Quotes from Charles Brandt

He had that smile on his round, craggy face you get when you squint at the sun. He had muscle deterioration in his face that gave him a lazy eye. If you didn't know him you would think he was blinking or drinking. With his good eye he looked through his wide glasses into my blue eyes. Russell

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had blue laws that didn't allow bars to be open on Sunday. No stores were open. It was the day of worship. Even later on when night baseball came in, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics could play baseball at Shibe Park on Sunday only while there was daylight. They weren't allowed to turn on the stadium lights on Sunday. Many a Sunday game was called on account of darkness.

I don't care how tough you are or how tough you think you are, if they want you you're theirs. It's usually your best friend that walks up to you talking about a football bet and you're gone. Like Giancana got it frying eggs and sausages in olive oil with an old friend he trusted. This

The meeting had been called to settle down the potential problems that could have erupted in the wake of the October 1957 shooting of godfather Albert Anastasia in a barber's chair with a hot towel over his face in New York's Park-Sheraton Hotel. The

Bobby Kennedy chose the members of the squad himself. He gave the squad a very limited job to do and gave the squad a very subtle name: "The Get Hoffa Squad." Everything, and I mean everything, came as a result of that.

Russell had not been coming to Philly just for prosciutto bread and sweet and hot sausage from Roselli's, not even extra-hot sausage. He had business interests with Angelo Bruno, their own kind of business. And

Russell had lost the thumb and index finger on his left hand when he was young. He moved the thumb he still had around like he was grinding something into the white tablecloth and said, "Dust to dust." I

My father, Tom Sheeran, would borrow a big old clumsy car with a running board.

Russell Bufalino had secret interests in Las Vegas casinos and not-so secret connections to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, whom Fidel Castro toppled in 1959. With Batista's blessings Bufalino had owned a racetrack and a major casino near Havana. Bufalino lost a great deal of money and property, including the racetrack and the casino, when Castro booted the mob off the island. Time

One of my earliest childhood memories is getting birdshot picked out of my backside by my mother, Mary. My mother would say, "Tom, how come I'm always picking this stuff out of Francis's behind?" My father, who always called her Mame, would say, "Because the boy doesn't run fast enough, Mame." I get my size

Having him for a father was a nightmare. We couldn't go to him with a problem because of our fear of the horrible things he would do to fix it for us. He thought he was protecting us with the way he handled things, but it was just the opposite. We didn't get protected by him because we were too afraid to go to him for protection. A neighborhood man exposed himself to me and I couldn't tell my father.

Frank Sinatra behaved himself around Russell Bufalino. One night at the 500 Club in Atlantic City I heard Russell tell Sinatra: "Sit down or I'll rip your tongue out and stick it up your ass." If he had a drink in him Sinatra was an asshole. He'd put on a gorilla suit when he got drunk. He'd go to fight some guy knowing somebody would stop it. He was a bad drinker. Me, if I drink, I want to sing and dance. I guess he figured he was already a singer and a dancer.