Murder Machine

by Gene Mustain

  Frank and Ronnie interviewed the brother; he was mildly mentally disabled, but they were convinced his inability to recall details had less to do with that than his grasp of a canon of Canarsie: Talk to cops and your sister dies. Still, they urged Walter to put him before the grand jury; maybe he would crack under the pressure of testimony under oath. He did not. Meanwhile, outside the grand jury room, the brother’s friend told Frank the entire story. “He saw it, but you’ll never get him to say it.”

  “Imagine that,” Frank told Ronnie later. “In Canarsie, even a retarded kid stays with the code.”

  Regularly, and always after a big event came along, the task force held brainstorming sessions. For instance, during the session following Roy’s murder, Walter said: “By killing Roy, someone has exposed themselves to prosecution. How do we use that?” Simultaneously, many people in the room had the same thought: Freddy DiNome.

  Roy’s devoted friend was serving his Empire Boulevard sentence in a prison in Otisville, New York. Kenny McCabe and Artie Ruffels, particularly, were convinced that Freddy would feel so betrayed he might open up, maybe even become a cooperating witness if he realized that he too was a RICO target of the task force—and that as soon as he was released on parole in a year or so, he might have to go back to prison for life.

  Kenny and Artie visited Freddy in Otisville on February 10, 1983. Freddy did feel betrayed, and said that a few days before the murder he warned Roy by telephone to be careful and that a few days afterward, a crew member telephoned him and said, “Roy was found in his trunk; Nino says there will be no retaliation; you are to report to him when you get out.” Freddy added that a fellow inmate told him he might “have a problem” with the crew after he was released on parole, but he was not worried.

  The meeting lasted twenty minutes. Freddy would not discuss anything but the murder, and it was difficult for him to face an old nemesis like Kenny. Still, Kenny and Artie came back with a positive report: With the threat of a RICO case and the lure of avenging a friend’s death, Freddy could be coaxed along; he just had to come to terms with an alien idea, helping the government.

  “We get Freddy to talk and Roy’s murder begins to look like a colossal blunder,” Walter replied. He already believed the killers blundered badly by giving up the body. If Roy had been made to disappear, the task force would have wasted much time and money searching for him—on the chance he was in the wind.

  Seeking to coax Freddy and give Kenny and Artie more time with him, Walter arranged to bring him to Manhattan for several days in February. He was housed at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center next to the Southern District offices. At the MCC, word of a new prisoner—most inmates are pretrial detainees in frequent contact with their lawyers—travels fast, so Nino and the crew learned that Freddy was back in town right away.

  Just as the murder and disposal of Roy were strategic mistakes, so was a visit a minor crew member now made to Freddy at the MCC. The messenger’s manner was panicky and ominous. He said Vito Arena had “turned over a lot of rocks,” and everyone had to hang tough, then reminded Freddy of his obligation to report to Nino at the Veterans and Friends social club after he got out.

  It occurred to Freddy that maybe Nino planned to put him in a trunk too. He hardly knew Nino. Nino was just a man Roy used to report to, not him. “I’m not reporting to nobody,” he said, “because I’m not involved with nobody no more. My friend is dead.”

  Freddy also received an unsolicited visit from Gerald Shargel, Roy’s former lawyer; it also backfired. He told Freddy that Roy’s death was a tragedy and that he knew it was a great personal loss for Freddy because they were such friends. “Roy told me what a great guy you are and how much he thought of you.”

  Shargel added that he would not be able to represent Freddy in the Southern District investigation because he was now representing another figure in the case, Nino Gaggi. He did, however, announce that another lawyer would represent Freddy and that he would “take care” of the lawyer financially. While in the crew, Freddy was accustomed to legal decisions being made for him, so Shargel’s attempt to orchestrate his defense struck him as business as usual—exactly what he was beginning to resent.

