The Everything Mafia Book (37 page)

Putting Out the Word

A contract is put out on the target of a hit. The boss says to “take care of the situation,” or “make him disappear.” Johnny Rivera, a Tampa Mafioso, once complained that public killings were bringing too much heat on the mob. They started to “make people disappear” and covered them with lye to make sure the body decomposed quickly. A more intimate way to order a hit is to publicly give the person the kiss of death. This means that his days are numbered. That person is now a goner.

If a Russian Mafioso goes into a politician’s office and offers him silver or lead, the bureaucrat is likely to opt for the silver. This is a slang expression that offers the man the choice of a bribe or a bullet in the head.

The hit man may have already been told to get a place ready, meaning to find a good location to dispose of the body. That means he is going, as in “going, going, gone.” The victim will then be taken for a ride. Or perhaps go out for an airing.

Maybe he will get five times thirty-eight, which is five bullets in the head with a .38-caliber revolver, or maybe be on the receiving end of a Little Joe if he failed to pay a gambling debt. A Little Joe is four shots in the head in two rows of two bullet holes. Neatness counts. He could also receive the Italian rope trick. That is strangulation. Or maybe a Sicilian necktie, which means being garroted with piano wire. On very rare occasions, the person may be given a pass, meaning his life has been spared.

A Couple More

An ice pick kill means what it sounds like—an ice pick though the ear and into the brain. One thing you never want to hear a Mafioso say is the word
buckwheats
. He is not referring to the beloved tyke from the
Little Rascals
and
Our Gang
comedies. It is a slang expression for an especially grisly murder wherein the victim is mutilated and tortured for an extended period of time before being put out of his misery.

Native Tongue

One of the common ways that an ethnic group keeps outsiders from hearing its secret plans is to speak in its native language. Most of the new immi- grants to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries spoke a language other than English. Most learned English with a desire to assimilate, but the native language was still spoken at home. The children of the immigrants were often bilingual, but their native tongues often faded from use in favor of the English language.

The native language was often spoken as a code to prevent others from understanding what they were saying. The Mafia employed this course of action, and many of the Italian expressions continued to be used by subsequent generations. There is something more musical about a “romance language” (Italian, French, and Spanish) than the “Anglo-Saxon” English language.

Mafiocracy is a slang word to describe the current state of affairs in Russia. When communism collapsed, the criminal element filled the void before true democracy could get a foothold.

In some areas mobsters were fluent in more than one language. In the Cuban-Spanish-Italian area of Tampa known as Ybor City, the local mobsters were often fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian, sometimes even mixing the three together to make a unique Tampa “slanguage.”

Smack Talk

Gangster like to talk tough, and they like to “break balls,” meaning they like to throw around insults, many times in jest. If you do not like the looks of someone, you can say
Che bruta
, which means “How ugly you are.” A similar slur is
Facia bruta
, which can literally mean “an ugly face” or simply be used as a generic insult. However, it would be unwise to say this to anyone in the Mafia. If someone is a motor mouth they could be called a
chi-acchierone
, or “chatterbox.”
Gira diment
means “going crazy,” and
pazzo
or
oobatz
(
u’pazzu
) means that you believe the person you are addressing is already crazy.

A
mortadella
, besides being a type of Italian bologna, is a loser. So is a
cafone
, also spelled and pronounced
gavone
.
Va fa napole
literally means “go to Naples” but in mobspeak means “go to hell.”

Speak Like a Gangster . . . Guaranteed!

Most Mafiosi have a mistress on the side, even though they consider themselves to be fine husbands and fathers. A girlfriend is called a
comare
or
goomare
, while a male buddy is called a
compare
or
goombah
. Italian phrases that are used to denote “the Mafia” include
La Cosa Nostra
, which is translated as “our thing” or “this thing of ours,” and
fratellanza
, which means “brotherhood.”

Capo di tutti Capi
is much more lyrical than “Boss of Bosses,” but they mean the same thing. An
amico
is a friend of the family who is not a member of the crime family, and an
amico nostro
is a way to introduce a stranger who is also a member of a Mafia family.

