Free Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi

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 bums 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 throwaway 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