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

Jimmy may have told me after Broadway Eddie’s that night at the Warwick and over the years would die with me. In the end they made the decision to spare me out of respect for Russell. It wouldn’t be the first time Russell saved me from something serious.
    I don’t care how tough you are or how tough you think you are, if they want you you’re theirs. It’s usually your best friend that walks up to you talking about a football bet and you’re gone. Like Giancana got it frying eggs and sausages in olive oil with an old friend he trusted.
    This was the wrong time for me to sound like I was worrying about Jimmy. Still, I couldn’t help myself. Without making it sound like I was trying to save Jimmy, I got right next to Russell’s ear. “The nuclear fallout from the feds.” I tried not to stammer, but I probably was stammering. He was used to it; it was the way I talked since childhood. I wasn’t worried that he might view it as some kind of sign that I was having a problem with this particular matter because I was very loyal to Jimmy and very close to Jimmy and his family. I bowed my head and shook it from side to side. “The nuclear fallout’s going to hit the fan. You know, Jimmy’s got records stashed away in case something unnatural happens to him.”
    “Your friend made one threat too many in his life,” Russell shrugged.
    “I’m only saying the nuclear fallout’s going to hit the fan when they find his body.”
    “There won’t be a body.” Russell went thumb down on the table with his right hand. Russell had lost the thumb and index finger on his left hand when he was young. He moved the thumb he still had around like he was grinding something into the white tablecloth and said, “Dust to dust.”
    I leaned back and sipped my Sambuca and coffee. “That’s what it is,” I said. I took another sip, “So, we get it on Wednesday night.”
    The old man reached up and pinched my cheek like he knew what was in my heart. “My Irishman, we did all we could for the man. Nobody could tell that man what it is. We get into Detroit together Wednesday night.”
    I put my coffee cup down into its saucer, and Russell moved his warm, thick hand to the back of my neck and left it there and whispered, “We’ll drive so far, and we’ll stop for the women someplace. We’ll go do some business.”
    Sure, I thought, and nodded. Russell had business all along the route from Kingston to Detroit. We’d drop the women at some roadside diner and go do our business while they smoked and had coffee.
    Russell leaned toward me, and I bent down and leaned close to him. He whispered, “There’ll be a pilot waiting. You take a quick fly over the lake and do a little errand in Detroit. Then you fly back. Pick the women up. They won’t even notice we’re gone. Then we take our time. Nice, leisurely drive the rest of the way to Detroit. The scenic route. We’re in no hurry. That’s what it is.” ”

 
     
      chapter three  
     
     
    Get Yourself Another Punching Bag
     
    “ What were the twists and turns that brought me to that exact moment in a small Italian restaurant in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, where I listened carefully to whispered orders? Orders I had to follow for the part I had to play in the plot against my friend Jimmy Hoffa.
    I wasn’t born into that Mafia way of life like the young Italians were, who came out of places like Brooklyn, Detroit, and Chicago. I was Irish Catholic from Philadelphia, and before I came home from the war I never did anything really wrong, not even a pinch for disorderly conduct.
    I was born into some rough times, not just for the Irish, but for everybody. They say the Depression started when I was nine years old in 1929, but as far as I’m concerned our family never had any money. Nobody else’s family did either.
    My first taste of enemy fire came from farmers in New Jersey when I was a young lad. Philadelphia sits across the wide Delaware River from Camden, New