“Sal was the owner and sole proprietor of Sal’s Salumeria Salata, but, to us kids, he was more like Santa Claus. We’d drop by after school, and Sal would say, ‘Wait, bambinos, I got a little something for you in the back.’ Then he’d disappear for a sec and return with a special treat he’d pop right in our mouths—garlic knots, cannoli, cheesecloth, antifreeze, long rows of industrial staples—just whatever Sal had on hand that was fresh, no money accepted, no questions asked. In retrospect, maybe someone shoulda asked some questions.”
“See that knucklehead counting tickets by the money box? That was Jimmy (Screeches) Scrizzione, a smooth-talking grifter with a million-dollar smile and a work ethic that’d put any Puritan to shame. Unfortunately, he also had a teensy little habit—some of the boys think it may have been neurophysiological—of being unable to take a whiz without making a series of screeches so loud and, frankly, alarming that they unfailingly attracted the notice of law enforcement.”
“Nobody was prouder of his Italian heritage than Wesleydale (the Italian Guy) Von Stroppenheimer IX. The I.G. was constantly hitting us with phrases from the old country, like ‘Oh! Solo mio?’ and ‘That is a spicy ball of meat!’ And good luck trying to stop him whenever a hydrant burst—he would rush outside to get into a splash war with the neighborhood kids, frolicking among the ice-cold jets of marinara.”
“Whether you had a broken jaw or a broken heart, nobody could patch you up like Mama Gabbagool. Just a few minutes spent in her strong, loving, salt-cured, paprika-flavored arms, and all your troubles seemed to melt away. Then, before you knew it, it was already time to strap on your weight belt and heft that thirty-five-pound, ruby-and-white-marbled vixen back onto her hook in Sal’s freezer, and keep Mama G. and your ‘little secret’ safe another week.”
“A lot of wiseguys dismissed Hatori as nothin’ more than a resurrected ninth-century samurai seeking vengeance on the clan that pillaged his daimyo’s barley harvest. But, to me, Hot Tony was more like a father figure who taught me how to keep my head up, stay alive, and—no matter what happened—never ever re-sheathe my katana until the blood spurted, bright as wine, from those treacherous Minamoto-clan sons-of-devil-pigs.”
“Frankly, nobody knew what to make of Bobby (Old-Man-Supposed-to-Look-Like-a-Young-Man) DeNunzio. The way he had a young wife and little kids but also, somehow, the face of a guy old enough to run a restaurant and a film festival in Tribeca. But you couldn’t count Bobby out, because any Mob action that took place over the past forty-five years, he was always there, in a starring role. And yet at the end of the day—or whatever unit of time Bobby existed in—he was a man of simple needs. All he wanted out of life was to know if someone was talking to him.”
