by David Howard
The three of them rarely discussed family or anything that happened off the road. It was as if the pieces of their lives apart from one another might slow them down in the hyper-speed parallel existence they shared. Jack and J.J. knew that Phil was out of touch with some of his family; he hadn’t spoken with his brother, Joe, for years. But when it came to Audrey and Jeffrey, Phil apparently took his role as provider seriously.
J.J. glanced over and saw the pain in his eyes. For the first time since they’d met, Phil’s carefully constructed alternate universe was splitting its seams, and J.J. could see straight through into the abyss.
A quiet settled over them, and J.J. listened to bumps and footsteps coming from whoever occupied the next room. They had developed a familiar banter around the agents’ American Express cards, one of their repetitive inside jokes. Phil would playfully try to get one of them to hand over his plastic. J.J. would say, “I love you, Phil, but I ain’t giving you my credit card.”
It was funny, but it wasn’t. He and Jack had by then witnessed dozens of betrayals, small and large, among the promoters. As Elliott later described Phil: “I found him to be very keen. But I also found him to be very ruthless.”
J.J. knew he should just get up and step out of the room, leave Phil to figure it out. Instead, he said, “Do you wanna use my credit card?”
Phil looked up. “Would you give it to me?”
J.J. felt something beyond the reach of the cold rationality that had guided his thinking—something in his gut that short-circuited his brain’s executive functioning. They had crossed a threshold to where $2,000 didn’t seem so important. J.J. wouldn’t have even tried to explain it to anyone except Jack. But he knew Phil would pay him back.
“Phillip, if you fuck me over with this card, I’ll kill you,” he said. “Okay?”
He held out the AmEx. Phil nodded and picked up the phone.
—
That night they were all hanging out at a nightspot in Newport Beach when J.J. started dancing with a young blond divorcée. Eventually he wandered over to Jack and Phil and told them that his new friend wanted to go to the beach, and they should head to the hotel without him.
Around midnight, J.J. climbed behind the wheel of his date’s Mercedes convertible. They were waiting at a traffic light on MacArthur Boulevard, his elbow resting on the window frame, when a cab pulled up next to them. J.J. looked over and saw Phil and Jack sitting in back. They waved at each other, and he drove off. It struck him that the evening had played out with remarkable similarity to the way it would have if he was around his normal friends.
The next morning, J.J. showed up for breakfast late, dressed in a sport coat, a blue silk Brooks Brothers tie, and jeans. Phil was tolerant of his tardiness because of J.J.’s eventful night, but he didn’t approve of the casual attire.
“What are you wearing?” he asked, smirking. He sounded like J.J.’s father back in the Bronx. “You look like you’re dressed for a parade.”
“Oh, c’mon, Kitzer,” J.J. shot back, playing the rebellious teenager. “Look around. This is California.”
But at Phil’s insistence, J.J. went back upstairs and changed, and they headed off to Elliott’s business in Costa Mesa for a tour of the precious-metals refinery operation set up in a storage area behind his offices. Elliott had had about thirty fifty-five-gallon drums of compacted mining dirt shipped in from Reno; he’d obtained them from Carrano the previous year in a trade for bogus Swaziland bills of exchange.
Elliott claimed to be making doré bars—bars of gold that isn’t yet fully refined—out of the dirt. He then prepared sham assay reports indicating they were mostly gold, and created certificates based on the reports. Or he bribed an assayer to create certificates claiming the bars contained certain quantities of gold (the reports failing to mention that the cost of separating the gold from the other ores would be roughly equal to its value). Elliott rented out the certificates for 2 percent of face value.
Con artists had long mined veins of bogus gold and precious metals. Elliott and Phil had both handled millions of dollars in phony silver certificates. In other cases, promoters would claim that certain land was loaded with precious metals and sell claims to it. It was an easy con: As long as the materials were underground, you could assign any value you wanted to them.
Elliott fired up the smelter. With the temperature in the room soaring after Elliott poured the dirt into molds, Phil and Elliott removed their suit jackets. Jack, distracted by the spectacle, also shed his coat, drawing a glare from his partner. J.J. couldn’t peel off his jacket because of the concealed Nagra. Jack caught the dagger look: Thanks for the help, pal.
