As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.
You know, we always called each other good fellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody, “You’re gonna like this guy. He’s all right. He’s a good fella. He’s one of us.” You understand? We were good fellas. Wiseguys. But Jimmy and I could never be made because we had Irish blood. It didn’t even matter that my mother was Sicilian. To become a member of a crew you’ve got to be one hundred per cent Italian so they can trace all your relatives back to the old country. See, it’s the highest honor they can give you. It means you belong to a family and crew. It means that nobody can fuck around with you. It also means you could fuck around with anybody just as long as they aren’t also a member. It’s like a license to steal. It’s a license to do anything. As far as Jimmy was concerned with Tommy being made, it was like we were all being made. We would now have one of our own as a member.
Paulie may have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn’t have to move for anybody.
Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I’d either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies.
Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. When I was broke, I’d go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it’s all over.
And that’s the hardest part. Today everything is different; there’s no action… have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food – right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody… get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.
Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.
For a second I thought I was dead. But, when I heard all the noise, I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they’d been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would’ve been dead.
If you’re part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they’re going to kill you, doesn’t happen that way. There weren’t any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who’ve cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you’re at your weakest and most in need of their help.
For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean, they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.
One day some of the kids from the neighborhood carried my mother’s groceries all the way home. You know why? It was outta respect.
All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the FBI can never understand – that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can’t go to the cops. They’re like the police department for wiseguys.
It was revenge for Billy Batts, and a lot of other things. And there was nothing that we could do about it. Batts was a made man, and Tommy wasn’t. And we had to sit still and take it. It was among the Italians. It was real greaseball shit. They even shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn’t give him an open coffin at the funeral.
Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport. To us, it was better than Citibank.
In prison, dinner was always a big thing. We had a pasta course and then we had a meat or fish. Paulie did the prep work. He was doing a year for contempt, and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor, and he used to slice it so thin that he used to liquefy in the pan with just a little oil. It was a very good system.
So what does she do after she hangs up with me? After everything I told her? After all her “yeah, yeah, yeah” bullshit? She picks up the phone and calls from the house. Now, if anybody was listening, they’d know everything – they knew a package was leaving from my house – they’d even have the time and flight number, thanks to her.
It was easy for all of us to disappear. My house was in my mother-in-law’s name. My cars were registered to my wife. My social security cards and driver’s licenses were phonies. I never voted. I never paid taxes. My birth certificate and my arrest sheet… that’s all you’d ever have to know I was alive.
These are the guys Jimmy put together for what turned out to be the biggest heist in American history: the Lufthansa heist. Tommy and Carbone were going to grab the outside guard and make him get us in the front door, Frenchy and Joe Buddha had to round up the workers, Johnny Roastbeef had to keep them all tied up and away from the alarm, even Stacks Edwards got in on it, all he was supposed to do was steal the panel truck and afterwards compact it with a friend of ours in New Jersey. Only Morrie was driving us nuts – just because he set this up, he felt he could bust Jimmy’s balls for an advance on the money we were going to steal. He didn’t mean anything by it; it was just the way he was.
