Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

by Nicholas Pileggi

  If I was going to survive, I was going to have to turn on everything I knew. The decision was almost made for me. In jail I didn't think so much about whether or not to turn as I did about exactly how I could manage to do it and still get out of jail long enough to collect the money and dope I had out on the street. I had about $18,000 in heroin stashed in the house that the cops hadn't found. I had $20,000 owed to me by Mazzei. I'd probably have to kiss that goodbye. I had about $40,000 in loan-shark money out on the street. I wanted to recoup some of that. There was money owed me by fences on some of the jewel robberies and I had money owed me from some gun deals. Added up, there was enough to risk my neck before getting arrested by the cops or killed by my friends. It was going to have to be a con, a hustle, just like everything else.

  So every day when the feds would come to my cell to ask about Lufthansa or some murder, I would curse at them and yell that they should go away. Once I even refused to leave my cell. There were two FBI men downstairs waiting to take me to McDonald's office. "Fuck you and McDonald," I yelled. I kept yelling they'd have to carry me out. Finally four prison hacks came to my cell and said if I didn't go quietly I'd go unconsciously. Without overdoing anything, I put up enough of a racket most of the time to at least give the other prisoners the impression that I wasn't cooperating.

  It was a scary time. There were guys from Jimmy's crew, like John Savino, who were on work-release, and they'd leave every morning with all the news about who was cooperating and who was not. I was being as cautious as I could-I hadn't told anybody anything yet, but I remember shaking myself to sleep with fear every night I stayed in jail. I was afraid Jimmy would find out what I was planning and have me killed right there in my cell.

  McDonald used to say that I was safe as long as I stayed in jail. I had to laugh at him. I told him that if Jimmy wanted to whack me out, he could walk right in the front door, borrow a gun from one of the guards, blow me away in my cell, and walk out without being stopped.

  I had to figure that Paulie and Jimmy would know everything that went on in the jail, and if they knew I was going to McDonald's office every day, they'd know I was talking or at least thinking about talking. So I told McDonald that every time I was brought over to his office, he had to bring Germaine over too. This gave me the chance to scream and yell at Richie Oddo, my lawyer, that I was being harassed, that he was a shitty lawyer. To calm me down, Oddo used to say they were harassing Germaine too. Then I'd yell some more that I didn't care what they were doing with Bobby, I wanted to be left alone.

  I wanted all of my screaming and yelling about being harassed to get back to Jimmy and Paulie. Then, as soon as Oddo would leave, I'd spend the rest of the afternoon in McDonald's office drinking coffee and listening to them try to con me. During those sessions I never said I'd help and I never said I wouldn't. I just kept them hanging, but I knew they knew that I would eventually have to cooperate. They knew I had nowhere to go.

  And still, the idea of trusting myself to the feds was almost as scary as having to face Jimmy. It wasn't that the feds were crooked and would sell me out. It was that they were so dumb. They were always making mistakes. In my own drug case, for instance, I knew that the informant was Bobby Germaine's son, because the cops had accidentally left his name in the court papers. They were always fucking up like that, and I didn't want them fucking up with my life.

  On May 16, after eighteen days in jail, I felt the time was right to make my move. I had Karen and my mother-in-law come to the jail at one o'clock Saturday morning with ten thousand dollars in cash bail. I knew the agents and my parole officer would be off for the weekend. I would have a couple of days to pick up some cash and also a couple of days to see whether the feds were right, whether Jimmy was really planning to kill me. Scared as I was of Jimmy, it was still hard for me to accept.

  I knew that Jimmy had Mickey calling Karen twice a day from the first day I got pinched. They wanted to know if I was okay. Did I need anything? When was I coming home? The same kinds of questions they would have asked any other time I got pinched, except now everything was suspect. I was feeling paranoid, but I also knew that sometimes you were either paranoid or dead.

