I’m Winston Wolf, I Solve Problems

 

As the post title implies, certain niceties come to mind that ought to be addressed.

Anyone at the higher levels of organized crime, or the agencies that investigate it, feel free to share anonymously in Comments, but it seems to me if I were the Mob, or any undertaking (no pun intended) where disposal of inconvenient bodies were problematic, the first thing I’d do would be to move into the mortuary business in a big way, and acquire as many of them as I could.

1) They never go bankrupt, as clientele is an endless supply.

2) The mark-ups for legit business are quite simply recockulous.

3) Having a crew of trusted employees who would and could show up anywhere, any time, 24/7, like the clean-up crew in a John Wick movie, would be a boon to Mob business. For a gold coin (let’s call it an ounce, currently around $2500), they dispose of all the evidence to those “in the trade”. For anyone inside the family, it’s literally on the house.

4) Murder? Not without a body. Evidence? Gone forever. As Stalin noted famously: “No man; no problem.” Troublesome people simply disappear, and their faces go on milk cartons. But now, nobody can dime out anyone and tell anyone “where the bodies are buried”. Because now, they get sprinkled at sea, flushed down the toilet, scattered to the winds. Whatever.

What happened to Left-Handed Louie?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…

I bring this up not to tell organized crime (and as Ben Kingsley’s character observed in Sneakers: “Trust me, Marty, it’s not that organized.“) how to go about their business, because they doubtless already know it (recall, if you will, Signore Bonasera, whom Don Corleone befriended at his daughter’s wedding at the opening of The Godfather – Mario Puzo didn’t spin that out of whole cloth), but truth be told, they aren’t likely the only ones for whom disposal of certain things is solely their problem.

More proof that this is really a thing, in case you needed it:

 

 

or a hint about how certain things are handled “officially” I note for the record that Clint Emerson, Navy SEAL and CIA SAD worker, didn’t include this information in his book for nothing, nor did he learn the information presented solely secondhand, through reading classroom materials. This is first-hand knowledge and years of experience talking. Take that to the bank.

And make no mistake, those methods will work. But they’re intended as one-time field expedients. If you try thermal burial more than once in your own back yard, even if you live on 100 acres, sooner or later, a neighbor or passerby who’s not the same color pin on the map as you is going to see repeated black columns of smoke, realize you’re not having a pig roast nor electing a new pope, and call all the wrong people to come chat you up.

All those problems go away with the right excuse, and proper equipment.

While half-way helicopter rides would be satisfying, you need a convenient ocean nearby and hungry sharks and such to make the plan foolproof. In Pinochet’s Chile? The country is one continuous coastline. But it isn’t going to work, for example, in Nebraska. Mineshafts work, but you’re always one sheriff’s SAR rappel away from 200 consecutive life terms in the Big House, right?

I don’t know what the cost is of the unit above, or what the buy-in is to open or acquire a nominally legit crematorium. But whatever that price, it pales to insignificance compared with the peace of mind that would come from knowing there’s never going to be a corpus for some flatfoot to habeus, and thereby change people’s retirement plans from white sands to gray bars.

It’s less messy than a Morbark, and dead certain. Used judiciciously (say an extra body a day), you could eliminate a lot of problems in your local area, completely under the radar.

Which, frankly, would move it right up near the top of the list of Things One Might Wish For if events required a lot of troublemakers to become “no problem”.

Of course, that would never happen here, right?

Just saying.