Nothing but Money_ How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street Part 7

Labate was furious at the guy for so many reasons. First he was furious for the sell orders. Then he was furious for having to hit him in the forehead. Then he was furious for him not being dead, but instead getting everybody all worked up. He grabbed the guy and ripped his s.h.i.+rt and started hollering. It appeared he believed that the guy was wearing a wire. The guy looked like he'd awoken in the middle of some bad science fiction movie, the ending of which was surely not pleasant. He put the pieces of his s.h.i.+rt back on and scurried out of the office. He promised he'd never sell another stock as long as he lived.

Before he began working for DMN, Cary Cimino hadn't spent much time hanging around gangsters. In fact, he hadn't met any. He watched movies, of course. Like any other American he knew the G.o.dfather G.o.dfather lines: "Make him an offer," "sleeps with the fishes," "take the cannolis," etc. Having grown up in New York, he knew what "connected" meant, but that was about as far as it went. He wasn't really into that world, didn't really understand it. He certainly had not sought out business with these guys. Perhaps if he'd thought about it more, he might have walked away from that first meeting with Jeffrey before it was too late. If only he had known certain facts related to this relations.h.i.+p. Legitimate guys who do business with the mob always end up on the losing end. It is a fact. No matter how charming they may appear, gangsters ultimately are looking out only for themselves. And legitimate guys are considered weak links, like extra baggage on a too-small life raft. They're the first to go overboard. lines: "Make him an offer," "sleeps with the fishes," "take the cannolis," etc. Having grown up in New York, he knew what "connected" meant, but that was about as far as it went. He wasn't really into that world, didn't really understand it. He certainly had not sought out business with these guys. Perhaps if he'd thought about it more, he might have walked away from that first meeting with Jeffrey before it was too late. If only he had known certain facts related to this relations.h.i.+p. Legitimate guys who do business with the mob always end up on the losing end. It is a fact. No matter how charming they may appear, gangsters ultimately are looking out only for themselves. And legitimate guys are considered weak links, like extra baggage on a too-small life raft. They're the first to go overboard.

When Cary first heard about the incident at the office of his new employer, he had one of those sea change moments. Here were certain facts presented and certain decisions required. A broker had been beaten senseless inside a respectable office on Wall Street. He realized he was no longer working at Bear Stearns or Oppenheimer. This was unfamiliar territory.

There were different ways to view the incident. One was to see that this was not a good thing and it was time to go. The other was to figure that maybe it wasn't going to be such a problem. He'd known Sal Piazza for several years and he'd never seen him act unreasonably. Sure he considered Jimmy Labate a thug, but Jeffrey and Sal seemed to have the guy under control. At this time Cary made a choice. He would pick ambition over sagacity. Or was it just greed? How could you tell the difference between ambition and greed? No matter what you called it, the money was fantastic. Cary experienced a thought adjustment, explaining it in his own unique manner: "Jimmy was an absolute thug, but the financial remuneration that I was receiving? And Jimmy wasn't threatening me. At this point in time, he wasn't. I mean later in the future he does. And I was dealing directly with Jeffrey. Jeffrey was paying me. They were paying and I had had a long-term established relations.h.i.+p with Sal, who to me, never appeared as a thug, who I never knew had crime family ties as Jeffrey alleges. I really want to delineate the difference of how I perceived Sal and how I perceived Jimmy. I perceived Sal as a nice guy that my sister had a long-term relations.h.i.+p with, that I socialized with, that I went out to dinner with and double-dated with I never saw Sal act violent or raise his voice in any manner. Unlike Jimmy, who was inarticulate, p.r.o.ne to rages, and who Jeffrey manipulated."

Cary's thought adjustment had to do with math. For the first time in quite a long time, Cary was wallowing in money. Cash payments flowed to the point where he could now take a supermodel to a top-end restaurant in Soho and not worry about picking up the tab. DMN was taking care of his car payments, so that was no longer a sword hanging over his head. And besides, Cary felt he was being paid well because he deserved it. He had brought in maybe 90 percent of the corrupt brokers needed to make s.p.a.ceplex take off. His new friend, Warrington, was using his overseas contacts to make six-figure buys. Sal and Jeffrey were ecstatic. Cary could do no wrong. Cary had brought in a dozen brokers and was getting 35 percent commission on all sales. The math was this: organized crime was not getting in the way of Cary's net profit. Cary could live with organized crime.