  I remember walking out of the jail and getting into the car very quickly. I had this feeling I was going to get killed right outside the jail. I didn't feel safe until I got home. That's when Karen told me she'd flushed the junk. Eighteen thousand dollars she flushed. How could she do that? Why did I give her the signal? she asked. I hadn't given her the signal to flush it, just to hide it if the cops came back to search with dogs. She started screaming and crying. I started screaming and yelling at her. We screamed until we were hoarse. I slept with a gun all night.

  When Mickey called on Saturday morning to find out how things were, Karen said they were fine, I was home. Mickey almost dropped the phone. She wanted to know why Karen hadn't told her. They could have helped with the bail money. That was exactly why I hadn't told anyone. That's why I had Karen's mother show up with cash. That's why I had my bedroll all tucked up and was ready to check out immediately. I didn't want any guard calling up on me. I didn't want to be greeted by anybody other than Karen and her mother when I walked out of the jail.

  Mickey said Jimmy wanted to meet me as soon as I woke up. I had told Karen to say there was a lot of heat all around and that we were going to go to a bar mitzvah that night and that I'd meet Jimmy Sunday morning. I wanted to use Saturday to raise money and I also wanted to see if I could detect any signs of trouble.

  Sunday morning I met Jimmy at the Sherwood Diner, on Rockaway Boulevard. It was a crowded place where we were known. I got there about fifteen minutes early and I saw that Jimmy was already there. He had taken the booth at the end of the restaurant, where he could see everyone who came into the place and anyone who pulled into the parking lot. He wanted to see if I had been tailed.

  He hadn't touched his honeydew melon or coffee. In the old days Jimmy would have eaten the melon, three or four eggs, sausages, home fries, some crullers, toasted English muffins, and smeared lots of catsup all over everything. Jimmy loved catsup. He put it on everything, even his steaks. Jimmy was also fidgeting around. He was jumpy. He had started wearing glasses, and he was taking them off and putting them on.

  I felt drained, and nothing had helped-not the shower, not the fresh shirt Karen had ironed, not the cologne. Nothing could get the smell of the jail and fear out of my nose. Jimmy stood up. He was smiling. He opened his arms to give me a bear hug. My court papers were all over the table. Jimmy had gotten them from the lawyers. When I sat down with him, it almost felt like it was the old days.

  On the surface, of course, everything was supposed to be fine. We were supposed to be discussing my drug case, just like the dozens of other cases of mine we had discussed together, but this time I knew that the thing we were really discussing was me. I knew I was hot. I was dangerous. I knew that I could give Jimmy up and cut myself a deal with the government. I could give up Lufthansa and I could give up Paulie. I could put Jimmy and Paulie behind bars for the rest of their lives. And I knew Jimmy knew it.

  None of this was said, of course. In fact, almost nothing was ever really said. Even if the feds had somehow wired our table, and then played back the tape, they wouldn't have been able to make much sense out of our conversation. It was in half words. Shrugs. We talked about this guy and the other guy and the guy from over here and the guy from over there and the guy with the hair and the guy from downtown. At the end of the conversation I would know what we talked about and Jimmy would know what we talked about, but nobody else would know.

  Jimmy had been through the papers, and he said that there had been a rat in the case. I knew he meant Bobby Germaine's kid, but I tried to slough it off. I said that they hadn't found any drugs on me or in my house. I kept saying that they didn't have a strong case, but I could see Jimmy was very nervous anyway.

  He wanted to know about all the people I had working for me. He wanted to know whether Robin an
d Judy and the rest of the people arrested knew about him. I told him they knew nothing, but I could see he didn't believe me. He wanted to know if I had talked to Paulie yet. I said no.

  Jimmy was trying to look confident. He said he had some ideas about my case. I could see what he was doing. As long as I thought he was trying to help me, he knew that I'd stay close. Then, when he felt the time was right, when I was no longer dangerous to hit, he would whack me. Jimmy was biding time to make sure he could kill me without getting Paulie upset and putting his own neck on the line.

  As long as Jimmy thought I didn't know what he had planned, I had a chance of copping time on the street and scooping up some money. I had to pretend to Jimmy I didn't know what he might have had planned, and he had to pretend that he had nothing but my best interests at heart.

