Lisa’s neighborhood of Galewood was situated across the way from Elmwood Park, bordered by Harlem Avenue. Like Elmwood Park, Galewood was home to a lot of gangsters. You could easily tell an Outfit house by the wrought-iron fence and the statue in the front yard of a Roman soldier or the Madonna. The lawn was manicured with cropped spiraling bushes and motion detectors installed over the front porch. While Lisa’s family loathed the gangster reputation of the Outfit and their ways, I guess I was such a nice guy, and so much fun, I was an easy sell.
I kept mum about the double life I led working on my father’s crew. While out with my buddies and girlfriends, I would often abruptly say, at any time, “Gotta go.”
I would disappear for hours, days, only to return to my friends as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Most of my friends assumed that I was fulfilling my family obligations while in reality I was secretly working for my father collecting gambling debts and street taxes, maintaining and collecting juice loan payments, keeping books, and helping Uncle Nick.
During the years my father groomed me, dating back to high school, we did our bookwork around town, places where we kept our guns and work cars hidden and money bundled and secretly coded. We would meet on a Saturday night; I couldn’t drive directly to my father’s house. We used other people’s homes, basements, or garages as our “offices.” We frequently met in my grandma’s basement. I’d arrive in the middle of the night, park a few blocks away, and walk to a predetermined location at around two in the morning. There we’d do our weekly bookwork. Saturday night was specifically chosen by my father to keep his sons off guard and out of their social circles. How do you tell a girl you’re out collecting gambling debts or scooping up quarters from the back room of an adult bookstore?
The cash collected for juice loans and gambling bets was stashed in drop sites throughout the city. My father stashed money in safe-deposit boxes around town. They were in my name, my brothers’ names, and my uncle’s name. Every so often we’d go in and “change it out,” that is, rotate it for new money. I’d go with him. We’d go in, rotate the new cash in, and come out with the old. My father was very precise with money. He meticulously counted, stacked, bundled, and marked everything by the amount. He knew the exact count and where things were supposed to be. He kept a long list of the drop spots.
Some of the cash was stashed at the “Calabrese Cottage,” our summer home in Wisconsin near Lake Geneva. There we’d fill garbage cans or sealed drums full of money. We’d put a quilt on the bottom with some mothballs, stash some money, layer in some more quilts and mothballs, and then more money, until we filled up the drum. We could stash a hell of a lot of cash in fifty-five-gallon drums. We’d put household objects around the drum to make it blend in. Then we’d set our alarm system, arming the garage. In addition to Lake Geneva, a stash of cash might be anywhere: in a garage full of my father’s classic cars, or a garage in Stone Park.
Everything was accounted for. We even had a couple of hiding places in my grandma’s house. I knew where things were, and although my grandmother didn’t know what we were up to, she liked to snoop. We’d set traps to find out if she was snooping around. Once when an envelope was discovered left open, we knew that Grandma had struck. We would put the money on a higher shelf so that she couldn’t reach it.
Whenever my father, uncle, and I would meet to tally up the weekly accounts, there was the chance we were being watched by law enforcement. Whenever we had surveillance on us, we went into red alert. We had a code word that we used to let one another know if we were being followed. “My feet are bothering me” meant that I was being followed. For instance, if I said, “They’re hurting me real bad,” that meant there were a lot of FBI cars following me. The other code word for the FBI, “Scarpe Grande,” which in Italian means “big shoes,” was a reference to the shoes FBI agents wore.
At three o’clock in the morning, I’d walk out the back door of my house, head down the alley, and cut through a gangway. I would walk two blocks to where my father would be parked with the lights and ignition off. He would drive us around to make sure we weren’t being followed. We’d park the car two blocks from “the office” and walk through the gangways, alleys, and backyards.
To keep one step ahead of the law, my father maintained a series of aliases and IDs, backed up by phony driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards, armed forces IDs, and a badge and picture ID from the “American Investigation Security Bureau.” A few of the IDs he purchased from magazine ads. The Indiana driver’s licenses he applied for in person.
