Road to Paradise

A Family Man

April 1973

At nine forty-five on a bright and beautiful Saturday morning, Sam DeStefano had less than half an hour before meeting his violent death.

In his tan brick ranch-style house in a suburban upper-middle-class enclave of Oak Park, Illinois, this harmless-looking grandfatherly individual of sixty-four — slim, five feet eleven, wearing large black-rimmed glasses — had no foreshadowing of his imminent demise.

In fact, he was involved in some mundane spring cleaning in his garage, at the behest of his wife, Anita (who was spending the morning with her mother), straightening and sorting and, at the moment, using a new stiff broom to break up and sweep out the caked mud dragged in by their two vehicles over the winter.

His hair a gray unruly mass, Sam certainly appeared innocuous enough, though his features — close-set eyes, lump of a nose, and lipless slash of mouth centered in a cleft-chin oval — were suggestive of a man who might have been formidable in his day. The only thing vaguely eccentric was his dark blue silk pajamas; he also wore beat-up Hush Puppies shoes, and a lighter blue windbreaker with villa venice in white script on its back, advertising a nightclub that had been closed for better than a decade.

Like many American males, he had a small workbench and a wall of tools on pegboard, and a gas lawn mower and empty boxes and shelves here and there holding the various small dead kitchen appliances and other obsolete household articles that are typically consigned to the periphery of a garage.

The cement floor took some considerable sweeping, dirt and fragments of cardboard and paper and other detritus catching and sliding on a pair of small automotive oil spills. DeStefano swept with patience and deliberation, creating a modest but growing pile beyond the open garage door out onto the driveway.

His wife had one of their two Cadillac Coupe de Villes — her pink ’73 with the white vinyl roof — while his black Caddy (last year’s model) he’d loaned to his nephew Little Sam for a hot date Friday night. Little Sam, whose real name was Antonio (his late brother, Angelo’s, boy), was twenty-two and just starting out in life, and his own wheels were pathetic — a little gray Rambler. Even if you could maneuver some broad into the backseat of an embarrassment like that, what would you do for room?

Right now the Rambler was parked out front of the corner house. Soon Little Sam would be able to afford his own better ride — now that his uncle had put him out on the street as a collector.

Sam surveyed the clean cement floor, pleased with himself, then moved to the workbench and leaned way down, to work the broom under there and get at the hidden grime. Quite a bit of filth emerged, which was a little surprising, since Sam had no particular interest in do-it-yourselfing, and this workbench was seldom used.

On the other hand, in the soundproofed room in the basement of the ranch-style could be found Sam’s real workshop. On one wall was a wooden cabinet in which Sam’s tools were stored, various exotic instruments of torture, including such oldies but goodies as thumbscrews, blow torches, and butcher knives, as well as assorted hammers and mallets, and Sam’s specialty, an array of ice picks of various lengths and thicknesses, all honed to razor sharpness. Oh, and razors...

A counter on the opposite wall had a vise, of a perfect size for squeezing the human skull, and in the center of the glorified cubicle, a wooden chair with straps for head, arms, and feet — not unlike an electric chair — was bolted to the floor. Not much larger than a fruit cellar, the room could only accommodate one guest at a time, plus up to three interrogators, in comfort. For the interrogators, anyway.

Men had talked, been punished, even died, in the basement workshop. The recording studio — style soundproofing meant that neither his family and certainly not the neighbors had ever been aware of the operas of agony sung in this small chamber.

Of course, within his own circles, Sam made no secret out of his delight in applying suffering to those who deserved it. Not that he was a sadist, far from it — he just believed in discipline (in others). Nobody who ever sat in that chair hadn’t put his own goddamn ass down there by his own goddamn doing.

Since the early ’60s, Sam DeStefano had been a major player in the Chicago mob. Strangely, he was not officially a member of the Outfit, had never become a “made” man, though certainly not out of an unwillingness to kill for the Mafia (he had); Sam just didn’t like taking orders, preferred being an independent. They’d offered him literally trunks of money to come aboard, but he’d told them he didn’t have any interest in their little Howdy Doody clubhouse games with the blood oath and all that silly ceremonial horseshit.

“You wanna bring your toughest so-called killer around here,” Sam had told Tony Accardo, the man holding the top chair for Paul Ricca (in stir at the time, on that movie-union rap), “I’ll go toe to toe, head to head, belly to belly, gun to gun with the cocksucker. Bring him around!”

Decades later, the challenge remained unmet.

Accardo and Ricca respected Sam, who had single-handedly turned loansharking from a smalltime fringe operation into an organized business from which the Outfit made millions every year. Of all the loan sharks in the city, Sam DeStefano was the only one allowed by the Outfit to work anywhere, with only a modest tax, because, after all, any other loan shark in any jurisdiction was just riding on the skids Sam had long ago greased.

They called him “Mad Sam” — not to his face — but that was a designation he treasured, even cultivated. In his business, being feared was key — and you only built fear, which was after all the sincerest form of respect, by doing “crazy” things.

And from day one, back in the ’30s, he’d had to show these city boys he had the moxie. He wasn’t one of these lowlife slum goombahs like Giancana and Alderiso and the other kids in their gang, the 42s. Those toughies had boosted cars when they were in grade school, while Sam was growing up civilized in southern Illinois in a nice middle-class family. The DeStefanos didn’t even move to the West Side of Chicago till Sam was in his teens.

He’d had catching up to do. Convictions for rape, assault with a deadly weapon, extortion, bank robbery, and (during the war) counterfeiting ration stamps followed in short order, as did various stretches in stir. But all that prison time had its advantages: at Leavenworth he’d hooked up with — and provided muscle for — two incarcerated Chicago big boys, Paul Ricca and Louis Campagna.

The black Caddy pulled in the drive, his nephew behind the wheel. Sam was standing just outside the garage now, adding to the pile of sweepings, and held up a friendly palm for the boy to stop the vehicle at the driveway’s mouth. Little Sam hopped out, grinning.

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?”

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.

Then Sam DeStefano was gone, and his visitor, too.

No time at all for psychology.