American Desperado

by Jon Roberts

  My dad did some things that were a mystery to me. If the guy who owed him money was with a friend, my dad would beat the snot out of the friend, too. My dad would tell him, “This is what you get for being friends with a piece of shit who owes me money.”

  It made no sense to me. Why beat the one guy if the other one owes you money? But that was my dad’s way to make his points to people. If he thought his way was right, then it was right. All my dad’s friends and my uncles, they all thought the same way. To them, their way was the right way. There was no question about it.

  I’m a person who’s used to violence, inflicting it and taking it. I’ve been shot, had bones broken, and I have been tortured a few times. One time in Mexico dirty cops put jumper cables on my balls and electrocuted me. That was not a good day. But violence and pain don’t scare me. They make me angry. They hurt. They force me to concentrate my reasoning and solve the problem of why someone is hurting me.

  But you take a normal person, and you break his bones, or you make him watch while you break his friend’s bones, or burn his skin with a lighter, he will become very frightened. He will follow the directions you give him. I learned this from the way my father used pain and fear. My father instilled in me that if you’re doing something wrong, do it in a forceful way, and you’ll come out way ahead. Way ahead.

  My dad never explained his philosophy in words. I used to wish he would talk to me more, but he didn’t. I had to watch him. I absorbed what I saw without reasoning or understanding. But what I saw entered my mind and changed how I looked at the world. On the playground I would see kids draw a little circle in the dust, and two guys would stand and fight each other. In my dad’s world, there were no little circles.

  As a nine-year-old, I couldn’t put what he was teaching me into words. But as I got older, my father’s philosophy became clear: evil is stronger than good. To kill, to hurt, to instill fear gives you power over situations and people. If you have a problem, choose the most evil way to solve it, and do the evil as forcefully as you can. That’s how you come out on top. The evil path is the strong path, because evil is stronger than good.

  That is what, unfortunately, my father taught me. Having a son of my own, I see that what you put into the eyes and ears of a child feeds his mind. His mind will grow different ways depending on what you feed it. My mind was fed the power of evil.

  I’m not saying I agreed with everything I saw my father do. We’d go to the bar in the middle of the day, and my father would lend money to some poor fucker that didn’t have a job. The guy borrowing the money was borrowing it to drink. My dad didn’t give a fuck. When the guy couldn’t pay him back, my dad would tell him, “You better go steal the money you owe me.” And the guy would. That was my dad’s business, taking money from poor people who had to steal from other poor people to pay him. What kind of business is that?

  One time he lent money to a man who had a hardware store in Jersey. When the man couldn’t pay, my dad took it over. Instead of running the hardware store, my dad had a fire sale. He went out with his guys, and they laid out boxes of screws, hammers, saws, cash registers—everything. Come and get it. Whatever people would pay for it, my dad put the money in his pocket. That was the end of the hardware store. He sold it out and burned it to the ground.

  I saw other kids whose dads owned shops, and they lived in nice houses. I’d look at my dad and think, Hey, Dad. Why not run the hardware business like a real business?

  I’m not judging my father, or looking down on him. He had the correct understanding about evil being stronger than good, but if you look at what he did with his knowledge, he was not at all smart. His business was based on poor people. You can only go so far with poor people. My outlook is, if you want to be a bank robber, don’t just be a good one. Rob the biggest fucking bank you can rob.

  I WAS ten years old when my father gave my mother a ’57 Thunderbird convertible. It made my mother happy. I could see this in her: she hated my father, but she wouldn’t turn down the nice things he gave her.

  The flashy car made us stand out in the neighborhood. It made me think we were moving up in the world. Of course, my parents could leave it on the street with the top down and keys in it, and nobody would touch it. I was proud that my family was special.

  After my dad brought home the Thunderbird, a strange incident happened. My father and Mr. Tut took me to a boxing match at Madison Square Garden, and a mob of reporters came up to him. They were shouting questions, taking pictures. They chased my dad out of there. I’d never seen my dad run from anybody.

