Made Men

by Smith, Greg B.

  Ralphie asked, pressing for more probable cause. “Why

  did Vinny?”

  “He got lazy, so they took him down. He wasn’t active

  enough. You need somebody running around,” Sclafani

  said. He kept referring to John Riggi, the actual boss of the

  family who was sitting in a jail cell in Fort Dix, New Jersey, as “the other guy.” As in “When the other guy went to

  the can, nobody knew how to run the company. When you

  gotta run the company today and you’re a made guy, and

  he’s in the can, they put in a committee of three. That’s the

  deciding vote. You got three guys, and the consigliere

  picked three guys. That’s three guys to run the family.” He went on to disclose more rules and regulations, and

  expressed increased confidence that Ralphie would be

  accepted as a made member of the family and that he himself would soon win his promotion to skipper he’d been

  seeking practically since 1982, when he first became a

  soldier.

  “If I become skipper, you’ll be with me,” he said, and

  grumbled again about where Wes was with the Hilfiger

  counterfeits. Wes was, as usual, late. Then Sclafani got

  weepy. He made it clear that he was proposing Ralphie in

  order to leave behind a legacy. He seemed convinced that

  he was going to die.

  “God forbid I get killed tomorrow, they know you’re all

  right,” he said. “I put my life up for you already. I want you

  to be with me all the way.”

  “This way we can go together, do things,” Ralphie said. “Let me explain something to you,” Sclafani said. “This

  is very important. You can’t get into no trouble right now.

  No fights. I mean, if your back’s against the wall . . .” He

  was referring to the $40,000 Ralphie owed to a soldier in

  the Colombo family, who was not happy of late with

  Ralphie.

  “I’m gonna go slow,” Ralphie promised. “I’m not

  gonna lie.”

  “I’m gonna say you’re over here with me,” Sclafani

  said. “I’m your guardian knight. You’re established. The

  main thing is make money. Don’t bother them with no

  money problems.”

  One of Wes Paloscio’s friends showed up and said Wes

  was stuck in traffic with the truckload of counterfeit goods.

  They agreed to reschedule for the following Tuesday. The

  score was off for the moment.

  October 27, 1999 The devices were small and could be hidden. Their sole purpose was to secretly record conversations. Four days before Halloween, a customer walked into a local Radio Shack somewhere on Long Island and bought two. The customer in question was Vincent Palermo, ranking member of the DeCavalcante crime family.

  Things had been going so well for him. He was about to reopen Wiggles after more than a year. He’d managed to convince the city that he was now meeting the 40 percent requirement. His daughter from his first marriage, the schoolteacher who was headed out of her twenties and was still single, was about to get married. The ceremony was set for Thanksgiving weekend. One of his daughters from his second marriage, Tara, had just started college at a

  nearby university. But there was a dark cloud. Word was out that there was an informant walking around with a wire. Vinny Ocean knew this because one of the family’s soldiers had told him. The assumption was that the informant’s earnest efforts would ultimately result in the arrival of federal agents and the unveiling of multipaged indictments with numerous references to organized crime.

  Vinny Ocean decided what was said was said. All he could do now was damage control. His solution was to fight fire with fire, or more specifically wire with wire. He went out and bought two little microcassette recorders small enough to fit in his pocket. He figured that if he recorded his conversations, he could collect what lawyers called exculpatory evidence. In simple terms, this means proof that he was really just a modestly successful business guy from Long Island who had a couple of restaurants and was working on selling Penthouse lingerie to the Chinese. His name could be found on no documents. In addition to all the cash he took in, he also had plenty of traceable income from legitimate businesses, like the restaurants. He looked the part of successful businessman. He did not look like a guy who shot Fred Weiss in the face on a Staten Island morning exactly ten autumns ago. He could pull it off. The trick was to secretly record dangerous people without anyone discovering he was walking around with a wire. Naturally, if he was discovered, this could prove to be very dangerous to his well-being.

