Six Years Inside the Mafias: How I Worked My Way Through College

PROLOGUE

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

It was the Spring of 1959.  Cars were customarily broad; people were predominantly lean.  Physical labor in the work place coursed into mutual cooperation at home.  A president who didn’t covet the position occupied the White House; money hadn’t yet been elevated to the level of deity. 

The devil was accepted as the weaker part of man, not an external entity to be insulated from and exorcised by organized religion.

The explosion in statutes by state and federal legislatures that began in the late ‘40s, an effort to control a rapidly growing population by proportionately fewer people, had not yet gained its objective.  Individuals still believed in the power of self and of government as regulator, not creator.

Neighbors called each other mate during the decades before bureaucracies took away the incentive for citizens to interact, before laws were passed to ensure the perpetuation of institutions and an end to communities sharing skills and concerns.

The temptation to emulate billboard illusions and television celebrities paled in comparison to family solidarity.  Life wasn’t yet so difficult and complex as to drive the many to compensate with drugs and alcohol in order to muddle through each day. 

Husbands and wives strolled tree-lined streets after dinner, and children played stickball and king-of-the-hill on dirt fields untainted by the lure of the coming shopping malls. 

Toward the end of an especially rainy April, Jeffry Weiss, age thirteen, opened his first paper stand in front of a Horn and Hardart’s Restaurant.  Within two months he had the system wired.

Monday was trash collection day.  All the garbage, including the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, went out that morning.  And so he made early rounds of the neighborhood, picking out the papers that hadn’t been tainted by spaghetti sauce or defiled by banana peels.  He got thirteen cents for each return. 

No one seemed to mind that he was giving back more copies than he received, certainly not the delivery men who made a little extra, or parents who thought the clever scheme more creative talent than unethical behavior. 

By age fourteen, Jeffry had organized teams of shoplifters.  His favorite tactic was to have two members of the gang stage a fight to distract employees while the others pillaged the store.  At fifteen, he was paying janitors in prime locations to toss good merchandise out in the trash where he waited for the deliveries.

When Jeffry brought home pieces of Lalique from Wanamaker’s, or suits and dresses from Al Berman’s Haberdashery, family, friends and neighbors didn’t ask where they came from, only how much they cost.  By the 60s that was the condition of society as he knew it, where bargains overcame ethics, and association was far more potent than genetics.  People loved deals so much it twisted their concept of right and wrong, and perverted their natural obligation to correct social inequities. 

In that light he found his calling: provide a worthwhile service between manufacturer and the public, bypass the middleman, keep prices reasonable and become a cog in the machinery of business, gain his freedom and, in turn, undermine a system that deadened the spirit and punished creativity. 

It was so easy to accomplish and to rationalize.  All around him, individuals and companies were begging to be taken.  They were too naive, too rich, too...something. 

And because Jeffry cut everyone in on the action, they all praised his efforts. 

His profession was founded on the greed of patrons and the participation of his peers.  It worked beautifully.  At the age of eighteen, Jeffry had made his bones.

CHAPTER ONE

Garment District.  Philadelphia, Pa.  1964

South Street was originally named Cedar Street in William Penn's street map.  It formed the southern border of Center City and the northern border for South Philadelphia. 

South Street was known mainly as a garment district, with stores for men's suits and other clothing. 

No city had a wider range of textile products, churned out socks, carpets, blankets, rope and, men's suits and women's dress goods, upholstery, sweaters, surgical fabrics, military clothes and draperies.

And now, Premier Carpets had a bulls-eye painted on it thanks to Jeffry’s diligent reconnoitering.

He’d been in the building twice before: a large open work area on the first floor, the safe in the accountant’s office, the managers’ offices on the second and third floors and the storage closets and utility rooms on the upper floor.

He knew the vault was a FireKing Cash-Handling Safe made since 1951.  He also knew the model and specs from an earlier visit posing as a man from the phone company checking lines.

He learned how many employees worked there and when they got paid: the second and fourth Fridays of the month.  He estimated that the average salary was four hundred for two weeks work.  That meant there should be about twelve thousand dollars in the safe...unless the girls in the accounting room were skimming money off the top.

He didn’t worry about the odd dollars.  That was chump change.

