The Club King: My Rise, Reign, and Fall in New York Nightlife

by Peter Gatien

  All right, I understand that every writer and filmmaker needs a hook upon which to hang their story, and homicide is an obvious choice. But the basic truth is Alig was a smart planner who promoted a theme night at one of my clubs. He was also one of the most prominent club kids of the era, serving as one of the ambassadors to that specific cultural moment, appearing everywhere from Joan Rivers’s talk show to the cover of New York magazine.

  Business-wise, I knew that Alig could bring a couple hundred warm bodies into a club, consistently, and his flashy publicity efforts helped popularize the nightlife scene. But Alig never acted alone. He succeeded at Limelight only because he was a cog in a well-oiled machine—managers, designers, sound techs, security people, cashiers, bartenders, community-relations attorneys, the cleaning staff, a whole host of people working to make sure the Wednesday-night Disco 2000 parties went smoothly.

  My personal relationship with Michael Alig—not Michael the overhyped symbol, but Michael the person—was that I wanted to be a good boss. I wanted my employees to enjoy work. I wanted to create a caring environment. In all my clubs we did our best to accommodate childcare, medical appointments, and court dates. I handed out loans or advances when necessary. That was the ethos that had gotten me into backing A Bronx Tale. Sometimes generosity worked out for me. I was never quite sure where the line between being compassionate and being an enabler fell, and I carried more than one addict on my payroll long past the time I should have.

  Alig was a favored employee. I found him interesting. He threw good parties. When his drug use started to interfere with his basic humanity—not to mention his hygiene—I presented him with a simple choice, one that I have posed to more than a few employees.

  “Either get into rehab or I am going to have to cut you loose.”

  “I’ll go, yeah, yeah, I’ll go, right away. Today. Tomorrow at the very latest.”

  But to the best of my knowledge, he never did. So I fired him.

  His mother, Elke, came into my office soon after to plead his case. “Please don’t fire Michael, please. You’re all he’s got.”

  In the period after I let him go and after Angel’s killing, Alig picked up a couple of new employers: Agents Gagne and Germanowski of the DEA. As rumors spread about Alig’s crime, the Feds allegedly offered him a way out of his legal difficulties. Give us the dirt. Agree to testify against Peter Gatien. They took the killer club kid under their protection, offering him lenience on the murder charge that was sure to come his way. The government had discovered a crown jewel in the ragtag informants they’d found to build a case against me. Alig took his place alongside Sean Bradley, the failed counterfeiter from New Jersey.

  Also enlisted around that time was Sean Kirkham—Sean number two in the DEA roll call of sources. Kirkham had grown up in Canada, and that’s about all I can say with confidence about him, since at different times in his life he put forth several different origin stories.

  Kirkham showed up in New York City in 1990, and a couple of years later we gave him a gig at Club USA. He worked as an usher for ten days before he either dropped out or was let go—the history is hazy. I don’t recall meeting him, though he claimed that he came to know both Alig and me through his job at Club USA. Kirkham then decamped to Miami and somehow managed to hire on as an informant for the Feds. The guy careened from one scam to another, at one point stealing an address book and selling celebrity phone numbers to party promoters, at another point bilking victims he found on the web, always portraying himself as a supersuccessful, nonsociopathic good guy.

  He returned to New York City at the end of 1995 and fell in with Gagne and Germanowski, reaching out to them when he heard about Limelight’s closure. He described his methods during this period in a documentary film, Limelight.

  I’d been an informant for almost six years at that point in my life. I’d worked with countless agencies and hundreds of agents. Without question it’s physically impossible to prevent people like me from closing down your place of business. All it takes is a simple call to a drug dealer to come to your place of occupation. I’d have to make a drug purchase, and under the nuisance-abatement laws, your business will be closed.

  Human society is mostly a collection of human beings who have their psyches in good working order, going about their days and ways filled with good will and honest expectations. Meanwhile, there are a select few sociopaths who all seem to have a vital piece missing. How else to explain corporate raiders, tribal warlords, corrupt politicians, scammers—and amoral loose cannons like Sean Kirkham?

