The dominoes start to fall when Jake and his partner, Harry, go on a deadly carjacking spree. Butch Marable and his best friend and partner, Ernie "Cowboy" Kaloskivitch, along with the DEA, plan a sting operation that will put an end to a Vegas mobster’s drug smuggling, and money laundering operation. At the same time, saving a "some what" innocent Hollywood talent agent, who has gotten himself in too deep, and wants out. A passed around, wannabe movie star, Sylvia, and a lost, lonely washed up motorcycle racer get thrown into the mix. Their romance blossoms behind a veil of murder and deceit. With the help of some dubious motorcycle riders and ex-army buddies, Butch and Cowboy help the Los Angeles and San Diego Police Departments stop the car stealing murderers. It all comes together in the California/Nevada desert where the end justifies the means.

When Dominoes Fall

How many wrongs does it take to make a right ...?By danjo Thomas

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 danjo Thomas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-8754-8

Chapter One

Ollie instantly recognized the gravelly voice on the other end of the phone line.

He was sitting at a very large teakwood desk in his office off of Hollywood Boulevard. It was a large office that looked like it had been decorated by an assortment of gay Chinese. The furnishings gave you the impression that you were in an oriental whore house/bazaar. There were Oriental rugs on the polished hardwood floors. There was a large floor lamp with colorful ceramic dragons for bases standing next to each of the two carved teakwood chairs in front of Ollie's desk. On the far wall was a sofa that was upholstered in red and gold faux velvet. On each end of the sofa, there was another hideous floor lamp. These had bases made of the same colorful painted ceramics, but these were elephants, not dragons, each holding the brass lamp pole with its trunk. The walls were covered in that flocked paper you see in cheap trailer house bathrooms.

The wall behind Ollie's desk had several classic movie posters hanging in what appeared to be real gold gilded frames. They were movies he told all his clients that he had a part in producing. Chances are that he was not even born when the movies were made.

"Hey, Dom! How are you doing? I was beginning to wonder if I was going to hear from you today." Ollie was loosening the knot on the too-wide purple silk tie. He was wearing a yellow silk shirt. It came nowhere close to matching the dark brown wool suit he had on. But then, again, the wool suit was not exactly "L.A.". He had on a pair of black wingtip shoes that looked two sizes too large. Ollie looked like a cross between a C.P.A. and a clown. All that was missing was the red rubber nose and large white water-squirting daisy sticking from his lapel.

"Yeah ... yeah ... yeah. Forget the crap and tell me you found my car." Dominic always sounded like someone you did not want to mess around with. And there was good reason, too. "I got some people coming to town next week who are sure interested in that fucking car. I am sure you understand the importance I place on my clients."

"Dominic, come on, you know you can always count on me. As a matter of fact, I have already bought and equipped the Goat. You are going to love her." Ollie sounded somewhat nervous. He always sounded that way while talking to Dominic or even thinking about him. He sounded that way because he was truly intimidated by him, with good reason.

"Hey, that's good for me, and especially for you. Oh yeah, Ollie, you still got that blonde ... Sally, Shelly, what's her face, hanging around?" he asked.

"Her name is Sylvia and, yes, she is still here, Dom." Ollie knew and dreaded what was coming.

"Well, Ollie, ol' pal, I kind of liked that bimbo and I got a lot of friends out here that would take a liking to her also. So just load her in the car and send her along with the rest of the shit."

"Dom, I like this girl a lot and....."

"HEY! OLLIE! In case you didn't notice, I wasn't askin'. So get your shit together and tell me when I can expect delivery!" roared Dominic.

"I'll get a driver and you should have your car ... and Sylvia, Saturday," Ollie said. It was almost a whimper.

Ollie had almost forgotten that you do what Dominic tells you to do and you do it without question. Dominic Salvino was the kind of person that you did your very best to try and stay on the good side of.

There were lots of stories of people who had gotten on that bad side and suddenly were never heard from again. If the truth were known, the deserts outside of Las Vegas were littered with the sun bleached white skeletons of people who crossed Dominic or others like him. And in Vegas, there were lots of men like him.

"That is good to hear," Dom said flatly. "Now that business is out of the way, how are things with you?", not that he gave a rat's ass.

"Things are good. I was just telling...."

"Yeah, good." Dominic cut him off in mid-sentence. "Let's hope it stays that way. I will talk to you later. When the car arrives, I'll send one of my associates around with your cash. They can do the swap in the usual place."

There was a loud click on the phone. Not even a "Goodbye". It took two tries for Ollie to set the receiver back onto the phone's cradle. It was Ollie's favorite phone. One of those gaudy ivory white and gold Victorian looking pieces that you see on television in the lobbies of fancy French hotels.

