"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa Read Online Free PDF

He had that smile on his round, craggy face you get when you squint at the sun. He had muscle deterioration in his face that gave him a lazy eye. If you didn’t know him you would think he was blinking or drinking. With his good eye he looked through his wide glasses into my blue eyes.
    Russell didn’t say anything at first, like he was trying to think how to say it by studying my eyes. Russell had a voice that crackled like a rattle, but the madder he got the softer Russell talked. He was very soft-spoken that night before my testimonial dinner at Frank Sheeran Appreciation Night when he warned Jimmy to back off from trying to take back the union.
    At the table at Brutico’s, Russell was talking so soft I had to lean my extra-large head real close. In a raspy whisper he said, “We got a little change in plans. We’re not leaving tomorrow. We stay put ’til Wednesday morning.”
    The news hit me like a mortar shell. They didn’t want me in Detroit Wednesday afternoon at that restaurant. They wanted Jimmy alone.
    I stayed bent over close to Russell. Maybe he’d tell me more. You listen. You don’t ask questions. It seemed like it took him a good while. Maybe it just seemed like a long delay to me before he spoke. “Your friend was too late. There’s no need for you and me to meet him on Saturday by the lake.”
    Russell Bufalino’s penetrating good eye stayed on mine. I moved back up in my seat. I couldn’t show anything in my face. I couldn’t say a word. That’s not the way it works. The wrong look in my eyes and my house gets painted.
    Jimmy warned me to watch myself back in October at the Warwick Hotel in Philly when I tried to tell him what it is. He said, “…watch your ass…you could end up being fair game.” Just yesterday he got done warning me again on the phone that I was too close to him “in some people’s eyes.” I put the coffee and Sambuca up to my nose. The licorice didn’t smell strong enough against the smell of the coffee so I added some Sambuca.
    I didn’t have to be told that I better not even think about calling Jimmy when Irene and I got back to the Howard Johnson motel for the night. From this point on, whether it was true or not, I would have to assume that I was being watched. Russell had a piece of that Howard Johnson’s. If I used the phone that night it is quite likely that Irene and I never would have made it out of the parking lot the next morning. I would have gotten what some people thought was coming to me anyway, and poor Irene just would have been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong Irishman.
    And there was no way in the world Jimmy could call me. In case the feds were listening, you never said on the phone where you’d be staying when you got to where you were going. There were no cell phones then. Jimmy just wouldn’t get a call from me Tuesday night in Detroit, and that would be that. He would never know why. He’d go alone to his meeting on Wednesday. My little brother and I wouldn’t be there for backup.
    I sat there in silence with the ladies talking among themselves about who knows what. They might as well have been on the other side of the bridge over the waterfall in Bill Bufalino’s basement.
    I was reviewing things fast. Right after I called Russell that morning about Jimmy calling me, Russell would have called certain important people. He would have told these people about me going to the restaurant with Jimmy and taking my little brother. Right or wrong, the best I could figure at that moment was that these people called Russell and told him they wanted us to stay put for a day so they could get Jimmy alone.
    Only before they called Russell they must’ve been reviewing things themselves. All day certain people in New York, Chicago, and Detroit must have been deciding whether or not to let me be there with Jimmy on Wednesday. That way one of the closest Hoffa supporters in America would go to Australia with Jimmy. Whatever secrets