* * *

On Thursday, the day before pay day, Jeffry walked into the business wearing the uniform of a gas company worker: the right color and style overalls, hat with emblem and a big old bag of tools.

People were coming and going out of the building on a busy workday just before closing.  He didn't wave to anyone or stop to show his credentials, which he had due to the expertise of a friend in the printing business.  In fact, he had credentials in half-dozen different names and various companies and professions.

He just strolled in like he owned the place, which he soon would, and went upstairs, looking for the best place to hunker down until the wee hours of the morning.

The top floor was already vacated and found an unlocked utility closet filled with mops, brooms buckets, cleaning supplies and uniforms for the maintenance and clean up people.

When he was sure no one was looking, he slipped into the closet and wedged a metal rod so the door could not be opened even if someone used a key.

Jeffry settled down for a long winter’s nap...just like in the Christmas poem...’twas the night before Christmas, when all through the building not a guard, or an asshole staying late to pork a fellow worker, was stirring, not even a rat.  The money was bagged in the safe with care, which Jeffry hoped would still be there – unless the accountant was running two sets of books.  And if all went well, Christmas would come early...

1:00 a.m. came and went.

The employees were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of season bonuses danced in their heads.  When there arose such a clatter, Jeffry checked to see what was the matter. 

The first kick vibrated the door hard enough to rain dust down on Jeffry.  The second kick started a crack in wood slats.

Hey, hey, the alcohol-infused voice yelled.  "I hafta pee.  And I’m going to go right here in the hallway if you don’t open this fuckin’ door.

Away from the rear he flew like a flash, took down the bar and tore open the door to see what was the matter...just as the guy was winding up for kick number three

The guy’s foot swung like an NFL kicker going for a fifty yard field goal.  His momentum led him to fall on his ass.

What the fuck? he asked, way too loud for Jeffry’s comfort zone.

Jeffry stuck a gun in the guy’s face.  If you say one more word, I will end your pathetic, useless life.  You just nod when I ask you questions.  Okay?

The guy nodded profusely.

Anybody here with you?

The man shook his head No.

Anybody coming to meet you here?

Again, No.

‘You woke me out of a sound sleep.  I should kill you just for that."

The guy’s facial expression pleaded for his life.

Hand me your wallet, Jeffry said.

The guy looked confused.

The wallet, Jeffry asked again, this time with a whole different meaning.

The guy handed it over.

Jeffry searched through the eallet and took out a picture and a small address book.  He looked it over, then held up a picture and said to the man, This your family?

Another nod.

I now have your address.  If you say anything to the police other than I was a male, I will burn your house down with you in it.  You got it?"

The guy nodded profusely.

"Okay then.  Here’s how we play this.  I tie and gag you.  You sleep it off.  I will call the office in the morning and tell them where to find you. 

Jeffry tied the man’s hands and feet behind him, then gagged the guy, and finally hog-tied him

Satisfied the man couldn’t break free and couldn’t kick the door, Jeffry walked down stairs and into the accounting office where the safe was situated.  It was a generic model, one and a half inches of steel; a model seen more in residential properties than in commercial businesses.

Jeffry took a water picture, filled it up and doused the wall and the floor in case the sparks or metal shards caused a fire.  He put on his protective goggles, plugged in the circular saw and began cutting into the side of the safe. 

Amateurs tried to cut through the front.  Retarded fuckers who watched too much TV.  The sides were one-half the thickness.  That was because safes were made to be built in.

Jeffry changed blades a third of the way through, then again two-thirds through.

Within two hours he had cut a ten inch square hole and sweated off about five pounds which he really couldn’t afford to lose.

He reached in and began pulling out the bundles of money.  They were banded and marked so he knew how much he had in just a few minutes: nine thousand two-hundred dollars.

What the fuck?  I’ll bet those little old ladies in accounting have been dipping into the till to cover their bingo losses.  Shit, just enough money to pay off people for merchandise I already took delivery of.

There wasn’t time to celebrate.  It was only an hour and a half to sunrise when the clean-up crew would be coming through.

He packed up his tools, stuffed the money in his duffle bag and walked up to the front door.

He opened it just far enough to look both ways on the street.

Sirens filled the air.

