When we left our family owned a private jet.
When we left, the move away from the crime of Philadelphia had become
a strategic move that put a significant spike in our family’s
crime. We could go to the source. We could cart heroin all around the
country to clientele anywhere, though it would likely just be those
well-established in Philly and those to come in California. Senior
didn’t understand that we wanted to get away from crime. To him,
crime wasn’t a choice or an avoidable entity; it was simply our way
of life. We were a crime family.
When I told my mother about the plane as she set out the meal that
had just been delivered, she was shocked. Senior assured her that he
had bought it as a going away present for us. It was a means of
keeping us close even when we were a country away. Senior was smooth
with words. As he explained that he couldn’t bear the thought of
seeing us only on holidays and occasional vacations even I was
convinced by his clear emotion. As he told her we could hop on the
jet anytime we wanted to pop back for a visit even I was moved by his
generosity. So I guess it wasn’t fair for me to think my mother a
mindless drone for believing it all. But as she was moved to tears
and hugged Senior thanking him for everything he did for us, I was
sceptical as to the assumed intelligence we kept crediting to her.
Manipulation: making smart people do what you want is one thing, but
I wanted to reach the next level, the Senior level. I wanted to have
the power to make smart people think, feel, believe what I wanted
them to. Senior was my hero. My father and my uncles had their
shining moments but Senior was the spring, they were just the pooling
water in comparison.
About a month later as I was counting down the days until we moved,
the boys – even Senior – piled onto the plane bound for Vietnam.
Their dirty diplomat had arranged for his source to provide a
planeful for them.
I couldn’t decide whether or not my mother actually believed that
this was just a little leisure trip. It didn’t matter because
before he left my father told her the reality of it. I lay in my bed
listening to her crying through the wall. It was dangerous, more so
than other trips. They were returning to the country where drug
dealers had shot Ricky dead. She had probably believed it was a
leisure trip before Tommy came clean with her. He should have just
left it well enough alone. Senior had an ability to turn the most
farfetched lies into blindly followed gospel. I don’t know why he
was compelled to tell her the truth when it wasn’t even him who had
actually lied to her.
My father was not a righteous man, in fact, he was anything but a
righteous man. He sat vacantly in a church pew back when my mother
had forced us to go but that was hardly grounds for righteousness.
Yet when it came to my mother, he followed all the rules: thou shall
not lie, thou shall not cheat, or however those commandments go. If
there was one thing I was sure of as a kid it was that no man would
ever treat me as well as my father treated my mother. To be fair, I
was also quite sure I would never treat a man as well as my mother
treated my father. It’s a two-way street.
So all the men in my life left on a jet plane and John Denver said it
first: I didn’t know if they’d be back again. I thought they
would. I trusted them and their competence in the criminal world.
However, the way my father spun my mother around in a youthful
embrace just seemed to scream: don’t know if I’ll be back again,
babe, I hate to go. Then her tears coupled with Scotch’s tears,
well, it didn’t seem promising. Still, I thought perhaps they might
be too dramatic. They were attached to gangsters, they weren’t
gangsters themselves. They didn’t understand this business like I
did, or thought I did anyway, at the sage age of 15.
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