My First Job Was for the Mafia

      Remember your first job? What was it like? How much did you make? How old were you? Let us know by writing to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com as we begin, below, a new series on first jobs.

      I was barely 16 and hoping to find work—ideally requiring no experience or skills—that would fit around my high school schedule. I found it in the most unlikely of places.

      According to the classified ad, an Italian bakery chain in New York City with a store in my Queens neighborhood was interviewing at its headquarters in Harlem. I took the subway there from Jackson Heights one Saturday and arrived at their office with some trepidation. The owner was a pleasant middle-aged guy, and the interview went fine. “You came up here all the way from Queens?” (He was clearly impressed.) Afterward, he insisted on having someone on his staff walk me to the subway station, which was in a seedier section of Harlem in the 1960s.

      I got the part-time job, and though it paid only minimum wage—$1.25 an hour—it was close to my dream job. I could snack on yummy Italian cookies (rainbow cookies are still my favorites) and crusty breads during my shift and could buy them at a discount to bring home. The middle-aged, motherly supervisor taught me the ropes and made sure I didn’t screw anything up. Nothing too difficult except at rush hour when customers would breathlessly shout their orders as they raced to catch the bus home in front of the storefront:

      “I need a large Italian loaf— no, not that one — the one with all the seeds!”

      “C’mon, miss, my bus is gonna leave.”

      “Sweetheart, can you please hurry up with my change? The bus is here!”

      The rush-hour folks were buying only bread, of course. No one ever rushed through a cookie assortment order. Those were slowly and thoughtfully placed, often with almost intimate commentary. “Oh, I can’t leave out the ones with the pignoli nuts. My wife would kill me. And oh wait, throw in the ones with the dot in the middle. I haven’t had those since I was a kid.”

      Once or twice a day the giant trays of cookies and bread were delivered to the store (we didn’t have a bakery on the premises). Sometimes “the big boss” brought them, and occasionally he’d just stop by, but it wasn’t a big deal when he did.

      After a few months, my motherly boss left, and a pleasant young woman just a few years older than I was took her place. Now we had a regional supervisor who came by every few days. He was probably in his late twenties. The big boss stopped coming. The only thing I remember about the regional supervisor was that he flirted with my pretty coworker, whom he later dated.

      One day I was at a friend’s house when I happened to see the banner headline on the front page of the Nov. 10, 1964, daily newspaper, the Journal American.

      I gasped.

      “Cosa Nostra Leader Shot Dead in Apparent Suicide.” Cosa Nostra was just another name for mafia. The picture and the name under the headline clearly identified my boss, the big boss, the pleasant man who’d hired me, Andrew Alberti. His wife had found him in his pajamas outside their large home in Riverdale, an affluent section of the Bronx.

      The newspaper article noted that he had connections to the Gambino crime family. He’d been arrested a few times but had no convictions and only suspicions of ties to mafia activities. I’ll admit I was glad to see that his recent suspicious activity mostly related to jewelry heists and such.

      He had been scheduled to appear in just hours as a witness before a grand jury investigating a big jewel swindle by another mafia family. He’d refused to testify when called previously. This time, I guess, he figured that he was a goner either way.

      I read every word of the story and only near the end did I find what I was looking for. According to the newspaper, he also owned a legitimate bakery chain with his brother.

      My neighborhood store stayed open, and I continued to work there after school. When customers inquired whether the owner was the same guy they’d read about, we all reflexively denied it. After a while, they stopped asking.

      A version of this story first appeared in Medium.