June 30 - The Whale

It was a full length black leather trench coat. Probably took a family of cattle to make it, judging from the size of it. The thing was enormous. Big enough enough to be car cover for a Cadillac, and it had been hanging untouched on the rack at Giuseppe's dry cleaning shop for just over a year.
After a month had passed since he'd cleaned it, Giuseppe tried the number the guy had given him when he dropped it off, but the number was no longer in service. And so Giuseppe had held onto the leather trench coat in case he showed up again, but he never did.
Cases like that weren't unheard of. People forgot about dry cleaning all the time. Like most dry cleaners, Giuseppe held on to any unclaimed article for a year. After that, he usually just donated whatever was left behind to the Salvation Army.
But the leather trench coat was different. It was gorgeous, well worn in, imposing, comfortable, and distinctive as hell. To give it to the Salvation Army where just anyone could walk away with it was almost sacrilegious. Such was the power of the leather trench coat that Giuseppe felt it needed to go to the right person. Someone who would appreciate it. Someone who would respect it. Someone who would wear it the way it ached to be worn.
Someone like Giuseppe.
He knew it fit. After it had been on his rack for six months, he allowed himself to try it on, and it was like it had been especially made for his frame (Think: the most imposing aspects of Luciano Pavarotti, The Undertaker, and an especially large bison all crammed together into one massive ass package.). And to Giuseppe's credit, he didn't hide the coat or duck any phone calls that may have been from its owner or spare any effort to help it find its way back to its rightful owner. He was an honorable man.
But he wasn't a man that was especially up on current events. If he were, he would have known that the owner of the leather trench coat was Han Seok Park also known as Park the Whale, and formerly known as Park the Shark, thousands of helpings of kimchi ago when he still fit that nickname, as well as considerably smaller trench coats.
The Whale was an upper level boss in the Kim family, one of the largest Korean crime syndicates on the east coast, and he had been missing since about a week after he'd dropped off his leather trench coat for cleaning. News of his vanishing had been in all the papers, as had speculation on what had become of him:
He was dead.
He'd turned state's witness.
He was on the run.
He was at the bottom of the Hudson.
He was in the bulgogi in half the Korean restaurants in New York.
He was gone.
But since he never read the papers, Giuseppe wasn't aware of any of it. Nor was he aware of the tales of the Whale and how thoroughly he'd been feared. All the other families in the Korean mafia feared him like a three-legged hyena feared a lion. He walked through Little Korea like he owned the place, cutting one badass swath in his gargantuan leather trench coat. When he walked the streets, people scattered like vampires at the first hint of dawn. Even at night, there was no mistaking his frame. Nobody was as big as the Whale.
Except for Giuseppe.
And so when he started wearing his trench coat out on the streets, people couldn't believe it.
It was the whale!
It was the ghost of the Whale!
The Whale was back from the dead, back for vengeance!
They never even saw his face. They just saw that massive body and that enormous coat, and their overactive, superstitious imaginations took care of the rest. Night after night, everyone who saw him ran for their life.
Except for the Whale himself.
One night he approached Giuseppe and told him that he was the rightful owner of the coat, that he had dropped it off just before he left his life of crime and changed his identity.
Giuseppe was taken aback, so the Whale told him the story of his conversion. While sleeping, he had received a vision too deep to ignore and too profound to completely understand. But the unmistakable message of the vision was that he was to renounce crime and become a Buddhist monk. And so he set about doing just that.
Secretly.
However, as the Whale, it was impossible to just disappear, so he completely changed his appearance: liposuction, a stomach stapling procedure, plastic surgery, hair implants. Now, instead of the body of the Whale, he was built like a power forward. And with his wholly different appearance, he lived out in the open in New York City, completely anonymous in the town he once ruled with his mere presence.
He was satisfied with his transition, but troubled by the reemergence of his leather trench coat. It reminded him too much of his former life, and he wanted it back so he could destroy it and have closure.
No problem, said Giuseppe. Just give me the ticket.
But the ticket was long gone, so Giuseppe told him no deal.
However, the incident had had an impact on him. He decided that he would donate the leather trench coat to the Salvation Army after all. He told the erstwhile Whale which location he would do it at so that he could buy it the moment they put it on the floor.
And he did. And then the former Korean crime lord bought the leather trench coat and buried it in his back yard, and that was the end of the Whale.