The King of Con

July 3, 2017

It’s a warm summer morning and before Marty arrives for my 6 AM haircut, I put on the Sinatra Christmas tunes.

I’ll be home for Christmas . . .

Except for my stint in prison, Marty’s been cutting my hair for forty-five years now. We got history together. He knows all the different crews and still has the Cabbage Patch doll I gave him for his kid that time I got arrested thirty years ago. Marty’s a witness and one of the few still alive, like me, to attest to it all. These days, our conversations go like this:

“Marty, whatever happened to Freddy Minatola?”

“Dead,” says Marty, as he trims the nape.

“And Streaky and his son? Joe Albino?”

“Dead. Dead.”

“Tommy Barnetas?”

“Dead.”

It’s a little game we play, and the list goes on and on. Most of the guys in my crooked tale are dead and buried, but somehow I survived.

When I got out of prison, I returned to a bizarro world I didn’t recognize.

Harry Mount was teaching a course on organized crime at a local university; Kim DePaola was now “Kim D” and starring on a reality show called The Housewives of New Jersey; Tina went from being a cop to being a dog whisperer; and my attorney, Cathy Waldor, is a New Jersey district court judge. One of the guys I bought a garbage company from, Jimmy Rotundo, was now Mayor of Palisades Park, and Nicky Ola’s son is now a street boss. My kids grew up, got married, and made me a grandfather. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Tom Jr. and Nick are good fathers, Debbie tells me. And with that, they put a final end to the cycle of violence between father and son in our family.

I came back to a country where guys marrying guys was the law of the land and we had our first black president. Then last year, America went and elected a con man into the White House.

“He’s like a dumb mob boss!” I tell Marty, as he snips away and we listen to CNN over top of Sinatra. “I’m the king of con, but this guy? Son of a bitch conned more than half the country. And he’s such a disaster.”

Oh yeah, there was hope for me yet to take over the world.

After I got out of the halfway house in the summer of 2014, I moved into a hotel in Jersey near my old neighborhoods. That’s where I’ve been for three years now, until I figure out my next move. In my room, everything I have is in plastic boxes and I still wear my prison-issued T-shirts. When Tina came by to see my room, she shrieked: “You’re so institutionalized! Oh my God!”

I hoard canned goods in my closet with the labels forward, my clothes and socks are folded and lined up like my mother taught me, and at least twice a week I raid the maid’s cart in the hallway. I load up on paper towels, toilet paper, shampoo, towels, anything I can get my hands on. Yeah, I’m a still a thief—only now my crew is the hotel staff.

At least once a week I get the unstoppable urge to steal something bigger, more dangerous, more challenging.

It usually hits me at 4 AM, the time I used to steal from my father’s wallet. With my hands slathered in Vaseline under white gloves, I take a bunch of plastic grocery bags downstairs to the hotel kitchen, just off the lobby. From the freezer and fridge, I steal pints of Häagen-Dazs, breakfast sausages, cut-up fruit, whatever catches my eye that’s easy to clip. If the night manager on duty catches me, I slip him a twenty and tell him to keep his mouth shut. If he still complains, I slip him another twenty and he goes away. They gotta have tons of surveillance video of me by now, roaming the hallways like a looney tune. But they all know me. I’m the Old Gangster on the outside, too, and my hotel is my new home and safe house.

For a while, I was spending my days watching Netflix, devouring the news, eating my favorite deli, and loving every minute of it. I don’t give a shit about going out to clubs or buying five Cadillacs or dating broads. I really don’t. I’ll smoke a Maduro cigar once in a while and buy a nice suit, and I bought one nice car—I had to do that. But that’s it. I don’t fucking need or want what I had before.

Greed nearly killed me. It may have been good for Gordon Gekko, but not me. I’m happy with my stolen paper towels and ice cream. Especially because I’ve had plenty of time to lie awake at night and look back at my life with regret, over and over.

What the fuck did I do to myself? I still ask out loud, while the rest of the hotel and world sleep. I had everything, and now I’m a sixty-four-year-old man getting a pension, living on the money my mother left me.

