I had answered a request in the summer of 2017 for “Italian-American extras” for Martin Scorsese’s Netflix production of The Irishman, a film based on the biography of Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran’s I Heard You Paint Houses, written by Charles Brandt. My interest in the book and film centered on the accounts of Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa’s murder in 1975. I read the book after sending my picture and information to the agency. I wanted in.

Frank Sheeran had many jobs, most of them illegal. He wound up close to Hoffa; too close, for Jimmy’s sake. Sheeran claims to have murdered so many people he can’t remember. One he remembers well is Jimmy Hoffa in Michigan in 1975. But his statement contradicts what I’d been told by my father and uncle, and what our family lore still holds about Sal Briguglio, my godmother’s husband.