Chapter Five
[A wrong turn]
To this day, I still like to think of Tonio’s incident and the encounter with Bart Kaufman as the cause and effect that helps shape my future, and secured a career for me in the racket.
As in the weeks and months that follows both incidents, I had become Billy and Carlos’s criminal accomplice, running alongside both men the old man’s errands—a series of under wraps business matters involving: setting double-crossers straight, overseeing the old man’s smuggling enterprises, which includes; buttlegging, rumrunning, migrants smuggling, among other things, and ensuring that cash is funneled through the right channel to everyone on the family payroll.
Living the life of crime was such fun from the very start as is expected of every adventure. And as a teen, I fe
