Genovese Wiseguy Sammy Meatballs, RIP
I will toast Salvatore (Sammy Meatballs) Aparo this weekend, probably tonight. The 87-year-old Genovese mobster died last month, as per this week's Gang Land News. Sammy Meatballs Sammy Meatballs, for many years, provided me with an important talisman of sorts, a representation of the physical embodiment of what the Mafia is, a relic I never tire of looking at. I'm referring, of course, to his face.... The ghastly countenance, I believe, captures the moral absurdity of Mafia life -- the contradictions, the subterfuge, the muscled toughness, and gift of gab, the subtle absurd menace..... I glimpse it all in that enigmatic visage, its heavily lidded eyeballs swallowed by liverish sacks, the full, fleshy Boris Karloffian, thickly lined face. But it's that smile, that hideously genuine smile that faintly illuminates the eyes, as if the cop with the camera had shouted "Say cheese!!" Aparo was of the age and disposition to mentor young wiseguys. Unfort...