Fiore was ready to go on the campaign trail and let them know what he thought. “Hey,” he said out loud as he put the news aside and looked for the sports section, “what’s good for the Tarantinos should be good for everyone else.”
49
ON THE FIRST DAY of summer, the longest day of the year, the temperature climbed into the low seventies, the sky was a cloudless blue and sunshine was everywhere. It was the wrong kind of a day for Tommy Arena to receive some very bad news. He was sitting in his North Providence office early in the afternoon, swapping war stories with another business agent. The telephone call was from Teamster headquarters, the “marble palace,” in Washington. The Union’s general counsel was relaying the information he received from the Justice Department in that same hour. Its investigation of Arena uncovered sufficient evidence to conduct a hearing under the terms of the Teamsters’ national settlement agreement with the US government.
Arena was devastated by what he was told. The probe into whether he had any ongoing relationship with the “Mob” in Rhode Island dragged on for over two months. Specifically, the federal agents were trying to determine whether Arena and anyone they considered part of the State’s criminal establishment were doing business with each other for their individual or mutual benefit. During that entire period of time, Tommy kept his hands clean. He stayed away from all three of the freight forwarding warehouses and the restaurants where he normally made his collections. And just in case the agents tapped the telephones at those locations, he made no calls to any of them while he waited for the investigation to come to an end.
The freight forwarders, like Jack Newton, knew what they had to do. Arena made that perfectly clear to each of them a day after he got word that the Justice Department lawyers were coming to Providence. “There ain’t gonna be no collections for a while,” he told them. “But that don’t mean you don’t keep producing the fucking paperwork. When we start up again, I gotta know everyone’s assessment for every week.”
He gave each of them the number of a post office box he rented in Cumberland so they could send the information to him weekly. “I don’t know if anyone will have to pay the whole retroactive,” he said. “We’ll see. But don’t skip no fucking weeks on me. If it ain’t all there later on, someone will come by to see you and find out why not.”
Arena said that they should pass the word to each of the drivers who came in to pick up freight. “Every fucking one of youse had better understand if you get asked any questions about collections, you don’t know what they’re fucking talking about, and Tommy Arena never asked no one to give him anything that wasn’t in the contract.”
The three freight forwarders assured him they understood and that they’d be certain the drivers got the message. But Arena didn’t let up. He had another warning to pass along.
“If any one of youse says the wrong fucking thing to these shitheads who come nosing around and they charge me with breaking the law somehow, you’ll get called to testify in court about what you said. And you’ll have to go because they’ll stick a subpoena on you. Then I’ll know who mouthed off. They may get something on me, but my partners will make sure whichever one of youse puts his fucking foot in it will get fitted for a pair of cement sneakers.”
Arena knew they understood him clearly. He could read the fear in their eyes. Every transaction between them was always on a cash basis. But they were giving him his percentage from the gross, not the net, so there were no missing funds for the feds to go looking for. Whatever they paid Tommy one week became part of their expenses under a bunch of legitimate looking headings the next. Whatever showed up as the figure on the bottom line was the amount that got deposited in the bank.
There was nothing else the federal agents could trip him up on. Arena never fooled around with the money the employers paid in under the terms of the labor contracts for health and welfare or pension fund contributions. He knew how many other Teamster agents and officers hustled themselves into trouble that way.
The Justice investigators spent almost every day of their four-day weeks in Arena’s office. They were there for a month and a half, but never on Monday. He kidded them about having a day off every week. After a while he learned that they flew back to Washington on Friday afternoons, caught up with everything else at work on Monday and returned to Providence on the 7:00 a.m. Delta shuttle Tuesday mornings.
The agents had a right to go through every file and record they wanted to see, and Arena figured they did just about that. They had little to say to him personally except when there seemed to be something missing from a file that they thought ought to be there.
The feds made copies of every check he signed for the Local in the past five years. All the invoices that were received from the Union’s vendors were reviewed. They requested his own income tax returns for the same period along with statements from any bank that paid him interest during that time. Arena chuckled to himself at all the work they were going through for nothing. All his illegal transactions were in cash, not on paper, and that money sat in several places he was certain the government would never be able to find. His wife was the only person who knew where it was all hidden.
Arena was asked, of course, whether he knew anyone from the Tarantino family. It was a question he was ready for. He said that Sal Tarantino drove a truck and was a member of Local 719 years ago, when Tommy was still driving himself. “I had some beers with him back then,” he told them, “and I got Sal’s kid a summer job once or twice while he was in college. But I swear I ain’t spoken to no one in the Family for maybe fifteen years unless you count the two or three times I bumped into young Sal at a restaurant.”
“How about the Tarantino office building on Atwells Avenue. You ever been in there?” one of them asked.
“No way. I ain’t never set foot in the place. In fact, I ain’t even sure where it’s at.” They sat him down just that one time and questioned him for almost three hours. They never came back and asked him if he wanted to reconsider certain answers he gave them.
“So what the fuck went wrong?” Arena kept asking himself out loud after the phone call from Washington. His collections had resumed the Monday before the call. He gave everything a chance to cool off for two unbearably long weeks after learning that the agents checked out of their motel and left town.
