Made Men (29 page)

agents looked like they hadn’t slept all night, which in fact they hadn’t. It was a time-honored tradition—the prosecutor faces the camera and says that she has struck a blow, hammered a dent, put the fear of God into organized crime. Inevitably there would be much discourse on the fact that all the different law enforcement agencies involved—the New York Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—all had worked together, cooperating with one another. Inevitably someone would note that the indictment would “send a message” that “law enforcement will use any means necessary” to eradicate organized crime.

Prosecutor White, a veteran of this performance, laid out the details and revealed the numbers. She referred to “the cooperating witness” or “CW.” She called Vinny Ocean an “acting boss” and Tin Ear Sclafani a “veteran soldier.” She mentioned that Joe O Masella had been killed in a golf-course parking lot. She never once mentioned the name of the real star of the show, secret informant Ralphie Guarino. She assured the public that “nearly” all of the $1 million stolen so long ago from the World Trade Center had in fact been recovered. She made the usual statement about how the indictment would hurt but certainly not kill the DeCavalcante crime family and organized crime throughout New York.

“This investigation proves that those who declare the death of the mob do so at their own peril,” she warned. “We are not there yet, but we have done much in terms of progress.”

The reporters were drifting out when White announced that nearly all of the intended targets picked up that morning were at that very moment being arraigned over in magistrate’s court. That got the reporters’ attention. With the speeches over, the gaggle quickly shut down their cameras and hustled out the door, headed for court and the chance of a good “Mafia shot.”

istrate to be assigned to District Court judges. It was a day when all experienced lawyers and defendants brought along paperbacks while waiting for the welter of institutions to come together in what no one ever described as ballet. It was taxpayer-funded chaos, every Thursday. With dozens of new DeCavalcante defendants brought in, the system quickly began to fall apart.

Defendants were ready, but lawyers were not. Lawyers were ready, but defendants were still out of the building. Defendants and lawyers were ready, but the magistrate was not available. On and on it went, all afternoon.

At one point, Westley Paloscio—the Mickey the Dunce bookmaker who lived at home with his mother—was brought in, shackled to four others. He had been charged in the conspiracy to kill Joseph Masella. That meant he could face the death penalty. He shuffled in, looking like a small animal trapped in the sudden glare of an oncoming tractor trailer. As the magistrate asked Paloscio’s lawyer if his client had read the indictment, Paloscio glanced around the court, nodding to his buddies and assiduously avoiding eye contact with his mother. The prosecutor, Maria Barton, was trying to convince the magistrate to keep Westley locked up because, as a participant in the murder of a fellow human being, he had demonstrated that he was a danger to the community.

Westley’s mother began to pace in the audience. “Westley,” she kept saying in a stage whisper that got louder as the hearing unfolded. She was a small woman in her fifties wearing a winter jacket and new walking shoes. Her eyes seemed sad, and she alternately shook her head in disbelief and muttered in anger. The muttering grew in volume. Finally it was all too much. Mrs. Paloscio stood up in a rage and approached the wooden railing that separates the officers of the court from the people who pay their salaries. She started waving her hand to get the magistrate’s attention.

“My son has a new job!” she cried. “My son has never been in trouble in his life. He just started the job. He’s not a murderer.” She was yelling. “He’s going to lose his job! He’s not a danger to anybody.” She was shouting; the United States marshals were moving closer to her. She began shrieking. “He finally got a job to get away from all this shit!”

The marshals asked Mrs. Paloscio to step outside the courtroom. She complied slowly, walking out and watching as her son was led away in handcuffs, still studiously avoiding her eyes.

Anthony Stripoli was with the group attached to Westley, but the prosecutor had not called him a danger to society and so he was allowed to leave. He stood up and smiled at his relatives, who clapped him on the back as he walked through the rail on his way out of court.

“They didn’t tell me that,” Stripoli said. “They got my phone book with your name in it.”
This did not make Little Robert happy, but he and Stripoli worked out a deal where Stripoli would get $40,000, most of which would wind up with his lawyer.
Labate tried to be helpful. “Eighteen months federal,” he said. “When you come out, you’re like a fucking champ.”
“Oh yeah,” Stripoli said. “I’ll be fuckin’ working out every day.”

were used to winning. They had a conviction rate of 96 percent, and when they stood before a judge and asked that a defendant be tossed in jail as a danger to the community, more often than not they got what they wanted. This was the case because most judges would rather be run over by a bus than be labeled soft on crime. A judge who’s called soft on crime is like a hockey player who is said to be afraid to brawl. Overcompensation is inevitable. A judge labeled soft on crime metes out extreme sentences and denies bail as a matter of course. In the Southern District of New York, Judge McKenna was an exception to this rule. While most of his colleagues usually gave the prosecutors the benefit of the doubt, McKenna tended to take that position with the defendant. Defense lawyers called this open minded. Prosecutors dreaded walking into his court.

McKenna’s deputy got off the phone and told him the defendant had been brought up from the holding cell and was ready to be presented. The judge nodded and retired to his chambers. The informal chat was over, and the two adveraries—prosecutor and defense lawyer—took their appointed places. In a moment the United States marshals led in the prisoner of the moment, Joseph Sclafani.

