Free The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin

on Thirteenth Avenue. It was a club operated by a gentleman by the name of Swaggy—he was a made member, I believe, of the Genovese crime family—and I walked into the club, and he was there with Victor Amuso, and I said, Gas, do you know who shot you? And he got very indignant. He says, No, and you don’t either. I said, Well, it was Jimmy Hydell. He says, You’re crazy, it couldn’t have been Jimmy Hydell. I just got him a job with the unions, and we made friends, and we have been close for the last year. I said, Here, and I handed him the envelope. I said, See for yourself.
Q: Did the envelope you handed him have the photograph of Jimmy Hydell in it?
A: Yes. I left him with the package, because I was on parole, and I left, and it was a couple of days later when I seen him again.
Q: What did Casso ask you?
A: What do I owe them for this? I told him the story that they wouldn’t take no money because someone tried to hurt him, and he shook his head, he said, Boy, that’s really nice of them. They must be pretty good guys.

CHAPTER 8
    I have good reason to remember the period in Brooklyn in the 1960s when the family named for Joe Profaci, the old-time Mafia boss, was getting shot up from within by an insurgency group, the Gallo brothers. There were three of them—Larry, Joe, and Albert. They came out of 51 President Street, only yards up from the Brooklyn waterfront.
    As the newspapers called her, “Big Mama,” the grandmother of the Gallos, also lived there. She would spit at a forest fire. When her grandsons decided to campaign against the incumbent, Joseph Profaci, she sat at the kitchen table and counseled them. Grandson Joey would call newspapers and complain if they did not run his nickname, “Crazy Joe.” He kept a young lion in the basement. Joey would bring people who owed loan-shark payments to the door to hear the animal roar. The night waiters at the Luna Restaurant on Mulberry Street knew every hair on the lion’s mane. This was because Joey walked in one night with the wild beast panting at the end of a chain. A man sat alone at a table while his woman companion was in the ladies’ room. Joey and the lion strolled over, and the animal’s bloodred eyes glared at the guy, who scrambled and fled the premises. Joey Gallo and the lion were gone from the restaurantby the time the woman returned to her seat. When she asked about her companion, the waiter said, “I guess he just ran out on the check.” The woman swore, paid, and went home alone.
    Joe Gallo did several hard years at Attica. Big Mama remained at the kitchen table. One look at her told you that you were in the presence of greatness. She had gray hair pulled back. Her eyes were somber, then twinkling, and always in command. With grandson Joey in prison, there was little money in the house. With a sigh, she told of one of the crowd who lost his way coming home from a much-needed bank robbery. He was returning to President Street with the money in the backseat of the car in canvas bank bags. The guy saw a hot-dog cart on the curb on the other side of the street, and he pulled over illegally and was eating a hot dog and sauerkraut when a cop came up and admonished him and began writing a ticket. The officer’s gaze fell on the bank bags in the back.
    “What are these?” he said.
    The guy half choked. “They let me have them.”
    “Yeah, well, just don’t move,” the cop said, his gun now out.
    In her kitchen, recounting this, Big Mama said, “I told him, You got to do two things. First, you got to rob the bank. Then you got to get away. He forgot.”
    She sighed again. She then mentioned that the police had been around earlier looking for her grandson Larry.
    “Why do you want him?” she asked the detectives.
    “We just want to talk to him. Somebody was shot.”
    “Who was shot?”
    “Anthony Abbatemarco was shot.”
    Big Mama nodded. “This-a Abby. Is he dead?”
    “No. Hurt.”
    “Oh.”
    The cops left. Later, when Larry came