  During the visit, Shargel told Freddy he did not believe the government had a case, and at a second MCC meeting, after Freddy was visited by Kenny and Artie again, he asked his nonclient, “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  Freddy lied and said sure. The truth was, Freddy had begun trusting Kenny and Artie more than Nino and Shargel. He had already agreed to talk but did not want anyone to know because he was afraid his brother Richie might be killed. He told Kenny and Artie he would provide information but would never testify. The task force was jubilant; Freddy had more time with the crew than Vito Arena and had been the driver for the crew’s boss, Roy.

  Even so, Walter Mack was disappointed too. He was still wary of going to trial with calculating Vito as his main accuser. Vito on the stand would try and be clever, inviting defense lawyers to make mincemeat of him. On the other hand, Freddy DiNome might actually evoke a jury’s sympathy. He was just a sheep who had followed his seemingly invincible shepherd around.

  Kenny and Artie kept working on Freddy. His brother Richie, a target now too, would have to make his own decisions about who to trust, they argued. Moreover, Freddy had already sacrificed a lot for his brother by pleading guilty and covering up Richie’s role in the Empire Boulevard case. It was time Richie stood on his own feet.

  Finally Freddy said he might testify if his wife, son, and daughter would join him in the witness protection program—a condition whose difficulty soon became apparent. After a couple of more meetings, Kenny and Artie transported Freddy back to his familiar cage in Otisville. En route, they stopped at a motel because Artie had asked other agents to bring Freddy’s wife and children there for a reunion.

  The reunion did not yield the intended result; the situation was more complicated than getting Vito on board. It had been easy to give Vito what he wanted after his debriefings, a cell next to Joey Lee’s, but the relationship between Freddy and Carol DiNome was not as harmonious. He had been physically cruel and unfaithful. She had grown accustomed to his absence and liked it.

  “Freddy will do what he’s going to do with his mob. Why does it have to involve me?” she asked Artie. “I’m not pulling the kids out of school. I don’t want any part of it.”

  Kenny and Artie were frustrated but not defeated. On the road again to Otisville, they told Freddy they would continue talking to Carol. “So now we get to be marriage counselors,” Artie groaned to Kenny.

  They would become so sooner than they thought—with a couple from California, Mr. and Mrs. Dominick Montiglio.

  * * *

  Early in March, a day after telling Denise he would be home soon, Dominick left for New York to meet Danielle Deneux and the man they knew as Val so they all could complete the Quāalude deal they had hatched a few days before.

  Danielle, who had left earlier with Val and gone to Montreal to buy the drugs, picked him up at LaGuardia Airport in a limousine and took him to a suite at a Hilton hotel in Manhattan. She said it was good to see him because she only had a couple of dollars left—and, by the way, she and Val had been suckered. The Quāaludes they bought with their last cash were actually aspirin tablets.

  “You fuckin’ cuckoo clock!”

  “Hey, it was Val’s connection.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Probably out knocking off a Safeway. He’s broke too.”

  By the time Val returned to the Hilton, Dominick had come up with another plot to make money. During his Studio 54 days with Matty Rega, he had given a friend of Rega’s several thousand dollars to start a belt-buckle company in which Dominick was to be a silent partner. Rega’s friend, however, was arrested a short time later in the same federal drug case as Rega and Cheryl and went to prison a while. Dominick was out the money;
now he had telephoned around and learned that the man, Jeffrey Winnick, owned a small residential real estate brokerage in Manhattan.

  “At normal loanshark rates, I figure the guy owes me twenty grand by now,” he told Danielle and Val.

  “Beautiful,” Danielle said.

  Dominick also figured that Winnick would never see him willingly because he once talked tough to him while collecting money Winnick owed Rega; Danielle and Val would have to get him to the Hilton somehow. Naturally, Miss Penthouse 1980 would be the bait.

  Danielle telephoned Winnick and said she was a model new to New York and needed to find a safe Manhattan apartment. When he asked about her employment and income, she said she was not just a local beauty queen but a Penthouse Pet of the Year. “Did you see June 1980? That was me.”

  Winnick then volunteered to come pick her up and show her several apartments.

  Danielle dolled up and met him on a street corner in her mink coat. She waited until he got out of his Mercedes and opened its passenger door for her; as he did, Val came up with a pistol and pushed Winnick inside as his fantasy foldout walked away. Val told him not to worry, someone just wanted to see him.

  At the Hilton, however, Dominick changed his mind and stayed out of the room; he let Val do the talking. Val told Rega’s shaking friend he owed a legitimate debt. He made it seem the money involved was actually Matty Rega’s, not Dominick’s, and he was collecting it for Rega, who owed it to Roy DeMeo.

  Dominick did not know Roy was dead and had told Val about him—so Val told Winnick he would tell Roy if the debt was not paid: “And you know how he’d handle it.”

  Dominick Montiglio had just pulled his last scam. Winnick ran to the police and complained he was the victim of an extortion plot. He told detectives he was still on federal probation for an old drug case but was living right now. They contacted Winnick’s probation officer, Joseph Beltry, to ask if he knew a Matty Rega. Beltry did recognize the name—he had attended task force meetings. He told them Rega was in prison and cooperating with the task force; it had to be someone else behind the plot.

  The detectives contacted the task force. Everyone came to the same conclusion; Dominick Montiglio had come home. Walter was ecstatic. The task force did not have a clue where the nephew of the main potential witness in the case had gone because no one they talked to knew. And now Dominick had fallen out of the sky, a mile or so uptown from Walter’s office, and involved in a scheme ready-made for catching him red-handed and pressuring him to cooperate. If Dominick rolled over, the task force could start drafting indictments for the grand jury to vote on in—realistically, for once—“sixty–ninety days.”

  Frank Pergola, Ronnie Cadieux, Harry Brady, and others were delegated to devise a plan for snaring Dominick in a trap; Winnick agreed to cooperate and wear a secret recording device. At noon on March 7, 1983, he telephoned the Hilton and left a message for Val; the cops hoped Val would lead them to Dominick.

  That day, Dominick had already left the hotel for one of his former East Side hangouts, P.J. Clarke’s, a bar and restaurant. There, he ran into two former acquaintances of his Uncle Nino’s—former world middleweight champions of the world, Jake LaMotta and Rocky Graziano.

  The Lower East Side legends and former combatants were now close friends who lived nearby in swank Sutton Place apartments and usually met for lunch. Talking to Jake, whom Nino always had the most to say about, Dominick wondered whether he dared telephone Bath Beach and say hello, but the thought quickly passed. He asked Jake to autograph a napkin for son Dominick, Jr., and as the old Raging Bull scrawled his name, Danielle Deneux arrived and gave Dominick the telephone message from Winnick. “Just in time,” he told her, “because I’m down to my last two dollars.”

  Dominick decided to surface and meet Winnick face to face—Val had done the dirty work. To the joy of the detectives, he returned the call, and the wired Winnick told him he was ready to pay five thousand dollars. They agreed to meet in twenty minutes at a nearby Hickory Pit restaurant. Danielle, pumped up on coke, wanted to go along.

  “Not wise, since he already saw you once,” Dominick said.

  “Do I look the same today? And I’ll sit far enough away.”

  Without a special effort, twenty-four-year-old Danielle was fairly ordinary looking. This day, the Texas native was wearing gawky cowgirl boots, a studded Levi shirt, jeans, and a down vest. Coked-up, she actually looked unkempt. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  They entered the Hickory Pit separately. She took a table near the front; he walked to one toward the rear, where Jeffrey Winnick was. Several detectives—two inside the restaurant, two across the street in a Rodeo Drive-type boutique, and one posing as a Yellow-cab driver double-parked in front—watched every move.

  “This is all I can get now,” Winnick said, handing over the five thousand. “You gotta be patient.”

  “I’m in town a while. I’ll stay in touch. Count on it.”

  Winnick was nervous, but Dominick was not suspicious. Rega’s friend had always been jumpy, like Rega. Winnick left, and in a few minutes Dominick rose and headed for the Hickory Pit door.

