by Linda Scarpa
“Joe, are you sure that they were chasing you? Are you positive?”
“Linda, what am I stupid? I may be fucked up right now, but I know that they were chasing me. They were chasing me with guns, and they want to kill me. I got away from them.”
My brother was very scared; he wouldn’t leave the house for weeks. My father had to call Mr. X and Mr. Y to the house. He asked them what was going on. They said they didn’t have any idea what my brother was talking about. My father called my brother downstairs and they tried to make my brother out to be a psycho, like he was sick. They told him they’d get him help.
Meanwhile my brother was flipping out.
“You’re a fucking liar. You did this.”
Nobody believed him. I believed him, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe my father had anything to do with it.
My father thought that my brother was just being paranoid and hallucinating because he was doing drugs. My father was trying to talk him into getting off the stuff, while he was consoling him and telling him he would never let anyone touch him.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe what my brother was saying was true. After all, Mr. X wasn’t doing the right thing when it came to my father. In fact, everyone was trying to take advantage of my father. Mr. X knew that my father was suffering from AIDS and from AIDS-related dementia, so he stole $40,000 from him.
My father had given Mr. X the money for some deal, but I don’t remember which one. But Mr. X told my father that the cops raided his house in the middle of the night and they took the forty grand. My father asked Lin if what Mr. X was saying was true. Lin said he was lying because Mr. X’s house hadn’t been raided. My father never did anything about it, though, because Mr. X is still living.
Years later, after my father and my brother were both dead, I ran into someone from the old neighborhood who was in the life. He told me that Mr. X had just been pretending to be with my father. He said Mr. X had been shying away from my father and had no loyalty to him. In reality he had been with some other guy.
Then out of nowhere he said, “Remember when Mr. X and Mr. Y were chasing your brother?”
“What are you talking about? My father said that wasn’t true.”
“Wasn’t true? Mr. X and Mr. Y were supposed to kill your brother.”
“Are you serious? That’s what my brother told us.”
This guy confirmed that it was true. He told me “Mr. Z,” another member of my father’s crew, put a hit on my brother because he found out that Joey had given his wife drugs. Mr. X and Mr. Y were supposed to do the hit for Mr. Z.
Holy shit! The whole story that my brother told me was true. Everything that my brother said to me was confirmed, although I never doubted him for one second.
Shortly after that incident happened with my brother, things went from bad to horrible.
It was December 29, 1992.
The war that had erupted inside the Colombo family in 1991 between jailed boss, Carmine Persico, and his acting boss, Vic Orena, was winding down. When all was said and done, twelve people, including three innocent bystanders, had been murdered—four by my father.
That night in December, my father was really juiced up from the AIDS drugs and the steroids. On top of everything else the street pot he was smoking really messed him up and sent him over the edge of insanity—so over the edge that he didn’t even know his left eye had been blown right out of its socket.
My brother Joey came over to the house that night with his friend Joe Randazzo—they were both just twenty-one. They told my father that they had had a problem in the street with a couple Lucchese crime family drug dealers, Michael “Mikey Flattop” DeRosa and Ronald “Messy Marvin” Moran. One of them had pulled a gun on Joey and Joe.
My father was flipping out because someone actually thought he could pull a gun on his son. He was yelling and screaming in the house. His whole demeanor was different. He was enraged beyond recognition. You wouldn’t even recognize him if you knew him.
“What? Do they think I’m fuckin’ sleeping? They think because I’m in this house, I’m fuckin’ sleeping. They think they’re going to do this to my son. This ain’t gonna happen to my son. They think they’re gonna pull a gun on my son. Fuck that!”
When my mother heard him ranting and raving, she tried to calm him down. She told him to call Larry Mazza the next morning. He should let Larry and the rest of the crew handle it. But because my mother was always on top of my father—when she nagged, she could drive you crazy—he just “yessed” her to death.
My mother went to bed. I was upstairs writing a letter to a friend, a member of my father’s crew, who was in prison. But it was stewing in my father, and he was enraged with everything that was going on with my brother. I heard him banging stuff around. So I went downstairs and he was acting crazy—really crazy.
Next thing I knew, he was gone with my brother and Joe. My brother didn’t want him to go, but Joe and my brother didn’t have any say.
“Get in the fuckin’ car,” my father said. “We’re going there and we’re going to straighten it out.”
That’s what my brother thought—they were going there to straighten it out. He didn’t even know my father had a gun on him.
So they left and the ankle bracelet was going off. I ran outside—it was around midnight. I was so confused. I knew that Mikey DeRosa lived on Eightieth Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Avenues, closer to Thirteenth. And I was on Eighty-Second Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth Avenues, closer to Thirteenth. We were only two short blocks away.
Then I heard gunshots and screaming; the ankle bracelet was going off. I was completely panicked. I ran back into the house. I was running back and forth. I didn’t know what to do. As I was about to run back outside, the car pulled up and stopped right in front of the driveway. My father got out. He was wearing a white jacket; it was soaked in blood.