  Then he said that he wanted me to go down to Florida in a few days. He said there was some money to be made. He said he had to meet me again soon about the case. He said we should meet on Wednesday in a bar owned by Charlie the Jap, on Queens Boulevard, in Sunnyside.

  I'd never heard of the place. I've been operating with Jimmy for twenty-five years. We've been in a thousand bars together in Queens, and we've spent six years in the can together, and suddenly he wants to meet me in a bar I've never seen before.

  I nod yeah, sure, but I already know there's no way in the world I'm going into that bar. As soon as breakfast is over, I drive past the place. I'm not waiting till Wednesday.

  It was just the kind of place Jimmy has used in the past for hits. The place was controlled by one of the crew. It had a back entrance, and there was a parking area in the rear where you could take out a body bag in a rug without anyone seeing. Forget it. If Jimmy thought I was meeting him in that place on Wednesday he was nuts.

  Instead, I showed up at Jimmy's sweatshop on Liberty Avenue on Monday. I had been out all morning trying to raise money. In the afternoon I had Karen drive me over to his shop. While I waited in a bar across the street, she went inside and told him I wanted to see him.

  He came right over with Karen. I could see that he was nervous and surprised. He wasn't sure what I was going to do. Then he said if he gave me the name and address of Bobby Germaine's kid in Florida, would I go down there with Anthony Stabile and whack him. This was crazy, but I wasn't going to argue. Jimmy had never asked me to do anything like that before. And he'd never asked me to do something like that in front of Karen. Never.

  I went along with him, but I reminded him that the kid was Germaine's son. I mean we were going to whack the guy's kid. Jimmy shook his head and said it was okay. He said that one of the lawyers had gone to see Germaine in the can and had told him that his kid was the informant and that Germaine had told the lawyer to "hit the rat." This was where we were. We were putting hits on our own kids.

  Meanwhile Jimmy's at the bar waving around the piece of paper with the kid's alias and address on it. He wants me to go to Florida and whack the kid with Stabile. But I know that Stabile and Sepe were the two the feds had mentioned who were pushing Jimmy to whack me. If I go to Florida with Stabile, I know I'm not coming back.

  I dropped Karen at the house and went out looking for more money. I gave her the gun that I had been sleeping with ever since I got out on bail. I had a small rented car that could not be traced to me, and I even got her a rental so that we wouldn't be driving around in cars that were known. The Nassau DA had confiscated my Volvo.

  My plan was to stay on the street as long as I could and to make as much money as I could. I felt I was pretty safe because Jimmy was expecting me to go to Florida. But my plan didn't work. When I pulled up to the house later that afternoon I was surrounded by eight agents. They had found out I was loose. McDonald wasn't taking any chances. They arrested me as a material witness in Lufthansa. I was going to cut a deal or I was going to sink.

  Twenty-Two

  karen: As soon as they picked him up, the kids and I went to the FBI office in Queens. We had FBI men and federal marshals all around us. My mother, who was going crazy by now, came along. I went into Ed McDonald's office, and he said that we all had to go into the witness program. He explained that we were all in danger. Henry. Me. The kids. He said that the only chance we had was for Henry to cooperate. We had to start a new life. I asked, what if I let Henry go into the witness program and the kids and I stayed at home? McDonald said we would still be in danger, because they might try to get to Henry through me and the kids.

  McDonald made it plain. He had federal marshals with him. They all explained. They said that when Henry appeared in court, the people he was testifying against would be looking for us. Henry was the only thing that stood between those people being free and spending the rest of their lives in jail. If they thought my parents or my sisters knew where we were, their lives wouldn't be worth two cents. They would make them tell where we were, and then we would be killed.

  Then McDonald started his little blackmail. He said that there was enough evidence to indict me in the narcotics case. He said that we would all be on trial, and he asked what I thought the effect of that might have on the kids.