The idea was that with over a million dollars stashed, and with a bevy of identities to choose from, my father could “disappear” within a matter of hours under the name of James L. Traviso, Shelley Morris, or Bruno Adams. Other aliases actually had roots in the Calabrese and Hanley family trees. Like Primo Massie, a cousin on my father’s mother’s side. Or Tony Cononi, an uncle on his mother’s side. Or Eugene Vincent McLaughlin, an Irish cousin of my mother’s.
The crew frequently changed offices. During the time I worked for the city, I split my remaining hours working for the crew. Because I was working two jobs and kept long hours, it was difficult to get on a normal sleep schedule. One time I overslept. And I panicked.
I knew my father was waiting at our designated spot. I figured he’d wait ten minutes, then go ahead on his own. So I got up, ran out the back door, and headed down the street. As I suspected, he wasn’t there. I got into my car, drove around awhile to make sure I was clean, parked a few blocks away, and walked to my grandmother’s basement.
As I reached the bottom of my grandmother’s basement stairs, I turned the corner to find my father standing there.
“Dad, I’m sorry. I overslept.”
To which he unleashed a volley of punches. Boom. Boom. Boom. Lefts and rights to the side of the head. Rather than hit back, I fell to the floor, trying to protect myself. I saw the glassy stare in his eyes.
Uncle Nick was sitting in a chair nearby. He couldn’t believe what his brother was doing even though he wasn’t immune to a beating now and then himself. Yet he didn’t break it up. He simply shook his head. “You sick motherfucker,” he muttered to his brother, then walked out and went upstairs.
A few moments later, my father stopped punching me and said, “Listen, motherfucker. Get here on time! Stop disobeying me. I can’t believe …”
“Okay, okay, okay, okay.”
“Get up, go upstairs, wash your face, and come back down here.”
I went upstairs, washed my face, and came back down, and everything was fine, like nothing happened. For the rest of the morning, my father was the “business dad,” going through the numbers. My uncle didn’t return that night. Later, he and I talked. We agreed that we couldn’t take it anymore. Not only did we worry about the FBI, but now we had to worry about taking a beating, the mood my father was in, or what personality mode he was in at the moment.
Lisa and I were married on September 4, 1988. Before we entered the courthouse to get our marriage license, Lisa was presented with a blank prenuptial agreement, compliments of my father. Either sign the document or we don’t get a marriage license. As she signed the prenup, she could see that I was embarrassed.
An early red flag came up when she and I discussed wedding invitation responses over the phone. As soon as Lisa began naming names—like LaPietra—I would nervously cut the conversation short. I later told her not to name names on the phone in case a third party was listening. Lisa figured that my dad was some loan shark or bookie; she had no idea that she was in the presence of something far worse.
We had a small wedding by gangster standards at Al’s in Cicero. About two hundred guests were invited, compared with the five hundred or more who would attend a standard Outfit wedding. Consistent with his philosophy of blending in, my father wanted the wedding to be low-key, so we invited only a tight circle of friends. While not wanting to offend high-ranking Outfit members, it was important not
to attract the press and law enforcement. My father’s excuse for not inviting too many Outfit guys was that I wanted a small wedding, and there wasn’t enough room at the hall.
Invariably the police camped outside to film and take photographs. There was a great deal of food and liquor. Lisa and I paid for the wedding, although my father gave our guests the impression that he had footed the bill. Later Uncle Nick told me that there was word on the street that a lot of guys felt offended, and it showed. No envelopes were given to me from those who weren’t invited.
Lisa anticipated joining our colorful Calabrese clan with its herd of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and a myriad of cousins. But later she learned that none of our family really liked one another, and there was constant sniping. My father complained about the clothes Lisa wore and that she didn’t show enough respect.
After our marriage, Lisa became versed in the quirky gangster lifestyle of Melrose Park. Fur coats with the wrong monogrammed initials. Hot clothes sold out of the homes of gangsters’ wives. When Rocky Infelise was arrested for racketeering, he was photographed wearing the same green Eddie Bauer hunting jacket that everybody else wore, swiped from a hijacked forty-footer.
