all your human feeling, all your connections to the important things in life. I have been set ablaze by a new fire -- Lucia! -- and have seen by the light of that fire that my criminal ways must to come to an end. So...'' 
 
 The Don took a deep breath. Exhaled. Recommenced. 
 
 `` So. The opportunity I present to you three is one of possibility. There will be a criminal vacuum in my absence. Someone, or some group of people, intelligent, knowledgable about the crime world and this city, will need to take over, will need to fill that vacuum. I can think of no better trio than you. You are all eminently capable. You have all major corners of the mafia business covered.'' 
 
 `` But what about all your connections?'' asked Sweeney. `` Surely we will need them in order to get off the ground.'' 
 
 `` You must make new connections,'' the Don replied. `` Everything I built up is now gone, lost to a past I disavow as unreal as a nightmare. I've scratched it from the record of history and scratched it from my mind. There is now only the future. For you three, that future is a future of gold, for me, one of love, one of Lucia.'' 
 
 At that the Don pushed back his chair and stood up. He walked through the room of stunned silence to the door, through the door, and up the stairs to his helipad, on which sat a helicopter. Its engine started. Its blades cut through the heavy night air, heavy with the sweet perpetual twilight of love. 
 
 An attendant helped the Don into the chopper, and seated him beside her, Lucia, the love of his life, his confidant, the only one whom he trusted to tell all his secrets. Secrets about his past life. About his old misdeeds. About his terrible, bloody, ruthless and criminal past, a past like a noxious soil out of which he had improbably grown and blossomed into a man of great love, pure love, everlasting love. 
 
 She looked at him warmly as he sat down. She took his hand in hers -- Lucia, lovely Lucia, also known as Special Detective Lucia Banks of Fakem County. 
 
 *I nearly have everything I need, * she thought bitterly as she smiled warmly, *to put this bastard, the man responsible for my father's death, my brother's death, and the deaths of countless innocents and officers, away for a lifetime. And as soon as I know the whereabouts of his offshore accounts, I'll throw the book at him, this slimy rat of a man, once and for all. * 
 
 `` Shall we?'' asked the Don. 
 
 `` Yes my love,'' she said. 
 
 The Don waved at the pilot and the chopper rose up into the night. 
 
 -- - 
 
 /r/lalalobsters 
 
 
 
 
 
 

