Thirty years ago. When the Sandhogs opened up the Great Below and hell came spilling out. The monsters wanted a slice. Between the Sandhogs and Zoladski’s crime coalition, the nightmares got pushed back into the dark.

“Hell with it. Nobody came to listen to an old man talk about bullshit everybody already knows. Business is good. And business is gonna stay good. This thing that we do runs itself and me being six feet under ain’t gonna change that – not like I was getting any younger. Every day is a day gone, a day you don’t get back, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any one of us. Still, somebody needs to step up. Take the reins.”

Mookie looks around the room. The lieuts look anxious. And suddenly excited. Like one of them is going to be called up here and now and handed the keys to the city. Zoladski had a son, but the son died in a deal gone bad with one of the gangs, the Crimson Kings. The Kings paid for that transgression – heads cut off and sent to the other gangs as a message: This is what you get when you fuck with a Zoladski.

But it’s then that Haversham gives a nod to the far corner of the room and out from behind a stack of trays and chairs walks this young, reedy kid in an ill-fitting black suit with a narrow black tie. The kid hurries up to the front like a couple mop handles falling out of a hallway closet. Got two gold rings on his bulbous knuckles. Thin gold chain around his neck. It’s then Mookie sees the resemblance – square-shaped head, hair styled the same way (even though the kid’s is penny-red and the old man’s is like fresh snow). Same nose, too. Nose like an owl’s beak.

Mookie’s seen him before. But last time he saw him he was, what, knee-high to a chipmunk? Just a little boy then.

“My grandson,” the Boss says, the words a rheumy rattle. “Casimir Zoladski. Some of you have met him. He’s a good kid. He’ll succeed me in this. When I’m gone, he’s the new Boss, so give him the respect he deserves or he’ll cut your balls off. And I’ll come back from the dead to eat ’em.”

A moment hangs in the air before the applause, a handful of seconds bundled in the string of uncertainty where the lieuts shift nervously and wonder if this is some kind of fucking joke, that the Boss is going to hand over the entire Organization to a twenty-year-old wet-behind-the-ears whelp like this.

“So there it is,” the Boss says. Like he just pissed on the floor and is daring anybody to say something about it. “Let’s eat.”

Servers from downstairs put out chairs and tables and bring out food. A lot of it. Trays over burners. It’s a whole Polish spread: pierogies, three different types of kielbasa, golabki, pyzy dumplings, tomato soup, poppy seed rolls. Mookie wants to eat it all. He’s starving. He’s always starving but now’s worse than ever because the venom has him feeling gutted, like his blood sugar has fallen through the floor – and then this news? Cancer? Casimir? Mookie’s always been the type to eat his emotions and right now his emotions want him to shovel pierogies and sausage into his mouth until he passes out.