Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

by Nicholas Pileggi

  The gunmen had Eirich open the first vault door to a 10-by-20-foot room. They then ordered him to lock it behind them. They knew if he opened the door to the second vault, where the money and jewels were stored, without closing the outer door, a silent alarm would be sounded at the Port Authority's police office about half a mile away. Once the inner vault was opened, Eirich was ordered to lie on the floor while the men went through what appeared to be copies of invoices or freight manifests. They were apparently trying to identify the correct parcels in a room filled with hundreds of similarly wrapped packages. Finally the gunmen began to toss some of the parcels out the door. One of the first was thrown just inches from Eirich's head. He looked at ft for a second, and then the heel of a work boot smashed the package open and he could see what looked like neatly bound stacks of bills under the thick paper wrapping.

  The gunmen carried at least forty parcels out of the inner vault into the outer vault. They then ordered Eirich to reverse the procedure and lock the inner vault door before he opened the outer vault door. Two of the gunmen were designated to load the parcels into the van while the other gunmen took Eirich back upstairs to the cafeteria. There they gagged him with plastic tape, just as they had done with the rest of his employees. Suddenly one of the gunmen who had been loading the parcels onto the van came puffing into the cafeteria. He was sweating and excited. He had taken off his ski mask and was wiping his brow. One of the other gunmen yelled at him to put on his mask but not before several employees had managed to sneak a glimpse of his face. The gunmen ordered the employees to remain where they were and not to call the police until 4:30 a.m. It was then 4:16, according to the cafeteria wall clock. Exactly fourteen minutes later the Port Authority police received their first call. Five million dollars in cash and $875,000 in jewels were gone. The single most successful cash robbery in the nation's history had taken exactly sixty-four minutes.

  Seventeen

  Lufthansa should have been the crew's crowning achievement. A dream come true. The ultimate score for anyone who had ever hijacked a truck or moved swag out of the airport. It was the heist of a lifetime. The one robbery where there should have been enough for everyone. Six million dollars in cash and jewels. And yet, within days of the robbery the dream score turned into a nightmare. What should have been the crew's happiest moment turned out to be the beginning of the end.

  Henry had been running around so frantically that weekend trying to keep his point-shaving scheme afloat that he didn't even know that there had been a robbery until ten o'clock Monday morning when he woke up, turned on the radio, and got into the shower:

  "… and nobody knows for sure just how much was taken in that daring predawn raid at Kennedy Airport. The FBI says two million dollars, the Port Authority police say four million dollars, the city cops say five million. How much maximum? That they won't say. So far Lufthansa has not said anything, but they've promised to break their silence soon with a press conference, and WINS will be there to cover it live from the scene of the heist at JFK when they do. It looks like a big one, maybe the biggest this town has ever seen. Stay tuned…"

  * * *

  "I didn't even know they were going to take the place that night. I was drunk out of my mind. I was with Marty Krugman all night. We were drinking at the Spice of Life, in Cedarhurst, not two miles from the airport, and we didn't know a thing. When I got home that night I had an argument with Karen. I got so pissed I packed my clothes and took the Long Island train to the place of a girl I knew, on East Eighty-ninth Street.

  "About ten o'clock in the morning Jimmy calls me up. He says he wants me to meet him at the Stage Delicatessen that night just before he checks into the halfway house.

  "I go over to the Stage. Tommy was there, smiling. Fat Louie Cafora was there. He weighed three hundred pounds, owned a parking lot in Brooklyn, and was going on trial for extortion and arson, but he was happy. He was marrying his childhood sweetheart, Joanna. He had just bought her a white Cadillac for a surprise wedding present.

  "Lufthansa was all over the television and radio that day. Everybody knew about it, but I didn't say two words. Jimmy and Tommy were on their way back to the halfway house to check in. Jimmy was half drunk and feeling good.

  "He was concerned about whether I was going home to Karen that night. Karen had come to his house looking for me that morning. In fact, he had had to call around just to get the girl's number where I was staying. Karen didn't know where I was.

  "He asked if I was going home. I said in a couple of days. He said okay. I now see that he didn't want anything out of line. He wanted everything to appear normal. He didn't want angry wives running around from house to house looking for their lost husbands.

