American Desperado (9 page)

The world was changing in 1964. A couple years earlier only street people were involved in drugs. Now it was college kids. They were coming into Greenwich Village to score weed. Me and Jack Buccino did a couple of rip-offs in the Village just for fun, and we got the idea, why not go on to college campuses? To my thinking, it
seemed smarter to go after college kids than poor people. That was the problem with my dad’s business. It was based on poor people. I’d go after rich kids.

In Jersey there was a school called Fairleigh Dickinson University. Jack and I went there to do our first college rip-off. It was very easy. Jack, who wanted to be an actor, started acting. We were standing around some vending machines by a lounge, and Jack told these kids I’d won a basketball scholarship and was thinking of coming, but I wanted to know about the campus social life. That was all it took for some kids to take us to a party. We saw who was passing joints around and asked where they got them, and they introduced us to the dealer kids. The first few rip-offs, Jack and I went into the dealer kids’ dorm rooms and took their money with our hands. As long as they didn’t have lacrosse sticks, I could beat up college kids in my sleep.

The next school we tried was Princeton. This was a very hoity-toity school. Some of the kids wore suits with bow ties. When we tried our story out—of me attending Princeton on a basketball scholarship—I felt like I was becoming an actor in a film. I had to work at gaining their trust and concentrate on being the opposite of who I was.

At Princeton they had fraternities called eating clubs. I played basketball with some kids, and they invited me to their eating club. I went alone and had a dinner, and when the kids asked about my family, I told them my father was a professor in Maine. I talked about our house on the Point and our forty-two-foot sailboat. It was easy to fit in. Finally I ended up in a room someplace smoking weed with Princeton kids. Bingo. They told me about a kid who lived off campus and was their dealer.

Jack and I came up with an idea that would make more money than just robbing the dealer alone. We would tie him up, beat him, and make him call his friends. He’d tell them to bring their money because he was going to give them a great deal on drugs. This way we’d grab rich kids coming through the door like it was Christmas.

The first time we did this, it was hilarious. My friend from the
eating club took me over to the off-campus dope dealer. As we got to the front door, Jack, Petey, and Rocco drove up in another car.

“Who are these guys?” my friend asked.

“Shut the fuck up.” I was no longer the kid coming to school on a scholarship. I was myself now. I enjoyed this part even more than acting.

We forced this kid into the house with the dealer. I liked seeing the surprise in these kids’ faces when we came in and tied them up. We ended up doing this several times at Princeton and at a couple other schools.

When we first showed our true selves, the college kids always said the same thing. “I thought we were friends.”

They didn’t understand that once they got into the drug-dealing business, they were in our world. Our rules applied, not theirs.

We wouldn’t tell them what we wanted at first. We’d beat them. We’d scare them. Rocco would practice his professional boxing on these kids if they gave any attitude. They’d always become willing to follow our scheme. These kids had no loyalty. They’d call every friend they had and tell them to bring all their money because they were going to sell them the best pot in the world. We’d grab every moron college kid that came through the door. We tied up so many in one house, we ran out of electrical cords.

We knew these kids would be too scared to call the cops after we left. They couldn’t. They were doing an illegal thing. If any of these kids wanted to be tough, they’d never seen animals like us before.

At sixteen or seventeen I was now a very bad person. My friends were the same. Our attitude was,
You want to fight? We will break your hands, bite your ears off, whatever we need to do to make our point. We have no feelings. We are from the street
. Half the Outcasts were junkies at this point. When they saw money in front of them, their eyes blinked like pinball machines. I introduced these college kids to my way of thinking.
Evil is stronger than good. When I am alone in your house with you, you will learn this, too
.

I’m not proud of the way I acted, but I can’t take it back. I did this.

A few kids tried to be brave. One kid told us he was a fifth-degree black belt in karate. Dominic, the best fighter in the Outcasts, said, “Okay. I’m going to give you the best shot you got. After that I’m going to fuck you up.”

