Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (7 page)

“Jimmy came by the cabstand one day with a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache. It was Tommy DeSimone. He was one of those kids who looked younger than he was just because he was trying to look older. Jimmy had been a friend of Tommy’s family for years, and he wanted me to watch out for Tommy and to teach him the cigarette business-help make him a few bucks. With Tommy helping me, pretty soon we’re making three hundred, four hundred dollars a day. We sold hundreds of cartons at construction sites and garment factories. We sold them at the Sanitation Department garages and at the subway and bus depot. This was around 1965, and the city wasn’t taking it very seriously. We used to sell them on the street, and we’d give a couple of cartons away to the cops just to leave us alone.

“Pretty soon we’re importing the cigarettes ourselves. We’d fly down to Washington, D. C. , on the shuttle, take a cab to the truck-rental place, use a fake license and ID to get a truck, and then drive to one of the cigarette wholesalers in North Carolina. We’d load up with about eight or ten thousand cartons and drive north. But as more and more guys began doing it, things started to heat up. At first a few guys were pinched, but in those days they’d just give you a summons. The cops were tax agents and they didn’t even carry guns. But then they began confiscating the trucks, and the rental people stopped giving them to us. We used every scheme in the world to get those trucks, from bribery to sending local people in to make the rentals. We burned out half the U-Haul places in Washington, D. C. They went bust. Vinnie Beans had the Capo Trucking Company in the Bronx, and so we started renting his trucks. He didn’t know what we were going to do with them, so that went along fine until he realized he was missing a dozen trucks. When he found out that they had been seized by the state he dried up our supply. If we hadn’t been with Paulie, believe me, we would have been dead. Eventually we had to buy our own trucks-the business was that good. Tommy and I bought a nice twenty-two-footer, and Jimmy Burke was bringing in trailer truckloads. For a while we were all doing great, but then too many guys got into the business. The whole Colombo crew from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, started glutting the market. They took away the edge. But by then I was already into other things.

“I began stealing cars, for instance. It wouldn’t have paid if I hadn’t come across Eddy Rigaud, who was an import-export agent for the Sea-Land Service in Haiti. Rigaud owned a small retail store in Queens where he sold Haitian products, and he was somehow related to very influential people in Haiti. I remember one Sunday there was a whole story in
The New York Times Magazine
about his family. The deal was that since he could get hot cars out of the country, I would steal the cars he needed off the city streets.

“It was simple work. I had kids working for me. Kids from the neighborhood. Friends of theirs. Kids who were savvy and knew what was going on. They’d steal the cars for a hundred dollars apiece, and I’d accumulate ten or twelve cars. I’d park them in the rear of parking lots to get them off the street, and I’d get serial numbers for them from cars that were about to be scrapped. If I gave Eddy Rigaud the identification numbers for the cars in the afternoon, I had a manifest for exporting the cars the next day. Then I’d send all the cars down to the dock. The paper work would just shuttle them through. The cars would be inspected to see if they had spare tires and no dents, just as they were described on the manifest. They were all new cars--little Fords and other compact, gas-efficient cars, because gasoline was a buck and a half a gallon in Haiti in those days. I’d get $750 a car. It was just a couple of hours’ work for me, and then every five or six weeks I’d fly down to Port-au-Prince to pick up my money. That wasn’t too bad either, because I’d always go down with counterfeit money and stolen traveler’s checks and credit cards.

“And all the time I’m moving around with Paulie. I’m driving him here and I’m driving him there. I’d pick him up about ten o’clock in the morning and I wouldn’t drop him off until after he had his liver and onions or steak and potatoes at three o’clock in the morning. Paulie never stopped moving and neither did I. There were a hundred schemes in a day and there were a thousand things to watch over. Paulie was like the boss of a whole area, and he watched over the guys who watched over the day-to-day gambling clubs, hot-car rings, policy banks, unions, hijackers, fences, loan sharks. These guys operated with Paulie’s approval, like a franchise, and a piece of everything they made was supposed to go to him, and he was supposed to keep some and kick the rest upstairs. It was tribute. Like in the old country, except they’re doing it in America.