I knew my father had AIDS, but I had to help him. I didn’t even have any shoes on. I grabbed my boots and threw them on, because I didn’t want to get blood on my feet. I was thinking about helping my father, but I was afraid of AIDS. I went back to the front door and he was standing there covered in blood. There was blood all over his face, so I couldn’t completely make out what had happened to him—yet.
I was freaking out. He went to the kitchen and sat down on a chair. He had his hand on his eye. My first instinct was to reach out and touch him. He screamed at me to leave him alone. Where was Joey? Where was my brother? My father’s yelling that Joey was in the car. Then he told me to get him a towel.
As I went to get the towel, I heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. I screamed at her not to come down. I didn’t know if she was going to freak out if my brother was dead in the car. Of course, she came down. She had to.
When I gave my father the towel, he took his hand off his face and I saw that he had a bullet hole in his eye. His eyelid was closed shut, but you could see that his eye was gone. It was drooping down. He had a hole in his face, right by the corner of his eye. He was really hurt. I knew I had to call an ambulance.
“You’re not calling an ambulance. I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt. I got glass in my eye. Just give me the fuckin’ water. Just give me ice. Give me a fuckin’ glass of scotch.”
He was sitting there covered in blood, asking for water, ice and a glass of scotch. His ankle bracelet was still going off. The phone was ringing. My father told me to answer it.
“Hello.”
“There’s a problem with the bracelet.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what happened. Hold on a second, here’s my father.”
He got on the phone with them, all calm and nonchalant, and told them everything was all right.
“Everything’s fine. There’s no problem. I don’t know what’s going on with this thing. It’s just beepin’. I’m sitting right here. I answered your fuckin’ call.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I told my mother to take care of my fath
er. I had to go to the car, so I ran outside. My brother wasn’t in the car, but his friend Joe was in the backseat, gurgling from his mouth. The car was covered in blood, and I didn’t have anything on my hands. I ran back up to the house.
“Dad, Joey’s not in the car!” I screamed. “Joey’s not in the car!”
“He’s in the fucking car.” He still thought my brother was in the car.
Oh, my God, where was my brother? My brother was dead. He was on the street somewhere fucking dead. I was really panicking. I ran back inside and called Joe Fish for some reason. I hated Joe Fish. He didn’t answer, so I left him a message.
“You fucking rat bastard, you don’t answer the fucking phone.” Then I hung up on him and called Larry. I told him to get to the house right then to take my father to the hospital because he’d been shot and I didn’t know where Joey was. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. And Joe Randazzo was in the backseat of the car, bleeding to death.
I ran back outside and the twin girls from across the street came running over. They had heard all the commotion from me freaking out. I told them to get me gloves. Gloves for cleaning, gloves for the winter, I didn’t care. And I told them to call an ambulance.
One of them ran to her house and got me rubber cleaning gloves and winter gloves. I put them both on my hands. I pushed the front seat forward so there was more room in the back. But I was afraid to move Joe. I wanted to grab him and I wanted to hold him, because I knew he was going to die. But what if he wasn’t going to die? He had a head wound and I didn’t want to touch him and hurt him more.
So I talked to him. I tried to comfort him. I didn’t know if he could hear me, but he was making sounds and maybe he could hear me.
“Joe, everything’s going to be okay. The ambulance is coming. It’s Linda. It’s your little sister. You’re going to be okay.” I was twenty-three then and a few years older than Joe Randazzo. But ever since I could remember, he used to tease me and call me his “little sister.”
While that was happening, Larry had come to take my father to the hospital. My father was completely oblivious to everything that was going on. He still thought Joey was in the car. He still thought he had glass in his eye. He didn’t have a clue what had happened to him. He was already suffering from AIDS-induced dementia, but now he was completely demented.
I loved my father. I cared about my father. But he had lost so much control, I thought he was going to die that night. I almost prayed that he would. I prayed that God would take him out of this hell that his life had become. He was suffering from a horrible disease—a disease that took away all of his rationality. Dementia was settling in and taking over. I felt it would be best if he passed that night, because his suffering would end.
I wanted my father to live forever. To me, he was my world. He was invincible. That wasn’t the case anymore, though. But at that moment, I wasn’t concerned about him. I knew Larry was taking him to the hospital. I was scared to death for my brother.
Where was my brother? I didn’t know where he was. And I knew I had to stay with Joe. Then the ambulance came and the EMTs were pushing me away from him.
“Please help him!” I was screaming. “Please tell me if he’s going to be okay. Is he going to live?”
They got me out of the way so they could do their work. They said he had a serious head trauma and they didn’t know what was going to happen. I moved back and let them do what they had to do. Then they took him away and all I could see were those flashing lights from the ambulance.
To this day I can’t look at the lights of an ambulance because it takes me immediately back to that night. I get an instant flashback to that whole scene of Joe in the backseat of the car. It’s sick. It’s like a trauma—a scar that will never heal.
The lights were going everywhere. There was blood everywhere. I had blood all over the gloves on my hands. The car smelled of blood—my father’s blood and Joe Randazzo’s blood—and death. It was disgusting. The whole scene was a nightmare.
The ambulance left and I was standing outside, frozen. I was so in shock. I didn’t know what to do. Where was my brother? I heard another ambulance in the vicinity of Eightieth Street. Was my brother there? I was about to start running to Eightieth, when a car service car pulled up and my brother got out.
