You watched the movie. I waited for the signal to pull the trigger.
You know the name Russell Bufalino. You saw Joe Pesci play him in The Irishman. You saw him order the hit on Jimmy Hoffa. To the world, he’s cinema history. To The Secret Seven, he was just the guy trying to break my partner’s legs.
It was a Tuesday night in Lackawanna. My mentor, Jimmy “JR” Russell, was in a dispute with the Bufalino crew over a gambling debt involving his brother . They threatened to wipe out his family name.
JR didn’t call the cops. He called me.
He told me to bring “The Box.” Inside was a MAC-10 machine pistol with an 18-inch silencer—we called it the “melon-thumper” .
I parked our 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham across the street from the Crown Club on Electric Avenue. JR got out. He told me,
“If I hit the street… spray that black Caddy”.
I watched the meet through the windshield. I watched the most dangerous men in the Northeast argue on a street corner. My finger was on the trigger. I wasn’t watching a movie. I was about to turn a quiet Buffalo suburb into a war zone.
JR walked away. The black Caddy drove off. We didn’t shoot. We went inside and drank until 4:00 AM .
To storytellers reading this: You’ve told the story of the Bosses. You’ve told the story of the Made Men. You haven’t told the story of the Mechanics, the guys in the parked cars, gripping the wheel, waiting for the world to explode.
My story isn’t just Goodfellas in the snow. It’s the blue-collar reality of the mob war that the history books forgot. And I’m the only one left alive to tell you what really happened in that parking lot.
