When I was fifteen, Uncle Morty suggested I stay with him and my grandmother (as I’ve noted, Morty still lived at home) in Brooklyn for the summer and work for him at the El Caribe. He gave me real responsibilities, like signing up new members and collecting money from the restaurant and bar. During the slow times in the summer, I would be invited to sit with Gaspipe or gangsters like Roy DeMeo, Anthony Senter, Joey Testa, and Frank Lastorino, a kind of Murderer’s Row of gangsters, like the 1950s Yankees batting lineup, only these guys really were murderers. This was when I first heard the name Roy Cohn, the infamous New York attorney who worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare and later was a lawyer for many mobsters—including Donald Trump. But I was just a kid, and I didn’t see any of the connections, or perils.
During the summer of 1980, at age fourteen, I got an up-close look at how the mob really operated. One glorious sunny day, the El Caribe swim club was packed, the Olympic-sized pool overflowing with members and their families, the twenty cabanas filled with Brooklyn wise guys smoking cigars and enjoying giant platters from the restaurant. The food and booze were plentiful and some folks were getting more than a little tipsy, with this one guy floating around in the pool on his back, obviously drunk, when he decided it would be hilarious to take off his swimsuit. The exhibitionist was floating around butt naked, thinking he was funny, until a short, stocky, muscular Italian-looking man wearing a white wife beater-type shirt with a huge, primitive tattoo reaching from his shoulder to his elbow took offense.
“Hey, asshole,” the wise guy said. “Put your fucking pants on. My wife and kids are in the pool.”
The drunken idiot just laughed and rolled over to display his lily-white bare ass. The wise guy was standing right next to me and I knew immediately that the drunk had made a major mistake. I admit I was scared because I could tell something was going to happen. Sure enough, in the blink of an eye, the wise guy pulled a handgun from his pocket and shot the drunk in the ass. Holy shit! There was pandemonium as everyone panicked and I went to the loudspeaker to tell members to get out of the pool. There was a streak of blood in the water as the drunk floated in the pool moaning and the police and an ambulance were called.
As I stood there watching the crowd disperse, another wise guy type came over to me and tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a hard look. I had been an eyewitness to the whole scene. I had seen the shooter and could identify him, of course, and that was what this tough-looking man had come to talk to me about.
“Listen kid, you’re one of us,” he said in a thick Brooklyn accent. “You saw nothing. You know nothing.”
I nodded.
“Good boy,” he said. “Remember what I said.”
The man patted me on the shoulder and left with the shooter, the pair disappearing into the crowd. The NYPD turned up that afternoon and asked questions of the members who were still at the El Caribe, but they got no leads. When the detectives asked me what happened, I said I hadn’t seen a thing. I didn’t say a word. It was partly out of fear; no way was I going to go against Brooklyn gangsters who were obviously prepared to use violence at the slightest provocation. But mostly it was a sense of admiration I had for the men and how they lived. The drunk had stepped way out of line, pulling off his swim trunks with hundreds of women and children in the pool, and the wise guy had taken the law into his own hands, rough justice that made sense to me intuitively. I also liked how his friend watched out for him. The more I thought about what happened, the more I admired their friendship and loyalty and way of seeing the world.
A couple of days later, as I was working at the pool, a tough-looking man I had never seen before turned up at the El Caribe and caught my eye and motioned for me to talk to him. I walked over to a private area in a hallway off the pool. I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about.
“I said nothing,” I said.
“I know,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “You’re a good kid.”
He handed me two envelopes, one thick with cash, the other less so. “One is to cover the cost of the cleanup,” he said. “And this one is for you.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For being loyal,” he said.
With that, the tough guy left, and I never saw him again. As I counted my money—$500 in twenties, major cash to a kid—I was hooked on everything that gesture contained, in my well-off white suburban teenage boy way. I was like the young Henry Hill character in Goodfellas, fetching drinks and lighting cigarettes for the Lucchese crime family—which was actually the exact crew that hung out at the El Caribe and was fictionalized in Scorsese’s movie. I loved the swagger and strut, the way the rules didn’t apply to them, the tough talk and cursing, but most of all, how feared they were.
All through high school, I flipped pizzas during the summer at the El Caribe, or I worked by the pool, or I helped track the finances. Eventually I asked Morty if he wanted to open an ice cream stand and sell cones to the customers, splitting the profits fifty-fifty. I made a mint from that business, working long hours all summer to save for the upscale cars I started to buy and eventually import from Europe. Porsches were a particular favorite, but I would drive anything, the nicer the ride, the better.
My uncle ran a car service for members of the El Caribe, to do errands or pick up and drop off family members, partnering with a Russian gangster who hung around the club. Sometimes I would drive the Mercedes for wise guys who used the service, to pick up money as a side hustle. One day, a wise guy named Anthony Senter called me over and said he wanted me to take a ride with him. I was delighted to do so, and I followed his instructions as he guided me through Mill Basin into a commercial district where Italian-American stores and boutiques lined the streets. Anthony was part of the Gemini Lounge outfit, a crew attached to the Lucchese crime family and Gaspipe Casso that was responsible for as many as 200 murders over the years, including whacking a Russian gangster named Vladimir Reznikov, the significance of which I would learn later. In mob circles in Brooklyn, Senter was a kind of prince, one of the most lethal of the wise guys.