Arena asked every one of his collection accounts whether they were spoken to by the investigators. Most gave him a flat “No.” Some told him that the government agents asked general questions about him, like whether Tommy ever bragged about knowing anyone in the Tarantino family or whether they ever saw him with anyone in Rhode Island who had a criminal record. According to what they told him, their answers to all those questions were in the negative.
All three of the freight forwarders had their books examined by the federal agents. That part of the probe took one day in two cases and two days in the third. Some records were copied at all three locations, but very few, they said.
“So what the fuck went wrong?” he kept muttering. “Think, asshole, think!”
Exactly four weeks from the day he got the crushing phone call from Washington, Arena received a registered letter from the Department of Justice. It informed him that the hearing in his case would begin on November seventh in the US District Courthouse in Providence. He had the right to hire a lawyer to defend himself and to present whatever witnesses he chose. But he knew it would have to be at his own expense, not the Union’s.
50
HIS FIRST SIX WEEKS as acting managing partner of Walters, Cassidy & Breen were not exactly a bowl of cherries for Ed Jackson. And today, what he had to do with George Ryder didn’t make his life any easier.
If asked under oath whether he wanted the job, he would have said “No,” immediately and emphatically. The problem was that he didn’t have the nerve to refuse it on the morning that Fiore called him in, just a half hour before the Executive Committee meeting, and told him what he had in mind.
Some pe
ople in the firm called him “Big Ed.” He was six feet five and a half inches tall and was on the basketball team at Rhode Island College. In fact, he played very little during his three varsity years. Saddled with a team that could claim only a few players good enough to compete in their small college league, the coach lived with the hope that Jackson’s clumsiness on the court would give way to at least marginal talent at some point. That wish was never fulfilled.
Fiore was sipping a cup of coffee as he spoke. “I don’t know how much of my time I’ll be able to spend on office business, Ed. It’s not fair to the firm for me to stay on as managing partner under those conditions. I’m going to tell the Committee that I want you to fill the job temporarily. You’ve got more seniority on the Committee than anyone else. We’ll take a vote on it. The rules allow you to vote too—I checked it out—so it will carry with you, me, and Rubin. Then we’ll take it to the partners with an Executive Committee recommendation. Some of them will probably fight it, but we’ll have the numbers on our side. I’ve already spoken to the right people about it.”
Jackson got a less than welcome insight into his unpopularity at the partners’ meeting two weeks later. Listening to the discussion and the arguments, he concluded that about half of those in the room strongly opposed his right to be in the firm’s primary position of leadership, even for a short period of time.
Someone contended that Jackson didn’t have the right to vote for himself when Fiore submitted his name to the Executive Committee. That being the case, he argued, there had really been a 2-2 vote by the Committee, not enough for a recommendation. Fiore anticipated the objection and answered by reading from the section of the partnership agreement he reviewed earlier. While not definitive, it lent enough support to his position to keep the vote from being successfully challenged.
Another partner raised a related issue. His respect for Jackson’s veracity was lost years earlier in the course of a debate at the firm about the propriety of targeting a rival firm’s client, and he avoided contact with him to the extent possible ever since. He maintained that even if Fiore was right on the point he just defended, the Executive Committee shouldn’t have come that far. “The rules governing the Committee’s conduct allow a managing partner to recommend his own replacement only when his absence is going to be temporary,” he said. He then pointed out that Fiore would be giving up that office for four and a half months if he was away from the firm through the primary, and for almost six months if he was still a candidate in the general election.
“That’s longer than what’s reasonably thought of as temporary for a managing partner,” he argued. “A lot of pretty important things can come up in that kind of time period, problems that someone may have to resolve right away to keep the firm out of trouble. And of course the possibility exists that Doug won’t be back at all if he’s elected governor. You’re calling it temporary, but it’s more than temporary in any case and could very well become permanent.”
That generated a buzz among the partners in the room. In the ensuing forty minutes of debate a number of them offered their own views on the point, pro and con. It was finally agreed that the group was unable to resolve the intent when the word “temporary” was written into the specific clause. Fiore had the final say. He reminded everyone that the firm traditionally gave the strongest weight to an Executive Committee recommendation. Ballots were passed around the room and Jackson’s elevation to acting managing partner was approved by a scant two votes, much closer than Fiore anticipated.
After a short break, Jackson was asked when he intended to submit the name of a nominee for the fifth member of the Committee. Someone was now required to serve until Fiore resumed his position or, if he became governor, until approved by a vote of the partners for a full term. Jackson’s reply was scripted by Fiore who knew the question would be raised. “Big Ed” said that he would look into it, propose someone to the Executive Committee, and most probably have a candidate for the partners to consider at the next month’s meeting.
