Editing Jimmy Battista

Jimmy Batista is the son of two respectable working-class parents, an Italian father and an Irish mother. But Jimmy always had his eye on more: he had little more than contempt for his dad's clockwork routine, going into work then coming home, eating dinner, having a beer in front of the TV and then falling asleep. And his mother seemed to be little more than a slave to her husband and children. So Jimmy quickly fell in with the more exciting kids in the neighborhood - the ones who smoked and drank and ran little errands for the local toughs. His parents started to worry about him - especially after Jimmy came back from one too many street fights. His father started to take him to union meetings, 'to teach him some values and what sticking up for your friends really means', as his father said. But Jimmy learned a different lesson: that the worlds of the street toughs and the union organizers weren't that far apart. Jimmy was bright, graduated High School, and even community college. His mother and father were immensely proud (he was the first in his family to get a degree) and were even prouder when he got an internship, then a job, with one of the politicians who'd come to those union meetings years before. What they didn't realize was that this politician had spotted Jimmy at an early age as someone who was comfortable on both sides of the tracks and so would be the perfect bagman. Jimmy, meanwhile, saw himself coming up in the world - until one night, coming home after working late, alone on a subway car, his life ended in blood and ecstasy.