Ollie stared at the phone for a while, wishing he had the balls to tell Dominic to kiss his ass. But then that probably would not be a good thing to do. He knew Salvino and he liked having his balls hanging just where they were.

Oliver Steinman always felt a little relieved when he got off the phone with Dominic. He felt that if Dom were still calling you, then you still had a life. Or at least body parts that were still part of your body.

Steinman and Salvino had come from totally different parts of the country with distinctively different backgrounds. How they became acquainted was really no big mystery.

Oliver Steinman was in show biz, where everyone knew everyone. This was not his real name of course. He had it legally changed from Wilson to Steinman in the early seventies because everyone thought it fashionable to be Jewish in show business circles.

Dominic Salvino was in the casino business in Las Vegas, where everyone knew what everyone else was doing. But everyone there pretended to be blind. It was good to be blind, that way you got to keep your eyes. "Casino business" usually meant money laundering, drugs, thugs, and in general, racketeering. And "SHOW BIZ" was an added bonus!

They had met through a mutual acquaintance at a party. An acquaintance that felt these two could benefit from what each had to offer the other. And he was right. He was also dead. This was some information that Ollie was not aware of and did not involve Ollie at all and something that Dominic could not be tied to. It has been said before, that you do not make mistakes around Dom.

So Ollie did not just run a talent agency. He was into a lot of "businesses". Talent and hard-to-find cars were just a couple. He was an entrepreneur that dealt in a variety of businesses, most of which no one talked about.

He was an agent and a wannabe producer. After all, this was Hollywood, and everyone was, or wanted to be, either, a producer, actor, or any role in showbiz. It seemed that in this world, everyone covered everyone else's ass or was out to buy it, bury it, or stick something in it.

Cowboy had once told Butch, his best friend/partner, "Dom and Ollie are both scumbags and if you keep hanging around with those guys you will end up no better off than when you were captured outside Saigon."

Dominic was a collector of fine vintage automobiles and even finer classic muscle cars. Dominic was a lot of things. Occasionally, he would give Ollie a call in Los Angeles to help find something new for his car collection. But that is not all he was interested in.

Ol' Dom was into moving miscellaneous merchandise. The transfer of an old collector car served that purpose very well. The frame work, spare tire, or secret compartment under the floorboards was a great place to hide fifteen or twenty kilos of good, high-quality cocaine, stolen gems, bonds, and good ole dirty American cash. And in Vegas, Dominic Salvino always had a way of turning it into laundered, usable cash.

Chapter Two

Dominic Salvino grew up on the south side of Chicago, amongst the garbage, crime, poverty and other hardships associated with being a poor immigrant family. Dominic was large for his age. He never really had much trouble with the local bullies that thrived on beating up foreign kids for their lunch money or just for the hell of it. Dom never thought of himself as being any different than the locals. He had decided at an early age that he was not going to take the beatings that the other kids on the block had suffered. The first and only time one of the gangs came up to him in an attempt to intimidate him, beat him, or take whatever money he had on him, he was ready. He stood and waited till they were right in his face.

"Give us your money, you fucking wop, and we might not kick your ass," the apparent leader of the group growled.

The others all broke into laughter. But they weren't laughing for long.

No sooner had the words come out of the bully's mouth, Dominic's fist went in remarkably fast, shattering the boy's nose and dropping him to his knees. And then, just for grins, Dominic indifferently stabbed him in the left eye with a yellow Standard #2 pencil he had in his shirt pocket.

The other boys turned in a panic and bolted down an alley and disappeared, as if they were never there.

Dominic bent over the squirming and screaming would-be tough guy and casually plucked the pencil from his eye. It made a slight squishing, sucking sound. He wiped it clean on the boy's Chicago Cubs jacket sleeve, placed it back in his shirt pocket and calmly, nonchalantly strolled down the sidewalk towards home.

Dom did not take the contents of the boy's pockets. After all, that would be robbery. His family was not a gang of thieves. Dominic Salvino would become a man to reckon with and he would be considered many things, but never a thief.

He grew up in a world filled with violence; a world where you took matters into your own hands. Dominic realized, at an early age, that you did not go to the police for help. The Chicago police department was as corrupt as any could get. Chicago in the `50's was not that much different than Chicago was in the `20's and `30's. If you were not a "well-to-do" Anglo, then you were just another wop, greaser, nigger or chink. Which meant that any crime committed against you or your family was deserved. Or that you had committed it.

Shortly after his eighteenth birthday Dom's younger sister, Mia, who was fifteen at the time, came home in tears. Her dress was torn and filthy. She had a split lip and a swollen eye that was turning black. Her stockings had been ripped to shreds. She only had on one shoe. She was in hysterics.

