Italian Dinner

Prologue

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Really strange rumors float all over the city about that family…the Consolata family, the ones that own the enormous mansion on the top of the hill, the one that we all look to as though it’s either Buckingham Palace and completely forbidden, or a haunted house that we are know nothing of and are afraid of. The press never goes there; they receive no solicitors, the mailman drops off the mail at a box outside the gates. You never see any actual people come in and out of that property, only the stretched limos as black as night, with the windows tinted so you cannot see the face of a Consolata, but they can see you. Sometimes I think that’s the scariest part of the whole thing; that family has eyes and ears anywhere. You can’t see them, but they’re there, and if you screw them, they will find you.

I remember the very first time I heard about that family. I thought they would be my free ticket to bring home some pretty sweet bacon every night for the rest of my professional life...retire early maybe, who knows. I lived in Seattle and moved to Los Angeles in a heartbeat just to get my share of the action that whirled around this family.

I was told stories that the “king-pin” of the Consolata family was a man named Santo, born in Rome, a man who harbored fascinating legends in each corner of the city. Some said he was a witch-doctor, that he had lived through many shootouts that should have killed him, and that he could control minds and instruct the strongest of humans to do his bidding. Some said that he was a myth, that there really wasn’t a Santo Consolata in the city and whoever called themselves by the name were frauds. No one really saw him unless he wanted them to.

Some said that he was the Devil, because it was rumored that he had been responsible for more deaths of civilians in this city than any other leading cause.

I was living in Seattle at the time, and the city had its share of organized crime. We had our group of tough guys who owned the restaurants and the casinos who would break your knees for free if you even said something wrong. But there wasn’t a family that we could all point the finger at every time there was a suspicious murder, no “godfather” that we could drag in and start to question. I was a detective with the police, and the job wasn’t unexciting, but let me tell you it was like sitting around watching MTV and stroking your penis compared to what happened when I first started working on the Consolata case with LAPD.

I was transferred due to their odd shortage of staff; but it was fine by me. I had an ex-wife to leave behind and a boring job to forget about. Los Angeles was hot, it was beautiful, and it was exciting. But I was about to find out that it was soon more than I could possibly handle.

An old school friend of mine who had gone to LAPD directly after graduation told me that there had been a chain of suspicious murders happening all around the city in really spontaneous spots. A club downtown, a little medicine shop in Chinatown, maybe a porn shop in Hollywood. Single kills, everyone else on the premises left alive. It wasn't just murder, it was a series of hits, and we both knew it. And when I asked if there were any suspects...he said nothing, but we both knew who he was thinking.

I saw the latest one with my own eyes; a hit in a Santa Monica diner. One guy slaughtered, a big bloody mess, but no one else in the diner hurt or harmed. Not the cook, the waitress, or the manager. No one, just the John Doe in the corner by the phones, chewing on his stale French fries. The crime scene was gruesome. The Chief of the Los Angeles Police named Swanson took me through it and I was shocked by how much blood had been spilled and splattered. The rest of the diner looked amazingly spotless compared to this one little booth, the booth at the back close to the phones that looked like a goddamn butcher shop. There was the body bent over the table, bleeding all over the soggy hamburger and dripping into the cold coffee. When we stepped past the yellow tape I thought for a moment that I was actually going to be sick to my stomach. However had done this had a in mind a dish best served cold.

The crime scene investigators recovered a piece of evidence that lead us straight to the primary suspect. A business card in the dead man’s wallet, a business firm that built expensive show homes and mansions throughout the city, extremely successful, very high-status. The name on the card was Matteo Consolata...Consolata...immediately we were all thinking the exact same thing...

...You know what, I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Now, you know pretty much most of the basics...so I’ll start the story at the day I met Julian.

Julian...good god, Julian...let me tell you something, reader, I was not gay when I came to Los Angeles. And maybe I won’t be if I ever leave. But I fell in love with Julian. I fell in love with Julian...and in many ways I paid dearly for it. Course I never really anticipated exactly what I was getting myself into, right from the start. Sometimes I think I left Seattle and came to Los Angeles just to get caught in a web. I used to think that maybe the guys at the PD screwed me, because they didn’t want to screw over one of their own.

I thought I was going to unveil old secrets, find out the tricks behind their clever hits...I didn’t go in there gay but I’ll be damned if I told you I wasn’t in love coming out.

And in a way that’s what this story is really about. Love...believe it or not it in a strange way it was love that had led to the hits...and love was the reason I sunk deeper and deeper into the frightening world of the Consolata family...

So it begins...day one. The day I met Julian.

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A/N: Ugh, I had the WORST time spitting this out. I tried half a dozen different openings and they were all horrible! So if this one is horrible, and I don’t doubt that it is, I sincerely apologize. For some reason it just didn’t want to come out as I wanted. I promise it is about to get much more interesting.