For Jeffrey Pokross, the gangster presence at DMN Capital was both a blessing and a curse. Mostly the curse involved Jimmy Labate, who had evolved into somewhat of a problem. On the one hand, Jeffrey needed the guy around. Now that the s.p.a.ceplex campaign was up and running, enforcement of the no-sell rule was always an issue, and Jimmy was quite good at scaring the h.e.l.l out of the brokers and stock promoters in the office. He kept a .38 in his waistband and loved to talk loudly about how useful a golf club had been while beating some guy b.l.o.o.d.y in Staten Island. That same kind of talk, however, added a certain edge to the proceedings and made keeping the place looking legit more complex. Jimmy was a gangster on display. He looked like a gangster, he walked like a gangster, he talked like a gangster. He didn't hide it from anyone.

With difficulty, Jeffrey came to realize that for the scheme to work, he would have to live with his decision about Jimmy. He really needed Jimmy around. Jimmy's ties to Robert Lino were crucial. Without this, morons from other families would ultimately come knocking on the door demanding their percentage. On the other hand, Jeffrey was increasingly aware that Jimmy needed him as well. Jimmy's construction business was failing, so he needed the income provided by DMN. Jeffrey knew well how to turn someone else's lousy situation to his advantage. He'd made Labate an actual partner in DMN and thus Labate was, in a way, indebted to him. And everybody was clear about his role. Labate wasn't there to draft a.n.a.lysis on the futures market or make buy and sell recommendations to investors. His role, Jeffrey made clear, was simple: "He would continue to find mobbed up brokers that could put out our stocks. We bribe and hold on to it. In addition Mr. Labate would enforce the no-sale policy through threats of violence."

The effort to keep DMN looking legitimate was a never-ending high-wire performance. The idea was to keep the threats of violence (and the actual violence) to a minimum. The beating of the stockbroker had been a fairly drastic example. Usually all Jimmy had to do was walk up, open his knee-length leather coat, show off his gun and check the computer for sell orders. It was a delicate job, ch.o.r.eographing this friction between Wall Street and the streets of South Brooklyn. Now that s.p.a.ceplex was starting up, Jeffrey would have to see if his marriage to the mob was going to make him rich or dead.

In March 1995, the s.p.a.ceplex pump and dump was a going concern. Mostly it was a Jeffrey Pokross production. Maybe he hadn't gone to the Wharton School and maybe Illinois State College wasn't quite the London School of Economics, but Jeffrey Pokross was quite creative when it came to making money work for him-especially when it came to finding ways to conceal what he was doing from the NASD and Securities and Exchange Commission.

First they had to get control of the majority of shares in the company, which was already trading for pennies in the over-the-counter market. They did a reverse split, which shrunk the number of shares, then the company issued a number of free or absurdly discounted shares to Pokross and Piazza. "That would control the amount of shares that were allowed to trade in the market that weren't friendly or that we would have no control over." That meant they couldn't control the rest of the shares, the so-called public pool, but the pool was much smaller now.

Next the corrupt brokers pocketing bribes would contact market makers, that is, other brokers representing inst.i.tutional investors, and get them to buy big gobs of shares in s.p.a.ceplex. That would drive up the price. The inst.i.tutional investors had no real incentive to do this and weren't getting bribes. Instead, they were told by DMN's troops that they would be guaranteed against a loss. This was completely illegal, but it got the job done.

Pokross described it this way: "I would call him on the phone and say, let's say the stock was bid at one, offered at one and a quarter. I would say, Hey Johnny, why don't you move the stock up, why don't you take out the one and a quarter and move it up to one and three quarters?" I would make a call a half hour later, Hey Johnny, why don't you move the stock up to two and offer it out at three. I would guarantee them against a loss and give them a small profit."

Now with the price on the rise, the retail brokers could go to work. Cold-calling victims all over America, they pointed out s.p.a.ceplex's remarkable stock performance in recent days. They'd then launch into a dog and pony show, claiming s.p.a.ceplex was going to be the next Six Flags when, in fact, it was just a creaky little amus.e.m.e.nt park in suburban Long Island with a handful of c.r.a.ppy rides and games no one could win. It was a joke, but it worked.

This was supposed to happen on two fronts-in America and in Germany. Here is where DMN had to switch tactics.

"I had done my job," Pokross recalled. "I had found the stock, the price of the stock went up and we were waiting for the Germans to start buying it. The Germans didn't buy it. So we found U.S. brokers and promoters to go buy it and bribe the stockbrokers here in the U.S."

It was a delicate little dance. As usual, the biggest pressure was to keep the customer from trying to sell before it was time. This was the trickiest aspect of pump and dump. You didn't want a furious investor whining to the NASD that his broker wouldn't sell stock when he was told to. So if a customer insisted, DMN had a solution that put the pressure back on the broker. Sell the stock, but find a buyer.

