The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin Read Free Book Online Page A

the jurors. Everybody will read it, and they can ask for a mistrial.”
    Only shortly before this, Persico had a string of federal trials in Brooklyn dealing with various alleged crimes, and each time there was a conviction, it was overruled on appeal because each time the same prosecutor put in some outrageous error. Someone who knew about these things told me, “We got a hook in there.”
    I told the old detective that I might write about the new murder cases, but only after Junior’s trial. When I started to check on the killings, I couldn’t verify one bullet hole.

CHAPTER 6
    I keep hearing people talk about the end of the Mafia, but I don’t know what that means. I do know that illegal gambling, which once was a glorious fountain of cash for the outfit, now is a government-owned lottery machine that buzzes in every newsstand and deli in the city. Years ago the state looked upon gambling as a low vice, a depravity, and those who profited from it were no better than cheap pimps and deserved years behind bars. That opinion held right up until the government took it over, at which point it became a civic virtue to lose the rent and all other money you didn’t have on rigged games of chance. The states tell the citizens that their lottery and slot-machine money goes to public schools. Never. Tax money to school districts is unchanged. Schools do not get forty dollars more from gambling. The mountain of money suckers pour into the lottery machines goes into the running of government, which means that the mayors and commissioners and councilmen take it.
    In its early days, the American Mafia grew big thanks to Prohibition. After which, liquor became legal but drugs were desired. They were an exclusive business of the Mafia for a while, but now every country on earth is sending usdope. The only way the mob can again be its exclusive seller is to enlist and go fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    “Shylock” as a word has become disreputable wherever anti-Semitism is an enemy. But it is difficult to banish entirely, since Shakespeare coined it with a too-memorable character. On the streets somebody who can’t get the rent or, much more important, money to bet with, takes cash from a shylock. Who will get paid. “You’re getting married?” Tony N. said to a debtor rehearsing for his wedding the next day at Gate of Heaven Roman Catholic Church in Queens. “You owe a lot of money here. What is this, you going to go down the aisle on crutches?”
    Extortionist loans, as the federal indictments call them, have almost disappeared in the rush of people taking brand-new credit cards to automatic tellers that give cash to the touch. When you see people punching numbers into a wall and getting money inside bodegas in the poorest of neighborhoods, then you are an observer of terrible financial misdeeds. There’s your shy.
    Once the mob could have a hand in politics. It was possible back then for Mafia bosses and government officials to scheme together. A man with a gun and a politician in his pocket is rather formidable. Today mobsters are so unsavory that even elected officials are expected to shun them.
    “There are two people coming in,” Betty, the receptionist, was told. This is going back some years. “A Meade Esposito and Paul Castellano. If they come while I’m out, put them in the back office and then walk away. Don’t stand there.”
    Betty didn’t have the least idea who they were. She was young and just out of college, where she had studied architecture. She had this job in the law office, back in the seventies, until she could start working in her chosen field.
    Some minutes later a short man with square shoulders walked in. “I’m Meade Esposito,” he said in a raspy voice.
    She escorted him back to the office, and he shut the door as she left.
    Ten minutes later a tall man with large glasses sauntered in. “Mr. Castellano,” he said.
    She took him back to the office and said, “Mr. Esposito is already