Nicholas Pileggi,   Wise Guy:Life in a Mafia Family,  pp. 267-269, New York:

Simon and Schuster (1985).



Henry: My scheme was to play them along until I got my own head clear, got my

bail reduced, and got back on the street.  I knew I was vulnerable.  I knew that

you were vulnerable when you were worth more dead than alive.  It was that

simple.  But I still couldn't really believe it, and I didn't really know what I

was going to do.  Sometimes I thought I'd just get some money and go on the lam

for a while.  Then I thought I I might get my head clear and straighten it all

out with Paulie.  I kept thinking that if I watched my step, if I kept the

thought of my getting whacked in the middle of my mind, I might have a chance of

surviving.



In my case I knew that getting caught in the drug thing really put me in the

box.  Paulie had put the taboo on drugs.  It was outlawed.  None of us were

supposed to be in drugs.  It wasn't that Paulie wanted to take some moral

position.  That wasn't it.  What Paulie didn't want to have happen is what

happened to one of his best friends, Carmine Tramunti, who went away for fifteen

years just because he nodded hello to Fat Gigi Inglese in a restaurant. The jury

decided to believe the prosecutor that Tramunti was nodding his agreement to a

drug deal.  That was it.  Bang.  Fifteen years at the age of fifty-seven.  They

guy never got out.  Just at a time in his life when he was going to enjoy, when

it was supposed to begin to pay off, he gets sent away forever and then dies in

the can.  Paulie was not going to let that happen to him.  He'd kill you first.



So I knew that arrest on the drug charge made me vulnerable.  Maybe too

vulnerable to live. There wouldn't have been any hard feelings.  I was just

facing too much time.  The crew also knew I was snorting a lot of coke and

eating Judes.  Jimmy once said my brain had turned to candy.  I wasn't the only

guy in the crew taking drugs.  Sepe and Stabile had bigger noses than mine.  But

I was the one who was caught and I was the one who they felt might make a deal.



The fact that I had never made a deal before, the fact that I had always been

standup, the fact that I had done two years in Nassau and four years in

Lewisburg standing on my head and never gave up a mouse counted for nothing.

What you did yesterday doesn't count.  It's what you're doing today and could do

tomorrow that counts.  From where my friends stood, from where Jimmy was

standing, I was a liability.  I was no longer safe.  I didn't need pictures.



In fact, I knew it was going to be Jimmy even before the feds played me the tape

of Sepe and Stabile talking about getting rid of me.  I could hear them.  Sepe

sounded anxious to get it over with.  He said that I was no good, that I was a

junkie.  But Jimmy was calm. He told them not to worry about it.  And that was

all I heard.



Sitting in my cell, I knew I was up for grabs.  In the old days Jimmy would have

torn Sepe's heart out for even suggesting that I get whacked.  That was the main

reason why I stayed inside.  I had to sort it all out.  And every day I was

inside, Jimmy or Mickey called my wife and asked when I was getting out, and

every day that she could, Karen came to the jail and told me everything they

said.



If you're a part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill

you.  It doesn't happen that way.  There aren't any great arguments or finger-

biting curses like in Mafia movies.  Your murderers come with smiles.  They come

as friends, people who have cared deeply about you all your life, and they

always come at a time when you are at your weakest and most in need of their

help and support.



But still I wasn't sure.  I grew up with Jimmy.  He brought me along.  Paulie

and Tuddy put me in his hands.  He was supposed to watch out for me, and he did.

He was the best teacher a guy could want.  It was Jimmy who got me into

cigarette bootlegging and hijackings.  We buried bodies.  We did Air France and

Lufthansa.  We got sentenced to ten years for putting the arm on the guy in

Florida.  He was at the hospital when Karen had the kids, and we went to

birthday parties and holidays at each other's houses.  We did it all, and now

maybe he's going to kill me.  Two weeks before my arrest I got so paranoid and

stoned that Karen got me to go see a shrink.  It was nuts.  I couldn't tell him

anything, but she insisted.  I talked to him in general terms.  I told him that

I was trying to get away from drug people. I said I was afraid I was going to be

killed.  He told me to get a phone machine.



If I was going to survive, I was going to have to turn on everything I knew.

