Now filmed as ''The Irishman'' starring Al Pacino and Joe Pesci ''I heard you paint houses'' are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank ''the Irishman'' Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the wall and floors.

In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the Mob, and for his friend Hoffa. Sheeran learned to kill in the US Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat during World War 2. After returning home he became a hustler and a hit man, working for legenday crime boss Russell Bufalino.

Eventually Sheeran would rise to a position of such prominence that he was named as one of only two non-Italians on a list of the twenty-six most wanted Mob figures. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, the Irishman did the deed, knowing that if he refused, he would have been killed himself. Sheeran''s important and fascinating story includes b