"Mr. Josh, your previously ordered heavy-duty degreasing service has been completed. Have a pleasant day!"
Half an hour later, in a villa in West Palm Beach, barely a hundred kilometers from Miami, Josh smiled in satisfaction as he listened to the voice on the phone.
Hanging up the call, Josh happily opened a bottle of champagne, poured two glasses, and headed toward the backyard.
In the open-air pool in the backyard, a mermaid was swimming gracefully and freely.
"What happened? You look so happy." Margot, who had slowly swum to the edge of the pool and poked half of her body out of the water, looked curiously at Josh holding two glasses of champagne.
Although the United States had already issued a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, it did not prohibit minors from drinking.
So, in this era, underage drinking was actually still quite common.
But Margot knew this guy didn't like alcohol; he only drank a little champagne or wine on important occasions, and never took the initiative.
Now, opening champagne on his own clearly meant something good had happened.
"Nothing really, just completed an investment. Although there won't be returns in the short term, and I lost quite a bit of money, the future looks promising." Josh smiled, handed a glass of champagne to the beauty, clinked glasses gently, and said.
When you're happy, how can you not have fine wine and a beautiful woman by your side?
"So that means, you're done with work now, right?" Margot smartly didn't ask about the investment. After finishing the champagne with Josh, she asked.
"Yes, why?" Josh nodded.
"Then come down here!" Margot grinned mischievously, grabbed Josh, and pulled him into the pool, then quickly swam away, treading water not far off, laughing recklessly at the flustered Josh.
"Very good, woman, you've successfully gotten my attention. Are you ready to face the revenge coming your way?" Josh raised himself from the water, pretending to be serious as he looked at Margot.
"Revenge? Little sir, do you think you can catch me?" Margot said mockingly.
Well then, what man could tolerate that?
"Don't run. Just wait till I catch you and show you how 'little' I am!" Josh "furiously" swam toward Margot at full speed.
Soon, the courtyard was filled with shrieks and pleas for mercy, which before long turned into melodious moans.
Compared to cold Chicago, Florida's warm climate made Josh and Margot reluctant to leave.
So, the two decided to settle long-term in Palm Beach and even bought a plot of land to build their own vacation estate—after all, the current villa was just rented.
In the future, they could come here to vacation every fall and winter.
It wasn't just an indulgence—it was also a very worthwhile investment.
After all, Palm Beach would become a billionaire's haven in the future.
Although land prices weren't cheap in Palm Beach even during this period, they were far from being unaffordable. Building an estate posed little financial burden for Josh and Margot.
Moreover, with the Jewish gang no longer in the way, Josh's tobacco business suddenly became smooth sailing, bringing in huge sums of money every day.
However, since the tobacco production and sales hubs were mainly in the northern big cities, and he had successfully established a foothold in New York, Josh often had to travel back and forth among Chicago, New York, and Miami for resupply and collections.
The reason he didn't set up factories in the South was simple: while sales weren't impossible there, profits would be significantly lower. There were many tobacco-producing states nearby, and neighboring countries like Cuba were major tobacco producers, making prices difficult to raise.
Because of this, Josh had to fulfill a prior promise and spent nearly $30,000 to buy a modified DC-3 as a private plane for convenient travel.
Meanwhile, under Dix and Lyndon Schneider's leadership, the Blackwater Gang's influence rapidly expanded alongside the booming bootleg tobacco and sugar business.
Plus, thanks to the gang's powerful yet non-territorial style, they were very welcomed by Irish gangs across the country—mainly because Blackwater left enough profits in the bootleg trades for those gangs.
Thanks to these lucrative businesses, Dix successfully accumulated a large network and reputation among Irish gangs nationwide, and had vaguely become the de facto head of the national Irish mob.
Seeing the Irish gangs they had previously suppressed rising to match their power, the Italian Mafia naturally felt threatened.
The large-scale takeover of the Jewish gang's bootleg tobacco market made them realize that the ones who had taken down the Jews might not have been spies after all—but this mysterious Blackwater Gang.
But after several confrontations, they found that against the revitalized Irish mob and the manipulative Blackwater Gang behind them, they held no advantage.
In terms of boldness and ferocity, the Irish were in no way inferior to the Italians—they had only lacked a strong leader and sufficient organization before.
But now, with Dix as a leading figure, and supported by German and Austrian-descended members (who, while less cunning than Jews, were more organized), the Italians could hardly gain the upper hand.
Even if local Irish mob bosses and senior members were eliminated the Blackwater Gang would quickly use their Irish identity to elevate new leaders from the ranks and restore strength swiftly.
So, if they wanted to crush the Irish momentum again they had to take down the mysterious Blackwater Gang.
The problem was, the Blackwater Gang had no fixed territory, and Lyndon Schneider's cigarette factory was semi-mobile to avoid police detection. The Italians couldn't even touch the edges of Blackwater's operations.
As for their supply chain, Josh's delivery points were even less predictable.
Thanks to his system warehouse, every time supplies were needed, he would temporarily rent a location and notify Dix to pick up the goods. Even Blackwater members didn't know where pickups would happen until the last minute. How could the Italians possibly find out?
As for going directly after Dix, the head of Blackwater, the Mafia had tried that too but Josh's insistence on military training for the gang finally paid off.
Several Mafia attempts to assassinate Dix were narrowly avoided.
And the result? Furious retaliations against the Italians.
The involved Mafia families were wiped out, and their businesses devastated.
Most notably, every Italian Mafia outfit in Chicago was completely wiped out, and their territory divided among local Irish gangs.
Chicago had returned to the Irish era of twenty years ago!
After witnessing several terrifying reprisals, the Italians were scared.
They shifted to trying to tackle Blackwater through official channels but again, they failed.
As latecomers to American immigration, Italians were rare in the upper echelons of power. In the past, they relied heavily on their Jewish allies for political access but now, Irish and German descendants far outnumbered Italians and Jews in high places.
President Roosevelt himself was of Irish descent, and military leaders like Eisenhower and Nimitz were German.
Previously, the Irish mob had been too dysfunctional to compete, so their ethnic kin in high office had turned a blind eye.
But now that the Irish mob was rising and, importantly, paying their dues, which side would those politicians take?
By this time, it had become very clear that the ones who took down Meyer Lansky and other Jewish leaders were the Blackwater Gang.
Yet the FBI and other law enforcement agencies took no action against Blackwater.
One reason was that Blackwater was rising and played by the rules.
Another was that Blackwater covered its tracks so well that the FBI had no solid evidence.
And so, the Italian Mafia and Jewish gangs—who should have entered their golden era in this decade—were mysteriously and thoroughly suppressed.
Under such a situation, time swiftly moved from 1943 into 1944.
And the second dimensional beacon from Josh's long-awaited Dimensional Trading System finally arrived.