The Good Rat Read Free Page A

to Butner for my cancer operation, and I went back to Allenwood, and then I went to Gilmer, West Virginia.
Q: Mr. Kaplan, do you know how many criminal convictions you have total?
A: Five.
Q: How many times have you gone to trial?
A: Twice.
Q: So you have pled guilty three times?
A: I pled guilty, including this case, three times.
Q: Okay. In your trial cases, were you guilty of what the government said you did?
A: Yes.
Q: Were you guilty of the things you pled guilty to?
A: Yes.
Q: Why did you go to trial?
A: I felt that I had the right to make the government prove I was guilty.
Q: Did you ever commit a crime in prison?
A: Yes. I was involved in an assault on an inmate who assaulted me and he was assaulting other people, and I paid a Mexican a thousand dollars to have him assaulted.
Q: How did you get the thousand dollars to the Mexican?
A: I asked one of my friends to send it to him.
Q: How badly hurt was this fellow after he was assaulted?
A: He was assaulted pretty bad. That’s part of what prison life is all about.
    At this time we point out that Kaplan required no help from mobsters in any of his business ventures, legal or not. He made millions selling marijuana, for example, and virtually nothing went to gangsters. He was a big earner for the Lucchese Mafia family in many businesses, though, and everybody was afraid of bothering him. Some associatesbelieved he could have them killed. Mafia danger is the illusion of Mafia danger. Also, the mob families couldn’t move in on him because they didn’t know how to do what he was doing. He was in crime as a business, not an underworld dodge played on street corners and alleys. Gangsters can’t do what he did because it requires effort and thought. Kaplan ran legal garment businesses that made great money and let implied threats do the heavy lifting. Gangsters can manage private sanitation pickups or union organizing with violence, but Burt’s schemes required actual work.
Q: What got you into the garment business?
A: A friend of mine came home from prison, and he needed clothes, and I took him to flea markets and stores. In one place the people who owned the business were friends, and the guy had some leisure suits, and he asked me what I thought they were worth. And I asked him if he wanted a price for swag, which is stolen, or legitimate. He said swag. And I said twenty dollars. He said to me, How would you like to buy these legitimate for twelve dollars? I said, I would love to buy a lot of them, and I said, Could I borrow one for a few hours? And he said yes. And I took the fellow that came home from prison, and we drove up to Connecticut, and I showed them to a discount store that I knew up there, and I said, How would you like to buy a lot of them for eighteen dollars or seventeen dollars? And he said, I’d like to buy a lot. I said, The guy has three thousand. He said, I’ll buy themall. And I went back to Brooklyn and saw the guy, and I told him the guy wants to buy the three thousand suits, and he said to me, If I bring the three thousand suits into my warehouse and the guy don’t take them, there won’t be no room for my customers to shop.
    So I said, Why don’t you call him directly? And I put him on the phone with the guy in Connecticut, and the guy said he would buy them, and they made an arrangement to ship them up on Saturday by truck. We would bring them up to the guy.
    And Friday night I got a call at my house about two thirty in the morning from the guy who owns the store, and he said he can’t make the delivery tomorrow. I said, You gotta be kidding me, you’re going to destroy my friend’s business. He says, I can’t help it, my roof caved in from the snow.
    And I went back, and at five o’clock the next morning we were supposed to meet the guy who owned the business, and we went there, and I told him the bad news, and he got all excited, and I said, You know, maybe I can take a thousand of the suits.
    The kid went with me. We went to New