Gun Smuggling, Castro's Cuba and the Pittsburgh Mafia

Ben 00:02-00:04

Rich, welcome to Crime Capsule.

Rich 00:04-00:07

Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

Ben 00:07-00:28

It is a total joy and congratulations in advance. Your new book is coming out in just about a month or two, is that right? That's correct. January 7th. There you go. Now, I understand that this is your seventh book with History Press. Tell us just a little bit about your background and some of the other titles that you've worked on.

Rich 00:29-01:31

Well, I've written, I was a journalist for a little over 40 years, working in newspapers. And before I retired, I started working on my first book, which came out in 2011, called Black Valley, The Life and Death of Fannie Sollins, who incidentally was originally from New Orleans. And she was a labor leader who was murdered here near Pittsburgh during a labor strike in 1919. Then I retired and I devoted full time to writing. My other books were Wicked Pittsburgh, Prohibition Pittsburgh, The Mayor of Shantytown, The Phantom Turnpike Killer, which was the book that preceded this one. Swinging in the Still City, a History of Jazz in Pittsburgh. And I wrote that with a co-author. But that's pretty much what my life is now, is pretty much my grandchildren and my books. I spent doing work on those.

Ben 01:31-01:33

You were literally living the dream.

Rich 01:33-01:36

I mean… It was. It was my plan. Yes, it was.

Ben 01:37-01:48

Yeah, I think you nailed it. I'd like to sign up for that package if I could at some point in the not too distant future. Now, is there anything about Pittsburgh that you do not know, Rich?

Rich 01:48-03:53

Oh yeah, there's a lot of things. But somebody asked me that, where do I come up with these stories? And I said, what people don't realize is how story-rich Pittsburgh is. When I work on one book, I usually find something on another. Now, on this book, But the mob, it's funny because I kind of live this story. I was 10 years old when this story broke. And I lived in the area where it happened. And I knew these mobsters by reputation. I fortunately spent my formative years in a pool room in high school that was a numbers joint. And it was one of the places that the Manorinos controlled. They had their machines, their pinball machines, and they took bets there. And every week I'd see a guy come in from one of their businesses and he would collect the coins from the machines and he would give the the pool hall owner. And I have to admit, I bet numbers there once in a while for my parents. They would give me money and say, go down here, and I want this number plate. And, you know, they knew, I knew. I mean, I never thought much about it. But then, in 1995, my paper signed me to a store. I went down to the National Archives. That's when they had first released the papers on the Kennedy assassinations connection to the mafia yeah, and so I went down there and Got a lot of stuff, but I didn't actually touch on this these documents came out Years later, so I decided I wrote a series called mob rule in 96 and then I decided to do a full book on it, because I was familiar. Matter of fact, the airport where they flew these guns out of was not far from where I grew up. So I knew the Allegheny-Kiski Valley, and I knew the players, and I knew their reputations. So I thought, it's a natural fit.

Ben 03:54-04:40

know, it's funny, because you have kind of two versions of the same story or, you know, a fork in the road. I see sort of local boy made good on your end, and then you got a couple local boys who made something else on the other end, you know, that you're writing about here. And when you say that Pittsburgh is story rich, I mean, we have felt that very much here on Crime Capsule. A couple years ago, we had the great pleasure of interviewing Bruce Sewey, who had written a book about the infamous Judge Joe Okicke. I believe his book was called Jailing the Johnstown Judge, right? And we heard a little bit about what goes on down there in the valley. Now, did you ever run into Judge Okicke? Did you have to write about him? What was your connection there?

Rich 04:41-05:10

I never wrote about him, because he was in an adjoining county, which was a little bit out of our circulation area. But we followed the story, and I had a former colleague who had gone to one of the Pittsburgh papers, and he actually went to Eastern Europe. I forget if it was Serbia or Croatia to track O'Keekee down, because he had written a lot of stories about O'Keekee and the corruption surrounding him. And so they sent him to Europe. I don't think he found him, but he did write a lot of great stories about him.

Ben 05:11-05:39

I mean, it kind of feels like certain places and certain people were just made for one another, right? And we'll get into kind of the steel and aluminum politics, you know, of the region here in a bit. But, you know, it is fascinating to see how some stories and some characters in them, like Okiki, they just feel inevitable, don't they? There had to be someone like Okiki. There's much money and influence and power consolidated in this area.

