Interview With Mafia Author Scott Hoffman!

   

Inside , by Scott
M. Hoffman, is an intriguing work detailing the internal workings of the
Outfit, an organized crime family, which originated on the South Side of
Chicago during prohibition and rose to power in the 1920s. The Outfit has been
involved in a wide variety of criminal activities including gambling,
loan-sharking, prostitution, drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion,
labor racketeering, adult and child pornography, political corruption, and
murder. The individuals and events in Inside are composites of real people and
real events.

Inside begins in 1956 with Jimmy Williams, a
47-year-old man with two families—his wife and two children and the Outfit.
He’s a good man, a good husband, and a good father, while, at the same time, he
is a physically powerful man who is well respected as a consigliere in the
Outfit. He keeps his two lives separated, to the point his wife is unaware of
what he does.

The story is written from the perspective of
Jimmy’s son Bobby who, from the age of 8 begins to accompany his father on
Outfit business. Jimmy wants him to know what “the life” is like in order for
Bobby to decide if this is the future that he wants for himself. Take this
remarkable journey with Bobby. Will he follow in his father’s footsteps or
choose another path?  

Below is an interview with the author :  

1. What inspired you to write Inside? After I retired from the city of Chicago after
35 years of service, I decided I wanted to write -- since I have degree in
journalism -- the subject I knew very, very, very well. And it was when I
decided that I would write a book, it was going to be fictional, but composites
of real people and real events in the Chicago crime family known as the Outfit,
because my father was high ranking in the Outfit. And that's what got me
started writing the book.   

2. What is the book about? The book is about individual events and
stories that I saw starting when I was the age of eight years old. It was 1956.
I accompanied my father to Las Vegas, where he had a plan for seven
hotels and seven casinos that the outfit would eventually run, and my
introduction to my life started at that point. So that was why I was able to
recall stories to people that took place at the that time when I started. And
then after going to Las Vegas, my father told me 'You're going to see
everything in the life as mob life is known and then you'll make your own
decisions.' He never forced me into it. He just said 'I want you to see
it.'"   

3. How is it different from other stories
featuring Mob activity? Well,
basically you're seeing it through a child's eyes -- a child who's eight years,
nine years old when he saw his first murder, or 11-years-old when he saw a
guy's hands cut off, 12-years-old when he saw a head decapitated. My mob
education dealt with not only the violence, obviously, but the criminal
activity that I saw: gambling, loan sharking, extortion, money laundering,
labor racketeering, adult pornography, child pornography, any financial type of
scam and safe cracking, also forgery. And having the involvement of not only
seeing this in Chicago, but going with my father to the other cities that
reported to Chicago.   

4. By age eight, you were aware of what your
dad was doing. How did it make you feel to discover he operates on the other
side of the law? Well, it was it was
obviously very difficult because I'm still having trying to fit in with
classmates and kids in the neighborhood. And their father had what I would say
were legitimate 9 to 5 jobs. My father, his work that he was involved with, was
not nine to five, It was criminal activity that he was developing or he was
involved with already, and the difficulty was trying to keep things separate
from what I was seeing in the neighborhood, my classroom, my formal education,
with what my street education was. And that was very difficult to balance at
that age. You're not talking about an adult-developed brain. I'm a child
involved with seeing adult activities and trying to comprehend what is going
on. And the one thing my father did, like a sports team, he went over and
over every activity I saw, he went over and over and over it again. So,
after seeing it the first time I was able to get a little more comprehension of
what was going on, which made me have a very fast life. Because what I was
seeing, I wasn't seeing a child's life. I was a child in the criminal world.   

5. Were you aware that these activities were
outside the law?  Yes,
because he would always tell me: Mob life is a shoulder-to-shoulder business.
You're looking over your right shoulder to see if someone's going to try and
whack you, kill you. And the left shoulder is the "G', meaning the
government -- the FBI the IRS. Criminal Division, and see if they're coming
after you. So right away, I would see in the activities that they were not
legal because of the pressure that will be put on people, the fear that people
had. My father wasn't just asking, he was basically telling people something.
And because people knew what taking an opposite course could do, they either
end up basically telling themselves that because people knew what the opposite
could do, they either responded in a positive way, or in a way that might put
them in a potential physical harm at a later date.   

6. Did your mom know what your dad did
for a living? How did she feel about that? She knew. She knew before what he did. The one thing that my
father did do was he didn't work any Mob-related jobs, even though we could
have used more money than what he was making. He always worked regular jobs.
And he'd always say I need a W-2 for legitimate income, I have to show
legitimate income, because if I show income that is not legit it becomes very
difficult. Things were financially difficult. The G would come to see my father
at his workplace, as well as other personnel and show their FBI badge. "We
want to speak with Mr. Hoffman?"

"And the company said, 'what do you want
to speak with Mr. Hoffman about?  "Well, it's an investigation we
can't tell you," -- and they would come and talk to my father, showing
pictures of people and then personnel would call him in in those days and
they'd fire him on the spot. That's why at the age 15 my mother got a job and
was employed the 30 some odd years as an assistant bookkeeper.   

7. You witnessed a murder at age nine.
What impact, do you think, this had on you? It had tremendous impact in the sense I had never see anything
like that before. One day I came home from grammar school and my father was in
the living room with a mobster who was there to pick me up and we were going to
pick up another mobster. And my father said that 'he has a birthday present for
you.' And then we went to pick him up. I never had birthdays. I never had a
bike and childhood things. So, I was very kind of excited inwardly that
"wow, he has a birthday present for me, and I was looking forward to
it."   

And then we left to a town in a western suburb
to pick up the other mobster. And this was not even a mob murder. It would turn
out to be a murder where a banker had given bad advice about a financial
manner. And that mobster was not the kind of guy you gave bad advice on
anything.   

