by Linda Scarpa
Linda really wasn’t an experienced pot smoker like us. She had tried it a few times, but she really wasn’t doing it right. So that night she started smoking, and she still wasn’t doing it right. I told her, “You’ve got to inhale it.” But when she inhaled, she basically coughed her brains out. She nearly puked, but she said she was okay.
We smoked for most of the night. Then she said it was getting close to her curfew so she was going home. I tried to talk her out of it.
“Linda, do not go home like that. Your father is going to pin you out right away.”
I knew her father was involved with the Mafia, but I didn’t know how much he was involved.
“No, I’ll be all right. I’m going to go to Argie’s house.”
Argie was one of our friends. Argie’s parents, especially her father, were really strict, too. I didn’t really like him. So Linda left and we continued our party. Linda didn’t come back, so I figured she must have made it home okay.
But when I got home, my parents were on the phone with Linda’s parents. They were pretty much going at it on the phone. I found out that Larry had picked Linda up at Argie’s and took her home.And her father pinned her out, just as I thought he would. So I got in trouble. I was pretty pissed at Linda because I was convinced that she had ratted me out to her father.
The next day my friends and I were supposed to meet at the indoor Avenue I Flea Market in Brooklyn and then play a game of softball. I was a huge baseball player.
We used to go to the flea market and party in the basement. We used to get in through this staircase that was pretty much broken down. We used to squeeze through the fence and go back there. We were crazy. We would party in places where nobody would even think of going.
My friends and I got wasted and then we decided to go upstairs to the flea market. While we were there, I saw Linda and her mother shopping, but Linda didn’t look too happy. Linda’s mother and I got into an argument. She called me a pothead and said I made her daughter do this and that. But that wasn’t the case—I didn’t make her do anything. And that’s just what I told her mother.
“Who are you calling a pothead? I didn’t make her do anything. She got the weed from you guys, so look who’s talking.”
Big Linda was pissed because I pretty much embarrassed her in front of all the people at the flea market. That’s when she grabbed me by the arm and started shaking me. I sort of pushed her arm off me, but I didn’t push her. She took a couple steps back and started screaming at me. “You just wait,” she said.
We were yelling back and forth. I never started any fights, but I wasn’t a guy you wanted to pick a fight with. Then Linda and her mother left.
My friends and I started walking around the flea market. We were stoned as hell. Then next thing I knew, these two guys came out of nowhere and one of them hit one of my friends in the face. He just jabbed him out.
These guys weren’t dressed like us; they were dressed like gangsters. It was a Saturday or Sunday morning and we were in softball gear and they were wearing Capezios—and when I think about it now—looking like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. So I was thinking these guys weren’t just street thugs.
We started to retaliate and we ended up chasing them out of the flea market. When we got outside, the guys ran over to their car and I saw Linda and her mother in the backseat. My friend Stephen threw a baseball bat at the guys. It hit the back window of the car, shattering the glass. The last thing I heard before the car took off was Linda’s mother screaming at me out the window, “You wait until tonight!”
After that, we went to play softball and everything seemed fine. Later on that night, I was at our apartment building hangout with my group, and we were partying as usual. We ran out of pot, but we knew some guys who used to sell weed at the bowling alley on Avenue I, about two blocks away. It was raining that night; so since I was the most athletic and the fastest, I said, “I’ll go get it. I’ll run.”
So my friends gave me the money. I’m trucking myself along, and about a block or so away, I see three cars with a lot of guys in them—there must have been ten or twelve guys—on the other side of the street. It didn’t look right, but I kept running and didn’t think any more about it.
Then, all of a sudden, a car pulled up next to me. There was a used-car lot on the other side, and there was a big fence. Behind the fence were Dobermans and other guard dogs, so I couldn’t escape that way.
Then one car pulled up behind me and one in front of me. They pretty much boxed me in. I tried to jump over the hood of the car, but it was raining. I made it, but when I hit the roof, I slipped.
The guys were out of the cars by that point. One of them grabbed my leg, and I fell on my head. And they just friggin’ pulverized me. They annihilated me. I ended up with a broken nose, a concussion, two fractured ribs, and the rest of my whole body was bruised everywhere. And my head was so swollen, I looked like the Elephant Man. It was pretty bad. These were grown men. They were dressed like gangsters and they all had guns. I was only sixteen.
When they first got me, they beat me up outside. It started getting a little out of hand, so they threw me in one of the cars and drove across the street to a pretty secluded gas station. Linda’s father was in the driver’s seat; her brother Greg was in the front passenger seat; I was in the backseat, in the middle, with a guy on each side holding me.
Her father turned around and hit me a few times. He had a good punch—he had a better punch than her brother. I tried moving my head to head butt Greg Junior’s hand. I was pretty sure I hurt his hand, because I moved my face out of the way. I took boxing when I was a kid, and they taught me to move my head and try and break the opponent’s hand when it hit me, so that’s what I tried to do.
