The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter by Linda Scarpa Page B

wouldn’t be a way for him to get out.
    So the first time I met Lin—I already knew that he was an FBI agent because Greg told me that he was going to meet with him—I had taken a ride with Greg to Twentieth Avenue or somewhere around there. Lin was in a car, and Greg parked behind him. Lin got out of the car and sat in the back of our car, and that’s when Greg introduced me to him. Then Greg and Lin got out of our car and went back to Lin’s car.
    I saw Lin more when we moved to Avenue J and East Third Street, which wasn’t a dead-end street. Lin used to come by in the morning. Every time Lin came over, he’d sit in the kitchen. I remember one time when he came to the house, I was going to go upstairs so they could talk. But Greg said, “No, sit down, sweetheart. Don’t worry about it.” So I always sat with them.
    Greg and Lin were very close. Lin idolized Greg. When Greg talked, Lin would just look at him. Lin even admitted he and Greg had a friendship. Lin came by the house every week and Greg would give him money in exchange for the addresses and phone numbers of his loan-sharking customers who owed him money.
    I was there when Lin gave Greg this note with all the names of the guys who were going to get arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration on drug charges. It was 1987. Greg Junior was on the list, so Greg sent Gregory away on the lam to Florida because Lin told him that if Gregory was going to stand trial, it would be better if he went on trial alone.
    So that’s what happened. Lin knew where Gregory was hiding. Greg Junior was arrested ten months later, after he was featured on America’s Most Wanted . He was tried separately and convicted in 1988. He was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison for racketeering and extortion involving cocaine and marijuana distribution.
    I knew Greg was living a double life, but I never really thought that anything could happen to him because he had everything under control. He had the gangsters under control; he had the FBI under control. I didn’t fear anything. I never thought the gangsters were going to kill him, because Greg was too smart for them. He was manipulating everybody.
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    Lin wanted to be a gangster. He was an FBI agent, but he loved the fact that my father had these feelings for him, which he did. My father cared for him. When my father cared for somebody, he went all out for you, but he still wasn’t going to sell himself out.
    Even though he cared for Lin, he still knew what he was doing and it was going to benefit him, not Lin. But Lin was playing both ends because he wanted to be a part of the scene, but he was doing it from the FBI side. There were strong feelings there on a friendship level—my father cared for him and he cared for my father. He really did.

CHAPTER 6
    THE GRIM REAPER
    My father was one of the most feared hit men in the New York Mafia. An enforcer in the Colombo crime family, he was known as “the Grim Reaper” because if you did wrong and you were in the life, or you hurt his family or anyone he cared about, it was his job to bring you death. He’d kill you.
    Most mobsters were discreet around their families, but not my father. He started to bring the outside world home with him. My father didn’t make any attempt to hide his third family—the Colombo crime family—from our family. Mobsters came over to the house all the time. They’d discuss Mob business in front of Joey and me. My brother and I didn’t want to hear about those things because we were still so young.
    Sometimes my father’s friends would disappear—people I knew and loved. I asked questions about them and he would say they had passed away. I figured out that they must have been killed, but I didn’t want to believe that my father had anything to do with their murders.
    I really started to figure things out when I was in my midteens. It wasn’t all