Rich 05:39-06:02

Oh yeah, there were a lot of people like that. I mean, we go back to the days of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. I mean, they were the prototypes for that kind of power. So yeah, there's always been men like that in Pittsburgh and in southwestern Pennsylvania where I live. And it's good fodder for stories. I mean, you just have to look for it and do a little digging.

Ben 06:03-06:45

And you're not going to have to dig long or dig deep, are you? So, the era that you are writing about in your book is, it actually predates the Okiki era a little bit, okay? So, you're looking at more of the American mid-century and a little bit beforehand. Set set the stage for us for how the major players in your book kind of rose to power. Now, we'll come to the gun smuggling a bit later, but I would love for you to just kind of set the backdrop for us. How did this all come to be?

Rich 06:45-08:42

Well, you have to know a little bit about the history of new kensington which is about twenty miles north of pittsburgh it was at one time it was uh… major industrial city had steel mills and had alcoa it was the uh… home of alcoa aluminum uh… and one of the uh… founder one of the early bosses of the mafia a guy by the name of john bezano was from new kensington And he had mentored one of the Manorino brothers, Sam Manorino, and kind of brought him along in the business. And I think he was the one who actually made Sam Manorino a full-fledged member of the mafia, a maid member, as they say. And Bazzano went on, moved to Pittsburgh, where he became known as the yeast king. He had consolidated yeast and sugar. during Prohibition, set the prices, and was a power in the mafia during bootlegging days. Unfortunately, he ordered the murders of three brothers, the Volpe brothers, that used his coffee house in the Hill District as their headquarters. And he had them killed, and the Volpe brothers, the remaining, there was like eight or nine brothers, and they complained to the commission in New York City, and he Bazzana was ordered to come to Pittsburgh, or come to New York City, where he was murdered in retaliation for doing an unsanctioned murder. And then after that, Sam Manarino, he rose in the ranks of the mob, and he brought his younger brother Gabriel Manarino in, whose nickname was Kelly, and they really became a power in New Kensington. And their power extended way beyond New Kensington. It went into Eastern Ohio, in northern West Virginia where they controlled gambling and prostitution and blackmail and extortion and everything else.

Ben 08:44-09:20

So Pittsburgh at the time was absolutely in the ascendance, right? It was flourishing partly because of this new process that had been developed to make aluminum. And you write about this in your book where there had been a chemist who had devised a sort of new procedure to make it at comparatively low cost compared to previous processes and with maybe a little bit less of the overhead and equipment and so forth. Can you just describe kind of why aluminum and why here?

Rich 09:20-11:03

Well, aluminum at the time was expensive. Before this process developed, it was very expensive to make. America was on the cusp of growing, and I mean in terms of industrial development. When this process, cheaper process, was developed, the Mellons, along with Richard Vining Davis, some other industrialists, formed the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. It was in a place, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh called the Strip District, which at the time was a heavy industrial district. There was a lot of heavy industry and manufacturing going on there. Mellon owned a lot of land in the New Kensington area, which is in Westmoreland County, which adjoins Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located. They enticed the Mellons to come up here. said, look, we'll give you no taxes, we'll give you cheap land to buy. You're right by the Allegheny River where you have transportation, you have good rail lines. And so the company prospered and it grew and it hired more and more people. By hiring more and more people, it became an attraction for the mob, for booking numbers and sports bets. And that was a major, major source of the mob's income in that area. And it continued until Alcoa announced one day, we're shutting down, we're moving out of state. That's when the mob's finances declined and there was all kinds of problems. And, you know, the mafia did not become as strong, was not as strong there as it had been because the mob was intertwined financially with the prosperity of Alcoa. As long as Alcoa prospered, the mob prospered.

Ben 11:04-12:01

that's an aspect of the story which I think a lot of folks don't typically realize is that, you know, the mob is essentially parasitic, isn't it? It's always preying off of others' prosperity. Yeah. It does not generate things itself. It's always kind of relying on sort of sucking the blood of things that are already taking place there. I guess one thing that I'm a little curious about, Rich, is, I mean, as you describe the leading families in the greater Northeast region, Why were the Manarino brothers so effective? I mean, what was it about them in particular? Was it their willingness to do things that nobody else would do? Was it a business savvy? Was it just iron fist and as much violence as they could possibly meet out, you know, without sort of, you know, going over the line? Why did they end up running things?