Jeffry’s heart rate and pulse shot up and off the charts.

He needed to figure out how far away they were and which direction they were headed.

He stood perfectly still and devoted all his attention to his ears.

The sirens continued to wail, coming closer.

He was ready to run when the noise veered off and the sounds subsided.

He waited until his pulse slowed and his breathing returned to normal before walking out of the building.

Another close call avoided.  But how long would his luck hold out?

He closed the door behind him and strolled to his car...as if he owned the street.

The first grey clouds appeared in the East.  The world was asleep.  Maybe they couldn’t join in the excitement but they could read about it in the newspaper and celebrate with Jeffry vicariously.

CHAPTER TWO

Ridge Ave.  Philadelphia, Pa.  1964

The front door opened with a powerful rush, strong enough to suck the stale air out of the dilapidated building and start full-length lace curtains, hanging as display samples, in pendulum motion.  Thick, rusting bars banged against the warped wooden door frame as an emaciated, wild-eyed man ran into Weiss’s Specialty Shop waving a fist full of jewelry around like a bullfighter using a red cape to attract his quarry.  The odor of alcohol quickly permeated the surrounding area. 

Anybody wanna buy some stones, cheap? the intruder offered, his voice beckoning with a mix of stealth and seduction.  Dark circles of sweat spread through his crimson silk shirt as he made a proud half circle with shimmering rings and bracelets held high like an offering to the gods.

Jeffry, standing at the entrance of the hallway leading from the basement, sensed the stench of larceny blow into the store along with the heavy-breathing con man. 

Meanwhile, his father Max, oldest brother Jack, aunt Toby, and the two black sales girls continued stocking the showcases, all unruffled by the erupting scene.

Grandmother Bubby, who had been sitting calmly in her chair, a hand draped lovingly over the cash register, leaned forward.  Go help the meshugahner, the matriarch of the family derisively ordered her daughter, Toby, toward the gonif.

Toby - with her butch hair, generous backside, penciled brows, and dissecting eyes - began the trek up from the rear of the hundred-foot deep retail dry-goods store.  Moving past shelves of neatly stacked print sheets, striped pillow cases and flannel blankets, racks of boy’s blue suits and girl’s pink dresses, and counters prominently displaying plaid socks and bright white underwear, she shuffled over to the character in her clacking flip-flops, a sound produced by an individual unwilling to devote enough energy to lift their feet completely off the ground. 

Jeffry met her in the middle of the store and said, I’ll handle this.

Fine with me; just make sure it’s not all plastic, she said and handed Jeffry a stack of bills.

What’s this? he asked, concentrating on the intruder.

Counterfeit money.  You weren’t going to pay him with real bills....were you?

I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Yeah, well, we didn’t get this far by dealing from the top of the deck.

Right, he said, then walked over to the mark. 

Jeffry started surveying the stolen jewelry with store tags still attached.  He took his time, looking over the items like a gemologist, while the guy waved his arms around with a Let’s go motherfucker, I ain’t here for the atmosphere, expression.

Jeffry was certain it wasn’t the atmosphere.  His grandmother’s store was located in the darkest heart of the bottomless pit of the Philadelphia ghetto, a neighborhood beaten up by a tag-team of weather and residents using their chosen weapons of humidity and rain, singular frustration and lack of vested interest. 

According to his father, the robberies and smashed windows of the merchants that occasionally took place were payback for not treating the populace with respect.  It was, after all, The Ridge that made shopkeepers well off enough to send their kids to summer camp, while the residents’ only vacations were to Gratersford or Moyamensing, the local state prisons.

Jeffry continued slowly checking the pieces. 

Visibly incensed, the guy fumed, Hey, chump, I ain’t got time for dis bullshit.

What’s the hurry?  It’s a nice day.  Sit down.  Have a glass of tea.  The calmness in Jeffry’s voice suffused with a singsong Yiddish inflection only seemed to agitate him more. 

When Jeffry got that You’ll buy ‘em or you’ll be wearin’ ‘em to your grave look from the guy, Jeffry turned up the heat on his own burner.  "I’m not buying shit till I check it out, he explained.  This crap’s hot as a firecracker.  I ought to charge you for the appraisal, you nitwit." 

