The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (61 page)

Bottles
—Booze. I recommend rum. Most Boricuas would. My cousin Chu will tell you Patrón. Not a fan of the tequila. Do I look Mexican?

Bud
—Marijuana.

Chop shop
—Where boosted cars go to die.

Chopped/chopping
—Cutting up a car until it’s nothing but a frame, because the VIN will expose it as stolen, but there’s nothing to identify the parts individually. A stolen car is almost always more valuable chopped unless it’s extremely highline.

Drive-by
—A fucked-up, cowardly way for one crew to take out a hit on another crew’s members. A lot of innocents die in the process, and motherfuckers who do this deserve to burn for it.

End you
—Often used as a warning that an ass kicking is imminent, but it depends on who says it. If someone like one of the Italians is threating to end you, I suggest remedying that situation immediately. They’re usually literal when they say something like this.

Going down
—I have mixed feelings about this term. On the one hand, it’s a reference to going down on a chica, and it’s a much better pastime than getting blitzed. It’s also slang for getting arrested and going to prison. Having done both, I highly recommend sticking with the chicas and avoiding prison. (Note, gangsters will sometimes just use this as a general term too. Like going down one way or the other, death or prison. So, um, going down in the nonsexy meaning of the term is never recommended.)

Green
—Money.

Heat
—The cops. Always pendejos. Haven’t met one yet I like. Avoid unless you feel like going down in the nonsexy sense of the term.

In bed
—When you’re in bed with an organization, it means you’re tangled up with them whether you want to be or not, and you could possibly get fucked in the process. So you better be really in love with the motherfuckers you get in bed with.

In deep
—Imagine swimming out so far you can’t swim back. All you can do is tread water and try to survive before the ocean swallows you, but you know the entire time it’s pointless. You’re going down eventually. That’s what
in deep
means. Apply it to anything. You’re stuck in. You can’t get out on your own, and it’s highly unlikely anyone’s gonna try to pull you out because all it’ll do is force them to drown with you.

Ink
—Tattoos, usually with meaning. Ink is powerful. It’s forever. That means something to my people.

Jumping in
—Letting the members of a gang beat the ever-loving fuck out of you without fighting back so you’ll earn the special privilege of stealing/dealing/bleeding/killing/dying for the motherfuckers who kicked the shit out of you.

OG
—Original gangster. A term of respect given to gangsters who have lived long enough and bled for their gang to the point that they are no longer required to do grunt work. Sad, but most gangsters are OGs by their early twenties. (Note for young thugs. Very few gangsters get to be OGs, and if you do manage it, that means you buried most of your friends and/or you went down long enough to grow old behind bars. It’s almost always a depressing combination of both mixed with losing your soul just to survive gang life. Being an OG is not as baller as you’d think.)

Jacked
—Stealing a car, though it can refer to doing it at gunpoint. (Not a fan; where’s the fucking skill in that?) It’s also used as a general term for a stolen car.

Lying low
—Hiding out. From the heat. From another crew. Basically staying hidden so whoever is after your ass can’t find you. Not a fan of lying low. Hiding is for chicas without cojones.

Punked
—Someone playing a trick on you or fucking with you to the point that you look around for cameras, expecting an amped-up gringo to jump out of the woodwork and start laughing his ass off.

Represent
—Being aware of who you are and what people relate you to and making sure you keep up the image in order to give it more power. It could simply be cultural, like if you’re Boricua, you better be good in bed because we have a rep, and you’re expected to represent. But if you’re attached to a gang, you represent because your survival depends on it. Everything you do is to make sure you are contributing to the strength of your crew. Most organizations are like that. Don’t believe me? Watch the Italians for a while; they represent like a motherfucker.

Smoked
—Killed.

Snow girl(s)
—Also known as a snow bunny. A white girl. More specifically, a white girl who is dating a Latino or one who’s into Latinos. My people have been known to use the term
snow girl
as code for cocaine. Most Latinos have dated a snow girl or two (’cause word got out that we do it better), and it’s a code that’ll keep law enforcement off our ass when we’re on the phone. ’Cause, you know, big brother, he’s always fucking listening.

