Robby Yale had had enough.  He grabbed Gimp by his shirt collar and sat him in the chair.  The chair rocked when Gimp plopped down, but it didn’t fall over.  “You know who my boss is, right?” Robby asked the nervous thief.

“What do I look like an idiot?” Gimp asked.  “What are you asking me that for, Robby?”

“You know who he is, right?”

“Yeah, I know who he is!  What am I stupid?  You know I know who he is!”

“Then what you fucking with us for?  You think he came to this rathole for his health?  You think he don’t have nothing better to do than to come all this way to Chicago, and then travel all this way to this chop shop hole in the wall, just to say hey to your ass?  He’s coming to get answers!  You’d better not play this dumb bullshit with him, too, Gimp, or you won’t live to play anything else!”

“I told you what I know!” Gimp yelled.

“Which is absolutely nothing!” Robby yelled back.

“Because I don’t know nothing!  That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Robby.  I don’t know nothing about nothing!  I’m just working here!”

“Bullshit!” Robby fired back angrily.  “Talk that shit to Sal Gabrini, and you’ll rue the day you ever tried it.”

Gimp rubbed his forehead.  “I’m getting a headache here!”

“Are you going to tell what you know,” Robby asked, “or do I need to personally get rid of your ass and tell my boss to not bother coming in?”

Gimp shook his head.  He looked like a man damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t.  “I’ll talk,” he said reluctantly.

“And it better not be bullshit!”

“It won’t be.”

“Then what are you gonna say?”

“Why I got to say it twice?” Gimp asked.  “I’ll say it to Sal.  Why I got to say it to you, too?”

“Don’t fuck around and waste his time,” Robby warned.  “You know how he is.  He’s gonna be in a bad state if you fuck with him.”

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?” Gimp asked.  “Do I look like I’m that stupid?”

Robby frowned.  “Why you always answering a question with a question for?”

“Do I look like I’m crazy enough to fuck around with Sal Gabrini?  That’s what I’m asking,” Gimp said.  “Just get him in here so I can get this over with, dammit!  Just get him in here, Robby!”

Robby stood erect and stared at Gimp.  It was going to be Robby’s ass if this prick disappointed, and everybody in that shop knew it.  But Robby decided he had to take the chance.  Boss had to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, and he wasn’t going to wait all night.

He nodded for Nails to go get Sal.

They were in Gimp’s chop shop, a place where stolen cars went to be disassembled into parts and never to be seen in their former state again.  Gimp had been working, running some Frankenstein-looking conveyor belt machine with a grinder at the end of it, when they broke in.  What was being grinded in that machine, Robby thought when he first saw it, was anybody’s guess.

Three men stood over Gimp: Robby Yale, Sal’s second-in-command, was the leader of the pack.  Joe and Hawk, and Nails, the guy who went to get Sal, were his lieutenants.  But Joe, as usual, had shit to say.  “I don’t know if we doing it right,” he said to Robby.

Robby looked at him.  “You don’t know if we’re doing what right?”

“I don’t know if I would have done it like that.  I would have made him tell me what he knew first, before I brought in the boss.  I would have made sure he wasn’t bullshitting me.”

“Gimp got sense,” Robby said.  “He knows if he pulls that shit he’ll have me and Sal both to answer to.  He’s a fucker, but he’s no crazy fuck.”

“I’m just saying,” Joe said.  “I would have done it differently.”

Robby looked at Joe, and at Hawk too.  All of those motherfuckers wanted his job so badly they could taste it, and he was getting tired of it.  “Who the fuck cares what you would have done differently?  Boss put me in charge.  And I’m doing it the way he wants it done.  Now if you feel you know better than Boss, then by all means you go right ahead and tell him that.  But as for me?  I’m doing it Boss’s way.  Now get the fuck out of my face!”

Hawk grinned, causing Joe to push him in his chest.  “What the fuck you laughing at?” Joe asked angrily.  But Hawk didn’t retaliate.

When Sal walked in, just after Joe had pushed Hawk, Gimp understood why Hawk didn’t push back.  It seemed as if that same oil and gas smell that permeated the shop like a stench, slammed deep down into everybody’s throats when Sal walked in.  It wasn’t that they saw Sal as an unfair, scary boss.  Robby and all of Sal’s men loved him unconditionally because they knew him to be the fairest boss any group could have.  But Sal had a nasty temper, and if you rubbed him the wrong way, you could feel the brunt of that temper.  And especially now, when one of Sal’s men had gone missing, and they knew he wasn’t there to play.  And when Sal came anywhere to handle his business, they knew to look out.  Everybody, including Robby, were on guard.

Sal buttoned his double-breasted tailored suit and then smoothed it down with a finger as he walked toward their group.  Sal was once a cop.  He had been crooked as a curved road, but he had still been a cop.  He knew how to interrogate better than most.  And although he wasn’t even pretending to be on the side of the good guys anymore, his men, in an odd, twisted way, felt he still was.  Because everybody who knew Sal knew he had a heart of gold if he liked you, and a heart of steel if he didn’t.

Sal didn’t waste time.  “Where’s Gunner Leach?” he asked Gimp.

Gimp’s eyes gave him away, and Sal knew he knew.  That Baton Rouge fool had told the truth.  “Where is he?” Sal asked again.

“I had nothing to do with it,” said Gimp.

“That’s not what I asked your ass.  Where is he, Gimp?”

Gimp hesitated, but then he spoke up.  “They snatched him,” he said

Anybody else would have immediately asked who snatched him, but Sal sensed there was more.  “And?” Sal asked.

“And they killed him,” Gimp said, to the shock of all of Sal’s men.  “They killed him and then they dumped him in the river.  And don’t ask me where, ‘cause I don’t know where.  But that’s what I’m hearing.”

