The Banality of the Boot

Speaking of crime fiction, it seems that it's best when it doesn't imitate crime fact. So says City Journal's Steve Malanga in this review of a 1988 documentary called Confessions of an Undercover Cop. The movie presents the real-life flipside of the Sopranos we know and love: a group of crude, shabby, unglamorous, yes, depressingly banal evildoers, headed up by Ruggerio “Richie the Boot” Boiardo. (He earned his nickname by his penchant for stomping his enemies to death, a method of execution that may be many things but certainly isn't banal.)

The Boot made his headquarters inside a candy shop on Roseville Avenue in North Newark, transformed by the time of Confessions into a rinky-dink pizzeria and dimly lit adjoining cocktail lounge called The Finish Line. One look inside The Finish Line and it’s clear that for this real mob crew, style took a back seat to earning money.

Most of the action that Russell investigates takes place in even less glamorous social clubs around North Newark—little more than storefronts sporting linoleum floors, faux wood paneling, folding chairs, and card tables. From these motley locations, which could be had cheaply in Newark once rising crime and white flight eroded the city’s retail base, the crew ran nightly card games that netted them about $1 million a week. The earnings were big, though these games were nothing like those in The Sopranos, where mob-run gambling sessions take place in hotel suites and occasionally feature big name “guest” players like Lawrence Taylor.

Confessions makes it clear that few real mobsters could ever score a bit part on The Sopranos or any other gangster show—they simply look too ordinary. The Confessions crew runs around North Newark in Bermuda shorts, white tee-shirts, and knee-high socks, or in cheap polyester slacks and Ban Lon shirts—a look that would never get you a photo shoot in Vanity Fair or on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, where James Gandolfini, who plays Tony Soprano, has appeared.

It's unclear exactly what the moral is: The piece reads a bit like a PSA urging kids to stay in school and out of organized crime, which isn't all fun and cigars and fine suits like on TV. But it's fascinating as a look at the way art can transform something we'd pay not to see into something we'll never tire of watching. How's it done? As far as crime is concerned, here's a terrific primer.