Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

by Nicholas Pileggi

  "As soon as I heard about the possible transfers I started scheming right away. I knew if they were going to move sixty people out of Allenwood, there were going to be sixty empty bunks at Allenwood. At all costs I wanted one of those bunks. For me the difference between doing time in a place like Lewisburg-where I really didn't have it too bad-and Allenwood would be like not being in jail at all. I got Karen and told her to start calling up her contacts in the Bureau of Prisons immediately. I told her, 'Don't write, call!' I told her to call Mickey Burke and have Mickey try and get Jimmy, who was then in Atlanta, into Allenwood too. If we could get into Allenwood, it was the next best thing to being home. It was the country club of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. No walls. No cells. It was supposed to be like a summer camp for naughty grown-ups. There were tennis courts, a gym, jogging tracks, a nine-hole golf course, and, best of all, extremely liberal and enlightened rehabilitation programs.

  "Just as I suspected, about a week after the food strike began, the Bureau of Prisons decided it had had enough of Mr. Liddy and his bullshit. They loaded up six buses with all the guys who didn't want to eat-G. Gordon Liddy number one-and they sent forty of them over to Lewisburg and twenty of the dumb bastards to Atlanta, where the Muslims and the Aryan Brotherhood were stabbing each other over the doughnuts.

  "Within days the warden's office began moving guys out of Lewisburg and sending them to Allenwood, but my name wasn't on the list. When I asked my people in the warden's office, some of them said I couldn't get on the list because my folder was labeled 'Organized Crime.' Others said it was because I had injured my wrist in a softball game and Allenwood didn't want to accept injury cases. It was maddening. I felt like I'd set the whole thing up and they were transferring all these people and not me. Karen must have called Washington twenty times. No good.

  "Finally I went to see the secretary to my counselor. She took pity on me. I had always been nice to her, even though she was awful-looking. She used to watch me play tennis. I'd joke around with her. I'd cook things and bring them over. I brought her flowers.

  "Now I was desperate. I was begging. She knew what I wanted, and I think my years of kindnesses paid off. One day, after the warden had gone home, while they were transferring the last batch of bodies to Allenwood, I went to make another pitch at getting transferred. She looked real sad. 'Please don't say anything,' she said, and then she took one poor bastard off the list and put another poor bastard on. Me.

  "I couldn't believe it. In a couple of days I was in Allenwood. It was a different world. It was like moving into a motel. There were five large dormitories, with about a hundred guys in each, and everyone had his own little private cubicle. The administration building, the dining room, and the visiting rooms were at the foot of the hill, and except for a roll call twice a day-once when we got up for breakfast at seven o'clock and another time about four-thirty in the afternoon-everything was on the honor system. By the time I was there a week I was going downtown to the hospital to check on my injured wrist by myself. No guards. No spying. No nothing.

  "The place was filled with a nice class of people. Guys ran their businesses from the dorms. We had phone rooms next to the television rooms in each dorm, and you'd see guys on the phone all day and night doing deals. We had four stock swindlers whose wives would show up for visits just about every day. Allenwood had unlimited visits, and some of these guys stayed in the visiting rooms from nine in the morning until nine at night. The stockbrokers' wives used to arrive in limousines with maids who would cook a whole filet of beef right there in the kitchen. On weekends people showed up with their kids and nannies, and there was even a day-care center in the prison where kids could play and rest.

  "There were about forty Jewish guys in the joint when I arrived. They had just gotten the right from the Bureau of Prisons in Washington to have a separate kosher kitchen. I immediately volunteered to work in the kosher kitchen. I wanted to establish right away that I was a religious person so that I could get religious furloughs that would entitle me to seven days at home every three months.

  "I soon figured out how to get home even more often. I got Karen to contact a rabbi we knew, who then wrote letters to the Allenwood authorities asking that I be permitted to leave the facility for three-day religious instruction weekends once a month. Prison officials were always terrified of requests from the clergy. That's how we got two kitchens in Allenwood and that's how the black prisoners got their special Muslim diets and Islamic prayer days.

