Mob Life for Dummies

By Jeffrey Ressner Sunday, May 23, 2004
    • Somehow we can't seem to satisfy our appetite for the Mob. We've heard those murky wiretap recordings, seen the grainy surveillance photos, obsessively watched The Godfather and The Sopranos. But we want to know more, whether it's about the prep work for plunging an ice pick into someone's neck (tape the handle to avoid fingerprints) or the supplies needed for going to war with another crime family (bring big pots for marinara sauce to feed everyone at the safe house). Now two breezy new gangland guides, Donnie Brasco's The Way of the Wiseguy (Running Press; 224 pages) and Henry Hill's forthcoming Gangsters and GoodFellas (M. Evans & Co.; 273 pages), break the code of omerta even further.

    Few are as qualified to expose Mafia secrets as Brasco and Hill. Brasco is the nom de mob for undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone, whose 1988 autobiography became a movie starring Johnny Depp; Hill's story was first penned by author Nicholas Pileggi in 1985, then made into GoodFellas by Martin Scorsese. Both turned on la famiglia — Brasco ratted out the Bonannos; Hill, the Luccheses — and both have been keeping a lower profile ever since.

    Brasco's account is a how-to manual for made men, with chapters such as "How Wiseguys Take Over a Business" (start violent fights in a bar, then press the owner for "insurance protection") and "Wiseguy Table Manners" (tough guys order before the ladies). Given the colorful subject matter, his writing at times seems a bit dry, even formal. (Maybe that's because Pistone was in law enforcement, used to filling out just-the-facts-ma'am crime reports.) Still, the skinny here is often sensational, and reading the section about how to carry out a hit will almost make you feel the cold, steely tickle of a .22-cal. handgun close by. "For New York wiseguys," writes Brasco, "the preferred method of execution is two behind the ear."

    Gangsters and GoodFellas is far more freewheeling and ring-a-ding-ding. In a sequel of sorts to the tightly wound Pileggi original, Hill sweeps readers along on a wild ride through the witness-protection program as he tries in vain to fit in after the feds relocate him from New York City's fast lane to slow-as-molasses Hicksville, Ky. ("Kentucky was like a foreign country," he recalls. "They'd speak in that real Appalachian, southern accent. No capiche.")

    Together the books offer a yin-yang morality tale, with Brasco the straight arrow detailing how criminals conduct their craft and Hill the lifelong criminal attempting to straighten up and fly right. By virtue of its frank, confessional nature, Hill's story is more intimate and his prose more chewy; Brasco's is a thoughtful dissertation on wiseguyness. Both, however, are so crammed with revealing anecdotes, sick behavior and dark humor that you won't soon fuhgeddaboutem.