Love, Mafia Style

The bakery where the birthday cake you’d ordered weeks ago just burned down. This evening, fifty people are coming to wish your one-hundred-year-old daddy “Happy Birthday.” What are you going to do?

(No, you don’t even know how to boil water, so don’t even suggest baking the cake yourself!)

Love, Mafia Style

My name is Anthony Jovani and today is my father's 100th birthday. My father, Vito, has been the Godfather of the Jovani family for the last 50 years. His mind's still sharp, but his body is frail, so I handle the day-to-day affairs of the family business. Godfather's don't live to be 100, they either end up wearing concrete boots at the bottom of Lake Michigan, or rotting in jail for the rest of their lives, so tonight is a big deal. We have 50 of our most loyal Capos coming to the celebration, Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. are performing, and the local madams are providing us with their best girls for the evening.

The family commissioned the cake from Bobby's Bakery two months ago. Bobby is the family's baker; he's provided donuts, pastries, and cakes to us for years. So imagine my surprise when I opened the paper this morning to see that Bobby's Bakery had burned to the ground, and Bobby's dead body was inside, with a bullet in his head. This was not going to be a good day.

I called together my boys and they said that word on the street was that the McKibben boys had done it. I had suspected as much; those Irish bastards would do anything to ruin my father's birthday celebration. "Well boys," I said, "we need to get ourselves a cake for tonight. Looks like we need to pay a visit to Irish Mike, the McKibben's family baker. "

We rolled down to LaSalle Street and stopped in to say hello to Irish Mike. His eyes got real big when we walked in, and he damn near pissed himself when Johnny D. closed and locked the door, flipping the open sign to closed. "I didn't have nothing to do with what happened to Bobby," cried Mike. " Bobby and I were good friends, we traded recipes and helped each other out." " Well, seeing that you all were such good friends, I'd think you'd want to finish Bobby's last job, wouldn't you," I said. And to make sure you do it right, my boys are gonna stay here and help you bake the cake for my father's birthday. I told Mike what the specifications for the cake were, and whispered instructions to Johnny D.

The party was a success. Sinatra and Sammy sang their hearts out. The ladies were beautiful and the gentlemen appreciated their company. The cake was delicious, everything we had asked for. We even managed to get a hundred candles on it, and the grandkids helped him blow them out. My father was particularly impressed with the card from the McKibben family. It was placed on the platter carrying Irish Mike's head.