GoodFellas by Nicholas Pileggi Read Free Book Online Page A

kid like that would be interested in buying.
    â€˜Then the guy began to move down the block. I couldn’t tell if Theresa knew there was someone about fifty feet behind her. Across the street Branco’s Bar looked quiet, but I knew Petey Burns was watching. He used to sit on a stool leaning against the wall at the end of the bar and stare out the window until the joint closed at about two in the morning. I knew guys were watching from Pete the Killer Abbanante’s club on the other side of Crescent Street. Frank Sorace, one of Paulie’s guys, who was later murdered, and Eddy Barberra, who’s now doing twenty years in Atlanta on a bank robbery, were seated in a car parked at the curb. I knew they were armed, because their job was to drive the big winners from Babe’s card games home so they didn’t get robbed.
    â€˜To the guy following Theresa the street must have looked empty, because he never looked around. He just started walking faster. He really began running toward Theresa when she started rummaging around for her keys. As soon as Theresa got inside, the guy was right behind her. It was very fast. He stuck out his hand and caught the door just before it slammed shut. That’s when Theresa and the guy disappeared.
    â€˜By the time I got to the building it was too late. The guy was supposed to have pulled a knife and was supposed to have been pressing it against Theresa’s face, but I never saw anything. All I could see was backs. There were at least three tons of wiseguys crammed in the hallways even before I got there. They had already bashed through the front door. There were so many of them that it looked as though the hallway and stairways were made of rubber.Theresa had squashed herself flat against the mailboxes. All I could see was the top of the guy’s head and an arm of his sweat shirt. Then he was swept along with all the other bodies and arms and curses until he was carried up the stairs and out of sight.
    â€˜I backed up and went outside. Some of the guys were waiting there. I went across the street, turned around, and looked up. I could make out the small roof wall on the front of the building – it was made of brick – and then I saw the guy launched right over it into the air. He hung there for just a second, flailing arms like a broken helicopter, and then he came down hard and splattered all over the street.’
    Henry Hill went into the paratroopers just days after his seventeenth birthday on June 11, 1960, and it was a good time to be off the street. There was a lot of heat. The investigation started by the Apalachin meeting in November of 1957 had created a mess. After twenty-five years of saying there was no such thing as the Mafia, J. Edgar Hoover was now announcing that organized crime cost the public over $22 billion a year. The United States Senate had launched its own investigation into organized crime and its links to unions and business and had published the names of almost five thousand hoods nationwide, including members and hierarchy of the five New York City crime families. Henry saw a newspaper with a partial list of members of the Lucchese crime family, but he couldn’t find Paulie’s name.
    Henry Hill turned out to love the army. He was stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He had never been away from the streets. He hadn’t even gone for a drive in the country. He didn’t know how to swim. He had never camped out, and he had never lit a fire that wasn’t a felony. Other youngsters in boot camp complained and groused; for Henry the army was like summer camp. There was almost nothing about it he didn’t love. He loved the rigors of boot training. He loved the food. He even loved jumping out of airplanes.
    â€˜I didn’t plan it, but I earned in the army. I got myself in charge of the kitchen detail, and I made a fortune selling excess food. Thearmy overbought. It was a disgrace. They would always order