Gregg Hill - On the Run: A Mafia Childhood

Copyright 2004 by Gregg Hill and Gina Hill
All rights reserved.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

First eBook Edition: September 2004

ISBN: 978-0-446-53471-0

E2-20220614-PDJ-PC-AMZ

For our mother, our grandparents,
Aunt Cheryl, and Aunt Ellen,
who sacrificed to make
our lives better.

Were grateful to a number of people for their contributions to this book. Jerry Kalajian, our agent, encouraged us to tell our story and, together with Joel Gotler and Keith Fleer, he skillfully guided us. Rick Horgan, our editor, was a constant source of inspiration with his insights and his passion. Sean Flynn, an immensely talented writer, was invaluable. And retired FBI agent Ed Gueverra, retired U.S. marshal Alfie McNeil, and retired assistant U.S. attorney Edward McDonald helped us keep this book accurate.

This is a true story told mostly through our own recollections but also supported with interviews and official records. All of the dialogue is real, as are the names of our fathers Mafia associates, the prosecutors, the people connected to the Boston College point-shaving scandal, and the federal agents we dealt with. Most of the other names and a few minor identifying details, however, have been changed to protect the privacy of those people who were only tangentially involved in our fathers activities and our life on the run.

I always thought the worst thing that could happen to my father was that he would go back to prison or get killed. Its not that I wanted either to happen; its just that I expected it would be one or the other. By the time of my bar mitzvah, my father had spent more than one-third of my life locked up, and his friendsmy familys friends, people I knewwere disappearing by the week. The way things were going, I wouldnt have been at all surprised if he had ended up gone too, one way or the other. But as bad as his options appearedprison or deathat least those would have been things that happened to him. Not to me, not to my sister, not to my mother. To him.

My father was a criminal. I dont think I ever consciously thought of him with that precise termcriminalbut I knew he wasnt legitimate, that he wasnt like other fathers who went to work every day and paid their bills and showed up at their kids track meets. My mother used to say he was a wangler, that hed wangle this or wangle that or wangle his way out of some jam or another. I still cringe when I hear that word. Wangle.

In the spring of 1980, when I was thirteen years old and my sister, Gina, was eleven, my fathers wangling consisted mainly of selling large quantities of drugs. Cocaine and marijuana, mostly, but also some heroin and all sorts of pills. It wasnt something my father talked to me about, but it wasnt a secret either. Im sure my parents would like to believe that they sheltered Gina and me from the worst of it, but it was hard to miss the Hefty bags full of marijuana in the living room and the bricks of cocaine wrapped in foil on the coffee table. My father was a wreck, too, snorting three or four grams of coke every day and swallowing a dozen quaaludes to even it out. Plus, there were always people in the house getting high. My father would put Billy Joels Piano Man on the stereo, light a bunch of candles, and drag out the oversized mirror from my closet or take the Miss Piggy mirror off my sisters wall to do lines. Some of his idiot friends would even offer me a snort. I guess they were trying to be polite, as if they were honoring some kind of drug etiquette, but they only made things worse: Its harder to ignore the drugs in the living room if your fathers cokehead friends keep asking you to join the party. You know that feeling of being the only sober person in a room full of drunks? That was my life at thirteen. It took me years to get over the smell of candles. I still hate Billy Joel.

The drugs werent much of a secret outside the house either. In the early spring of 1980, narcotics detectives in Nassau County, on Long Island, kept my father under surveillance for almost two months. They tapped the phones, they photographed all the people coming and goingincluding my friendsand they picked through the garbage, pulling out scraps of paper with notations of the flights that my dads main courier, Amy Mulry, would take back and forth from Pittsburgh on drug runs. By the end of April, they had enough evidence for a warrant to search our house in Rockville Centre.

They came April 27, a Sunday night. I was on our big tan couch watching TV when the lights from their cruisers flashed through the living room windows. I thought there must have been a fire at the apartments across the street, but there were no sirens. The silence was odd. Then someone started thumping on the front door.

They were coming to our house.

My muscles clenched and my heart raced, making it hard to breathe. My mother, already nervous, unlocked the door, and more than a dozen men pushed in, four in plainclothes, the rest in uniform. It was like an invasion, all those men with guns pushing into the house, moving fast and shouting, securing the place.

We were in trouble. Big fucking trouble. Holy shit, I thought. Our house is being raided. We only lived a block and a half from the Rockville Centre police station on Maple Avenue, and it looked like the entire force was standing in our living room. They could have walked over. I didnt even get a chance to get off the couch, and I was shaking from the nerves. I never thought of myself as a macho kid or as particularly brave, but I thought I could handle anythingthat was my strength. But no kid is prepared for a police raid.

When my mother recalls that night, she remembers being calm, even offering to make coffee for all those guys whod come to tear up the house. Thats a laugh. She was nearly hysterical. We dont have anything youre looking for, she screamed at one detective, racing back and forth between him and another one, her face flushed. Theres nothing in the house.

Karen, calm down, the detective told her. He used her first name, like he knew her, which he probably did, considering how often my father had been locked up.

I wont calm down, she said. Youve got no right to destroy my house.

Weve got a warrant, the detective barked at her. Now sit down and shut up.

I wondered if it was an act, my mother pretending to be hysterical to distract them. If it was, it seemed to be working because they left her alone and actually worked more quickly. I stayed on the couch, praying no one would ask me anything. Gina came out of her bedroom, red and trembling, and sat down next to my mother and me.

Whats happening, Mom? she whispered.

Not now, my mother snapped. Then she caught herself, like the way someone chokes off tears that are about to come spilling out. She softened her voice, realizing that Gina was crying. Dont worry, she said. Everything will be okay.

Even I knew this was not going to be okay. Id never seen so many cops in one place. Theyd caught us by surprise, so my mind was playing catch-up. Okay, its a raid. Dads not home. What are they looking for?

It took only an instant for it to hit me: drugs. My father had paraphernalia everywhere, and probably plenty of drugs hidden in the house. Id always thought it was stupid to do drugs, to weigh drugs and count drugs and package drugs, in the open, right in our living room. Was I the only oneat thirteenwho understood that? Did my mother really think everything would be okay, that wed get through this, too?

For my entire short life, my mother had been telling me and Gina that wed get through one thing or another and then everything would be fine, at least until the next thing happened. What I couldnt understand, though, was why they couldnt just do things right. But no one ever listened to me. I was just a kid. What did I know? Quit being such a fucking pussy, my father would say to me. What are you, a fucking baby? Shut up already. So I did. I took no solace in being right this time, now that the next thing had happened. And I knew it was way more serious than anything that had come before. This wasnt something I had to endure from a distance or something Gina and I could watch from the sidelineswe were in the middle of it, surrounded, ambushed, trapped.