That day, Anthony was pure glamour to me as I followed him into a fine clothing store. It was a high-end menswear place, with thousand-dollar ankle-length leather jackets and merino sweaters starting at prices over $500 apiece. I’d never seen clothes that expensive, so I was amazed when Anthony started building up a big pile of jackets and suits and sweaters. He was a decade older than me, but a really sharp dresser who prided himself on his appearance: slicked-back hair, tight silk suit, Italian designer shoes shined to a gleam. I couldn’t believe that he would spend so much money in one place on clothes, until I discovered that he wouldn’t. The anxious, probably terrified owner was watching Senter carefully, fetching him different sizes and colors and making sure he was pleased, until the mobster decided he’d had enough and he ordered me to take tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise outside and put them into the trunk of the Mercedes—without pulling out his credit card or even hinting that he was going to pay.
I was standing flabbergasted on the sidewalk when Anthony told me to pick a sweater for myself; we were around the same size. Then he handed me a full-length black Armani leather jacket, worth at least a grand.
“It’s a gift from me for you,” Anthony said.
“I can’t,” I said, not sure what to do or say. Clearly there was some kind of racket going on: extortion, protection money, maybe a gambling debt, who knew? Should I take part in this shakedown, an impressionable Jewish teenager who was indeed very impressed?
Senter gave me a hard look. “Listen, kid, if someone gives you something you take it. Understand?”
I did: you couldn’t say no to these men. To turn down a gift was an insult to his honor and generosity. Gestures mattered to tough guys, and they didn’t want to be doubted or have aspersions cast on their conduct, particularly not by some kid. In this way, I was learning another language, one with it
s own grammar and syntax, not to mention pitfalls and perils.
I took the black Merino sweater and the black leather jacket, which made me look like a hit man when I wore it, and treasured these gifts for years. A couple of years later, I read in the New York Post that Anthony and his partner Joey Testa were convicted of murder, and he’s currently serving life at Allenwood, Pennsylvania—the traditional mobbed-up federal facility that was also portrayed in Goodfellas. I guess there’s more than a little irony in us both ending up in prison—but maybe that was predictable. At the time, Anthony seemed to me much more than just a Brooklyn tough guy taking what he wanted; the mob’s rules were hard, hidden, probably hypocritical, but very attractive to me.
Around this time, my family started to notice that my mannerisms and personality were changing. I was strutting and talking in ‘dems and ‘dos like a Brooklyn mobster, only I was wearing polo shirts with upturned collars and sailing shoes like any other middle-class white suburban kid from a well-off family in the ’80s. My parents didn’t find my new affect cute or funny. To the contrary, they weren’t going to tolerate a wannabe gangster strolling around the house ignoring the rules and pretending to be involved in an elaborate criminal enterprise. I was playacting, of course, but they took this seriously. My dad was a doctor and my mother cared about how the community viewed our family; the Cohens were respectable, not mob-affiliated.
One night my father called me into his bedroom.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said—only I said it with an imitation wise-guy attitude, to his dismay.
“Cut it out,” he said. “The whole mafia, gangster thing. You’re not one of them. You’ll be a surgeon like me, or a lawyer like your Uncle Ralph. Okay?”
“Sure, Pop,” I said, as I kissed him on the forehead.
But, in truth, his admonition went in one ear and out the other. In my heart, I was determined to continue to be the new self that I was constructing. I would behave well around my family, and I would be a good kid who worked hard and got decent grades and went to a decent college. I wasn’t sweating bullets to get into the best possible school, though, not like the worker bees in my high school; I was interested in succeeding in life, not amassing prestigious degrees and joining exclusive fraternities. I was like Groucho Marx—I didn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. I knew I would go to law school, just as my parents wished, a typical well-mannered Jewish boy pleasing his family. Inside, though, I belonged to another tradition: the Tough Jew. I wanted to be like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and Roy Cohn—or Downtown Burt Kaplan hanging out by the pool at the El Caribe. I liked how wise guys moved, talked, thought. I liked how they resolved issues and commanded a room. I would practice law, I determined as a kid, but I’d practice it like a gangster.
Chapter Four
Laura
My apprenticeship as a yuppie wannabe has sparked a sea of conspiracy theories, perhaps none more crazy or ill-founded than the imagined guilt by association because of my proximity to certain Russian criminals in the 1980s. Allow me to set the record straight.
One of the regulars at the El Caribe was a Russian gangster and businessman named Marat Balagula. He often conducted business at the El Caribe, in the health club my uncle set up on the lower level, so I saw him all the time. He was a tough-looking guy, well built, with shark-like eyes, and someone definitely not to be trifled with; he was the boss of the Russian crime syndicate in Brooklyn, a very serious force at the time. Like so many others at the El Caribe, Balagula was connected with Lucchese boss Gaspipe Casso and together they ran an illegal “tax” scam skimming two cents for every gallon of gasoline the Russian mob sold from scores of Brooklyn gas stations—one of the most lucrative swindles the mafia ever concocted, netting millions upon millions.