Yeah, I know what you’re wondering. Where’s the rest of the money I took? The millions in banks all over the world? Everybody asks me that. All I can tell you is: I have no fucking idea. That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it.

I’ll tell you this, though: I got plans, big ones. My mother used to say: “Give my son a pencil and a dollar and he’ll make a million.” I plan to get back on top again, and this time it’s not for the glory and not to prove anything to my father. This time it’s to prove something to myself—that I can, because I’m good at it. I’m the kid with a business mind who’s talented with numbers and can convince anybody of anything. The kid who coulda been somebody, a contender, without going bad.

“Just don’t go into trucking,” warns Mr. G, my parole officer, who visits once a month to make sure I’m on track. “And don’t go into the garbage business,” he says, “or the courier business. Or funeral homes, or investment companies, or . . .”

Okay, okay, I get the picture. I’m in trouble even if I fart wrong.

“Hey, Mr. G. Maybe you can work for me after you retire?”

He didn’t hesitate for a second before responding.

“Never going to happen,” he says, and we laugh. But I’m serious, of course.

I’m putting my new crew together, and it will include some of the old guys and some new ones.

After I got out, some of the old crew slowly reappeared—the best and most loyal ones: Fat Pauly, Wayne, and a few others. We get together at the old Tick Tock Diner in Clifton to make plans, the place where Tony Pro recruited me at nineteen.

You might be interested to know that Fat Pauly ain’t so fat no more, so we’ll have to come up with a new nickname for him. Wayne recently kicked cancer’s ass. And my Fort Dix buddy whom I didn’t say goodbye to, Manny, found me after I got out, and he’s gonna be my right-hand guy in my next big business venture.

Some of the other guys are calling, too, the ones I should stay away from. Because once you’re known as a Big Earner, they never leave you alone. I made a lot of money for a lot of guys, and they’re lining up to get a piece of what I do next. They want me to part the Red Sea for them again; they want me to be their golden goose one more time.

But I made two promises to Lauren in prison, and I’m trying to keep them.

The first was to find out who killed her, and you better believe I’m on the trail of that motherfucker. The second was to stay straight once I got out.

After Marty finishes my hair, I get into my car—a black Mercedes with black interior—and drive to the cemetery. Today is the fifteenth anniversary of Lauren’s death so I’m going there to talk to her. I still don’t believe in god, but I believe in Lauren.

“Baby, I’m getting it all together again,” I say, putting flowers on her grave. She’s buried in the same plot as my parents. “I’m going to be bigger than ever. And this time I’ll do it right, you’ll see.”

I can hear her voice in my head: Don’t get tangled up again like last time, Daddy. Be careful. Be good.

“I’ll be good.”

I look at my parents’ names on the stone and all I can think to say is: “I’m sorry.” They’d never said those words to me and part of me is saying it for them, to me. I’m still working on how to say those words to Tom Jr., Nick, Alison, Joey, Stephanie, and Kristina.

When I get back to the car I have a voice mail waiting. It’s a high-ranking made guy I’d done business with before I went away.

“Hey, Tom. We hear you’re working on a big idea. You’re wit us, don’t forget. We wanna see youse.”

I drive away from the cemetery and pass the mansions in my old neighborhood, each one grander than the next. It would be easy, so easy, to call that guy back and duplicate the life I had before. I can smell it, I can taste it; all it would take is one phone call. My hands are itchy.

I lean over and hit play on the CD player; on comes Frank singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

I’m not going to get tangled up. I’ll climb back on top of the mountain without those no-goodniks. I never needed them, anyway. I was the one who made it happen and took the Smurfs to the Super Bowl. I was the genius mastermind behind the deals that proved miraculous. I still am.

Glory to the newborn King!

Peace on earth, and mercy mild . . .

At the next stoplight I listen to the voice mail again, then hit delete. I know where to find that stunard if I want him. I take the turn for my hotel, singing along with Frank, a fellow Jersey boy, as I drive:

God and sinners reconciled . . .

In this world of saints and sinners, heroes and bad guys, real and fake news, I’m an old gangster returned home, trying to learn new tricks. And that’s the truth as I see it.

Because after all, a guy can change.

Can’t he?

END