In the World

by Richard Stratton

  “Put that thing away!” he growls at me. “You gotta get me outta this place, Richie. These doctors are gonna kill me.”

  “Joe . . . How am I supposed to do that? Are they ready to release you?”

  “Never mind! What the fuck’s the matter with you? Since when do you need permission? Go get a wheelchair and get me outta here or we’re finished.”

  There’s one thing about these old mob bosses: when they give an order, it has such gravitas, such authority that I’m sure comes from years of having given serious orders to serious men in grave circumstances, that one does not wish to refuse such an order for too little. Might as well give it a try. I go nab a vacant wheelchair, wheel it to Joe’s bedside, lift the old man out of his bed, and place him the chair. Operating under the tried-and-true method of the bold way is the best way, simply acting like I know what I’m doing and therefore I must have permission, I wheel Joe onto an elevator and take us down to the front entrance. When asked by a hospital staff member to see his release papers, Joe gestures to him to clear our way through the main lobby.

  “Don’t worry about my fuckin’ release papers. Just get outta the way,” the old man snarls. “I’m leavin’.”

  I go for the rental car, drive around to the entrance, and, lo and behold, Joe is still there sitting in the wheelchair, and he has even solicited the attendant’s help in pulling off his escape. Once the attendant and I load Joe into the front passenger seat of the car, I ask him, “Where to, Joe?”

  “I’m hungry,” he says. “Take me to the House of Pancakes.”

  When we get there, I can’t manage to get Joe out of the car and into the IHOP by myself.

  “Never mind,” Joe snaps. “Just go in, get the pancakes. We’ll take ’em home.”

  WHEN I TELL the editor at GQ magazine about my rekindled relationship with Joe, he’s sold. He gives me an assignment to write an article. “Oldest Living Mafioso Tells All” is published in the September 2001 issue. Marc Levin, Mark Benjamin, and I begin filming a series of interviews with Joe, first at his daughter-in-law’s home in Miami, then in New York during a nostalgic trip to the Lower East Side neighborhood around Stanton Street where Joe was born and grew up, and later at some of the locations in New Jersey he frequented when he became a major bootlegger and powerful ambassador at large with the Genovese Crime Family.

  Joe’s wife of over sixty years, Frances Paxton, a Southern girl and former Miss America, died while Joe was back in prison on the parole violation. His son, Joe Junior, I learn, is a fugitive. And Joe’s daughter wants nothing to do with him. Except for his daughter-in-law, Olga, the old man is alone in the world. Even while we were still locked up—when Joe first told me parts of his story and I read his file and learned of his background while I worked on his case, ultimately getting him released from prison—Joe denied any involvement in the narcotics business. He is so old school, so in denial about some aspects of his personal criminal history and about the mob in general that he’ll admit to any number of murders, but narcotics? No, never; Joe will never cop to having dealt or imported heroin, and yet both his cases—his arrest and conviction in Texas and later when Joe was implicated in the French Connection investigation in New York City while he was in custody at the penitentiary in Atlanta, which resulted in his being tried and found guilty a second time—both convictions were for importation of narcotics. The parole violation that got him sent back to prison was also part of an investigation into organized crime heroin trafficking. Yet Joe remains steadfast in claiming that he was hounded by the Justice Department under Bobby Kennedy, pursued, arrested, and convicted because, as Joe says, Bobby Kennedy believed Joe had information about his brother Jack’s killing (which, I’m certain, he does) and not because Joe was a major narcotics trafficker, professional killer, and a high-level member of the Genovese Crime Family.

  At one point early in our renewed collaboration, while sitting in the rear garden at Olga’s home in Miami, I ask Joe what he would like to do, and whom he would most like to see in these twilight years of his long and illustrious life of crime. Joe tells me, “I want to go back to New York and eat some decent food,” and, he says, “I want you to bring me Arnold Stone.”