  A few days later my dad did a funny thing. He told me he had to talk to me. The only other time I remember my dad directly talking to me was after he murdered the man on the bridge. I was nervous when I walked out to the car with him and Mr. Tut. We got in, and Mr. Tut drove for a while. My dad turned to me and said, “The cops are going to take me away, and you won’t see me for a long time.”

  Then the cops came to our house. Two men in suits, all the rest in blue. My mother let them in. My dad waited for them in the kitchen. He stood up when they entered and said nothing. It was very peaceful. My dad’s attitude was, even though the police were against you, they were doing their job. When they got you, they got you. My mother was quiet when he walked out with them. Nobody ever talked much in the house when my father was around. This day was no different. As my dad walked out the door, he looked at me and said, “I’m gone.”

  * Pacino shoots a mafioso named Virgil Sollozzo and the crooked cop, Captain McCluskey—played by Al Lettieri and Sterling Hayden—after retrieving a gun hidden in the restaurant bathroom. In the film, Luna is called Louis’ Italian American Restaurant.

  * “Lepke Aide, Hunted 7 Years, Gives Up,” New York Times, November 18, 1944.

  * Though in records his surname was Siloss, Jon and his sister disagree about their maternal grandfather’s first name. They called him by his nickname, Poppy.

  * An offensive slur for black people in Italian American slang.

  * A top, post-World War II designer.

  † “Joseph Riccobono, Racketeer, Is Dead,” New York Times, June 10, 1975.

  † “Honey” was also a nickname used by Jon for his maternal grandmother.

  ‡ Honey’s nephew Gerard “Jerry” Chilli was a captain in the Bonanno crime family whom Jon would become close to in his mid-twenties.

  3

  J.R.: My father was deported to Sicily in 1959. Years later I found out what happened. When Lucky Luciano, the boss of all the Mafia families, was deported by the government in 1946, a man named Albert Anastasia took over. In 1957 Carlo Gambino, who my dad and my uncles were loyal to, decided to take over from Anastasia.

  Albert Anastasia used to get his hair cut at the barbershop in the Park Sheraton Hotel.* One morning a couple of guys went in there and shot him to death in his barber chair,† and Gambino became the boss of everything. I don’t know if my family was involved in whacking Anastasia, but after it happened my uncle Joe got a big promotion. He became Gambino’s consigliere. I’m sure my dad got a promotion, too. Maybe he got my mother the Thunderbird to celebrate it.

  The mistake that happened was, a few weeks after Gambino took over, he called all the top gangsters from around the country to meet with him. They gathered at a farm in upstate New York, a place called Apalachin. The meeting turned into a fiasco when a nosy cop saw all the flashy gangster cars parked at the farm and raided the place.* They caught dozens of top Mafia bosses there, including my uncle Joe and my dad. The Riccobono name was in the papers every day.† That’s why the reporters chased us at Madison Square Garden. My uncle Joe became infamous as the head of the “Apalachin Five”—top Mafia guys arrested at Apalachin who refused to testify about what they were doing there.‡ He fought for his right not to testify up to a federal appellate court and won.§

  My dad had a different problem after his arrest at Apalachin. Unlike my uncle Joe, who was an American citizen, my dad was what they now call an illegal
alien. Everything he had—driver’s license, leases, cars he owned—it was all fake names and forgeries.** He and my mother weren’t even legally married. The cops released him after his arrest at Apalachin, but later they decided to deport all the illegal aliens connected with the Mafia.*

  My father was a made man. The son of a made man will usually become a made man. But when my dad was deported, his power went away. Because of who my family was, I was like a prince in the Mafia, but when he left, I was also a bastard.

  I saw this right away in my house. As soon as my father disappeared, my mother turned on me. After not talking to me for years, now she followed me around nagging me.

  “You don’t want to be like your father,” she’d say. “Go to school.”

  When I argued back, she’d say, “You’re just like your father. You’re bad like he is.”