In those years, there were lots of kids of Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union growing up in Brooklyn and Long Island, and they formed a part of my social group. During this time I once or twice ran across a Russian émigré kid named Felix Sater, whom I’ll discuss in detail in due course, but I barely knew him as a kid, no matter the fevered speculation about our Russian real estate connections in later years. It also happened that I was friendly with Marat Balagula’s daughter Malavena, a pretty Jewish girl who also lived in the Five Towns. Her family’s house was in Hewlett Harbor, an expensive area by the water, and the Balagula family definitely lived in style. One evening, I was at Malavena’s place with a bunch of other well-off Jewish kids for a party. By this time I was a student at American University, in Washington, DC, and I was back home for the summer break before my sophomore year, running my ice cream concession at the El Caribe and hanging out with friends. I was also unattached.
That night our gang went out to a nightclub called Sprat’s on the Water, and I started talking to a young girl named Laura Shusterman. She was gorgeous, seventeen years old, a rising senior at Kew-Forest School in Queens, a prestigious prep school that had once educated a boy then called Donny Trump, until his father lost patience with his bad behavior and worse attitude and enrolled him in a military school upstate. There was nothing romantic between Laura and me at the time, but I liked her a lot. After that night, Laura’s best friend called and asked what I thought of her. I told her that Laura was the kind of girl you marry, not someone you just fool around with.
As I went back to college in Washington, DC and eventually graduated from American University, I worked at the El Caribe during the summers but I always had other ways to make a buck. Scalping tickets was one way I learned to earn serious cash. The business was simplicity itself: buy seats at face value and sell high, the higher the better. It happened that I knew the guy at Ticketmaster who had first access to the best seats for the best acts coming through New York: Michael Jackson, Elton John, the Rolling Stones. I would buy a couple dozen super-premium seats, front and center, and then wait for the show to sell out (usually very quickly). Then I set about marketing them to the high rollers and wise guys at the El Caribe, as well as anyone who wanted the most coveted seats for the most coveted shows. In short, I was an opportunist, an impulse that I took to its furthest limits in pushing for the ultimate opportunist to take over the White House.
As I’ve said, another business I went into was importing high-end European cars. At the time, there was a real arbitrage between European and American prices for sports cars like Porsches and Ferraris. I partnered with a buddy in college and we’d front the money to buy a couple of cars from Italy or Germany, arrange for them to be shipped to the Port of New Jersey, then sell the vehicles to wealthy folks. While other college kids were hitting frat party keggers and writing home for their allowance, I was making bank on my own.
In truth, I was an indifferent student at American University. Ever the dutiful son, I made sure that I passed and didn’t burden my parents with excess tuition or the fear that I would drop out. But I wasn’t motivated by literature or music or the other pursuits of a liberal arts student; I was biding my time, ticking the boxes I knew were necessary to get to the life I was imagining for myself back in New York City as an attorney and entrepreneur.
For law school, I chose the Thomas Cooley Law School—or I really should say it chose me, as it was the easiest school to get into in the entire nation, so I qualified. I figured that it didn’t matter if you went to Harvard or Yale or Stanford for law school; all that mattered was that you were able to pass the bar exam. Once you passed, all admitted attorneys were given the same title: Counselor.
By the time I graduated from law school and moved back to the city, my little brother Bryan was studying at New York University and he had a new girlfriend, also an undergraduate at the college. Bryan told me that his girlfriend had a friend that I should meet; she was great, he said, very pretty and smart and she was like an older sister to his girlfriend. She was three years younger than me and she worke
d in fashion and lived in Queens; she was Ukrainian by birth, like Bryan’s girlfriend. He gave me her number, but I didn’t do anything about it. I was dating other girls and chasing around the nightclubs of Manhattan, and I was extremely busy trying to establish my law practice as a personal injury litigation expert. My business model was to accumulate as many cases as possible and settle them as quickly as possible, but what I was really doing was learning how to negotiate and conduct business in New York City, which was the equivalent of learning how to knife fight with gangsters—only these mobsters were wearing suits and ties.
The gangster reference isn’t made casually: the insight is central to understanding me, but also Donald J. Trump. At the time, the fascination with the mafia, evidenced in movies like The Valachi Papers and The Godfather, had morphed into a national obsession with organized crime. Mobsters like John Gotti were in the news every day and movies like Goodfellas packing theaters. The tabloids were filled with stories about wise guys getting whacked—lots of them my old heroes from the El Caribe—but something more pervasive was happening in the business circles I longed to inhabit. The cultural markers of the tough New York real estate operator were shifting, with Donald Trump at the forefront, at least as he portrayed himself in The Art of the Deal. Business in New York has always been hard-edged, with the opening bid in negotiations typically starting with an exchange of “fuck you” and the threat of litigation. No tactic or ruse was too low, including preying on the weak or vulnerable—in fact, that became Trump’s business model, perhaps because he’d gone broke so many times himself, only to be bailed out by his Daddy, that he knew just how defenseless the insolvent really are.
Disloyal: A Memoir Page 6