An Example

by Richard T. Hellinga

My life was over, that’s why. Pure and simple. You can call it savin’ my ass, but either the Feds or the Outfit was gonna cut my life short. When the Feds picked me up and brought me in that day and played that tape, it didn’t take long to decide what to do.

Finnelli: I don’t have to tell you how Phil ain’t been the same since he took care of John for us.
Vince: Yeah, yeah, I know. But Phil’s a...he’s a tough stand-up guy.
Finnelli: But he ain’t right no more. All this muttering about walking sharks...He’s gotten sloppy. He’s not working clean. We can’t take any chances.

Now, I’ve had my life threatened before. But it was always to my face and by guys I knew who were either full of shit or had no idea who they were talking to. Either way, they got what was comin’ to’em. But when I heard Boss Finnelli and Vince talking, I actually felt weak. I was so dumbfounded I didn’t say anything at first. Then I felt relieved, like I was breathing fully, as if I’d been breathing with just one lung and didn’t realize it until right then and there when the other one kicked in. One of the Feds even asked me if I wanted to hear the tape again. I told him, yes, because part of me still didn’t really believe that I’d just been given a death sentence by one of the bosses. After hearing the tape again, I felt more relaxed.

Up until that point, it was my job to carry out those death sentences. Like the one for John Spagnola. There had been rumors about things not going so well for that Special Operation they sent him down to help oversee. Stories of those guys gettin’ too cocky and taking more than their share. The few times a year I’d see John he just told me how fantastic everything was going and how I should get the bosses to send me to work down there with him.

As part of my regular weekly meeting with him, Boss Finnelli told me there was something important that needed to be done. He said to me, “I know this is gonna be hard, Phil. But I need you to take care of John. He’s making too much noise down there.”

I nodded and said, “I understand.”

“I know you guys go back a long time and he’s like an older brother to you. But I trust you to handle this. An example has to be made.”

When they say an example, that means what it means. Like when a group of guys had the audacity to break into the old boss’s house while he was on vacation with his family in Switzerland. There was seven of them (not so lucky) that had something to do with it. Me and my crew made sure each of their bodies was found in a public place.

But John, he was different. He brought me into the Outfit, vouched for me, protected me when I made a stupid mistake or two, and taught me everything I knew about the whole business of it. He was the Best Man at my wedding. And I was Godfather to his youngest child, his only son, John Jr. In many ways, John was the reason I’d done so well.

That night it was just me and him in that abandoned garage on Mannheim Road. He was duct-taped to the chair.

“You gonna light that?” John asked, looking at the acetylene torch next to the work table. He was still groggy from the chloroform so his eyes were half-squinted and hazy.

“Yep,” I said. I’d adjusted the tanks to working pressure while Al and Vince had secured him to the chair. Then I told them to wait outside and I locked the door behind them. I wanted them to hear, but only see when I was done. I was really angry about the whole situation. I was pissed at the bosses for making me do that job when there were at least a half dozen guys who could’ve done it. Though I was even more pissed at John for fuckin’ up when he knew better than to do so, and puttin’ me in the position I was in. There was no way for me not to do what I was about to do without getting myself killed.

He smirked, but not too confidently. “I don’t see any Pepto-Bismal.”

“I’m not gonna need it.”

“You won’t see me begging.” He was sweating and breathing real heavy. When Al and Vince had shut the door, I got John’s full attention by smacking both his knees with the baseball bat. It worked. But it was more like insurance; in case he somehow got free he wouldn’t be able to run very far. That was if he could even stand up with two busted knee caps.

“You already screamed. So it’s only a matter of time.” I was holding the thin end of the baseball bat in my hand, letting the fat end rest on my shoulder. I turned the bat in my hand, rolling it side to side in place on my shoulder. I was feeling a little jittery, just like I’d felt the first time I’d worked on a special job. That was Billy Tomczak. The first time I killed a guy it didn’t bother me too much. There was nothing to it. A bullet to the head and it was over. There was clean-up, but you always had that. But with these special cases, you either get off on that kind of thing, like John, or you learn to. I had to learn.

“Just remember that when you’re in a chair like this,” he said.

“I won’t be.”

He shook his head hard, like he was trying to shake being groggy and the pain in his knees. “Yes, you will. You’re dumber than me. That’s why they sent me to run the Operation down there and not you.”

“Then why are you sitting where you’re sitting while I’m standing where I’m standing?”

He didn’t give me an answer. Not even a bullshit one. He just looked around, blinking slowly, his face sweaty. The garage was going to be demolished a few weeks later. So it was empty except for me, John, the chair he was sittin’ in, the blowtorch, a pair of gloves, the fire extinguisher, the work table, and the extra bat. I had an extra bat leaning in the corner by the door. I once had a bat break on me. Ever since, I’d always made sure I had a spare.

