Popped at White Castle

Chapter 17

Five Thousand Quaaludes

So I was going about my business, doing this, doing that, when I got busted on Long Island for possession and sales of five thousand Quaaludes. Nick wanted me to get something going in my old Long Island roots so I called a couple of friends of mine out on the Island. I hadn’t been in contact with them for a few years, two, three years, because I was in Florida and I was in Brooklyn and back and forth and so we connected and I started to do two, three pounds of pot a week, a little coke, a few Quaaludes. I’d take a train out there and I’d stay at this gal’s house I knew. I was a fugitive on the Island, I was a fugitive for about five years, but I took a chance. I did that awhile and then the gal that I was seeing had a friend that I knew too that hung out in this jazz club, this guy Gino. He was selling coke in this jazz club to musicians and stuff like that and he wanted a better connection so I went to see him. He would order a pound or two at a time and maybe fifty Quaaludes.

At this time Steve Bowman had this machine that would press out Quaaludes with the LEMONS lettering on them. They started out as Auroras, a very popular drug in the seventies. It was a muscle relaxer and it was used mostly by coke and amphetamine users because it would level you out.

So this guy Gino from the jazz club he knew me from years ago in the bar business and stuff and I knew his daughter and I knew his wife. So I go out to his house and he goes, well, I got this guy in the Hamptons that buys a lot so next week instead of two pounds bring five pounds and instead of a hundred Quaaludes bring five hundred Quaaludes. So I did and he paid me for them and everything was good. Nick was very happy, things are going along smooth, things are looking up, you’re doing it again, you’re building a nice thing here, continue it. See, with Steve pressing out these Quaaludes it wasn’t costing us much. We had the dope addicts rob the pharmaceutical place and get vats of this stuff that we needed. Steve was like a chemist too, a very educated guy but he was fucked up. Anyhow, he would process the Quaaludes and press them out on this machine in his living room when he was still with his wife. He’d do it during the day while she was working. He’d press out thousands of them.

After awhile Gino said the people in the Hamptons needed more, so bring me ten pounds and fifteen hundred Quaaludes. Then it got up to ten pounds and five thousand Quaaludes, and I said to Nick, “I don’t like the way this is going. I think I’m being set-up.” Nick at this point in his life is starting to get stupid on coke himself. Smoking a lot of base which is crack, making stupid fucking moves and shit like that, whatever. Going out with some despicable women besides the one he lives with. And he’s getting to be where he was having these coke hangovers and having these emotional swings. A coke hangover, you don’t even want to go through it, headache and feeling nauseous. It’s almost like a booze hangover but mostly it’s this strain in your head. That’s from doing the pills to come down, really. You know, your whole body’s racing and then you’re doing pills and lots of them to come off a two or three day jag, you know. That’s what I used to do. One time I stayed up a week. Didn’t eat, was only drinking orange juice until that turned my stomach then I stopped. I thought I was going to die.

Anyway, I said, “Nick, I really don’t think this is a good idea”.

Nick says, “You and Frances”, that was his girlfriend, “and the baby go out there with that order. I want you to do it tonight. Set it up with Gino”.

So I said okay and so we went out there in her car. Gino didn’t know what kind of car it was. We passed the house and I see two strange guys standing on his porch, his front steps, talking to each other, smoking a cigarette. I just didn’t like the situation. I said, “Frances make a u-turn and go back to Brooklyn”. We went back to Brooklyn and Nick is there snorting coke and doing this shit. He very rarely got loud and violent with me because he wasn’t really a strong-arm man, you know, he was more of a brain. He was the kind that didn’t work out, wasn’t a muscle-bound guy. He had other people to do his dirty work, you know. Anyhow, Nick says to me, “What do you want me to do with these fucking Quaaludes? Eat ‘em? You get out there and sell the motherfuckers. You call that Gino up and you tell him that the car broke down and you’re going to do this tomorrow. And Joey’s going out there with you. You don’t want to meet him at his house? Tell him you’ll meet him someplace. Do the deal!”

He was being paranoid that he couldn’t sell them because he was stoned. I figured that you could probably sell them maybe in a week. You could get rid of all of them combined. They were a great item. They were a sellable item, c’mon. But no, there was no talking to him at that time.

I told Nick, “I don’t like the situation”.

Nick goes, “And don’t let Gino know you’re thinking this way cause it’s just bullshit you’re thinking.”

So I said, “Alright Nick, you’re the boss”.

And he’s waving his fucking .38 and he goes, “And if you don’t do it I’m going to blow your fucking brains out! What do you think about that? You’re starting to aggravate me.” And I walked out.

I loved the guy, you know, and I see him going downhill now a little bit.

Joey picks me up the next afternoon and we make arrangements for Gino at four o’clock to meet us at the White Castle parking lot. A big White Castle out on Long Island, where these two guys would be in a red and white vehicle. I told them what kind of vehicle I had and we’d meet in the parking lot and they’d find us or we’d find them. When we get there I say to Joey roll around the parking lot once. We roll around it once, twice, and I see these people sitting around in cars with their newspapers up in their faces, like a lot of them. Cars parked way in the back of this White Castle parking lot. Everyone’s got newspapers? C’mon. And why is this helicopter flying around? I said to Joey, “I don’t like this. This is looking bad. I got a bad feeling the other night and I got a worse feeling today.” We didn’t have cell phones in them days so we had to go to a pay phone to call Nick.