  "Once I got my religious instruction weekends approved, there was a local rabbi who arranged everything. He was slick. He had been working with Allenwood inmates for a couple of years, and you got the kind of instruction you paid for. There were about a dozen guys at Allenwood who were in his program, and he actually took them to a local motel meeting room where they received religious instructions and relaxed. I knew that he could do better for a price. Within a couple of weeks I had it set up so he used to pick me up in a 98 Olds early Friday afternoon, and we'd drive like hell to Atlantic City, where I'd meet Karen and some of the crew and spend the weekend gambling and partying. The guy took a grand for the weekends and I had to pick up the tab for his room and meals. He was so anxious to please that after a couple of trips I got Jimmy included on the Jewish religious weekends. I hadn't seen too much of Jimmy after he got to Allen-wood because he had been assigned to one of the other dormitories and he was on the grounds-keeping crew. But I did get him in on the religious weekends, and come Friday, when we started to take off for Atlantic City, it was like old times.

  "I also joined the local Junior Chamber of Commerce because they took us out on five-day rehabilitation furloughs every month. And they had Toastmaster Weekends' one Sunday a month, where we'd be signed up at a local motel and listen to lectures about starting out in business again. Most of these JCs were well-meaning and legit, but a few of them weren't, and it didn't take me long to find out who was willing to take a hundred dollars a day to look the other way. Pretty soon I was signed up for everything. One month I managed to string together so many furloughs, days off, and religious holidays that the joint wound up owing me a day.

  "Also, if I had to get out to pick up some pills or pot, I could always pay one of the guards fifty dollars and he would take me out of the place after his tour and the four-thirty count and then bring me back when he returned to work before the seven o'clock morning count. Nobody questioned the practice. The guard didn't have to sign any papers. It was just a way that some of them made a few extra bucks, and nobody was going to blow the whistle. I would usually arrange for Karen to have a room in one of the motels nearby. I liked the ones with indoor swimming pools.

  "On the longer, five-day furloughs I just went home. Why not? Karen or one of the crew would meet me at whatever motel the Junior Chamber was having its seminars, and my guy would just wave me goodbye. I'd be home in a few hours. After a while I was getting home so often that there were lots of people in the neighborhood who thought I was out of jail a year ahead of time."

  On July 12, 1978, Henry Hill was granted an early parole for being a model prisoner. According to the report of the Bureau of Prisons, he had been the ideal inmate. He had availed himself of the prison's self-improvement and educational programs. He had maintained a clear-conduct record throughout his entire incarceration. He had adjusted well to rehabilitation and had entered into community-service and religious programs created to assist inmates. He had been courteous and cooperative during interviews with prison personnel, social workers, and psychologists. He appeared self-confident and mature. He had strong family ties and, upon release, he had been guaranteed a $225-a-week job as an office manager for a Long Island company near his home.

  Of course the prison officials had no way of knowing how expertly Henry had manipulated and misused their system. Nor did they know that his new job was essentially a no-show affair that had been arranged for him by Paul Vario. Henry's prospective employer, Philip Basile, was a mob-controlled rock p
romoter and Long Island disco owner who had once hired Henry to burn some buildings. To the Bureau of Prisons, however, Henry Hill's file read like a testimonial for the modern penological approach to rehabilitation. When he signed out of Allenwood for the last time, the Bureau of Prisons noted that his prognosis was good and that it was very unlikely he would ever return to prison again.

  Fifteen

  Henry Hill walked out of Allenwood on July 12, 1978. He was wearing a five-year-old Brioni suit, he had seventy-eight dollars in his pocket, and he drove home in a six-year-old car, a four-door Buick sedan. Karen and the children had been living in a cramped, shabby, two-bedroom ground floor apartment in a run-down section of Valley Stream. Henry's lawyers, prison guards, and weekend furloughs had swallowed up almost all of his money, but he told Karen to start looking for a house. He had prospects.