Squat/squatting
—Breaking in and living in an unoccupied house. You haven’t lived until you’ve squatted in an abandoned crack house in the middle of the hood for a week or two. We should add it to the gangster brochures. (Note, that was fucking sarcasm. As bad as it sounds, I promise you, it sucks worse.)

Strapped
—Carrying a gun, usually to avoid being smoked. (See above.)

The hood
—The place God forgot. Trust me, when you get to the hood, you’ll know it. (Note, if you don’t belong in the hood. Don’t go looking for it. Watch a fucking documentary or something.)

Thugs
—Hard, mean criminals, most often gangsters, because thugs tend to find one another at a young age and organize with a unified goal of them against the world. Avoid. They’re always and without question pendejos, myself included.

Valentino Moretti’s Guide to Italian and Cosa Nostra Terminology, Version 1.0

Traditional Italian

Note from Tino: There are a lot of New York Italians who use broken-up, Americanized phrases in Italian, but this isn’t it. This section is traditional Italian. I need to clarify it, because my mother was serious about the way Italian should be spoken. She was old country, so I guess, in a way, me and my brothers are old country too. Not good or bad, just the way it is. (Yeah, let them think that. We all know this makes us sexy as hell. The rest of those guidos are just posers. Old country. The real deal. In my family, if we do something, we own it. Bet you didn’t know that, but stick around; you’ll find out real fast.)

Apri questa porta del cazzo, Valentino
—Open this fucking door, Valentino. (Note, both my brothers have this annoying habit. When they’re irritated with me, they switch to Italian and use my full name in the same way my mother used to. It pisses me off. So I do the same thing to them. It particularly irritates Nova, which is reason enough to do it often. Romeo must find it entertaining too, ’cause he does it to Nova all the fucking time, but it’s good for him.)

Bambini
—Babies, as in more than one. (Not for nothing, but my brother makes the cutest bambini. Sad, him and Jules can’t have any more. My nephews could make a million bucks modeling. It’s genetic. We don’t make ugly babies.)

Bambino
—Baby.

Cazzo
—Fuck.

Chiudi la tua fottuta bocca, Valentino
—Shut your fucking mouth, Valentino. (See what I’m saying? This whole fucking dictionary is just gonna be me and my brothers bitching each other out in Italian.)

Ciao
—Hello.

È morto
—It’s dead.

È la morfina. Lei non ci sta con la testa
—It’s the morphine. She doesn’t have a clear mind. In other words, I was telling Nova that Jules was high as fuck and not to take it personally. Hey, no judgment. I spent a good chunk of my life high, and I don’t have two perfect, handsome bambini to show for it. I got nothing but love for Jules. She’s my favorite sister-in-law. (And likely the only one I’m gonna get, unless Carina switches teams and starts going for girls. Nova sure as hell isn’t getting married.)

Figlio di puttana
—Son of a bitch.

I miei bambini
—My babies. (Yeah, pretty much. I’d take a thousand bullets for those two.)

Macchiato
—
Caffé macchiato
literally translates into
spotted
or
stained coffee
. It’s espresso with a spot of milk. The highline coffeehouses in New York will often serve them with designs swirled into the foamed milk. Sounds like a cappuccino, but it’s not. Look, I understand it’s all very confusing, but think of it like this. Macchiato is a two-layered drink, with just espresso and foamed milk. Cappuccino and lattes are three-layered drinks, with foamed milk, steamed milk, and espresso. Lattes have more steamed milk. Cappuccinos have more foamed milk, so in the caffeine food chain it goes, macchiato, cappuccino, lattes, with progressively more milk and less coffee as we go down. Still don’t understand? It’s okay. Like most things in my world, it’s complex. (Note, it tastes a little different from the café con leches in Miami, but the café con leche was actually really fucking good. I drank them for a full week, and I missed them afterward. So I’m going to have to give them the Tino Moretti seal of approval.)

