>>5882904>>5882593>>5882510>>5882503"Maroni, he's gotta be the weakest link right? He's been on the losing end of a feud for a while now."
"His beef with Falcone? That's a little before your time, it's simmered but it's more cold war than Vietnam now." Kimble chimes in.
"Regardless, DeLucia might be right, Maroni has been taking hits for years. It all started when he lost his best enforcer. Mook named Tony Zucco, we found him hogtied to a tight rope with both his arms broken."
"Jesus Christ, Falcone?" You ask.
"Batman." Kimble chimes in. "Gotham's own muscle."
"If it was years ago then the Vigilante Act wasn't in place, how'd we make anything stick?"
Grey laughs to himself almost ruefully.
"Second we cut the fella loose he spilled the beans on himself, implicated himself in a double murder from nearly five years prior. Killed two acrobats for some kind of insurance scam, on Maroni's behalf of course. Dent served him a life sentence."
"Dent? So this happened back when he was still a judge?"
Kimble nods.
"Before your time." He repeats before leaning up from his seat and giving Grey a glance. "I have experience with these types of guys, you okay letting me run point on this? At the very least I can debrief."
Grey gives him a wave and sits back to listen to him along with you.
"Alright. So the way I see it and from what we know Maroni has three pressure points we can leverage. The three things he's short on nowadays. Money, Respect, and Muscle."
You pull out your notepad, Kimble didn't have any gangland experience from your knowledge but nearly ten years on the streets had to give him some insight.
"We press on Money then it's an old school affair. We tell him that we're willing to turn a blind eye to some of his less savory businesses in exchange for intel. He gets a steady flow of cash for a bit and we get to learn something."
You scowl, the idea of letting a mob boss slide on his dirty business doesn't sit right with you.
"The other methods?" You ask politely.
"Respect, this is the most diplomatic option. We appeal to his pettiest feelings and try to get him to spill information just because it'll hurt his competition. Final option is Muscle, the most confrontational, we put even more pressure on him. We tell him he plays ball with us or we end up having more patrols around his businesses. Extortion at a state level essentially."
Grey leans back.
"Thoughts, DeLucia?"
>"I like the idea of pressing his pride, if we can rile him up he'll flip out of spite." >"I'm not a fan of giving people a free pass, but it's the most convincing way we could get his intel." >"Muscle, Criminals should be worried about us dropping down on them. Reminding them that all it takes is a pooling of men to drive them out of business is the best tactic.>Write-In 