Dirk Robertson:	SHOTS' NY Correspondent
Number:	Number 4 (June 2006)

The weather is strange. Blistering hot one moment, freezing cold the next. In the high winds I can hardly hear people, in the street, speak to me.

They do, constantly.

The majority of them are convinced I am someone else. I will give you a regular update from now on, as it is almost a daily occurrence. They don’t ask me if I am that person. They have already told themselves I am, so there is no room for debate. It is intimidating, but also provides me with some of the best laughs I have had in a long time.

First up is a basketball player who was involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. According to a bloke who tried to exercise a citizen’s arrest, I am that person. The hair, everything about me was just right. Luckily for me, he had overdone it on the hamburgers so he was too fat to give chase as I legged it down the street.

 There is a woman on Broadway and 110th street who would strongly disagree with his identification of me.

She knows I am really Errick.

She screamed at me, “Where have you been Errick?”

“I am not Errick.” I replied.

“You would say that, Errick. You’re a smart one alright.”

She was joined by a friend.

“Hi, Errick, where have you been?” said the friend.

I fled the scene, luckily managing to jump on a 104 bus downtown. I pick up the newspaper to read of Morton Freedgood’s death. He wrote a whole stack of crime fiction, under the pen name of John Godey. He got the name from a 19th century women’s magazine. He enjoyed good commercial success with “A Thrill A Minute With Jack Albany”, “Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Kill Today” and my favourite, “The Three Worlds Of Johnny Handsome.” He will be best remembered, however, for his 1973 best seller “The Taking Of Pelham 123.” which was a big box office success on the silver screen, starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, in 1974.

I get off the bus at 42nd street.

“Goodbye, Mister Ross.” The bus driver says just before shutting the air-powered doors.

It is becoming more like the Twilight Zone, every minute.

What is happening on the real-life organised crime scene?

I was in a deli when a mobster appeared to shake it down. It was extremely frightening. Dead early in the morning. Maybe it was a joke. The Italian looking bloke, with sideburns like an Amazonian rain forest, barged in, jowls flapping,  demanding a whole lot of dollars. He even did that funny movement with the neck, which tough guys do. Twirling the head and touching their collar. Looking left then right, like a method actor off Law and Order.

Only this was real life.

He and the shopkeeper might have been mates.   I will never know. I made signals to the shopkeeper.

You know the type.

Hey, I’ll testify in court. Keep him busy, I’ll hit him with a box of courgettes while he is not looking.

Either the poor old shopkeeper didn’t understand what I was getting at or, nearer the truth, he just wanted the quiet life and was scared to death of doing anything which would upset the applecart. A truckful of dollars passed from the till to the big hairy hands of the human snake seemingly doing the extorting. Once the greenbacks were counted the piece of slime slid out the door. If I ever see him again I....., probably never saw him before. It made me almost homesick for Glasgow.

He would never get away with that in Maryhill. If it is what I thought it was.

In the Federal District Court in Manhattan, (1)Arnold Squitieri entered guilty pleas to four counts of racketeering and extortion.

Prosecutors had charged that Mr Squitieri had become the acting boss of the Gambino crime organization in June 2002 after an alleged former boss, Peter Gotti, had been arrested on racketeering charges. Mr Squitieri refused to acknowledge that he was a member of the Gambino organization. He said he took part in an “enterprise” but would only enter a plea if the Gambino name was left out of it.

A wise move.

Mr Squitieri’s trial was supposed to start on May 8, alongside alleged Gambino capo Gregory DePalma. Not a young man, Mr Spitieri’s plea means he will probably get out just before he is 80. All of this was the result of an undercover operation going back some years. One of the most memorable things about it were gifts from an undercover agent. He gave flat screen televisions to Mr Squitieri and Mr DePalma, saying they were stolen. Mr Squitieri watched an episode of “The Sopranos” when a gangster is rumbled by a parole officer watching a stolen flat screen television. As a result of this Mr Spitieri got rid of his own tv afraid that “life could imitate art.”

It always does.

In my next report I will look at the Tribeca film festival. Till then good bye from the city where not all the rats have tails......

(1) Source: New York Times 21/04/06