The man’s tone quickly changed.  Bu...bu...but ah needs to know, he spit out apologetically.  His gaze darted to the front doors and out onto Ridge Avenue like the messenger of death was about to come through.  Da police be on my ass. 

The Ridge, as Jeffry came to know it through his grandmother’s reminiscences, snaked for twelve miles through the city.  But it was the four-mile section concentrated from Thirty-third Street on the north to Fairmount Avenue on the south that became the center of the universe for the family.  That was where Jews had emigrated at the turn of the century and established themselves as merchants and landlords over what at first were dormant, yes’m blacks.

The first thing he checked on each day upon arriving at the store, after attending his classes at Drexel University, were the protective bars.  Shopkeepers even welded them around second and third floor windows – like the blacks had wings or something.  Colored people were devils as far as most of the jobbers were concerned, but no magazine he had ever seen published a picture of one of them flying. 

The two-lane street he regularly drove down was still one of the busiest in the city, but it was trolleys and through traffic for the most part.  Shoppers stayed close to home when relying on their feet for transportation. 

In the evenings, he watched it all shut down, like a western town about to host a gun fight.  It was the prevalence of alcohol brewing and a simmering discontent that drew a pale, loathsome mist over the streets at night.  Those oblivious to the dangers became easy targets for locals with little to lose.

Jeffry looked up from his inspection and said, Yeah, well we’ve all got our problems, don’t we?  I missed my bus once.

The head-bobbing, leg-twitching, quick-drooling, stuttering junkie broke into a profuse sweat even while standing directly under a huge ceiling fan.  Ah...ah...ah gotsta go, he muttered, grabbing the pieces as he burst through the front doors. 

Bub - with goitered neck, boiled forehead, gnarled fingers, and encrusted toes - sitting center stage at the store and viewing the entire spectacle, berated Jeffry in a dialect untainted by forty-three years in America, So, you couldn’t swindle the goods from the Schwartze?  Ensconced in her favorite chair overlooking the action, with a blintz dripping out the side of her mouth, she continued, You talk to the shmuck a little more, he wouldn’t even remember coming in with the merchandise.

It’s bupkis, Jeffry assured.  Let him keep the crap.  He needs it more than we do.

Bub was gross inside and out.  Prematurely white hair hadn’t felt the bristles of a brush in a month.  The frayed, ill-fitting dresses she wore hid little, but it didn’t matter; peoples’ gazes were directed away from the modern-day Methuselah. 

Dense bifocals enabled Bub to warranty money close up, while empowering her to spot delicacies at great distances.  Jeffry had it figured: by purchasing and consuming the most expensive and richest cuisine available, the Jewish wife pushes her husband to a stroke paying the bills while she finally, through food, attains a satisfaction that was never forthcoming in the bedroom.  

He’ll just lose them to somebody else, Bub reasoned.

How do you sit there with fat rolling down your arms and your face stuffed with food, and talk to me about ripping off people who don’t even have carfare to leave the neighborhood to steal from stores that have decent merchandise? Jeffry asked.

In verbal summation of the visual circus, the grandmother said, If shit were worth money, fools would be born without assholes.

Bub turned inward for a moment, sitting transfixed, gnawing on her food.  Then, rousing from that state, clearly frustrated and seeking retribution, she called to Jeffry.  Go after the goniff.  Get him back here...with the jewelry."  As Bub spoke, pieces of cheese sputtered out of her mouth, sticking to the limp hairs of her upper lip and mutton-chops. 

Okay, Grandma, Jeffry replied.

Hurry, petzel, Bub insisted. 

Have a heart attack you bitch, he urged his penny-pinching grandmother after she impugned his manhood. 

We’re all bitches...bitches and bastards.  Didn’t you know?  That’s what the Yiddishers are, bitches and bastards scattered around the world by our enemies.  Bub laughed herself into a coughing fit.

Looking at and listening to you, I can see why, Jeffry retorted, then stepped from around the counter and toward the front door. 

Eighty-six, Trixie, the petite black sales clerk, called out.

Jeffry heeded the code that all the merchants knew, as though it were passed down genetically: a shoplifter was working in the store. 