  "He asked me if I needed money. I said no. I asked him if he needed money. He laughed. He took out an envelope stuffed with fifty- and hundred-dollar bills-there must have been ten thousand dollars there-and he counted out about five hundred to Tommy and five hundred to Fat Louie.

  "With that he says that he'll meet me in the morning at Moo Moo Vedda's dress factory, next to Robert's.

  "The next morning I meet Jimmy at Moo Moo's, and we started driving to Bobby's Restaurant, in the garment center. We have a meeting with Milty Wekar about betting the Harvard game we'd rigged for the next Saturday. Later that afternoon we had the same kind of meeting set up with Marty Krugman back in Queens. Milty and Marty were two of the bookmakers we used to get our bets down in the point-shaving games.

  "We were on the expressway, getting close to the tunnel, when Jimmy let go of the steering wheel, turned toward me, and gave me a big, one-armed hug around the shoulders. 'We got it!' he said. 'We got it!' Then he started driving again like he hadn't said a word. I was so surprised by his sudden move that he almost broke my neck, but I knew it was his way of telling me that we had taken Lufthansa.

  "But the next thing he said made me feel sick. He was looking ahead, driving, and he asked, almost casually, if I thought Marty had told his wife Fran about Lufthansa.

  "At that point I knew that Jimmy was going to whack Marty. I knew Jimmy better and longer than most people. Sometimes I knew what he was going to think about something before he did. I could tell whether Jimmy was going to like something or hate it. And now I knew Jimmy was thinking about murdering Marty Krugman.

  "I shrugged. I didn't want to look as though I even considered Krugman important enough to think about. We kept driving. I didn't say anything. After a minute or two Jimmy said that when we got to Bobby's he wanted me to call Marty and make an appointment with him for later that night. Now I said that I was certain Marty had told Fran everything. I wanted to sound like Marty probably talked with lots of people. That it was no big deal. Nobody could prove anything. I was scrambling to try and keep Marty alive. Jimmy didn't listen. He just said that after our meeting with Marty I should figure out a way to get Marty to go somewhere with me later that night.

  "Now, I know where to find Marty every hour of the day. I had been with him all night Sunday, but since the robbery early Monday morning I had been purposely ducking him. Marty must have called my house a million times. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to know when he was going to get his money. And now I began to suspect that he had been busting Jimmy's balls about money too.

  "I called Marty from Bobby's and said that Jimmy and I would meet him at the Forty Yards at four-thirty. I didn't say anything about later. When I got back to the table I saw that Tommy DeSimone was sitting there with his sister Dolores, and so was Milty Wekar. Jimmy started talking to Milty about the basketball bets, and then he turned to me and said that I should work out with Tommy where we were going to take Marty later that night.

  "That's how it happens. That's how fast it takes for a guy to get whacked. It was getting crazy, but I still had from two in the afternoon until eight or nine o'clock that night to talk Jimmy out of killing Marty. Meanwhile I'm going along with the program.

  "Tommy said that he and Angelo Sepe would meet me at the Riviera Mote
l. There was a big parking lot in the rear of that place. Tommy said, 'Just bring Marty to the back of the parking lot. Tell him you got to meet some broads downstairs. Just get out of the car and leave him there. Me and Angelo will take it from there.' Tommy loved it. To Jimmy whacking people was just business, but Tommy got enjoyment out of it. I told Tommy that I'd be there between eight and eight-thirty.

  "In a little while Jimmy and I were on our way to the Forty Yards to see Marty about the baskets. I could see for the first time that Jimmy was a nervous wreck. His mind was going in eight different directions. All the way to the Forty Yards I talked about what a pain in the ass Fran Krugman would turn out to be if we whacked Marty. That she'd pester everybody until she found out what happened. I also reminded him that we needed Marty to lay off some of our bets. I didn't use the words, but I was trying to say that killing Marty was like taking bread off our table.

  "When we got to the Forty Yards, Marty was waiting. On the way in the door Jimmy said, 'Forget about tonight.' It was like a load off my mind. And in a few minutes Jimmy's drinking and joking with Marty like they were the best of friends. We drank for the rest of the afternoon, and there was no mention of Lufthansa and no mention of the money. I thought maybe Marty was wising up. Maybe he had a chance.