Pokross called this "crossing the stock": "In other words, if a broker has got client A that wants to sell the stock and that's demanding to sell the stock, that broker couldn't go and give it to the trader and say sell it. That broker had to find customer B. So effectively he had to sell it from Customer A to Customer B directly."

The effect of this was to make it appear as if s.p.a.ceplex was a hot commodity, a must-buy. And it worked. They started lining up with buy orders. There were amateurs and pros, big money and small. Even some inst.i.tutional investors jumped on s.p.a.ceplex. They came from all over. There was Carmen Campisi of Howard Beach, Queens, and Astaire & Partners Ltd. of Queen Street, London. A firm in Germany invested $300,000; another in Switzerland committed $500,000. An Italian invested $482,000; a wealthy guy from Pueblo, Colorado, dumped in $221,000. Warrington got the Bank of Monaco to put in another $285,000. All told in 1995, more than two hundred investors sunk $3.5 million into s.p.a.ceplex. It's probably a safe bet that none of these investors had seen the s.p.a.ceplex Family Amus.e.m.e.nt Center in Garden City, Long Island. If they had they might have thought twice.

While this was going on, Cary Cimino and his band of corrupt stockbrokers did no good but did quite well. Jeffrey was writing Cary checks for 35 percent commission and expecting him to chop up 20 percent for the brokers. These payments were straight-ahead bribes; none were disclosed to investors. Sometimes they were by check, sometimes by wire transfer to an overseas account, sometimes by cash. The checks were always made out for less than $10,000, the amount that requires banks to report transactions to oversight authorities looking for money laundering.

Most importantly for Cary Cimino, the checks cleared. Investors actually believed the nonsense the brokers were saying about s.p.a.ceplex. And this was why Cary didn't feel so bad about it. Warrington at first expressed some reservations and dabbled in guilt, but soon he, too, embraced Cary's credo that investors were just as greedy as the rest of us. They bought the craziness about "the next Six Flags" or "the next McDonald's" or "the next Starbucks" because they wanted wanted to buy it. Their choice to buy was not bovine inspiration. It was a choice. They listened, they chose to stay on the phone and not slam it down in disgust. They authorized a stranger to spend their money. So if they got burned, that was their problem, not yours. to buy it. Their choice to buy was not bovine inspiration. It was a choice. They listened, they chose to stay on the phone and not slam it down in disgust. They authorized a stranger to spend their money. So if they got burned, that was their problem, not yours.

As it happened, DMN princ.i.p.als Pokross, Labate and Piazza made a killing. The suckers out there in the hinterlands lost out big-time: $3.5 million-pretty much everything they put in.

May 1995

On some Friday afternoons, Cary would stop by DMN Capital and spend hours sitting and listening to Jimmy Labate. It was better than TV. The nicknames: Patty Muscles, Joey Goggles, Frankie the Bug, Scooch. And the local color-the El Caribe in Brooklyn, the social club on McDonald Avenue, some abandoned lot in Staten Island where some bodies might be buried. Cary had no idea what was truth and what was fiction. He didn't care. After months of working with DMN, Cary had taken to calling the place "the circus," but it was clear he loved being part of the act.

He was now dropping gangster language into his conversation. Some of the models liked that. Everybody used language for their own purposes, of course. He'd been using the euphemisms of psychology for years with his "methodology" and "process" references. Jeffrey used business language to show how smart he was, dropping in "reverse splits" and "yield burning" whenever he could. Of course, Pokross-who was born in Kentucky and grew up in New Jersey-also had taken to dropping into mob-speak. It was infectious.

Cary learned quickly that for a group that was about breaking the law, there were a lot of rules in the mob. A soldier couldn't speak to another crew's captain. His own captain had to do that. The captains weren't supposed to bring disputes directly to the boss or underboss, but could reach out to the consigliere. A made guy could only be introduced as a made guy to another made guy by a made guy. It was worse than Robert's Rules of Order. But Jimmy made it sound kind of fun. And there was also the added benefit that if people knew you were with one family or another, they couldn't try to play games with you. You were a man of respect. Fear had that effect on people. It was probably inevitable, then, that Cary began to think that he himself was a gangster. He'd grown up in suburbia and even started well-heeled, but time and circ.u.mstance can do pretty much anything.

He started using terms like "whack" as in "whack a guy" or "bounce" as in "go out bouncing." It was kind of ridiculous. Here was a guy who had a weekly appointment at a tanning salon and who injected himself with growth hormones to keep looking fit talking about "the vig." But there it was, and thus did Cary come up with a solution to a problem that he must have found in the pages of a Mario Puzzo novel.

