The boy nodded. “He’s one of your best men, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, juice collectors don’t come better... Anyway, now they don’t, after I made my point with Patsy.”
Patsy was a big guy, six two and beefy, and just looking at him made most borrowers pay up.
Sam said, “About ten years ago, I found out Patsy was holding back on my collections — skimming from me, if you can imagine. To the tune of maybe fifty grand?”
The kid whistled. “What did you do, Unk?”
“Well, we took him to the basement of your uncle Mario’s restaurant, and we tied him up and kicked and beat the crap outa him.”
“No ice picks?”
“Naw. This was just a lesson I had to teach. Anyway, we did this over a period of three days, then I invited his whole family, his wife and kids and a buncha judges and politicians and cops. The wife was worried that Patsy hadn’t been around for a while, afraid somethin’ bad befell him. So I tell her, he’s been doing work for me, and now I’m gonna say thanks by honorin’ him with this big dinner.”
Little Sammy began to smile; his expression said he knew this was going to be good...
“Anyway,” Sam was saying, “last thing we do with Patsy is chain him up to this hot radiator... once again, it’s the middle of winter, y’know... so he starts whining about how it burns. So me and your uncle Mario and Chuckie and Gallo, we piss all over the guy.”
Little Sammy’s expression froze.
“Ah, don’t be a pussy, kid! He deserved it. So upstairs I join the dinner party and give a speech about Patsy, only it ain’t no jolly-good-fellow spiel. It’s me saying that Patsy broke my heart by stealing from me, but that I loved him so much, I decided to forgive him. Right then the fellas drag Patsy up and toss him in the middle of the room, naked, burned, dripping with piss.”
Sam started laughing and couldn’t stop.
The nephew watched with a strained smile.
Shaking a school teacherly finger, Sam said, “And do you think any of them people ever pulled anything on me again? Patsy is still with me, and he don’t snitch a penny since. See, kid? Psychology!”
The boy sighed. “I don’t know, Uncle Sam. You’re stronger than me. Better... mental toughness.”
He patted the boy’s leg. “You’ll get there, Little Sam. You’ll get there. You remind people of me, otherwise they wouldn’t give you that nickname, right?”
“Right. What about this... this trial coming up?”
“Just a nuisance. We’re workin’ on where the safe house is, where they got Chuckie holed up. We’ll take care of that little thing.”
Sam DeStefano was out on bail, his old partner Chuckie Grimaldi having flipped on him. What a crock! The murder was what, ten years ago? Old fucking news! The ancient stiff in question was that guy Foreman, a real estate broker who’d also been a collector for Sam, and who had been embezzling from Sam (hadn’t Foreman heard about Patsy’s party?).
When Sam had confronted Foreman (when was it, 1963?), the bozo had said, “Big deal! So maybe I made some arithmetic mistakes.”
“Yeah, well add this up,” Sam had said. “You think Action Jackson had it tough? You’re gonna think we took that fat bastard out on a picnic, when we’re through with your crooked ass.”
A few weeks later, Foreman died with a smile on his face — happy that it was over.
Now Chuckie, who’d been in on it, had turned government witness, the disloyal fuck.
“Hey,” Sam said, walking his nephew out, a hand on the young man’s shoulder, “in the unlikely event it does go to trial, I’ll just give ’em a little of the ol’ ‘Mad Sam’ magic.”
“What do you mean, Unk?”
“I’m a sick man. I’ll go in on a stretcher and do what I did last time — talk to the judge usin’ a bullhorn. I’ll go off my nut yakkin’ about this being America, how we’re livin’ in a gestapo country, and I got civil rights just like the coons.”
“More psychology, Unk?”
Sam laughed. “Oh yeah. If I don’t scare ’em away, I’ll get off on temporary insanity.”
The boy sighed glumly. “Too bad these federal courts are getting into the game.”
“Yeah.” Sam shook his head. “Goddamn pity. Here I am, biggest fixer in town, can buy anybody outa anything... and I’m havin’ to deal with this J. fucking Edgar Hoover, who is a fag, incidentally.”
“No!”
“Do you know that fed, that big guy — Roemer?”
“Heard of him.”
“He tried to turn me state’s witness. Me! I played along, awhile, had him out to the house maybe half a dozen times. Rolled out the red carpet. He didn’t know, every morning before he come around, I was pissing in his coffee.”
“What? Unkie, you are outa sight!”
Sam hit his nephew lightly on the arm, saying, “Don’t insult me with that hippie shit, you little hippie shit.”
“Unk, you’re a caution...”
Little Sammy was still laughing when he rolled away in the Rambler, waving to his uncle.
The boy would come around; he would.
Walking slowly back toward the garage, Sam smiled to himself, reflecting on how much he loved this boy, and what plans and hopes and dreams he had for his nickname namesake. His own children were not going into the family business — his son was in college, and the twin girls would grow up and marry well, no doubt, smart little cutie pies that they were — and he liked that his three off spring would be free of this dangerous life.
But he also liked having Little Sammy going down the same road as his uncle. Sam had a special kinship for the young man, and even felt he owed Antonio a debt of sorts. Little Sammy was like having a second chance with Angelo, the brother Sam had lost so many years ago.
Angelo had been a drug addict. This was a shameful thing that embarrassed Sam with the Outfit. So when Giancana expressed concern that Angelo might — due to this weakness — become unreliable, Sam had read between the lines and taken on the responsibility.
After stabbing his brother to death in a car, Sam had taken Angelo to where he could strip him and wash his body with soap and water. To send him to God clean, to cleanse Angelo’s very soul. Angelo was found that way, naked and clean and dead, in the trunk of a car.
In the garage, Sam got his broom and dustpan, and soon the mound of dirt in the driveway was transferred to a nearby garbage can. Finally he stood in the midst of the garage, hands on his hips, thinking what a job well-done this was, how pleased Anita would be with him. He was doing a sort of pirouette, taking the tidy garage in, when — with his back to the street — he missed seeing the new visitor arrive.
But he heard the footsteps, and whirled, and saw a figure dressed for winter — black stocking mask showing only cold dark eyes, and a black turtleneck, slacks, and boots, even a black topcoat, from under which emerged in black gloved hands a double-barreled shotgun.
“You fucker,” Sam said, and the visitor fired once, blowing off Sam’s right arm.
Sam did not fall, just did a small dance, like a tightrope walker keeping his footing. He stood there, weaving just a little, looking down at his arm, which lay like a big dead fish, even flopping, twitching a little. Damnedest thing. He heard something, a kind of splashing, spraying sound, and his eyes quickly went to the wall at his right, where he was geysering blood, painting his own Picasso, his workshop area finally as bloody as the other one in the soundproofed room downstairs.
The voice was familiar, but muffled enough under the ski mask to remain unidentifiable.
“You really don’t deserve it quick,” the visitor said, “but I’m in a hurry.”
The second blast opened Sam’s chest. He gazed down at the gaping hole in himself and swallowed once and collapsed in a pile too big for any dustpan.