  "Jimmy left, and while Marty waited for Fran to pick him up he started his song. 'When do I get my money?' he asked. 'What are you asking me for? Ask Jimmy,' I said. I was almost joking. He said, 'I did, and Jimmy says my end is $500,000.' Now I know why Jimmy wants to whack Marty. It's a matter of a half a million bucks. No way Jimmy was going to deny himself half a million dollars because of Marty Krugman. If Jimmy killed Marty, Jimmy would get Marty's half a mill.

  "Meanwhile Marty was asking me how much my end would be. I told him not to worry about my end. But he wouldn't stop. He said that he'd talk to Jimmy. That he'd give me $150,000 and then get Jimmy to give me $150,000. He was screaming that he'd make sure I wasn't cheated. The poor bastard, he didn't have any idea how close he had just come to being killed, and I couldn't even tell him. He wouldn't have believed me.

  "Thursday afternoon, about three days after the robbery, we were all in Robert's having our Christmas party. Paulie had come up from Florida, and we'd kicked everybody out of the place who wasn't with us. Paulie looked good. Jimmy was running around making sure Paulie was happy. Paulie's brothers Lenny and Tommy were there. Fat Louie was there. Everybody was there except Tommy DeSimone, because Paulie didn't like Tommy being around.

  "There was this big spread of food, and I took out some money to pay. We're all having a good time when Stacks Edwards sees my wad and starts to do his 'black dude' number. 'How come I'm fucking broke and all you whities from the May-fia got the money?' He starts joking about the 'May-fia' guys who got all those millions from the airport.

  "Stacks was crazy. That day in the papers the cops had found the truck, and it had prints all over it. The papers said they found the ski masks, a leather jacket, and a footprint from a Puma sneaker. I knew Stacks was supposed to have taken the truck to a guy we knew in Jersey and compacted it. Finished it. Instead he had gotten stoned and left the van on East Ninety-eighth Street and Linden Boulevard, in Canarsie, about a mile and a half from the airport. Then the jerk went home to sleep. The next day the cops found it, and now it's in the papers. Stacks should have been running for his life, but instead he's in Robert's screwing around. The guy either had a death wish or he couldn't believe he was in trouble. The truth is that nobody ever knows just how much trouble he's in, and here's Stacks, and there's a chance his prints are all over the truck, and he's carrying on about how the 'May-fia' was getting all the money.

  "Then Lenny Vario, Paulie's brother, butts in on the joke and he starts talking about how the guys who made the airport score must all be down in Puerto Rico or Florida basking in the sun, while we're all up here busting our humps.

  "I look at Lenny like I can't believe he would kid around about a thing like this, and then suddenly I realize that he's not joking. I mean, he doesn't know a thing about it. He's sitting in the room with the guys who did Lufthansa and he doesn't even know it. His own brother, Paulie, has just salted away one third of the loot in Florida, and Lenny's totally in the dark. Paulie had had his son Petey fly the money down in a garbage bag inside a hang-up travel bag the morning of the robbery. Petey went first-class and watched his bag all the way.

  "As Stacks and Lenny carried on, I looked at Paulie. He didn't look happy. Jimmy was watching Paulie's every move. I knew that Stacks had signed his death warrant that day. Jimmy gave the order, but it was Paulie who gave Jimmy the look. That weekend Tommy DeSimone and Angelo Sepe went to see Stacks. It was easy. The guy was still in bed. They did it fast. Six in the head.

  "When Marty Krugman heard about Stacks, he thought Stacks got whacked in some drug deal or over some plastic. And that's the way everybody played it. Jimmy sent me over to Stacks's family. We paid for everything. I spent Christmas Eve in the funeral parlor with Stacks's family. I told the family Jimmy and Tommy couldn't come because they had to be in the halfway house.

  "Marty was bound to be next. He was breaking Jimmy's balls. He was breaking my balls. He was crying that he needed his money to pay the loan sharks. He owed about forty thousand dollars, and he kept saying that he needed it now. He wanted to know why he had to pay the interest every week.