The problem was a guy named Herman. Cary had known Herman for years. He and Herman, a fellow stockbroker turned stock promoter, had traveled the country doing dog and pony shows on different companies their firms were plugging. At one show in Orlando, Cary remembered how he and Herman-both avid Star Trek Star Trek fans-paid some guy a couple thousand so that they could be part of a fans-paid some guy a couple thousand so that they could be part of a Star Trek Star Trek episode as extras. Herman was one of the brokers Cary had paid to hype stock before he came to DMN. Herman always insisted on cash, and that turned into a big headache for all concerned. episode as extras. Herman was one of the brokers Cary had paid to hype stock before he came to DMN. Herman always insisted on cash, and that turned into a big headache for all concerned.

Cary believed that Herman owed him $40,000. Herman insisted he did not. Cary claimed that he had paid Herman the cash bribe when he sold two hundred thousand shares of a company Cary was promoting. Unfortunately, the customer had five days to actually pay for the sale, and during that time, the stock tanked. Thus the customer refused to pay, and Cary was stuck with the fact that he'd paid his good Star Trek Star Trek buddy Herman $40,000 in untraceable bills for absolutely nothing. buddy Herman $40,000 in untraceable bills for absolutely nothing.

Cary was, understandably, furious. After Cary moved on to DMN, Herman stopped returning his calls. Cary tried to look at the situation reasonably: "I don't believe that Herman's efforts were to just take the $40,000 and run, because I had an established relations.h.i.+p with Herman . . . [But] Herman was, based on the rules of the game, based on the established parameters that we worked within, Herman was responsible, solely responsible."

Then out of the blue, in the middle of the s.p.a.ceplex scheme, after dodging Cary's phone calls for months, Herman suddenly called Cary looking for product to push. Herman suggested he could make amends for the $40,000 by buying a hundred thousand shares of s.p.a.ceplex. Only just for now, he needed to do it on credit. It's not entirely clear who was most offended by this arrangement-Cary or Jeffrey Pokross. Both insist it was the other's idea to call Herman for a meeting at J.D.'s, a respectable restaurant in Midtown Manhattan frequented by brokers and lawyers and office workers.

When Herman showed up at J.D.'s, he found Cary and Jeffrey Pokross sitting at a crowded bar, two well-dressed stockbroker types sipping Scotch and blending right in with the crowd of professionals. He didn't at first notice the two other guys with them, mostly because they looked so different. One was a big, square guy with reddish close-cropped hair who looked kind of like a psychotic version of Curly of the Three Stooges. The other was a heavyset dark-haired guy with tinted gla.s.ses who looked like he spent a lot of time at Belmont Raceway. He didn't know it yet, but Herman was getting his first introduction to Jimmy Labate and one of Jimmy's pals, a guy named Bobby. Neither had business cards, but if they had, Jimmy's would have said, "a.s.sociate, Gambino Crime Family," and Bobby's would have said, "a.s.sociate, Genovese Crime Family."

Herman and Cary exchanged ba.n.a.lities, and Cary introduced Jeffrey. Later Cary would claim Jeffrey laced into Herman about moneys owed, while Jeffrey would say Cary was the screamer. Either way, after a few minutes of furious rhetoric, Herman was told he was going to take a walk outside J.D.'s with two gentlemen whose names he was not provided.

The bar happened to be at a window looking out onto the street, so Cary and Jeffrey could observe what was occurring as if they were watching a TV show. Jimmy and Bobby were standing very close to Herman on the street, one on each side. Jimmy was gesticulating and hollering in Herman's face, while Bobby stood right behind Herman like a backstop, silent. Herman looked like he was going to puke; the crowd of New Yorkers pa.s.sing by acted as if the three men did not exist, going about their business, eyes averted.

Jimmy and Bobby began slapping Herman right there on the crowded sidewalk in the middle fifties in Manhattan.

From inside the bar, Cary and Jeffrey watched as Herman crumpled to the ground and Jimmy shouted something down at him. Then they picked him back up, brushed off his suit, and escorted Herman-the side of his face a bright red from the slap-back into J.D.'s to continue their civilized conversation over a Scotch. Pokross realized right away that the whole incident had been a mistake.

"Why did you do this?" Herman whined to Cary, never looking directly at Jimmy or Bobby. "I don't owe you money."

"You didn't hold it like you were supposed to. You know your obligation."

"I paid for some plastic surgery for you," Herman said. "I really don't owe you money."

The mood s.h.i.+fted.

