Giuseppe “Three-Finger” Terranova was looking for the tunnel. The cops weren’t far behind.
Joey Adonis, in a night of wild drinking, had told him about it once. It was in upstate New York…a road that led to a tunnel in the side of a mountain.
On the other side of the tunnel was a cabin. A great place to hide. He’d never tried it because he lived in another state, but his friends all told him about it every time he was in the area.
Giuseppe drove as far as he could before the road became too dangerous to continue. It was pock-marked with deep potholes. He was exactly twenty miles south of the tiny town of Apalachin, when he pulled off the main road and purposely drove into a thicket of bushes.
Joey told him about a trail to take to get to the tunnel. It was getting dark as he wandered around looking for traces of a trail. Just as he began to think he was crazy for listening to Joey (he was a real joker) he saw the trail. It was well-worn.
Giuseppe pulled out his pistol and checked it for ammunition. The 38 “snubie” had two rounds left. That was it. He fired the rest at the cops who broke into the lodge earlier, interrupting him and sixty other Capos in conference.
He didn’t really care if they were all caught. Just as long as he was safe. The cops had too much on him. Even with good lawyers it would be an uphill court battle that might end up with him frying on the chair.
No way. Not Giuseppe. He was above the law. He made monkeys out of those cops chasing him tonight. They’d never find him. He turned his attention to the trail in the dying light.
Fact. Giuseppe was a city boy who’d only gone camping once with a Boy Scout Troop and got in trouble for beating up another boy. He was no trailblazer. The sounds of the night made him nervous.
Small animals rustled around in the thick bushes and trees on either side of the trail. A traveler had no choice but to go forward on the trail, or turn around. He’d gone too far to turn around, so Giuseppe plunged on.
“Geeze,” he muttered to himself, “A guy’s gotta be Davy Fricking Crockett out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Hours passed. He was so tired that he was stumbling. Finally, totally exhausted, he laid down on the trail. It must have been the pure mountain air, because Giuseppe slept like a baby.
When he woke up the sun was overhead. He stood up. Pain racked his entire body. He wasn’t use to sleeping on the hard ground. He was stiff and hungry. There was nothing to do but keep walking.
The tunnel wasn’t even concealed. One moment he was walking along, then just around the bend, there it was! The tunnel. It was just to the right of the trail and there was a small clearing in front of it.
It was carved out of solid rock. It was about seven-feet high and six-feet wide. The ground was dry inside. So were Giuseppe’s lips. The thought of a water source on the other side gave him the courage to go into the dark interior.
He felt his way along with his hands. Stumbling at times. Then he saw a ray of light. In moments he was outside again. Fresh air and to his delight, a clean river running along a small cabin barely visible through the trees.
He was on his knees drinking water from his cupped hands when someone asked him, “Where’s Dorie May?”
He slowly got to his feet and turned around. Three men dressed like cowboys (right down to guns and all) were mounted on horses that formed a small semi-circle around him. The speaker, a tall lean man with a big black hat and hard gray eyes, asked him one more time,
“Where’s Dorie May?
There was a shout from the cabin. “We found her Clem! She’s dead!”
Giuseppe shouted, “What’s going on Here?”
The speaker motioned to the other two riders and they got down off their horses. One had a length of rope in his hand. The hard gray eyes of the speaker were full of hate as he pointed his pistol towards a nearby oak tree.
The two riders walked him over to it. One of the cowboys threw the rope around a thick limb and tied the other end into a noose which he slipped over Giuseppe’s head. The speaker got down from his horse and grabbed the rope and pulled on it.
The other two men joined him. They pulled him up by his neck. A crazy thought went through Giuseppe’s mind before he died and he croaked “What year is it?”
As It Stands, justice has a way of being served in time when your karma is bad enough.
The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff 