Wedded to crime

Alternately rough and tender, hard-boiled and hilarious, Wedded to Crime is a fascinating look into the final years of the traditional mob—and the heart of a woman who lived through them. Sandy Sadowsky was only nineteen when she met nightclub owner Bernie Barton, twenty years her senior and a lifetime member of the Meyer Lansky mob. A sharp dresser with a heart of gold and a pinky ring to match, Bernie wooed Sandy with dogged nonchalance, and soon this working-class girl from Brooklyn was residing off Park Avenue, dressing in furs and living The Life. In the course of her tenure as a mob wife, Sandy traveled to Rome to watch her husband launder money through the Vatican; assisted in opening a storefront ministry in Harlem, recruiting a charismatic teenage preacher and reaping the benefits of the collection plate; and dined at the Lansky home, where Meyer entertained in his bedroom slippers. "You do good, kid," Bernie told her. "The guys say you're a real standup broad."