PROVIDENCE — If you want to tell a story about crime and corruption in Providence, this is a classic place to start: “Question: Did he kick you?” “Answer: Yes.” “Did he try to burn you with a cigarette?” “Yes.” “Did the mayor swing a fireplace log at you?” “Yes.” This is the opening of “Crimetown,” a new podcast series by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, who produced the award-winning HBO documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” They’ve partnered with Gimlet Media on this series to tell a story about crime and corruption in an American city.

Providence is season one. And there are a lot of stories to tell.

In the first two episodes, released on Sunday, “Crimetown” lays out the road ahead by introducing the two most important players: the late Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who ruled from City Hall, and the late Raymond L.S. Patriarca, the crime boss of the New England Mafia, who ruled from Federal Hill.

Two men who are still described in Providence with a mix of fear and affection.

The start of the first episode is the 1983 grand jury transcript from Cianci’s assault on Raymond DeLeo, a Bristol contractor who Cianci believed was having an affair with his former wife. Cianci’s indictment and plea forced him to resign as mayor.

While the kick-cigarette-fireplace-log incident is familiar to most Rhode Islanders, Smerling and Stuart-Pontier promise to tell a deeper story.

This season’s 17 to 20 episodes will explore decades of crime in Rhode Island, through the banking crisis of RISDIC, the impeachment and resignation of a Supreme Court justice, and City Hall corruption uncovered in Operation Plunder Dome.

“It’s a story of alliances and betrayals, of heists and stings, of crooked cops and honest mobsters,” Smerling says.

“A story about how organized crime corrupted an entire city and infected every part of public life. A story where you can never quite tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

D i v i n e P r o v i d e n c e , indeed.

“ C r i m e t o w n ” s t a r t s by taking listeners back to the early 1970s, when Cianci was an ambitious young prosecutor taking on Patriarca.

T h e c r i m e b o s s w a s accused as an accessory in the murders of Rudy Marfeo and Anthony Melei, shot to death in April 1968 at Pan-none’s Meat Market, in front of 20 witnesses who didn’t see a thing.

Marfeo’s craps games were apparently interfering with Patriarca’s operations. “It’s like a business. This just happens to be organized crime,” explains Albert Berarducci, who grew up in Federal Hill. “People don’t get fired — they get fired at.”

As an Italian-American, Cianci felt this was personal.

“I totally, totally resented t h a t o r g a n i z e d c r i m e brought upon my people, my heritage, the people I come from, the stereotype of everyone being a crook, everyone being a murderer, everyone being a criminal,” Cianci says.

Patriarca had a priest as his alibi.

Cianci and Bobby Ste-v e n s o n , n o w a r e t i r e d P r o v i d e n c e d e t e c t i v e , describe how they figured out the priest was lying. The jury acquitted Patriarca anyway.

This led Cianci, beaten but unbowed, to a fateful decision, as recalled by one of his closest friends.

V i n c e n t V e s p i a J r . , former state trooper and South Kingstown police chief, says they were having dinner at the Old Canteen when Cianci said, “You know, I think I’m going to run for mayor. Or, I’ll buy a boat.”

Cianci drew a “T” and wrote, on either side, the benefits of running for mayor versus the benefits of buying a boat. It was cheaper to run for mayor.

Would he change Providence, or would Providence change him?

“In those days, he was an honest person,” Vespia says.

“It’s a shame what happened to him.”

In the second episode, t w o f o r m e r e n f o r c e r s , Robert Walason and Gerald M. “Gerry” Tillinghast, talk about how they met Patriarca while at the Adult Correctional Institutions — a free-wheeling place then that the mob ruled from the inside.

“In that day, being a wiseguy was the coolest [expletive] thing on the planet,” Walason says. “There was nothing cooler. Movie stars wanted to be around them.”

Profane and humorous, the men’s voices also sound heavy with their memories and regret.

In this episode, their violent crimes are ahead of them.

As boys, they were lost souls.

W a l a s o n e s c a p e d a drunken, abusive father and was on the streets at

12. Tillinghast volunteered to serve in Vietnam and became a man without compassion.

Patriarca became their father figure and their family.

“ H e t r i e d t o h e l p everybody in that neighborhood,” Tillinghast said, sounding wistful. “I wish he was my father. I wish he could have been.”

The crime boss seemed to understand.

On a wiretap, Stuart-Pontier says, Patriarca was overheard telling his underboss: “In this thing of ours, your love for your mother and father is one thing. Your love for your family is a different kind of love.”

— amilkovi

@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7213 On Twitter @ AmandaMilkovits