Wiseguy: The 25th Anniversary Edition

by Nicholas Pileggi

  “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 paperwork 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 burns 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
throw away 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.

  “And I wasn’t alone. Everyone I knew was into money schemes, and almost nobody ever got caught. That’s what people from the outside don’t understand. When you’re doing different schemes, and everyone you know is doing these things, and nobody is getting caught, except by accident, you begin to get the message that maybe it’s not so dangerous. And there were a million different schemes. You didn’t have to sell swag or stick up anybody. One of the guys from the neighborhood was the manager of a local supermarket, one of those giant chain places with ten check-out lanes and a half-a-percent profit margin. He was always very straight, and nobody gave him much credit for anything until the week he went on vacation and the main office sent carpenters to install new check-out lanes. The carpenters got to the supermarket with their blueprints and charts and thought they were in the wrong place. It seemed that the market had eleven check-out lanes instead of ten. It didn’t take long for the main office to catch on that someone had created his own check-out lane and that everything rung up on the eleventh register went into somebody else’s pocket. When our pal got back from vacation the cops were waiting for him, but he was a local hero. He was fired, but because he dummied up and denied everything he never spent a day in jail.

  “Also, hanging around and hustling means gambling. A day doesn’t go by without bets going down on this or that. When I had it, I’d bet a thousand dollars on the point spread of a basketball game, and I wasn’t just betting one game. I could have ten thousand dollars riding on the wide, wide world of Saturday afternoon sports. Jimmy bet thirty, forty thousand dollars on football. We were at the track, shooting craps in Vegas, playing cards, and betting on anything that moved. Not a thrill like it in the world, especially when you had an edge.

  “And there were guys, like Rich Perry, who could give you the edge. He was a genius. Long before anybody else thought of it, Perry had dozens of people all around the country watching college sports for him. He knew what kind of shape the field was in, the injuries to key players, whether the quarterback had been drunk, all kinds of things that gave his handicapping an edge. He used to find things in small-town college newspapers that never made the wires, and he had people calling him right up to the minute he was ready to bet.

  “He was the brain who figured out how to increase the odds on the Superfecta bets at the trotters, so that for a while we were doing so well that rather than alert the track that we were winning all the time, we had to hire ten-percenters just to go and cash our winning tickets. There was so much money involved that some guys—those who had records and didn’t want to be seen as the winners—even had cops they knew cashing the tickets for them.

  “In the Superfecta races—which they have since banned—a bettor had to pick the first four winners in a race in their exact order. Perry figured that by getting two or three of the drivers to pull back or get their horses boxed in, we could eliminate two or three of the eight horses from the race. Then we could bet multiples of the remaining combinations at a minimal cost. For instance, it would normally cost $5,040 to buy the 1,680 three-dollar tickets to cover every possible combination of winning horses in an eight-horse race. Since the average Superfecta paid off about $3,000, there was no profit. By eliminating two or three horses from the race, we could almost guarantee ourselves a winning ticket, because mathematically there were now only 360 different winning combinations, and they only cost us $1,080 per ticket. When we had a fixed one going, we’d bet $25,000 or $50,000 on the race.

  “We usually reached the drivers through ‘hawks,’ back-stretch regulars who lived and drank with the trainers and drivers. Sometimes they were wives, girlfriends, ex-drivers, retired trainers—people who really knew how the trotting world worked. W
e got to the hawks by just hanging around, taking their bets, loan-sharking them money, getting them good deals on hot televisions and designer clothes. You’d be amazed at how easy it all was.

  “The Off-Track Betting computers eventually figured out that there was something wrong with the payoffs on the Superfecta, and they started an investigation and arrested almost the whole crew. The feds claimed they had made over three million dollars, but that was an exaggeration. There was a trial involving about two dozen drivers, trainers, and wiseguys. Bruno Facciolo and Paulie’s son Peter beat the case, but Richie Perry was convicted. He got six months.”