Sclafani had been sitting in jail for four months. He entered the walnut-walled courtroom without handcuffs, dressed in the baby-blue togs of federal pretrial detainees. He wore sneakers without laces and his pants were secured at the waist by elastic. In prison, shoelaces and belts were forbidden. He sauntered in with a kind of rolling strut of the seasoned wiseguy that conveyed the message “Who gives a fuck?” He nodded to his wife and two sons, who were the only spectators sitting in McKenna’s court besides a lone newspaper reporter. The Sclafani progeny smiled and waved at their father; the wife looked like she was about to burst into tears.

The defense attorney, Francisco Celedonio, bent in close to Sclafani and began whispering. Sclafani pointed at his ear and Celedonio got up and switched sides. Judge McKenna appeared in his robes and took the bench. The prosecutor, Lisa Korologos, a small, quiet young woman whose voice never seemed to rise above the level of benign conversation even when she was furious, quickly rose and smiled at the judge. She stood at a table in front of Sclafani and his lawyer, her back to them.

Celedonio the defense lawyer paid no attention to the judge or the prosecutor as he continued to whisper to his half-deaf client.

“
United States
versus
Joseph Sclafani,
” said his deputy. “Is everyone ready?”
Celedonio stopped whispering and averred that he was ready. Judge McKenna got right to business.
“I guess I will begin by asking Mr. Celedonio: I am aware of the background in this case; would you just put on the record the package you’re proposing?”
The package at hand involved the set of circumstances Celedonio the lawyer could present to convince all concerned that the release of Tin Ear Sclafani would not place the Republic in jeopardy. At least that was the way he saw it. He was there to get his client out on bail. Sclafani had been sitting in jail since the morning the FBI agents showed up at his house on St. George in December 1999, and he wanted out. The package would include collateral he could raise toward that cause combined with conditions that would assure the judge that Mr. Sclafani would be there for his next court appearance. Sclafani’s lawyer, Celedonio, proposed $30,000 cash and a bond of considerably more, backed by the faux Tara in Staten Island Sclafani called home. He suggested that the FBI could bug all of Tin Ear’s phones. He agreed that his client would wear an electronic bracelet that would set off an alarm should Tin Ear venture away from St. George Road. Sclafani would be confined to Tara and his gazebo with the fake bridge and the plastic raccoon, and would be allowed to meet only with his immediate family and his lawyer. If he needed to go someplace else, he would have to get permission. That was the package Celedonio earnestly presented.
“I believe, Your Honor, these are all the elements that I am proposing,” Celedonio said.
“So the real issue is the weapons,” Judge McKenna said. “Let’s talk about them.”
In the federal system, a judge must hold the accused in jail if the prosecutor demonstrates that the person is a danger to the community. In Joseph Sclafani’s case, the fact that the FBI found loaded weapons in the man’s bedroom did not help Sclafani’s argument that he was a danger to no one. Celedonio knew this, but he had a plan. He began an unusual argument—one that had never before been proposed in the history of the American Mafia—to get his man out on bail.
It would not be easy. The government had alleged that Tin Ear—at the age of sixty-two, deaf in one ear, suffering from various stomach ailments, etc.—was a danger to the community because besides all these things, he had been a made member of organized crime for forty years. Many gangsters did not live that long. He had sworn a blood oath to live and die for the mob when the prosecutor, Korologos, was not yet born. When the FBI had come for him, they had discovered not one but two loaded guns in his bedroom. He voluntered to the agents that he needed the guns in his bedroom just in case somebody came to get him. No particular somebody, just somebody. The government lawyer, Korologos, had reminded Judge McKenna of this statement on several occasions.
Celedonio asked Judge McKenna to have an open mind.
“Aside from the weapons that were found in his home, it is important to note that despite this assertion—that he is an active member, that he is engaged in violence, that he has been a member of this alleged crime family for thirtyfive or forty years, my client has never been accused— prior to this indictment—of participating in any crime family.”
Korologos the prosecutor turned back to look at Celedonio. She tried not to display a trace of emotion, but her face betrayed her. She seemed to have produced, just for a second, a smirk.
Celedonio, an impassioned veteran of lost causes who claims never to have read
Don Quixote,
argued on. “The weapons, although they were found in his home, were not his weapons,” he said. “They were his brother-in-law’s weapons.”
Prosecutor Korologos practically snorted out loud at this one, and she clearly rolled her eyes. She jumped right in, noting that the brother-in-law had been dead for nearly three years, and reminding Judge McKenna that Sclafani had been caught on hours of tape—both video
and
audio— discussing murders and extortion and loan sharking and gambling and just about every criminal option available to a soldier of the DeCavalcante crime family. Or as the defense lawyer might put it, the “alleged” DeCavalcante crime family. And now he was blaming his brother-in-law.
Celedonio barely flinched. He had just begun. He now attacked the argument that Tin Ear was a member of the Mafia. Long ago, in the 1960s and even 1970s, defense attorneys often argued with a straight face that the Mafia did not exist. Celedonio tried a new approach.
