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neighborhood that cheered successful mobsters the way West Point cheered victorious generals. It had been the birthplace of Murder Incorporated; Midnight Rose’s candy store on the comer of Livonia and Saratoga avenues, where Murder Inc. ’s hit men used to wait for their assignments, was considered a historic landmark during Henry’s youth. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone grew up there before going west and taking machine guns with them. The local heroes of Henry’s childhood were such men as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who joined forces with Meyer Lansky to create Las Vegas; Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, whose well-muscled cutters’ union controlled the garment industry; Frank Costello, a boss with so much political clout that judges called to thank him for their appointments; Otto “ Abbadabba” Berman, the mathematical genius and policy-game fixer, who devised a system for rigging the results of the parimutuel tote board at the track so that only the least-played numbers could win; Vito Genovese, the stylish racketeer who had two hundred limousines, including eighty filled with floral pieces, at his first wife’s funeral in 1931 and was identified in The New York Times story as “a wealthy young restaurant owner and importer”; Gaetano “Three Fingers Brown” Lucchese, who headed the mob family of which the Varios were a part; and of course the legendary members of Murder Incorporated: the ever dapper Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, who was proudest of the way he could ice-pick his victims through the ear in movie houses without drawing any attention; Frank “Dasher” Abbandando, who only a year before Henry’s birth went to the chair with a Cagney sneer; and the 300-pound Vito “Socko” Gurino, a massive hit man with a neck the size of a water main, who for target practice used to shoot the heads off chickens running around his backyard.

    It was understood on the street that Paul Vario ran one of the city’s toughest and most violent gangs. In Brownsville-East New York the body counts were always high, and in the 1960s and 1970s the Vario thugs did most of the strong-arm work for the rest of the Lucchese crime family. There were always ~e heads to bash on picket lines, businessmen to be squeezed into making their loan-shark payments, independents to be straightened out over territorial lines, potential witnesses to be murdered, and stool pigeons to be buried. And there were always young cabstand tough guys such as Bruno Facciolo, Frank Manzo, and Joey Russo who were ready to go out and break a few heads whenever Paul gave the order, and such young shooters as Jimmy Burke, Anthony Stabile, and Tommy DeSimone who were happy to take on the most violent assignments. But they did this work on the side; almost all of these wiseguys were employed, to some degree, in one kind of business or another. They were small-time entrepreneurs. They ran two-rig trucking firms. They owned restaurants. For example, Jimmy Burke was a hijacker, but he also had a partnership in several nonunion storefront clothing sweatshops in Queens. Bruno Facciolo owned Bruno’s, a ten-table Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, and prided himself on his meat sauce. Frank Manzo, who was called “Frankie the Wop,” owned the Villa Capra restaurant in Cedarhurst and had been active in the carpenter’s union until his first felony conviction. And Joey Russo, a solidly built youngster, was a cab driver and construction worker.

    Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, Tommy DeSimone, Anthony Stabile, Tommy Stabile, Fat Andy, Frankie the Wop, Freddy No Nose, Eddie Finelli, Pete the Killer, Mike Franzese, Nicky Blanda, Bobby the Dentist (so named because he always knocked teeth out when he punched anyone), Angelo Ruggierio, Clyde Brooks, Danny Rizzo, Angelo Sepe, Alex and Michael Corcione, Bruno Facciolo, and the rest of Paul Vario’s sidewalk soldiers lived without restraints. They had always been outlaws. They were the kids from the neighborhood who