We had guns, so we knew if the kid by some miracle actually knew karate and hurt Dominic, we’d shoot him. We let the kid loose. He asked if he could warm up. We sat back and watched as he did some kicks and stretches, like he’s giving a class in Princeton karate. Finally Dominic walks up to him and says, “Okay.”

The kid gives Dominic his best kick to the chin and misses.

“That’s your Princeton karate?” Dominic asks.

Dominic gives him some Jersey karate—he kicks him in the balls. He throws the kid through a door, beats him down, stomps him. I’m laughing my ass off when I feel my shoe crunch on the floor. Dominic had knocked the kid’s teeth out of his head. Dominic got so crazed with beating him, he broke the kid’s arms, his legs. He fucked him up to the point where I’m sure he never told anybody ever again he was a fifth degree in anything.

We had an incident where a college kid pulled a gun. He was so excited, he shot himself in the leg. We took the gun from him and shot him in his other leg. When it comes to defending himself, the average college kid isn’t worth three dead flies.

There are not a lot of tough people in normal society. Many guys will act brave for a few seconds, but as soon as you hurt them, all that bravery goes out the window. You bite someone’s ear off, you break his fingers, shoot his legs, and he will come around. A guy who fights every day of his life reacts differently. This guy, when you hurt him, he fights harder. Very few men react like this. And those who do are dangerous people.

For me, robberies were my amusement. Jack Buccino was as sick as me. Since he fancied himself an actor, his enjoyment was the acting we did to befriend our victims. Jack always thought he was on stage. After we were done, he was so out of his mind, we’d be in the attic of his mother’s house counting the money, and Jack would ask me, “You think I played the part good?”

Sometimes, just to eat his guts out, I’d tell him, “You didn’t do a good job acting today.”

When Jack and I went out to set up different kids, we would have contests to see who got bigger rip-offs. That was our game. Most kids our age were competing in things like “Hey, I got six home runs.”

With Jack it was “I stole $2,200.”

“I got $3,000.”

“You won, motherfucker.”

That was our fun.

M
Y SISTER
did not give up on me. When I was seventeen, she came down to New York. She saw my apartment, the nice clothes I had, and she knew I was not doing things legally. She begged me to get a real job. She actually believed I could go into the straight world. That’s how good my sister was. Good people can’t understand how truly bad a bad person can be. Good people are good, but they’re also a little bit stupid. That’s why my sister never lost hope in me. She was good.

J
UDY
:
There was a boy I had dated in high school, Walter Hutter,
^*
who had gone on to work at E. F. Hutton as a stock trader. I called him up and asked him, “Please, can you find a job for my little brother?”

J
.
R
.:
Walter Hutter had always been in love with my sister. He had been a great athlete in high school. He was signed to play pro baseball, but he fucked up his arm and went into the stock business. When he agreed to hire me, my sister begged me, “Do me this one favor, Jon. Go in and work for Walter. Try it.”

I said, “Judy, I love you. You’re my sister. I’ll do it for you.”

I thought it would be interesting to get inside a brokerage house and see how they made money. I bought a suit and tie and nice shoes to look proper. I went down to Wall Street the next morning. I find the building, ride up the elevator, and there’s Walter. He’s in his suit. I’m in mine.

“Hey, Walter.”

“Jon, I’m going to teach you how to chart stocks.” He led me into his office.

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Take this blank paper and read these numbers. Write this into a chart.”

I charted stocks all morning. By lunchtime I was getting uptight with this bullshit work. I thought,
God Almighty, when do I start to make money? I’m not going to sit here for a fucking month and make charts
.

Walter invited me to have a sandwich with him in the lunchroom, but I went down to the street to smoke a joint so I could relax. I came back to the office lit out of my mind. But I was calm.

Walter said, “Jon, I made some transactions this morning. You’re going to post them in the book. When you finish, I’ll explain to you what we just did.”

“Walter, I’m not stupid. I can figure out what we’re doing.”

He told me to watch myself.

I tried to calm things down by explaining myself. “Walter, I want you to teach me how to buy stocks and make money. Don’t make me do this shit-ass paperwork, man.”