  I realize now my mother was trying to correct me. But it was too late. I was already just like my dad. I could feel it inside. I’m sure I reminded my mother of the mistake she’d made in being with my father.

  A few months after my dad was deported, my mother put me on a plane and sent me to Palermo. This was in 1960, when flying overseas was not an ordinary thing. I was twelve, and I flew alone. I was supposed to stay with my father so he could raise me, and I wouldn’t be a problem for my mother anymore.

  To me, going to Sicily was like traveling to the Stone Age. There was no basketball, no baseball, no TV. I missed Sea Hunt and Bonanza, my favorite TV shows. My father dragged me here and there, and nothing made sense to me. All I saw was old Mafia guys playing dominoes, drinking coffee. I didn’t speak a word of Italian. There were no kids my age. I hated Italy. It was so bad even my father showed compassion. He sent me home after a few weeks. I never heard from him again.

  I never loved my father the way a normal person is supposed to love their parent. I respected him because I feared him. I didn’t feel any love from him. I don’t think my father was capable of love. I know that because I grew up to be just like him. I had no love for anybody.

  WHEN I came back from Italy, my mom had moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, with my grandparents Honey and Poppy. Their house was the first house I’d ever lived in. It felt like a mansion. I went back years later and couldn’t believe how small it was. It was a narrow two-story house divided into small rooms—a sardine can divided into smaller sardine cans. Including my sister, Judy, there were five of us in there.

  But I’m not complaining. It was a good home. The only problem in that house was me.

  They put me in a local school. I hadn’t really been in school for a couple years. My thought patterns were different from other kids’. The stuff they taught in class was ridiculous. The story of George Washington and the cherry tree, where he says, “I cannot tell a lie.” You’ve got to be kidding me. I’d hear this shit and laugh my ass off.

  I made friends with kids on my street, but I didn’t know how to get along with them. One day I was playing basketball with a kid at a little hoop his dad made for him in the driveway. I punched the kid. In Little Italy it was no big deal to fight with your friends. In Teaneck it was a major offense. The kid’s parents came to my grandparents’ house. Everybody was yelling, “This boy is your neighbor. You can’t hit your neighbor.”

  The neighbors said I was messed up because I didn’t have a dad. A guy in the neighborhood felt sorry for me and put me on a baseball team. It was called the Firemen because we were sponsored by an engine house. Our team was all the messed-up kids from bad homes. We had a game against a team of normal kids, and a fight started. I wasn’t involved at first. But no way would I miss a fight. I grabbed a bat and started swinging. Everybody else was using their fists. I’m swinging my bat. One of the fathers tried to grab my bat. I hit him in the face. Now I got all the fathers of the kids from good homes chasing me. They finally took me down with a baseball bat and sent me to the hospital with a broken arm. I was off the team.

  Watching Bonanza on TV was one thing I had in common with normal kids. Everybody went nuts over that show. I loved Westerns. I wanted to be a gunfighter. Here was one thing I could relate to with the rest of America. But when I listened to how other people talked about Bonanza, I was amazed. We had a teacher in school who talked about the show in class. He explained how the Cartwright family* represented the good values of America because they were on the side of law and justice.

  My way of seeing it was different. To me the Cartwrights had the might and power, and they used it to take over all that land on their Ponderosa ranch. Thousands of acres. You’re telling me it’s fair that one family gets so much land? Some poor asshole in his little covered wagon wanders onto the Ponderosa ranch, and the Cartwrights ride out with guns and chase him off. They had the sheriff paid off, too. Anybody the Cartwrights didn’t like, he got thrown in the jail. No trial, nothing. From the way I saw it, the Cartwrights were the same as my father and uncles in the Mafia. They understood force.

  Because of all the stories in the news about my family, Riccobono was a bad name. My mother told me I had to change my last name. I changed my name to Jon Pernell Roberts, after Pernell Roberts, who played the oldest son on Bonanza. I liked him the best because he wore black. His hat, his vest, his gun belt were all black. He was the top enforcer for the family. He was the kind of guy I wanted to be. I wanted to steal my own Ponderosa when I grew up.

