The Buick sedan crawled the Providence streets. The April sky was baby blue, the air pleasant and cool. Perfect baseball weather. The man hunched in the back seat once lived for days like this.
When the maroon car stopped outside Pannone’s Market on Pocasset Avenue, its back-seat passenger leapt out with uncommon grace, a mask over his handsome face, a shotgun in his large hands. An armed and disguised accomplice followed close behind.
The mom-and-pop employees ducked as the nimble gunman found his target, a bookmaker who had defied Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the coal-eyed head of New England organized crime. The wayward bookie caught it from three feet away, his unused gun clattering to rest a few inches from his outstretched hand. His sidekick was dropped near a shelf of canned tomatoes, his face rearranged by buckshot.