Jeffry turned toward the danger.  The eighty-six alarm was sounded for a humungous turd of a man sporting a pimpled, oily face that had stopped many a two by four who’d wandered into the emporium wearing a fleece-lined trench coat on the balmy Autumn day, like a rooster into a paraplegic hen house, with an extra large milkshake bulging from one of his oversized pockets. 

The shoplifter nonchalantly walked around the store, picking up items and stuffing them in a grocery bag.

Jeffry moved deliberately toward the guy.  Hey, you fat fuck.  If you don’t put the goods back and get the hell out of our store, I’ll send you home in a body bag.

You ain’t shit to me, boy, the man responded with disdain.

How about I swing an elbow into your temple hard enough to make your brains ooze out your ear and on to your milkshake.  Then you’ll be too stupid to realize it’s not whipped cream. 

Y’all better gets your scrawny ass outa my face, white trash, the thief threatened, closing the distance between them.

Jeffry reached behind for his gun, but then quickly stepped back as Trixie threw the front door open and entered the store with Reggie Martinez one step behind. 

Jeffry noted Reggie with admiration: a top-ranked middleweight fighter just a decade earlier, one bout away from a title shot.  His past profession was still obvious on a face road-mapped by scar tissue and a nose pancaked by deft blows in the ring.  Arms that had once put the fear of God into serious men still held the knowledge and power of those earlier years.  A pronounced paunch slowed down over-burdened legs, but surely added center of gravity to left hooks.

Instead of immediately going over to the goniff and pummeling his face to the consistency of a grapefruit, the ex-prize fighter waited at the front door shadow boxing, a truly menacing sight.

When the trapped animal spotted Reggie at the entrance, he started unloading the merchandise from his shopping bag. 

Jeffry laughed out loud at the shoplifter who reminded him of a magician pulling unending rabbits out of a hat.

The man hadn’t even broken a sweat while speeding around the store one step ahead of everyone else, but now he was a running river of fear.  After giving up his entire haul, and with one eye rotated sideways to watch Reggie, he offered Trixie a sawbuck as a contribution for all the trouble he caused.

On the way out, the thief bellied up to Reggie sporting a chalk-gray complexion fusing hatred and dread. 

Who the fuck you starin’ at, Mister born ugly, and got fat quick on ‘greazy’ chicken? Reggie asked.  Looks like you got drunk and cursed out guys who make a living breaking concrete.

Whatcha doin, sidin’ with whitey, boy? 

I ain’t nobody’s boy, nigger, Reggie responded, then sliced an uppercut so deep into the thief’s capacious gut that his hand seemed as though it would become permanently attached.  As the wind sailed out of the pilferer’s mouth, he went flying backward hard enough to bounce off a heavy wooden counter five feet away.  Several minutes passed before he was able to stagger out of the store.

Jeffry retreated to the kitchen for lunch.  His father Max joined him a moment later.

Together they sat at the Formica-topped table eating grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, watching the TV set atop the refrigerator showing scenes from Birmingham, Alabama of Black and White Civil Rights marchers being blown off their feet by fire hoses while White policemen taunted the marchers, hoping to illicit a response they could use as an excuse to bash a few heads.

Max shook his head, despondent.  Jeffry agreed in his own silent way.

Daisy, the light-skinned black sales girl, peeked into the kitchen.  There’s a big dude trying to push some stuff on Jack, she said to Jeffry, leaning into the room while keeping her feet outside.  You better get out here and back up your brother.

Jeffry was in a momentary fog of reflection, caught by the events on screen.

Jeffry, Daisy repeated.

I’m coming, he replied, then spun out of his chair and followed Daisy, overhearing as he did his father mumble something about how to hold a family and its traditions together against the tides of temptation.

There.  Daisy pointed to a black man speaking to Jack.  His head almost touched the florescent light fixtures hanging down from the eight-foot ceiling.

Jeffry was alerted by a composure that didn’t jive with the locale.  As he approached, he listened to the guy lay a smooth line on his older but far more gullible brother.  Yeah, it’s right from the armory.  Retails for two large, the man said, patting the long, thin, leather case now sitting on the counter.

What do you want for it? Jack asked as visions of sugarplums danced in his head.

Jeffry saw that his brother was in the guy’s pocket.

A thousand, the man said, zipping up the case and lifting it off