Dominic wanted to know what had happened but she would only talk to their mother. Dom listened to the story from behind the closed door to Mia's bedroom. She had been raped on the way home from school. Some young men had grabbed her and dragged her into an alley just off Halstead. They had beaten her and then took turns on her behind a dumpster. Over and over, each one laughing and cheering the next one on.

This was one of the things that would not be reported to the police. They would just ignore it and would bring shame to the girl if the incident were to be made public. Besides, the Salvinos were a proud family and took care of their own, as were all the families that lived around Chicago Heights, Highwood, near Chinatown, and along the Near West Side.

Dominic left the house in a white rage. He wandered around the neighborhood most of the night. He would take care of this alone.

He did not go around asking questions. That was not his way. He kept his mouth shut and listened to the street talk. By midnight he had learned all he needed to know.

He had heard about three white kids from across Wabath, the neighborhood boundary, bragging about what they had done to that Italian slut. "Yeah, by the time I got on her the second time, she was begging for it." They had all laughed.

Dom was furious when he got home. But he never let his emotions show. He sat awake the rest of the night, fuming and letting that rage grow. They would not go unpunished.

Two things Dom had going for him were the fact that the boys did not know him, or the fact that he knew who they were. And time was on his side.

Two days later, one of the boys was found in that same alley. He had been led there by one of Dominic's girl friends with the promise of a good time. What he found was Dom.

Dom told the girl thanks and asked her to leave. He knew she would not tell anyone anything and he did not want her to see what was about to happen.

The boy was found dead and naked. The coroner's report said that he had been beaten severely by what may have been a baseball bat. He was not real sure, since there was no bat found. But what he was sure of was that isn't what killed him. The boy had choked to death on his own penis which had been cut off and shoved deep into his throat.

The two remaining boys had heard about the incident and decided that it would be a good idea if they disappeared for awhile. It did not save them. It just delayed the inevitable.

It took a little longer, but just listening to the street talk, Dom eventually tracked them down. And when he caught up with each one he made them regret that they had ever been born.

The older of the two, a tough guy named Curt, was found at the waterfront docks. He was hanging upside down and spread eagle from two pier pylons not too far off Lake Shore. Each ankle bound with white cotton clothes line to each pylon. His genitals, balls and all, had been cut off and shoved down his throat also. He had what appeared to be a fairly new #2 pencil sticking out of one eye. The other eye was missing entirely. It was not found. The medical examiner's report stated that this young man died from asphyxiation. Apparently he had been alive while he was being tortured.

The third boy's body was never recovered. His head was found impaled on a fence post near the Seward Park, close to his own home. There was a pencil stuck in each of his eyes, buried deeply into his brain. The M.E. told the investigating officers that the pencils were in place before the boy had died.

Everyone in the surrounding neighborhoods knew who had done these terrible things. But no one talked about it to anyone. Especially the coppers. The families all felt that the victims had gotten what they deserved and knew that they would be safe from anyone else who wanted to come to their part of town and cause trouble. They had a guardian angel.

Dominic Salvino climbed to the top of the Organized Crime ladder and became the most feared man in the hierarchy. He was the most wanted man in Chicago, but the police knew better than to go looking for him. They knew that he lived in a place on the east side off of North Avenue, but he was rarely there.

Dom liked to hang out with old friends and business associates in his old territory. The police had been to Little Italy, his territory, before. They did not get a warm reception then and they did not get one now. This was an area that was best left alone. There were way too many obstacles to surpass. If Dominic didn't want to be found, then he could not be found.

The Business (as they called it) promoted Dom to a position in Las Vegas. They needed someone to take care of a casino owner who had gotten a little greedy. And with that job completed, he became the manager, and eventually the owner of the casino by virtue of his good work and dominating presence.

They called it a performance bonus. But in reality, The Business felt that it would be in their best interest not to be too closely associated with this mad man. Dominic Salvino was now "The Man" in Vegas. And everyone knew it.

Chapter Three

Ollie was sitting behind his desk, at his Malibu home. He was twirling a pencil between his fingers. When he realized what he was doing, paleness crawled over his face like a fog rolling in off the coast and he dropped the pencil as if it was white hot. He had heard all the stories.

"So you understand the deal?" he asked. "I can't leave L.A. at this time. Business, you know. Actually, I don't want to go to Las Vegas right now. This car has to be there by Saturday morning so I need a driver that is dependable and careful. He will be paid well to deliver the car in pristine condition. Dom likes spotless merchandise."

"I know it would be a lot simpler to just put the car on one of those transports. The trouble is there is always this paper trail left behind if you use a transport company. Besides, they always treat the cars like they're just plain used cars. This car is like a priceless piece of art."

Butch set down his beer and gazed out the terrace windows onto the beach. He was sitting in a camel back red leather chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from When Dominoes Fallby danjo Thomas Copyright © 2010 by danjo Thomas. Excerpted by permission.
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