“I know what you mean, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
“You want to check me, or the room, for a wire, I’ll understand, Mr. Smith. I’ll take no offense.”
Jesus Christ, I didn’t even think about some sonofabitch recording this!
“No need to do that,” Frankie said, feeling quite sophisticated about it. “I trust you.”
“That’s good. I appreciate that trust. In our line of work, trust is important. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me about the job you did on Atchison and Marcuzzi.”
And Frankie Foley did, in great detail. From time to time, Mr. Cassandro asked a question to clarify a point, but most of the time during Frankie’s recitation he just nodded his head in what Frankie chose to think was professional approval.
“In other words, you think it was a good, clean job, with no problems?”
“Yeah, I’d say that, Mr. Jones.”
“You wouldn’t take offense if I pointed out a couple of things to you? A couple of mistakes I think you made?”
“Not at all,” Frankie said.
“Well, the first mistake you made, you fucking slimeball, was thinking you’re a tough guy,” Paulo Cassandro said.
He pushed himself off the desk and walked to the door and opened it.
Joey and Dominic Fatalgio came into the office.
“Break the fingers on his left hand,” Paulo Cassandro ordered.
“What?” Frankie asked.
Joey wrapped his arms around Frankie, pinning his arms to his sides. Dominic pulled the fingers of Joey’s left hand back. Frankie screamed, and then a moment later screamed much louder as the joints and knuckles were either separated from their joints or the finger bones broken or both.
“Oh, please, Mr. Cassandro,” Frankie howled. “For Christ’s sake!”
“That was another mistake,” Paulo said, and punched Frankie in the face while holding a heavy cast-metal stapler in his hand.
“You never seen me in your life, you understand that, asshole?” Mr. Cassandro said.
Frankie now had his left hand under his right arm. When he opened his mouth to reply, he spit out two teeth. His whole arm seemed to be on fire. He wondered if he was going to faint.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“One of the mistakes you made, you pasty-faced Irish cocksucker, was going around saying untrue things, letting people think, telling people, that you were working for some Italian mob. For one thing, there is no mob, and if there was, there wouldn’t be no stupid fucking Irish shit-asses in it. The Italians in Philadelphia are law-abiding businessmen like me. You insulted me. Worse, you insulted my mother and my father when you started spreading bullshit like that around. You understand that, you fucking Mick?”
Frankie nodded his head to indicate that he was willing to grant the point Mr. Cassandro had just made.
Mr. Cassandro struck Mr. Foley again with the heavy cast-metal stapler, this time higher on the face, so that the skin above Mr. Foley’s eye was cut open, and he could no longer see out of his left eye.
“Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you fucking Mick scumbag!”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Foley said.
Mr. Cassandro, with surprising grace of movement, then kicked Mr. Foley in the genital area.
Mr. Foley fell to the floor screaming faintly, but in obvious agony.
Mr. Cassandro watched him contemptuously for a full minute.
“Stop whining, you Irish motherfucker,” he said conversationally, “and stand up, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.”
With some difficulty, Mr. Foley regained his feet. He had great difficulty becoming erect, because of the pain in his groin, and because his entire right side now seemed to be shuddering with pain.
“Now I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen carefully, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. You don’t even know shit about the law, so I’m going to educate you. You know what happens when you plead guilty to murder?”
Mr. Foley looked at Mr. Cassandro in utter confusion.
“Nine times out of ten, it don’t mean shit,” Mr. Cassandro said, “when you confess and plead guilty, which is what you’re going to do.”
That penetrated Mr. Foley’s wall of pain.
“Confess?” he asked.
“Right. Confess. What happens is your lawyer can usually come up with something that will make the jury feel sorry for you, so they won’t vote for the death penalty. Even if he can’t do that, the judge usually knocks down the chair to life without parole, and what that means is that you have to do maybe twenty years.”
“Why?” Mr. Foley asked, somewhat piteously.
“I told you. You dishonored the Italian people of Philadelphia. And if there was a mob, you would have dishonored them too. How would it be if it got around that a stupid Mick asshole like you was associated with the mob? If there was a mob.”
“I didn’t say any-” Mr. Foley began, only to be interrupted again by Mr. Cassandro striking him a third time in the face with the heavy cast-metal stapler. This blow caught him in the corner of the mouth, causing some rupture of mucous membrane and skin tissue and a certain amount of bleeding.
“You know what’s worse than going to the slammer for twenty years, Frankie?” Mr. Cassandro asked conversationally after Mr. Foley had again regained his feet. “Even worse, if you think about it, than getting the chair?”
Frankie shook his head no and then muttered something from his swollen and distorted mouth that might have been “No, sir.”
“Dying a little bit at a time, is what would be worse,” Mr. Cassandro said. “You know what I mean by that?”
Again there came a sound from Mr. Foley and a shake of the head that Mr. Cassandro interpreted to mean that Mr. Foley needed an explanation.
“Show him,” Mr. Cassandro said.
Mr. Joey Fatalgio went to Mr. Foley, this time grabbing his left hand, which Mr. Foley was holding against his body with his upper right arm, and twisted it behind his back. Then he grabbed Mr. Foley’s right wrist, and forced Mr. Foley to place his right hand, so far undamaged, on the desk at which Mr. Cassandro had been standing.
Mr. Cassandro moved away from the desk. Mr. Dominic Fatalgio then appeared at the desk, holding a red fire ax in his hand, high up by the blade itself. He flattened Mr. Foley’s hand on the desk, and struck it with the ax, which served to sever Mr. Foley’s little finger between the largest and next largest of its joints.
Mr. Foley screamed again, looked at his bleeding hand, and the severed little finger, and fainted.
Mr. Cassandro looked down at him.
“We don’t want him dead,” he said conversationally. “Wake him up, wrap a rag or something around his hand, and make sure he understands that if I hear anything at all I don’t want to hear, I will cut the rest of his fucking fingers off.”
Mr. Dominic Fatalgio nodded his understanding of the orders he had received and began to nudge Mr. Foley with the toe of his shoe.
Mr. Cassandro left the office, and then returned.
“Make sure you clean this place up,” he said. “I don’t want Mrs. Lucca coming in here in the morning and finding that finger. She’d shit a brick.”
Both Mr. Dominic and Mr. Joey Fatalgio laughed. Mr. Cassandro then left again, carefully closing the door behind him.
There were a number of problems connected with the arrests of Mr. Atchison and Mr. Foley for the murders of Mrs. Atchison and Mr. Marcuzzi.
The first problem came up when Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein telephoned the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, on his unlisted private line in Chestnut Hill to tell him that the Honorable Thomas Callis, District Attorney of Philadelphia County, had been his usual chickenshit self, but had come around when he
