Cunningham's big plan was to expand his union into the hotel and casino hotbed of Atlantic City. He enlisted my help in convincing the security guards to sign the cards needed to push the union issue to a vote. First, I arranged a meet with Philadelphia boss Nicky Scarfo. Atlantic City's bartenders and waitresses were already unionized under the protection of the Scarfo and Gambino families, and I had to go through the proper channels. Scarfo gave his approval, and Cunningham opened an office in Atlantic City.
The unionization drive blew up much the same way the Vegas casino hotel project had crumbled, and Cunningham was eventually indicted on fifty-two counts of union fraud. When the New Jersey press got wind of the indictment, the stories effectively choked the union drive. Cunningham was subsequently convicted of forty of the fifty-two counts and was sent to prison.
Once again, I was having a difficult time selecting the reputable front men I needed to shield my operations from government investigators. The legitimate business world seemed to be overflowing with thieves.
This is not to imply that the union operation died with Cunningham's conviction. Anthony Tomasso, Cunningham's underling, took over. Not long afterward, Tomasso had a heart attack. That left my man Louie Fenza as the new union boss. Several dominoes had fallen, and I suddenly found myself in control of a million-dollar security guard union operation.
About this same time, I was contacted by a man with mob connections who wanted me to arrange the killing of his fatherin-law, who he believed was going to testify against him before a grand jury. I reported this request to Persico, and the boss affirmed what I already knew: La Cosa Nostra did not kill people for associates. Contrary to popular belief, it didn't even kill for hire (although some soldiers would quietly hire themselves out on the side). The mob killed for mob business only. In those instances, the hit men or hit squads were never paid for their services. The idea of a "contract" being put on someone's life, while it existed in other areas of society, was merely figurative when it related to the mob. All Cosa Nostra soldiers were expected to be killers. I explained to the man that I couldn't help him with his father-in-law, but I did use the opportunity to get involved in his business.
64
During this period, I also found myself back in the flea market game. The part-owner of a flea market in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn was having problems with his partner. The man had become addicted to drugs and was dealing on the grounds to support his habit.
"I'll get him out," I assured the owner. "And then I'm your new partner."
I dispatched two of my men to scare off the unwanted partner. One of the enforcers was a jumpy Vietnam vet named Anthony Sarivola, better known as "Tony Limo" for his job of driving a hearse for Larry Carrozza's funeral parlor. Tony Limo bullied the flea market junkie and told him to hit the road. Three days later, I received a call from Jimmy Angellino, later a Colombo captain and fast-rising star in the family. Angellino told me that John Gotti, then a soldier in the Gambino family, wanted a meet.
Gotti and I met the next day at a restaurant in Queens. John, later the much-publicized Gambino family boss, arrived with a soldier named Angelo Ruggiero, and I took a Colombo soldier with me.
The meeting turned into a classic example of a high-stakes Cosa Nostra sit-down. Contrary to previously published reportsincluding the version that was used as the basis of a scene in The Godfather, Part 111-there were no heated arguments, cursing, or trading of insults in this meeting. We all spoke calmly and treated each other with respect, as decreed by family policy. It was the subtlety of the verbal sparring that provided the fascination.
After we'd politely introduced ourselves, Gotti took the lead. "This kid at the flea market, he's with me."
"How can that be, John?" I countered. "He's a drug addict and a dealer. You know the rules."
"You don't know that," Gotti said, feigning surprise.
"It's been confirmed. He's using and selling. How can a man like that be with you?"
"If he's doing drugs, we'll make him stop," Gotti said, being careful not to admit any prior knowledge of his alleged associate's drug use. "Even so, his interest in the market is still mine."
"If he's into drugs, then you can't be associated with him. And if you can't be associated with him, then you have no interest in the market," I said.
"That's not the way it goes," Gotti countered.
"You know the rules, John."
Sensing that I had Gotti cornered, I decided to take the offensive. "Who you kidding, anyway? He's not with you. He ran to you after we threw him out."
"No, no," Gotti insisted, shaking his head. "He's been with me a long time. A long time."
"If he's been with you a long time, then how come you aren't aware that he's using and selling drugs?" I countered, sensing that I had him pinned.
We each repeated our positions. Gotti promised to make the guy kick his addiction and clean up his act. I repeated that the man's long-term drug use severed any tie Gotti had to the rich, unpoliced market. Then I added that, no matter what they decided, the guy was out.
"We can't have a junkie around the market," I insisted. "It's no good. You can't argue that. And since when are we in the drugrehabilitation business?"
"I'll install somebody in his place," Gotti offered.
"I'm not convinced you have claim to begin with," I insisted.
Although Gotti's position was weak, his towering ego wouldn't let him lose the argument. We decided to take it up with our captains and meet again. I went to Persico and told him what had happened, and he gave me the okay to press the issue.
The day before the next meet, I received a call informing me that there was a third partner in the flea market, and that partner was aligned with Collie Dipietro, a soldier in the Genovese family. This further muddied the waters. It also confirmed to me that Gotti was lying. If he had been with the flea market for as long as he claimed, he would have known about the Genovese connection.