Walter told me I had no choice. The walls were becoming tighter. My pot wore off. I was starting to lose it. I was not on the level. I was feeling violent. I said, “Walter, I don’t feel good. I better go home.”

“On your first day of work?”

“Walter, listen to me. For your sake and my sake, let me leave early.”

Lucky for him, he agreed.

I went home. I told my sister, “Judy, I don’t think a stockbroker job is a wise thing.”

“Please, give it a chance.”

“All right, Judy. I’ll give it a chance.”

I went in for a whole week, maybe two. Finally, I can’t take it. I go one morning, and Walter says, “Okay, Jon. Here’s the paper. Chart ten stocks.”

“I’ll tell you what, Walter. Here’s your paper. Use it as toilet paper. Shove it up your fucking ass.”

Walter stands up.

“Walter, sit down, please,” I tell him. “You’re my sister’s friend. Don’t do this. Sit down and let me walk the fuck out the door.”

He steps in front of me. I grab an adding machine and knock him on the head. His friends run in. I bang them with the machine. A security guard comes in. I run the fuck away, get on the elevator, and I’m gone. That was my stockbroker experience.

A couple days later Walter called my sister. “Your brother almost killed me. How could you send that maniac into my office?”

J
UDY
:
I became so angry when Walter called Jon a “maniac.” I told him, “How dare you call my brother a maniac.” I was overprotective, but Jon was my baby brother.

J
.
R
.:
My Outcast friends got more wacked out on heroin. Petey, Jack Buccino, and Dominic Fiore were needle-in-the-arm junkies. Their minds were gone, but their muscles could still destroy anybody on the street. When they did rip-offs, it wasn’t for fun anymore, it was because they had to.

My uncle Sam knew something was up. I came around a few times with my Outcast friends, and he told me maybe I should stop using my friends to help with collections. He said, “Jon, take my meat guys.”

The “meat guys” weren’t Mafia. They were actual meatpackers in the union my uncles controlled. The union thugs were loyal to my family. But I was loyal to the Outcasts. This caused me some aggravation in the spring of 1965.

My uncle Sam had a dry cleaner who got behind on a loan. Dominic and I grabbed him off the street and took him into an apartment I kept off of Lexington and 48th. Obviously, you couldn’t beat people on the streets of Manhattan, so I had an apartment for collections work. We developed a method. We’d strip the guy naked, tie him to a chair, gag him, and beat him. I didn’t say a word. Just beat, beat, beat. We’d beat a person on and off for hours. It was like marinating a piece of meat. Everybody softens over time. When we’d finally pull the electrical cord from his mouth and tell him to get money, he’d be grateful he was being talked to like a human. I’d hand him a phone and tell him to call somebody—his wife, his in-laws, his rabbi, anybody—and get the money he owed. That person would deliver the money to one of my guys at a coffee shop. We’d let the guy go, and everybody’d be happy.

This time I stepped out during our beating to meet a girl I was seeing. While I was out, Dominic shot up a load of heroin and nodded off. He fell on the floor like a dead man. The guy managed to escape—crawl down the stairs and roll onto the street—still naked, and tied to the chair. Some asshole Good Samaritan called the cops. They came into the apartment and found Dominic on the floor. He was comatose, and they actually drew a chalk outline around his body before they realized he wasn’t dead. They took him to the hospital, and when I walked back in, two cops threw me on the floor. I saw the chalk outline of a body, and I said a very stupid thing. “Where’s Dominic?”

The cops had Dominic’s name from the ID in his wallet. If I had been wise, I would have said I’d walked into the wrong apartment. But I’d let them know I knew Dominic. My own mouth gave them the evidence they needed to arrest me. Every cop in the room laughed at me.

I fucked up. Evil is stronger than good, but it don’t beat stupid. I was young. Young people make mistakes. Mistakes can help you learn. As long as you don’t do it a second time, anybody’s entitled to a mistake. Because of my mistake, I was charged as an adult for kidnapping and attempted murder.

*
Walter Hutter is a pseudonym to protect Judy’s friend.