Free GoodFellas by Nicholas Pileggi

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.
    â€˜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 wasdoing 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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