Just One A Them Things is a crime novel. Taking place over the course of one day in the summer of 1978, in Long Beach, California, union agent Sheen McGinty is drawn into an FBI sting operation attempting to forge a RICO link between the Teamsters and the Mafia. Inspired by true events and real people, the book began with the working title of “John Doe 1978,” which was the name given to an actual body found, in August rather than July, of 1978. It was going to be a story of the events leading up to his death, though the protagonist would be a completely fictionalized adult, as Sheen McGinty is in the book, rather than the real fifteen year old boy who was found in the middle of the street without any form of identification. At the time I started working on it, it was still an unsolved case.
However, the more I started researching the time period and location, the more I found I wanted to bring into the mix. 1978 would be the last Summer for The Pike Amusement Zone. Later that year, Jimmy Fratianno would make history by being the first Made Man to testify against the Mafia. The Crips were just at the beginning of their violent expansion of territory and power. The FBI was wielding the powerful new weapon of RICO against any organization with which they had ever butted heads, and the Teamsters were a case they had failed to make time and time again.
It was a time and place when everything changed, but nothing really changed. Empires would crumble and others would come to build new ones with the rubble. They’d do it differently though, they'd say. They’d do it right. After all, everyone knows cognovit Dominus qui sunt eius.
It’s just one a them things.
"Suddenly, he had too much blood. It swelled his limbs and made his flesh feel sausage-tight, and ready to burst. His cheeks and ears burned. The sweltering heat of the day felt cool on his skin by comparison. Naturally fair skinned, with a wave of hair the shade of stewed carrots, he radiated his anger. Sheen could understand how people had once embraced the medicinal logic of the humors. Embarrassment and fury rose tangibly to his surface. They glowed with a peculiar shade of red his father used to refer to as Irish Sin.
He certainly felt like sinning now.
No one could be this stupid. This clueless. No way he could be this goddamn dumb and have escaped the righteous beating he deserved to correct his erroneous ways. However, it was the only explanation for a situation such as this situation to occur. No one – after enduring the punishment he was due – could proceed to live with such blissful, selfish ignorance. It was a cosmic oversight, an injustice of Biblical proportions.
One which Sheen intended to remedy.
Strength came from numbers, he’d told Lucius, and he’d meant it. It was the founding principle – the bedrock – of any union. As individuals they had very little. They were skilled labor, sure, but their skills were limited. Specialized. The double-edge of any union also came from their numbers. It allowed for numerous weak links in the chain. If they failed to hold together, then as individuals they could be easily replaced.
Without loyalty, he told Lucius, numbers didn’t last.
Without trust, without faith in the strength, and the fortitude, and the goddamn character of those beside you – and those beside them, and beside them, all the way down the line – then the numbers were meaningless.
He could feel the eyes of Lucius, in the store behind him, burrowing into the back of his head. He patted his pockets for his lighter, making a show of it for the old man and for anyone else who might be watching. A reason for his hesitation. Not that he needed to. It was in his right front pocket, where he always kept it.
He continued the performance by tapping the fresh pack against his wrist, before he ripped the foil free and let it flutter to the ground. Flicking a practiced thumb against the bottom of the pack, two smokes popped up about an inch and he pulled one free with his lips. From his pocket, he retrieved his battered Zippo.
A present he’d received for beating a man blind.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true.
Half-blind."