Phil looked over. “Hey, J.J., aren’t you roasting?” he said.
Wedick shook his head. “You know me,” he said with a shrug. “Always cold.”
Elliott continued his refinery seminar. The bars he produced were solid lead—but his schtick was to claim he was using a process called “iron interlock.” If you separate, or unlock, the molecules in the minerals, you can harvest the gold, Elliott said with a grin. He showed the agents a book that backed up the science. “It was a great smoke-and-mirrors story,” Jack said.
When the bars were finished, Elliott stamped ingot numbers on them—customers could choose their own—and stored them in an adjacent vault. Jack, J.J., and Phil walked into the vault, and Elliott pointed out one of his inspired touches: He’d chosen lightbulbs that cast a gilded tint over the bars. Jack and J.J. looked at each other and rolled their eyes. It was all just a collection of unconvincing props and stage lighting, but Phil told the agents the paper was still worthwhile. A client could take the certificates to his banker and say, “Will you hold this for me and give me a receipt?” He would then possess a document from a credible bank saying he owned $1 million in gold—and could use that receipt at a second bank as collateral on a loan. Before they left, Phil sent a few bars to Santini and Cicale, who wanted in on the scheme.
—
The Pasadena smog had settled in for the day and the football game was already under way by the time Phil, Jack, and J.J., all clutching beers, settled into their seats in the Rose Bowl. After a week of meetings, with their business in Southern California finished, Phil had surprised them with tickets to a preseason NFL game that Saturday, August 6: the Los Angeles Rams against his beloved Minnesota Vikings. Phil wasn’t a huge sports fan, but he avidly followed the Vikings and their star quarterback, Fran Tarkenton.
Small and slender for pro football, Tarkenton didn’t look the part. But when his opponents swarmed him and a sack seemed imminent, Tarkenton would duck, dodge, and feint and run for a big gain. He had an uncanny knack for slipping free just when trouble was closing in.
The trip’s slower pace had afforded the trio a rare chance to soak up some local culture. Near one hotel in Los Angeles, Jack walked past a woman he recognized as cruise director Julie McCoy from The Love Boat, the hit TV show that had launched the previous year. Jack swiveled and wandered to the edge of a shoot. At dinner in Beverly Hills, Phil ordered steak tartare, then spent the entire meal amusing himself by badgering his wary friends to take a bite.
Back at the hotel the next day, the phone jangled to life. Pro was calling about the doré bars Phil had sent; apparently Santini had taken them to be assayed and was incensed to learn that they were pure lead. He felt Phil had suckered him somehow.
Phil chuckled. “You know Sonny’s mentality,” he said. Santini wasn’t as mentally nimble as the other promoters, and was perpetually suspicious that they were taking advantage of him. Phil hung up, and they made plans for the evening. The phone rang again. This time it was a terse-sounding Santini, asking Phil to come back to New York as soon as possible.
“We need to meet,” he said.
Phil replaced the receiver in its cradle and pondered this development, then told Jack and J.J. that he suspected that Santini and Cicale had conned themselves into believing the doré bars actually contained gold. They were already on
the verge of leaving California, and Phil figured they might as well take a red-eye so they could tamp the problem down quickly.
—
New York’s summer-long meltdown had shown no signs of abating when their flight from Los Angeles touched down. The daytime temperatures hovered around ninety, with smothering humidity, and at night it dropped only to seventy-five. The three men hopped in a cab to Manhattan and checked into the Essex House, then met with Pro, who was acting jittery and distant, as if he had a secret he didn’t dare tell.
Phil and the agents were foggy from the red-eye, but they’d slept just enough to slog through the day. They sat down for breakfast around ten-thirty at the hotel’s restaurant. Jack was the only one enjoying the food; J.J. had only coffee, as usual, and Phil was picking at a plate halfheartedly when Gabe Cicale and Sonny Santini walked in and the room ionized. Santini looked twitchy, his face blotched with swaths of red and tightened into a scowl.
Cicale was harder to read, but his usual joviality was absent. “Okay, guys,” he said, his voice chilly. “Let’s take a ride.”
