Review: I Heard You Paint Houses
I finished I Heard You Paint Houses last week.
I meant to do a review over the weekend, but that thing with the birds rattled me and I forgot. Anyway, it was a good book. I read a fair amount of “true crime” sort of books and they vary widely in quality, but this was pretty well written. Of course, a lot of the book is actually taken directly from taped interviews with Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran who, before his death, claimed to be the guy who “took care” of Jimmy Hoffa.
In fact, that was one of the interesting things about this book. See, Sheeran was a long-time friend of Hoffa. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. The book starts out with Sheeran recalling his rather rough childhood on the mean streets of Philadelphia. Coming from a home with a poor, alchoholic and abusive father made Frank Sheeran a tough Mick in an already tough neighborhood. That toughness would serve him well after he enlisted during World War II and served in the most active Army unit in the European theatre. Most of his friends didn’t make it through the first few weeks, much less make it through the whole war, so Frank learned to not get too attached. Well, not to anything but red wine and a “good time”. Mainly, though, he took after his old man and drank. After making it through the war, Frank came back to tough times. To make ends meet, he started stealing from the companies who hired him to drive trucks. It was through some of these crooked contacts that he met crime boss Russell Bufalino. Later, after doing way too many favors for Bufalino, Frank would find out, like the rest of the nation, that there was not only “organized crime”, but that his friend Russell was one of the top Godfathers.
Along the way to that discovery, Sheeran would get involved in the quickly growing Teamster’s Union. Remember, this was back in the days when things like unions might be all that stood in the way of gross abuses perpetrated against the American worker by big business. Many of the current government legislation to protect the working man simply didn’t exist and it was all out war between the Corporation and the Worker. And, that kind of bloody war was right where both Sheeran and Hoffa were at home.
I won’t spoil the whole book, but I will say that, if it’s all true, the “mystery” of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, who was behind the assasination of JFK, and why the Bay of Pigs failed are all made clear. Sometimes, I wonder if any of it’s true, but, well, either way, it’s still a good read. Fast paced and informative, it’s some of the best writing and story-telling I’ve read in a long time.
Oh, the title comes from the first conversation Sheeran had with Hoffa. Introduced over the phone by Russell Bufalino, the first question Hoffa asked was “I heard you paint houses”, which is slang for “I hear you kill people for the mob” and comes from the fact that killing someone in a house “paints” it red with their blood. Sheeran’s reply was “Yeah, I do my own carpentry, too.” That’s slang for “I build the coffins to get rid of the bodies myself, too”, though, most of the time, there aren’t any actual coffins.
In any case, it’s a great book and I reccomend it highly to anyone who’s interested in either Jimmy Hoffa or the Mob.
I also read Tarnsman of Gor this week, because it was close to hand. I don’t reccomend it though, unless you’re an undersexed adolescent boy, that is. That’s the primary audience. Personally, I read it hoping with each page that it would get better, but it never did. And, still, that stinker sells like hotcakes. Go figure.
Currently, I’m reading Jesus in Blue Jeans, which is an interesting counter-point to the last two books! I’m not sure what I’ll pull out of the pile o’ books by my bed to read after that. With my eclectic taste, it could be anything!