The whole time they were hitting me, her father kept asking me, “Where’s Stephen?” They wanted Stephen more than me, but I wouldn’t rat. I wouldn’t say anything. I just kept telling them that I didn’t know.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Boom.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Boom.
This continued on for at least a good ten to fifteen shots.
Finally I said, “I think he’s at the bowling alley.”
Crack.
“Where is he?”
“I think he’s at the bowling alley.”
Crack.
But they didn’t stop, until I said, “He’s at the bowling alley,” not “I think he’s at the bowling alley.” They wanted a definite answer.
These guys then took me from the gas station to the bowling alley, which was about half a block away. It was right on McDonald Avenue, which was famous for being a place where people got killed. When the elevated trains ran overhead, people would blow shots at you and nobody would hear the gunshots.
I was pretty much toast at that point. I was thinking I was dead. But they took me to the bowling alley in search of my friend Stephen.They stood me up outside, and they were bouncing me around the bowling alley wall like I was a pinball. They were smashing me against the wall.
Then they went into the bowling alley. It was a tough place to hang out because another gang of guys hung out there. But Linda’s father’s crew threw all those guys out when they were looking for Stephen. A couple friends of mine were there and they told me later they didn’t know how I survived.
Greg Senior hit me a few times outside.Then he said, “Stephen is not in there.” I was thinking that they were going to take me for the ride at that point and finish me off. They’re still bouncing me around outside some more.Then Larry Mazza said, “Enough, enough. Come on, enough already.”
I knew Larry before he got involved in the Mafia. He was a delivery boy and he used to deliver food to my house. He kept saying, “Enough is enough.” But that didn’t help. The whole time I was wondering when it was going to end. All I could do was try and make it through.
I wasn’t going to rat because I knew they w
ere going to kill Stephen for sure. I knew where he was because I had just left him in that vacant apartment building.
I ended up on the ground, pretty much beaten to a pulp, with my head hanging off the curb. It was still raining and I looked down and saw my blood pouring into a puddle. I was alive probably because I didn’t rat my friend out. If I had, they probably would have offed me right there for being a rat. Maybe Linda’s father wanted to see how much I could take.
Finally they left. I felt somebody pick me up and pull me into the bowling alley bathroom. He was a pretty high-up guy, so he had his connections, too. He was from a different crew and I think a different family. Other people I knew from the neighborhood had come in and they were taking care of me.
A lot of people knew me. I was the athlete. I did everything. I played baseball—I was a baseball star. I was a musician—I played the drums. I was also a party kid. But I also had a sense of honor. I wasn’t the type of guy who would just screw you over for nothing. If you screwed me, I’d get you, but if you didn’t, you had no problems with me.
So those guys told me to stay in the bowling alley bathroom and not come out. I guess they were making sure that Linda’s father’s crew didn’t come back hunting for Stephen or me.
After a while, they said it was okay for me to leave the bathroom. I didn’t want to leave, though. I was petrified. Finally they took me to my friend’s house, and then they took me home.
My mother and sister almost passed out when I walked through the door.They both started crying. My sister had to sit down because she was so hysterical. My father was pissed.
“Who the fuck did this to you?”
I didn’t want to tell him because I was scared of what was going to happen; my father had a high-level job with the federal government. But I finally told him.
“Come on, we’re going over to the house.”
“You’re fucking crazy! I’m not going over there. Dad, come on, he’s a fucking maniac. He just told me if he ever sees me again, or sees me near his family, he’s going to fucking kill me. And I believe him. So, no, I’m not going over there. You’re crazy.”
“You’re fucking going over there with me.”
When we got to Linda’s house, my father made me stand right outside the door. He rang the bell. Greg came to the door and invited us in. Everything was respectful. My father was pissed, but he was still talking in a respectful manner. For one thing, my father was not dumb. He didn’t want to get killed, either.
We were all sitting down on this little couch that was in the front room. My father and Greg were having a sit-down. They came to an agreement.
“Now the agreement is, they stay away from each other, okay? You don’t touch my family,” my father told Greg. “And I won’t touch your family.”
And they shook hands on it. That’s when Greg called Linda downstairs. I was one of those nice guys. But once you screwed me, forget it. When I got involved with somebody, I really opened up to them. I gave them everything. I felt very betrayed by Linda because I thought she ratted me out to her father. So when she came downstairs, I looked at her pretty much like I hated her.
When Linda saw me, she screamed at her father. “I hate you.” And then she ran back upstairs. Then my father and I left.
Before all this happened, Greg liked me. First of all, I had the same name as him and she had the same name as her mother. So it was, “Greg and Linda, Greg and Linda.” The fact that he liked me probably saved my life.
I had an eye on Linda from the get-go. She used to come and watch us play softball, and I’d always see her hanging around. I never really talked to her in the beginning. Then I heard about her and her dad. I knew a little bit about that. But what stood out about her was that she really didn’t want that whole lifestyle.
