1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local/Prologue IV: Homicidal Maniacs

Synopsis
On the afternoon of December 30th, 1931, Don Placido Russo sits in in his manor and reaffirms that today is the worst day of his life.

That morning, the Russo Family's astronomical monthly earnings were stolen en route by a man and woman dressed as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. To make matters worse, there are rumors floating that the charred remains of a Russo capo and other Russo men were found on the outskirts of town last night.

To top it all off, Nader Schasschule and his allies - who had plotted to betray the Lemures and join the Russo Family - have yet to make contact with him. Apparently the Lemures' factory hideout is now a mess of rubble and corpses, so Placido has ordered his men to take care of the mess while he deals with everything else that has gone wrong.

Placido's nephew Ladd Russo enters his office with the news that he plans on hijacking the transcontinental express Flying Pussyfoot, which is leaving Chicago for New York City that evening. The idea is to use the train as ransom: if the railroad company does not give Ladd money, he will crash the train right into Manhattan. If crashing the train is not enough of a threat, then Ladd will up the ante by kidnapping the passengers. He estimates that he and his friends will be able to kill off half the passengers before the railroad company coughs up the money, a prospect which delights him.

Placido is not amused, and calls for his guards to throw Ladd out of his office. The office door opens to reveal a group of men and one woman, all clad in white. Ladd introduces the woman to Placido as his fiancée, Lua Klein, but Placido is too busy ranting about Ladd's plan to particularly care - he does not care if Ladd kidnaps and kills people, so long as his actions are in no way connected to the Russo name.

Ladd cuts off Placido's increasingly rabid shouting by pointing his rifle at his uncle's chin. He reminds his uncle that the people he likes to kill the most are those who think they are completely safe - who think that there is no way they are going to die – just like Placido. Ladd pulls the trigger right as Placido is begging for his life, and nothing happens. The rifle had been unloaded the entire time.

Nonchalant in the face of Placido's distress, Ladd offers his uncle a breezy goodbye, predicting that it is likely they will never see each other again...given that Placido is almost certainly on Lucky Luciano's hit list considering that he tried to protest Luciano's reorganization efforts. Not only that, Ladd figures that the cops and the tax office have their eye on Placido as well, considering the 'recent incident'. He assures Placido that he only knocked out his guards, not killed them, and opines that it is lucky Placido's grandchild is currently at school.

Placido is disconcerted, as there is no way Ladd could have known about his opposition of Luciano's reforms or the theft of the Russo income - unless he had been deliberately keeping an ear out for information. He realizes with dread that Ladd no longer has any use for him, since he is clearly aware that the Russos are no longer in a secure position.

Placido wonders why Ladd even came to him if he was planning on leaving anyway, and Ladd anxiously asks if Placido could give his old white suit to him as a wedding gift. Nonplussed, Placido asks why his group is all dressed up in white in the first place, and Ladd explains that the passengers' red blood will look gorgeous on the white cloth.

Later, Ladd, Lua, and their companions board a black double-decker bus and head for Chicago's Union Station. After Ladd changes into Placido's suit, Lua asks why he spared Placido's life; he muses that it is better to go to a feast hungry.

Ladd turns his attention to his dozens of followers, gleefully expounding on the horrors he plans to inflict upon the Flying Pussyfoot passengers.

Cultural References

 * Ladd warns Placido to "try not to end up like Salvatore Maranzano," a Sicilian mafioso whom Lucky Luciano had murdered a few months prior to the events of the Flying Pussyfoot on September 10. Maranzano met his end at the hands of four assassins, who shot and stabbed him in his office inside the New York Central Building.
 * Ladd notes that Placido had previously protested Lucky Luciano's 'reorganization efforts', almost certainly a reference to how Luciano's reorganized the Cosa Nostra after succeeding Maranzano as the most powerful crime boss in the United States. Part of Luciano's reorganization efforts included abolishing Maranzano's capo di tutti i capi title, controlling criminal rules, and appointing his most trusted Italian associates to authority positions in his family.

Characters in Order of Appearance

 * Placido Russo
 * Ladd Russo
 * Lua Klein