Plastic surgery? a.s.sociates of New York's Mafia were hanging around with a guy who got plastic surgery? Jimmy and Jeffrey were looking at Cary, waiting for an explanation. Cary kept insisting the guy owed him money, but it didn't sound right. Pokross said, "The meeting ended with Bobby and Labate being nice to Herman. They were looking at Cary like, 'Why did we do this when this guy really didn't owe the money?' "

It was a bad move all around. It wasn't that Jimmy felt bad about beating on Herman the Star Trek Star Trek fan in the middle of the sidewalk. He would do it again on the weekend if asked. It was just that doing things like that brought attention, and Jeffrey was trying to keep a low profile at DMN. fan in the middle of the sidewalk. He would do it again on the weekend if asked. It was just that doing things like that brought attention, and Jeffrey was trying to keep a low profile at DMN.

A few weeks later when Bobby came to Labate and Pokross to say Cary had another Herman-like problem and was requesting a Herman-like solution. Jeffrey was not pleased. Cary wanted Jimmy to enforce the no-sale policy on another deal Cary was doing outside DMN. Even Jimmy Labate thought that was a bad idea.

"You're not going to be running around being the John Gotti of Wall Street," he said, and Bobby did nothing more.

To make the point clear to Cary that they preferred he act like a stockbroker and not like a wannabe gangster, Jeffrey and Sal and Jimmy hired Herman to work with him on other jobs. Cary thought that was hilarious.

"Herman gets slapped and then works for Jeffrey and Jimmy," he said. "Herman works for these guys in a happy-go-lucky fas.h.i.+on."

Business is business. Cary shut his mouth, went back to work. What could he say, as long as those checks kept clearing and the envelopes of cash showed up on his desk?

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

May 1992

The historians will one day acknowledge that the guys from the neighborhood did not figure out the lesson of John Gotti right away. Here was a guy who taunted the FBI every day to come and get him. He'd whacked a boss on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk, in front of civilians buying Christmas presents, and strutted around Little Italy like Macbeth, making a public display of his power. He'd required his captains to meet with him regularly, guaranteeing that each and every one would wind up in an FBI photo alb.u.m. Everybody but the janitor was in there: his underboss, his consigliere, and all the captains and soldiers and hangers-on. There were crowds of them on the Mulberry Street sidewalk, milling about with the tourists pa.s.sing by. It was a wiseguy convention, and it was very bad for business. It was obvious that this was more than a bunch of guys from the neighborhood getting together to play casino. Hours of video had played out in federal court, along with the hours of tape-recorded conversations inside an apartment above the club, and together with the sudden transformation of the second-in-command, Gravano, from sociopath to the federal government's employee of the month, Gotti had been convicted the month previous and now faced the likelihood of dying inside a federal facility. One might have thought that the brilliant tacticians of New York City gang-land would thus have second thoughts about the parade in and out of social clubs and inst.i.tute an immediate ban on going anywhere near these places. Not a chance. The meetings continued, the walk-talks went on as if nothing had changed. It was always the same thing: they won't catch me because I'm smarter than they are.

Robert Lino had a different idea about all of this. Robert from Avenue U stayed the h.e.l.l away from Avenue U, and from all of Brooklyn for that matter. John Gotti's loss of Teflon sobered him right up. The streets of Gravesend and Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge and Maspeth were crawling with federal agents, guys with cameras sitting inside vans for hours at a time, day and night, never going home to see their families. This was not a convenient arrangement for meeting your crew. If you dropped by social clubs near McDonald Avenue or anywhere else in that part of Brooklyn, it was almost guaranteed you'd show up on some videotape that would later be used against you in a court of law. Robert Lino figured the best place to be was in a place n.o.body would think to go-across the East River in an innocuous Manhattan neighborhood known as Murray Hill.

Murray Hill was a middle-cla.s.s high-rise neighborhood with little flower stalls and barbershops somewhere between the Upper and Lower East Side. It was neither here nor there. In fact, it wasn't really a neighborhood. It had no real personality. There were no Italian cafes or bocce courts or social clubs with ridiculous names like the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club or the Hawaiian Friends Society. It was ba.n.a.l. It was a perfect little rabbit hole into which Robert Lino from Avenue U could disappear.

His choice of venue was a Murray Hill restaurant called Katrina's owned by a childhood friend, Frankie Ambrosino. Despite the owners.h.i.+p's family history, the restaurant served only Polish food. It was ideal. Robert from Avenue U could come and go without being observed. Katrina's was not on the federal radar. Robert's friend Frankie had long ago made it clear that he didn't want anything to do with the gangster life. He didn't mind Robert and his crew hanging out in the back room of his restaurant, but that was as close as he was willing to get. He was quite straightforward about it. He never wanted to become a gangster, just a gangster's friend. Therefore not only were the feds unaware of Katrina's, they were also unaware of its owner.