“You’re gonna make an example of me, huh?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Like Billy Tomczak?”

We killed Billy a number of years before John was sent to run that Operation. The thing about John was that he loved to torture and kill more than anything, including sex I think. He got a huge thrill out of drawing things out to really break a guy. After using a knife to peal a small strip of skin off one of Billy’s arms, John told him that if he apologized for withholding information about Momo’s whereabouts, that he would call the bosses on his behalf. There had been a dispute between the former boss Momo and the rest of the bosses. Anyone with half a brain knew which way the winds were blowing. Billy apologized over and over and admitted how dumb he was. John said good and told me to bandage him up while he made a phone call. Billy was ecstatic and thanked John for being so merciful. Then John left the room. So I bandaged Billy up and we waited. He told me how sorry he was and how grateful he was to be able to live and how he’d be loyal to the bosses for the rest of his life. After about 15-20 minutes, John came back into the room, shaking his head. Billy asked him, “What?”
“I was just fuckin’ with you,” said John with a big smile. “The bosses don’t want an apology. They want justice.”

Billy started sobbing like a baby and said, “Just kill me now. Please!”

“Well,” said John, “I was gonna do that. But now that you’re begging for it, I have to prolong your agony. Because, you see, it ain’t about what you want. It’s about maintaining order.”

At the end of that long night, with Billy dead and most of the skin on his arms removed, I threw up. I kept thinking it went on too long and I started feeling bad for the poor bastard. That would not be the last person I’d see John flay alive. While I was out there in the alley leaning with my hand against the wall and heaving next to a dumpster, John just laughed and said,

“Looks like you don’t have the stomach for the special ones.”

When it was John in the chair and me, my stomach was churning but I didn’t feel a bit nauseous. I knew that whatever John said, he was not surprised to be in the same position as Billy. I stopped rolling the bat on my shoulder, looked John in his glassy eyes, and said, “Somethin’ like that.”

“Lot of good it did.” He winced and groaned. His black slacks were loose enough that I couldn’t tell exactly how much his knees had swollen up.

“Kept guys in line for awhile.”

“Remember his family?”

“Yeah.” I brought the fat end of the bat down to the ground and leaned on it like it was an old man’s cane. Billy’d had a wife and two sons. He’d also had a number of mistresses.

“My wife...” His voice trailed off and he turned his head down and away.
I poked the floor with the fat end of the bat twice. The pinging echoed in the garage. “She knows what we do.”

“I have a beautiful daughter, don’t I?” He raised his head to me.

“Yes, you do.”

“She’s getting married next spring...I’m not gonna see it.” His eyes went blank.

I pinged the bat against the floor again.

He breathed hard a few times, then nodded towards the blowtorch. “Fine example you’re setting, Phil, torturing and killing your best friend.”

I blinked slow and brought the bat back up to rest on my shoulder. “That’s funny. You once told me Billy was like a brother to you.”

He closed his eyes. “He was.”

“As I recall, he chose the wrong loyalties.”

He hung his head down like he was too tired to hold it up. “I was one of the first to warn him. But he said he had his loyalties and that there was nothing he could do about them.” He coughed.

“And he paid the price,” I said, tightening my grip on the bat.

He bit his bottom lip and then his sweaty head wobbled from one side to the other. I thought for a moment that I was gonna see something I hadn’t seen before: John Spagnola crying. But if he was, he stopped himself, and focused his eyes near my feet. “Didn’t you ever stop to think, why is it that all these examples never seem to have their intended effect?”

I leaned back against the work table. I hadn’t ever thought about it. I’ve killed dozens of people, including guys from my own crew and even a number of made guys. Honestly, I’d never thought much about any of it. It was like askin’, why do you piss? Because, you gotta piss. I got my orders from the bosses and left. Here around Chicago, or to Kansas City, Las Vegas, Houston, Miami, New York, L.A., wherever. However it needed to be done: to look like a suicide or accident, or just have the person disappear completely. There were times I didn’t even know why the person had to be killed. The fuck did I care. I wasn’t the judge. The bosses were the bosses because they’d been through all this and more, and clearly knew what they were doing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been the bosses of such a powerful outfit.

“You were never philosophical until now,” I said.

“You’re trying to cut off a limb to save the rest of the body. Cut off enough limbs and the body won’t be able to move.”

I stood from the table and took a couple of steps toward him. “That’s really not my concern.”

“You need to think!” he yelled.

I jabbed him in the stomach with the fat end of the bat. He yelped.

“You ain’t in a position to be tellin’ me anything! Got that?”

He nodded while he was wincing and coughing.

“You of all people know better than anybody! You put me in this position! I follow orders!” I smacked him in the gut with the bat again.