  In anticipation of his release, Henry had discussed dozens of potential money-making schemes during his weekend furloughs home. That, in fact, was one of the main reasons that furloughs were so important: They helped Henry to feel he was on the way back into action even before he was out of prison. After four years behind bars Henry had no intention of going straight. He couldn't even conceive of going straight. He needed to make money. For Henry it was a simple matter of getting out and getting over.

  Within twenty-four hours of his release Henry flew to Pittsburgh (in violation of his parole) to pick up fifteen thousand dollars, his share of the marijuana partnership he had started in Lewisburg with Paul Mazzei. Henry planned to use the money as a down payment for a house. Unfortunately, when he got to Pittsburgh he found that Mazzei had just bought a garage full of high-grade Colombian grass and had only two thousand dollars in cash. Henry couldn't wait for Mazzei to raise the money; he had an appointment in New York the next day with his parole officer, and he had promised his daughter Ruth that he would take her to F A O Schwarz on her eleventh birthday and buy her the biggest doll in the store. Henry borrowed Mazzei's largest suitcase, filled it with bricks of marijuana, and headed back to New York.

  Henry had been in prison and away from the street so long that he was uncertain about the procedures for examining luggage before boarding planes. Rather than chance the airlines he went back on an all-night Greyhound bus. It took over twelve hours and made dozens of stops, and he had to get off the bus at every stop and guard the luggage compartment to make sure nobody walked off with his suitcase. Henry wasn't sure where he could unload the grass. He had never sold or even smoked grass before he went to prison. He could not use sources within his own crew, because Paul Vario had outlawed any kind of drug dealing among his men.

  It took Henry at least a week of sneaking around before he was finally able to unload the suitcase. Nevertheless, when he did, he made twelve thousand dollars in cash. It was fast and sweet. He had a down payment. He took Ruth to F A O Schwarz, and even though she cried and said that they couldn't afford it, he bought her a two-hundred-dollar imported porcelain doll. Then he called Pittsburgh and told Mazzei to send him a hundred pounds more. Within a month Henry began wholesaling uppers, Quaaludes, some cocaine, and a little heroin. Soon he had a drug crew of his own, including Bobby Germaine, a stickup man who was on the lam and pretending to be a freelance writer; Robin Cooperman, a clerical worker at an air freight company, who soon became Henry's girl friend; and Judy Wicks, a courier who never made a delivery unless she was wearing a pink-and-blue hat.

  In addition, Henry started a little sideline operation in automatic rifles and pistols, which he bought from one of his Quaalude users and part-time distributors who worked in a Connecticut armory. "Wise-guys like Jimmy and Tommy and Bobby Germaine loved to have guns around them. Jimmy would buy them in shopping bags. Six, ten, a dozen-you never had too many pistols for those guys." Also, Henry started to fence stolen jewelry through a jeweler in the West Forty-seventh Street diamond exchange. Most of the large pieces came from William Arico, another Lewisburg pal, who had joined a gang that specialized in robbing swank hotels and the homes of wealthy people. "Arico worked with Bobby Germaine, Bobby Nalo, and that crew. They were strictly stickup guys. Bobby used to get his information from a woman furrier and designer who used to get into rich people's homes and then give Bobby the layout." One night Arico's gang tied up cosmetic queen Este Lauder in her Manhattan townhouse and got away with over a million dollars in jewels, which Henry fenced. "They got in by Arico pretending to be a chauffeur. He left my house all dressed up in his uniform and hat. Karen even drew a mustache across his face. It went very smoothly, but then the jeweler ruined almost all of the pieces by scratching the stones taking them out of their settings. You always take hot stones out of the settings as soon as you can so they can't be traced. They're then sold off and reset in new pieces. The gold and platinum settings are sold off separately and melted down."