  After the Limelight raid in fall 1995, and despite the rumors of a government initiative against me, I spent months in a sort of cloud-cuckoo-land, desperately wanting to believe I was in the clear. Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney and Robert Silbering’s boss, subpoenaed my business records in a sales-tax investigation—but, publicly, at least, that seemed to be the extent of my legal problems.

  Behind the scenes, though, at the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, prosecutors prepared to indict me on drug charges, secretly conducting interviews with sources, getting all their ducks in a row. And a trio of odd ducks they were: Alig, Bradley, and Kirkham, criminal informants for hire.

  That spring, the government case against me took a hit when police busted Bradley for selling drugs at a New Jersey shopping mall. US Attorney Michele Adelman went ballistic.

  “You know what an embarrassment you are?” she allegedly screamed at Bradley, visiting the hapless kid in jail. “I gave you a 5K letter [a type of official memo recommending leniency for a cooperating witness], and now I’m going to look like an asshole!”

  That little glitch in the prosecution’s best-laid plans failed to slow the government steamroller. Shortly after the arrest of their prize informant, US Attorney Zachary Carter’s office issued a felony indictment against me for conspiring to distribute Ecstasy.

  When I answered the front door at five thirty that morning, hair tousled from sleep, wearing only a T-shirt and my pajama pants, a whole platoon of DEA agents confronted me, guns drawn. Gagne and Germanowski were nowhere to be seen. I felt like I was caught in a bizarre scene out of the Wild West. Alessandra and Xander were home and I feared that they might get harmed in the chaos.

  “Are there weapons on the premises?” agents kept barking, guns still out, ignoring my repeated replies of No, no, no.

  I couldn’t understand what was going on. A random idea that made no sense occurred to my sluggish, newly awakened brain, that maybe a drag queen working one of my theme nights had gotten into trouble. The lead agent on the raid, Jay Flaherty, hustled me upstairs to dress.

  My mind fumbled to keep up with the cascade of events, all the while wondering, Is this really happening? The sidearms of the government agents and their DEA windbreakers informed me that Yes, indeed, it’s going down right now. And I still couldn’t believe it. The cuffs went on and I still didn’t believe it.

  “Don’t worry,” Agent Flaherty told Alessandra as he led me out. “Peter will be home for dinner.”

  He lied. In fact, I wouldn’t have dinner at home with the wife for quite some time. Flaherty had me whisked away, first to the DEA’s Manhattan headquarters for processing, then to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) near Red Hook, Brooklyn. I had been arrested at six a.m. and wasn’t processed until midnight.

  I had never been in jail before. The MDC struck me as a scene from a bad movie. When I walked onto the cell block, a chorus of catcalls greeted me along with the other newbies. For the sake of keeping the peace, the whole place was racially segregated. The dorms had separate rows of cots for African Americans, Anglos, Asians, and Latinos. There was even a zone known as “heroin corner” devoted to junkies.

  For reasons I’ll never understand, the corrections officer—the CO, and don’t call them “guards” if you value your well-being—led me to the area that was reserved for Italian wise guys, a fifth-floor dorm, quiet as a church.

&nbs
p; “Who’s this punk?” growled an inmate, in a way that made me think I didn’t want to ask too much about his business.

  “Yeah, buddy, you want to take care of this one,” the CO responded. “He’s going to be on the front page of the Daily News tomorrow.”

  He was right. My arrest landed me not only on the cover of the News, but on the front pages of the Post, Newsday, and the New York Times national section. I was jailhouse famous. When I awoke in lockup the next morning, one of my fellow inmates approached, speaking in a hushed tone.

  “What do you want?” he muttered. “I can get you heroin, cocaine, weed, uppers, downers, anything you need.”

  No doubt if I had asked him for a hit of the infamous club drug, Ecstasy, the guy would have come through. I had been charged with conspiracy because I allegedly allowed drug use on premises I operated. In my smelly, crowded detention dorm, the clamor from other inmates providing a background roar, I wondered who in the government could be hauled into court for allowing drug use in its jails.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Trial by Fire

  For years, I’d been running dead presidents through cash-counting machines, filling up one armored car after another, shoving shovelfuls of money into this or that bank account, leading the life of the reasonably well heeled. I wasn’t rich by the standards of the Manhattan uberwealthy, but I was better off than most.