Lisa liked going to the house of Ruth Aleman, wife of Harry Aleman, along with my mother. They found lots of good stuff. Lisa was exhilarated. Here was a girl scared to break the law, but she didn’t think anything of going over to Ruth’s house to buy hot clothes. Ruth had racks of clothes set up in a bedroom. She kept the price tags on her merchandise, and we paid 50 percent of what was printed on the tag. Ruth fenced a lot of merchandise, and she had runners going into stores doing special-order grab-and-runs.
Rather than buy our own home, Lisa and I rented houses owned by my father. My relationship with my father was often erratic and confusing, and especially embarrassing whenever he would treat outsiders better than his sons. When Johnny Marino, a neighborhood friend, bought one of my father’s rentals, my old man arranged for the financing and a job promotion with the city.
“It’s funny,” Marino said to me. “I’m paying six hundred dollars a month for a mortgage and you’re paying seven hundred dollars rent. I like your father, but it seems like he treats me better than he treats you and your brothers.”
When Lisa and I hosted a party for our daughter Kelly’s first birthday, we invited my father and Diane to Papa Milano’s, a Near North Side restaurant. He was seated with one of his associates, ordering special Italian dishes while drinking a more expensive wine than the rest of the party. Afterward, he accused Lisa and me of being big shots for staging such an elaborate birthday party. The next week, he raised our rent two hundred dollars a month.
One day my father stopped by the house. He was angry because I wasn’t available and was home babysitting my daughter. As I opened the door—boom!—I took the two shots to the face just as Kelly rushed up to give Dad a hug and a “Hi, Poppi.”
My father saw the confusion on Kelly’s face. “Laugh like we’re joking around,” he hissed to me.
One night I came home late, avoiding the light so Lisa wouldn’t notice my red and swollen face. At first she thought I might have been in a fight. But then Grandma Sophie casually explained to Lisa that my father regularly hit his sons and his brother Nick. After that, Lisa stopped asking questions and would only shake her head in disgust.
During one Christmas, the family played Pictionary, with my father doling out the cards. With Dad on the opposing team, Lisa drew a picture of a “sacred cow.” As she drew a church, a cross, and a cow, my father shouted out, “Scared cow!”
“All right,” Lisa said. “Who cheated? And who doesn’t know how to read?”
Kurt and I exchanged nervous glances, and tried to give Lisa the high sign to shut up and let it go. My father could blow up at any time.
Kurt’s wife, Angela Lascola, became Lisa’s buddy. They both realized that Kurt and I were at odds with our dad. Angela and Lisa confided in each other. “You’d have to be in this family and live in their world to believe it,” Angela told Lisa. And she was right.
Lisa noticed that Christmas brought out the best in my father.
Just as she saw the violence, she saw kindness. He would go to the neighborhood churches and collect addresses of needy families. He’d put together boxes of food, a turkey, and canned goods and include an envelope of cash. He’d drop off the boxes himself, though he preferred to give anonymously.
But you’d wonder, Is he doing it for the families or to soothe himself? Does the good balance out the evil? There was that side of him, one of pure kindness, and that’s why we held out hope. You’d think the kindness and good deeds were a sign of a change coming about.
Then there were the notes. The big joke was whenever Lisa and I came home and there was a note posted on the door: “Frak, call me!” The note had to be from my father. Only he could misspell his and his son’s name that badly.
Throughout our turbulent relationship, I kept my anger bottled up around my wife. Lisa was out one day and got a flat tire. She called me to come help her, but I was busy with my father.
“I can’t come right now,” I whispered in the phone.
“What the hell?” she said. “I’m stranded out here.”
That night at home, I was eating a cheeseburger, and Lisa got in my face.
“Why didn’t you come help me?” I ignored her, so she shoved me. “I’m talking to you!”
I stared blankly at her as I slowly squeezed the cheeseburger. As it oozed through my fingers, Lisa said, “Okay, I’m done talking now.”
