He was recommending a little Mafia IRA, back in 1977.

8

LEFTY

Like most wiseguys, Lefty Guns Ruggiero still lived in the same neighborhood where he was born and raised.

He lived in a big old apartment complex called Knickerbocker Village on Monroe Street, a few blocks south of Little Italy. A lot of wiseguys lived in there, including Tony Mirra. Lefty invited me up there often.

Lefty’s apartment was a small one-bedroom on the eighth floor, overlooking the interior courtyard of the complex. He loved tropical fish and had several tanks of them. He had a big color TV and a VCR, and a cable connection into which he had tapped illegally, like all the wiseguys, so it was free.

He didn’t have air-conditioning. Lefty hated air-conditioning. On the hottest, most humid days, he wouldn’t let me turn it on even in the car. He chain-smoked English Ovals, which made the air everywhere he was worse—especially for a nonsmoker like me.

He was a great cook, any kind of food. I would go over there to eat a couple of times a week.

Lefty had been divorced for a long time. His girlfriend, Louise, was a nice girl from the neighborhood. I got along good with Louise. She put up with a lot. Lefty had no sensitivity and sometimes treated her badly, just like he treated everybody else. But at the same time he was protective of her and quite faithful. She had a full-time job as a secretary.

When Louise’s mother died, she asked me to come to the wake. I didn’t know her mother, but I was complimented to think that Louise liked me well enough to include me. I remember it was raining like hell when I went to the wake. It was dreary and sad, and put me in a strange mood, sharing this kind of time with somebody who thinks you’re somebody else.

You develop feelings for people, even in this job. It’s easy to accept deceiving the badguys, because that’s the game. Knowing that for five or six years you’re deceiving others in their world who are not badguys, who don’t know what’s going on, who just happened to be born to or married to badguys, that’s tougher on your mind. Some of those people develop feelings for you too. While you are allowing this to happen, you know that in the end, they are going to be hurt by what you are doing. And they don’t even know who you really are.

Lefty had had four grown kids. I got quite close to Lefty’s kids, really became a friend to them. They would come to me with their problems. His youngest daughter, in her mid-twenties, lived with his ex-wife in the building and worked at a hospital. She was a hard worker. Every year she had a booth at the Feast of San Gennaro, where she sold soft drinks and fruits. His son, Tommy, who was about twenty-eight, also lived in the building. He was a thief and had done some work for the family. Basically he was a free-lancer. But he also had problems with heroin. He was an on-and-off junkie.

Lefty was continually asking me to talk to Tommy, get him straightened out. He wanted me to help keep him off drugs and to get him to settle down to work. Sometimes Tommy and I would be in Lefty’s club in the early afternoon watching our favorite soap operas, like All My Children. Lefty would come in and see that and throw a fit. “Turn off them fucking soap boxes!” he would bark. “You should be out stealing and looking for business. Come on, Donnie, get Tommy busy out on the street.”

Two of Lefty’s daughters were married to wiseguys. One had the misfortune to be married to Marco.

I met Marco at the Bus Stop Luncheonette, Mirra’s place. Besides being a jewel thief, Marco was supposed to be an expert safe-and-lock man. He was also a drug dealer and a loudmouth. Other than a few conversations about jewels, I never had much to do with Marco. He lived a flashy life, vacationed in Florida where he had a big boat. He boasted that he could move all the dope that anybody could provide him with.

When I met Marco, he was worried about his partner, Billy Paradise. “Billy has turned stoolie,” Marco said. “Billy could put me away twenty-two times if he ratted me out about the jobs we pulled.”

Lefty was also worried about Billy Paradise. “We gotta think about having that guy whacked,” he said.

“I’d like to take him on my boat and throw him to the fishes. I ever tell you that story, Donnie, about the guy that thought I was gonna whack him on my boat?”

“No.”

“One day I asked this guy to come out with me in my boat, you know, in the East River, my speedboat. He came along, but he kept watching me, wouldn’t turn his back to me. Finally I asked him what the hell was the matter. He said he was afraid that I thought maybe he had turned stoolie and I was gonna shoot him and throw him overboard. I said, ‘You dumb bastard. If I wanted you whacked, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing you out in my boat. I would have hit you downstairs at the club while you were playing cards and rolled you up in a rug and dumped you in the river right at South Street. That’s what we do with stoolies,’ I told him.”

He was looking at me. I didn’t know if he was just telling me a story, or if he was giving me a message about what happens to informants.

“Well, I hope this guy Paradise don’t rat anybody out,” I said.

One day Marco just disappeared. The word was he got into skimming drug profits that were supposed to go to the organization. He was never found. Word on the street was that the contract had gone to Lefty, to whack his own son-in-law. But Lefty never said anything about it.

Louise knew what kind of business Lefty was in, that he came and went when he wanted to, like all the wiseguys do. They seemed to have a comfortable relationship. Lefty talked openly in front of her, but without swearing. That’s a thing about wiseguys. You can go out and kill somebody, but don’t swear in front of a female. And if a female swears, she’s a puttana—a whore. “If Louise said ‘fuck,’ I’d throw her out the window,” he said.

In September they decided to get married. Lefty asked me to be best man. The wedding was at City Hall. They were all dressed up. Lefty was so nervous that he forgot to pick up the license. The ceremony was at five P.M., and the license bureau was closed. The judge got his clerk to go down and get the license.

I gave them $200 as a wedding gift. We went to CaSa Bella to celebrate. Maybe ten people. Mike came over and sat down with us to have a drink. Then we went uptown to Château Madrid, Lefty’s favorite place, where we saw a floor show with flamenco dancing.

“You ever do a hit on anybody, Donnie?” Lefty asked.

“I never had a contract, if that’s what you mean. I killed a couple guys. One guy in a fight, another guy that fucked me out of a score and we got into a beef.”

“That ain’t a hit.”

“If you kill somebody, you kill somebody, what’s the difference?”

“No, Donnie, you don’t understand. It ain’t that simple. That’s why I gotta school you. Hitting a guy on a contract is a lot different than whacking a guy over a beef. On a beef, you got a rage about the guy. But on a contract you might have no feelings one way or another about the guy, it might not even concern you why the guy’s getting hit. You got to be able to do it just like a professional job, with no emotion at all. You think you could do that?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Lot of guys think it’s easy, then they freeze up and can’t do it. Next time I get a contract, I’ll take you with me, show you how to do it. Generally you use a .22. A .22 doesn’t make a clean hole like some bigger calibers. Just right behind the ear. A .22 ricochets around your skull, tears everything up. Next contract I get, I’ll take you along.”