  Arnold Stone? I expected he would want to see his son or his daughter. But no, Joe wants to see Arnold Stone, the former Justice Department prosecutor under Robert Kennedy who, Joe claims, knows the truth of how and why Joe was targeted by the government, why he was hounded until his arrest in Boca Raton, Florida, and then prosecuted—not because of his stature in organized crime, no, but because he refused to cooperate with the government after he fled Cuba and was forced to give up his business interests there and return to the United States, having lost nearly everything. All this, Joe tells me, he can prove because it’s all right there, in the files, in the documents, in the papers he has collected and saved all these years.

  “Where are the papers now, Joe?” I ask him.

  “Ah, this fuckin’ bum,” he says. “When I lost touch with you, Richie . . . when they locked me up, I lost all of my numbers. They took everything. I never would’ve found you, you never woulda found me if it hadn’t been for that girl, Charlie Lucky’s daughter. This other writer comes to me through a lawyer I know, and he says he’s gonna write my story. Now . . . I give him all the boxes. He drives up from Florida in a truck and picks up all the boxes . . . with everything in ’em, all my papers.”

  “Okay, yeah, so . . . where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. He tells me he put ’em in some storage place or something. . . . You gotta ask him. I’ll give you all the information. He never wrote a fuckin’ word, this bum.”

  I MAKE ONE of my periodic trips to Hollywood to pitch the Stassi documentary in search of funding. Sheila Nevins at HBO passed on Joe’s story; apparently, she has an aversion to old men. So far, Marc’s company, Blowback, has been footing the bill. But as we plan to ramp up production, we need additional financing. Back while I was publishing Prison Life magazine, we did a cover story, “Hollywood Goes to Prison,” featuring an interview with Oliver Stone around the time of the release of his film Natural Born Killers. Oliver and I became friends. We met again when we were both guests at the taping of a segment of Bill Maher’s HBO show “Politically Incorrect,” and I usually call Oliver and try to meet with him whenever I am in LA.

  Oliver had been after me to introduce him to legendary ex-convict writer Eddie Bunker. Eddie had also been the subject of a Prison Life cover story and had become a close friend. We devoted one whole issue of the magazine to an excerpt from Eddie’s classic prison novel, Animal Factory. When I call Oliver, he tells me he’s hosting a dinner at a Chinese restaurant and asks me to bring Eddie Bunker. I pick Eddie up at his home in LA, and we drive to the restaurant where we are to meet Oliver. We arrive on time at eight o’clock. The hostess tells us we are the first to arrive and escorts us to a large private dining room. Soon other guests begin to wander in. A fellow who claims to be Oliver’s psychiatrist joins us at the table set for at least twenty guests. Other characters arrive with stories of how they know Oliver, and then several beautiful Asian women join the gathering.

  A good hour and a half after we arrive, Oliver is still nowhere in sight. Eddie is getting impatient. “Fuck this,” he says, “I’m ordering food.” Soon everyone follows suit, and dinner is served. I sit beside a gorgeous young Korean woman named Jayne Ku, who tells me she interviewed Oliver for Korean TV. When she asks me what I’m working on, I tell her about the Joe Stassi project, and she’s fascinated. Koreans, Jayne tells me, love stories about American gangsters. She asks for my number in New York and says she’ll be in touch. Finally, at around 10:30, after Eddie and I have eaten and Oliver still hasn’t shown up, Eddie demands that I take him home. “Enough already,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  Later, past midnight, I am in bed back in my hotel room at the Chateau Marmont when the phone rings. It’s Oliver. “Where are you guys?” he wants to know. “Where’s Bunker? Wh
y did you leave?”

  Before I leave LA, Jayne Ku and I meet for lunch. She takes me home and introduces me to her parents. She says she is in talks with a wealthy Korean, a Mister Lee, whom Jayne thinks might be interested in funding the Joe Stassi documentary. Would I be interested in meeting Mr. Lee? Of course I would. Great, Jayne says, she will set it up.