  Harry Brady then confronted him. “Police officer! Freeze!” Dominick turned and Brady stuck a pistol in his left ear. “Move a fucking hair and your brains are on the floor.”

  “Take it easy, take it easy—I don’t have a gun.”

  As Brady said he was under arrest for extortion and others came up and handcuffed him and taunted him for being a jerk because everything he said to Winnick had just been recorded, many thoughts came to Dominick’s mind, including how he once told Henry Borelli that their life was a losing proposition and how here on their old turf with two dollars in his pocket, he had finally lost. In a much bigger way than he yet knew, however.

  Frank Pergola, Ronnie Cadieux, and others arrested a panicky Danielle as she tried to walk out like none of it had anything to do with her. The suspects were taken to a nearby stationhouse; as they were fingerprinted and photographed, Danielle became hysterical. Frank and Brady picked her off the floor a couple of times. The balls Dominick thought she had were gone.

  “She didn’t do nothing,” he told the arresting officers. “She’s just a friend, a high-class girl, a Penthouse model.”

  “She must photograph well,” Frank said.

  Brady and another officer took Danielle to a hospital until she returned to earth. Later, they took her to the intended drug distribution suite at the Hilton, to wait for Val; they wound up renting it two more weeks. Val, however, either smelled trouble or decided to ditch his friends, because he never showed and was never found. Danielle quickly realized she was a bit player and was not going to be held accountable. At the outset of the fourteen-day vigil, she began enjoying the nonromantic company of Harry Brady, who enjoyed the assignment more than he did his undercover search for Vito Arena in the gay bars of Manhattan. She gave Brady a signed copy of her Penthouse layout, which she had taken to New York.

  Brady took it to the Southern District, where most of the task force members thumbed the pages—“strictly for investigative purposes,” they all said, laughing. They were struck by the contrast between the confident beauty on paper and the scruffy girl who had fallen to the floor.

  In the meantime, after the NYPD got his picture and fingerprints, Dominick was transferred to federal custody and taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center. He asked Frank to please not lose the Jake LaMotta autograph taken from him when he was searched.

  Frank told him not to worry, Dominick had bigger problems. In his economical way, the Bath Beach detective said, “The other shoe is about to drop, Dom-Boy.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Class President

  Having nearly talked his way into prison in California two months before, Dominick clammed up during his initial processing on the extortion charge at the Southern District on March 7. Assistant United States Attorney Barbara Jones conducted the first pre-arraignment interview because Walter was occupied with ot
her organized crime unit duties. Dominick, who had used some of Danielle’s cocaine that day, did answer personal questions for the “pedigree” report Jones was filling out. He said, for instance, he never used drugs, that he was an unemployed songwriter, and that though his parents were dead, Anthony Gaggi, an uncle in Brooklyn, was still alive so far as he knew. Before talking about his arrest, however, he wanted to consult a lawyer.

  While waiting for a court-appointed lawyer to arrive, he was permitted to make telephone calls. His first was to his Buzzy Scioli–type friend in California, the young legitimate businessman he referred to as The Armenian, rather than by name, so no hitman from Brooklyn who might hear of him would have an easy time finding him. He told The Armenian he had been set up by a friend of an old accuser, Matty Rega, and arrested on a phony charge that “might take a while to clear up.” He asked him to go to Westlake and stay with Denise and the children; he was calling there next.

  On the telephone with her husband, Denise exploded. “I told you it was stupid to keep ducking back into New York!”

  “I just caught a bad break.”

  “That’s great, what am I and the kids supposed to do because your luck ran out?”

  “Just sit tight. The Armenian will be there soon and so will I.”

  Dominick’s lawyer arrived and huddled with Barbara Jones and then separately with him. Consequently, Dominick began to realize what Frank Pergola meant when he said “the other shoe” was about to drop. He had not stumbled into a smalltime extortion trap, but a bigtime racketeering case against his uncle and the DeMeo crew. He agreed to have Jones illuminate the situation further and was startled to learn it was a violation of some law called “RICO” just to be associated with an organized group that commits crimes. “That is a strange-ass law,” he told her.