Subway to California

In 1961, the Di Priscos fled Brooklyn—and the FBI. The father was a gambler and bookmaker, and agents chased him into the Long Island woods because he was implicated in police corruption. At thirty—five he escaped to a strange place called California, where his wife and two of her four sons joined him. One member of the family graduated high school, and he would make books of a different sort.

Joe didn’t seem called to a life of crime, but evidence is mixed. Once he was Brother Joseph in a C...