Salerno: The generation gap that began to creep into
the organised Crime and only widened was the fact that the older men who had
made many millions had a tendency to say, Let’s stay away from Narcotics. It’s
bad Publicity. It’s bad News. Stay away from it.
Leonetti: Drugs, sure, we could have done a lot
better. But my uncle always concerned how the People in the Genovese Family
would feel about that. He knew they were dead against it. And he always made
sure nobody in our Family fooled for Drugs. You put the Rule down. You can shake
People down – because you can shake Drug Peoples down for big Money – but you
cannot steal the Drugs and sell them. [Accurate.] We can steal the Money, he
told them, but not the Drug.
Montiglio: The older guys, whom we referred to as the
Moustache Pete, that School is dead now, because it used to be very
Disciplined. They stuck to the Rules. They were very cheap. They had a saying,
Keep them down, keep them hungry, keep them working for you. And the Drug
Business opened them a whole new horizon.
Salerno: In the generation gap, the young guys are
saying, Sure, they had made all their Money, and they’re going to deny us a
chance to catch up to them. That’s why they want us to stay away from
Narcotics. So that was a general Rule that a lot of the young men decided to
violate.
Narrator: For a good reason, Money. Drugs are making
other people rich. The Rules are working great for the bosses, not for the guys
on the Street.
Montiglio: I just wasn’t getting enough Money to
survive. I had another child on the way. I had two kids, and he was paying me
like $250 a week. And we’re talking about putting hand grenades in People’s
car, running around gunning down People in the street, for $250 a week.
Beattie: I had grandmothers, ladies with blue hair,
driving big Electric 225 Buick, with 800 pounds of pot in it. [unclear] was on
it, spray-painted so the State Police wouldn’t see it, delivering them to my
door. And I gave them an enveloppe, 500, 1500, or whatever you agree with, then
they would leave. This was like three times a week. These were grandmothers.
These People were People I’ve never seen again, thank God. I knew it was
somebody’s grandmother. They had nets on their head. They were looking over
their sterring wheel. The cops would never stop them. We used to bring them up
and down the Turnpikes all the Time like that. You want the car? Unload it. You
can take the car with you. We didn’t even want the cars. I wanted to open the
damned car lot, I had so many cars from smuggling Drugs up. We were giving cars
away for Christmas presents. And you asked me it affected everybody? Everybody that
was affected was making Money. Now that the monster is here, nobody wants to
pay for it, but it’s here. Now what do you do with it?
Reagan: We’ve stopped the American free-fall into the
Drug-pit. We’re getting our footing to climb out.
Narrator: Far from climbing out, the Mob is sinking
fast. Mobsters are not only selling dope, they’re shooting it. Forget
Discipline, forget Restraint, forget Loyalty. For these kind of dough, People
will do anything.
Leonetti: As Things started evolving and changing,
People who started to dealing with Drugs changed. It’s not like it was in the
old days.
Montiglio: I would stay up three or four days at a
time, doing cocaine, not eating, drinking Jack Daniels, and doing Wobblies.
Beattie: I was snorting the same cocaine that I was
selling. Doing the same quaaelude.
Montiglio: It gets pretty hairy, because you start to
hallucinate. [Accurate.]
Beattie: It got worse with the bodies. As the bodies
came, cocaine got worse.
Montiglio: Guns become a very big part of your life.
You’re always with guns, and ready to shoot.
Beattie: Where I would carry a vial, I was carying
around ounces. Constantly reload, constantly drinking, which destroyed the West
Side, by far. All of them became Drug-addicts.
Montiglio: The more you do, the worse it gets.
Beattie: They would kill People and get high, or get
high and kill People, or whatever you did. [omitted] It’s become too fast. Getting chased out of the Waters outside
of Miami. I was chased by helicopters. We jumped out of boats. Horrendous, horrendous stuff. But it was kind of
action-packed, so it was kind of Fun at the same time. I really pumped
jump. Today, Holy Jesus. I felt like that movie, Miami Vice after a while. I
started to live that life.