“I don’t care what you do, you’re going to fucking do that! Do it!” And he hangs the phone up.

“Joey, he said do it”.

“Okay, Nick said to do it, well we’ll do it.”

So we see the red and white car come in. It looked like the Starsky and Hutch car, it really did. I said, “Joey, we’re gonna get popped. I got a feeling we’re going to get popped”.

“Are you such and such?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re such and such from the Hamptons. Gino sent us.”

All of a sudden helicopters are coming over, these people with the newspapers are all running out of their cars. Guns are drawn, sun-roof is opened and they’re standing on the roof with guns pointed at me. I mean I had all sorts of shit going on here. So I’m popped. They wanted to be real cool so they locked me up and they locked Joey up and they’re trying to find out who Nick was because Gino happened to talk to him on the phone a couple of times, on the pay phone in the dog grooming shop. They really couldn’t trace it, but they wanted to know who Nick was. When I was arrested they wanted to know names and people I knew.

The Organized Crime Squad, what they did was they started out with six phone books piled up on top of my head. Then they’d hit me as hard as they could with night-sticks on those books. They’d hit me with night-sticks on top of the phone books so there would be no marks. Then after I didn’t answer they’d take those books out one by one. They’d take a phone book out and make it five. Then it would get more intense because that one extra book was gone to absorb it. Finally they got down to one book and they beat me like ten times with that one book there. I couldn’t think straight but I still wouldn’t open my mouth. They want to know who Nick is. Nick told Gino he was in the hub of the Mafia and all this shit on the phone. Nick was losing it. But I told them nothing. Finally they stopped beating me and I went back into my cell. It was about a week until I felt better. I had terrible headaches.

The next day we had to go for arraignment. I was asked if I had a lawyer and I was just about to say no when this guy in a suit jumps up saying I’m his lawyer, I’m Joey’s lawyer. Nick sent this Mafia lawyer that represented a lot of big shots in Brooklyn. Blah, blah, blah, how much is bail, all of a sudden the bail is put up. It was like twenty thousand apiece, cash. Nick put up forty thousand dollars to get us out, plus he lost all that money for the drugs. Buy you know why? Because of him. Because of him being stupid. Joey and I were released on bail with my court date like two or three months later. We all got into the lawyer’s Cadillac and he drove us all back to Brooklyn and we partied. The lawyer didn’t party, he was strictly business. Nice guy, kind of a neighborhood guy that made it. A Brooklyn guy, office in Brooklyn. I heard he represented some big names. He was good at what he did.

Anyway, I took the blame. I said Joey was only a friend of mine driving me out there and he didn’t know what was in the attaché case. But they found .38 bullets in the back of his car and he lost his car, his Monte Carlo. It was a new one and he paid cash for it. He lost that. Drug deal? That’s gone. He loved that car too. Nick took my vehicle I was using and gave it to Joey but it wasn’t near as good. It was an Oldsmobile Cutlass and it was an older model. It was alright, I mean, better than nothing but Joey’s Monte Carlo was kind of new. I felt bad for Joey. I mean, Joey was forced into this, not by me, by Nick. He lost his Monte Carlo but they shifted the weight all on me which was what I wanted them to do because Joey really didn’t have nothing to do with this whole set-up. It was me and Nick really. Nick felt very, very bad about it and he even straightened out for about a month. He was talking about the stupid moves he’d been making and he should’ve listened to me and what do I want to do? I’ve got three months to do whatever I want to do before I’ve got to go to court. Nick had me working, you know, doing things still. I just went on with my life the way it was, you know. When the court date hit I got another I.D. and I never showed up.

They’d be looking for me on Long Island and they’d be looking for me in Brooklyn too. But you know how many people they’re looking for? And I didn’t murder anybody so it wasn’t really a priority with so much other shit going on. There was a recession going on at that time. Lots of crime going on, jails over-crowded. Police departments were over-budget and under-staffed and I was in an area where they would never look for me anyhow. I just went on with my life, man.

From Stand-Up Guy - A true crime gangster memoir.

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Goodfellas

Goodfellas

I couldn’t stand Henry Hill from day one. Who’s this fucking prima donna I asked myself? Henry Hill.  

In 1970 I started a two-year sentence for that drug and firecrackers charge at the Nassau County Correctional Facility. Each floor had four dorms of twenty men each, eighty on a floor. I lived in the dorm next door to Henry Hill, Paul Vario and five or six other made guys. All those guys were in there for conspiracy. Paulie was doing a year. Out of Paulie’s twenty-person dorm about a half-dozen were with him. The rest of the guys he used to make leave when he didn’t want them around and they did it obediently. Fuck, yeah.  