Omerta
is the Mafia’s vow of silence. Once a mobster is “made,” meaning he is inducted into a family, he takes this vow. Violating Omerta is a death sentence, or at least it once was.

The Russian Mafia calls a front company that launders money and serves as a front for illegal activities “a panama.” This is probably derived from the common practice of using offshore, often Latin American, front companies by both legitimate and illegitimate organizations.

Pleasantries

On a lighter note, other expressions used by the Mafia do not imply malice or menace.
Piacere
is a greeting that means it is a pleasure to meet you.
Che peccato
is an expression of sympathy meaning “what a pity,” and
buon’anima
is a condolence and meditation on mortality that translates as “rest his soul.” And the Mediterranean mouthful
Col tempo la foglia di gelso diventa seta
is an old Italian proverb that is rendered in English as “Time and patience change the mulberry leaf to satin,” meaning that patience pays off in the long run with great rewards.

Business Language

The Mafia does business in a similar fashion to any multinational corporation, murder and mayhem notwithstanding. It has executive officers, middle-management types, and drone-like workers. It also has a singular slang for its practices.

The mob is inherently capitalist, although its structure is a little different. Money is made from the bottom up. A soldier makes a score, or a successful criminal endeavor. He brings in a load of cash. Since he’s a big earner, the Mafia’s equivalent of Salesman of the Year, he’s looked at favorably by his capo. The soldier gives the capo a taste, giving the capo a percentage of the take. In turn, the capo pays up to the boss. Associates, like bookies and loan sharks, who are not made into the mob may have to pay tribute, or pay a fee to ply their trade in a particular mob family’s territory.

In an example of linguistic détente, the Russian Mafia slang expression for a hired killer is the same as one of the many used by the American Mafia. When they need someone whacked, they call a hit man a torpedo.

Drugs and Alcohol

Of course, much of the Mafia’s business in its earlier days involved bootleg whiskey. In later years the Mafia dealt in drug trafficking.
Alkali
was a word for alcohol.
Alky racket
was slang for Prohibition, and an
alky cooker
was what they called a still, a device used for distilling alcohol. The
B-and-A racket
stood for beer and alcohol, another expression for Prohibition. When Prohibition became law, all distilleries and breweries became illegal, but gangsters as well as the thirsty private citizens decided that the party was not going to end because of some lawmakers in Washington, DC.

Bootlegging seems innocent in comparison to the drug trade.
Babania
is a word for the drug traffic, especially heroin. It was forbidden for many years, but eventually the old dons looked the other way because of the big profits made in the narcotics business.

The Bangkok Connection
refers to the drugs that wind their way from Southeast Asia to American shores for distribution at great profit by the Mafia.

Gambling

The Mafia also made a lot of money in the world of illegal gambling. Action covers the illegal gambling business. A bookmaker or bookie is the guy who takes illegal bets on horseracing and other sporting events. The numbers racket was the illegal precursor to state lotteries. A number was chosen at random and itinerant gamblers tried to divine the result. You had to be in it to win it. The gangster in charge is called a numbers operator. His assistant who takes the bets for the citizenry is called a numbers runner. And below the numbers runner is a low-level hood called a drop man. The percentage that the numbers operator and other Mafiosi have to pay to their bosses is called giveup or tribute.

Money Talk

The Mafia also has a unique language to describe money. A nickel is $500. Logically it follows that a dime is $1,000. Sometimes a dollar is also $1,000. So is the word
large
, as in “five large” being $5,000.

Frankenslang

A subset of mobspeak is “Frankenslang.” This is the phraseology developed by Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack,” a group of entertainers who were not Mafiosi per se, but who certainly moved on the fringes of that world. Any performer who worked in Las Vegas, especially in the ’60s and ’70s, had to rub elbows with the mob. It was inevitable. The Mafia owned the place. The Rat Pack worked for the Mafia and were friends with many Mafiosi. They attended the same parties and shared the same girlfriends. There was plenty of crossover between Mafia lingo and the hipster patois of the Rat Pack. While not politically correct, there is a charm in the Rat Pack’s idiom. In the 1950s and early 1960s the Rat Pack patter was the epitome of cool.