Two brothers, Angelo and the younger Paulie, have lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood all their lives. They still play stickball in the street with their friend and rivals, but the stakes are higher than when they were children. It is a tough neighborhood and you have to put up a mean front to survive. When they get into a fight, its broken up by the local mafia don, the much feared and respected Santo. He has the lifestyle Angelo can only dream about, for he and Paulie are waiters in a local restaurant where their boss treats them like dirt and some of the customers treat them worse. Fed up with his dead-end job, Angelo quits and persuades his brother and their two friends to go into the book-making business. In a climactic blood bath we learn who is the real thing and who is the wannabe; who is left standing and whose body will be riddled with bullets.