The jail was between minimum and maximum security. You had a set of bars but the bars weren’t in the dorms they were on the entrances to the dorms. You shared a bathroom with twenty people, two or three or four urinals, some toilets, some sinks. Each one had a set of showers. I didn’t like it, I liked to be in a cell by myself. See, you’d get a lot of street thugs in there, they’d steal your candy, they’d steal your cigarettes. They were a lot of fights and stuff in there, more than in the separate cells. I only stayed in the dorms until Paulie and them started to disintegrate and leave, then it was no fun anymore.  

Anyway, when I get to prison those guys are already there. I started out in a regular cell and then they ask me if I would mind going into a dorm. At that time I didn’t know who was in the dorms. I had heard that all these gangsters were somewhere in there, but I didn’t know where. You hear everything in prison, the wire they call it. You know what’s coming down. You know what Joe Blow says he’s in there for but you know what he’s really in there for. We knew who the child molesters were, we knew who everybody was that were disguising themselves. They had a real rough time after they got discovered, I can tell you that. We knew exactly who was coming in and out. What we didn’t know Paulie and the boys would find out because they had all the guards paid off. There were no cell phones in them days but the guards used to let those guys out to use the pay phones. They’d give them change to call their people up every night.  There would be money sent to their houses in envelopes. The jail guards, they were all paid off, most of them. It wasn’t a very good job in them days, probably not to this day, so they made a little extra money for bullshit, you know?  

So anyway, I knew those guys were down there but all of a sudden I’m right next door to them. And I knew a couple of inmates that were friendly with them so they told the gangsters about me and who I worked for and stuff like that. They knew a couple people I worked for, you know, or been involved with, that I was a stand-up guy, a good guy. So, it was all good.  

If you lived in the dorms you were supposed to work. Maybe in the kitchen or in the officer’s mess as a waiter. I worked in the kitchen, so you would steal tea bags or something for Paulie. He would tell you what he wanted. I need this, I need that, I need a couple loaves of bread to make stuffing or something like that. They’d bring in chests of food and they worked on occasion in the kitchen too. They were all cooks and stuff and we ate good. The whole prison ate good when they cooked. The way they use to make dishes and stuff, real good. The food was excellent. I can’t say nothing about the food. It was good. I ate real good. I gained a little weight in there.  

I remember Paulie used to dye his hair. When he first came in there his hair was black. A couple months later it started to turn gray. He said to me, “I can’t wait to get out to paint my hair.” I mean he had kids and everything but he was a player. He wasn’t living with his wife I don’t think and he had young girlfriends and stuff like that.  

After awhile they separated those guys and they made Henry move out of Paulie’s dorm and into my dorm so we were living in the same dorm. I said to Paulie, “Who is this fucking jerk?” meaning Henry. He just looked like a fucking jerk. My friend told me he was a bitch. He’d bitch about everything. Complain. A whiner. Henry Hill was a fucking whiner. So, I said to the guy, right in front of Paulie, I said, “Man, I hate this motherfucker, keep him away from me.”  

Paulie goes, “Oh, he’s a good guy. He’s like a son to me” and all this other stuff.  

I says, “Paulie, I…I…I don’t know, man. I don’t like him. I really don’t. In fact, I kinda hate him. I want to beat the shit out of him or something.”  

“Oh, no, oh, no, please don’t do that”, Paulie says.  I couldn’t stand Henry. I couldn’t stand him. He used to sit there in swag white uniforms from the kitchen, he didn’t want to wear the blue uniforms like everybody else, and then he never even worked in the kitchen. Maybe he worked in the kitchen once or twice. I very rarely saw him work. Work? Fuck work. He was selling drugs in there. Anyway, he used to go and get shoe polish and polish his little shoes, and brush his little teeth. I thought that the guy didn’t have the balls to be in the position that he was in. I had a feeling he wasn’t strong enough to hold up. He was a bitch and that’s what I wanted to do, bitch-smack him, I dreamed of it.

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Please Send Postcards

Please Send Postcards

I love postcards and am saddened that people no longer send them while on vacation. I was at Disneyland last week and was unpleasantly surprised when it became near impossible to find postcards for sale. Eventually I found a couple of booklets of ten cards but these seemed more meant for at-home viewing rather than sending to friends and family.

When I bring up the lack of postcard sending people always say something along the lines of well these days you can just send a pic so easily who needs postcards? I love pics too but a postcard is a small gift. You get the picture, a message, a post-mark and a stamp. A person has taken a moment out of their day to remember you and share a little token of their vacation. In an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show the Taylors are in Hollywood, California on vacation and Aunt Bee runs out of postcards and asks Andy to pick up some more while he's out.

I buy old postcards sometimes and I'll buy one with a message over a blank card. These messages are strikingly similar. They usually mention how hot/cold it is, oftentimes noting the exact temperature, whether they went swimming or not and what Aunt/Uncle was visited. It's always Aunts and Uncles for some reason. It's also surprising to me how many people had their mail forwarded to them during their two weeks in Florida or what not and many times the cards will note a departure date and ask the recipient to please stop forwarding their mail.

Fortunately I have a couple of sweet girlfriends that will indulge my desire to rejuvenate the sending of postcards and I am grateful to them for that. In the middle of a handful of catalogs, bills, ads and flyers it's uplifting to find a pretty card with a short message and know your friend is having a good time on vacation and wants to share a moment of that with you.