Made Men Read Online Free
Author: Greg B. Smith
Supreme Court arguing with a straight face that protesters were violating Wiggles’s right of free expression. Meyer asks a judge for an injunction ordering the protesters to immediately cease and desist from yelling and screaming outside the door. They alleged that the protesters had repeatedly violated the privacy rights of customers by videotaping license plates. They also claimed the protesters had violated the right to be free of flying foodstuff. Wiggles employees—even those who kept their clothes on at work—had been hit by airborne tomatoes and other unspecified fruit. Granted, there was no better than a slim chance that Palermo would actually win. But Vinny Ocean knew that his quixotic effort of wrapping himself in the American flag and filing suit might, in the end, not matter a bit.
That was because the protests had actually increased business. All that publicity had been good for the club. In fact, in the city of New York in 1994, no other strip club could boast of getting so much publicity with so little effort.
All of which made Wiggles’s prospects pretty good. When a reporter asked Meyer, the club’s lawyer, what he thought the future would bring for Queens’s only all-nude strip club, he answered swiftly and succinctly.
“We will outlast them.” SAM THE PLUMBER
February 11, 1997
Two hours past noon at Corsentino Home for Funerals in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the cars had filled up the parking lot and jammed Second Avenue. Agents with the State of New Jersey’s Organized Crime Racketeering Bureau walked from vehicle to vehicle, jotting down license-plate numbers. Agents in a van with tinted windows videotaped the men and women entering and leaving Corsentino’s. This was a big day for the funeral home. This was the day that New Jersey’s one and only Mafia don, the eminent Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante, was to be waked.
This was the funeral of Sam the Plumber, the founding father of the DeCavalcante crime family, who managed to live a life as a racketeer and die of a heart attack in what the FBI deemed “semi-retirement” at the respectable age of eighty-four.
Sam the Plumber definitely fell into the category “old school.” With his carefully combed silver hair and his Italian suits, DeCavalcante made a practice of claiming to be a descendant of Italian royalty. Whether or not this was true, no one knew. He was nicknamed “the Count” and was allegedly one of several real-life Mafia bosses said to have inspired Mario Puzo’s entirely fictional Don Vito Corleone, the patriarchal boss of The Godfather. He was also the owner of Kenworth Heating and Air-conditioning in Kenilworth, New Jersey, which had earned him his nickname as a seller of sinks and pipes. Law enforcement seemed to have a certain respect for Sam the Plumber. They noted that he managed to win a spot on the Mafia’s Commission, the ruling body that once governed the mob in America. They referred to him as “diplomatic” and noted that he was able to double the number of associates and made guys in his crime family between 1964, when he took over from the previous boss, and 1969, when his secret life as a mob boss became not so secret.
For a brief and strange moment during the Summer of Love, Sam the Plumber became a national sensation. On June 10, 1969, the FBI suddenly released 2,300 typed
pages of transcripts gathered during a two-year wiretap of Sam the Plumber’s office. On tape, Sam the Plumber was given to philosophizing about “honor.” He was known to say things like “I’d give my life for our people.” His most famous quote was “Honest people have no ethics.” He said this because he was furious that the cops and judges he was paying off wouldn’t always do what he wanted.
“Those people just don’t stay fixed,” he complained.
Sometimes he’d settle disputes over who was allowed to shake down whom in the manner of, say, a Roman senator. Revealing how he resolved one such affair of state, Sam the
That was because the protests had actually increased business. All that publicity had been good for the club. In fact, in the city of New York in 1994, no other strip club could boast of getting so much publicity with so little effort.
All of which made Wiggles’s prospects pretty good. When a reporter asked Meyer, the club’s lawyer, what he thought the future would bring for Queens’s only all-nude strip club, he answered swiftly and succinctly.
“We will outlast them.” SAM THE PLUMBER
February 11, 1997
Two hours past noon at Corsentino Home for Funerals in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the cars had filled up the parking lot and jammed Second Avenue. Agents with the State of New Jersey’s Organized Crime Racketeering Bureau walked from vehicle to vehicle, jotting down license-plate numbers. Agents in a van with tinted windows videotaped the men and women entering and leaving Corsentino’s. This was a big day for the funeral home. This was the day that New Jersey’s one and only Mafia don, the eminent Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante, was to be waked.
This was the funeral of Sam the Plumber, the founding father of the DeCavalcante crime family, who managed to live a life as a racketeer and die of a heart attack in what the FBI deemed “semi-retirement” at the respectable age of eighty-four.
Sam the Plumber definitely fell into the category “old school.” With his carefully combed silver hair and his Italian suits, DeCavalcante made a practice of claiming to be a descendant of Italian royalty. Whether or not this was true, no one knew. He was nicknamed “the Count” and was allegedly one of several real-life Mafia bosses said to have inspired Mario Puzo’s entirely fictional Don Vito Corleone, the patriarchal boss of The Godfather. He was also the owner of Kenworth Heating and Air-conditioning in Kenilworth, New Jersey, which had earned him his nickname as a seller of sinks and pipes. Law enforcement seemed to have a certain respect for Sam the Plumber. They noted that he managed to win a spot on the Mafia’s Commission, the ruling body that once governed the mob in America. They referred to him as “diplomatic” and noted that he was able to double the number of associates and made guys in his crime family between 1964, when he took over from the previous boss, and 1969, when his secret life as a mob boss became not so secret.
For a brief and strange moment during the Summer of Love, Sam the Plumber became a national sensation. On June 10, 1969, the FBI suddenly released 2,300 typed
pages of transcripts gathered during a two-year wiretap of Sam the Plumber’s office. On tape, Sam the Plumber was given to philosophizing about “honor.” He was known to say things like “I’d give my life for our people.” His most famous quote was “Honest people have no ethics.” He said this because he was furious that the cops and judges he was paying off wouldn’t always do what he wanted.
“Those people just don’t stay fixed,” he complained.
Sometimes he’d settle disputes over who was allowed to shake down whom in the manner of, say, a Roman senator. Revealing how he resolved one such affair of state, Sam the
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