Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi Page B

ninety miles an hour during some stretches. I felt if I could make up fifteen minutes here and ten minutes there I’d knock time off the trip.

    We made it all the way to the turnpike Exit 14 in Jersey City. I had seen the speed trap and I jammed on my brakes. Too late. I saw one of the radio cars pull out toward us. When I jammed on the brakes the cigarettes in the rear seat were thrown all over the place. As the cop came closer, Lenny scrambled into the rear and tried to rearrange the blanket, but he couldn’t manage too well. The cop wanted my license and registration. I told him the car belonged to a friend of mine. I kept looking for the registration to the car, but I couldn’t find it. The cop was getting impatient and wanted to know my friend’s name. I didn’t know whose name the car was in, so I couldn’t even tell him that. It was a brand-new 1965 Pontiac, and he couldn’t believe that somebody would lend me the car and I wouldn’t even know his name. I tried to stall, and finally I mentioned the guy whose name I thought it might be in, and I no sooner gave him the name than I found the registration, and of course it was in somebody else’s name.

    Now the guy was suspicious. He finally looked in the back of the car, and he saw cigarettes all over the place. He called for a backup car and they took us in. Now I had problems. I’m going to have the distinction of getting Paul Vario’s favorite son his first pinch. I could hear the noise from here. I told the cops that I didn’t even know Lenny. I said that I had picked him up on the road, that he was hitchhiking. No good. They brought the two of us in. Lenny knew what to do. He had been groomed. He kept his mouth shut except to give his name. He signed nothing and he asked no questions. I called Jimmy, and he got the lawyer and bondsmen.

    By two o’clock in the afternoon we came before a local judge and were held in fifteen hundred bail each. Our lawyers and bail hadn’t arrived, so they took us upstairs. We got our bed rolls and were put in with a lot of other guys. We had some cigarettes on us and we gave them to the guys and we just sat and waited. In an hour or so we heard a hack yell, “Hill and Vario! Bag and baggage!” We were free, but now I wasn’t worried about the cigarettes. I was worried about Paulie. And I was worried about Karen.

    KAREN: He called up and said he’d had a little trouble. It turned out he and Lenny were arrested for transporting untaxed cigarettes. It wasn’t a big crime, but he was arrested. I still thought he was a bricklayer. Sure, I knew he was doing some things that weren’t absolutely straight. I mean, some of my friends and relatives used to buy the cigarettes. Nobody complained, believe me. One time I remember Henry and his friends came up with some imported Italian knit shirts. They had crates of them. There were four different styles in twenty colors, and all of us were wearing Italian knits for a year and a half. It was a matter of all of Henry’s friends being involved and all of their girl friends and wives and children being involved. There were so many of us, and we all tended to only hang out together. There were absolutely no outsiders. Nobody who wasn’t involved was ever invited to go anywhere or be a part of anything. And because we were all a part of that life, soon the world began to seem normal. Birthday parties. Anniversaries. Vacations. We all went together and we were always the same crowd. There was Jimmy and Mickey and, later, their kids. There was Paul and Phyllis. There was Tuddy and Marie. Marty Krugman and Fran. We went to each other’s houses. The women played cards. The men did their own thing.

    But I was mortified by his arrest. I felt ashamed. I never mentioned it to my mother. But nobody else in the crowd seemed to care. The possibility of being arrested was something that existed for anyone who hustled. Our husbands weren’t brain surgeons. They weren’t bankers or