A BUSINESS OF CONSEQUENCE

A re-release of an older story for Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursdays are a reminder to us writers that there are stories in our archives that many of today's Subscribers and Followers haven’t read simply because they haven’t browsed through the Archives. And that’s Okay. There’s a lot here that Substack has to offer, and you can’t be everywhere at once if you’re subscribed to 20, 30, 40, 50 posts.

I wrote this story without really knowing where I was going to go. I just started writing about these two guys in turn of the last century New York. 1910. I was into looking at the darker side of life. I had an old copy of a Playboy magazine I’d stolen from my brother back in the 70’s because it an article about the gangs of New York: The Dead Rabbits and The Five Points, and Monk Eastman, with his Eastmans and Jr. Eastmans. They used to ensure you voted who they wanted you to vote for. They broke up rallies and Unions. And somewhere in these gangs were the likes of Luciano, and Costello, and Lansky. I thought it was going to be a story about Monk, but I kept getting this idea about two hoods who wanted to start their own gang. And the one was playing a trumpet. And then there was Rothstein: The guy that fixed the World Series. The Black Sox scandal. I knew there was something in there. There were too many colourful characters not to find something.

And I came up with A BUSINESS OF CONSEQUENCE. I brought in heroin, speak easies, prostitution, Prohibition, and threw it all into the blender…

I only had 53 Subscribers. I’m pretty sure it was before we had Notes. It took longer to find readers back then, but somehow we did it. So now I have 574 Subscribers and 665 Followers. Maybe some of my Followers will up-grade and become FREE Subscribers? That’s why I put these up.

I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

And leave me a comment? I love it when you leave me comments.