Word count: 930 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Not only were these guys killers, they did it for rock-bottom prices.
Three hundred bucks doesn’t get you much these days.
Dinner for three, not including beverage or gratuity, at Le Bec-Fin.
About a monthly payment on a 1990 Lincoln Town car from Olde City Auto Sales.
A round trip ticket to Albuquerque on TWA. If you purchase a ticket this week.
Forty-three square yards of Dupont certified Stainmaster carpeting with free installation from Ideal Carpet.
Three hundred pounds of pork chitterlings from Meldy’s Prime Meats.
Burial space for two, including perpetual care, at Rolling Green Memorial Park.
Except for the dinner, and maybe the trip to Albuquerque, none of the above items really appeal to me.
And, as much as I like a free meal, I’m not willing to kill for one.
Which is what makes the testimony in the racketeering trial of John Stanfa and six associates so fascinating. The Meatballs Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight got up on the stand and told jurors that they went around trying to whack people for the grand sum of $300 a week. Roughly the same money I made while a high schooler working double shifts at Beefsteak Charley’s. Roughly the same money I earned a few years later in one weekend at Turback’s Restaurant, a fancy Ithaca, New York eatery that employed me during my college years.
Now, I must admit that once or twice during my tenure in the hospitality industry I fantasized about doing away with a manager or two. Especially the one who wouldn’t give me a prime wait shift because he was banging one of the waitresses in the meat freezer every night after the place closed.
And there are one or two editors that, were I a GoodFella, would be swimming with the fishies as you read this.
But it is a long stretch between muttering something under my breath and blowing somebody’s brains out.
Particularly for $300 a week.
The few times I was able to sneak out to the federal courthouse to watch the case Inky mob scribe George Anastasia dubbed Dumbfellas, I sat on the front bench, just a few feet from Stanfa, who sat every day in the same blue chair.
I couldn’t resist taking in at least some of the trial, which should hit the jury by the end of this week.
I live only a few blocks from Stanfa’s headquarters, Continental Imported Foods. I used to grab a sausage sub every now and then from his neighboring restaurant, the former Warfield Breakfast and LunchExpress. The subs were as good as any in the city.
But the real reason I was drawn to this trial was that, back in 1992 and 1993, I covered the mob wars between Stanfa and young rival Skinny Joe Merlino.
Every time a wiseguy got whacked, I dropped what I was doing and sped to the scene.
Most of the time, it meant either heading back to my general neighborhood from the Courier-Post‘s headquarters in Cherry Hill or, as was more often the case, rolling out of bed and driving a short distance east to the heart of South Philly.
It was great fun, really, covering mob hits.
The victims were hardly innocent. They usually had great nicknames and colorful backgrounds. The stories got good play, because in this area, mob watching is the fifth most popular sport, behind baseball, football, hockey and basketball, though that ranking can change depending on the fortunes of the local teams and the status of the dead man.
I got to go head to head with Anastasia, the dean of local mob writers and one of the top reporters in town.
But best of all, I recall, is that, because these were mob hits, I as a reporter had great license to speculate on whodunnit and why.
Was it for revenge?
Was it to send a message?
Was it because the guy was a rat, or forgot to return another wiseguy’s power tools?
Covering a mob hit is like covering politics, or writing about trade rumors.
Guessing is OK. No theory is too far-fetched to at least consider.
I didn’t know how far-fetched this mob really was until the trial revealed:
A guy who used a drill on another guy.
Guns that wouldn’t fire. Bombs that wouldn’t go off.
The year-long fight between Sara Stanfa and her dad John, during which she did not speak to Daddy Don, in large measure because boys interested in Sara had to get Daddy Don’s permission or face the consequences. There was a reconciliation, perhaps because the man Daddy Don allowed to propose marriage to his daughter became a key witness for the prosecution.
Much of the testimony has been hilarious, revealing these guys to be inept, inane and generally so stupid and greedy it was a wonder they managed to stay out of jail at all.
But the testimony was also chilling.
Not so much that some of these guys are killers. That is a given in a mob trial.
What was really chilling, to me, is the cheapness of human life. That people are willing to kill, and risk being hunted down and being killed themselves, for what amounts to chump change — the kind of paycheck that would qualify these guys for food stamps.
When you get right down to it, $300 doesn’t buy you much.
Other than a life or two.
And that double plot at Rolling Green Memorial Park. The one with perpetual maintenance.
Which, when you think of it, might actually be a good investment for some of these jokers.