Operating out of Katrina's was a sound idea. Robert Lino favored the notion that a secret society of organized criminals should endeavor to remain secret. In the old days, that had been much easier. People who signed up for the program stayed in the program and never strayed. Over forty years, there had only been a handful of exceptions. Joe Va lacci. Fish Cafarro. Jimmy the Weasel. These were guys who'd decided that, for whatever reason, informing on your friends and family was worth the risk that someday while walking alone along the streets of Phoenix or Seattle some guy might come up behind you and put five in your cranium. That was when becoming an informant was highly unusual. The shame of being labeled a rat was powerful. Now something had changed. Now there was Gravano, a top boss of the most powerful Mafia family in America, an allegedly stand-up guy, who had one day awakened to discover that it was time to become a friend of the United States government.

Robert from Avenue U was the kind of guy who believed in the whole movie script, that when you swore an oath you swore an oath, that there really were men of honor, that the concept of omerta omerta was to be taken seriously. Guys like Robert Lino were at a loss to explain why Sammy the Bull had flipped over to the government's team. That was why Robert truly favored the notion of spending his days in anonymous old Murray Hill. To have this Gravano turn rat, that was a profoundly disturbing moment for a society of criminals who'd long clung to the ancient notion that telling on your friends was worse than killing them. Once somebody that high up went over to the other side, the whole contraption was on shaky ground. was to be taken seriously. Guys like Robert Lino were at a loss to explain why Sammy the Bull had flipped over to the government's team. That was why Robert truly favored the notion of spending his days in anonymous old Murray Hill. To have this Gravano turn rat, that was a profoundly disturbing moment for a society of criminals who'd long clung to the ancient notion that telling on your friends was worse than killing them. Once somebody that high up went over to the other side, the whole contraption was on shaky ground.

In fact, the Gravano defection was beginning to look like a virus. A month after Gravano turned, Little Al D'Arco, acting boss of the Lucchese family, walked into the FBI even before he was asked. And the federal government's pursuit of Gotti had ramifications for all the five families, especially those who were videotaped meeting with Gotti and his crew. Only those who stayed away preserved the ability to survive the storm caused by Gotti. The bad habits of the self-proclaimed boss of bosses were not going to be mimicked by Robert Lino and the Bonanno family.

In the back room of Katrina's, Robert's a.s.sociates dropped by weekly with envelopes and complaints. He would count money first, then listen to complaints. That was what soldiers did. They collected as much money as they could from as many sources as possible-loan-sharking debtors, gambling debtors, protection debtors-and kicked up a percentage to the skipper, in Robert's case his cousin Frank Lino. In turn Frank kicked up a percentage to the hierarchy. Each week Robert with the sixth-grade education carefully chopped the money up. This was math he could handle. Some weeks were good, some weeks weren't so good.

As for complaints, he spent too much time on those. If there was a dispute with another family, he would take it to his skipper. Sometimes Frank would deal with the issue. Sometimes he'd let Robert handle it himself. On this day, Frank showed up at Katrina's with an issue they both would have to deal with. As always, Frank kept things vague.

He had been at a funeral parlor in Queens for some wiseguy's wake and Sal Vitale, another captain in the Bonanno crime family and the brother-in-law to Ma.s.sino the boss, had approached Frank with a problem that needed repair. Frank's job was to first find a place to eliminate the problem and then find a different place to dispose of the problem. During the entire conversation at the wake, Sal had made a point not to mention the name of the problem. Frank liked to know the names of his problems, so he'd asked around and soon learned from another source the problem's name-Robert Perrino.

Perrino was married to the daughter of a former Bonanno underboss named Nicky Gla.s.ses. He was a superintendent of delivery at the tabloid newspaper, the New York Post New York Post. There he ran a lucrative bookmaking operation, kicking back a percentage to the Bonanno crime family. He also had a leaders.h.i.+p position in the union representing the drivers who dropped newspapers off every morning across New York City. Organized crime liked unions like this because they existed more or less to provide jobs to gangsters who didn't actually have to show up and as a weapon to extort payments for the promise of "labor peace." Newspapers, after all, couldn't exist if the drivers couldn't get them to newsstands on time. Perrino was the Bonanno family's go-to guy at the Post Post, and now the rumor was there was an active investigation of his activities there.

The issue that turned Perrino into a problem was that he was not considered to be a tough guy. It was felt that if he were indicted, he would right away forget all his friends in the Bonanno crime family and realize that the government was his new friend. Especially, it was believed, he would be a problem for Sal Vitale, the Bonanno capo to whom he reported. And now he was Robert Lino's problem.