  Getting slammed into the slammer narrows your life down to a pinprick. From the first moment I entered New York City’s Metropolitan Detention Center, all my mental energy focused on a single overriding question.

  How do I get out of here?

  I was plagued with uncharitable thoughts about the MDC, infamous for being a real shithole. My review: zero stars. The food was lousy and there wasn’t enough of it. My fellow guests were surly and the service staff unfriendly. The most surprising aspect of life inside was how hellishly loud the place was. It wasn’t suited for quiet meditations on your sins.

  How do I get out of here?

  That question drummed in my brain and pretty much chased out all other thoughts. I’d take a break to curse Rudolph Giuliani once in a while, before jumping right back on track. Get. Me. The. Hell. Out. Of. Here.

  Prosecutors convinced Magistrate Robert Levy to set my bail at $1.7 million. According to US Attorney Zachary Carter, as a Canadian citizen I could be considered a flight risk. Since their number-one goal was to keep me inside, the US Attorney’s Office performed a full-frontal attack on my assets. I woke up to find my accounts locked tight and a lien placed on Limelight, a Sixth Avenue freeze-out that meant, even though I owned the building, I couldn’t raise money mortgaging it. My corporate entities were given the bum-rush by Chemical Bank, where I had held accounts for over a decade. Suddenly I found myself rendered nearly penniless.

  It’s impossible to mount a defense if you’re broke, and doubly so if you’re incarcerated. The great majority of federal cases never go to trial. They plea out. In order to prepare the ground for negotiation, prosecutors need their targets inside, desperate, chock-full of fear and loathing. They figure that way, prisoners will be more open to compromise. In my case, the Feds felt that if I was out on the bricks, going on my merry way after making bail, I might somehow forget that the long arm of the law had my nuts firmly in its grip. The government prefers you vulnerable and out of your mind to make a deal.

  The other poor souls who got swept up with me on the same day, mostly random club-goers, all got unsecured bail. They were released on their own recognizance, just by putting their signature on a form. Meanwhile, the big fish, the tabloid poster boy, remained in durance vile. This despite the fact that I had deep ties to the community, sent my kids to school in New York, and owned property there.

  The government treated my case as if I were a mob boss. I had originally believed that the main question in my mind—How do I get out of here?—had a one-word answer. Bail. When I found out I had been rendered broke, that question gave way to another, equally pressing one. Where’s all my money?

  There was a single glimpse of hope. The US Attorney’s Office couldn’t touch my holdings in Canada. Performing a financial fandango by transferring property up north to my brother Ray, then having him take out a mortgage, I managed to scrape together $750,000 in cash, still falling well short of the $1.7 million total.

  My wife, Alessandra, tried to arrange my bond. My friends tried. It all took time. With mounting panic I watched day one slip into day two, day three, day four . . . Agent Flaherty had promised Alessandra I would be home for dinner. He didn’t specify on which day.

  I’m a proud man. I’ve made my own way in the world, always paying back whatever government aid I got in the way of small-business loans. Early business partnerships, minor as they were, never worked out. Now it killed me to have to go to my brothers with hand outstretched. My self-image as the supersuccessful one in the family crumbled. I had to ask Maurice, Ray, my ex-wife Sheila, and my mother to dip into their pockets so that I could be sprung from the MDC.

  During the long wait, I had nothing to do but pay attention to what was going on around me. Through the jail grapevine I heard that a fellow inmate had been stabbed the first night I was there. I watched another inmate get beat up for the high crime of taking too long on a call to Nigeria. A constant scramble surrounded the bank of pay phones, and the victim had violated his allotted time.

  Everywhere, people were spending their days bulking up. Instead of barbells they used two buckets of ice suspended on broomsticks. My interactions with my new cellies did not go well. One of them approached me, sporting biceps the size of howitzers. This guy looked as though he could snap me like a twig.

  Without preamble he blurted out, “Hey, man, I lost my oyster in your motherfucking club.”