At the scene, the first mobster, used a .22
caliber with a silencer. The wheelman revved up the engine because there is
some noise associated with a silencer. And the shooter came back to the car and
he gives it, the gun, to me. He says, "you take care of it, get rid of
it." And the second mobster asked him, "are you sure you want to do
this?" And kind of looks at him and says, "yeah, he's got to learn,
he's got to learn, so he's going to learn now."   

So, it was very difficult at that point,
because here I had the silencer. I didn't know what a silencer was. And it was
in March so I had my winter coat on and I had it in my pocket so as we're
driving back to my neighborhood, which was Albany Park in Chicago, I'm trying
to figure out what to do with this thing.   

8. Shifting gears a bit, by age 12, as a
result of organized crime connections, you met Marilyn Monroe. Was it lust at
first sight? She was registered at
the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, which I was familiar with because the hotel is
still there today. It was actually through Sam Giancana, who told my
father, Marilyn Monroe was coming in to do promotion for her movie, The
Misfits. Would Scott like to meet her? And my father said, I'm sure he would
and that's, you know how I met her and we had an interesting discussion for
almost two hours."   

She was asking me a lot of questions. One of
the things I would say to her I said, Well, my father at one of the hotels, he
started, it could have been the Golden Nugget, it told the girls who gave the
free drinks to "Go Marilyn." And she (Marilyn) said, "what do
you mean, "Go Marilyn?" I said, "you were a natural brunette
until you became a model in the 1940s. She said, "yes, right." Then,
"how old are you?"   

And I said, 'well, I'm 12 and a half years
old, as kids do at that point," and she said, 'no, you're 12, going on
40." And that extended our conversation. She started asking me more things
about myself, like what do you do for hobbies and fun? And I would lie about
it. I would say, 'well, I follow sports, I go to the library and take out books
about people who are successful in life, something that sounded normal, because
I couldn't tell her about what my life was like with street with juice collectors,
street enforcers, learning about all the mob activities because that would have
been probably a much longer conversation."   

9. Were you tempted to follow in your dad’s
footsteps? No, not really.
Because he had abilities that I never could have. That was the thing. He could
do things that I knew I couldn't do. It's it would be kind of like someone
who's a star professional athlete. And there's the rest of the team. Say
Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls. He had a natural talent to be a star. Not
everybody on the Bulls had his talent. And he was able to help them win
championships. Well, I knew what my father could do. And I knew what I can do
in life. And I also knew starting at such a young age, I know what the
consequences if I'd made mistakes -- where I might wind up you know, as far as
federal facilities, and all that type of thing. So, you know, I had to make a
decision. And when I told my parents my senior year of high school that I'm
going to go to Wilbur Wright Junior College to further my education. I'm not
sure what I wanted study. And he said "that's great and he said 'I'm
supporting you 100% plus." The final thing he said about that was if
a parent tries to force a child into something, and the child is never happy
with it, 30, 40 years later his child's going to say you forced me into it. He
said 'I'm not going to do that. You're going to make your own decision."   

10. Your story gives a historical perspective
of The Outfit, a Chicago organized crime family dating back to the 1920s. How
did it grow in power by the time your story opens up in the year 1956? Obviously, Prohibition was the big moneymaker
for organized crime and all cities, metropolitan areas. And also, they were
bringing in illegal gambling money from card games. There were street taxes: A
strip club was 10 percent, which was carried out in the future. A Mobbed-up bar
was a 3% street tax and restaurants were 2%. But when things really started to
grow. really starting to grow is when Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in as
president in 1932 and passed the 40-hour workweek and the labor movement started
and unions started to develop. That's when we decided we'll run our own slate.
of candidates, we get control of the unions, and then we can get, say 10% on a
weekly basis. In a town like Chicago, the outfit would start to run their own
state and do what they do best, which would be physically intimidate the
opponents and get them to drop out or even if they stayed in the race, they
just didn't have enough votes to stop that Outfit slate from becoming
President, Vice President, Secretary, Recording Treasurer -- you know, that
type of stuff. And of course, once you have control of the unions, they control
the money. So, the money started to really started to come in.   

11. Your book reads like a movie. Who do you
see playing some of the key people? Oh, that's hard for me because I wasn't real much of a movie
person today. You know what I mean? So it's kind of a tough question. I think
someone like Matt Damon would be good as my father. I really believe he has the
ability, just I'd have to talk with him a little bit about how to come up with
development of the character. Who would play me? They'd have to start some
child actor obviously, and go forward in age.    

12. You have watched Goodfellas, Godfather,
The Outfit, and The Sopranos. From what you know of the real-life organized
crime world, did these Hollywood depictions get the stories right? Well, Hollywood, you know, you always have to
remember whether it's a movie or a television show, it's done for
entertainment. First of all, normally in movies and television, they try to
have a technical advisor. Now in a lot of cases they might be using a retired
FBI agent who worked mob cases but it's different. He's basically listened to
wiretaps and maybe talked to someone, but he's not there. He's not in the room.
He's not inside. If they used a retired agent who worked undercover, there
would be a different perspective. And sometimes shows they'll hire
mobsters who have left the life, kind of like retired mobsters, and they'll
give their perspective and fill in as much as they can and be very close. But
again, it's entertainment. In my book, Inside, I talk about something that I
don't think the viewers for an audience really couldn't possibly stomach. And
that was when I was with a juice collector. When I was almost 12-years-old, we
went to a house looking for a guy who owed gambling money, and his wife was
pregnant. She opened up the door. Okay, and what physically happened to her was
very upsetting to me even at the age and I could just imagine the viewers or
who would be watching what physically happened to her, what was physically done
to her. I don't know if people can handle it.   

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on Twitter
@theprexpert. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2023. Born and
raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and
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