Frank let it be known that Robert would not have to be the shooter. Frank himself had never done such a thing, always relying on others in his employ. He wasn't interested in making Bobby Lino's son pull the trigger again. All Robert Lino had to do was find a place to get the job done and then a place to get rid of the aftermath. No heavy lifting. Somebody else had already dreamed up a story to get Perrino where they needed him. Perrino would be told he was meeting with Sal Vitale to let him know about the investigation at the Post Post and work it out so he could go on an extended vacation to Florida for a while, until things quieted down. That was the story Perrino would be told to get him to whatever spot Robert Lino would pick. and work it out so he could go on an extended vacation to Florida for a while, until things quieted down. That was the story Perrino would be told to get him to whatever spot Robert Lino would pick.

Robert Lino decided it was time to visit with Anthony Basile, a friend of his who owned a social club on the second floor above his sister's nail salon in a building at 86th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. That would be perfect for disposing of the Perrino problem. Robert had another idea for the disposal issue. Jimmy Labate had a beat-up garage in Staten Island where he stored construction equipment. The lot was in a highly residential neighborhood, with three-family homes right next door where they left the Christmas lights on all year. The garage was perfect. Jimmy could be called upon to get things ready by digging a hole in the floor inside the garage. No one would see what was going on in the middle of the night. Jimmy was desperate to ingratiate himself with the leaders.h.i.+p of the Bonanno family, so he undoubtedly would be happy to help out.

At Katrina's, the cousins Lino agreed the plan was perfect.

Robert Lino sat with his childhood pal, Frankie Ambrosino, in a restaurant a few blocks from the Brooklyn social club over the nail salon, near the 20th Street BMT subway stop he'd picked. He was waiting to fulfill the final task related to the resolution of the problem named Robert Perrino. Apparently picking the spots was not good enough. He also had to partic.i.p.ate in something called cleanup. Cleanup was usually not a job you wanted to do. Usually there was a big mess, and sometimes you had to make the item in need of disposal more disposable. This could involve the use of saws and knives, and usually took quite a while. Unlike Tommy Karate, a specialist at this who enjoyed it, Robert Lino did not, and so when the pay phone in the restaurant rang and the restaurant owner told him the caller was looking for him, he took the call with some apprehension in his gut. It was a guy he knew called Mikey Bats.

Mikey said, "We're ready" and hung up.

Robert called his cousin, Frank, who was sitting in another restaurant down the street, to let him know it was time. Robert and Frank left their respective restaurants and headed down the street.

The plan was simple: Robert and Frankie would enter the club, wrap Perrino in a rug, then walk the package downstairs and around the corner to a car parked and waiting with the key in the ignition. It was a little tricky because the stairs. .h.i.t the sidewalk very close to a subway exit, and it would likely be somewhat complicated to explain to pa.s.sing commuters what precisely was going on if they happened upon two guys carrying a rug in the middle of the night. However, cousin Frank was going to watch the entrance and signal when the coast was clear.

Simple. Ch.o.r.eographed in every way. Someone else would actually pull the trigger, and when the cleanup crew arrived, that guy would already be gone. That way fewer people knew who did what. It was important-no, essential-that things go smoothly, because the cops had discovered the body of a guy named Sammy in the trunk of a car in Queens just six weeks earlier, so the FBI was watching the Bonanno family closely. Failure was not an option. Expectations were high.

Robert and Frankie pa.s.sed the 20th Street subway exit, the green globe s.h.i.+ning in the warm May night. It was a perfect night for people to be out. Large groups could emerge from the mouth of the underground at any minute. The two men walked up the stairs and opened the door of the club.

They practically tripped over the body on the floor. There were a bunch of guys standing around looking at the body. It lay right by the entrance, facing the bar. It was obvious the guy had been shot the minute he'd stepped inside. Blood was oozing from his head. The gun that had been used to shoot him lay next to the body. And there was one more little detail that caught Robert Lino off guard. The guy lying on the floor was still alive. He was breathing and then moaning and twitching.

One of the guys in the room had an ice pick in his hand. He jammed it in the moaning guy's ear and the guy stopped twitching and breathing. The ice pick guy took the gun and put it in his pocket.