  Lost his oyster? I thought it was a euphemism, like losing your cherry. Whatever it meant, it sounded like a bad thing. Only later I found out that there was a kind of Rolex called an Oyster, very expensive, and the dude had gotten his stripped off him in the crush on the Tunnel dance floor. I was terrified that the confrontation might blow up, but then the guy just laughed the whole thing off. It took me hours to stop looking over my shoulder.

  I spent two weeks marooned in MDC, dodging dangers both real and imagined. It seemed to take forever for friends on the outside to help me make bail. My fellow producer on Bronx Tale, Dan Lauria, bless him, pitched in right away.

  “Anyone who helps the arts is a friend of mine,” Dan explained to the press.

  Lauria, Alessandra, my mother, Sheila, and my brothers all signed the bond. As did Sidney Levinson, a longtime tutor of Jen and Amanda’s, a retired educator who had become one of the family. He appeared at my bail hearing to offer up his book-and-record collection as collateral, since he had no other property to pledge. I get choked up just thinking about it, and I believe Sid Levinson’s selfless offer made a difference, since the magistrate saw him as a man of integrity.

  By that time I had met with and hired an attorney, a fierce litigator named Ben Brafman, named in the press as “the man to have on speed-dial when you’re in really big trouble.” I had known Ben only socially before my own “really big trouble” began. The year I was arrested, 1996, New York magazine labeled Limelight the best nightclub in New York City and called Brafman the best criminal-defense lawyer. Like Clarence Darrow, he had made his bones defending mobsters. In my situation, I figured I needed to hire the best.

  It turned out I was in perfect tabloid company. Around the time he signed on to defend me, Brafman was also representing accused murderer Daphne Abdela, a fifteen-year-old who was charged alongside her boyfriend, Christopher Vasquez, for allegedly gutting a victim in Central Park. The Post loved to use the tag of “Baby-Faced Butchers” for Daphne and Chris. I liked the fact that Ben was accustomed to defending clients who were being tried not just in court but in the press.

  His wife, Lynda, nicknamed Ben “HP,” for all the high-profile cases he handled. With my face splashed a
cross every newspaper and TV news show, I was in his wheelhouse. During my initial meeting with him, in one of the supposedly soundproof lawyer-client conference rooms at Metro, it didn’t take long to realize I had found my man. He convinced me of the one thing I absolutely required of my attorney: he believed I was innocent.

  Ben told me he worked by invoking a somewhat subversive legal strategy. “My philosophy,” he said, “is to take the theory of prosecution and demonstrate its weakness. If that can be done with the government’s own evidence, it is successful. It’s difficult for the government to challenge the strategy, because essentially it’s theirs.”

  Turn the prosecution’s case on its head. Hoist the government on its own petard. Again, as with the Limelight closure, the indictment had Rudy Giuliani’s fingerprints all over it. It came out of a US attorney’s office, just like the one he had spearheaded for six years. I wanted to see Rudy revealed as the con artist he was.

  Brooklyn-born and raised in Queens, Ben Brafman proved to be a bare-knuckled scrapper in court. He had no Harvard Law pedigree, but he had done a stint in the Manhattan DA’s office, then struck out on his own. When Rudy the racket-buster went after the New York Mafia families, Ben was on the other side, arguing cases for the defense. A poster hangs in his office bearing the label “Tough Guy.”

  That toughness was on full display during my bail negotiations, as Ben argued to get the bail reduced from $1.7 million to an even $1 million, arranged for the bond signatories to make their guarantees, then got the magistrate to release me on the promise of a check for the balance, to be delivered the next day.

  On Wednesday, May 29, after fourteen nights inside, I walked out of MDC into the summer air of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

  Then my real troubles began.

  The New York journalist Jack Newfield and I should have been on the same side of the political fence. Newfield was a longtime Village Voice reporter who self-identified as a muckraker, making his name as a crusader for mostly lefty causes. But soon after my bust he began a vendetta against yours truly, and over the course of the next two years he wrote sixteen slanderous, ultrasensationalized columns on the subject of my evil days and ways.