"A mole on her ass?" asks Junior. "What's the joke? I still don't get it." Neither do I, Junior. Neither do I. Anyway, we're at Junior's house, and Tony has come over to solicit advice. Uncle June usually comes off pretty well in these proto-father/son-type chats that they have, so I'm curious to get his take on the situation. "The fucked up thing is that I don't even like [Joey]," sighs Tony. "If he was drowning, I'd throw him a cinderblock. But not protect one of my own captains?" They then take a break from discussing business to indulge in this week's requisite meta-moment, wherein Junior chides a contest on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for using all his lifelines by the fifth question. Yes, and what does that say about Tony, who's already down to his last phone-a-friend by only the fourth episode? Junior recommends providing deniability for everyone by using out-of-town talent to perform the hit on Johnny. When Tony mentions that Sack frequently travels to Boston to visit his father, Junior relates a long anecdote about a crew from Rhode Island (the Atwell Avenue Boys) and their bad experiences in the drug trade during the sixties. Then he suggests Tony use them for the hit. "What, those sick old fucks?" asks Tony. "They may be old, my little nephew, but those dogs can still hunt."
Cut to Rhode Island, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, where Christopher and Silvio have gone to contact the Atwell boys. They ring the bell at a decrepit old house, and Christopher observes that "we could do this ourselves. Ninja-style." Hee! That joke is even funnier if you've been playing No One Live Forever 2 recently. The door is opened by a frumpy blind woman, who leads them back into the house to meet the gang. Unless otherwise noted, just assume that Michael Imperioli and Stevie Van Zandt's facial expressions are hilarious. Once in the back room, Silvio and Chris are confronted by a veritable rogue's gallery of geriatric gangsters. The leader is blind himself, one guy is on a respirator, and there's a strangely youthful member standing in the back. It's basically like a Charles River version of Deliverance. And I don't care if it makes me homophobic. Anyone squeals like a pig, and I'm outta here. One of the elderly asks Christopher if he does drugs, which Chris vehemently, if inaccurately, denies, and then Silvio steps forward to talk business. He pulls out a Polaroid of Johnny Sack and Tony at a birthday party, and delivers some instructions about Johnny's travel plans. Then he tries to hand the picture to the blind guy. Heh. The photo finally ends up in the hands of the young dude, and Silvio is emphatic about mentioning that the target is the guy on the left. Apropos of nothing, Blind Guy starts telling a story about how they once grabbed a guy and cut off his head with a hacksaw. "If you'd like," adds Respirator Man, "we could arrange to have that same thing happen again." Silvio: "I don't know that we need to be that, er, overstated." Aaron: "Hee!" The doorbell rings again behind them, and Silvio pulls out an envelope which contains half their $20,000 fee. This time he does hand it to Blind Guy, before leading Chris on a hasty retreat.













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