Rich 12:01-13:42

They were brutal. They ran everything with an iron hand. People were absolutely scared of them. There was an incident where the FBI was, had no, this was, you have to remember, the FBI started looking at the mob. from the very beginning and they knew nothing about it because so much of their early efforts were on revolutionaries and anarchists and Bolsheviks and communists. When Appalachia occurred they were forced to start a whole new learning curve about the mob. And they had no photographs of the Manorinos. So they went to this one industry, to this one business that was located across the street from the Manorino scrapyard. And they asked, would you mind if we could use your second floor to do a photo surveillance, so we could get a picture of these guys coming and going. Well, the guy said, no, no way. He was too scared. And then he told Sam Manarino what they were trying to do. So that was a kind of fear. When the FBI went to a local photographer to get photographs of one of the daughter's weddings, he said, I have no negatives. We didn't keep any. Well, he's probably lying because he was scared. That's the way they were. They were known for their ruthlessness, they were known for their violence. They had hair trigger tempers and they were not shy about using violence. One of the things when I was growing up in that area, they always said, well, they're not a violent gang. They're low key. Well, they were low key, but people didn't realize until those FBI records came out just how violent they were.

Ben 13:44-14:35

Well, and you have some incredible photos in the book of, you know, they had their heavies, right? They had the guys that did the dirty work for them. And one of their heavies was, in fact, I believe it was about 400 pounds. I mean, you know, this guy was an absolute bruiser that you write about. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you this, one of the things that is always a part of the cat and mouse game regarding organized crime is the presence of informants, right? Oh yes. Yeah, you describe a couple in your book and Suffice to say, things just don't always go very well, you know, for those guys. Can you tell us about the difficulty or at least the strategy that law enforcement tried to use to get any actionable intel on this ring?

Rich 14:37-16:29

Well, they would first start with the bookies, try to talk to some of the bookmakers. Now, you have to remember, the bookmakers were independent operators. You got a percentage of their numbers that they wrote, of their bets. And then they had to turn in a certain percentage to the manorinas, because the manorinas got a piece of everything, every crap game, every card game, every barbood game. they got a cut. So the money, some of these people became disaffected. They had independent operations and they didn't want to deal with the Manorinos. But the FBI realized that and cultivated some of these bookies for information. They also went to the prostitutes. The Manorinos, even though they were married, had mistresses. And if you notice, one of the FBI reports said that they had a penchant for sleeping with ugly women. So they would go to the prostitutes and try to get some information from them. But then they would also look at members of the inner circle. There were men that were dissatisfied with the way they were treated. The Manarinas were greedy. They didn't cut anybody any financial breaks. And when gambling declined, these guys were basically out of work or were not called to do much work. And so there was no unemployment benefits. So they became dissatisfied. So the FBI went to these guys and tried to cultivate them. And they did cultivate them. There was a number of them in these FBI records that were given confidential informant numbers. But the censors, failed to do a good job editing, and some of their identities were in the clear. And one of those was Sam Manarino himself. He became an FBI informant.

Ben 16:29-16:31

It's a remarkable twist.

Rich 16:31-16:33

He gave them a lot of information.

Ben 16:34-17:25

Because, of course, he's got higher ups, he's got the New York outfit. I mean, there's a lot of folks that he has to report to at some level. And so, yeah, it's either flip or get burned, right? There was one instance in a former life where, when I was working as a legal videographer, Rich, I got to see a federal attorney make a proffer to a guy who'd been found utterly guilty of highest level of corruption. Post-katrina New Orleans and there there's a special moment when a federal attorney puts a proffer in front of you because you just know Your butts against the wall. You've got nowhere to go, you know, I mean, it's it's that simple so yeah, there's a special kind of silence that descends on the room as the guy considers and you know, his options in front of him.

Rich 17:25-17:43

Exactly. They have all the leverage and you have none. It's either a long stand in a federal prison or you roll over, you know, and run the risk of being killed for being an informant. But unfortunately in Pittsburgh, everybody seemed to spill. That's what killed the mob here. Everybody became an informant. Nobody wanted to go to jail for the rest of their life.

Ben 17:45-18:09

Well, that's what makes sort of tying your book to Bruce's book so interesting is that, you know, O'Keeffe, Judge O'Keeffe in the wider region, he was inheriting some of the after effects of the decline of mob influence. And he was trying to kind of prop up some of his own power using maybe not exactly their means, but just kind of like preying upon the structures that they had left behind. It seems like Pittsburgh has a lot of that going around.