Everybody was surprised by how quickly Gimp turned around.  Robby looked at Sal.  Sal was staring at Gimp.  “Who snatched him?” Sal asked.  “Who killed him?”

Gimp exhaled again.

Sal backslapped him so hard, Gimp’s neck made a cracking sound.  “Who killed him?  I’m not playing with you, motherfucker!”

“Chainsaw,” Gimp said quickly, as the pain woke him up to the reality of the person he had in front of him.  “Chainsaw Makinroe.”

But Sal was stumped.  “Chainsaw?” he asked.

Gimp nodded.  “I picked him up, but it was Chain’s boys that killed him.”

But Sal was still confused.  “Why the fuck would Chainsaw Makinroe snatch one of my men?”

“I don’t know!  But his people took him, and killed him.  I know that much.”

“Where’s he at now?” Robby asked.

Gimp frowned.  “What?”

“Where’s Chain now?  You heard me, motherfucker!”

“How should I know where he is?  I don’t run with him.  All I did was pick Gunner up, and hand him over.”

“Yeah,” Sal said.  “That’s all you did.”  The idea of it, that this prick would kidnap that good man, throw him in a trunk, and then deliver him to his killers, was too much.  Sal’s temper got the best of him.  And he grabbed Gimp by his collar and began beating him until he was bashing in his face.  “That’s all you did?” Sal kept asking that question as he beat him.  “That’s all you did?”  His punches wouldn’t relent. “That’s all you motherfucking did?!”

And then Sal pulled out his gun, and shot Gimp repeatedly.

But as soon as those gunshots rang out, and Gimp slid out of the chair dead, additional gunshots were heard, and they didn’t come from Sal’s gun, nor the guns of his men.

“Everybody down!” Sal yelled, as he looked across the shop and saw the gunman, who was still firing a hail of bullets, and running for the exit.  But Sal’s warning was too late for Hawk.

The flying bullets hit Hawk in the shoulder, which caused him to turn sideways and grab his shoulder in surprise.  But in turning sideways and grabbing awkwardly, he lost his balance, began to teeter, and fell headlong onto the conveyor belt.  He started screaming, because the conveyor was taking him to the dangerous drop off point, to that grinding machine, but his colleagues were too busy dodging bullets.

“Take care of Hawk!” Sal yelled to his men, and gave them cover by running toward the gunman, ducking and dodging and shooting as he ran.

Even the gunman was surprised by Sal’s fearlessness.  But that only made him more determined.  He kept firing.  But then he began taking aim, not at Sal’s men, but at Sal himself.

But Sal kept heading the gunman’s way.  If that motherfucker thought he was going to ambush them, and shoot one of his men, and then just waltz on out of there, he was delusional.  Sal kept running at him, and kept firing at him, until he finally got him.  In the leg at first.  But that was enough to slow his ass down.  Then Sal stopped running, and took better aim.  He shot him in the side, in the arm, and finally, in the head.

The gunman’s legs buckled, he fell to his knees, and then he fell over.

But Sal knew he had a man in trouble.  He ran back toward the conveyor belt.  “Make sure that asshole’s dead,” he ordered Nails, “and make sure there aren’t anybody else in this joint!”

“Yes, sir,” Nails said, and took off, with his gun drawn, toward the downed gunman.

Sal’s men were trying with all they had to grab Hawk’s arm or leg or anything they could reach to pull him out off of that crazy-ass machine.  But they couldn’t grab him.

“Turn it off!” Sal said.  “Where’s the switch to turn it off?”

“We can’t find it, Boss!” Joe cried.  “We can’t find it!”

But Sal would not be deterred.  “Hold me!” he yelled to his men as he leaned over that conveyor belt as far as he could go.  His hand was within an inch of Hawk’s leg.

Robby and Joe grabbed hold of Sal’s legs as he reached over further and further until he was reaching as far as he could go.  But it was too late.  By the time Sal was able to get a grip on Hawk’s leg, Hawk’s upper body had already been through the grinder.  Sal was able to pull him out before his entire body went under, but Hawk, badly mangled, was already dead.

After Sal hoisted the body out, and laid it on the floor, he and his men just stood there, stunned out of their minds.  Joe, who was closest to Hawk, placed his hands over his head in abject despair.  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.   And he lashed out.

“Why didn’t you check this place out first, Robby?” he yelled.

“I told your ass to check it out!”  Robby yelled back.

“You told me to look around, and I looked around.  You didn’t tell me to check out everything!”

“What the fuck you think checking it out means?” Robby asked.

But Sal had had enough.  “Shut the fuck up, both of you!” he yelled.   They were lashing out because they were hurt, and Sal knew it.  Hawk was dead.  One of theirs died.  And it was completely avoidable.

But Sal also saw the devastation on his men’s faces.  It was a horrific accident, but it was an even worse tragedy.  And Sal knew there was no way he was going to ask any one of his men to handle this.

“Everybody outside,” he ordered.  “I’ll clean up the mess.”

Robby would have normally objected.  The idea of their boss doing their dirty work made no sense!  But that was why they loved Sal.  He was in Chicago because one of his men went missing.  Any other mob boss would have phoned it in and made his underboss, or even one of his capos, handle it.  But not Sal.  He handled it.  His men were his responsibility.  And he looked after them with almost as much devotion as he looked after his own family.

That was why they did as he had ordered, and went outside.

And Sal Gabrini, the head of the Gabrini Crime Family, removed his tailored suit coat and tossed it aside, revealing a muscular body in expensive suspenders and shirtsleeves.  And this boss, who was different than any other don in the game, rolled up his sleeves and took on the gruesome task of cleaning up the horrific mess that had once been his man.