  "I told him to take it easy. I told him he'd get the money. But Marty didn't want to pay the interest. By this time it was already January, and he was hanging around Robert's every day. You couldn't get rid of the guy. He was getting worse and worse. He was where he wasn't supposed to be.

  "And by now there was constant surveillance on everybody. There were cars parked around the clock outside the bar. The feds were down the block. The heat was getting worse and worse. And still Marty kept coming around.

  "I wanted no part of it. I kept telling him to smarten up. I'd tell him he'd get his end, but he just wouldn't stop. He told me that Jimmy had given him fifty thousand dollars right before Christmas but that he had given forty thousand of it to Lou Werner because Werner was busting his chops for his share. I knew what was happening and I never asked for a nickel.

  "I didn't even ask Jimmy for the money he gave me before the holidays. He said come over to the house. When I got there, Jimmy went into the kitchen and opened the breadbox. There were stacks of money inside. There had to be a hundred thousand in there. He gave me ten grand. I gave Karen three grand to go Christmas shopping. I put seven in my own kick, and that night I dropped by Harold's Pools and bought a three-hundred-dollar permanent Christmas tree. The kids had a great time. It was the most expensive tree Harold had. It was a white plastic tree with purple balls.

  "The week after Christmas, Jimmy has me drive some bad coke down to Florida for him. Jimmy had paid a quarter of a million for it, and he wanted me to bring it down there, and he wanted to kill the guy who sold it to him. He was going to make the guy give back the money and then he was going to murder him right there in the Green Lantern Lounge in Fort Lauderdale.

  "Tommy would have gone down there with Jimmy that weekend, except Tommy was going to be made. He was finally getting his button. For Tommy it was a dream come true. If you wanted to be a wiseguy, you had to be made. It was like being baptized.

  "We had heard that Bruno Facciolo and Petey Vario were going to vouch for him. They were supposed to pick him up and drive him to where they were having the little ceremony, but when Jimmy called and asked if he had seen his godmother yet, Tommy's mother said it was snowing so much it had been called off. The next day Jimmy called again. I saw him in the booth. He listened, and then I saw him raise his hand and jam the phone down on the hook with all his strength. The whole phone booth shook. I never saw him like that. I never saw such anger. I was scared.

  "He came out of the booth and I saw he had tears in his eyes. I don't know what's going on, and he says that they just whacked Tommy. Jimmy's crying. He said they whacked Tommy. The
Gotti crew. They whacked Tommy. It was over Tommy having killed Billy Batts and a guy named Foxy. They were made guys with the Gambinos, and Tommy had killed them without an okay. Nobody knew Tommy had done it but the Gambino people had somehow gotten the proof. They had a sit-down with Paulie and they got Paulie's okay to kill Tommy.

  "The way they did it was to have Tommy think he was going to get made. He thought he was going to his christening. He got all slicked up. He wanted to look good. Two of his own crew came to pick him up. He was smiling. He was going to be made. Nobody ever saw him again.

  "We came right back to New York. The guy who sold Jimmy the bad coke got a reprieve. There was nothing to do. Even Jimmy couldn't revenge Tommy. It was between the Italians, and on that level Jimmy didn't belong, any more than I did, because my father was Irish.

  "Right after New Year's the Lufthansa heat got to be too much at Robert's, so everyone moved to a new place Vinnie Asaro opened on Rockaway Boulevard. Vinnie was spending a fortune fixing up the place, which was right next door to his fence company. I remember when I got back from Florida, Marty was all over me. He was hanging around Vinnie's new joint now, and he wanted to know about Tommy. He wanted to know about Stacks. What was going on?

  He knew Tommy had had trouble with the Gotti crew and that Stacks was probably hit over a business deal that went bad, but he was nervous. I think he sensed something was wrong. He used to hang around Vinnie's bar waiting for war news.

  "And that's where they whacked him out. At the bar. On January 6. Fran called at seven o'clock the next morning and said Marty hadn't come home that night. I knew right away. I couldn't get back to sleep. She called back at nine. I told her that I'd go out and look for him later that morning.