He argued that the Mafia was now just a movie.
“The disclosures that the government refers to, that certain murders are alleged to have been sanctioned, is no great piece of information that requires extensive surveillance or extensive investigation,” Celedonio said. “Just from watching the movie
Goodfellas
one knows that with people alleged to have involvement in crime families, the assassinations may or may not be sanctioned.”
Prosecutor Korologos nearly turned completely around. Even Judge McKenna of the open mind smiled a little bit. He wasn’t sure he was hearing what he was hearing—that Sclafani was blaming a movie for his troubles.
“You don’t necessarily believe whatever is in a movie,” Judge McKenna said. “But on the other hand, the United States against Locascio, in the Court of Appeals’ opinion—the testimony of the FBI experts in that case was to the effect that may or may not be in
Goodfellas
or something else—that killings had to be sanctioned by the boss. In that case, I believe it was John Gotti. So you can find these things out more reliably than by only seeing
Goodfellas
or
The Godfather.
”
The prosecutor, Korologos, now mentioned again the hours and hours of Sclafani going on and on about this murder and that murder. There was Sclafani describing how he would happily kill anybody he even suspected of being an informant for the government. On a motorcycle even. There was Sclafani talking about all those rules about killing people who slept with wiseguys’ wives and so on. She waved a transcript as she said this, and Sclafani shook his head as if saddened by the whole state of affairs.
Celedonio the lawyer was unfazed. He now argued that his client—in his many hours of recorded conversation with the FBI informant Ralphie—was merely trying to get the informant to pay him money owed. He was, in effect, conning the con man with his
Goodfellas
dialogue. Or so Celedonio claimed.
“You don’t have to be a member of any crime family,” he pleaded. “The Gambino crime family, the DeCavalcante crime family. You don’t even have to be a learned individual to know that if there is such a thing, if someone becomes a cooperator, then yes, there is likely going to be some level of retribution.”
He claimed Sclafani told Ralphie what Ralphie wanted to hear. “In exchange for money, my client gave Ralphie an elaborate story based on nonsense, based on nothing more than what I can speculate on by watching television, by watching
The Sopranos,
by reading a novel by Mario Puzo. There is nothing to say that my client’s assertion that someone who sleeps with someone’s wife can be a candidate for an assassination. The assertion itself doesn’t make it so and it doesn’t imbue anyone with any specific insight into what these alleged crime families do or don’t do.” He was on a roll. No one interrupted. The prosecutor’s face by now had changed from puzzlement to amusement. She wanted this to go on.
“I could have told Ralphie if someone is a member—or alleged member—of an organized crime family, and that person becomes a cooperator, like Sammy the Bull, then he is going to be a target.” Celedonio dropped in Sammy the Bull without mentioning his last name, as if he were a movie character familiar to all. “That doesn’t imbue me with any specific knowledge as to this alleged crime family. It just means I read the newspapers, I follow the news and watch TV.”
The argument went on for a few more minutes. Celedonio tried the sick-client approach—mentioning Tin Ear’s tin ear, listing the names of several pills Sclafani was taking. The prosecutor countered by arguing that Sclafani claimed he could do one hundred push-ups, although she was uncertain on the exact number.
“As you can tell by looking at him, he is somebody that either lifts weights or does a hundred or a hundred and fifty push-ups a day,” she said.
“I can’t tell from here,” the judge said. “You may be right, you may not, but I can’t tell. He has got a shirt on.”
But the momentum was gone. The movie defense had collapsed. Celedonio the defense lawyer was merely dancing in an empty auditorium. His audience was gone. Even Judge McKenna wasn’t buying at this bake sale. The government prosecutor, Korologos, now literally brought out both guns—the .380 semiautomatic pistol and the .22 rifle—two magazines of bullets, the ratty old sock the pistol came in. She offered to pass them up to the judge, after promising not to wave them at his deputy. He declined, and said he would reserve decision on whether to release Tin Ear Sclafani on bail.
Throughout this performance Tin Ear continually fiddled with his hearing aide and shrugged his shoulders, implying that he wasn’t hearing anything. His family in the spectator row waved as he was led off. He gave them another shrug and walked away through the side door into the holding cell, a marshal on each side, just another wiseguy headed back to the pen.
The hearing was over. Joey Sclafani would be shuttled back through a series of halls and tunnels to the Metropolitan Correctional Center behind the courthouse. There he would be placed back into the prison’s general population. The Sclafani family surrounded the lawyer, pelting him with questions about when their Joey would be getting out. The lawyer Celedonio said he did not know, it was up to the judge. He said it in such a way that it was clear Joey Sclafani was not going anywhere.
The two Sclafani sons glowered at the prosecutor and the newspaper reporter; Mrs. Sclafani looked at the floor, defeated. The three Sclafanis then shuffled out into the hall, took an elevator to the lobby, and walked outside into the glorious spring afternoon, knowing that they were not in any movie and that they might not see their Joey again for a long, long time.