I was working with my dad that day and it bothered me tremendously not only that I couldn’t go out and help her, but that I couldn’t tell her that I had just caught a couple of cracks to the face. Lisa got angry and started yelling and hitting me. I tried not to pay attention to her, so I walked out the door. When I returned I told her, “Please don’t ever hit me again. I will never lay a hand on you, so please don’t hit me.”
The Calabrese crew entered the 1990s making up for the money Philly Beans had stolen. At any given time, my father had between five hundred thousand and a million dollars in juice on the street, with collections ranging from 3 to 10 percent per week. Crew members like Ralph Peluso presided over a modest group of bookmaking agents. Peluso’s bookies carried three hundred to five hundred active gamblers. Dino the Greek from Cicero handled additional bookie action and juice for the Chinatown crew, and Ralph Conte and Johnny Nitti contributed their own group of customers. Counting the bookies and the juice loan collectors, my father’s operations had risen to at least a couple dozen crew members earning and working the streets on his behalf or else paying street tax through their own operations.
My father blamed Uncle Nick for letting the Philly Beans Tolomeo situation get out of hand. He was angry at his other crew members, demanding that they contribute out of their weekly take to help make up the difference for his lost income.
Thanks to Philly Beans, the Calabrese crew was now on the federal law enforcement radar. Philly Beans’ cooperation with the Feds gave them fresh information on how my father ran his crew. The FBI needed to stage an undercover investigation to unearth more facts. Agents decided to key in on Matt Russo, who operated an auto repair company on the border of Elmwood Park and River Grove. Russo’s M&R Auto became a regular hangout for the Calabrese family.
The Feds staked out M&R by renting a room across the street, from which to take photographs. Could M&R be just another Outfit front? Elmwood Park Outfit lieutenant Joe “the Builder” Andriacchi, among others, had his car worked on at M&R, proving that even made guys needed an honest mechanic. Russo proved to be the ticket.
My father enjoyed hanging out at Matt’s shop. Matt was viewed as a stand-up guy. In addition to his thriving auto repair shop, Russo was involved in the career of an Elvis impersonator. Matt was seven years older than I, and we became close friends.
Russo soon settled into his own illegal operations when he hired a tow truck driver t
o field the increasing number of calls for towing service. M&R’s new tow truck driver introduced Russo to a grand theft auto scheme that involved making duplicate keys to his customers’ cars. After fixing their cars, once they were back with their owners, the cars would be boosted for easy cash.
Matt boasted to his new driver that he was in tight with our crew and thought that he would get my father’s blessing and slip him a piece of the action while John Fornarelli, a young car detailer, rented the space next door to Russo.
The tow driver paid Russo cash on the spot—two thousand to eight thousand dollars per vehicle. It was not suggested that they chop up the stolen vehicles for parts. The tow truck driver stated he had a source “somewhere down south” who would take the vehicles whole.
After moving dozens of stolen cars, Russo received a visit from the FBI and was taken to a nearby hotel room, where he learned that his tow truck driver was actually an undercover FBI agent. Both Matt and Fornarelli were caught red-handed. In addition to the auto theft ring, the undercover agent had worked out a side deal where Matt and Fornarelli would supply him with a couple of kilos of cocaine and machine guns.
It was time for Russo to play ball and cooperate. But in the scheme of things, the FBI viewed Russo as a small fish and had their eyes on a bigger prize: the Calabrese crew.
Matt freaked. Two thoughts jumped into his head. First, setting up my father could prove fatal, and second, my dad and I hadn’t done anything wrong. We knew nothing about the tow truck scam. My father had warned Russo against doing anything illegal in his presence that would draw heat. The Bureau reminded Matt that he needed to save himself. Russo reluctantly agreed to wear a wire to help the FBI put us away.
Oblivious at the time to what was really going down, I wanted to get into the detailing business. I found out that crew member Ralph Conte could get me valuable car dealer accounts if I could locate a garage to set up shop.
Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family Page 11