Quotes from Charles Brandt

fan. You know, Jimmy's got records stashed away in case something unnatural happens to him." "Your friend made one threat too many in his life," Russell shrugged. "I'm only saying the nuclear fallout's going to hit the fan when they find his body." "There won't be a body.

held. This was before the U.S. Supreme Court changed all the laws on search and seizure. Fifty-eight of the most powerful mobsters in America were seized and hauled in by the police. Another fifty or so got away running through the woods. Also in 1957 the public was getting a close look at organized crime on TV every day during the televised sessions of the McClellan Committee Hearings on Organized Crime of the United States Senate.

The deportation proceedings and appeals would last for fifteen years, but they were always hanging over Russell's head. In the end when he lost his last appeal and had packed his bags and had his tickets, I recommended a lawyer to him who went through the Italian government, spread a little lira, and got it so the Italian government refused to take Russell, and that was that. America had to keep him.

Then one day this guy, Whispers DiTullio, came over to my table at the Bocce Club and bought me a glass of wine.

Whispers told me to meet him at the Melrose Diner. So I went around there. You wouldn't expect to see any people from downtown at the Melrose Diner. It's more for the crowd grabbing a bite to eat before they go to a Phillies game. You get a nice piece of apple pie there with hot vanilla syrup on it. Whispers sat down and asked me if I could use ten grand. I told him to keep talking.

One cold night in December 1941 I won a dance contest jitterbugging to "Tuxedo Junction" at the Denver Dance Hall. The next thing I knew I was on a troop train at four in the morning heading for the West Coast to defend California. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I just turned twenty-one and I was 6?2?. Four years later when the war ended I got my discharge one day before I turned twenty-five; I was 6? 4?. I had grown two inches.

Whispers was one of these short Italian guys in his early thirties that you'd see all around South Philly, just trying to get by with one hustle or another. This is not the same Whispers they blew up when they bombed his car around the same time. This is the other Whispers. I didn't know the one they blew up; I just heard about it. I

They say the average number of days of actual combat for a veteran is around eighty. By the time the war was over the Army told me I had 411 combat days, which entitled me to $20 extra

Eliciting information from Frank Sheeran about his combat experiences was the most difficult part of the interview process. It was two years before he could accept the fact that his combat experience was even worth discussing. And then it became painstaking and stressful for both a respectful questioner and his reluctant subject, with many stops and starts. To

To help me understand his combat days, Sheeran tracked down the 45th Infantry Division's hardbound, 202-page official Combat Report, issued within months of World War II's end. The more I learned from both this report and Frank himself, the clearer it seemed to me that it was during his prolonged and unremitting combat duty that Frank Sheeran learned to kill in cold blood. The

The Sicilian people were very friendly. Once we drove the Germans out I got to see Catania, where every house had homemade spaghetti drying on the clothesline. After the war Russell Bufalino liked the fact that I went right through his town. My

Charlie explained to me that an exploding shell is going to spread its shrapnel on an angle upward. You get down and stay down and let it sail over you. Otherwise it cuts you in half right across your chest. When we were kids I looked out for Diggsy,

But back then we had to amuse ourselves, and fighting seemed to be all we had. Looking back, it was good for us. You got a lot out of your system. And you learned a lot. And then when our country needed soldiers we were in shape. We already had a mental toughness. I graduated from the eighth grade

If you were AWOL when your company was going back into combat you might as well keep going because your own officers would blow you away, and they didn't even have to say it was the Germans. That's desertion in the face of the enemy. While

You fat fuck," I said and jumped up and decked him. I broke his jaw, and they expelled me permanently on the spot. Naturally,

Before a battle or a landing, you get a little nervous tension. Once the shooting starts it goes away. You don't have time to think. You just do what you have to do. After the battle it sinks in. We took the Germans by

Running up out of the surf on to the beach at St. Tropez I thought I was shot. I looked down and saw red all over my uniform. I hollered for the medic and Lieutenant Kavota from Hazelton, Pennsylvania, came running over to me and shouted, "You son of a bitch, that's wine. You ain't shot. Get up and get going. They shot your canteen.

In Alsace-Lorraine I saw Pope stick his leg out from behind a tree to get a million-dollar wound so he'd be sent home; only a heavy round came in and took his leg off. He survived and went home with one leg missing. Another

and Russell told me that he comes down to Philly a lot to pick up prosciutto bread. That's bread made with prosciutto and mozzarella baked in it. You

I told him about the macaroni hanging out on the line like laundry to dry on Sunday in Catania. Sometimes he'd invite me to eat with him and we'd talk a little Italian.

Yank was a good man who lived a good life. He never did anything wrong. He died before his time, while I was still in jail. They wouldn't let me come home on a pass for his funeral. Not even for my brother's or sister's funerals. Yank managed O'Malley's Restaurant on the West Chester Pike, and he wrote me in jail that he was going to throw a great big welcome home party for me when I got out, but poor Yank got a heart attack and it killed him.)

For better or for worse, meeting Russell Bufalino and being seen in his company put me deeper into the downtown culture than I ever would have gotten on my own. After the war, meeting Russell was the biggest thing that happened to me after my marriage and having my daughters. I

In those days they wanted their money today. Now they want their money yesterday. Half of them today are doing drugs themselves, and it makes them impulsive. It distorts their thinking. More than half of them. Some of the bosses, too. I

No doubt I was getting a reputation for being efficient, but also for being somebody you could trust.