  On this October day, he tried out his new machines on a deli owner named Joseph. He’d loaned Joseph $15,000 to pay his mortgage, which Joseph had agreed to pay back at a rate of interest that could crush small animals. When he was unable to pay, Vinny put one of his people in a noshow job at the man’s deli. The man’s salary went to Vinny. Now Vinny met Joseph at his restaurant in Queens, Sea World. He had the tape recorder turned on, and he said hello. It was an odd moment in the history of the American Mafia, an acting boss of a crime family sitting in a Chinese restaurant secretly recording a loan-shark victim to prove his innocence. Imagine Don Vito Corleone secretly recording the words of the undertaker promising to “use all my skills” to patch up the body of his assassinated son. It was difficult to picture.

  The idea was to have a conversation in which any action that could be interpreted as an act of extortion or loan sharking could instead be explained as an act of extreme altruism by a charitable soul and all-around great guy. Vinny got right down to business.

  “Did I ever give you any money?”

  Joseph’s answer was unintelligible. The tape was turned off, then back on. Vinny continued, abandoning any pretense of subtlety.

  “Did you ever give me money?”

  Again the answer from Joseph was unintelligible. Vinny was an amateur in the James Bond game.

  “Did I ever put that guy in the deli? Did I ever extort you?”

  “No,” Joseph said, keeping it simple.

  “No,” Vinny continued, helping Joseph out. “I never extorted anybody in my whole life. You hear what I’m telling you?”

  “Yeah,” said Joseph.

  “Never,” Vinny said. “Today is October twenty-seventh, 1999. They could look till October twenty-seventh of two million, they will never, never, never find anybody to say that they gave me one penny. Never. I never did that in my whole life.”

  “I agree with you,” Joseph said helpfully.

  With the tape running, Vincent Palermo tried to explain himself. At times he seemed to be talking directly into the microphone, as if Joseph was not there. “Maybe it’s on their mind, the question I asked you with the deli. Did I know that guy?” He didn’t say who “they” were. He seemed to have lost his train of thought. “I mean, I always treat you like my brother.”

  “I know,” Joseph replied.

  “The problem, the one time you were behind on your mortgage, remember? You needed the fifteen thousand dollars. I borrowed under my name from the business where I was working to help you with that.”

  Joseph’s answer was unintelligible. Cars beeped in the background.

  “You know what I’m saying? And I told you, Joe, don’t worry about paying me back. Whenever you have it. And you came to my house and said, ‘Why are you doing this? Don’t you understand? My own family don’t do this.’ I said, ‘Joe, I like you.’ What could I tell you? ‘I like your family, you’re a family man, I see you work hard, you’re a good man, and I helped you.’ Huh? What’s wrong with that? Everybody should do that.”

  Joseph, who by now was an active participant in the little one-act play, said, “I agree with you.” This clearly was his favorite line.

  “As far as taking a penny, I never,
ever took a penny from anyone in my whole life,” Vinny said. “Ever. Okay?”

  “I agree with you.”

  Then the tone of Vinny’s little chat took a turn toward the slightly menacing.

  “It makes me angry that certain people mention certain things that’s not true,” he said. “And they listen to some asshole who’s maybe jealous. You know what I’m saying, Joe?”

  Before it got ugly, the wife of Vinny’s partner in the restaurant walked over to the table and said hello. He called her Mrs. Kim. Vinny asked her how she was, said his wife was asking for her as well, then began using her to augment his argument. He told her he was about to reopen Wiggles the following Monday. He was headed over to the club to supervise preparations for the big reopening of the legitimate business that he secretly owned.

  “If I start now, I’ll be done at five, five-thirty in the morning,” he said, launching into his favorite bootstraps monologue. “I worked my whole life. Eleven, twelve years old. Two jobs. All my whole life. I love to work. People see that you have a nice house, a nice car, they figure maybe you did something wrong. My whole life, Mrs. Kim, never never did I do one thing wrong. That I know of.”

  Mrs. Kim laughed nervously.

