The Thought Plickens...

The plot thickened for me when my brother, Dave, in California called to tell me how sometimes fiction resembles fiction:

“Hey, did you watch the Sopranos?”

“No, I’ve never seen one episode of the Sopranos.”

“You wrote a book about the Mafia, and you’ve never watched the Sopranos?”

“Nope.”

“Well, one of the last episodes has a car accident scene pretty similar to Solemnly Swear. But instead of it being the Mob boss and his wife as in Solemnly Swear, the Sopranos had the Mob boss and his nephew.”

Oh, great. I knew I took too long getting this crazy book to the market. Anyway, I still haven’t seen the episode, but I did look it up online and compared the scene…

Sopranos: Barreling along a deserted New Jersey highway, the two of them groused about the deal going sour. Meanwhile, Christopher kept taking his eyes off the road to fine-tune his sound system (which notably was playing "Comfortably Numb" from the soundtrack for the recent film "The Departed").

Solemnly Swear: The bouncing lights, blinding me as I glanced in the rearview mirror, scared the hell out of me. They were fast approaching from behind—much too fast, as it turned out. I swerved my Mercedes sharply to the right just as an SUV passed with only inches to spare. The resulting air stream buffeted my car as if an eighteen-wheeler had just sped past. The SUV was traveling at least twenty miles per hour over the posted speed limit and was swerving all over the road. As it passed, I caught a quick glimpse of what looked to be a middle-aged couple inside. The woman was driving, and the man in the passenger’s seat was reaching over, as if to grab the steering wheel.

Sopranos: Then his sport utility vehicle abruptly crossed the centerline. Christopher veered off the road to miss an oncoming car and crashed down a hill.

Solemnly Swear: The white Cadillac Escalade veered into the oncoming lane heading directly for the concrete wall that separated the road from the beach. I watched in horror as the SUV hit the curb without braking. It bounced straight up and then flipped over twice before landing right-side-up and hitting the wall broadside. The vehicle skidded for at least forty yards, with the driver’s side making contact with the wall and shooting up dangerous friction-generated bursts of sparks. It finally ran out of road and rolled into a grassy knoll, coming to rest alongside the wall.

Sopranos: Tony was banged up, but Christopher was in far more serious condition. Having suffered internal injuries, he was spitting up blood and gasping for breath.

Solemnly Swear: I noticed movement inside the vehicle. I stepped up onto the SUV’s running board and peered in through the broken window, and saw a scene that would forever be imbedded in my mind. A man and a woman were trapped in the SUV. The glow of the moonlight and the strobe-like flicker of the front blinker added an eerie effect. The man looked to be in his late fifties; his dark hair was slightly graying at the temples. He was bleeding from a deep gash in the middle of his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice. The woman was probably a couple years younger than her companion. Her eyes were closed, and her long blonde hair spilled across her face, although it didn’t hide her painful grimace. Her death must have been agonizing.

Sopranos: He pleaded for help. But before Tony could dial 911, the dazed Christopher added, as if about to face a DUI charge, "I'll never pass the drug test. Call me a taxi." Feeling betrayed yet again by Christopher (who had routinely vowed that he was drug-free), Tony made a fateful decision: It was time to solve this personnel problem. Tony pinched Christopher's nose, guaranteeing he would smother, and, looking comfortably numb, Christopher faded away.

Solemnly Swear: The man was almost on top of the woman, and they were both drenched in the bright red blood—the majority of which, I soon realized, belonged to the woman. The man was holding a jagged shard of glass in his right hand. He was using it to slit the woman’s throat from ear to ear.

While not an identical match, that’s where the similarities end. My brother George told me to look at the bright side…maybe I have a future writing sitcoms for TV. At least the TV scene lends some credibility to my book’s plot. Anyway, I don’t think the producers of that Sopranos 2007 episode will come after me; since Solemnly Swear was written and copyrighted in 2002 (it also has a 2007 copyright pending for the cover artwork and new parts of the book).