Flushed

One of Rhode Island's most infamous mobsters has been taken out of the loansharking game - for now.

65 year old Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent of Johnston, a notorious loanshark affiliated with the sad remnants of the Providence based la cosa nostra franchise, entered a plea bargain yesterday on charges that he attempted to extort $200,000 from two men in Massachusetts. An unnamed state police source is also claiming that St. Laurent offered to pay someone $20,000 to have a man who defaulted on his payments murdered. So what's the twist?

St. Laurent is 65 years old, but elderly mafiosi are nothing new. What's remarkable about St. Laurent is the claim by his lawyer (John F. Cicilline) that his client requires new fewer than 40 (yes, forty) enemas a day - a medical condition that accounts for his predictable alternate nickname: "Public Enema #1".

What could possibly account for a need to constantly flush out your colon? Does he eat 8 pounds of peanut butter and brick chocolate per day? Did he last eat fiber during the Nixon administration? His lawyer won't comment, but it's fairly obvious that the claim is intended to try to wrangle out a house arrest sentence for his odious client instead of having him put behind bars. Apparently, a Patriarca capo named Bobby DeLuca fingered The Saint as both an FBI and Rhode Island State Police snitch back in 2001, so it is, perhaps, understandable that he wishes to stay away from dangerous convicts, but really: if a capo named someone as a snitch 5 years ago, why is he still alive today? Ray Patriarca Sr. would never have stood for it. I suppose all of America's traditional institutions are in a similar state of decline. Sic gloria transit and all that.

I don't think the judge will buy the defendant's claim of requiring such intensive anal irrigation, and while The Saint is frail and in ill health, he has little to look forward to beyond dying in jail sans, of course, his 40 daily colon blastings.