The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

This is a true story with a surprising twist. I use a terrific car wax called Zaino (rhymes with Drano). It costs about the same as medium quality waxes but it's easy to apply and looks great. They use it on show cars. If you own a car that's not a junker, I highly recommend Zaino. It's available worldwide.

Zaino is a small operation. They sell their products mail order. Major brands like McGuire's have interactive web sites to advise you on which items to buy and how to use them. If you have a question about Zaino products you call the owner, Sal Zaino, in New Jersey: "Bada bing, bada boom. This is Sal. How can I help yoose?"

Hawaii is the only state that has a local distributor (because they won't mail order it here). It's just a guy who sells the stuff out of his garage. One time I asked him, "Do you know Sal's brother?" He replied, "I didn't know Sal had a brother." I pointed out that the company was originally called "Zaino Brothers". He goes, "Oh, right."

So now I was curious. Sal is obviously the day to day operations guy. Maybe his brother is the chemist? Somebody's got to be developing these products. The identity of their chemist may even be a trade secret.

A few minutes of stalking on the web revealed that Sal has a brother named Tommy Zaino. I proceeded to check if Tommy is a chemist. No, he's not, but he gained some notoriety in 1977 when he witnessed a Son of Sam murder!

Tommy was 19 at the time. He and his date parked under a streetlight in Brooklyn. She was nervous about Son of Sam and asked him to move the car somewhere darker. Tommy pulled forward three car lengths into the shadows. Then Robert Violente and Stacy Moskowitz pulled their car under the same streetlight and began kissing. Son of Sam approached from the side and shot both in the head. Tommy saw the whole thing in his rear view mirror. He pushed his date's head down and sped away.

I sent Sal an email to confirm that this was the same Tommy Zaino:

So there you have it. Pretty wild.