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.
To order the book, please click here: https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Scott-Hoffman-ebook/dp/B01DG8PNAE/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2XVLVU61WYLJ0&keywords=scott+hoffman+author&qid=1688105662&sprefix=scott+hoffman+%2Caps%2C465&sr=8-1
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