Rich 18:11-19:05

It did, they did. You know, getting back to the informants for a moment, there was one particular informant, his name was Joe Marola. And Marola, he was embraced by the Manarinos. Unfortunately for the Manorinos, he was an informant for the FBI and the CIA, and he knew a lot about this gun smuggling thing. And he ratted them out, testified against them in a trial in Chicago, gave information to the grand jury about their criminal and personal lives. So the FBI hit the goldmine when they found this guy. They knew he was not to be trusted. He was a major jewel thief as well as an informer, but he was also a guy that gave the FBI a lot of inside information. Despite that, despite all that information, inside help, they never got the Manarinos. They never were able to pin anything major on him.

Ben 19:05-19:30

Yeah. I've always wondered what it must be like to be in the intelligence sector, you know, working for one of those agencies, CIA, FBI, and to be given information from a source who you know is close to the action, but who himself or herself may or may not be totally trustworthy. And just the kind of sifting that has to take place. It's great.

Rich 19:30-19:31

It's fascinating.

Ben 19:34-20:29

Well, let's let's turn just briefly to The the content of the book that you the chapters where you write about What actually is the core of your story here, right and you have this amazing premise, which is that there is a heist and a attempt to steal a bunch of guns and send them overseas. And what is fascinating to me about your work, Rich, is that we might at first think this is a book about mob activity just in one localized part of, you know, the greater Northeast and the industrial corridor and so forth. Guess what? Spoiler alert, it's not. This is a book about international affairs, right? Oh, yes. Very much. It's sort of one of these things where it's not out of left field. There's actually, you know, this is about global politics.

Rich 20:30-21:05

That's what surprised me. When I was a kid and I read these stories in the newspaper and heard about it. As a matter of fact, I even wrote a story about it before I retired. It was a much shorter version. I was really shocked. Looking into these FBI records, this became an espionage thriller almost, full of international intrigue. That's what shocked me. I just didn't realize it was that that complicated. When I tell former colleagues that I was working on this book, and they were aware of some of this, they were shocked to find out about the international aspect of it, Cuba and Europe.

Ben 21:07-21:32

Absolutely. So before we touch on that, I would like you to just return to something you mentioned a little while ago, which is important, which is the fact that you stumble across the depth of this story through a bunch of declassified files from the Kennedy assassination. For folks who may not be fully aware of what exactly you're referring to, can you just unpack that a little bit? Sure.

Rich 21:34-23:35

Ever since the Warren Commission issued its report, there was always these lingering thoughts that there was more than just Lee Harvey Oswald in this murder. And it surfaced at one point where they thought the mafia was involved. So there was, first there was a thing called the Church Commission. who did some investigation. They touched on it, but in a more depth investigation occurred when the House Select Committee on Assassinations took up the issue and looked at the Kennedy murder, the murder of Martin Luther King, and some other foreign leaders that were involved in, that were killed at the time. And they looked very deeply into the Mafia. And the Church Committee No, I should say the House Select Committee came to the conclusion that they could rule out the mafia. as a player, but could not rule out the fact that certain members of the Mafia may have played a role in the murder. And they cite specifically two, Santo Traficante Jr. of Florida and Carlos Mossello of New Orleans. There was one informant who testified before the select committee that he heard Santo Traficante once say they killed the wrong Kennedy. because they thought they should have killed Robert Kennedy, who was the Attorney General and was making trouble for the mafia. So that's the thing. And once you get into these reports, and I warn you, when you read them, they're fascinating. It's going down a rabbit hole that you don't want to go because you just can't cut yourself away from it. And that's where I found this stuff. It took a lot of reading. It took a lot of in-depth studying because some of these reports are massive and they're hard to put together, so it took some time.

Ben 23:36-24:59

You know, I gotta just, I have to say this as a resident of New Orleans, I am probably contractually bound to say this in some way, which is that, you know, the links, the conspiracy theories, the speculation regarding the Marcello crime family and Lee Harvey Oswald here, continues to run just almost unabated here. People map out the different houses that Harvey Oswald lived in across the city. There's kind of a local tinfoil hat gang that meets together from time to time, you know, to kind of debate, well, what did we learn this year, you know, that was, that might have come out, you know, about his movements. Oh, it's all over the place. It keeps showing up. So, Marcelo's favorite restaurant, Mosca's, is still, you know, around. You can go have a lovely, you know, veal piccata there if you want to. The hilarious joke about Mosca's was that, you know, it's just far enough outside of town, kind of in the bayous of the southwest part of the city, that, you know, if a body needed to be thrown into the bayou, you know, and a couple of the gators might help you dispose of it, well, I mean, who's to say? Who's the worst? It really is kind of an unusual place to go and visit. You feel like something has happened, but you sure as hell do not want to ask exactly what.