John let out another yelp. Tears came to his eyes as he hacked some more.
I went over to the table and set the bat there. Then I picked up the goggles and put them on top of my head. It was then that I had this feeling come over me like I had to destroy him. Just totally obliterate him, so that no one would ever mention him. Like he’d never existed. Like the name John Spagnola meant absolutely nothing.

It took him a few minutes to catch his breath again. But he was still breathing pretty hard. “You don’t have to do this...You could let me go.”

I put on the leather gloves and picked up the torch handle.

He struggled to get loose. It was a pathetic attempt because he was so weak at that point, and he didn’t even have any wiggle room with the duct tape so tight anyway. The tendons in his hands popped out as he attempted to pull his arms off the chair. His breathing sped up and his face got even more red. Then his eyes closed and his shoulders dropped. “Please,” he whispered.

“You’re begging.” I set the torch handle back down on the table.

“Please don’t lie to my wife if she asks you who did it? Be honest.”

“You already know that me being honest with your wife is the most dangerous thing I can do to her. Next thing you know they’ll send someone for me or her. It’s better that she doesn’t know a thing about who did what to who. Am I right?”

A few beads of sweat dripped from his nose to his lap.

I pulled the goggles over my eyes.

“No,” he said, struggling some more.

Through the goggles he looked like a dark shadow. I turned towards the table.

“Promise me you’ll tell my little boy, John Jr., when he’s old enough to understand.”

“Another bad idea. You’re full of bad ideas.”

“Please.”

I picked up the friction lighter and torch handle from the table, turned on the acetylene, and lit the gas. After I set down the lighter, I turned on the oxygen and adjusted the flame so it was like a nice sharp blue point.

As I stepped closer to him with the blowtorch hissing, he screamed, “No!” The sweat bursting from his face twinkled in the light from the flame.

I didn’t want his face to be his face, his voice to be his voice, or his hands to be his hands. Everything. Not have a thing about him to remind me of who he was and everything he’d done for me. So that he was just a big misshapen lump of burned flesh.

Much later, once I was done, I opened the door and walked outside. It had been dark outside when I’d started, and it was still dark. I told Al and Vince to take care of the body.

I lit a cigarette and then I heard Vince say, “Holy shit!”

“Whoa!” said Al.

I didn’t want them to say anything more. But Vince poked his head out and said, “Phil, man, you really did a job on him.”

I flicked my cigarette at him. “Just clean up the fuckin’ mess.”

He jumped back, swatting at the lit cigarette. “Christ! What the fuck are you doin’?”

“I told you to clean the fuckin’ mess!”

“Alright, alright.”

He went back inside and I lit another cigarette. While I smoked, I heard some birds chirping in the trees there behind the garage.

Once they’d finished the clean-up, I had Al and Vince stick the body in the trunk of John’s black Lincoln Town car. Then we parked it at O’Hare airport. A week later the car was found and it made the news. They even showed a picture of John’s burnt and deformed face on the TV news with a warning about its “graphic nature.” Finnelli told me I did good, real good. And that it was a perfect example of why they trusted me so much; because I always did what I was told, no more, no less, without question.

After that, I took a long vacation with my wife and our three sons down in the Caribbean. Every gorgeous day I’d sit on the porch of our rented bungalow next to that totally pristine blue sea and think about what John had said about the examples not having their intended effect. The idea being that I was going to have to keep killing because no example, including Billy’s, had ever stuck, even to John.

I’d sit on the beach drinking rum, staring at that sea and the next thing you know I’m imagining that big gray sharks were learning to walk and coming out of the water straight at me and I had to kill them but they just kept coming. Steam would come off first as I aimed the blowtorch at them, then smoke and that smell as their flesh burned. And then they would try to splash water on my flame. And I worried that with so many sharks to kill the tanks would go empty on me. No matter how peaceful everything was there, I kept imagining those sharks trying to kill me and I didn’t want to come back up to Chicago to my life. I was seriously thinking for a way to disappear with my family to some island in the South Pacific. It couldn’t be in the Caribbean because the Outfit had too many connections down there. I heard the South Pacific is just as beautiful as the Caribbean, but even more isolated.

When my break was over, I wasn’t back in town more than a few days when Boss Finnelli gave me the orders for another job. I kept seeing those sharks, everywhere, no matter what I did or how much I drank, so I said something like those sharks keep coming. And he said, I don’t care what you call’em, I just want’em handled. And I said, no problem.

As soon as I saw the face of the first guy, I didn’t want anyone to be able to remember what he looked like. I didn’t have a bat ready, so I used a crowbar to beat his face until it was bloody, puffy, and all black and blue. After that, on every job I tried to erase the guy’s face. I didn’t want to remember them. I don’t remember how many. I couldn’t stop until I heard that tape from the Feds. Then I got myself erased.

© 2006 Richard T. Hellinga. All Rights Reserved.