With the COVID pandemic going full blast, you couldn’t even shoot guys in restaurants, anymore.

If the Godfather’s pasta place operated at even half capacity he’d still be losing money. Even without the killer disease, nobody made reservations for a table with blood stains on the red and white checkered tablecloth. Violence turned off this new generation.

In the mob’s heyday, patrons flocked to joints where wise guys capped other wise guys, begging to sit at the very table where the deceased’s brains splashed over the linguini in a splattered seasoning thicker than any white clam gravy.

Umberto’s in New York, for example, was heaven and hell in more ways than one. Always packed for years, the place where Crazy Joey Gallo died in Little Italy drew gawky tourists the way Osso Buco kitchen grease draws roaches. Now, the Godfather sat alone at a corner table for two, his chin in his meaty palm, looking at the clock and waiting for the first customer of the night.

Over the past three decades, nine guys died in his place waiting for their salads. Now he couldn’t lure a victim if his life depended on it. He couldn’t sell homemade wine. He couldn’t make sausage with sliced and diced parts of a recently whacked victim from an enemy mob family. Besides, you walk through the doors at the Godfather’s ristorante wearing a mask the waiters would open fire on sight.

Mafia life just wasn’t fun anymore.

Minghia, the Godfather’s successor as boss was actually working full-time in an ice cream parlor, scooping chocolate, vanilla and strawberry frozen yogurt for hipster banana splits as a condition of his work-release at the county jail.

What the hell kind of La Cosa Nostra don was that?

What would Carlo Gambino have done in Brooklyn? Angelo Bruno in Philadelphia? Russell Bufalino in Scranton? First off they’d threaten to make cannelloni out of the intestinal tracts of anybody who called them Godfather. Carlo, Angelo and Russell knew not to draw attention to themselves.

First names only, grazie.

The Godfather didn’t ask for much. He just wanted people to call him Raymond. How many times in the past year did he whisper his request in that Marlo Brando voice he practiced in front of the mirror nose to nose, chin to chin? Call me Raymond. Just call me Raymond. You can call me Raymond.

It almost worked but when one of the younger trigger men started calling him RayRay he shot the goof himself. RayRay. The name made him sound like one of them colored rappers, like he should wear a baseball cap backwards or sideways. When one of his middle-aged lieutenants came strolling into the restaurant wearing a baseball cap backwards, Raymond shot him too; right in the restaurant. At least that rubout made him feel good. Now, things were so bad he was thinking about burning down his own restaurant.

This Doreen business might work out. The only problem was Raymond didn’t have anybody to give her. His crew wasn’t up to snuff, so to speak, and he didn’t have anybody the feds wanted from his family. The few guys he did have with skeletons in the closet whose statutes of limitations hadn’t run out included the restaurant’s winning Bocce team that Raymond regularly and successfully bet on. How could he afford to let them go?

In the old days Raymond could have slid this undercover federal agent any number of stunads, real tough guys who used icepicks for toothpicks and whose lives of crime sent shivers up and down the backs of the most hardened gangbusters.

All Raymond looked forward to anymore was Sopranos reruns and he hated that Little Stevie actor who played with Bruce Springsteen’s band because no man of honor worth his garrote was ever born to run.

Raymond still read the newspaper every day. Nothing surprised him anymore. But on this day of somber melancholy he stared dumbfounded at the headline printed in bold capital letters that read ANARCHIST DESTROYS COLUMBUS STATUE.

Standing slowly, Raymond walked to the pay phone by the glass cigar and candy counter by the cash register by the door. He made a call and spoke quietly for about 20 seconds. Hanging up, he now walked behind the counter and grabbed a stale pack of peanut butter crackers from an almost full box. Unwrapping the bar snack, he walked to the birdcage in the corner. The green parrot he caught on the street and imprisoned inside the cage started whistling Free Bird, a classic rock song Raymond didn’t recognize.

The Mafia chief tried to be friendly.

Polly want a cracker?

Dillon pressed his beak tight against the wire cage.

An offer I can’t refuse, he said.