"You've got to understand, we grew up near the airport. We had friends, relatives, everybody we knew worked at the airport. To us, and especially to guys like Jimmy, the airport was better than Citibank. Whenever Jimmy needed money he went to the airport. We always knew what was coming in and what was being shipped out. It was like the neighborhood department store. Between boosting cargo and hijacking trucks, Kennedy Airport was an even bigger money-maker than numbers. We had people working for the airlines, people with the Port Authority, we had clean-up crews and maintenance workers, security guards, the waiters and waitresses at the restaurants, and the drivers and dispatchers working for the air-cargo trucking companies. We owned the place.
"Sometimes a trucking company boss or some foreman would get suspicious that one of their employees was tipping us off and try to fire them. If that happened, we'd talk to Paulie, who would talk to Johnny Dio, who ran the unions, and the guy would always keep his job. The union would make a grievance out of it. They'd threaten a walkout. They'd threaten to close the trucker down. Pretty soon the truckers got the message and let the insurance companies pay."
In 1966, at the age of twenty-three, Henry Hill went on his first hijacking. It was not a true hijacking in that the trucks were parked in a garage rather than traveling along the road when they were robbed, but it was a first-class grade-B felony nevertheless. Jimmy Burke invited Henry along on the heist. Jimmy had found out about three cargo trucks filled with home appliances that were being stored over the weekend in one of the freight garages just outside the airport. He also had a buyer, a friend of Tuddy Vario's, who was going to pay five thousand dollars per truck.
As always, Jimmy had great inside information. The garage had very little security, and on Friday nights there was only one elderly watchman on duty. His job was mostly to prevent vandalism by youngsters. On the night of the robbery Henry had no difficulty getting the watchman to open the gate. He simply told the man that he had left his paycheck in one of the trucks. The moment the gate swung open, Henry poked his finger in the man's back. He then tied the watchman to a chair in a nearby shack. Jimmy knew exactly where the keys were kept and the trucks parked. Within minutes Henry, Jimmy, and Tommy DeSimone were driving the trucks through the industrial roads of Canarsie on their way to Flatlands Avenue, where Tuddy and the fence were waiting. It was simple and sweet. It was the easiest five grand Henry had ever earned. Within an hour he and Jimmy and Tommy were on their way to Vegas for the weekend. Earlier that day Jimmy had made reservations for the three of them in phony names.
"Most of the loads hijacked were sold before they were even robbed. They were hijacks to order. We knew what we wanted and we knew where it was going before the job was done. We used to get two or three jobs a week. Sometimes we'd get two a day if we wanted money bad. We'd get up in the morning and go to Robert's, a bar that Jimmy used to own on Lefferts Boulevard, in South Ozone Park. Robert's was perfect. There were three card tables, a casino craps table, and enough bookmakers and loan sharks to cover all the action in town. There were barmaids who drank Sambuca in the morning. There was 'Stacks' Edwards, a black credit-card booster who wanted to join the 'May-fia.' He played a blues guitar on weekends. It was a hangout for truck drivers, freight handlers, cargo dispatchers, and backfield airport workers who loved the action and could drop their Friday paycheck before Saturday morning. But a tip on good cargo loads could make up for a lot of paychecks and buy back a lot of IOUs. Robert's was also convenient. It was next to the Van Wyck Expressway and just minutes from the Kennedy cargo area, Aqueduct Race Track, Paulie Vario's new office in a trailer on Flatlands Avenue at the Bargain Auto Junkyard, and the Queens County courts, where we got our postponements.
"The customers were often legitimate retailers looking for swag. There was also a whole army of fences, who bought our loads and then sold pieces of the loads to guys who had stores or sold the swag off the backs of their trucks or at factory gates or to a whole list of customers who usually retailed the swag themselves to their relatives or to the people they worked with. We were a major industry.
"Lots of our jobs were called 'give-ups'—as opposed to stickups—which meant the driver was in on it with us. For instance, you own the driver who leaves the airport with a $200,000 load of silk. An average score, but nice. Somewhere along the road he stops for coffee and accidentally leaves the keys in the ignition. When he finishes his coffee he discovers that the truck is gone, and he immediately reports the robbery to the police. The 'give-up' guys were the ones we always had to get Johnny Dio to protect when their bosses tried to fire them.
"The guys with the guns who did the actual hijackings usually got a fixed rate. They'd get a couple of grand just for sticking a gun in the driver's face, whether it was a good score or lousy, whether the truck was full or empty. They were like hired guys. They didn't share in the loot. In fact, even Jimmy, who hired most of the guys who did the stickups, didn't share in the ultimate sale of the loot. We would usually sell pieces of the load to different buyers, wholesalers and distributors and discount-store owners, who knew the market and had the outlets where they could get near a retail price.
"On an average hijacking we'd know the truck number, what it was carrying, who was driving it, where it was going, and how to circumvent the security devices, like triple lock alarms and sirens. We usually tailed the driver until he stopped for a light. We'd make sure that he wasn't being followed by backup security. We used two cars, one in front and one behind. At the light one of the guys—usually Tommy, Joey Allegro, or Stanley Diamond—would stick a gun in the driver's face and put him in the car while other guys drove the truck to the drop. Tommy always carried his gun in a brown paper bag. Walking down the street, he looked like he was bringing you a sandwich instead of a thirty-eight.
"The first thing Jimmy would do with the driver was to take his driver's license or pretend to copy his name and address. He'd make a big thing about how we knew where he lived and how we'd get him if he was too helpful in identifying us to the cops. Then, after scaring the shit out of the guy, he'd smile, tell him to relax, and then slip the fifty-dollar bill into the guy's wallet. There was never one driver who made it to court to testify against him. There are quite a few dead ones who tried.
"An average hijacking, including unloading the truck, usually took a few hours. Jimmy always had the unloading drop lined up hi advance. It was usually in a legitimate warehouse or trucking company. The guy in charge of the warehouse could pretend afterward he didn't know what was going on. Jimmy would just come hi with some stuff to unload. He paid the warehouse operators fifteen hundred dollars a drop, and sometimes We had to store the stuff there overnight. Some warehouse owners were getting five grand a week from us. That's a lot of money. We had our unloaders, who got about a hundred a day. They were local guys we knew and trusted and they worked like dogs. When the truck was empty we'd abandon it and tell the guy babysitting the driver to let him go. The drivers were usually dropped off somewhere along the Connecticut Turnpike.
"I got into hijacking because I had the customers looking for the merchandise. I was a good salesman. Early on, Jimmy told me that I should start using some of the same people who were buying my cigarettes to buy some of the swag. But I was already looking out for big buyers. I had a drugstore wholesaler who had discount stores all over Long Island. He'd take almost everything I had. Razor blades. Perfume. Cosmetics. I had a guy in the Schick razor blade factory in Connecticut who smuggled cartons of blades out for me to resell at twenty percent below the wholesale price. When that was going well, I'd make between seven hundred and a grand a week just on blades. I had a furrier who would buy truckloads of pelts top dollar. Mink. Beaver. Fox. I had Vinnie Romano, who was a union boss down at the Fulton Fish Market, who would buy all the frozen shrimp and lobster I could supply, and we could always supply the bars and restaurants with hijacked liquor at better than half the price.