Pirate Yarns: Cocaine Cash Cow

Friday, September 13, 2013

Cocaine Cash Cow

American Desperado: My Life--From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Couldn't put it down. Carried the book around like a weapon for a week. It awoke something in me, as only a handful of other books have done.

Jon Roberts lays all his cards on the table, tells the brutal truth about a lifetime of violent crime, an unrepentant "wise wiseguy" who always learned from his mistakes and lived by two rules: crime does in fact pay and evil is more powerful than good. Still Even Wright, who co-authored the book, manages to show us a more vulnerable person than the one Roberts portrays. It wasn't just to avoid the heat after he murdered his business partner that he abandoned organised crime in New York City and moved to Miami in the mid-70s. He had aspirations beyond the Mob, and he wanted to have fun in the sun. His arrival in South Florida coincided with a rising tsunami of Columbian cocaine that was about to engulf the US. Roberts made sure he rode the crest of the wave, earning hundreds of millions of dollars as a smuggler until his arrest.

Wright skilfully organises Robert's vivid recollections into a gripping narrative, giving full flow to his rapid wit and fast-flowing streams of consciousness. Robert's memory is like a newsreal, countless detailed observations of crime scenes in which he was usually the perpetrator. Wright seeks to corroborate stories he hears from Roberts, especially his more audacious and savage claims. Chillingly, he finds evidence to back most of them up.

American Desperado is a well-researched and touching profile of one of the most successful criminals who ever lived, a fascinating insight into the mind and the heart of a man you will not disagree is totally beyond redemption.

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Biography

Italian American Gypsy, born Miami, Florida, 1959. Keen bill fisherman and scuba diver. Formerly worked in "inconspicuous import/export" on the Florida coast. Was a member of the Devini family, Meyer Lansky’s gaming connection in 1950s Havana. Managed their casino in Malindi until his disappearance.

Has no known military record.

During the Second World War, Oceans' grandfather Capitano Luigi Salvatore was stationed in Africa Orientale Italiana, today’s Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Central Somalia and Puntland. Somaliland meanwhile belonged to the British. Capitano Salvatore’s division, the Granatieri di Savoia, under the command of Generale Guglielmo Nasi, was part of the force that conquered British Somaliland in 1940,Italy’s greatest victory in the war. In the following month, while his unit was on patrol in the Sanaag, they stumbled on a valuable antiquity and swore a blood oath never to reveal their discovery to any one. Eight months later, the entire unit got wiped out by British forces in Dongolaas Gorge. Capitano Salvatore is among the many thousands of Italians who died in the Battle of Keren in Eritrea.

In 1987 Oceans' criminal record was mysteriously wiped clean by the DEA, after which his whereabouts became unknown. Five years later he turned up managing his Uncle Bobby's casino on the Kenyan Coast. In August 1998 while scuba diving on the Malindi Watamu bank, he vanished and is presumed dead.

"The good guy's Keyser Soze..."

Ocean's always carried a small .38 snub nose hammerless 5 shot, with a Pachmayr grip and MIC holster, which he kept loaded with +p .38 hollow-point bullets: "Go in like a pencil and come out like a typewriter!"

Gitmo alumnus Ali al-Rubaysh finds inspiration in the most unlikely places.

One for the Road by Harold Pinter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Arguably Pinter's most powerful political play. But it must be read slowly, deliberately seeking out the drama in each and every murky corner of Pinter's pendulous pauses before reading the next lacerating line. What appears to be a paragraph on the page may go on for some time on stage. 'What do you think this is? It’s my finger. And this is my little finger. This is my big finger and this is my little finger. I wave my big finger in front of your eyes. Like this. And now I do the same with my little finger. I can also use both…at the same time. Like this. I can do absolutely anything I like. Do you think I’m mad? My mother did.'

Much of the chatter is one-sided but Nic is no obvious monster, as he demonstrates certain vulnerability and empathy with his victims: a husband, wife and son who are being held prisoner by an unnamed State and tortured. But these are only the tools of a seasoned bureaucratic tyrant, a ploy to make the pain of his victims less bearable when he finally tells them the truth. Or is it the truth?

One For the Road counts among my list of profoundly influential pieces of literature.

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