I knew Collie. He had served time at Leavenworth with my father. He was in his mid-forties, dressed sharply, chewed a fat cigar, and possessed an ego that rivaled Gotti's. We met at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park. I suspected that Collie and Gotti would join forces against me, which is exactly what happened. Without hesitation, Collie showed his cards by acknowledging Gotti's claim on the market. That negated my assault on that front. I also knew I couldn't coexist with these two ego-guys. My only remaining tactic could be to have them buy me out.
Collie had a different plan.
"Look, we know that each of our guys is a thief," he said, slandering our associates. "I have a solution. There's this Jew I know, a real business whiz. We'll have him run the market and look out for all our interests."
I stifled a laugh. Collie's Jew would not be looking out for anyone's interest but Collie's. I countered that my man had founded the market and was its backbone. There was no way I could justify giving anyone say over him. We ran this around for a while and finally decided to kick out the junkie, replace him with Gotti's representative, and bring in Collie's Jew on a trial basis. If it didn't work, then one party would have to buy out the other.
As I expected, the arrangement didn't work. By the third weekend, the new flea market partners were at each other's throats. Another meeting was set. This time I convinced Collie and Gotti to put up $70,000 to buy out my man's interest.
I came out of the flea market meetings $20,000 richer-my share of the $70,000-and, more importantly, with valuable experience and knowledge. The negotiations had been mob business as usual, infused with deceit, lying, and twisted gamesmanship. Yet, I had not only held my own under those circumstances, I felt I had won as well.
I was also left with a grudging admiration for John Gotti. I found the future Gambino boss to be a true mobster who loved the life and everything about it. He was sharp and tenacious, and it was obvious that he would reach the top-or die trying. I wasn't overwhelmed, however, by Gotti's show of toughness. He was tough, but I knew that I
had come from the toughest of allSonny Franzese.
"Who's John Gotti?" I remarked to an associate prior to the third meeting. "Remember, I came from the best."
It was a psychological edge I carried throughout my mob tenure. By comparing every opponent to my father, I could never be intimidated.
Within a year, the flea market wheezed, sickened, and eventually died, and the business whiz Collie had installed to run the market was convicted of an assortment of felonies relating to his handling of the operation.
I had other encounters with Gotti and actually got to like him. As long as we weren't arguing over some mob business venture, he was cool.
65
While I was flying high, it was obvious to even the humblest mob associate that Dad was lying low and was no longer a factor in the organized crime hierarchy. Still, the government feared him, and in June of 1982, his unheralded return to freedom ended much the way he had originally lost it.
As part of his parole, Dad had been obligated to prove he could be a decent, civic-minded citizen. To show that he was moving in that direction, he joined the Brooklyn Kiwanis Club and dutifully attended the organization's Tuesday night meetings. A few times a year, the Kiwanis hosted joint meetings with brother chapters around the New York area. The gathering that summer was at the Georgetown Inn in Brooklyn.
Dad had often asked me to join him at these meetings, but I always begged off, considering them boring. This time, for whatever reason, he didn't mention it. Had he, I never would have allowed him to attend. The Georgetown Inn was a popular mob hangout, so popular that it was constantly under surveillance. The bartender was an FBI informant who regularly wore a wire.
As soon as Dad and a number of other felons were spotted entering the inn, the surveillance team outside perked up. A call went out to James Stein, Dad's parole officer, and the bartender was alerted to keep watch. In the course of the evening, my father bumped into two old friends, a Gambino capo named Carmine "the Doctor" Lombardozzi and an unidentified man he had met in prison. He spoke briefly to each, and no criminal activity was discussed. But both conversations were reported to have lasted longer than the three-minute limit set by Dad's parole guidelines. And one of the conversations occurred at the bar, right under the nose and hidden microphone of the bartender.
The following day, Dad received a call to meet with Stein. At the parole office, Stein informed him that he had violated his parole by "consorting with known criminals" and would have to surrender to authorities. Dad agreed to surrender and was taken back to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
"Dad, what happened?" I asked him over the phone when I heard the news.
"No good," he said.
My father's crime was a technical violation that should have netted him no more than six to nine months, but after the hearing, during which Stein testified about my father's activities at the Georgetown Inn, he was given a ten-year sentence.
"Ten years!" I was enraged, and I blamed Stein. I felt the duty of a probation officer was to help keep his subjects clean, not to sit on stakeouts to catch them in a violation. Outside the hearing, I found myself face-to-face with Stein.
"I'm sorry, Michael," he said. "That's how it goes."
"You know, Stein, you're a real scumbag," I said angrily.
"What?" he feigned surprise.
"You heard me," I said, my voice rising. "You were supposed to let him know if there was a problem. They said in there that he was under surveillance the past seven months, and you were obligated to warn him. You're a scumbag, and you helped set him up! "
A few days later, two FBI agents visited me at my Rumplik Chevrolet office. I ushered them out to the parking lot to talk in private.
"We understand that you threatened the life of James Stein," one of the agents sternly said. "We know about it, and if anything happens to him, we're coming after you."
"I didn't threaten his life!" I exploded. "I called him a scumbag, and he is a scumbag. I'll say it again right now. The guy's a scumbag! But I never threatened him in any way."
