Jimmy Breslin - The Good Rat: A True Story

What Im doing, Im kissing the mirror, and Im doing

He cannot believe that he is doing this, that he

I can barely handle legitimate people. They all proclaim immaculate

Even before Burt Kaplan takes the stand, the trial has

Without Burt Kaplan they couldnt convict the cops for illegal

There had been so many years when it was so

I keep hearing people talk about the end of the

Even his friend Burt Kaplan described Anthony Casso as a

I have good reason to remember the period in Brooklyn

The figure of $35,000 mentioned here was what Casso and

Eppolito, big, brazen, and brawling, and Caracappa, slender, stealthy, silent-each

In 2004, two years before Burt Kaplan took over this

Had you caught snatches of their shoptalk, you would have

The horse came into the bar after work and had

It is tempting to see the cops as the evil

She didnt know who he was, and therefore we cannot

In my years in the newspaper business, the Mafia comes

In court, Burt Kaplan says to the prosecutor, I could

This development came in the early nineties, after Burt Kaplan

On a day in June 2005, Sammy the Bull Gravano

Liz Hydell, Jimmys sister, found out during the trial that

Later, I am in another courtroom in Manhattan, one with

As I told Steve Caracappa the night I left to

FEDERAL COURT JUDGE JACK B. WEINSTEIN, a master of his trade.

BURTON KAPLAN , the witness. Read and remember him.

LOU EPPOLITO, one of the cops Kaplan happened to mention.

STEPHEN CARACAPPA, also drew some discussion.

ANTHONY GASPIPE CASSO, described as a homicidal maniac. Beyond that, he has a bad reputation.

MITRA HORMOZI, ROBERT HENOCH, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

BRUCE CUTLER, EDWARD HAYES, BETTINA SCHEIN, defense attorneys.

JUDGE DEBORAH KAPLAN, Burts daughter. A New York State Supreme Court judge.

THE INCARCERATED

They are proof that the Mafia is law-abiding. They always go to prison.

JOE MASSINO

GEORGE ZAPPOLA

CHRISTY TICK FURNARI

TONY CAF

PETER GOTTI

SAMMY GRAVANO

THE DECEASED

ANNETTE DIBIASE

ISRAEL GREENWALD

JOHN OTTO HEIDEL

JAMES BISHOP

MIKE SALERNO

EDDIE LINO

GOOD NICKY GUIDO

JAMES HYDELL

JAMES HYDELLS DOG

JOEY GALLO

JOEY GALLOS LION

LARRY GALLO

BIG MAMA GALLO

PAUL CASTELLANO

JOHN GOTTI

FRANK SANTORA

ANTHONY DILAPI

BRUNO FACCIOLA

JIMMY THE CLAM EPPOLITO

JIM-JIM, HIS SON

ALIVE AND FREE AS OF THIS WRITING

SAL REALE

BAD NICKY GUIDO

What Im doing, Im kissing the mirror, and Im doing it so I can see myself kissing and get it exactly right, no tongue and no fucking slop. This way I can go into the clubhouse and kiss them on the cheeks the way Im supposed to. Thats the Mafia. We kiss hello. We dont shake hands. We kiss.

I am at the mirror because Im afraid of lousing up on kissing. When you kiss a guy and he gives you a kiss back, you make sure that your kissing comes across as Mafia, not faggot. Thats why Im practicing in front of the mirror.

This is real Mafia. For years cops and newspaper reporters glorified the swearing-in ceremony with the needle and the holy picture in flames and the old guy asking the new guy questions, like they all knew so much. The whole thing added up to zero. The kissing is different. It comes from strength and meaning. If you kiss, it is a real sign that youre in the outfit. You see a man at the bar, you kiss him. You meet people anyplace, you kiss them. Like a man. It doesnt matter who sees you. Theyre supposed to see.

It all started when John Sonny Franzese and Joey Brancato, both big guys in the Colombo outfit, bumped into each other one day on the corner of Lorimer Street and Metropolitan Avenue in Greenpoint, which is in Brooklyn, and they kissed each other on the cheeks. The only thing anybody on Metropolitan Avenue knew was that they had never seen it done before. The moment the men kissed, it became a street rule. This was at least fifty years ago. Immediately they were doing it on 101st Avenue in Ozone Park and Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach. Soon even legitimate citizens were doing it.

Sonny Franzese was born in Italy, brought here by his family when he was two. The family settled on Lorimer Street, which is made of two-story frame houses, home built, and a bakery and restaurant. At a young age, Sonny failed to behave. In school he also fell short. Even in the army for a brief time, he received a poor report card. He sparkled on local police reports and his name got stars on FBI sheets.

The feds soon realized all they had to do was follow guys who kiss each other and theyd know the whole Mafia. Still nobody stopped.

Some guys said that Sonny Franzese had nothing to do with it. Italian men always kiss, they claimed. But my friend AnthonyTony Cafwho is the boss of Metropolitan Avenue, says that when Sonny Franzese and Joey Brancato kissed it was the start of a great way for tough guys to know each other. Its like a password, only its more personal.

The only thing anybody can agree on is the clout the old Black Hand had for a while. It came from the smallest villages in Sicily, where people in need of a favor or a goat went to the village priest for help. They would kiss his hand. Over the centuries Sicily was raided and raped by many other countries. They raided and raped and afterward went into blacksmith shops and stuck their hands into cans of black paint, then slapped the walls outside to frighten anybody who passed. The Sicilians soon took over and began sending extortion notes decorated with black hands and demands for money from the immigrants crowding into downtown New York. Pay or Die. Many paid.

The thing worked for a long time. Maybe we are talking about 1960, when I was in the village of Lercara Friddi, in the hills outside of Palermo, on a day of frigid rain. I was in the vestibule of the local church, large and leaky and falling down. I asked a man for the name of the church and he said, Church? This is a cathedral.

Outside in the narrow alley was a cow. The street of low stone houses ended at a field where narrow-gauge rail tracks led into a deserted sulfur mine. Kids in short pants and bare legs huddled in doorways and played cards.

The next morning, on the way to the airport, I found an Italian-English dictionary that I used to buy a stamp pad. I got a handful of postcards and stood off to the side of the ticket counter and smacked my hand on the ink pad and then on one of the postcards. I did this several times. The ticket clerk, pretty and bright as you want, walked over frowning.

I need you, I said. I want to write a thing in Italian.

What?

Put down Pay or Die in Italian.

She sighed. Do you really want such silliness?

I told her sure, thats what I want, and she made a face and told me again how silly it was. Then she told me to put down Paghi o Mori.

She said, That is the Sicilian.

I took those cards and put stamps on them and mailed them to several people I knew back home in New York. The postcards fell on Queens in an attack so sudden and surprising that peoples legs gave out as they read. Dr. Philip Lambert, a dentist who ran a fixed dice game in his waiting room on Jamaica Avenue, was shaking as he showed the card to the veteran cheat Nicky the Snake.

Look at this, the Snake said, its from Palermo. Doc, its real. What did you do to them? Nobody here is heavy enough to make them go away.