“Where?” Phil said.
“We’re going up to the Bronx,” Cicale said.
Santini stood there looking peeved.
Cicale was focused on Phil, but he gestured to the Junior G-Men, too. “We’ll wait for you out front,” he said. Then they disappeared into a pair of black Lincolns parked illegally on Central Park South.
Phil, Jack, and J.J. looked at one another: What the hell is this about? Their meals sat half-eaten.
Phil stood. “Let me find out what’s going on,” he said.
They watched him leave; then J.J. turned to Jack. “I ain’t going up to the Bronx with these guys, Jack,” he said. “This does not feel good to me.”
This seemed to be about more than just a few bars of lead. Jack agreed. They watched through the windows, envisioning Vinnie DiNapoli (a made man and Sonny’s boss) sitting in the Bronx, waiting for them. There was no chance to get help. Bowen Johnson had a room on the fourth floor, but they had no way to alert him.
The agents stood and walked to where Phil was speaking with Cicale. He nodded and turned back toward the hotel alone, and the agents cornered him. “Phillip,” J.J. said. They used his full name when they wanted his undivided attention. “We are not getting in that car. There’s something rotten here.”
Phil told them he’d already come up with another suggestion: They would go up to his hotel room and have a private conversation there—just him, Santini, Cicale, and Ralph Cantone, who had emerged from one of the waiting cars. “Whatever it is,” Phil said, “they want to talk to me. You guys wait here.”
The four of them, Phil and the mob guys, walked through the lobby and disappeared into an elevator. The agents watched as Phil pushed the button for the eleventh floor and nodded at them.
Jack and J.J. moved immediately, without discussion. They boarded the next elevator to the fourth floor and went straight to Johnson’s room. Both were thinking the same thing: Get the guns. They banged on the door, and J.J. called, “Bowen!” But he was gone—probably on a coffee run, since he had also flown a red-eye. No one had expected that they would walk directly into this kind of trouble during their first hour back in New York.
Whatever. There was no time to find Johnson. Jack and J.J. darted back onto the elevator, and on the ride up to the eleventh floor, they riffed on potential strategies. We could just listen. If it sounds okay, stay outside. One of us could go back for the guns. But what if it sounds bad?
They had no idea what to expect, but J.J. was furious that they didn’t have their guns the one time they really needed them. They exited the elevator, turned right at a T intersection, and came within a few yards of Phil’s door. They could hear bellowing and creative variations of motherfucker and son of a bitch—obviously Santini.
It sounded bad. The agents were unarmed, and the three mafiosi in the room were almost certainly packing. Strictly speaking, this was not the way the FBI had trained them to execute their missions. The right move would have been to call for backup before entering—but they couldn’t just stand out in the hall: Santini sounded like he was on the verge of throwing Phil out the window.
“If they shoot him and we’re out here, that’s fucking ridiculous,” J.J. said.
Jack raised his fist and pounded on the door.
21
Sonny’s Mentality
AUGUST 8, 1977
Everything went quiet. That was the first thing the agents noticed after Jack banged on the door—Santini stopped bellowing. When Jack and J.J. leaned closer, they heard only Phil’s voice. It sounded even and measured, as if he were making one of his presentations.
Phil answered the door, looking flushed but calm. Jack and J.J. were breathing hard.
“Phil,” J.J. said, peering around him. “What’s going on?”
Phil held his hands up. “Everything’s fine.”
J.J. and Jack could see the three Outfit guys toward the back of the room. Santini, his neck crimson, stood against a wall.
“Can we come in?” J.J. said. They wanted to make sure no one was holding a gun—though it was unclear what they would do if someone was.
Phil said, “There was a misunderstanding.”
He turned back to Santini and picked up where he’d left off: “So, Sonny, like I was saying. Am I wrong about this? You’re the kind of guy, somebody screws you, your mind-set is that you’re not going to let that happen. You’re going to go grab the guy by the neck and hang him out a window. Or stick an ice pick in their ear.”
Santini agreed.
“Well, then, Freddie’s the guy you need to be concerned about,” Phil continued. “That $200,000 for Seven Oak—he still hasn’t paid most of that.”
