American Desperado by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright Read Free Book Online

together, we were just kids who liked to fight. But as drugs spread on the streets, we started robbing people who were buying or selling them. Drug rip-offs were ideal because the people we robbed couldn’t report us to the police, since they were doing an illegal thing in the first place.
    It’s easy to rob a drug buyer. We’d offer to sell him some shit, and when he showed up with the money, we’d rob him. At first you could take someone’s money, slap him in the head, and it was over. Then you had to start carrying a gun because other people were carrying guns, and it became something different. It got violent very quickly.
    We justified the bullshit we did. We had a code: only rob street people. Never rob a house. Never stick up a liquor store. Those people are civilians. You don’t touch them. But if it’s street people, I can do anything. If I have to hurt you to do what I got to do, that was not a problem in my mind.
    J . R .: We liked to do robberies inside cars. We’d get the kid we were going to rob to get into a car with us. I’d say, “We got to drive to see the guy who has the weed.”
    The kid gets into the car with me and the Outcasts. We start driving and tell him to hand over his money. Usually, the kid cooperates because we’re such mad dogs. When he gives us the money, we throw him from the car.
    Rocco loved to hit people because he knew how to professionally box. Even if the kid was cooperating, Rocco liked to try out new punches. He’d see how hard, or fast, he could hit somebody in the face before we threw him out of the car.
    After a while we changed up how we robbed people. Northern New Jersey was like one big small town, and the guy we robbed last week might see us again next week. Or maybe the kid we robbed had rich parents, and we knew we could rob him more times in the future because of his parents’ money. So we did a new setup, where I would get the kid in the car and make it look like I was beingrobbed, too. If the kid believed I was also a victim, it would keep the trust between us, so I could rob him again in the future.
    O NE DAY Jack Buccino brought a black kid into our group, Freddy Wilbert. * Freddy was a real skinny kid who talked in a soft voice. Jack said, “Freddy’s crazy. He’ll do anything.”
    Freddy was perfect, because with America being as prejudiced as it was, he could pretend to rob us and everybody would believe it was real. Nobody would think a bunch of Italians were partners with a black kid.
    I set up what was for us a big deal. I convinced a guy in his twenties that I could get him a thousand dollars’ worth of heroin. I was fourteen and too young for a license, but I’d started driving an old Chevy Impala station wagon with a V8 and the shifter on the column. I picked up the guy we were going to rob. I had Petey in the back carrying an empty gym bag that we said had the heroin in it.
    Petey acts uptight and says he won’t open the bag until I drive to a safe place. I drive to a woods in Fort Lee. The plan is Freddy, the black kid, is supposed to jump out of the trees with a shotgun and rob us.
    But when I pull up, no Freddy.
    Petey is so wacked out on cough syrup, he gets confused and almost hands the guy we’re robbing the empty bag. I pretend to accidentally honk the horn. Freddy finally runs out of the woods with his shotgun. He’s supposed to get in the car, so people don’t call the cops about a black kid running around on the street with a shotgun. But Freddy is so excited, he stands outside the window pointing the shotgun at Petey’s head.
    I roll down my window and tell Freddy, “Hey, bro. Could you get in the car so nobody sees that gun and calls the cops?”
    Freddy says, “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry.”
    As soon as Freddy gets in, our victim just hands him histhousand dollars. Freddy starts to get out before he takes Petey’s bag. That’s key to the robbery. We don’t want any chance the guy we robbed sees there’s no heroin in the bag.