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

I turn to Petey and say, “This robber’s really fucked up. Give him your bag so he don’t get angry and shoot us.”
    Freddy takes the hint. He grabs Petey’s bag and jumps out of the car. I peel out. I’m sure the guy by now must have figured out we were all in on this. But he’s so scared of seeing a black kid with a shotgun, he didn’t notice all the mistakes we made. The next day I call the guy and say, “I’m sorry, man. We have a business relationship. I’m going to work with you to get your money back.”
    “What do you mean?”
    I tell him whatever money he can get his hands on, I’ll give him heroin at a discount that he can sell at his mark-up until he earns back the money he lost. This guy is so grateful about what a good guy I am, he agrees to meet me with $500 to buy more heroin.
    I pick him up that afternoon. This time I have Rocco and Dominic with me. They don’t want to go through no complicated bullshit. So as soon as the guy gets in the car, they beat the shit out of him, take his money, and throw him from the car. That was the end of our business relationship.
* One of Jon’s friends from this era says that they once assaulted Ivor Swenson for threatening to rat them out for a scheme to pass counterfeit money.
* Bernie Levine is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s friend.
* Herbert Peter is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s schoolmate.
* Jon insisted we clarify this: “I don’t do any of that shit now, but that’s how I used to stab people.”
* Gallione played in a local league on a team called the Bergen County Chargers.
* Freddy Wilbert is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s fellow thief.
† Frank Messina is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s friend.
† Dominic Fiore is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s friend.
‡ Rocco Ciofani is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s friend.

6
    J . R .: In the fall of 1963 my sister did an intervention. Everybody knew I was turning out wrong. My sister wanted to try to be a mother to me. She decided the way to fix me was to have me move in with her and her husband. She had married a pilot in the Marine Corps, and they were living in Texas while he trained near Corpus Christi. Poppy came and got me from Jack Buccino’s house and put me on a Greyhound bus to Texas.
    I liked Texas. My sister and brother-in-law had a little house near the water. My sister helped me get a job on a commercial fishing boat. It was called the Captain Maddox * after the name of the man who owned it. I got friendly with his son, Billy, who was a few years older than me. We worked long hours on the boat. Then Billywould take me around to beer places. It’s a funny thing, being an Italian from New York, but I got along with rednecks.
    Me and Billy had great experiences. * He got me laid the first time. Billy took me to a whorehouse filled with white-trash Texas girls and Mexican whores. For a couple of dollars, the Mexican broads would fuck you dry. That was the first time I got laid. A Mexican girl fucked my brains out.
    I WAS only in Texas a few months when my sister’s husband was transferred to Brunswick, Maine. So I moved up there with them. They enrolled me in high school and tried to make me into a good kid. I started to chafe against my brother-in-law. He was this straight-arrow, military guy, and we did not mix well.
    J UDY : My husband had been a star football player in college. He was so all-American, they used his picture in Marine recruiting posters. I saw the tension between Jon and him. But since my husband flew out of a base in Keflavík, Iceland, and was gone weeks at a time, I believed their differences would be manageable.
    J . R .: My brother-in-law flew planes that hunted for Russian submarines, and he thought of himself as a hero. He judged me for who I was. But I judged him, too. I looked down on people who were not on my side of the world. Unfortunately, I was not nice to my