I May Have Started a Gangland War

What a difference a day makes. Wednesday I was living the good life, the best my life has ever been, Thursday I may be responsible for the death of dozens, and my oatmeal was cold.

I keep telling myself tomorrow is another chance for a good day, that I can wake up earlier and spend more time cooking the oatmeal, but nothing can bring those dead men back to life. Or, if there is, I probably can't afford it. I'll just have to live with their deaths on my head, or get a second job to afford the re-animator machine, and I'm not about to do that.

The head of the crime family I'm currently accessory to, Yogi, took me along to a inter-mafia event of some sort. I'm not sure exactly what was to be moved, drugs, guns, or illicit footwear, but I know the relationship was on thin ice as it was. And mob people are in general too fat to stay on thin ice for a very long time, no offense to you and your murderous ilk if you're mobbed up. But Rok Finger was the extra helping of love handles that cracked the ice here.

My comments are not entirely important here, but suffice to say they bruised a lot of feelings and led to name-calling and bullet-firing. So insignificant, really, they don't bear repeating. But I would suggest if you're going to get worked up over a difference of opinion on Johnny Mathis being a better crooner than Frank Sinatra, maybe you're the one with the problem, and the state shouldn't issue you a gun permit. Then again, I guess if you're in the business of buying and selling arms you probably have ways around the permit thing.

It's a nightmare, good people. A few crass words, some of them my own, admittedly, and a couple of slaps later and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by dead bodies—not in a good way either. Yogi said I'm not to blame, except for I started the flow of blood, but don't take it too hard, Joe Cool. A war with the New Jersey family was coming for some time, he told me. Still, I felt awful.

I tried to fix everything in the best way I know how—a nice letter to the newspaper. I used all the names of their family, tried to ingratiate myself with liberal use of the word "goomba," and told them how fond I was of The Sopranos. There was no way I could know, but apparently this only made matters worse. It was then things went from bloody to The Shining bloody.

It's not the loss of life that bothers me—mobsters are little better than sick curs, and a few less of them isn't going to do anything but make the world a better place. It's the social faux pas that really bothers me. I've always been an elegant and graceful character, that's the illusion I've sustained in my mind, and with all these death threats and contracts on my life it's getting harder and harder to block out the reality.

I would like to make this all better somehow. I've offered to meet with the new head of the family, Mario, since Giovanni got whacked by Yogis clown-o-gram plot. But he insists I come alone, and it's something I refuse to do, as it's a long walk and I have no ride there. With enough talk I might convince him Camembert doesn't count as company, and we'll finally be able to work out this little death feud. The last thing I need is another death feud after the last one nearly got me killed.

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