Not that anything about Little Sam was little — the boy stood a good six feet... a towering size for a DeStefano... and had the build of a running back, which he’d been in high school. Sammy’s grades hadn’t been college-worthy, though, and anyway the kid had always wanted to go into the family business.
He was a handsome number, looking quite a bit like Dean Martin before the nose bob, with dark curly hair unfortunately kept in that long, almost girlish manner of the day. Little Sam wore a black leather jacket — not the motorcycle kind — and a rust-color sweater, blue jeans, and sneakers. Nice clean-cut kid.
Holding the keys out to his uncle, the boy approached and said, “Thanks, Unk — what a ride!”
Sam reached up and rubbed the kid’s head. “You talkin’ about the front seat or the back?”
“Both!”
Sam shook a scolding finger. “I better not find any used rubbers down in them seats...”
Little Sam flashed his winning grin. “Who uses ’em?”
Sam patted the boy on the cheek, once, a mock slap. “Guys who don’t want their wang turnin’ black and droppin’ off, is who — don’t be a babbo!”
The kid laughed, and rocked on his heels. He had his hands in his jacket pockets. Something was troubling the boy — his uncle knew this, sensitive in his way.
“What’s eating you, Sammy? Work problems?”
Swallowing, his nephew nodded. “You see right through me... Can we talk about it? I could use your counsel, Unk.”
“Sure, sure.” The older man gestured toward the clean garage. “Step into my office.”
Uncle and nephew sat on a couple of stools by the workbench. Sammy leaned on an elbow, looking like a kid with a headache — a kid about to cry.
“Spit it out,” Sam said.
The young man shrugged, shook his head; but his eyes wouldn’t meet his uncle’s. “It’s this work. I don’t know, Unk. I just don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Know if I’m cut out for it.” A long sigh came up. “You know, I thought I was tough, but I... I was never a bully or anything. In school.”
“I know. You’re a good boy. Proud of you. Your aunt Anita is proud of ya, too.”
Little Sam smiled, and there was fondness in it. “I know. And that means a lot to me... but what I mean is, any fight I was in, I never picked it. I just stood up for myself.”
“Didn’t take no shit.”
“Didn’t take no shit, Unk, is right. But this juice collectin’... I don’t know how to tell ya this, but...”
“Aw, kid, you don’t feel sorry for these deadbeats, do you?”
Hanging his head in shame, the boy nodded. “Kinda. I mean... I feel like I’m, I dunno, pickin’ on somebody who ain’t even my own size.”
Sam felt a wave of disappointment wash over him, but he touched the boy’s arm and said, “Kid, kid... you gotta shake that off. These are sick fucks.”
“I know, I know...”
“Degenerate gamblers mostly, and burglars and thieves who don’t got the sense not to go blow their dough as easy as it come.”
The boy swallowed, shaking his head. “Unk, some of these guys are civilians... just businessmen, who got their asses overextended, and now can’t go to a bank or a credit union or—”
“Nobody put a gun to ’em and made ’em borrow money from us, son. Nobody.”
The boy shivered. “I broke a guy’s arm the other day and I just went outside in the alley and puked.”
“...Anybody see you?”
“No. No.”
“Good. Good.” Sam leaned in, resting an arm on the workbench. He gestured with artistic fingers. “You can’t feel nothing for them. That kind of... mental toughness, it’s all we have to offer.”
Little Sammy looked up, his brow tight. “I don’t get you, Unk. Mental...?”
“What I mean is, how do we get six bucks back on every five we loan? Fear. They don’t fear us, they can rob us blind. Lemme tell you a parable.”
The boy blinked. “Like in church?”
“Not exactly.” Sam shifted on the stool. “The cops come to a guy, let’s say he’s me. And they say, ‘Sam, we think you killed them two guys, them burglars that turned up in the trunk of a car on the South Side.’ And somebody says to the cops, let’s say he’s me talking, ‘Well, don’t you know them guys committed suicide?’ And the cops, they kinda blink and look like dumb shits, and they say, ‘Sam, they was both shot in the back of the head! How do you commit suicide by getting shot in the back of the head?’ And somebody says, let’s say maybe it’s me, I say, ‘They committed suicide when they fucked with Sam DeStefano!’... Pretty good parable, huh?”
The boy lifted his eyebrows. “Well, I get the moral, all right.”
“What, are ya bothered by the sight of blood?”
“No... I just have trouble seeing these people as something other than... people.”
Nodding, Sam said, “Oh, they are people — that’s to your advantage. If they was just dumb fuckin’ animals, some fox that got in your henhouse, there’d be no reasoning with them, right?”
Little Sammy’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what I’m doing when I break an arm or a leg? Reasoning with them?”
Sam shrugged. “You’re just keeping our end of the bargain, and encouragin’ these deadbeats to keep theirs. It’s psychology, see.”
“How is knocking heads psychology, Unk?”
Suddenly Sam understood why this kid couldn’t get a college scholarship, despite his football stats. “You heard about me and my ice picks?”
Little Sammy grunted a laugh. “Sure. On the street they say you got more ice picks than Picasso’s got paintbrushes.”
“Yeah, well and I paint pictures that make more sense than that modern art crapola... You know what’s good about a ice pick? What’s good about a ice pick is that it looks nasty as shit.” He held up a fist, with an imaginary ice pick in it, and they both looked at it. “Really fuckin’ wicked. Nobody likes to see a ice pick in the mitt of a guy he owes money to.”
“That I understand.”
“But the beauty is, a ice pick makes little holes. There’s all kinds of scary damn places on the body that you can puncture with a ice pick, and leave a poor bastard in a state of utter terror, and...” Sam shrugged. “...not really do that much damage.”
The boy’s eyes were narrowing. “Could you teach me?”
“Sure! I can show you exactly where you can stab a borrower in the belly and none the worse for wear. In the ball sack, if you miss the testicles, for example, that’ll get their attention — even the throat has safe spots. Man, the throat, they think they bought it! And guess what? They don’t never miss a payment, after that.”
“Such rough stuff, you never had a slip up?”
“Well... we did have one guy die on us. I didn’t know he had a bad ticker. It was winter, and so we dragged him out and stuffed him down the sewer. But then when spring came, the sewer got blocked up and the sanitation department yanked out the bastard’s body, perfectly preserved in a block of ice, like a damn Mastodon... Funniest thing ever!”
While Sam laughed, the boy said, “Never got traced to you?”
“Naw. We had everybody in our pockets. Not that different now.”
Little Sammy was slowly shaking his head, admiration glowing in his eyes. “How did you get so good at this, Unk?”
“Brains and practice. Ah, and I got a kinda knack for this.”
“For psychology.”
“For psychology! You know Patsy Colleta?”