Santini nodded.
“And he knows you’re the guy trying to collect it?”
Santini conceded that this was true.
“You know Freddie’s making money over there,” Phil said. “He’s got so many deals going he can’t keep up. You ask me? He’s got that $200,000, and he’s holding out on us.” He sat on a bed. “And like I said,” he continued, “you’re not the kind of guy who lets someone screw you like that right under your nose. That’s what I was saying yesterday. Was I wrong about that?”
Santini shook his head.
“So, Sonny,” Phil said, “if anyone’s got money here, it’s Freddie. He’s the piece of shit who’s cutting you out.”
Santini mulled this over a bit longer and stood and nodded at Cicale and Cantone. The Trident Consortium offices were next door. Before they left, Phil reminded them to be careful about the phones—the FBI had bugged them.
“Yeah, well, if the FBI arrests him, I’m gonna kill him,” Santini said. “Fred can’t keep his fuckin’ mouth shut.”
Santini, Cicale, and Cantone left, and Phil and the agents passed a few moments in stunned silence before Jack said, “What was that?”
They returned to the restaurant, where Phil recounted the episode. It turned out that when Pro had called them in Orange County, he’d been using the speakerphone—with Santini in the room, listening. When Phil had said, “You know Sonny’s mentality,” Santini went apoplectic. He thought Phil was saying he was “mental”—as in intellectually challenged.
Once they went upstairs and Phil pieced this together, he turned on his mouth. Sonny, you misunderstand. What I was saying is that you’ve got the mentality to succeed in this business, because you know how to bring in the money. That’s an attribute to be admired, and it has nothing to do with your intelligence. In fact, you have to be smart and resourceful to be so good at what you do.
Phil had spun an insult into “Sonny is the brightest guy in the Bronx.”
He laughed recounting the story—how Elliott’s lead bars had caused Santini and Cicale to “catch gold fever.” They had just ordered a round of drinks when Pro burst into the restaurant, breathing hard, his toupee askew.
“You motherfuckers!” he shouted. “
You sent Sonny over to my office, and he’s had me hanging out the window with an ice pick in my ear, saying I better come up with the rest of the $200,000 or I’m a fucking dead motherfucker. Whatever you told him, it’s not true, but you better fix this.”
They all turned to Phil, who was grinning as he swished the water in his glass around. “You started this, Fred,” he said calmly. “You’ll come up with the money. I know your mentality. You’ll figure it out.”
—
Back in the room that evening, Phil was drinking and thinking. In Orange County, Jack Elliott had said something that had stuck with him: Los Angeles–based FBI agent Phil Hanlon had interviewed Elliott about Vince Carrano’s robbery, and Kitzer’s name had come up. Hanlon had been asking about him.
Phil had spent the past couple of days considering phoning “the alphabet,” as he called the FBI. (That was the term you used, he said, if you were “in the game.”)
Jack and J.J. had heard this before. Phil had often preached taking a preemptive approach with the bureau. Be helpful: Hey, I wanted to let you know about something I heard. Build a friendly relationship, just like in any con. In the past, Phil had sent telexes to the FBI and the Department of Justice. Later, he would say: If I was doing something wrong, why would I cooperate? I brought this up in the first place.
Now, with Scotch surging through his veins, Phil announced to J.J. that he was going to call Hanlon.
“Oh, yeah, Phil, that’s a great idea,” J.J. said.
Phil ignored the sarcasm while he dug Hanlon’s number from his briefcase.
“Hey,” J.J. said, getting serious. “We don’t want any agents showing up at our door. The lion is sleeping in the corner—why do we have to stir the bear?”
Phil wasn’t in the mood to debate. He could be pigheaded when he drank. He stood and headed for the phone, but J.J. intercepted him.
“You are not calling the FBI, Phillip,” J.J. said.
The agents had worried about this in the past. There could be crossed wires; someone in Los Angeles could get confused or mistakenly say something about OpFoPen. They couldn’t risk that. J.J. was standing between Phil and the phone when Jack walked in and asked what was going on. They stood facing each other, and Kitzer looked irritated. “C’mon, get outta my way,” he said, moving toward J.J.
