Made Men (25 page)
Authors: Greg B. Smith
The hardened gangster with twenty bodies on his underworld résumé sat on a hotel sofa in his underwear drinking a beer. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt, a pair of print boxer shorts, and dark socks. He looked like any man in his middle fifties beaten down by a life of hard living—his whole body slumped a little, as if it was running out of gas. His hair was disheveled, his gut was inching over his belt line. When he talked he sometimes seemed distracted by events taking place inside his head. He sat splay-legged on the couch facing Ralphie Guarino, who was wearing a polo shirt and shorts and looked ready to hit the beach as long as he could stay out of the sun. The men were sitting around chatting, and only one of them was aware that the United States government had hidden a camera in a wall fixture. The camera faced Joseph Sclafani head-on, and Ralphie sat next to him in a cushioned chair, sneezing from the air-conditioning. A cooking show played quietly on the hotel television with the volume low enough that the agents could hear every word as Joey Sclafani explained how wonderful it was to be a member of the Mafia.
“You can never get killed here,” he said to Ralphie. “To get killed, you got to fuck a guy’s wife. You got to be a rat, or you got to do something really bad. Like, say, I took your money, fuck you, I’m not paying you, I don’t give a fuck what you do. But they take care of it their own way. No bullshit this way.”
“I believe sometimes guys go because other guys are just jealous,” Ralphie said. “But that’s all the other crews. Not this.”
“No, they’re not jealous over here. Well, there’s jealousy in every crew. But it’s different over here. It’s not the—”
Sclafani sat in his underwear and complained about his septuagenarian captain, Uncle Joe Giacobbe. Uncle Joe had recently committed a major-league La Cosa Nostra faux pas—he asked about a guy who’d been killed. Sclafani was implying that Uncle Joe, who had been col
lecting Social Security for a decade, was beginning to lose it. He said Uncle Joe had asked not once but three times about the whereabouts of a guy who’d been murdered, which was essentially like Martha Stewart forgetting to set out the salad forks. It was simply not done. He was recalling the entire conversation for Ralphie.
“Don’t you know you haven’t seen him in two years, and you’re asking about him? Nobody here, Joey. You asked about him three times already. Every time you opened your mouth, they look back and walk away. He says, ‘Yeah, I was wondering why.’ What do you mean, wonder why? He says, ‘Oh, oh, all right.’ Now you know. Don’t ask about him no more. You understand?” Once again Sclafani launched into his “why me” shtick, complaining about less capable people being promoted to captain when obviously he should have gotten the nod.
“This is what I’m saying. He may be older than me— he’s seventy-five, seventy-six—but he ain’t got as much as I got.”
Sclafani was beginning to sink into his old war stories mode. The more difficult it was to think about the present, the easier it was to drift back into the past. He began telling a story about a plan to rob an armored car on the west side of Manhattan near Greenwich Village. “My score again,” he said. “I always come up with the score.” The driver on the job was a gangster named Joey Farrone. They decided to do a dry run. Sclafani instructed Joey Farrone to drop him off on a corner of Varick Street, then drive around the block several times until an appointed time. The problem was Joey Farrone could not handle even the simplest of instructions.
“Joey’s got no mind, you know? He always gets lost,” Sclafani said. “ ‘All you have to do, I don’t give a fuck what you do, just keep making right turns. Just make right turns, Joe. If you make a right turn, you gotta come back here.’ ” Ralphie was, by now, laughing out loud. “I’m serious,” Sclafani said.
The day of the dry run, Sclafani packed away a pistol with the intention of doing the job if the conditions were right. If they were not right, he would simply check out the details, walk out of the building, and get picked up by his driver, Joey Farrone, for a clean getaway. As planned, Joey Farrone dropped Sclafani off on the corner of Varick and immediately got lost in the winding streets of Greenwich Village. Meanwhile, Sclafani and another gangster walked into the building and right up to the two armored-car guards carrying sacks of money. They did not make a move, but instead saw what they needed to see and walked out of the building. When they got outside, Joey Farrone was nowhere in sight.
