"I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa

by Charles Brandt

As I looked at him that evening in 1991, I decided another question was in order just to keep him alert. Based on the final scene of the obscure movie that I’d seen at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City decades earlier called Blast of Silence, and sensing a lull, a literal blast of silence, just to keep him talking as the evening was coming to a close I very “innocently” asked Frank why so many people were actively involved: “…Tony Provenzano, you, Russell, Tommy Andretta, Steve Andretta, Sal Briguglio, Chuckie O’Brien, Tony Giacalone.” “That way,” Frank said, “if you go bad you only know what you did. You can’t rat on the other ones before you and the other ones after you.” “That’s a great point,” I said. “Precautionary is all,” Frank said. “Also,” I said, “I guess, if you handle a high-profile hit like this by yourself you’ll stand a good chance of getting eliminated in the end.” “Oh, yeah. You’d have to be out of your mind to do something like this alone.” “It’s like a movie I saw once in Atlantic City where the hit man they brought in from Cleveland for a high-profile hit in New York goes to get paid after the hit and gets hit himself.” “Oh, yeah. You’d have to be out of your mind to do something like this alone. They’re definitely not going to have a massacre, but a lone cowboy will be disposable.” “Like the lone cowboy Lee Harvey Oswald,” I said, laughing.