Chainsaw Makinroe sat in the barber’s chair like a man without a care in the world. Being prepped for his shave, he was laughing and talking with his longtime barber and former capo.  And they were talking about dinosaurs.

“‘What do you mean fake,’ I said?  ‘Dinosaurs ain’t fake.’  He says, ‘sure they are.  They were invented at Jurassic Park.’”

The barber laughed.

“I said you idiot!” Chainsaw said.  “Dinosaurs were here before his ass was ever even conceived.”

“They were here even before movies were ever conceived,” the barber agreed.

“Jurassic Park,” Chainsaw said, shaking his head.  “Fucking idiot!  But that’s what I’m dealing with since you left.  I’m going crazy around here!”

And he and the barber laughed again.

 

Outside of the barbershop, Chainsaw’s security detail, two men in an SUV, were quietly on duty.  One was reading a newspaper, while the other one was reading his phone’s emails.  They never felt a need to go inside the barbershop because the barber and their boss were always the only two people inside on Chainsaw’s haircut day.  And besides, nothing had ever happened the hundred times before.  Why would anything be any different today?

Except this time was different.  Tommy and Sal Gabrini were in town.  And they didn’t fly all the way to L.A. County for nothing to happen.

Before either man knew what that happening was all about, bullets pierced through their rolled-up window like missiles on attack.  The gun, with silencer on, never made a sound.  If it hadn’t been for the window shattering, and the bullets tearing through their flesh, even the men in the SUV would not have realized they were under attack.

But they were.  They tried to grab their guns.  They tried to duck and hide.  But it was too late.  Their decision, to not do their jobs and expect the same outcome they had achieved week after week after ever-loving week, proved a fatal misjudgment.  They were dead before they had a chance to see who hit them.

For Tommy, whose weapon did the piercing while Sal was behind the wheel, it was all about his wife, and what that assassin Chainsaw had hired tried to do to her.

For Sal, it was all about his capo, and what Chainsaw’s men had already done to him.

But whether it was their real family, or Sal’s crime family, nobody was going to harm or attempt to harm either one without retribution.

After the guards were out of the way, Tommy and Sal, both wearing gloves, both wearing black, got out of their rented car and made their way across the street and into the barbershop.  It was Sal’s time to take the lead.

But as soon as they walked in, the barber realized who Sal was, and who Tommy was, and nearly pissed in his pants.

“Shit!” he yelled out, and immediately backed away from Chainsaw with his hands in the air.  And with the blade he was using to shave Chainsaw still in his hand.

“What is it?” Chainsaw asked, and quickly uncovered his fat face and looked up.  When he saw the Gabrinis standing there, he quickly tried to jump out of his chair and grab for his concealed weapon, too.

But Sal was upon him just as he uncovered himself.  Sal held a gun beneath his double chin, lifting his face back up once again.

“Okay, let’s talk,” Chainsaw quickly said, his hands now in the air too.  “One of yous motherfuckers is bad enough.  I’m not about to make any stupid moves with both of yous here.  Just tell me what you want, and you got it.”

“Do you look like somebody in position to tell us what to do?” Sal asked him.  Then he knocked him across the face with the butt of his gun.  “Do you, asshole?” he yelled.

“No!” Chainsaw cried.  “I’m in no position to do shit right now.  I’m just trying to figure out what you might want.  That’s all, Sal.  I have no beef with you.  With you either, Tommy.  I’m just trying to get some answers right here.”

“Stop playing stupid, asshole,” Sal said.  “You already know the questions.  It’s our time for answers.”

“Okay!  Just don’t do anything rash.  This can be worked out.”

“Why did you snatch my lieutenant?” Sal asked.

“Why did you hire an assassin to kill my wife?” Tommy asked.

“It wasn’t me,” Chainsaw said, and Sal hit him across his face again with the butt of his gun, drawing blood this time.

“Okay!” Chainsaw yelled.  “I meant it wasn’t my call!”

“Whose call was it?” Tommy asked.

“And since when do Chainsaw Makinroe take orders from somebody else?” asked Sal.

“I had no choice.  Those orders came from Rome.  I had no choice.”

Rome again, Sal and Tommy thought, although they never, not for a second, let Chainsaw in on their thoughts.

“Who in Rome?” Tommy asked.

“The head of the Venetti family,” he said.

Sal frowned.  “The Venetti family?  Who the fuck is the Venetti family?”

When Chainsaw didn’t respond, Sal was about to strike him again.  “They run my outfit,” Chain quickly responded.

“They run your outfit?” Sal asked.  “What the fuck you mean they run your outfit?”