Rich 24:59-25:05

Do you know that Carlos Marcello was born in French Morocco?

Ben 25:05-25:05

I did not know that.

Rich 25:06-25:33

And he claimed he was born in Guatemala, and that's why he was mad at Bobby Kennedy Jr., because he deported Marcello back to Guatemala, because he had a phony birth certificate, and he didn't want to go. He eventually snuck back in the country, but that was one of the reasons, the friction between the mafia and Robert Kennedy, is the deportation of Marcello. I didn't realize, I thought he was born in Sicily or Italy, but he was born in French Morocco.

Ben 25:34-26:44

That is, I mean, there's nothing like a good personal grudge, you know, to animate your actions, is there? But no, it is a remarkable web of connections that just kind of keeps throwing things up, you know, over and over again. So, when we come to the international affairs aspect of your book, I want to let our listeners have the absolute joy and pleasure of reading about the heists, about the flight, the chase, you know, the pursuit, all of the good cat and mouse that takes place, you know, when they try to get these guns overseas. But can you tell us, can you help us to understand What is the why? Okay, why were the Manarino brothers attempting to undertake this operation? And what was their larger goal here? Because it is actually pretty interesting. And there's a powerful drive, which is moving them in this direction.

Rich 26:44-29:08

Well, when Fulgencio Batista was the dictator of Cuba, He had a great relationship with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. They controlled gambling and they paid kickbacks to Battista. At one point, Battista got a little too greedy. The mob kind of were upset with his greediness and eventually he put a lot of his own people in control of the casinos. When Castro launched his revolutionary movement, Sam Manarino saw an opportunity that, hey, if we help this guy, perhaps he'll show his appreciation and let us back in, and we can control the gambling in Cuba. Because the Manarinos did have a casino, the Sansuzi. outside of Havana that they had for a while, and they didn't do a very good job running it, and eventually sold it to Meyer Lansky. But that was the main thing that they wanted to do. Now I have to clarify one thing. Kelly wasn't involved. Gabriel, his brother Kelly Manarino, was really not involved in it. This was strictly Sam's. Sam's deal. And his brother and John Rock, head of the Pittsburgh crime family, they were not happy with this. As a matter of fact, that caused them to put San Marino on the shelf and keep him out of Mafia affairs as he got older. But that was the thing they wanted to do. He thought, oh, we'll hedge our bets and we'll put the money on Castro winning this. What Sam failed to realize was that Castro had no more use for the mob than he did for the United States. So he would have never done that. And when he took power, again, he opened some of the casinos and they were all run by Cubans. And the American gambling element essentially fled and went to Vegas. So that was his supposed thinking about it. They were not as entrenched in Cuba in terms of gambling as a lot of other crime families. They didn't have a very good success rate there. But somehow Sam, in one of his delusions, thought he could become the savior of the mafia and get them back in with Castro's good graces.

Ben 29:09-29:27

It made me wonder, Rich, I mean, you know, when we read the story now, and I'm just so excited for our listeners to get to do that, but when we read it now, it does feel like a delusion, right? I mean, was Sam prone to these? Was this kind of a part of his personality?

Rich 29:27-30:49

Yes, he had a lot of ideas for business that he wanted to get into. And every time he did, he got taken for a financial ride. And his brother, younger brother, was so, so fed up with him. He even told John LaRocca one day, my brother's getting C now. We'd be better off if we whacked him. Probably if they found out he was informing to the FBI, they probably would have whacked him, but they didn't. He just frustrated his brother. He had a business making jukeboxes with some guys in Chicago. He lost a fortune in that because he didn't realize that the original patent owner sold the patent to another manufacturer and he couldn't make these jukeboxes after putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the business. He had a business of automatic hand dryers and washrooms and car speakers for drive-in theaters. He didn't do well at any of these things. He made tombstones for graves. He had these bronze markers for cemeteries. He had this crazy stuff and it just frustrated his brother and it was a drain on Sam's side of the financial ledger too.

Ben 30:51-31:02

you know, they always talk about throwing good money after bad. But, you know, you read about these failed ventures, and it just feels more like throwing bad money after bad, right? I mean, where does it stop?

