Law-enforcement units—New York Police, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, all the others—have organized crime figures under surveillance all the time. It is standard practice. None of these outfits—including the FBI, for the most part—knew who I was. So if I started coming into their picture, buddying up with badguys, naturally I would become a suspect just like the rest of them.

If it wasn’t cops, it could be wiseguys checking me out. I didn’t want anybody on either side tailing me. If I was going to meet my contact agent, or going home to see my family, a tail could have blown the whole operation. So every time I left a place, I was tail-conscious. I always “cleaned” myself. I never went directly to my destination. I would ride around, keep checking my rearview mirror to see if I was being followed, lose any suspicious cars with a series of turns and double-backs. When I parked someplace, I would notice whoever parked near me, and anybody who came in a place with me.

The first time I was rousted, I was near Carmello’s. I hadn’t had time to get rid of the car tailing me. They pulled me over. A couple guys in plainclothes with drawn guns ordered me out, told me to put my hands on my head. They patted me down, checked inside the car. They didn’t find anything on me or in the car. When they were finished, they said it was a routine license check because I had Florida plates on the car.

The only thing it was routine for was wiseguys, because they get rousted all the time. That’s why you don’t usually carry a gun. These guys here who rousted me didn’t even identify themselves. I don’t know who they were.

I was tailed a few times, stopped and searched a couple of times. It was an inconvenience, but it also made me feel that I was doing the job right.

I drove over to Brooklyn, to Jilly’s store at 7612 15th Avenue. The neighborhood was very clean, quiet, working-class, two- and three-story residential buildings with a lot of storefronts on the ground floors. Jilly’s store was in the middle of a block of glass fronts. There was a small grocery store, and the Park Ridge Pharmacy on the corner.

A big sign over the door of Jilly’s store read ACERG. Jilly’s last name was Greca, his store was the name spelled backward. The store part was the front room. Plain metal racks of expensive clothes, mostly women’s stuff: leather jackets, pants, blouses. Everything was marked cheaper than it would be at a regular store. The store was open to the public, but nobody would be coming there from Manhattan. It was a neighborhood store in the kind of neighborhood where outsiders are spotted in a minute.

Everything was cheap because it was all swag. Jilly’s crew were hijackers, burglars, all-around thieves. The store sold their loot.

5

BROOKLYN: THE COLOMBOS

The Acerg store was in the front, and anybody in the crew could act as salesman. There was a back room with a desk and a couple of card tables. That’s where the crew hung out during the day. That’s where I was introduced to a few guys, ranging in age from maybe late twenties to early forties, who were sitting around playing gin and bullshitting. First names and nicknames only: Guido, Vito, Tommy the Chief, Vinnie, and so on.

I started hanging out there with Jilly’s crew. Because I was “known” by other people that this crew knew, and because I was introduced to them by somebody they knew, they were pretty open around me.

Although these were lower-echelon guys in the mob, they always had something going. They always had money. They were always turning things over. They always had swag around. Swag was always going in and out. Everybody dressed well. Ninety percent of what they wore was swag. Latest styles. Sports shirts, slacks, sweaters, and leather jackets. If they had jeans on, they were always designer jeans.

You name it, they stole it. Jilly’s crew would hit warehouses, docks, trucks, houses. There was nothing they wouldn’t consider stealing. They considered all the time. There wasn’t one hour of one day that went by when they weren’t thinking and talking about what they were going to steal, who or what or where they were going to rob. There was always a load to go after, or somebody else’s load you might get a piece of, always something to hustle.

When they got up in the morning, they didn’t think about going to work and punching a time clock. They didn’t think about spending time with their wives or girlfriends. The mob was their job. You got up, went to the club or wherever you hung out, and spent your day with those guys.

You’ve got to be up all day figuring out what you’re going to do that night, what scores you’re going to go out on. The day basically was: You got to the club at ten-thirty or eleven o‘clock in the morning, then sat around all day and discussed scams and scores and hustles, past and future. Somebody would have an idea about a burglary or hijack, and they’d kick it around to see if it was worthwhile. Or somebody else had pulled a score and was looking to get rid of jewelry, furs, or whatever. And they’d discuss the possibility of “middling” it—taking the swag and reselling it.

All day long, while they schemed, they’d sit in the back room at the Acerg store and play gin and smoke cigarettes and cigars. I don’t smoke. They never opened a window. Even with air-conditioning, it got to be pretty dense. There might be two games going, depending on how many guys were in there. I don’t even like to play cards. You play gin—never any other game—for maybe ten cents a point. Even while you’re sitting around playing gin, you’re still talking about making a dollar, what the hustle of the day is. Maybe you go over to somebody else’s club, play gin there, or talk up some scheme. Maybe you talk to somebody about a score you’re trying to set up or trying to get a piece of. If they had a potential job to case, a couple guys would go out during the daytime and look it over.

If they weren’t scheming and dreaming, they were telling war stories, reminiscences about their time in various jails and prisons. Everybody did time in the can. It was part of the price of doing business. They knew all about different jails, cell blocks, guards. I had enough phony background set up to establish my credentials as a serious criminal, to show that I was tough enough to do time if I had to without turning rat. But I never claimed to have done any prison time because I didn’t know those places, and that could have just tripped me up. If you do three to five years you get to know the guards—what guard’s on what tier. You get to know the inmates, guys who are doing fifteen to twenty, guys who are still there. They knew the lingo and the slang. Everybody remembers those relationships and that time.

My thinking is, if it’s not necessary to have done something, don’t claim to have done it. When these guys talked about prison time, I just listened like an ordinary citizen.

For lunch somebody would go out to bring in Chinese food or hero sandwiches. Maybe around four-thirty or five o‘clock, the guys would split, go home to their wives or whatever, have supper, then go back out on the street, pulling off their scores or bouncing around the night spots or doing whatever they did.

On Tuesdays we went to Sally’s club for lunch. Sally was an old-time wiseguy, a capo in the Colombo family. He had a social club on 17th Avenue, not far from Jilly’s. Sometimes we’d hang out over at Sally‘s, divide the time between there and Jilly’s. But every Tuesday afternoon Sally cooked a big lunch for our whole crew of about eight, and his own, altogether maybe eighteen or twenty guys. He had a regular kitchen, and he would cook meatballs, macaroni, sausages, peppers, everything. For this lunch we would set up a long folding table. We would sit at the table all afternoon eating lunch, drinking jugs of homemade red wine that Sally produced, and bullshitting.