The Places

The Offices, The Battlegrounds, and The Cages.

This is the map of “The Life.” The concrete and steel backdrop where it all went down.

 

Erie, Pennsylvania: The Neutral Zone

On the surface, it was “quiet little Erie,” just a sleepy waterfront town. But that was the con. Geography was our greatest asset: we sat exactly 100 miles from Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. It was a “neutral town,” an open city where the mobs agreed to play nice. If any one family tried to take over, the other two would come against it. That made it a “den of thieves,” a place where bank robbers, safe crackers, and hitmen could “lay low on the lamb”. This is where my grandmother, the “Million Dollar Baby,” ran rum during Prohibition, and where, decades later, we ran the streets.

Lackawanna, New York: The Fortress

This was Jimmy “JR” Russell’s hometown. If Erie was the proving ground, Lackawanna was the fortress. It was a town of steelworkers and old-school homeboys. When “The Kid” came to town, JR’s word was the only passport I needed. It was a world of joints like the “Astro-lite,” the “Crown Club” on Electric Avenue, and the “LakeSider Strip Club,” which famously stayed open for breakfast for the graveyard crews getting off shift at the Bethlehem Steel plant. It was my refuge until the night I got pulled over with a silenced pistol, and the walls came crashing down.

The Ole’ Monte Club: The Office

“Mousie” DeAurora’s place in Erie. This was where the crew met, where the deals were made, and where the coffee was poured. It was our living room. We owned the place, literally (in our minds). One morning, when Mikey D was late to open up, JR didn’t wait. He picked the front door lock in seconds, and we went in and served ourselves. We had our own private spot, a short section of the bar at the end where “no one else dare sit” when we were in the building.

The PP Club (Petrola Peligna Society): The Brawl

A private Italian nightclub in Erie’s Little Italy where you “had to know someone to get in past old Pasquale”. It was here, amidst the smoke and the music, that fate walked in. One night, we were there in three-piece suits when a fight exploded with a biker crew. In the middle of the bedlam, a rock glass came flying out of nowhere, knocking our own man cold. I looked over and saw Mary Ellen DeSantis in a silver velvet jumpsuit with a “shit-eating grin on her face”. JR snapped, “He was on our side!” but it didn’t matter. I fell in love right then and there.

The Crown Club: The Standoff

Located on Electric Avenue in Lackawanna. This is where I learned what loyalty looked like. JR’s brother Bobby was in debt to the Bufalino crew, and they were threatening to break his legs. JR told me to bring “the box”: a MAC 10 machine pistol with an 18-inch silencer. We sat in the Caddy across the street. JR told me that if the meeting with the Bufalino men went south and he hit the street, I was to “spray that black Caddy” with the melon-thumper. My heart was in my throat, but I was ready. JR walked away, the black Caddy drove off, and we lived to drink until 4 AM.

Shades Beach: The Disappearing Act

A quiet spot near the Pennsylvania/New York border. This is where my partner, Peter “The Doctor” Russell, pulled off his greatest magic trick. Facing prison and wanting to save his mother’s house from a bail bond lien, Pete decided to check out. He left a pile of clothes, a Bible, and a suicide note on the beach, then vanished into the wind. He stayed gone for 10 years, living a whole other life while the law dragged the lake, before they finally caught up with him in California.

Erie County Holding Center (10 Delaware Ave): The Waiting Room

The “hell hole” in downtown Buffalo. After the bust in Lackawanna, this is where I rotted for 10 months. It was a “pit of dead time” where I was often the “only white dude on ‘D’ block”. I didn’t let the time do me; I did the time. I played cards for push-ups, racking up 1500 a day until I could do 50 handstand pushups against the cell wall. It was the forge that hardened me for what was coming next.

Wende Correctional Facility: The Pit of Hell

Attica Reception. Classification 85C0177. This is where the state sends you when they’re done with you. It was here, locked in a cell on the Ides of March, 1985, that I received the letter from my mother. It was here I learned that Mary Ellen was dead. I beat the steel walls until my hands were “hamburger bloody to the bone”. When the extraction team came, 8 guards in full riot gear. I backed into the corner and asked them,

“Who is going to be the first motherfucker through that gate?”.

They didn’t come in. That night, I died, and a different man was born.