Merda
—Shit. (Note, yes, I know. It sounds a lot like
mierda
, which is
shit
in Spanish. I grew up in East Harlem. Often called Spanish Harlem, though it was Italian Harlem first. There are pockets of Italian holdouts who still live there, but I heard enough Puerto Rican Spanish as a kid to understand most of it. I’m just not gonna speak it, ’cause I have an ethical issue with butchering a language. Like I said before, if you’re gonna do something, do it well or don’t do it at all.)

Morfina
—Morphine.

Nonno
—Grandfather. Not to be confused with godfather, unless you’re lucky enough to be me. Then they’re one and the same.

Sei uno stronzo
—You’re an asshole.

Tu sei morto per me
—You’re dead to me.

Vaffanculo
—Fuck off. (Usually said while flipping your hand under your chin and then giving them the middle finger. A lot of Italian has accompanying hand gestures. I know people make jokes about Italians talking with their hands, but there is some of it that has actual meaning.)

Un enorme fottuto stronzo
—A huge fucking asshole.

Vai a morire ammazzato
—Go and die murdered. I guess, technically, it translates to
go and die killed
. Essentially, it means don’t just go and die. Go and die violently, at the hands of another, shamed and suffering before death. What can I say? All the great artists were Italian because we’re creative people…in all things. (Note, I don’t even remember saying this to Nova, and he was probably really pissed off about it. This is not a nice insult. Especially in our family, when dying murdered is a very real possibility. I should probably apologize to him for this one.)

Vai via, stronzo
—Go away, asshole. (Note, in case you haven’t noticed,
stronzo
means
asshole
, and I use it frequently when talking to my brothers. Don’t feel too bad about it. They’ve said it to me a few times too.)

Zio
—Uncle. (
Zu
can also be used, but
zu
is sometimes used with respect toward senior members of a mafia organization. No, we’re not gonna let our nephews call us Zu.)

Cosa Nostra Terminology

Note from Tino: The information contained in this guide was obtained through academic research and does not, in any way, indicate any sort of personally obtained knowledge of the internal workings of Cosa Nostra, criminal activity, drug use, etc… (In other words, I’m not a narc, and I’m not a wiseguy. So the Borgata and the Feds can just back the fuck up. It’s a fucking story. That’s it. Made-up. I’ll swear on a thousand stacks of Bibles that none of the shit in these books is true anyway.)

.38
—A gun. On the small side. A good revolver if you’re into revolvers. It’s not the most powerful gun. It’s not the fastest (I prefer semiautomatics), but if you’re running strapped and you want someone to know you’ll put a hole in them if they fuck with you, a .38 will do the job. It’ll kill someone easily enough if your aim is decent. (Note, it’ll do the job faster than a fucking shotgun, that’s for sure!)

Administration
—The upper-level management of a crime family. Usually consisting of the don (boss),
capo bastone
(underboss), and the consigliere (advisor). It’s all about the bottom line with them, and shit always rolls downhill from the administration. Also, many of the rules in Cosa Nostra revolve around protecting the administration, but despite that, historically there are a lot of bosses who have gone down. Feds will give just about anyone a free pass to grab someone from the administration of a crime family, and it works more often than it should. The old man has done over ten years in federal, and that’s light for a don. It’s a fucking miracle Nova hasn’t gone down as capo bastone, but no one’s sold him out. (Note, selling out Nova would be very bad for your health. Don’t think I can’t find you. There are a lot of dead motherfuckers who made that mistake.)

Associate
—An associate is someone who works with an organization but is not an actual member of the mob. The power and influence of an associate are vast. For example, if you’re just the drug dealer up the street, paying out a cut to the capo in charge of the area, you have no power, but if you’re someone like Chuito, who is now a known confidant to the capo bastone of the Moretti crime family, that’s a different set of issues. There have been associates who’ve gained great power in an organization, even if they weren’t Italian. Think Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. They were both Jewish but gathered huge amounts of power and authority with the Italian mafia. It’s all about playing your cards right and allying yourself with the right powers that be, ’cause shit can change very quickly in the Cosa Nostra. (Note, not playing your cards right is a good way to end up dead. There aren’t too many Meyer Lanskys in history. Most associates are expendable should a mafia war break out. They aren’t protected like a made man is.)