THE GOOD RAT: A True Story
Jimmy Breslin
Harper Perennial
True Crime
Hardcover: 9780060856663
Paperback: 9780060856694

Long before “The Sopranos,” Casino and Goodfellas, Jimmy Breslin wrote a book in 1970 called THE GANG THAT COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT that was also made into a movie. It was one of the first fictional looks inside the feared Cosa Nostra, written a year after Mario Puzo penned THE GODFATHER. There might never have been a fictional Tony Soprano if not for Breslin and Puzo.

Breslin knew his subject. He spent many a long night back in the day drinking in mob joints with characters such as Jimmy Burke, who was portrayed in Goodfellas by Robert De Niro. Breslin points out here that a young De Niro consulted with him to find out how to play wiseguys before filming The Gang. It was one of Bobby D’s first screen roles before Godfather: Part II.

So who better to cover what was billed as the first great mob trial of the 21st century? Two NYPD detectives were accused of being hitmen for the Lucchese crime family, fulfilling contracts on eight victims. Breslin approaches the trial with a sense of gloom. “And the idea of cops who use their badges to murder depresses me,” he writes, “It is dreary and charmless and lacks finesse. It promises no opportunity to marvel, much less laugh.”

And then Burton Kaplan, the good rat in this tale, takes the stand to inform on the cops. Breslin observes, “He testifies in simple declarative sentences, subject, verb and object, one following the other to start a rhythm that is compelling to the jury’s ear…Kaplan comes out of all the ages of crime, out of Dostoyevsky, of the Moors Murders, of Murder Inc. A few words spoken by Burt Kaplan on his Brooklyn porch sent animals rushing out to kill.”

Breslin found his book, as Kaplan tells the court about his life in crime. He uses Kaplan’s story to link us to the history of the mob over the past half century, as witnessed firsthand by reporter Breslin.

Kaplan is not a mob boss. He is not even a “made man.” As a Jew, he can’t be a member of the Sicilian mob. Kaplan is a legitimate businessman with a lot of illegitimate sidelines. Whether dealing in drugs or stolen goods, Kaplan is an “earner” for the mob. He also becomes right-hand man to Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, a Lucchese crime boss who uses Kaplan as the go-between to the alleged “killer” cops.

At 72 and facing 18 more years in prison on drug charges, Kaplan quite reluctantly and with great sorrow breaks the code of silence he has lived his life by in order to see his grandchild as a free man. He becomes a rat.

THE GOOD RAT is a classic mob book. It is a fascinating and compelling read made even better by one of America’s greatest writers working his craft at the top of his game. Breslin does not just write sentences --- he chisels them as if working in stone. Most writers just get the words down, but Breslin works the words until they are sharp and precise and paint clear pictures. This has become a lost art in corporate journalism today and especially on the Internet.

Consider Breslin’s description of one of the cops: “He must weigh more than three hundred pounds. He has the shoulders of a goat. Once he stopped bodybuilding, his front slid down like a slab off a collapsing glacier.” Or this description of his fellow defendant: “His narrow, sharp face reveals less than a frosted window.”

Interspaced between the trial, Breslin gives us the entire modern history of the mob. At the beginning, the “Black Hand” operated in secret as J. Edgar Hoover denied its existence. By the late ’60s the Mafia had become part of American folklore as bestselling writers like Breslin and Puzo started making it a cultural phenomenon.

Then the narrative shifts to the Outfit’s waning years at the end of the 20th century as arrogant gangsters like John Gotti were destroyed by informants like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and RICO statures started putting old men away not for five years, as had been the case, but for 50 years of hard time. The code of Omerta quickly crumbled.

Breslin writes with his usual passion and biting humor. As a young newspaperman he got the mob beat because he came from Queens. “I was reputed to be streetwise and tough,” he writes. “Which was untrue. I didn’t fight. I chased stories, not beatings. But I knew where to find people who were somewhat less than our civic best, and so the editors clung to the illusion.”

Did he ever fear that his writing about the mob would get him buried in The Hole, the notorious “informal” burial site in Ozone Park? He writes, “Was I nervous about the mobsters? You want to be afraid of something, be afraid of being broke.”

Written as only JB can. Like the legendary reporter he is, Breslin tells the truth about the mob. “As it dissolves, you inspect it for what it actually was, grammar-school dropouts who kill each other and purport to live by codes from the hills of Sicily that are actually either unintelligible or ignored.”

In THE GOOD RAT, Breslin shows us unexpected sides of the mob. Jimmy Burke “left a mountain of bodies” buried over his career. One night, Burke summons Breslin to an ominous midnight meet. Breslin wonders if he is going to be killed. But he has other problems on his mind; his first wife is dying of cancer. Burke surprises him by offering him $30,000 in cash to get his wife the best doctors. It isn’t a bribe, Burke points out, because “I know Rose when you married her.” Breslin declines, saying, “But I got to remember you forever.”

Times change. Traditional mob enterprises like gambling and loan sharking have been taken over by the government and banks. The corner ATM machine in poor neighborhoods replaces the shylock while still charging outrageous interest on “loans.” Yet there will always be a Mafia, Breslin points out. “Just like Prohibition, mobsters will do things nobody else wants to do,” he writes.

At one point in this book Breslin describes the late newspaperman from Chicago, Mike Royko, as “a national treasure.” Very true. But so is Jimmy Breslin. Another great writer, Pete Hamill, once told me that “Jimmy is Jimmy.” Other writers have copied his style for decades, but nobody has his distinctive voice. THE GOOD RAT is one of his best books. Read and enjoy it. A new work by Breslin is an event to celebrate and cherish.

    --- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

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