george martorano

[The Streets Don't Love You Back]

The life of a jailed mob writer has its drawbacks.
George Martorano has had to barter cookies for typing paper, cigarettes for ballpoint pens and ice cream bars for an artist's sketch for his manuscripts.
Probably the worst problem has been finding a typist. That is, next to having a typewriter that doesn't type commas and a few capital letters.
But after four novels and six screenplays, he's about to get his first novel, the semi-autobiographical "Pain Grows a Platinum Rose," published. And an independent producer is considering turning his third novel into a movie.
All this has been going on behind bars for the past 30 months. Martorano hopes to show the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and, most importantly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, that he has changed his life while in prison.
Today, his attorney, Creed C. Black, Jr., was to argue before a three-judge panel in Circuit Court that Martorano deserves a new trial, because of conflicts of interest by his ex-attorney Robert F. Simone.
Louis Pichini, who is chief of the U.S. attorney's criminal division and who prosecuted Martorano, is expected to oppose a new trial.
Simone was under FBI investigation for racketeering and income-tax evasion when he advised Martorano to plead guilty to operating a $75 million-a-year drug-trafficking network.
Acquitted of tax evasion, Simone later was convicted of racketeering and other charges for becoming an "unofficial consigliere" to then-mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo through the 1980s--when Simone was representing Martorano.
Martorano was advised he would get a 10-year sentence on the drug charges, but received life without parole. He won an earlier appeal, but was resentenced to the same term.
"I'm not the person I was. I worked hard to change. If they would give me a chance, they would see that. As far as the streets are concerned, it's over with," said Martorano, son of jailed mobster Raymond "LongJohn" Martorano.
(His father and mob associate Albert Daidone are awaiting a new trial in the 1980 murder of roofers Union Leader John McCullough.)
So passionate has the 45-year-old South Philadelphia native become about his writing that he taped a handwritten manuscript--his fourth novel--to his body while his prison was on alert to be evacuated during Hurricane Opal in early October.
"I couldn't bear to part with it," said Martorano.
Cornelius Van Dyke agreed to publish Martorano's "Platinum Rose" novel for Commonwealth Publications, a small Alberta, Canada, publishing house that will issue 85 books this year.
Van Dyke says the book is "overwhelmingly honest." "...It's almost eerie the way he uses the tools. He knows how to create suspense and tender moments. He seems to be able to go from one extreme to the other with little effort. I consider his work extremely professional," he said. "He's quite prolific, banging out two, three books a year."
Martorano had a lawyer in prison read over his contract. The attorney's fee: five packs of cigarettes. (He also asked a New Jersey attorney to review it.)
Van Dyke said Martorano received no advance money and would get only royalties based on a percentage of sales. The book is due to be published in March.
His third novel, "Muddy Angels," is under consideration for a movie by Open Eye Productions, a Philadelphia independent production company. Said Open Eye producer Nathan Solomon: "We're eagerly awaiting the screenplay," which Martorano just adapted from the novel.
His characters are uniquely his own, drawn from his imagination and real-life experiences of legendary mobsters he's researched.
Many come from his days growing up in the Bella Vista neighborhood in South Philadelphia.
His fourth novel features the infamous gangsters, the Lanzetti brothers, a landlady who poisoned her boarders and "gangster nuns" who shook down the mob for money.
As for hiring typists in prison: it costs one Dove bar a day.
"If they're drunks, if they gamble, if they spend all their money on smut books, I don't want them," says Martorano. "I gotta check them out.
"My first book, the typist got drunk and started running around naked and they locked him up...threw him in the hole."
Martorano couldn't figure out a temperamental artist. "He acted like he wasn't into it anymore," he said.
The problem: the commissary stopped stocking the nutrient bars the guy liked. "I had to argue with the commissary to get them back in so I can keep him happy.
"Seems like when people get to prison, they become children again," he said.
"I had to buy this other guy cigarettes to get 50-60 sheets at a time. We get this lined paper, but it's too thin. I don't like the texture," he said. He recently traded cookies for paper.
"I work on a desk top that is only a foot-and-a-half wide and use an iron chair with a piece of foam rubber to sit on in my cell."
Due to prison overcrowding, the noise became so loud he told prison officials: " 'I want to go to the hole to do the first write for six weeks' They wanted to send me to a psychiatrist. They told me, 'You're cracking up with this writing.'
" 'You don't understand,' " I told them, ' I can't write with all this noise.' think