  I was pretty much in a daze, but when I walked out of his office I knew I was going into the program. Henry had told McDonald he would cooperate if I agreed to go into the program with him. He said he wasn't going in alone.

  I had no choice. They're going to prosecute my husband and me. "How could you look after the kids?" McDonald asked me. They made it impossible for me to make any other decision.

  The minute I walked out of McDonald's office Henry grabbed me and said I had to stay with him. He didn't want to go into the program alone. He wasn't going to go without me.

  My mother had been waiting outside McDonald's office with the kids. She was very upset. She wanted Henry to go into the program alone. I said what other choice did I have if my life was in jeopardy? They could kidnap me and the kids just to get to Henry. She started yelling about Henry, how he had never been any good, how he had brought all this upon us.

  McDonald had said that they would pack me and the kids right then. They'd take me home under guard and pack me. We would be gone. It meant leaving everything immediately. My mother. My father. My sisters. I couldn't believe how fast it was all happening. We wouldn't be able to even contact them again, ever. It was like a death.

  My mother and I and the kids were driven home by the marshals. When we got home there were marshals inside the house and out. They had four cars. They had shotguns and rifles. I had to pack enough stuff for two or three weeks or until they could move us into another place. My father and sisters were waiting at the house. They all helped me pack. We were all packing and crying. When they were not looking I whispered to my mother that she should give us some time. We'd get in touch. My father was very good. He held together.

  The kids were excited. All they knew was that we were going away. They thought of it all like a vacation. I said that it was more than that. We had to go away so that some people who wanted to hurt us couldn't get to us. I said that they could not call any of their friends and they couldn't go back to school and get their books or sneakers or gym clothes.

  The kids had read the papers. They knew about all the people who had been killed. There were stories every week about Jimmy and Paulie. They knew about Stacks and Marty Krugman. They knew Tommy had disappeared. They could see that everything we had was falling apart. Remember, there had been about a year of craziness between Lufthansa and their father's arrest.

  I made up a long list of things for my mother to do. There was still stuff at the dry cleaner's. I had bills to pay. My mother cleaned out the refrigerator. There were pictures of a party we'd had. When my mother called about the pictures, the word was out that Henry had turned, and the photographer, who was a friend of Raymond Montemurro's, didn't want to give her the pictures. She said if he didn't give her the pictures she'd send over the marshals. He said okay, but when she went to pick them up he threw them at her. He wouldn't even take the money.
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  We had packed up everything in large black garbage bags. The kids and I were driven by marshals. There were four or five marshal cars all around us. They took us to a motel in Riverhead. It was a very nice, clean place. They moved us every couple of days. They always had the reservations made and we went right to our rooms. The marshal just gave us the keys, but they always stayed outside the door. They stood around with walkie-talkies and rifles in slings under their raincoats.

  We'd stay as far away as Connecticut or Montauk. In the morning they would drive us all to the FBI headquarters in Queens or to McDonald's Strike Force offices in Brooklyn. I would sit around doing needlepoint, and the kids would play or read, and Henry would sit inside talking to the investigators.

  We were just hanging around while the Marshal Service recreated us as different people. The paperwork took time. They asked us if we had any choices for our new names. They had shredded everything about our past. It was an amazing moment, sitting there in one of the Strike Force corridors with the kids, trying to dream up new names.

  We got new Social Security numbers, and the kids got new identifications for school. The marshals explained that the kids would keep their grade records but that the transcripts submitted to the new school under our new name would be blank where the previous school was asked for. Also, when the girls registered in their new school, a marshal would go to the principal and explain that they were part of a family involved with government security. They would make it sound like their daddy was a government master spy or something very important.

  The marshals were very nice. They were very good with the kids. They talked to them and played cards with them and kidded around with Ruth. They treated everyone with great respect. They were always gentlemen. The way they did it helped enormously.

  After a couple of weeks I went back to the house in Rockville Centre. There were marshals all over the place. They had arranged for movers. There were trucks waiting and so were my parents. I still didn't feel as though I was leaving them behind forever.