"That's not the way we heard it," they responded.
"Why don't you come inside and explain all this to my attorney," I encouraged, "I want it on the record."
But the agents declined the offer.
"I don't have time for this nonsense. Get off my lot!" I ordered.
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It wouldn't be the last of the "scumbag" incident. My heat-ofthe-moment hallway conversation with Stein was filed away to use against me. The FBI was now on my case and soon set up an undercover sting operation to seduce me into offering a bribe to free Dad.
An informer named Luigi Vizzini teamed up with undercover FBI agent Chris Mattiace, and the two men presented themselves to me as middlemen who had national parole board head Benjamin Malcolm in their pocket. Numerous meetings were arranged with them, most of them held at the Atrium Club in Manhattan, and during these meetings, the wired and highly trained undercover agent and his associate tried to cajole me into offering the bribe.
From my perspective, this was an excruciating balancing act. I didn't want to be suckered by an informant, but neither did I want to eliminate the chance that the men really had a connection that could free Dad. If they were legitimate, I'd have been more than willing to pay the money. Until I was positive, I took the precautions my father had taught me during all those 6:00 A.M. breakfast meetings: "Treat every stranger as if he were an undercover FBI agent." Along with that advice, some internal warning system now alerted me to be especially careful with these two. It turned out to be the first in a long line of instances in which my eerie sixth sense would kick in and save me.
Relying on verbal adroitness, I kept the doors open with these mysterious men while never saying anything on the tapes to clearly implicate myself. Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Rose deemed all the recordings useless and killed the investigation. I didn't learn until four years later, at a bond hearing, that Mattiace was an agent and that the conversations had been recorded.
Despite this failure, the FBI tried to trap me again. In 1983, the agency launched a heavily financed sting operation aimed at bringing down famed boxing promoter Don King by linking him to the mob. A former member of Muhammad All's entourage, Reggie Barrett, had been turned by the FBI and was being used as its entry into big-time boxing. Barrett was paired with a Latin undercover agent named Victor Guerrero. Guerrero, operating under the pseudonym Victor Quintana, proclaimed himself to be a mega-rich South American trying to buy his way into boxing.
This duo had been introduced first to my father by fight manager Chet Cummings shortly before Dad's parole was revoked. Cummings made the introduction at a boxing match in Atlantic City. Guerrero and Dad became fast friends, dining together and frequently playing each other at racquetball. At some point, Dad advised his new buddy that I was the man to see to get to King. Although I didn't know King, Dad figured that I could do anything.
Right about then, Guerrero and Barrett must have thought they had struck gold. The operation had barely started, and they already had met both Michael and Sonny Franzese. The mob/ boxing link was all but established.
I met with Guerrero and Barrett more than fifty times during the next year, and the FBI put on a first-rate show. Guerrero opened an office in a high-rent district of Manhattan, drove a Rolls-Royce, wore $1,000 suits, and threw taxpayers' money around with abandon in other ways as well. He expressed an eagerness to get involved in all of my businesses. We traveled together to Florida and California, spending hours chatting. During the flights, he frequently adjusted his position and complained of a back problem. I later came to the conclusion that he was probably suffering the discomfort caused by a wrapping to secure his voice-activated microphone.
We talked and talked, and yet I gave up nothing. My sixth sense was on alert again. As usual, it wasn't strong enough to blow the deal away, just strong enough to make me cautious. Finally, unable to get a clear fix on the man known as Victor Quintana, I agreed to
arrange a meet with Don King. But first I wanted to see the $15 million Quintana claimed he had. The FBI set up a banker in Illinois to confirm the deposit, complete with official bank statements.
-67
I was able to get to Don King through the Reverend Al Sharpton, the infamous New York rabble-rouser and preacher. Sharpton was a "player" who had friends in the Gambino family, and I had been introduced to him through his Gambino connections.
Sharpton and I had sometimes met at the offices of Spring Records in Manhattan to discuss our mutual interest in labor unions and entertainment. In public, he could be grating, especially to the white power structure, but in private, he was a gentleman and a good guy. He struck me as someone who believed strongly in his various causes.
During our meetings, Sharpton had offered to use the considerable black power forces he commanded to assist me in any way. I took him up on it during the drive to unionize the security guards in Atlantic City. Before that effort blew up, Sharpton was planning to organize his people to picket casino hotels.
I later read an article in which Sharpton claimed he had been associating with me merely to gather information for the FBI. I doubted that. I thought he was just covering himself when he found himself in a little hot water. Either way, he never did anything to hurt me, and he helped me get to Don King.
Before bringing Guerrero to Don King, I had a private meeting with the flamboyant, wild-haired boxing promoter. He turned out to be pretty much as advertised-boisterous, verbose, always smiling, always happy. I could believe his oft-repeated claim that his hair sticks up that way naturally. The man appears to be electrically charged.
I respected King because he came from the streets and climbed up the hard way. Personally, he struck me as a tough negotiator, but once you had a deal, he'd keep his word. Those who have cried foul in dealing with him weren't cheated. They were simply out-negotiated.
Blood Covenant Page 14
