Carlito's Way: Rise to Power2005

[first lines]

Carlito Brigante:
Sooner or later, a thug will tell his tale. We all want to go on record. So let's hear it for all the hoods. The Jews out of Brownsville, the blacks on Lennox Avenue, the Italians from Mulberry Street, the Irish in Hell's Kitchen. Like that. Meanwhile, Puerto Rican's been getting jammed since the fortys, and ain't nobody said nothing. Well, I'm gonna lay it on you one time, for the record. My people. They hit New York and filed into the roach stables in Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx. They sat behind the sewing machines, stood behind the steam tables and marched behind the brooms. In other words, they busted their ass. How did I survive growing up? Hustling, thieving, break-in's. Anything for dollars in them days. This here is the story of East Harlem. Blacks on one side, Italians on the other, and Puerto Ricans stuck right there in the middle. And any way you cross the line could get your ass killed! [gun fires] For thirty years, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Blacks all in a three-sided war. No winners but the funeral parlours. And then one day the Italians should up with the dope. That's what made the peace, the heroin business. I hit twenty one in the Elmira Pen, upstate in New York. First whiff of country air for this Puerto Rican.