  “Because I don’t have to. I like to take something, keep moving up. Understand? My house, I bought my house, my car. Nobody gave me these things. All my life I’ve been a workaholic. Three jobs, four jobs. Even now, I put in fifteen, eighteen, twenty hours sometimes a day, all week long. Working. Some people are jealous, some people are stupid. They say, ‘Oh, nice house, uh-huh, there must be something wrong.’ ” He began to get angry. He assumed the persona of the furious taxpayer. “That’s bullshit! I worked, I pay my taxes. I don’t do nothing wrong! Some people have big, big mouths, that’s the problem. Everybody keeps quiet, you wouldn’t have a problem. It’s all bullshit.”

  The tape continued to play, but there was no more chatter, just the background sounds of the restaurant. As he headed outside, he stopped by to make one more comment to Mrs. Kim.

  “Just wanted to stop by and say hello,” he said, and then the tape went dead.

  November 28, 1999 The wedding reception was held at a banquet hall on the South Shore of Long Island and it was well attended. Renee Palermo, New York City schoolteacher, was to wed Emil Onolfi. She was about to receive her master’s degree. He was a heavy-equipment mechanic for the county of Nassau on Long Island. It was a late-blooming romance. They had been dating for two years. He had two children from a previous marriage. They were planning on moving to the south shore of Long Island.

  The father of the bride, Vincent Palermo, had five children from two marriages, but this was his first daughter to get married. He invited his family, and with seven siblings, that was a lot of people. He also invited all his friends, including the entire hierarchy of the DeCavalcante crime family. They all showed up with envelopes of cash for the bride and groom. For Vinny Ocean, it was supposed to be a happy day.

  And it was. Until he happened to spot the men outside the banquet hall with telephoto-lens cameras. The men were walking from car to car, jotting down license plates— just like in The Godfather. Everyone knew this was part of the little dance with the FBI. They wrote down your license plates and took pictures of your guests; you pretended they weren’t there.

  But the pressure had been mounting.

  The service was over, the guests were eating dinner, and Vinny was boiling like a teakettle. He could not believe they had the cannolis to show up at the wedding of his daughter. Was there no honor? Was there no respect? Despite warnings from his associates, Vinny suddenly broke away from the crowd and ran outside.

  The agents were taken by surprise. There they were,

  doing their jobs, playing their parts, when all of a sudden this crazy person came running out of the banquet hall in his tuxedo, frothing and fuming. He waved his arms passionately and shouted epithets that the priest from Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church who was inside probably did not hear.

  “Enough!” he shouted. “Enough!” The agents backed away but did not leave. They moved across the street and continued to do their jobs. Vinny Ocean walked back inside to his daughter’s wedding reception and that was that for the rest of the day.

  The day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas season kicked off in New York City officially, although it had been up and running for weeks. The crowds grew heavier at Rockefeller Center and along Fifth Avenue. Vinny Ocean’s wife went about her usual business of shopping and keeping house. The two youngest kids went to classes at their private schools, and the oldest daughter continued her freshmen year at Fordham University in the Bronx. Everything seemed normal, with one exception. The agents who staked out Wiggles weren’t seeing any sign of Vinny Ocean. He had stopped using the cell phones Ralphie Guarino had given him and they hadn’t heard his voice in a long time. Ralphie asked around, but nobody could say for sure where he was. After a few days of searching, the agents reached a conclusion.

  Vinny Ocean had disappeared.

  16

  DO YOU OWN THE GODFATHER? There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when prosecutors had to spend a good amount of time educating jurors about the ways of the Mafia. They would bring in expert witnesses to explain a little history of the secret society, talk about the difference between a capo and a soldier, shed some light on the concept of omerta. There would be charts and graphs and other visual aids. In those days this was new territory. People had to learn the language before they could even consider the case itself. It was all a little mysterious, even exotic. By the end of the twentieth century, the mystery was gone.

  The change was best illustrated by jury selection in United States v. Steven Kaplan. Kaplan was identified as an associate of the Gambino crime family who was running first a nightclub in Boca Raton, Florida, and then a nude club in Atlanta, Georgia. He was indicted by federal

  prosecutors in Atlanta on racketeering charges for allegedly paying protection to the Gambino family. In exchange, they let him use the Gambino name to get what he wanted. It was an unusual case in that most of the big traditional organized-crime prosecutions take place in New York and New Jersey, where people are somewhat more familiar with the quirks and jargon of the genre. The presence of the family run by John Gotti south of the MasonDixon presented both sides with a challenge: How would the Mafia play in mainstream America?

