Hill Henry - Wiseguy: The 25th Anniversary Edition

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Books by Nicholas Pileggi

Casino
Wiseguy
Blye, Private Eye

Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1985 by Pileggi Literary Properties, Inc.

Introduction copyright 2011 by Martin Scorsese

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

This Simon & Schuster hardcover edition September 2011

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Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-4221-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-4278-0 (ebook)

For Nora

T he first time I read Wiseguy, I was astonished. It was everything Id hoped for and then some.

Some of the greatest actors I ever knew were people from my old neighborhood, the guys who could keep you absolutely riveted when they told you a storytheir story. Nick Pileggi knew the world of Italian-American culture inside out, and he understood that storytelling was fundamental, from the people who succeeded and assimilated to the ones who were stuck in the middle, the ones who tried to be decent but somehow couldnt. Nick knew every side of this bygone world, and he never judged anyone for what they said or did. And he knew that if the story was really going to be told, he had to find exactly the right person to tell it.

In Henry Hill, Nick found someone with access to every level of the life, who knew it on a daily, minute-by-minute basis, who was ready and willing to tell his story as an act of survival. Nick had grown bored with, as he puts it, the egomaniacal ravings of illiterate hoods masquerading as benevolent Godfathers. Henry was an insider and something of an outsider at the same time, and he wanted, even needed to remember everything down to the smallest detail.

Of course, when I read the book that first time, I found it hard to put it down. I found myself making notes, visualizing movements, cuts, passages of music. I realized: I had to make this movie. For me it was an evolution, in a direct line with what Id tried to do in Mean Streets. Only here, there was no central character per se, no equivalent to Charliethe lifestyle was so big and so compelling that there was no need for a main character, just someone to guide us along. I saw the possibility of making the lifestyle itself the main character.

When I called Nick, I asked him to write the script with me, for what would eventually become Goodfellas. I think he was a little surprised, but excited. I wanted to stay as close to the facts as we could. There was a natural rise and fall narrative there, but that wasnt what made it special. It was the places, the restaurants and bars, the food they ate; the clothes, the sense of style; the gestures, the body language, the way of being with one another; the ease with which they committed murder. On the one hand, an immersion in detail that was sensual and documentary at the same time; on the other hand, a forward propulsion that moved with their energy and exhilaration, and then with their paranoia and stone-cold fear. We had a great time putting it together. Nick is one of the greatest collaborators anyone could ever hope forpatient, hard-working, detail-oriented, and absolutely concentrated on the work.

I often think back to that first reading of Wiseguy and the sense of excitement I felt. Nick and I have been good friends for years now, weve made a second movie together and, fingers crossed, well get to make a few more. But I need him to know just how special our collaboration has been to me.

It all started with this book, which youre about to read. If its your first time, set aside a few hours. Because you wont be able to put it down.

Martin Scorsese

March 2011

I want to acknowledge the contributions made to this book by U.S. Attorney Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York; Asst. U.S. Attorney Edward McDonald, who headed the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force; and Thomas P. Puccio, his predecessor. I would also like to thank Special Attorneys of the Organized Crime Strike Force Jerry D. Bernstein, Laura Ward, Douglas Behm, Douglas Grover, Michael Guadagno, and Laura Brevetti, as well as Brooklyn homicide prosecutor John Fairbanks and detectives and agents Doug LeVien, Mario Sessa, Thomas Sweeney, Steve Carbone, Joel Cohen, Edmundo Guevera, Arthur Donelan, James Kapp, Daniel Mann, Jack Walsh, Alfie McNeil, Ben Panzarella, Steve DelCorso, and John Wales.

WISE GUY

O n Tuesday, May 22, 1980, a man named Henry Hill did what seemed to him the only sensible thing to do: he decided to cease to exist. He was in the Nassau County jail, facing a life sentence in a massive narcotics conspiracy. The federal prosecutors were asking him about his role in the $6 million Lufthansa German Airlines robbery, the largest successful cash robbery in American history. The New York City police were in line behind the feds to ask him about the ten murders that followed the Lufthansa heist. The Justice Department wanted to talk to him about his connection with a murder that also involved Michele Sindona, the convicted Italian financier. The Organized Crime Strike Force wanted to know about the Boston College basketball players he had bribed in a point-shaving scheme. Treasury agents were looking for the crates of automatic weapons and Claymore mines he had had stolen from a Connecticut armory. The Brooklyn district attorneys office wanted information about a body they had found in a refrigeration truck which was frozen so stiff it needed two days to thaw before the medical examiner could perform an autopsy.

When Henry Hill had been arrested only three weeks earlier, it hadnt been big news. There were no front-page stories in the newspapers and no segments on the evening news. His arrest was just another of dozens of the slightly exaggerated multimillion-dollar drug busts that police make annually in their search for paragraphs of praise. But the arrest of Henry Hill was a prize beyond measure. Hill had grown up in the mob. He was only a mechanic, but he knew everything. He knew how it worked. He knew who oiled the machinery. He knew, literally, where the bodies were buried. If he talked, the police knew that Henry Hill could give them the key to dozens of indictments and convictions. And even if he didnt talk, Henry Hill knew that his own friends would kill him just as they had killed nearly everyone who had been involved in the Lufthansa robbery. In jail Henry heard the news: his own protector, Paul Vario, the seventy-year-old mob chief in whose house Henry had been raised from childhood, was through with him; and James Jimmy the Gent Burke, Henrys closest friend, his confidant and partner, the man he had been scheming and hustling with since he was thirteen years old, was planning to murder him.