  JUDY: When we moved to Teaneck, I coped with the bad in our family by throwing myself into schoolwork and my social life. I made myself oblivious by being good and pretending everything was good. Jon was the opposite. My father was an unspeakably evil man. But he was Jon’s dad, and Jon lost him. It hurt him. He fought in school. He argued with our mother. He was still a little boy, but he was already mad at society.

  Our grandfather, Poppy, was the only positive influence Jon had. Poppy was a wonderful man, and Jon loved him.

  J.R.: I didn’t love Poppy. The concept of me loving a person was not a concept. But I liked Poppy.

  Poppy was a straight old-country Polish guy. Didn’t drink, worked his ass off. He tried to raise me properly. Everything was poetic to him. He would talk about shit like the beauty of the sky. He was the total opposite of my father. I thought he was strange. Not bad, but strange.

  Poppy loved to fish, and this is something he passed to me: the love of the water. It helped when I got into smuggling. On the weekends we would go to the Bronx and get on a drift-fishing boat. We had to be at the dock at five-thirty in the morning so Poppy could get a special place on the boat. The way I looked at it, if you’re going to catch fish, you’re going to catch fish, no matter where you sit. But Poppy had his way of doing it.

  We’d go toward the Jersey shore for fluke or bluefish, or up toward Connecticut, where we would get black fish and mackerel in the colder water. On the way out they’d have a poker game on the boat.

  These weren’t anything like my dad’s games, where his friends would play for hundreds of dollars with their guns out. Poppy and his friends played for a few dollars. One time Poppy won the game, and another guy on the boat called him a cheater. Poppy said nothing to this man. He did not stand up for himself.

  The way this man treated Poppy turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe the weakness Poppy showed. I was twelve, but I went up to the man and said, “You think he’s a cheat? You’re a piece of shit.”

  I spat in his face, and the guy hit me.

  There was a mate on the boat, a teenager who liked Poppy. When he saw me get punched, he started beating on the guy. I picked up a grappling hook and began swinging. All hell broke loose.

  When we got home, Poppy didn’t talk to me. The man wouldn’t raise his voice. He showed his anger with silence. I couldn’t understand him. He’d shown weakness, and I’d tried to back him up.

  Poppy took me fishing again, and I got us banned from the boat. The men on the boat had a betting pool. Each man would put in a dollar, and whoever caught the biggest fish won the pot. I watched everybody putting in their
money one morning, and I remember looking at these jerks, thinking, I’m going to take their money.

  There was $52 in it that day. I caught a fish. He was big, but there were other fish equal to my fish. So I took some lead sinkers, stuffed them down my fish’s stomach, and made him the winner. I got the $52, and I tossed my fish in the bucket. Poppy was proud. He told the mate, “Filet our fish, because we’re going to eat it tonight with his grandmother.”

  I didn’t pay attention. I got my $52. I’m happy.

  Then the mate came back and said, “Gee whiz, we’re going to have to disqualify your grandson. Jon cheated.”

  Poppy put his arm on my shoulder and said, “Give back the money.”

  I looked him in the eye. “I don’t give a fuck. The money is mine.”

  I knew Poppy wouldn’t do anything. He’d backed down at the poker game when the guy called him a cheater. He wasn’t going to fight me. He paid back the betting pool out of his own pocket.

  AFTER I saw how weak Poppy was, there was no controlling me. I’d come home with lunch money I stole from a kid at school, and Poppy would ask where I got it.

  “None of your fucking business.” I knew how to handle him.

  My school was Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Teaneck. When I didn’t want to go, I’d call in bomb scares. Eventually some idiot ratted me out. The police took me and my mom to the fire station so they could lecture me about the consequences of my actions. One of the cops said, “All these firemen have to get on their fire engines and drive to the school because of what you did.”

  “Why am I supposed to feel bad for making firemen get in their fire trucks? Isn’t that their job?” I thought I was hilarious.