“I just keep going around the block,” Sclafani said. “Do you believe he left me on the corner for three hours? He just couldn’t find me. He took the car home to my house in Brooklyn. Three hours I’m in New York, and I’m calling my wife. She said, ‘Joey? Yeah, Joey’s here. He dropped the car off and he says he got lost. He says he couldn’t find you.’ She says, ‘It happened again, Joe.’ My wife, she knows.”
Ralphie was still laughing when Sclafani said, “I had to take the subway home.”
The phone rang and Ralphie said, “Who the fuck?”
“Keep it fuckin’ ringing,” Sclafani said. “I hope they ain’t listening to us.”
“Oh no,” Ralphie said, picking up the phone. When he was done, Sclafani brought up something he’d obviously been thinking about for a long time.
“I’m gonna put you up,” he said. “I’m gonna propose you.”
For anyone who knew anything about La Cosa Nostra and the secret society and the history and the mythology and everything else, this was a huge moment for Ralphie Guarino. Joseph (Tin Ear) Sclafani had just said he was going to propose Ralphie Guarino for membership in the DeCavalcante crime family. This meant he would be formally inducted into the family. There would be a ceremony and everything, where they’d burn the picture of the saint in his hand and warn him that he would burn just like that if he ever informed on his brothers in crime. He would swear allegiance to the DeCavalcante crime family above all others, including his own family. He would be a made man, a button man, a man of honor. He would have to pay a percentage of his earnings each week to his captain, but no one could touch him without permission from the family hierarchy. His name would grow in stature in certain circles. The fact that Sclafani was willing to do this showed how much he trusted his friend and protégé. It also showed the success of the FBI’s daring ruse. They had planted a listening device in their secret informant, and somehow he had thrived. It was rare indeed for someone to be proposed as a made member of organized crime. Some Mafia associates work for years hoping in vain for that magic moment. Here was an FBI informant being proposed for membership. Scalfani was putting his reputation on the line. He was vouching for Ralphie. He had no idea how wrong he was.
“I want to do it,” he said.
“Well, thank you,” Ralphie said.
“Now, when you’re proposed, you’re like a wiseguy.”
“I know, I know.”
“You know what that means? That it’s just a matter of time.” He explained that he had the support of the three bosses, Vinny Palermo, Jimmy Palermo, and Charlie Majuri. “Though Charlie can’t say nothing anyway.”
“I can’t believe this,” said Ralphie, playing his role.
Sclafani then began talking to Ralphie as if he were a bride getting ready for the big day: all the do’s and don’ts. “First of all, you’re not supposed to get in no trouble, no fights. No problems with wiseguys. But we’ll keep you out of that anyway.” He was very excited about the whole thing. He warned Ralphie it could take some time. Another associate named Vic, who’d been proposed months before, still had not been inducted into the family. But Sclafani was enthusiastic about getting moving quickly. He was confident he had made the right choice.
“I’d rather you get proposed right away,” he said to Ralphie, and to the FBI agents listening in. He asked Ralphie if he wanted another beer, but Ralphie said no.
They discussed heading down to the pool, then Ralphie talked on the phone with his wife and told her he bought white T-shirts and confided that he only wore black underwear but that he bought a white pair so he would wear them under a white outfit.
“You wanna talk to me or you wanna call me back later or something,” he said to his wife. “You seem like you’re involved in something. I heard the bathroom flushing. Are you finished now? Are you feeling better or are you still hungover?” Pause. “Boy oh boy. What’d you take, mean pills this morning? Hold on.” He took another call from Joey Smash, who demanded to talk to him in person. He came back to his wife and said good-bye.
The two men then put sunscreen on each other.
“That’s why I do it in the room, because I don’t like doing it down there,” Ralphie said.
“Why?”
“Because people look at you. You can’t put it on right, you know? I put it on my head,” Ralphie said, rubbing lotion on his growing bald spot.