  The gods of film financing work in mysterious ways. You never know where the money might come from when looking for funding for a film project. You might meet a beautiful Korean woman who has a friend who loves gangster stories. My rule of thumb has become to chase every lead, pursue every possible source for money no matter how unlikely it may seem. When I tell Marc about Jayne Ku and her potential backer, Mr. Lee, Marc is all for following up. So when Jayne calls and asks us to meet her and Mr. Lee at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, we fly down and check in to a hotel. Our first night in Disney World, we have dinner with Jayne and Mr. Lee. He and Jayne would like to meet Joe. Of course, I will arrange it. Last I heard, Joe and his daughter-in-law were in the process of relocating to a new home in Kissimmee, not far from Disney World. Perhaps I can arrange for them to meet Joe while they are both here in Florida.

  Mr. Lee speaks very little English. When Jayne translates, he takes out a packet of $1,000 traveler’s checks, signs all of them, and hands them to Marc. There will be more money, he says, as needed. His one stipulation is that we agree to give Jayne a role as a producer. Yes, by all means, we are more than happy to bring Jayne on. Jayne says she’s ready to relocate to New York to work on the film. But first, of course, Mr. Lee and Jayne want to meet Joe.

  It’s love at first sight. Joe is utterly smitten with the beautiful and gracious Jayne Ku. And she couldn’t be more charming and solicitous. She holds and caresses Joe’s wizened, liver-spotted hands. She gazes into his milky eyes and asks him how he feels.

  “Are you all right, Joe?” she coos. “Can I get you anything?”

  It’s a done deal. Jayne will move to New York right away. Joe also will come to New York to eat some good food and revisit his old haunts while we film his journey back into his past. Mr. Lee will return to South Korea and arrange to have additional funds wired into an account set up for the production; Marc will have his lawyer draw up an agreement.

  All proceeds according to plan until the GQ issue with my article “Oldest Living Mafioso Tells All” is published. Joe demands that I come to see him at Olga’s in Kissimmee immediately. Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin come along to film the showdown. When we arrive at Olga’s, Joe is apoplectic. If he weren’t confined to a wheelchair, if he weren’t nearly a hundred years old and could get to his feet and wrap his gnarled hands around my neck, if he had the strength, he would throttle me. If he had a gun, he would shoot me and bury me in Olga’s backyard.

  “Why, Joe, what did I do?”

  “What did you do? You made me a rat!” Joe rants.

  Made him a rat! Now I am the one who is angry. I made him a rat? I got the old gangster out of prison. I wrote the story he told me, and the story he wanted me to tell. What’s he talking about?

  There is only one way for me to deal with this. I know, at least I believe from past experience with wiseguys and in my previous dealings with Joe that I must not—no, I cannot just sit here and let him berate me. I cannot cower and allow myself to be intimidated by Joe or he will lose all respect for me. I have been called on the carpet. I have been summoned to report to a boss, and only a spirited and equally threatening defense will have any merit in Joe’s eyes.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, I made you a rat? You’re the one who wanted me to tell your story. Not one word I wrote in that article came from anywhere but from you; every fucking word is what you told me, Joe! What you said you did! What you wanted me to tell as your story! How the fuck does that make you a rat?”

  I’m on my feet, in Joe’s face now, and ready to fuck him up no matter how old and infirm he may be. The man insulted me; he won’t get away with it.

  Joe is seated before a folding table on which there is a bowl of soup and a spoon. He’s shaking the tray, rattling the bowl and spoon, barely able to contain his rage. I’m thinking any second he’d going to pick up the bowl and hit me over the head with it, make to gouge my eyes out with the spoon.

  “What’s this?” Joe says and stabs a page of the magazine with his finger. “How could you write this? Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

  He points to photographs of Charlie “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky and to the caption under the pictures that identifies who the men are, and states, “men for whom Stassi worked, and murdered.”

  “How could you write this? Are you crazy? I didn’t murder these men! I loved these men.”

  Oh, Jesus, now I get it. Joe may not have even read the entire article. I don’t know if he can still read given his failing eyesight. But someone, maybe Olga, read him the caption under the photographs, and Joe completely misunderstood what it says.