Leonetti: It’s good to watch, but when you’re
involved in it, you have to go out, pull the trigger and blow somebody’s brains
out. That’s not much Glamour in there. You’re the guy who gets indicted and
goes to Jail. They can turn the channel off and watch the different show when
the person goes to Jail or gets the Electric Chair. You’re the guy who has to
go through it. You’re the guy who lives it. [omitted] A lot of the guys, when we started
shaking down Drug-dealers and bookmakers and loansharks, Come right to the
hangouts. They said, Look, I’m going into Business. Here, I want to start
paying. I want no problem with you guys. That’s
how scared they were of us, because we were killing everybody. Everybody
was being killed, no matter who they were.
Beattie: Everybody had contracts on everybody in the
Group at that time. They were going to kill me, they were going to kill him,
they were going to kill each other. They started killing each other. Things got
really nuts.
Montiglio: You walked in. You got shot in the head
with a silencer. Somebody wrapped a towel around your head to stop the blood
from going all over the place. Chris would jump out with his underwear, because
he didn’t like to get his clothes dirty, and he’d stab in the heart to stop the heart from
pumping so the blood would stop.
[Saved.] You were hung upside down in the shower. The neck was cut,
starting in the back, all the way around here. Bleed you in the shower for about
40 minutes. And they have pool tarpaulin and regular butcher kits, with saws
the butcher uses and a hatchet. They had it down to a Science. [omitted] Once
they wanted you found. And they didn’t care who it was. They got to a point
they didn’t care who they were killing. [omitted] You had five or six serial
killers in one crew. These were legitimate serial killers. I’m talking up to
100 [homo sapiens] a piece. It kinds of gets you after a while, because every
time you go walk in there to collect money, you say, I wonder I’m going to walk
out of here tonight.
Beattie: I sat in the tub for 4 hours. Stark naked
with two guys, silencer pointed at my face with hoods on. Jimmy Coonan and Eddie
Kaminsky. And I asked them, What did I do to deserve this? I’m earning you
Money. No, it’s nothing personal. It’s not you. We’re waiting for Patty Dougan
to come.
Montiglio: And then all the People in our own crew
started to disappear. It wasn’t like they were out to kill. They started
killing each other. So it just got too insane.
Beattie: Women walking in the Street, waiting for the
husbands to come home that weren’t coming home no more. That wasn’t easy to
deal with. [omitted] It was disturbing to see Jimmy
Coonan pick these babies up, and hold them and play with them. I used to look
at him, and said, How can this guy? He just cut somebody’s fucking hand or his
head in his hand. He’s playing with his kids. How do you live with that? I
couldn’t live with that. I refused to live with that. That was my
cop-out to Drugs. You learned to escape. [omitted] But how can a sane person, a
supposedly sane person go kill somebody and not get drunk? How do you live with
the fact that you severed somebody’s head off? I saw them cut a man’s head off. [Accurate.] [omitted] But it
happened so fast, and I saw the look in Jimmy Coonan’s face, I knew my days
were numbered. He was not going to allow me to go and have this over his head.
[omitted] Coonan instructed Mickey, Billy’s got to go, I want him out. So they
put a contract on the Street on me.
Montiglio: I was accused of dealing heroin, and in
our Family that’s a death sentence. [omitted] And on the way home, Nino told
me, he says, You know, if you weren’t my nephew, they would have found you on
the Street already, and you just keep on messing up. And he just gave me that
look. And I had no intention of not keeping on messing up, because I was going
to go out and make my own Money. At that time, I figured either I stay and I’ll
ask a few of them once, and they’re going to kill me, or I take off and I go.
Beattie: I had made Peace with the face that I was
dying anyway. But I made Peace with that fact early in life when I became a criminal
and Drug-dealer and burglar. It was obvious I wasn’t going to live long,
because we were dealing this dead man’s hand. Everyone around me was dying.
\
Narrator: Mob guys dead. Discipline dead. Loyalty
dead. Nobody’s safe anymore. Not even the bosses.
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