Frank Lino left to watch the subway exit. Robert Lino, Frankie Ambrosino, the ice pick guy and the guy who owned the club, Anthony Basile, went to work. Basile produced a rug, and they all rolled the dead guy's body inside, trying not to get blood on their clothes. Then Robert Lino and Frankie and the ice pick guy picked up the body and stood by the door. They looked outside and Frank Lino signaled for them to move. They heaved the body all the way down the stairs and past the subway exit and put it in the back of the car waiting around the corner. They slammed the trunk and everyone breathed a little easier. No one had yet emerged from the subway. Robert Lino and Frankie Ambrosino got in the car and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

Chaos ensued. Now they had to open the trunk, drag the guy in the rug out into the open again, haul him out of there right away. Should they pull another car up next to the one that wouldn't start? Should they just walk the guy in the rug down the middle of the street and hope a bowling team didn't emerge from the mouth of the subway in time to witness this bizarre tableau? First they decided which of the other stolen cars on the scene would make the best vehicle to transport the guy in the rug. Then they went with option one, pulling that car up next to the dead car and quickly transferring the bulky rolled up rug and all its contents into the trunk of the second car. During the entire frantic procedure, no one stepped out of the subway, proving once again that timing is everything.

Cousin Frank followed in a second car as they drove over the Verrazano Bridge into Staten Island. They paid the toll and headed toward the property owned by Jimmy Labate. As they entered the neighborhood, the lead car pulled over and Frank Lino followed. Jimmy Labate was waiting at the chain-link gate and waved them inside. They backed the car up to the garage and heaved the body out and onto the garage floor. In the back corner of the garage the concrete floor had been broken up and there was a big hole in the dirt underneath. Jimmy had a fresh batch of concrete ready to go.

Basile left to go back to his club to clean up the mess. The rest of them-Robert, Frankie, the ice pick guy and Jimmy Labate-stuffed the body inside a fifty-five-gallon steel drum and Jimmy poured concrete on top to seal it. They then lowered the container into the big hole in the corner of the garage. Jimmy had already set up a rectangle of wooden planks all around the hole to hold the cement in place. He dumped some dirt on top of the hole, leveled it off, and poured concrete on top of the whole affair. Robert Lino and Frank Ambrosino left as Jimmy began smoothing out the top to make it look like this slab of concrete in the corner of the garage actually belonged there.

Robert Lino had never actually met Robert Perrino. Robert did not know his wife and children, had never discussed the Knicks with the guy, had no idea whether Perrino would, in the end, turn into a rat or remain a stand-up guy. At this moment, it didn't really matter. Robert was part of Perrino's end, and also knew the precise location in the city of New York of Perrino's final resting place. Perrino would now be with Robert Lino forever, along with Louis Tuzzio and Gabe Infanti.

Robert Lino sat in yet another restaurant, this one in midtown Manhattan, waiting for Jimmy Labate. By now, Robert was making good money in a number of ventures and didn't need this aggravation. He was a floor manager at a strip club called Wiggles in Queens where cash flowed like rain in Seattle. He was overseeing the bookmaking operation for the Bonanno group's boss, Ma.s.sino, whom he never referred to by name but instead tugged on his left ear to let everybody know without really knowing who he was discussing. He had a driver, Angelo, who accompanied him everywhere and opened the door for him when he pulled up to the curb. Mostly things were going good for Robert, with a few exceptions. Jimmy Labate was one of those exceptions.

Today in the restaurant Robert from Avenue U once again found himself addressing a Jimmy Labate situation. Lino sat across the table from a contractor who had a dispute with Jimmy. He was sure that Jimmy was in the wrong, as he was so often, but he had to hear the story from both sides. Of course, it didn't help matters that Jimmy was supposedly "with" him and that he was also late for the meeting.

Being a soldier in an organized crime family was sometimes like being the princ.i.p.al of an unruly high school. Today's Jimmy Labate dispute centered on Jimmy Labate's interpretation of certain rules that Jimmy insisted existed. Jimmy was always looking to get paid, so he decided to put some of his guys in no-show jobs on a hotel renovation in Manhattan. One day he decided to show up at the hotel and make his position clear. He pulled up in his Lincoln with four guys and strutted in, ordering the contractor to put all four guys on the payroll or there'd be problems. The four guys started knocking things over, making a big mess. The contractor said okay, okay, I can't afford four guys but I'll take two. That seemed reasonable. Most guys would think it was reasonable. Even Jimmy-who was only reasonable on occasion-agreed. The two guys went on the payroll, and that was that.

Only it wasn't. Instead, Jimmy showed up a few days later with the other two guys and said you have to put them on anyway. The contractor was furious, so he decided to go straight over Jimmy's head and take his situation to Robert Lino. Everyone told him Robert was reasonable and fair, which was why the contractor now sat across the table in the restaurant in Midtown, waiting for Jimmy Labate.