  “That’s not what it says, Joe. Listen to me. It says that you worked for Meyer and Charlie Lucky, and that you carried out hits for them, under their orders, which is what you told me. The hit on Dutch Shultz. The guy you killed, your best friend, on orders from Meyer and Abe Zwillman. These are stories you told me that are in the article. It doesn’t say you killed Lansky and Luciano; it says you killed for them.”

  We make up and embrace. I tell Joe I love him, and it’s true, I do love the old killer, the multiple murderer, as insane as that may sound. We did time together. I lived in the next cell to Joe for three years, saw more of him day in and day out, and at closer quarters, than perhaps any other person I’ve ever known, including some ex-wives. I sat with him in his cell nearly every night and listened to his stories. When the arthritis in his hands became so painful he couldn’t write legibly anymore, I used to go to his cell in the evening before lockdown and write letters he dictated to his family and friends. He always began with the salutation, “Dear so and so, how are you? As for me, I’m doing good.” His cell was spotless, everything put away in its proper place. He would get down on his hands and knees and clean the floor. Joe did time like a captured enemy general. He never complained. He kept to himself. He rarely associated with the other organized crime prisoners in the joint, and they treated him with the respect due a don of his stature and history. He never mouthed off or bitched to the guards. His one comment to me about staff was, “They treat us better than we would treat them.”

  Much of my affection I feel for the old gangster comes from my own misguided youthful admiration of criminals. Growing up watching The Untouchables on TV and finding Al Capone much more compelling than uptight Eliot Ness. Then of course there are the Francis Ford Coppola Godfather films that further inculcated the myth of the honorable Mafioso. There was that adolescent urge to belong to something larger than myself—a gang, an army, a crime family, a band of brothers who took a vow and would be there beside you and have your back come what may. Joe Stassi was everything the government said he was, and that included being an organized crime member of unique status, trusted and respected by the legendary bosses of the underworld.

  Once Joe understands what I wrote, and after I attack him verbally and threaten to walk out and abandon the project, he tells me to sit down and relax.

  “Bring me Arnold Stone,” he repeats.

  It is a commandment with biblical overtones and one that I am determined to carry out.

  AFTER SOME RESEARCH, I locate Arnold Stone, who is still alive and well and practicing law in Carteret County, North Carolina. When I reach him on the phone and say the name Joe Stassi, he takes a breath.

  “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” Arnold Stone says.

  As well as being a lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor under Bobby Kennedy, Arnold Stone is something of a literary man with some experience in the film business. He co-wrote a one-man play called Secret Honor about Richard Nixon that was performed in Los Angeles at the Ac
tors Theater in 1983 and ran for three weeks Off-Broadway. Secret Honor won Play of the Year and was produced as a film directed by Robert Altman in 1984.

  Arnold Stone is surprised to learn that Joe Stassi is still alive. Would he be willing to come to Florida with me to visit with Joe and let us film the meeting?

  “Why? What on earth for?” Stone asks. I tell him of the magazine article and of our production to make a documentary film about Joe’s life.

  But why, Arnold Stone repeats, why—first of all, why did Joe agree to be involved in such a project? And, secondly, why should he, Arnold Stone, agree to participate?

  “Why?” I say, “Why, in the interests of history.” Of course.

  I go on to tell him that Joe has made certain claims about the government and about why the Justice Department was so interested in capturing him.

  Arnold Stone says, “Well, how about the fact that Stassi was a major figure in organized crime. Joe Stassi was designated a ‘Top Hoodlum’ by the FBI and pursued by the Justice Department in an effort to identify and indict all the major organized crime figures of the era. Organized crime was and still is a threat to the economy and the integrity of our nation. Joe was suspected of firsthand involvement in several organized crime contract killings.”

  Yes, I say, but what about the whole Kennedy thing and Joe’s close association with Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante and the long-whispered theories that those two and others were involved in the assassination of the president and senator? I tell Stone that I have long been good friends with Richard Goodwin, who worked under both Jack and Bobby Kennedy in the White House and who told me that Bobby was convinced the Mafia had a hand in killing his brother.