My grandfather wasn't a gangster, but he was a truckdriver in the Mob-controlled Fulton Fish Market in NYC and knew plenty of gangsters. During Prohibition, he had a still in his house in Brooklyn and bred Pomeranian dogs, which he sold to gangsters (they loved the dogs). My father told me that one day, a "textbook gangster" in black coat and pearl-gray fedora came to the house, had a drink with my grandfather and bought one of the dogs. The following week, my father said that the NY Daily News ran a photo of the same gangster on p.1--he'd been murdered.