“But for a guy who traveled all day and all night and ran as much as he did, Paulie didn’t talk to six people. If there was a problem with the policy game, for instance, the dispute was presented to Steve DePasquale, who ran the numbers game for Paul. Then, in the morning, when Paulie met Steve, he would tell Paul what the problem was, and Paul would tell Steve what to do. Most of the time Paul just listened to what Steve said, because Steve really knew the numbers business better than Paul. Then he’d tell Steve to take care of it. If there was a beef over the crap games, he’d talk to his brother Babe. Union things would be referred to the union guys, whoever they happened to be, depending upon the specific unions and the kind of dispute. Everything was broken down to the lowest common denominator. Everything was one on one. Paulie didn’t believe in conferences. He didn’t want anyone hearing what he said, and he didn’t even want anyone listening to what he was being told.

“The guys who reported to the people who reported to Paulie ranged from regular hustlers to legitimate businessmen. They were the street guys. They kept everything going. They thought up the schemes. They kept everything nice and oiled. And Paulie ran the whole thing in his head. He didn’t have a secretary. He didn’t take any notes. He never wrote anything down, and he never made a phone call unless it was from a booth, and then he’d only make an appointment for later. There were hundreds of guys who depended upon Paulie for their living, but he never paid out a dime. The guys who worked for Paulie had to make their own dollar. 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. For instance, say I’ve got a fifty-thousand-dollar hijack load, and when I go to make my delivery, instead of getting paid, I get stuck up. What am I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Not likely. Shoot it out? I’m a hijacker, not a cowboy. No. The only way to guarantee that I’m not going to get ripped off by anybody is to be established with a member, like Paulie. Somebody who is a made man. A member of a crime family. A soldier. Then, if somebody fucks with you, they fuck with him, and that’s the end of the ball game. Goodbye. They’re dead, with the hijacked stuff rammed down their throats, as well as a lot of other things. Of course problems can arise when the guys sticking you up are associated with wiseguys too. Then there has to be a sit-down between your wiseguys and their wiseguys. What usually happens then is that the wiseguys divide whatever you stole for their own pockets and send you and the guy who robbed you home with nothing. And if you complain, you’re dead.

“The other reason you have to be allied with somebody like Paulie is to keep the cops off your back. Wiseguys like Paulie have been paying off the cops for so many years that they have probably sent more cops’ kids to college than anyone else. They’re like wiseguy scholarships. Paulie or Babe, who handled most of that for Paul, had been taking care of cops since the guys were rookies on patrol. As they rose in rank, Babe kept taking care of them. When they needed help on a particular case, when they needed some information, Babe would get it for them. It was a two-way street. And when they took money from Babe, they knew it was safe. They developed a trust, the crooked cops and the wiseguys. The same thing went for everybody else. Politicians--not all politicians, but lots of them-needed help here and there. They got free storefront offices, they got the buses and sound systems they needed, they got the rank-and-file workers from the unions to petition when they needed it, and they got lawyers to help them poll-watch. You think that politicians aren’t grateful? You think they don’t remember their friends? And remember, it’s not Paul Vario doing all this. Very few politicians ever meet Paul Vario. Not at all. This is all put together by businessmen connected to Paul. By lawyers indebted to Paulie. By building contractors, trucking company bosses, union guys, wholesale butchers, accountants, and people who work for the city-all the kinds of upstanding people who are totally legit. But behind it all there is usually a wiseguy like Paulie waiting for his payday.

“I was only a street guy and even I was living good. I’m doing everything. I’m stealing and scheming with two hands. When I was doing the cigarettes I was also lending money and I was taking a little book and I was running the stolen cars to Haiti. Tuddy got me a couple of grand setting some fires in supermarkets and restaurants. He and the owners cleaned up on the insurance money. I had learned how to use Sterno and toilet paper and how to mold it along the beams. You could light that with a match. No problem. But with a gasoline or kerosene fire you can’t strike a match because of the fumes. The usual trick to start them is to place a lighted cigarette in a book of matches, so when the cigarette bums down to the matches the flash will ignite the room. By then you should be long gone.

