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At times, I probably could have coel, but I was trying to look on the bright side: though the nineteenth-century lifestyle certainly took so used to, at least when the dollar collapsed, we’d be good

So here I was, up early, out on the porch drinking coffee like your classic westernaround for e Actually, I didn’t have a horse or knohat “the range” was, so I decided to just read the news on my iPhone

Beavis and Butt-Head were coe Wasn’t that nice? It was a real coht-hundred-acre sanctuary was still going to hell in a gasoline-filled recyclable shopping bag

It hat I spotted when I thue Report that made me sit up and spill coffee all over my wellies

MOB WAR!!? 20-Plus Dead! Manuel Perrine

Suspected in Multiple Bloodbaths!

CHAPTER 2

IT TOOK ME ABOUT half an hour of reading through the just-breaking news reports to wrap

There had been seven attacks in all Three in the New York area, and one each in Providence, Detroit, Philly, and Los Angeles Reports were preli like the heads of all five Mafia fa those ht by unknown assailants

Wives were dead, it said Children A mobster’s house in Westport, Connecticut, had actually been blown to smithereens

“ ‘Twenty-three bodies and counting,’ ” I read out loud off the Los Angeles Times website

Twenty-three dead wasn’t a criht in utter disbelief Twenty-three dead was the body count of a land war

The scope and sophistication of the attacks were daunting Alarms had been disabled, security tapes removed It was still early, but there didn’t seem to be any witnesses In the space of seven hours, several mobsters and their families had been quickly and quietly wiped off the face of the earth

An unht be Perrine The anonymous tipster said that Perrine had offered the American Mafia some sort of partnership a few months back, a deal that was turned down Not only that, but the article was saying that today was actually Perrine’s forty-fifth birthday

It definitely could have been Perrine, I knew The attacks actually made sense when you realized how the cartels worked The cartels’ brutally si tactic was called plata o plomo on the street Silver or lead Take the money or a bullet Do business with us or die