Lincoln James Clay (born January 21, 1945) is an American crime boss and former US Army soldier. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Clay was abandoned and spent most of his childhood at an orphanage, being taken in by Black Mob boss Sammy Robinson and his family in 1958. In 1964, he enlisted in the Army and was deployed to Vietnam to fight in the War. During the war, he was renowned for his stealth tactics and infiltration skills as a Green Beret. Upon being discharged in 1968, Clay returned to New Orleans to help Robinson pay back a debt Robinson owed to Sal Marcano, an entrepreneur and boss of the Marcano crime family. Clay, Sammy Robinson's son Ellis, Sal Marcano's son Giorgi and Irish mobster, Danny Burke robbed the Federal Reserve of the United States and got away with the money. However, that evening at Robinson's bar, the Marcanos, along with the Dixie Mafia, killed all those present and set the restaurant on fire. Giorgi Marcano shot Clay in the head, but he astonishingly survived, being taken away to safety and healed by his priest, James Ballard, before the flames engulfed the entire place.
As Clay regained consciousness, he asked for Ballard to call CIA agent John Donovan, with whom Clay had formed a friendship with in Vietnam. He, along with Donovan, devised a plan to take revenge on Marcano and wipe out his family, while gaining control of the New Orleans criminal rackets in the meantime. To achieve this goal he sought the help of Vito Scaletta, a mobster from New York Clay had met through his association with Marcano, and who Marcano had tried to get killed, so he wouldn't reveal personal business secrets to the Commission, with Clay helping in Scaletta's survival, Thomas Burke, the leader of the Irish Mob and father of Danny Burke, who died during the Marcano betrayal, and Cassandra, the head of the Haitian Mob who Clay had met when he killed her kidnapper (who was also a Haitian mobster) months earlier. Together, they went on a crusade against the Marcano crime family and set out to get revenge against its leadership. He also assassinated politicians Gerard Granger and Reld Davis and judge Cornelius Holden, who were affiliated with New Orleans' corrupt, conservative political machine.
Clay's modus operandi consisted in highly publicized killings that were meant to "send a message" to Marcano and his allies. His first move was wiping out the Dixie Mafia that had helped the Marcanos take out the Black Mob. Clay personally killed both the boss, Ritchie Doucet, and his underling, Merle Jackson, the former by hanging him from the ferris wheel at Baron's Saturday Fun Park in Algiers (Clay also regained Perla's Nightclub, a theater-turned-brothel that had been taken over by Doucet). Clay then murdered Marcano's top captain Tony Derazio by throwing him off the top of the Royal Hotel which Clay infiltrated.