Locked Outside - Jennifer Baljko

I guess it may have played out like a movie, or a scene from The Sopranos. I imagine they stalked Tony, waited outside in their fancy cars while he locked up the pizzeria one night. I’m sure they took him out back, threw him up against the wall in a dark alley, roughed him with bats or pipes, threatened to come back in a couple of days. I’m pretty certain Tony was pissing his pants when they pushed him to his knees and shot him a couple of times in the back of his head. Tony was opening a bunch of pizzerias around the county. Some people in my neighborhood speculated that his sudden wealth had nothing to do with selling great pizza. Not for nothing, most folks in my neighborhood, including myself, thought his pizza was crap. I was too young to understand what kind of mess Tony stepped in. I only caught only snatches of the scuttlebutt spinning around the porches of the local gossipmongers. But, I always wondered what really happened. If wonder if I know what I think I know, or if it was just a story I strung together in my own head.