Rich 31:02-31:20

Well, everybody's probably heard of the book, The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin. If I was to rename this book, I'd call it The Gang Who Couldn't Think Straight, because they just were not intellectuals. I mean, neither one of them had much of an education. So yeah, they were great gangsters, poor businessmen, poor individuals.

Ben 31:21-31:29

Well, you know, as is often said, when in doubt, apply more force, right? And that's what you're… Exactly.

Rich 31:29-31:30

That's what they did.

Ben 31:30-31:57

They were tough. It is, it's an incredible story, and I'm just so excited for our readers to get to, you know, to experience it for themselves. And honestly, you know, Rich, I think one of those really interesting dimensions that you work with is the fact that it was previously unknown. I mean, you discovered this in the archives, it had been declassified. This is a story which is coming to light after many, many decades of being buried, isn't it?

Rich 31:58-32:42

Oh yeah, it is. The surface story was they stole the guns, they flew them out of this airport they got nailed in West Virginia and never made it to Cuba. That was the surface story. Nothing had ever been written about this other stuff before, the international intrigue and the politics behind it. It was the FBI investigation into the guns is fascinating. The international investigation into the financing of a future gun running and some of the characters that were involved in that plot is also fascinating that hadn't been written about before. And I was just stumbled onto these characters and decided to make sure I included them in the book.

Ben 32:42-33:20

Well, you never know what else you might find, right? And that's the beauty of it is what else might be waiting there for you next time you have to take a trip down to those archives and another wrinkle, another story, another failed heist. Well, I guess you could say the heist was successful, but the aftermath of the heist was less so. Exactly. Yeah, no, I love it. This is just a total joy to read. I guess the last question I have for you before we wind up is that pool hall that you used to go visit when you were a kid. And, you know, hustle a little here, hustle a little there. Is this still around? Can you go and shoot it?

Rich 33:20-34:43

No, no. I think it's a chiropractic office now. It closed a long time ago. The owner was kind of old when I was in high school. He was, you know, up in the 70s, he was a convicted bookie. He had been nailed a number of times. And I'll never forget, if I could just indulge you. Please, please, please, please. I play high school football. And one day I was in a game and I was standing in the field ready to receive a kickoff. And there's a referee to my right and I look over and it was this bookie. He was a high school referee. He had arrests and convictions for gambling and booking numbers. He had been involved in raids. I look at him and I mention his name and he goes, shh, shh, shh, keep it down, man, keep it down. Don't let them know you know me. And it was hilarious because everybody on the football team went in that pool room and everybody knew this guy was a bookie and here he was calling a football game. And I almost had a heart attack right there. It was hilarious and I remember. And then I saw him in the pool room later that Saturday night and I says, hey Sparky, what the hell are you doing in a referees uniform? And he just said, don't tell anybody, man. Just keep it down on the down-low. He didn't want anybody to know that that political association had hired a convicted bookmaker to referee.

Ben 34:43-34:47

Love it. I love it. All politics is local, isn't it, Rich?

Rich 34:47-35:12

It is. It really is. I say that to people, and they kind of laugh and say, yeah, yeah, right. But I said, if you look at the people around the time, And you look at their, you look at the stuff in Pittsburgh. I mean, it's just, it's just a wealth of stories. I mean, I've, I've got more ideas for books than I'm probably going to have time on this earth to write. And I'm just going to plow my way through.

Ben 35:13-35:29

There you go. Like we said, live in the dream. That is the goal. That is the hope. So, I love it. Well, tell us this, how can folks get a hold of your books that are already out? What's the best way for them to find you and to find your titles?

Rich 35:30-35:57

Well, you can find everything's on Amazon that I've written so far. And of course, Barnes & Noble has them. And some targets in Western Pennsylvania have them. And I think Sam's has them on occasion. Sam's Club. And there's also, Pittsburgh has a great literary scene. And we have a lot of independent bookstores in Pittsburgh. And you can usually find them there as well.

Ben 35:57-36:11

That's great. That's great. Well, we'll look forward to it. We look forward to seeing the book in print when it comes out next month. So congratulations. Again, Rich, thank you so much for taking the time for us. This has been a real pleasure.

Rich 36:11-36:16

Oh, you're welcome, Ben, and I appreciate you inviting me to the podcast.

Ben 36:16-36:17

Got it. We'll do it again soon.

Rich 36:17-36:18

Okay.

Ben 36:19-36:31

All right, so Bill will count us out, and the little magic machine will do its work in the background. Now, this guy's name was Sparky. His name was Abe Sparky.