The Sheriff

Oftentimes, reports appear in the news media that Chinese immigrants pay large sums of money to be smuggled into the United States. Although in reality the Immigration and Naturalization Service officials deal with smugglers and illegal immigrants, here is a fictional story about this contemporary criminal activity, involving a sheriff. A Sicilian syndicate’s man in Arkansas, Lucina Guanto, sets the tone for the story in the following exerpt, in which Guanto is speaking to Frank Borso, the story’s main antagonist: “The Palermo Council has asked me to assign you an additional project that will require you to transfer your headquarters from Memphis to Helena. Will moving to Helena pose a problem for you?”

Suddenly, Frank understood that Guanto’s concern about Joey’s death was more than sympathy for an employee whose brother had been killed...