  It was difficult to know going into the case what the people of metro Atlanta knew or thought about the Mafia. During jury selection, the defense attorneys and federal prosecutors haggled over what questions to ask to weed out potential prejudice in either direction. They questioned people about their feelings regarding strip clubs (“Do you have any particular feelings toward nude dancing establishments which may interfere with your ability to be impartial in this matter?”). But they spent a lot of time inquiring about the Mafia and, more specifically, Mafia movies.

  “Do you or your spouse have any specific interest in or fascination with the Mafia?” was one of the first mob questions. It assumed that everybody knew what the Mafia was. Jurors were then asked if they had known anyone associated with the Mafia. They were then given a Mafia primer, and asked if they were “familiar with the terms ‘La Cosa Nostra,’ ‘made man,’ ‘soldier,’ ‘captain,’ or ‘LCN’?” Specifics about the real-life Mafia followed: “Have you ever heard of John Gotti?” “Have you ever heard of the Gambino crime family?”

  Then came questions about the pretend Mafia of TV and movies and even the Internet. They asked jurors if they watched The Sopranos or visited Mafia Web sites. They asked which books jurors had read “on the subject of the Italian Mafia.” They asked jurors to list all the mob movies they’d watched in the last five years, and specifically whether they’d seen any of The Godfather movies. “If yes, how many times and do you own any of these movies?”

  During jury selection, most of those who were asked these questions had some familiarity either with the TV show or the movies. One woman a
dmitted she was a big Sopranos fan, which prompted concerned questioning by Assistant United States Attorney Arthur Leach, who was afraid she might be a kind of Mafia groupie. The Sopranos presented the capos and soldiers and their families as somewhat sympathetic figures, which was a concern to a prosecutor who was about to present the Gambino crime family as the epitome of evil. Leach thus found himself asking this juror about totally fictional gangsters in his effort to prosecute real-life gangsters. He asked about Tony Soprano, the fictional mob boss, and the woman said she liked him. A bad sign for Prosecutor Leach, but perhaps not reason enough to justify kicking someone off the jury as being prejudiced against the government. He decided to ask about another TV character named Big Pussy, a soldier who becomes an informant against the people he’d grown up with.

  “Oh, him,” the potential juror responded. “He’s a rat.” The juror was summarily removed from the panel.

  December 1, 1999 The sixteenth-floor office of DMN Capital Investment looked like hundreds of other small investment firms located deep in the heart of capitalism. It was located right on Hanover Square a few blocks from Wall Street, and it included all the trappings of high finance, which is to say legitimacy. If an investor took the time to check out DMN, he would find oak wainscoting, fake masterpieces, and ersatz walnut furniture in the hallway and DMN CAPITAL in gold block letters on the polished oak doors. Inside the office there was plenty of blond wood furniture, green-blue carpet, and two dozen plastic telephones trilling away. A smart conference room with a door to shut out the trill-trill-trill looked out on the old Farmers Insurance building, one of the premiere landmarks of lower Manhattan. If the diligent investor had the time, he would watch and listen as a dozen brokers and stock promoters worked the phones, cold-calling senior citizens culled from specially prepared lists. The investor would hear the hard sell, as aggressive young men hyped overthe-counter chop stocks, stocks that allowed the willing investor to bet on the fortunes of tiny companies nobody had ever heard of. Companies that owned health clubs in the American Southwest. Companies that sold in-home nursing care or recycled roofing shingles. Companies that claimed to operate Web sites. And those phones were humming, with the biggest bull market in the nation’s history charging forth to make everybody rich. Everybody—not just the descendants of the Mayflower’s original passenger manifest. Everybody! Taxi drivers. Toll collectors. Chinese-food deliverymen. And DMN was right there at 5 Hanover Square, surrounded by the happy drone of capitalism, ready to make some money.