The decision was almost made for me.  In jail I didn't think so much about

whether or not to turn as I did about exactly how I could manage to do it and

still get out of jail long enough to collect the money and dope I had out on the

street.  I had about $18,000 in heroin stashed in the house that the cops hadn't

found.  I had $20,000 owed to me by Mazzei.  I'd probably have to kiss that

goodbye.  I had about $40,000 in loan-shark money out on the street.  I wanted

to recoup some of that.  There was money owed me by fences on some of the jewel

robberies and I had money owed me from some gun deals.  Added up, there was

enough to risk my neck before getting arrested by the cops or killed by my

friends.  It was going to have to be a con, a hustle, just like everything else.



I felt drained, and nothing had helped-not the shower, not the fresh shirt Karen

had ironed, not the cologne.  Nothing could get the smell of the jail and fear

out of my nose. Jimmy stood up.  He was smiling.  He opened his arms to give me

a bear hug.  My court papers were all over the table.  Jimmy had gotten them

from the lawyers.  When I sat down with him, it almost felt like it was the old

days.



On the surface, of course, everything was supposed to be fine.  We were supposed

to be discussing my drug case, just like the dozens of other cases of mine we

had discussed together, but this time I knew that the thing we were really

discussing was me.  I knew I was hot.  I was dangerous.  I knew that I could

give Jimmy up and cut myself a deal with the government.  I could give up

Lufthansa and I could give up Paulie.  I could put Jimmy and Paulie behind bars

for the rest of their lives.  And I knew Jimmy knew it.



None of this was said, of course.  In fact, almost nothing was ever really said.

Even if the feds had somehow wired our table, and then played back the tape,

they wouldn't have been able to make much sense out of our conversation.  It was

in half words.



Shrugs.  We talked about this guy and the other guy and the guy from over here

and the guy from over there and the guy with the hair and the guy from downtown.

At the end of the conversation I would know what we talked about and Jimmy would

know what we talked about, but nobody else would know.



Jimmy had been through the papers, and he said that there had been a rat in the

case.  I knew he meant Bobby Germaine's kid, but I tried to slough it off.  I

said that they hadn't found any drugs on me or in my house.  I kept saying that

they didn't have a strong case, but I could see Jimmy was very nervous anyway.



He wanted to know about all the people I had working for me.  He wanted to know

whether Robin and Judy and the rest of the people arrested knew about him.  I

told him they knew nothing, but I could see he didn't believe me.  He wanted to

know if I had talked to Paulie yet.  I said no.



Jimmy was trying to look confident.  He said he had some ideas about my case.  I

could see what he was doing.  As long as I thought he was trying to help me, he

knew that I'd stay close.  Then, when he felt the time was right, when I was no

longer dangerous to hit, he would whack me.  Jimmy was biding time to make sure

he could kill me without getting Paulie upset and putting his own neck on the

line.



As long as Jimmy thought I didn't know what he had planned, I had a chance of

copping time on the street and scooping up some money.  I had to pretend to

Jimmy I didn't know what he might have had planned, and he had to pretend that

he had nothing but my best interests at heart.



Then he said that he wanted me to go down to Florida in a few days.  He said

there was some money to be made.  He said he had to meet me again soon about the

case.  He said we should meet on Wednesday in a bar owned by Charlie the Jap, on

Queens Boulevard, in Sunnyside.



I'd never heard of the place.  I've been operating with Jimmy for twenty-five

years.  We've been in a thousand bars together in Queens, and we've spent six

years in the can together, and suddenly he wants to meet me in a bar I've never

seen before.



I nod yeah, sure, but I already know there's no way in the world I'm going into

that bar. As soon as breakfast is over, I drive past the place.  I'm not waiting

till Wednesday.



It was just the kind of place Jimmy has used in the past for hits.  The place

was controlled by one of the crew.  It had a back entrance, and there was a

parking area in the rear where you could take out a body bad in a rug without

anyone seeing.  Forget it.  If Jimmy thought I was meeting him in that place on

Wednesday he was nuts.



Instead, I showed up a Jimmy's sweatshop on Liberty Avenue on Monday.  I had

been out all morning trying to raise money.  In the afternoon I had Karen drive

me over to his shop. While I waited in a bar across the street, she went inside

and told him I wanted to see him.



He came right over with Karen.  I could see that he was nervous and surprised.

He wasn't sure what I was going to do.  Then he said if he gave me the name and

address of Bobby Germaine's kid in Florida, would I go down there with Anthony

Stabile and whack him.  This was crazy, but I wasn't going to argue.  Jimmy had

never asked me to do anything like that before.  And he'd never asked me to do

something like that in front of Karen.  Never.