Mouthpiece
A Life in - and Sometimes Just Outside - the Law
Chapter One
I learned as a child not to expect to be loved for myself.
My father was a very good teacher.
I don't have a single good memory of him, not one, but he taught me
a lot of useful lessons. A merchant marine during World War II, my
father had gone on missions to Murmansk and Malta on a tanker and he
told me how, during those voyages, American destroyers rammed German
subs and the subs torpedoed the tankers and, in the end, the water
was full of sailors who had been blown to bits or were on fire. They
fought to the death. I remember thinking, That's the way life is:
somebody goes home and somebody does not, you try to avoid the
latter, but that's how life is.
I learned this early on, and also that people are weak and can't
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