“The first thing, of course, was to begin using computers.” RL continued to relate the story to Jamie of how he came to be involved in something that could cost his life by dinnertime. “Having just come back from college he was enamored of the new machines from Digital. Much more elegant than the huge lumbering mainframes from IBM to the young man. The first step, which looks obvious to us years later, was to convince his father and uncle to buy a small DEC model to use for accounting.
“Of course mobsters never wanted to put anything on paper, which could at least be burned easily if there was even a moment’s warning. They had no taste at all for such complex, expensive machinery. Joseph’s thoughts went further than just the machine–he would locate the server down in the Caribbean, on a little island that the family essentially owned and where the American authorities had no way to confront them, and only have terminals in family offices. After a year, having proven the worth of his system, he even purchased a small telephone company through fronts so he had that much more control.
“For several years Joseph worked to improve his software and the ways in which he could track and even forecast the family’s businesses. He began to see patterns and understand where the risks lay. Three years in, he twice predicted to his uncle when the police would raid certain warehouses and once when a trusted lieutenant was about to try and, well, go out on his own. Joseph made his bones by putting that lieutenant’s body in deep water about a half mile offshore from the island he used as the computer system’s home. He worried, though, that the Feds began to develop equipment to tap his private phone lines and he went out and hired an expert in encryption software.”
RL reached down to his waist and pulled a flask off his belt. He took a drink of water and handed it to Jamie. “You’re wondering what this all has to do with you already, right?” Jamie nodded. “Well that expert he hired was essentially the first event of the second stage of this plan. Even after seven or eight years, no other mob families were using computers, not the way that Joseph was doing for his. He’d kep this whole operation walled off from the rest of the work, using a small group of extremely trusted men as the go-betweens, the ones who brought the information from the real businesses to Jospeh so he could manage the data entry.
“Hiring that encryption expert made him realize that he had massive amounts money to spend on improving his system. Why not hire the best people? He even recognized the opportunity to invest that was beginning to happen outside San Francisco and over the years made money that way as well.
“Of course not everyone was thrilled by the idea of working for the mob. Many people were hired through front companies and they never knew who was really printing their paychecks. Some of these were thought to be so valuable that ways were found, money, drugs, women, threats, whatever would work, to bring them in on a more permanent basis. Some didn’t care or at least were bright enough to realize they had no choice. Most eventually came to that point of view, happily or not. A few joined the lieutenant under the blue Caribbean water.
“You’re the one Joseph’s people want today. After you make this delivery, if you make it.”