“They run it!” Chainsaw said.  “You think I do this shit without an assist?  I’m in charge of the west coast right here.  How you think that came about?  I’m no Gabrini.  I don’t have Gabrini money.  I don’t have Gabrini reach.  My fucking uncle ain’t no Mick Sinatra!  I have to have backup too.”

“Are you trying to tell us the head of your crime family, some fucker named Venetti, ordered you to snatch my capo, and to try and kill Tommy’s wife?”

“That’s what I’m telling you!”

“And he made this order all the way from Rome?” Tommy asked.

“That’s what I’m telling you!”

“Why?” Sal asked.  He felt as if he’d been asking why all week long!

“I asked him why,” Chainsaw said.  “You know me, Sal.  You know I asked him why.”

“And what did he say, motherfucker?” Sal asked.  “Stop trying to act like we’re fucking buddies.  Just answer the gotdamn question!”

“’Just do it,’ Chainsaw said.  “That’s what he said.  ‘Who the fuck are you to question me?’ he asked.  And then he said, ‘just do it,’ again.  And I did.  I did what he said.  That motherfucker’s crazy.  I did what he said.”

Sal looked at Tommy.  Tommy’s mind was thinking many ways.  “What else did he tell you to do?” he asked.  Was there anything in the pipeline, they all knew was really his question.

“That was it so far,” Chainsaw said.  “Snatch one of Sal’s capos.  He didn’t care which.  And kill his ass.  And then he wanted us to take care of Grace Gabrini.  He didn’t say why.  He just wanted it done.  He told me to do those two particular jobs.  That’s what he told me.  That’s all he told me to do so far.”

“And you did them?” Tommy asked.

“I had to hire out to get close to your wife at that mayor’s party, or anywhere else with all the security you have around her.  But yeah.  I made the order because I was forced to make the order.”

If Sal heard that line once, he’d heard it a thousand times.  It was as if those fools thought they were absolved because they were told to fuck with them.  If they thought absolution was at the end of any of this, Sal thought, they were badly mistaken.

Sal pistol whipped Chainsaw again, drawing more blood, and then stood back and shot him in the groin.  Chainsaw cried out and grabbed his balls.

“That’s for Gunner Leach,” Sal said.  “That’s for my capo you killed, motherfucker!”

And then Tommy ordered the barber to hand him the blade he had been using to shave Chain.  After what the barber had just seen with his own two eyes, he quickly handed it over and then placed his hands back in the air.  Chain was right.  Dealing with one of those Gabrini motherfuckers would be hard enough.  But two of them?  Sal Luca and Backdoor Tommy, too?  He wasn’t about to do anything but whatever they told him to do.  His only hope was that they would realize he had nothing to do with what Chainsaw was confessing to doing, and they would spare him.

With that blade in hand, Tommy walked over to their pained captor and stood in front of him.  Chainsaw was still holding onto his balls, still in agony, as he looked up at Tommy.  Sal was straight-up vicious.  Any man who would shoot another man in the balls was vicious as hell!  But Tommy, Chain knew, was sneaky.  That was why they called him Backdoor Tommy.  As soon as you think he was the reasonable one, the Dapper Tom one, he’d prove how misleading that belief truly was.

Tommy proved the fallacy of that thinking as soon as he stood in front of Chainsaw.

“This is for my wife,” he said, thinking about Grace and how close she came to death last night in that restroom.  “You don’t come for my wife and expect me to let you get away with that.  Only a fool would think that.  You’re a fool because you not only thought it, but didn’t even realize you needed added security.  You didn’t even realize we had the kind of reach, as you put it, to corner your ass.”

Then Tommy exhaled.  “Consider your ass cornered,” he said, and then, without hesitation, slit Chainsaw’s throat with that blade, and ended it once and for all.

Then Tommy looked at the barber.

“I had nothing to do with it,” he said, trying to back away, although they both knew he was Chainsaw’s barber and, once upon a time, was Chainsaw’s capo.

“We know you didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Sal said.  “Just keep your mouth shut.”

“I will.  Nobody will ever know anything.  I will, I promise I will!”

But just as the barber was making his last promise, Tommy took that blade and tossed it at the barber, not for the barber to catch, but for the blade to catch the barber.  And it did.  It went straight through the barber’s throat.

The barber held onto his now bleeding throat.  By the time he fell to his knees, he was bleeding out.  By the time he fell to the floor, he was dead.

There was no way Sal or Tommy Gabrini was about to leave a witness.

Sal went over to Tommy and squeezed his biceps.  “Damn right,” he said.  Then he patted him on the back.  “I’ll see if there are any tapes around this joint,” Sal said, as he went further into the barbershop, to do just that.