Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family Read Free

is he?’ Paulie said. ‘He’s a cousin. He’s blood. ’ From then on even the mummies smiled.

    “I was learning things and I was making money. When I’d clean out Paulie’s boat I’d not only get paid but I’d also get to spend the rest of the day fishing. All I had to do was keep Paulie and the rest of the guys aboard supplied with cold beer and wine. Paulie had the only boat in Sheepshead Bay without a name. Paulie never had his name on anything. He never even had his name on a doorbell. He never had a telephone. He hated phones. Whenever he was arrested he always gave his mother’s Hemlock Street address. He had boats his whole life and he never named one of them. He always told me, ‘Never put your name on anything!’ I never did.

    “I got to know what Paul wanted even before he did. I knew how to be there and how to disappear. It was just inside me. Nobody taught me anything. Nobody ever said, ‘Do this,’ ‘Don’t do that. ’ I just knew. Even at twelve I knew. After a couple of months, I remember, Paul was in the cabstand and some guys from out of the neighborhood came for a talk. I got up to walk away. I didn’t have to be told. There were other guys hanging around too, and we all got up to leave. But just then Paulie looks up. He sees that I’m leaving. ‘It’s okay,’ he says, smiling at me, ‘you can stay. ’ The other guys kept walking. I could see that they were afraid to even look around, but I stayed. I stayed for the next twenty-five years. ”

    When Henry started working at the cabstand, Paul Vario ruled over Brownsville-East New York like an urban rajah. Vario controlled almost all of the illegal gambling, loan-sharking, labor rackets, and extortion games in the area. As a ranking member of the Lucchese crime family Vario had the responsibility for maintaining order among some of the city’s most disorderly men. He assuaged grievances, defused ancient vendettas, and settled disputes between the stubborn and the pigheaded. Using his four brothers as his emissaries and partners, Vario secretly controlled several legitimate businesses in the area, including the cabstand. He owned the Presto Pizzeria, a cavernous restaurant and pizza stand on Pitkin Avenue, around the corner from the cabstand. There Henry first learned to cook; there he learned how to tot up a comptroller’s ribbon for the Vario policy bank that used the pizzeria’s basement as its accounting room. Vario also owned the Fountainbleu Florist, on Fulton Street, about six blocks from the cabstand. There Henry learned to twist wires onto the flowers of elaborate funeral wreaths ordered for departed members of the city’s unions.

    Vario’s older brother, Lenny, was a construction union official and ex-bootlegger who had the distinction of once having been arrested with Lucky Luciano. Lenny, who was partial to wraparound sunglasses and highly buffed nails, was Paul’s liaison to local building contractors and construction company managers, all of whom paid tribute in either cash or no-show jobs to guarantee that their building sites would remain free of both strikes and fires. Paul Vario was the next oldest. Tommy Vario, who was the third oldest in the family, was also a union delegate for construction workers and had a record of several arrests for running illegal gambling operations. Tommy oversaw Vario’s bookmaking and loansharking operations at dozens of construction sites. The next in order, Vito Vario, also known as “Tuddy,” ran the cabstand where Henry first went to work. It was Tuddy Vario who hired Henry the day the youngster walked into the cabstand. Salvatore “Babe” Vario, the youngest of the brothers, ran the floating card and dice games in apartments, school basements, and the backs of garages every night and twice a day on weekends. Babe was also in charge of accommodating, or paying off, the local cops to guarantee peaceful games.

    All the Vario brothers were married and lived in the