In search of lost time
Something in the news from time to time brings back memories of, er, Rhode Island businessman Raymond L.S. Patriarca (1908-84).
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The complicated, and, I’m sure to many people, boring, if important, trial involving money-laundering charges against political operative Jeffrey Britt got me to watch a GoLocal video on the best known character in the case – Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello. The seedy situation centers on his 2016 campaign for re-election, which he very narrowly and controversially won.
As the video relates, Mr. Mattiello was friends with Joseph Bevilacqua Jr., the son of Joseph Bevilacqua, the late ousted state Supreme Court chief justice who was in bed with the Raymond Patriarca unit of the Mafia. Mr. Mattiello was also pals with Charles “The Ghost’’ Kennedy, another mobster. Not comforting information about someone said to be the most powerful person in his tiny state.
Hearing this took me back to the first time I lived in Rhode Island, in the late ‘ 70s, when the Patriarca mob, based in Providence, was still in force, and everybody seemed to be making mob jokes, some of which I had heard while, just before, as a resident of a Brooklyn neighborhood said to be a favorite of Mafia middle management.
So, as William Faulkner observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’’
Jeffrey Britt himself, now of course a resident of Florida, where people like him so often domicile themselves (a “sunny place for shady people’’), is a curious character, not least because of his bizarre muscle-bound appearance, which screams body building and, well, maybe some bio-chemical helpers.
Another interesting character in the case is Shawna Lawton, who briefly ran in the GOP primary race in the speaker’s rather conservative district in 2016 but was defeated by the very smart and interesting Steven Frias, who then narrowly lost to Mr. Mattiello that year. Ms. Lawton is another of those anti-vaxxer Republicans who defy science and in so doing put the health of the public at risk. I wish they would all move to, say, Baffin Island, with QAnon sidekicks.
To see the GoLocal movie, please hit this link.