“I made a lot of grief for people. I was always in a brawl. I didn’t care. I had ten or twelve guys behind me. We’d go into a place in the Rockaways or some place in the Five Towns and we’d start to drink and eat. The places were usually half-assed connected. I mean, there was a bookmaker working out of the place or the owner was half a loan shark or they were selling swag out of the basement. I mean, we didn’t go into little-old-lady restaurants like Schrafft’s. We’d go to overpriced places with red walls and wall-to-wall carpets--rug joints, we’d call them-places where they had a few bucks invested. Maybe there’d be girls and some gambling. The owners or managers always knew us. We’d spend a buck. We’d really have a good time. We’d run up tabs. We’d sign all over the place. We’ d sign over nice tips to the waiters and captains. Why not? We were good for it. We’d throwaway more money in a night than a convention of dentists and their wives could spend in a week.

“Then, after a few weeks, when the tabs got to be a few grand, the owner would come over. He’d try to be nice. He’d try to be polite. But no matter how nice he tried to be, we’d always make it into a war. ‘You fuck!’ we’d scream. ‘After all the business we brought you! You got the nerve to embarrass me in front of my friends? Call me a deadbeat? You fuck, you’re dead. You miserable bastard cocksucker... ’ And so forth and so forth. You’d curse him and scream and throw a glass or plate and really work yourself up into a fit. I mean, even though deep down you knew you were full of shit, you were still ready to tear the bastard apart. By then somebody would usually pull you away, but you go out threatening to break his legs.

“Now the guy’s got a problem. He knows who we are. He knows we could break his legs and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. He can’t go to the cops, because he’s got little problems of his own and they’ll shake him down for even more money than he’s already giving them. Also, he knows we own the cops. If he makes too much noise, he gets his business burned down. There’s nothing left for him to do but to go and see Paulie. He won’t go direct. He might go to see someone who talks to Paulie. Frankie the Wop. Steve DePasquale. Bruno Facciolo.

“If the guy is well enough connected, there’s a meet with Paulie. Let me tell you, Paulie’s all heart. He sympathizes. He groans that he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with us. He calls us psycho kids. He tells the guy that he talks to us over and over, but we never listen. He’s got lots of problems with us. We’re making trouble for him all over town. By then the guy knows it’s time to say it would be worth his while to get us off his back. And one word leads to another, and pretty soon Paulie is on the guy’s payroll for a couple of hundred a week, depending. Also, our bar bill is forgotten. It’s so smooth.

“Now the guy’s got Paulie for a partner. Any other problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the cops? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with deliveries? Call Paulie. And, of course it goes both ways. Paulie can put people on the payroll for early parole, he can throw the liquor and food buying to friends of his. Plus the insurance. Who handles the insurance? That’s always big with the politicians, and the politicians who are close to Paulie get the broker’s fees. Plus the maintenance. Who cleans the joint? I mean a wiseguy can make a buck off every part of the business.

“And if he wants to bust it out, he can make even more money. Bank loans, for instance. A place has been in business say twenty, thirty years. It has a bank account. There’s usually a loan officer who can come over and give you a loan for some improvements. Of course, if you can, you take the money and forget about the improvements, because you’re expecting to bust the place out anyway.

“Also, if the place has a line of credit, as the new partner you can call up suppliers and have them send stuff over. You can call up other new distributors and get them to send over truckloads of stuff, since the place has a good credit rating. Wholesalers are looking for business. They don’t want to turn you down. The salesmen want to make the sale. So you begin to order. You order cases of whiskey and wine. You order furniture. You order soap, towels, glasses, lamps, and food, and more food. Steaks. Two hundred filets. Crates of fresh lobster, crab, and shrimp. There is so much stuff coming in the door, it’s like Christmas.

“And no sooner are the deliveries made in one door, you move the stuff out another. You sell the stuff to other places at a discount, but since you have no intention of paying for it in the first place, anything you sell it for is profit. Some guys use the stuff to start new places. You just milk the place dry. You bust it out. And, in the end, you can even burn the joint down for a piece of the insurance if it doesn’t make enough. And nowhere does Paulie show up as a partner. No names. No signed pieces of paper. Paulie didn’t need paper. Back then, in the sixties, aside from busting out joints, I know Paulie must have been getting a piece out of two, three dozen joints. A hundred here, two or three hundred there. He was doing beautifully. I remember once he told me he had a million and a half cash stashed away. He was always trying to talk me into saving a buck, but I couldn’t. He said he kept his in a vault. I said I didn’t have to save it because I would always make it.