To:
Capone Security Services Inc.
666, Hireamoron Road,
Chicago, IL 37412.
Dear Mr. Capone:
You have a reputation for being totally ruthless, oblivious to cries of mercy, tears, and anguished appeals to friendship or loyalty. In fact, these are the qualities for which I hired you in the first place. Therefore I am not just disappointed but absolutely flabbergasted at the shoddiness with which you handled the Fat Boy Mastriani account.
Mr. Capone, you were paid to ‘take care’ of my ‘little problem’ when Mastriani opened another restaurant one block from my own, draining a good 50% of my profits. I asked you to ‘lean on’ Mastriani and make sure his business suffered an ‘unexpected slump’. What the heck did you have in mind when you visited Mastriani’s last week? A schoolgirl’s pajama party?
Sure, your men took a baseball bat to the jukebox. But as regards ‘leaning on Mastriani’, my dentist does more damage in ten minutes than you did in three hours - and he’s legal.
Not only has Mastriani STILL got the use of his right arm, but also I hear he has at least two fingers left on each hand. Word has it that Mastriani’s right leg was broken. Mr. Capone, whatever happened to multiple fractures? Don't your men know how to swing a baseball bat?
Apparently the mandatory Staff Toe Removal was implemented with a sharp cutthroat razor. Whaat?! This is not my area of expertise, Mr. Capone, but any kid on the block will tell you a pair of rusty, unsharpened bolt cutters takes up to four times longer to get through the cartilage and has grown men squealing like pigs.
The biggest indictment of your sloppy work came when I bought the Chicago Dribbler to read about the incident. It didn’t even get to the front page! When I read the headline, I nearly lost it myself. It said: ‘Gangland Attack on Restaurant; Staff Completely Traumatized’. Traumatized? What is this? Barbara Streisand’s shrink report after a bum gig?
Jeez, Capone, remember the headlines after Smiling Slim Saccari's mob paid a visit to Church Brass Rubbin’ Rostriero’s boys? ‘A Deathly Pall of Horror, Inhumanity and Doom Hangs Over a City Hiding Behind Locked Doors’. Now that’s what I call ‘leaning’ on someone.
Doubtless I'm a fool to expect the ‘Service With A Sadistic Snarl’ that I used to get off Fried Linguini Ferriera or the ‘Twilight Rain of Blighted Horror’ that I received from Stuffed Zucchini Zambini at almost half of your price.
In that case, would it be too much to ask you to go back and do the job properly? I have sent, at no cost to you, forty-five pounds of napalm. Use it. And see that it sticks. If the reports from the press are not ones of slaughter, horror, demoniac bestiality, dumb shock, fear, misery and incomprehensible anguish, then I’m afraid I'll have to withdraw my account.
Yours,
The Reverend B.C. O’Halloran
Honorable Proprietor of ‘Church is For the Child’ Outreach Program
and O’Halloran’s Good News Vegetarian Restaurant