Mobster Meyer Lansky was Tampa man’s grandfather. He saw good deeds.

TAMPA — As a child, Gary Rapoport didn’t question why FBI agents regularly followed his grandfather Meyer Lansky.

“We would go for a walk and could see across the street there were two guys,” he said. “We’d go out to eat, and they would come in and sit down. But I never thought anything of it.”

It wasn’t until Rapoport, now a 68-year-old Tampa resident, was a teenager that he learned that the man he called grandfather was the Jewish gangster who helped put the “organized” in organized crime by rising through the ranks from smalltime bootlegger to the individual who brokered peace between rival factions and brought them together to form a national syndicate.

You might have seen Lansky portrayed in one of the numerous mob movies that have used him as a character over the years. Harvey Keitel played him in “Lansky,” Patrick Dempsey in “Mobsters” and Ben Kingsley in “Bugsy.”

“It wasn’t a big deal to me,” he said. “I didn’t run around screaming that I was his grandson.”

But he’s vocal about it now.

Rapoport’s mother, Sandra Lansky Lombardo, had charged herself with talking about what she called the positive aspects of her father’s life. She wrote the book “Daughter of the King,” published in 2014.

She died in July. Her job, Rapoport said, now falls to him. “It’s my family legacy and he was my grandfather.”

Rapoport, whose E-Cool of Florida company sells and leases industrial cooling units and fans, came to Tampa as a University of South Florida student more than four decades ago. In her later years, his mother moved in with him.

At his house, his mother had 15 boxes of belongings related to Lansky. Rapoport recently finished cataloging the contents that include photographs of his grandfather, dinner plates monogrammed “ML” and a declaration from the state of Kentucky that named Lansky an honorary colonel in 1965.

Rapoport is sending some of the photographs to The Mob Museum in Las Vegas.

And then there are the binders of handwritten and typed pages.

His mother and stepfather, Vince Lombardo, who was also in the mob before leaving to start a family, were writing a book about their knowledge of Lansky’s patriotism to the United States and Israel. It would have detailed how he orchestrated New York crime syndicates to protect the docks from the German spies and break up Nazi meetings during World War II and, later, smuggle military weapons to the newly formed Israel when the U.S. had an arms embargo against all nations involved in The Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

“That’s all true,” said Tampa Bay-based mob historian Scott Deitche. “American mobsters were standing up and helping to protect their community and country.”

Rapoport may find an author to complete his mother and stepfather’s book and recently talked about his grandfather with a documentary film crew from Israel.

“He did a lot of good,” Rapoport said. “I want people to know that.”

It’s a different side to Lansky, who was a leader in a crime syndicate that killed those who stood in their way.

“There’s no sugarcoating it,” Deitche said. “He was involved in a lot of criminal activity for a very long time, starting with Prohibition and into his later years with racketeering and illegal gambling. Certainly, in those early years, there was a lot of violence associated with organized crime and Lansky was part of it. But it is difficult to find direct evidence of him ordering killings as opposed to other mobsters.”

The way Rapoport sees it, “Bad things went on whether he was there or not.” And, if anything, he said, his grandfather lessened the bloodshed.

In 1929, Lansky and his Italian mafia friends hosted The Atlantic City Conference, which brought together syndicates from around the country. There, they agreed to stop violently competing and to instead work together in certain ventures, which later included running casinos in Cuba.

“I look at my grandfather as a guy who took a bunch of killing thugs ... and turned it into organized crime where it became important to run it as a business, to make a profit for everybody ... without going around killing each other,” Rapoport said.

While he has a favorite cinematic version of his grandfather — the character Maximilian “Max” Bercovicz, played by James Woods in “Once Upon a Time in America, is based on Lansky — Rapoport said he feels compelled to remind the public that Lansky was a person and not just a character in books, television shows and movies. “He was a loving grandfather.”

Rapoport was born in New York but his family moved to South Florida, where Lansky had relocated, when he was in elementary school.

“He was very big on education and reading,” Rapoport said. “He had a big formal library. It was beautiful ... and if I showed interest in something, next week, I’d come for a visit, and he had a book for me.”

They often went on long walks, he said, during which Lansky would dispense advice like, “Never be a follower, be a leader. Never jump into a crowd of people and just do what they’re saying because you think it’s cool.”

On one occasion, the home of Rapoport’s parents was swept for law enforcement surveillance technology.

“The funny thing, they searched the whole house and didn’t find a thing,” he said. But a listening device was discovered in the car that drove the search team.

Lansky fled to Israel in 1970 to avoid tax evasion charges. Rapoport visited around 18 months later. They went sightseeing and spent time with Joseph “Doc” Stacher, another Jewish gangster wanted for tax evasion in the U.S.

Lansky returned in 1972. Accounts say that Israel deported him. Rapoport said his grandfather left on his own. A year later, Lansky was acquitted of the tax evasion charges. He died at 80 in 1983.

Two funerals were planned. One was publicized to keep law enforcement and fans away from the unannounced private service for family and close friends. But that backfired, Rapoport said. “We ended up with more fans and press than ... family members.”

Rapoport has his grandfather’s Vacheron Constantin watch, given to him as a graduation present. He keeps it in a safety deposit box along with photographs of Lansky wearing it for proof of past ownership. It’s worth $9,850, according to the appraisal certificate, but that’s without including the infamous former owner.

“I can’t wear it,” Rapoport said with a laugh. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.”

He has considered selling the watch, but only if he found someone who appreciated the history.

“I don’t think it or any of this will bring me fame and fortune and I don’t need that,” said Rapoport. “I just want to keep his name and his story alive.”