he time he was also being drawn into the group, especially after Paul Vario, the local mob boss (and brother of the cab stand's owner) took an interest in him. The type of performance that made the biggest impression on Hill was the wise guys' method of dealing with Henry's truancy. They simply tracked down the Hill family's mail deliverer and threatened him, letting him know that he was never to deliver another letter from the school to the Hills, home. Throughout the account of his life this is the type of high pressure tactic and demonstration of the wise guys' reach that most impresses Hill. Even when he finds himself serving a ten-year prison sentence, Hill is, at least in telling about it later, delighted by the way the organized crime group managed to keep themselves in comfortable circumstances inside a federal prison. To Henry Hill the wise guys had the entire world figured out and even when he came across evidence to the contrary he refused to notice it.
In his neighborhood, and most other working class areas, the men he worked with were treated with complete deference. They ran card games, took bets, arranged bribes, and offered protection. When Hill begins describing his meeting with Jimmy Burke he mentions that Jimmy "was also one of the city's biggest hijackers" (27). For the reader who does not know the city had any particular number, let alone ranking, of hijackers, Hill's tone is surprising in how matter
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