“You should of bought a fucking hat,” Sclafani said. “Should I put some of that stuff on my leg?”
“Sure,” Ralphie said. “Otherwise you’ll cook out there, Joey. I tell you, I can’t believe how fucking fat I got. I can’t believe how fat I am.”
“I need that little bag,” said Sclafani, the trained killer.
“What do you gotta bring the little bag down there, right? I don’t have a bag. You go down there with bags, they’ll think we’re shopping-bag ladies. Joey, do me a favor,” Ralphie said. “Put this on my back. Yeah. Now the shoulders. This is good stuff.”
“Yeah?” said Joey.
“Bain de Soleil. Now I’ll do your back. That’s where you get it, on the back. You don’t realize it. The front, you know it when you’re hot. The fucking back, you got no control.”
“Nope,” said Tin Ear Sclafani, veteran soldier of the DeCavalcante crime family.
“I don’t believe how fat I got,” said Ralphie, gangster in the making. “Fucking fat.”
Sometime in the summer of 1999, the DeCavalcante crime family became aware there was a rat in the ranks. The FBI, of course, did not yet know this.
By the summer of 1999, in fact, they were quite pleased with themselves. They had collected thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations implicating numerous high-ranking members of the DeCavalcante crime family. They had enough, in fact, to bring an indictment. But they faced a dilemma. In the middle of their investigation, one of the key players, Joey O Masella, had been murdered right under their noses by persons unknown. With that in mind, they had pressed Ralphie Guarino to get back out there and see what he could see about the murder of Joey O.
After his many months of wearing a wire, Ralphie had by now grown quite comfortable in his role as secret agent. He had worked his con to such so effectively that he was about to be proposed for membership in the mob. The FBI
and Ralphie both felt Ralphie could ask aggressive questions in order to figure out who killed Joey O. The problem was, with Tin Ear Sclafani, it was difficult to know what was actual knowledge and what was inference. Ralphie had grown weary of Sclafani’s stories. It got to the point where he began his work day by talking into his recording device before he headed out to meet Tin Ear.
“Going to meet Joey Sclafani,” Ralphie would say into the tiny microphone. “See what his story is today. Every day he’s got a new story.”
On this day he was again trying to find out who killed Joey O.
“If somebody killed your nephew, wouldn’t you like to know what happened?” Ralphie had asked Tin Ear in one FBI-monitored discussion. “What’d he do wrong that he had to be killed?”
“I know who did it,” Sclafani said. “I have the best idea who did it.”
Ralphie said it had to be Vinny who ordered Joey O murdered. “He got mad,” Ralphie said.
“No, it wasn’t Vinny,” Sclafani said.
“No? No? I thought it was.”
“Possibility.”
With Sclafani, nothing was clear. He said Westley Paloscio knew more than he was saying, but that was all he would say. The bureau sent Ralphie to talk with Westley. He found him in a state of pure terror, convinced that someone was going to kill him, though he wouldn’t say who. All he would admit was that the Steve who called Joey O the night of the murder wasn’t Steve, that he was Steve and that he had pretended to be Steve to lure Joey O to the deserted parking lot at the bottom of Brooklyn. That was as far as it went. The more questions Ralphie asked about Joey O’s murder, the more nonanswers he and the FBI received.
Then Vinny Palermo stopped using the free cell phones Ralphie had been providing. In fact, Vinny Palermo seemed to stop talking on any phone. Somehow getting information was becoming more and more difficult, and the FBI did not know why.
Inside the DeCavalcante crime family the guessing game was under way: Who was a rat?
Every gesture was scrutinized. Every question was second-guessed. Innocent comments became infected with nefarious intent. Allegiances were formed, lines were drawn. Who could be trusted? In a world where lying was an everyday event, this was not a simple question.
