Steven Seagal and the Mafia

The Holy Book of Robocop examines Seagal's time in the New York Underworld

                                                                     

At one point the most deadly hitman in the Big Apple

When Steven Seagal arrived in New York in summer of 1976 the city was on fire. Its eight million inhabitants were locked in the deadly grip of serial killers, gang warfare, and race riots

But in the blood-stained streets Seagal had finally found an environment that matched his own psychic landscape. For the first time in his life he felt that he was home.

He roamed the city for days on end, riding the subway from borough to borough and testing his skills against the local hoodlums. Along the way street punks, drug lords and several mime artists were to die at his hands.

Eventually the killings began to attract too much attention. When the federal Government deployed the 101^st Airborne to deal with the problem Seagal knew it was time to lay low for a while and moved into an old Italian neighbourhood in the Bronx.

His new home, he knew, lay deep within a Mafia controlled area of the city. Seagal had already met several members of the Cosa Nostra, and had been impressed with their code of honour and the respect they commanded from their people.

The gangsters, in turn, admired Seagal’s natural authority and would often ask him how his ponytail maintained its famous vibrancy.

He found himself a job in a nearby bakery, serving bread and sfogliatelle to the local housewives. 

At the same time he was observing the people around him, learning the complex web of customs and traditions that had been passed down to them by their Sicilian forefathers.

When the bakery was terrorized by an out-of-town Jamaican gang Seagal finally had the chance to prove himself to the neighbourhood capos. 

The Jamaicans had started coming in to the shop weeks earlier, demanding that the owner pay them fifteen per-cent protection money.

At first Seagal had hoped that the situation would somehow resolve itself, always preferring the path of peace to that of violence.

The greatest warrior on Earth? Forgettah bout it

However, as soon as one of the Jamaicans referred to his Japanese kimono as a dress Seagal had no option but to pick up a rolling pin and bludgeon each of the gangsters to death.

News of his actions spread quickly around the neighbourhood and a few days later Seagal was invited to a café to meet Don Antonio, the local Mafia chieftain.

“How about you come work for us?” said Antonio, sipping his coffee.

Seagal squinted in the sunlight. “Don Antonio, I am flattered that you would consider me for such a position. But unfortunately Barossa's bakery are already depending on me.”

Don Antonio looked at Segal admiringly. “Good,” he said, smiling. “Loyalty is too rare these days." 

Antonio waved his hand "Do not worry, Barossa is a good man and he will be compensated.”

“Then it is done,” said Seagal, kissing Don Antonio’s ring and shaking the hands of the lesser-ranked men that were present.

Under the guidance of Don Antonio Seagal went on to enjoy a brief yet prolific career as a Mafia hitman, unleashing a one-man crime wave on the New York underworld.

Apparently, he was so lethal that bosses of rival families took to conducting their business over the phone from rural New Jersey, well out of the range of Seagal’s bullets.

Unlike most Mafia assassins however Seagal operated according to a strict moral code, insisting for instance that there would be no killing of holy men or sexually active women – and absolutely no decapitations before eleven o clock in the morning.

Most of the men respected his code, and while there were those who were suspicious of his unusually active conscience they were usually kept in line by his awesome reputation.

Don Antonio, meanwhile, was charmed by Seagal’s idiosyncrasies. Maybe Seagal reminded him of the Mafioso of the old country, long before they were corrupted by the money and power of the new world.    

In his spare time Seagal visited the ghettos of New York, listening to his beloved blues and giving martial arts classes in which he taught young African American children how to kill a man via a series of pressure points.

Yet all the while events were conspiring against him. Although he didn’t know it yet, Seagal's time amongst the Mafia was coming to an end.

Within six months he would be operating on the other side of the law.