He looked at me, and I looked at him. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out were sobs—deep, gut-wrenching sobs. All I could say was “Oh, my God, Joey.”
“Lin, you don’t even know what happened.” His face went slack; his mouth was slightly open. I could see the color draining from his face. He was shaking—he couldn’t stop shaking—and he couldn’t catch his breath.
“Joe, listen, they’re alive.”
“They are?”
“Yeah, Daddy went to the hospital, and Joe just went to the hospital, too. They’re both alive right now.”
“Joe can’t be alive. He got shot in the head, Lin. You don’t know what Daddy did. He made like he was going to shake Mike’s hand, and he did—he shook his hand—and I thought everything was squashed. I thought we were going to, you know, walk away, and everything was settled. I thought we were going to drive away.”
My brother was so distraught. He had just witnessed his friend get shot in the head, and he thought he was going to get killed, too.
“Daddy told Mike to make his friends go inside. But Mike just told them to step aside—you know, to move down. He says, ‘Guys, move down there. I’m gonna talk to him by myself.’ That was crazy for him to do, but he trusted Daddy. Lin, Daddy shook his hand. I thought it was squashed. Next thing I know, Mike goes to walk away and Daddy shoots him. And they start shooting back. A bullet went through Daddy’s nose and took out his eye. When I turned around to tell Joe to duck, he got shot in the head. He can’t be alive.”
He was coughing and gasping and crying. The deep, rumbling sobs tore through his chest. He had this wild look in his eyes, which scared the shit out of me.
“Joe is alive. He is. They took him to the hospital.”
“Lin, I blacked out. I put my arm up to protect my head and a bullet grazed my arm.”
Joey held his arm up and I could see the skid mark of a bullet. It looked just like a tire tread. I grabbed his hand and dragged him into my aunt’s apartment. I didn’t want to bring him into our house because the cops could come because of my father. But they’d have to get a warrant to search her place. As soon as he could, Joey called his wife, Maria, to come to the house.
Maria was hysterical when she arrived, but she was trying to calm him down. Joey was sitting on the floor and she sat down next to him. Holding him. Crying with him. They were both in shock.
Maybe an hour later, the cops showed up at my door. I asked what they wanted. They told me it was a crime scene and they had to come in to search. I told them there was no crime scene in my house. They insisted there was. We went back and forth like that a couple times. Finally I asked if they had a warrant. When they said no, I told them the only way they were getting into the house was when they had a warrant. But they weren’t giving up so easy.
“You know, there’s a car in front of your house full of blood, and an ambulance was here that took a body, and you’re telling me this isn’t a crime scene?”
“The crime scene is outside. The crime scene is not inside. So when you have a warrant, you can come in my house.”
“We just need to come in and talk to you,” one cop said.
“Fine, you can come in and talk, but you’re not searching my house.”
“So, where’s your father?” the cop said, looking around.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, did he come home?”
“Listen, all I know is this—something happened, some crazy shit.... These guys came to the house and took my father. I don’t know who they were. I don’t know where they took him.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“No. I have no clue. They came here, they took him out
of the house, there was nothing I could do about it and my father left with them.”
I made up some crazy story. They must have thought that I was nuts. I didn’t want to tell them that he went to the hospital, because I thought he was going to die, and I wanted him to die in peace. They could figure it out on their own.
“Where’s your brother?”
“I don’t know where my brother is. I don’t know what’s happening.”
While this was happening, my mother was walking around like a zombie. They couldn’t talk to her—she was completely shut down. In shock. I wasn’t going to let them talk to her, anyway. I was like the boss at that point.
That’s the way it always was. When there were serious situations, I took over. If my father wasn’t around, I took over. They weren’t going to talk to my mother. They weren’t going to talk to anyone but me.
Finally the cops gave up and left.
Almost right after the cops left, Larry called from Mount Sinai Hospital. He said my father was going to have surgery so the doctors could remove his eyeball from the socket. They couldn’t repair it. His eyeball was still in there, but it had been blown up. I wasn’t happy to hear that news. If my father lived, he would be living the rest of his life suffering and dying in a prison somewhere. Plus he was only going to have one eye. He’d be in a hospital or a jail and he’d live a really tortured life, dying in prison without his family.
My mother went to the hospital that night to see my father. I didn’t go right away. I stayed home to comfort Joey. He was inconsolable.
When my mother got to the hospital, my father was in the emergency room. The marshals who were there wouldn’t let her see him. Then they searched her and decided she could see him if she wanted, but she decided to wait in the waiting room. He hadn’t gone into surgery yet and she didn’t want to see him with his eye shot out.
While she was waiting, the marshals called and told her my father wanted to see her.
“I went to the room he was in. He was sitting there, all bandaged. When I looked at him, I got dizzy. It was shocking. It’s something I can’t even describe. There I am dying, but he had a smile on his face, and he said, ‘That’s all right, sweetheart. You can call me “One-eyed Greg” now.’ Because he always tried to make us feel better, no matter what the situation was. He always tried to make like it was nothing—like it wasn’t a big deal,” my mother said.
