I just finished reading American Desperado, a biography on the life of Jon Roberts, Mafia soldier and cocaine cowboy. The book was written by Roberts in tandem with Evan Wright, an award-winning journalist and author of the excellent Generation Kill. The story starts with Roberts born into the Mafia and at the tender age of seven, witnessing his first murder, carried out by his father. Before seeing his father deported to Italy, Roberts learned the one crucial lesson that would serve as a guiding force throughout his life: the evil path is the better path because evil is stronger than good. This philosophy would take root in Roberts as he navigated a rocky, unstable childhood and later became a hunter-killer during the Vietnam War. After he returned home, he “officially” became a member of the Mafia and went on to become one of the leading nightclub impresarios in New York City at the age of 22. When he got into some hot water because of an affair with another mafioso’s wife, he fled to Miami, where in only a few years he would become one of the top smugglers and American representatives for the Medellin Cartel of Columbia, a ruthless organization that included Pablo Escobar and was run by the Ochoa family. The U.S. government eventually took notice of Roberts and enlisted him to smuggle arms to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua. Later, Roberts would become a central figure in the documentary Cocaine Cowboys.
The stories Roberts shares in the book range from hilarious to the macabre to the undeniably brutal. He is surrounded by a cadre of beautiful women and celebrities (Jimi Hendrix, O.J. Simpson, Richard Pryor, James Caan-Roberts was not particularly fond of the former’s portrayal of Sonny in The Godfather, as he makes clear), but after it all comes crashing down (as it typically does in these types of stories), Roberts comes to a stark realization: he is utterly alone on this earth because he cares for no one. Is this ultimately a redemptive story? Not really, although Roberts does find love for a son he later fathers. Roberts is acutely self-aware of his evil ways and fully expects that when he leaves this earth, his partner for eternity will be the Devil himself, and he is perfectly accepting of that. But now he enjoys and basks in the love of his son and his wife. Told in a straight-forward (“street”) and blunt manner, it is a fascinating tale of a modern-day American outlaw, an outlaw who to his dying days will profess that his religion is evil, the easier and simpler path to take.