Everybody had their favorite suspect; usually it was the guy you hated most. Tin Ear Sclafani, for one, had decided Anthony Capo had to be the rat. He hated Anthony Capo because he believed that in his world of criminality Capo was a man you could not trust. He had heard that Capo wanted to kill Westley Paloscio because of the murder of Joey O Masella. Westley was considered “with” Sclafani, so, if proper Mafia etiquette was followed, Anthony Capo should have approached Sclafani and explained his reasoning. Perhaps Sclafani would have given him permission to do what had to be done. But Capo had ignored Sclafani, and Sclafani was furious. He sought a meeting with Vinny Ocean and Vinny had instructed both men to work out their differences. Sclafani felt that Vinny was protecting Capo because he needed Capo around to do his dirty work. Vinny wanted proof. Sclafani kept going back to Vinny, warning him that Capo was trouble, but Vinny stood by his guy: “If my guys did something wrong, I’ll kill them
tonight. Before the sunrise, tonight, there’ll be two dead bodies there. You got proof they did it?”
Other culprits were found.
By midsummer, it was decided that Thomas Salvata, the front man at Wiggles, was an informant. Salvata was a silver-haired middle-aged wiseguy wannabe who’d served for years as Vinny Ocean’s eyes and ears at Wiggles, watching the money and making sure Vinny got his fat envelopes of unreported cash every week. He had also been involved in collecting loan-shark payments from T&M Construction. After Wiggles closed and he recovered from a heart attack, Salvata had been put in charge of Gentlemen’s Quarters in Babylon, Long Island. Then he went off the radar screen. This was out of character for the doggedly loyal Salvata, and whenever a wiseguy did anything out of character, he immediately became suspected as an informant.
A new suspect was picked in November 1999. His name was Frank Scarabino, a hulking DeCavalcante associate who had acquired the nom de wiseguy Frankie the Beast. There were actually several Frankie the Beasts in various families. This particular one had been sitting in a backup car when Vincent Palermo and others shot the would-be Staten Island real-estate mogul Fred Weiss in 1989. Frank Scarabino had been around a long time. Now, with word of an informant circulating faster than police gossip through a doughnut store, the bosses of the family decided that this particular version of Frankie the Beast was acting funny. This Frankie had been asked to show up to a meeting, and he had refused. He had even gone into hiding. As a result, a hole was dug in a remote urban wasteland section of northern New Jersey that was just big enough to encompass Frankie the Beast’s enormous frame.
•••
On a September day in 1999 Vinny Ocean and his trusted and hard-of-hearing soldier, Tin Ear Sclafani, stood on a street corner on the Brooklyn waterfront chatting. They were down near the bottom of Fulton Street in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the site of the old Brooklyn ferry that had inspired Walt Whitman to write his famous poem. This was also a spot seen in a thousand movies and TV shows—the swirling edge of the East River, the most beautiful bridge in the world, the Manhattan skyline in magnificent display on the far shore. This was a popular spot for tourists in buses and braver tourists who’d taken the subway over from Manhattan and wandered down to water’s edge. It was not an easy spot to find.
At this time Joey Sclafani was doing the best he could. In the past year he had made a few thousand here and there selling “a pallet of this, a pallet of that” stolen from tractor trailers and warehouses on the Jersey and Brooklyn waterfronts. There was the 2,250 cases of stolen Due Torri Pinot Grigio wine, 1,630 cases of stolen Gucci clothing, 29,000 packages of stolen Centrum vitamins. Joey and his cohorts would take anything. A truck trailer filled with Kraft food products. A load of 56 Minolta copy machines and accompanying toner cartridges.
The theory was, somebody would buy this stuff.
At that moment Sclafani was not swimming in money. Much of the time the FBI sat listening in on his many lengthy conversations with Ralphie, Sclafani whining about how broke he was. Sometimes he would complain that Vinny the boss was a multimillionaire and didn’t pay attention to the needs of his soldiers, but usually he remained loyal and willing to do whatever had to be done. Lately there had been a lot of missions but little action. The Big Ears Charlie Majuri hit had been nixed when all sides agreed Big Ears Charlie wasn’t worth killing. The Frank