THE CODE: LESSONS FROM THE GUTTER

The Code isn’t written down. It’s learned in back alleys, in getaway cars, and in the steel silence of a prison cell. It’s a curriculum paid for in years and blood.

These are the lessons that kept me alive when I should have been dead.

Rule #1: Watch the Quiet Ones

The first and most important rule came from the man who started it all, Jimmy “JR” Russell. He taught me the foundation of our world:

“Keep your mouth shut Kid!”.

He taught me to be the “quiet one” that sat in the corner in the shadows, observing. He told me that the loudmouths were never a threat because “you know what direction they’re comin’ from”. So I became a quiet one. I learned to listen. I learned that silence is the only armor you have when the heat comes down.

Rule #2: Have an Exit Strategy

JR’s code was one of meticulous, obsessive planning. He lived by the belief that you never walk into a room without knowing how you’ll walk out.

“Always have a plan B Kid, an exit strategy, when you go in KNOW how you are getting’ out!”.

This wasn’t just advice. It was a lifeline. He’d make me watch a score three times. He said once we saw it three times,

“It’s ours… We own it !”.

To break this rule was to invite disaster. The one time we cut a corner on a supermarket job, watching it only once, it all fell apart. My partner froze, the money got away, and I learned the hardest lesson of all:

“Them’s the rule’s! Break the rules and the rules break you”.

Rule #3: The Toolbox

JR wasn’t the only man teaching lessons. My own father, a brilliant machinist and pool shark, gave me a different kind of code. It was for survival in the straight world, but it had the same hard edge.

When I was washing out of the trade, feeling like I had failed him, he told me:

“When the job ain’t goin’ like you think it should be goin’ you gotta’ have enough confidence in yourself that you can close your toolbox up, roll it out the door… and you’ll do the next job there”.

It was a lesson in self-reliance that I carried into every cell and every job, legit or otherwise. You have to know your own worth, even when the world tells you you’re nothing.

Rule #4: The Two Percent

The final lessons came from the inside, from the men who had seen it all. In prison, an old-timer named Tony Cangiano gave me the two rules that would save my life and my soul.

First, he explained what it really means to be tough. It isn’t about walking around with your chest out.

“Being a tough guy is easy, 98 percent of the time you don’t have to do anything than your ordinarily do. Only two percent you have to do what is required, when it’s required…HOW it’s required!” .

Rule #5: Dig Two Graves

When I was locked up, boiling with rage and planning my revenge for the death of my angel, Mary Ellen, Tony gave me the last piece of the code. It was the one that stopped me from destroying myself.

“Murph, there is a saying back in my old country, ‘When you go out with vengeance in your heart; dig two graves. One for the person you’re after and one for yourself’” .

I didn’t dig that second grave. I survived. And that’s the only victory that matters.