  Henry started to muscle his way into a liquor-distribution route, through which he planned to supply whiskey to all the bars and restaurants where Jimmy Burke and Paul Vario had clout. And, most important of all, he made sure to collect his $225-a-week paycheck for the no-show job as a disco manager with Phil Basile that Paul Vario had arranged for him. Henry needed the weekly pay stub so he could show his parole officer that he was gainfully employed.

  It was on one of his increasingly frequent trips to Pittsburgh that Henry met Tony Perla, a local bookmaker and close friend of Paul Mazzei's. Over drinks at Mazzei's apartment discussing the drug business, Perla told Henry that he had a Boston College basketball player willing to shave points for the upcoming 1978-79 season.

  "Tony Perla had been cultivating this kid, Rick Kuhn, for over a year. Kuhn was a Boston College rebounder, who had grown up with Perla and Perla's brother, Rocco. He was a big kid who wanted to make money. Perla had already given the kid a color TV, money for repairs on his car, and even some grass and cocaine. When I said that Kuhn alone couldn't guarantee the points, Perla said Kuhn would bring in his best friend, Jim Sweeney, the team captain. Perla said that with Kuhn and Sweeney and a third player, if we needed one, we could probably control the game points for twenty-five hundred dollars per game.

  "The players loved it, because they were not dumping games. They could keep their honor. All they had to do was make sure that they didn't win by more than the point spread. For instance, if the bookies or the Vegas odds-makers said the line was Boston by ten, our players had to muff enough shots to make sure that they won by less than the bookies' ten points. That way they'd win their games and we'd win the bets.

  "Perla needed me in the scheme because of my connections with Paulie. Perla wasn't able to place the large numbers of big-money bets you'd have to put down with bookmakers across the country to maximize your profits on every game. Also, Perla wanted to be sure of protection in case the bookies got suspicious and refused to pay. In other words, if one of the bookmakers came up to Perla with a serious beef, he wanted to be able to say that any questions should be taken up with his partners-namely me, Jimmy Burke, and Paul Vario.

  "Some people might not know it, but betting lots of money on college basketball is a very difficult thing to do. Very few bookmakers get into the baskets seriously. In fact, most bookies will handle college basketball action only as a favor for someone who is also betting a lot on football or baseball. And even then, all they'll usually put you down for is fifty, or maybe a thousand dollars tops.

  "That's why I would have to line up a string of maybe fifteen or twenty bookmakers, and I would have to let a few of them in on what was going on so that they'd be able to help me spread the bets around even more. I already knew the guys I had in mind. Some guys, like Marty Krugman, John Savino, and Milty Wekar, would make money with us, while other guys would lose.

  "When I got back and told Jimmy and Paulie about the scheme, they loved it. Jimmy loved to beat bookmakers, and Paulie loved to beat anybody. We were standing in Geffkens Bar, and Paulie kissed me on both cheeks. I was back a couple of months and I was already bringing in one score after another.
That's what I did and that's what made Paulie happy.

  "When I had the thing set up, Mazzei and Perla flew into the city for a meeting at Robert's with Jimmy and Paulie. By then Paulie had turned the basketball deal over to his son Peter, and Peter and I flew up to Boston with Mazzei and Perla to talk to the players. I had never met the players before. Perla had been the contact, but now we were going to be betting heavy money on these kids, and I wanted to make sure they understood the seriousness of what they were doing.

  "The meeting was set in the Sheraton at the Prudential Center, in Boston. Kuhn and Sweeney looked nervous at first. Before I would talk to them I took them, one at a time, into the bedroom and searched them for wires. Then they ordered the most expensive stuff on the room-service menu. They talked about their careers, and both said they felt they were either too small or not good enough to make the pros.

  "They knew who I was and why I was there. They knew I was the one with the connections to get the bets down, and they kept asking me to make sure to get bets down for them in addition to the twenty-five hundred we promised them for every game. They talked about shaving points and betting lines and the odds so casually I had the feeling they had been doing this stuff since high school.