West 47th by Gerald A Browne Page B

especially true of the fences, guys on the first level of swag who worked teams of swifts. Russo was always there for them. He was the next level, a fence for the fences. He bought from established fences only, those that he knew, the dozen or so. He never bought from an unconnected swift or slick-looking jewelry crook.
    â€œSomeone told me you might be interested in something.”
    â€œSomeone was wrong,” Russo would say .
    â€œLet me show you.”
    â€œKeep it in your pants.”
    However what the fences brought usually got bought. Russo was wise in the ways they did business and invariably he got the best of them. They were, he knew, like two-hundred-dollar whores who could be negotiated to lie down for fifty.
    Swag.
    Regarding it, Russo set some smart rules for himself. Like never keeping a piece of stolen jewelry intact for any unreasonable length of time, which to Russo meant no longer than an hour or two. Normally, a major piece that he’d acquired, say, a diamond necklace, would be broken up within minutes. It made no difference to him that the necklace was exceptional, made by Cartier or Van Cleef or whoever, he was merciless. Out came the stones, the gold and platinum tossed into the smelting crucible.
    He had no appreciation for beauty.
    And it was said of him that he could pop stones from their mountings by merely looking coldly at them.
    Joseph Riccio was one of Russo’s favorite have-arounds. One of.
    Furio Visconti was just as much a favorite.
    Russo played them against one another. Probably he figured that way he got more out of them. Eventually, when Riccio was made Russo’s right hand, there was Visconti just as close on the left.
    For years that’s how it was. Russo telling Riccio he was number one in line and, practically in the same breath, telling Visconti the same. So, it followed that when Russo didn’t have the heart to wake up one morning and forever, both Riccio and Visconti felt eligible to be allowed to take over the street.
    It wasn’t something they could settle amicably. They went at each other as early as during Russo’s wake at the Scalise Funeral Home up on 188th Street, and again at the funeral. Scuffled and threatened around grave markers and consecrated ground and had to be restrained.
    The suggestion was made that the way to settle the matter was the old way.
    A sit-down.
    On a sweltering Thursday afternoon in August Riccio and Visconti were transported in separate cars by guys they didn’t know to the house of a man they’d only heard of. An unremarkable house on the Connecticut blacktop road between New Fairfield and New Milford. With a mailbox bearing the family name right on the road, as though that name didn’t deserve to be self-conscious. House with aluminum siding and a screened-in rear porch overlooking a garden of zucchini and peppers.
    They, Riccio and Visconti, sat on the porch in yellow canvas director chairs across from the old guy years past his days, who hooded his creamy eyes and did a great many nods and made a protruding lower lip so they would believe he was listening to their claims.
    Riccio was in mob heaven. The only thing missing was an invisible orchestra playing O Soave Fancinella . Being in the presence of this fabled consigliere awed him, caused his little voice to go tremulous.
    â€œI knew your uncle,” the old guy said at Riccio, which made Riccio feel that he had an edge, until the old guy added: “Your uncle was a spuce .
    â€œAs for you,” the old guy said at Visconti, “you probably think bris-cola is a soft drink.”
    Visconti knew it was a Sicilian card game but figured it best to let the old guy have his opinion.
    The old guy announced that he had to take a leak. He went into the house, leaving Riccio and Visconti to ignore one another. Riccio craned up to get a better view of the garden. He would have stood but thought that might not be proper once one had sat at a