Fiore’s preference, already made clear to Jackson, was to fill the vacancy with Mark Zappala, one of the younger partners. He knew he could count on Zappala’s loyalty to him. It was Doug who successfully lobbied the hiring committee to offer Zappala a position with the firm ten years earlier, even though his grades from Suffolk Law School in Boston were far from spectacular. No one else was aware that Zappala’s stepfather owned the automobile dealership in East Greenwich where Fiore purchased four cars over the years, including the Mercedes 300SL he now drove.
A second plus going for Zappala was that he did a large amount of work for Margaret Cardoo, and at times she praised him ecstatically. Fiore felt that Cardoo would be hard pressed to vote against his being put on the Executive Committee, even though she might suspect he was Doug’s ally.
Fiore gave Jackson a quick education on firm politics. “I want Zappala on the Committee,” he told him. “But if you try and get it done at the same meeting you’re elected acting managing partner, it won’t fly. Some of the partners are going to be pissed off good, at me more than you, once you get the votes to take my place. They’ll be dead set against anyone else they think I’m supporting. Instead of doing anything about Mark right now, hold off until the next Executive Committee meeting. I think you’ll get the votes you need for a recommendation to the partners. Rubin will be with you, I’ll make sure of that. Deveraux will vote against, so we’ve got to hope Cardoo sees it the way I figure she will.”
Cardoo proved Fiore right. Later, despite some heated opposition, a majority of the partners were again reluctant to vote down someone who had the Committee’s endorsement. Still, many of them were aware that Jackson had virtually no relationship with Zappala, and he easily read the disbelief on their faces when he told them, before the vote, that more young blood was needed on the Executive Committee. Jackson’s opponents knew that Fiore was behind the recommendation, and he knew that they knew it.
51
IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN those two partners meetings, Fiore gave Jackson an ugly task to perform. In revealing what had to be done, he said it was his intention to take care of it himself when various complaints about Helen Barone’s performance as office manager were brought to him, but that the political situation didn’t let him get around to it. Fiore felt extremely uncomfortable all along about removing Barone from her position—he knew this should never happen to an employee who has performed her job competently—but reasoned that for the good of the firm as well as himself, it was necessary for Scardino to know whether anyone was eager to stir up trouble in his absence. He also took reassurance in the fact that Barone would be offered another job at her same salary. Still, he knew he had to lay it on thick to get Jackson to act without questioning the decision.
“If her performance continues going downhill, it will affect how the lawyers and staff feel about you, Ed. When she screws things up, you’ll be blamed for it. Helen probably figures that the crap she’s pulled up to this point will be forgotten about because I’m not in charge any more. She must think it’s a new ballgame and that she’s got a lot more rope before anything gets back to you.
“But there’s no reason for you to get hurt by her. Just call her in and tell her you’ve decided to make a change. A new broom can sweep away whatever it wants. Offer her a job in accounts receivable instead. If I know Helen, there’s a good chance she’ll take it and I think she’ll be happy there.” Fiore wasn’t certain at all that Barone would agree to the new job assignment, but according to Scardino there was no opening to offer her and no new position was being created at that time. “Tell her she’ll keep her same salary and benefits,” he said.
Jackson couldn’t think of anything negative he heard about Barone. In fact it was his impression that she was well liked by the office staff she hired and the lawyers who needed her assistance once in a while. But he felt that Fiore had a better handle on what was going on and that he wouldn’t react well to being questioned about specifics.
>
“Who’s going to replace her?” he asked.
“Give Janice Rossman the job,” Doug said. Again, feeling guilty in what he was doing, he had to create a new set of facts for Jackson. “She proved she could handle things in the mail room. I understand she’s made a big difference in there, gets along with everyone and knows how to use her authority when she has to. It will be a good move for both you and the firm.” Fiore suspected that Jackson was unaware of the turnover in the mail room since Rossman was put in charge. He was right.
At 4:30 on the following Friday afternoon Jackson spoke to Barone. He gave her the weekend to decide whether to accept a transfer and work as an accounts receivable clerk. Sitting across from him, she cried and said she always thought seniority and good performance were worth something. “I’ve never been demoted before in my life,” she sobbed, blowing her nose several times. “This is like a slap in the face. If someone didn’t like the way I was doing my job, why wasn’t I told about it? This isn’t right. Mr. Fiore would never do this to me.”
Jackson didn’t know how to answer her. He wished now that he’d asked Fiore for some of the details, at least the highlights of how she had supposedly screwed up. But Fiore spoke of many complaints about her work, so he felt certain there were good reasons for the termination and was sure Doug wouldn’t risk having an age discrimination suit filed against the firm. Jackson waited until Barone composed herself and then walked partway down the corridor with her.
“Think about it,” he said.
On the following Monday morning he learned from Frankie Scardino that Barone had quit. “She said she’s not interested in working in accounts receivable,” Scardino reported. “I told her I’d let you know.” But he failed to tell Jackson that Barone asked to be considered for the opening as an assistant marketing director she knew Scardino was in the process of creating and would soon fill. Scardino had risked not telling Fiore about the position, correctly assuming that Doug would be too engaged in the race for governor to have office employment matters on his mind. Barone wanted Jackson to know she would wait at home several days for him to contact her.
My Honorable Brother Page 27
