Chapter I – WALT

The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the blinds and added its glow to Walt’s post coital bliss. He was awash in the endorphin-fueled satisfaction and sense of well-being that usually follows an extended romp in the hay. His mind was grooving along in la-la land while Judy, his current squeeze, sensed his vulnerability and resumed her relentless campaign urging him to divorce Maria and spend the rest of his life in bimbo heaven.

Walt was paying absolutely no attention to her pleas. No need to; he had heard it a thousand times from Judy and the long line of women that had preceded her. He knew the scene by heart and had no intention of ruining the moment by lending any credence to her efforts.

Soon the sexually induced semi-coma began to ebb, and little by little Walt returned to reality. He thought to himself, Of all the women that have shared my bed, this may well be the most accomplished of the bunch. I can’t say I’ve ever had a really bad hummer, but Miss Manning is a virtuoso performer. Makes me want to keep her around, at least for the moment.

For the past ten years or so, Walt had maintained a leased love nest somewhere in the metropolitan Chicago area. Sometimes in the city and sometimes in the burbs and always furnished with a beautiful young woman with loose morals and high ambitions. Judy Manning was just the latest resident talent. Walt had been keeping Judy in this Morton Grove hideaway for nearly seven months and soon the one-year lease would be ending. Walt usually recycled his honeys in harmony with lease expiration.

This program ensured that he would always have interesting and exciting partners and never would they be ensconced at the same address. Who needs a belligerent ex-girlfriend bumping into the current model? This could have no happy outcome and he was very cautious in separating his babes.

For the past month or so, Judy had started with the divorce/marriage theme that usually presaged the implementation of his exit strategy. This brought up several related issues and as his mind cleared of the afterglow, he turned to dealing with this thorny dilemma. In the past there was no question about changing horses. He always had a new candidate in the wings, and being an accomplished adulterer and a damn good lawyer he had no trouble making the transition.

This time was different in a couple of areas. He was not nearly tired of the comely Miss Manning. Not only could she suck start a Harley Davidson, but she seemed to love it as much as he did and had the talent to stay in an extended state of bliss for amazing periods of time. This made Walt feel powerful and fed his insatiable ego. She just might be in for an extension of her tenure.

In fact, it might be time to reexamine the whole fabric of his relationships. He and Maria, his wife, had long ago settled into a state of armed détente. They were excruciatingly polite and proper to each other, but it was obvious that there was nothing left in the marriage. Maybe it was time to move on in that area as well. The only problem was that it would be a lot easier to fantasize about dumping a Mafia princess than it would be to actually do it.

Walt had met Maria during his last year of law school at Northwestern University. She was in her senior year and was drop-dead beautiful, intelligent, and great in bed. Walt was five years older than Maria, he had studied accounting as an undergrad and had sat for his CPA before law school, and he was completely besotted with her. He knew her folks were second-generation Italian, but her last name of Colosimo meant nothing to him. It would soon mean a lot.

Once he had proposed marriage the next step was to meet her family. On a Sunday morning in May the young couple attended Mass at Saint Athanasius in Evanston and after the service went to her family’s home for lunch. They parked in the circular driveway of a large two-story Arts and Crafts home in an old established neighborhood. They were met by her mother, a very handsome edition of Maria. It was easy to see how beautifully Maria would age.

Walt thought about that lunch as he lay in the fading sunlight half-listening to Judy make plans for their lives after Maria was gone. That Sunday lunch had convinced Walt that marrying Maria was the thing to do. Her father was long deceased, killed on the job. Maria lived with her widowed mother and three older brothers. The brothers had been evasive when questioned about their careers, simply saying that they worked in the family business and no mention was made as to the exact nature of that business.

Judy nudged him in the ribs and said, “Damn, Walt, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

Walt had heard enough to answer, “Oh yes I have; you’ve been telling how our life will be after I’ve divorced Maria and we are together.”

A broad smile crossed her face and she cooed.

“Oh Walt, you do intend to get a divorce, don’t you?”

“I want us to be together and I plan to do whatever it takes to do it.”

That was the first time those words had ever been spoken to one of his sweeties and he had a hard time believing they had come out of his mouth. Judy jumped out of the bed and swished across the bedroom to the bath giving Walt the full treatment of her beautiful bare ass. He felt life return to his nether regions, a stirring of renewed lust and desire.

“Yep,” he thought. “This one is a keeper, maybe not the future Mrs. Stephens, but something that might last longer than the usual year.” This brought him back to the current Mrs. Stephens and his looming difficulties.

After the Sunday lunch with Maria’s family, Walt did some hurried research on the Colosimo family and quickly discovered that Maria’s grandfather, Giacomo “Big Jim” Colosimo, had been the founder of the current Mafia establishment in Chicago. Upon his death in 1920, his son, Maria’s father, had vied for control of the outfit. He lost in his bid and thus his death on the job. His sons who were ordinary guys had been accepted into the Mob and were sort of middle managers. All three were made men and well respected in Mob circles.

When Maria and Walt were married the June after they graduated, Walt was offered a starting position in a law firm closely tied to the Chicago crime family. He had worked long hours and soon proved to have an uncanny ability to move money in and out of offshore banking systems and into legitimate business. Soon he caught the eye of Tony Accardo, the longtime Chicago Don and was told to leave the firm and hang out his own shingle as a single practitioner. Accardo, who was known as the “Big Tuna,” began to allow Walt to launder some of the Mob’s ill-gotten gains into legitimate funds. When Accardo passed away, his successor, Santo Roncolli, turned to Walt as his primary financial adviser.

Today, Walt was Roncolli’s right-hand man in the finance of drugs, prostitution, gambling, extortion, and a variety of pseudo legitimate businesses controlled by Roncolli and his associates. Income ran to the hundreds of millions each year, and Walt was handling it all. He had remained aloof from his brothers-in-law, but Maria was very close to her family.

The whole bunch was Catholic and divorce was never condoned. You could have as many mistresses as you could stand or afford, and the wives were expected to look the other way. Nobody divorced and even though Walt had no moral compunctions about the issue, he did realize it would piss off Roncolli, and more importantly, it would infuriate Maria’s three brothers. He had no illusions about just how painful that would be. Family honor was inviolate.

Walt had realized for a long time that the only hope he had to rid himself of Maria and maintain his position with the Mob was for her to turn up dead. The fact that he had been skimming a small percentage of every dollar that passed through his hands added to his conviction that if Maria turned up dead, he could in no way be connected to the happy event. It would have to be a thoroughly professional job and made to seem like an unfortunate accident. He had made some discreet inquiries along these lines and several independent sources had recommended the same solution.

Judy came out of the bathroom and crawled back in bed snuggling up to Walt and rubbing her sizable breasts against his chest. The little head took over from the big head, and Walt slipped back into the arms of Eros. Thoughts of Maria were soon replaced by spasms of pleasure. He would deal with Maria later.

Later that afternoon, back in his office, Walt placed a call to a number that would begin the process of ridding himself of his wife and her troublesome family. The phone rang several times before a voice said, “Good evening. This is Final Solutions, Royce speaking. How may I help you?”