She dressed down a lot. She’d wear these little terrycloth sweatpants—nothing fancy or anything that made her look like a little Italian princess. She was so cute, but she looked normal—she always just wanted to look normal. And that’s the way she acted.
She was really sweet—a lot sweeter than a typical Brooklyn girl, who would haul off and kick your ass. Linda wasn’t like that, although she did have a feisty little temper.
She just kept it very real. My parents liked her because they knew who she was back then. She was a very likable girl, especially by the guys. But the girls didn’t like her because they were jealous of her. A lot of those Brooklyn girls wanted that Mob life. And she had it, the minute she was born. But I could tell that she was born into something that she really didn’t want.
And her smile was “Oh, my God.” That’s what I was attracted to about her, besides her beauty. I thought her smile was the best, and still to this day. Out of all the women I’ve been with in my life, I would say Linda definitely has the best smile. She doesn’t do it much, but when she does, it’s good.
When we were kids, I was always at Linda’s house. At that point I knew her father was involved—everybody knew. Linda used to invite me over for dinner, but she’d tell me not to wear my earring because her father hated earrings. So I would take it out before I went to her house. Her father and I got along pretty well. We used to talk about sports. He knew I was a baseball player.
Her house was really nice. On the outside it looked like a normal house. When you went inside, it was different. It was all minted out. They had a great bar in the basement and even a little suntanning room down there, too. I loved it.
I liked to go see Linda, but I really liked it because her father trusted me. He told me he trusted me with his daughter. He gave me that opportunity to be trusted, which also was the opportunity to screw up, I guess. He basically let me stay at the house with his daughter. But when it got late, he’d say, “Okay, time to go.” And I’d leave.
Greg was always very nice to me. He was a very admirable kind of guy. At the same time, though, you knew in his voice—he had a real deep voice—that you did not want to mess with this guy at all.
When I went over there for dinner, Greg would do the cooking. He cooked me these filet mignon steaks. There was actually a little grill in the kitchen, and Greg would grill steaks. There I was sitting at the table, thinking, Wow, I have a serious Mob guy cooking for me. He cooked them great, too. One night we even had steak and lobster. I had never even had lobster before. We had a surf-n-turf night, and it was pretty awesome.
But after that sit-down, I was forced to stay away from her and she was forced to stay away from me. Everybody knew, if you didn’t abide by the rules at a sit-down, you were dead. So I was abiding by the rules. I would see Linda around the neighborhood, but I never talked to her.
About six months after the beating happened, I found out the real story. Linda wasn’t the person who ratted on me to her father—it was her friend Argie. After Linda’s mother called Argie’s house, Argie’s father demanded his daughter tell the Scarpas who she and Linda were with that night. So Argie finally told them it was me.
When I found that out, I wanted to talk to Linda, but I couldn’t. Every time I saw her—she would walk by me on purpose and look at me—I had to put up this mean-guy front. I had to do it because if I gave her any indication that I wasn’t pissed at her, she would approach me.
I was doing my best to keep up that “I’m pissed off at you” look for my safety, and my family’s safety, as well as for her safety. Because who knew what my father was capable of? He was pretty friggin’ pissed. I always gave my father a lot of credit for going over there to see Greg. I was pretty impressed with that.
Linda and I didn’t talk for the next year and a half. But other things were going on in the neighborhood. Bodies were turning up here and there. As kids from the neighborhood, we knew who was doing it.
Thankfully, Stephen wasn’t one of those bodies. When I saw him after the beating, I told him Greg’s crew was looking for him and he should probably leave town. He was lucky they never caught up with him. If they had, he would have been history.
I used t
o see Linda’s father driving in the neighborhood, but I wouldn’t even look at him. Once, though, I was walking on Avenue I and I passed by a coffee shop just as he was coming out. He was only about fifteen feet in front of me. When I saw him, I stopped. He just turned his head and looked at me and kept walking. He didn’t smile, but it wasn’t an “I’m going to fucking kill you” kind of look. It was just a normal look. I looked at him, and that was it.
One day shortly after that, I was outside swinging my baseball bat on my porch. I lived right on Avenue I. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linda walking on the other side of the street. She looked all dressed up in a nice dress. I was wondering what the occasion was.
As I was swinging my bat, I looked up and saw her starting to walk across the street toward me. I was thinking, Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I was minding my own business, on my own porch, and she was coming over to me.
When she got close enough so I could see her, I noticed that she had matured a little bit. She was looking better than she ever did. I also noticed she was wearing a gold necklace that said Greg and Linda in diamonds.
“You wasted your money on that, because that’ll never happen.”
Those were the first words I said to her in a year and a half.
She looked at me and said, “Oh, I didn’t buy it. It’s my mother’s.”
I forgot that her mother’s and father’s names were Greg and Linda. I had just made a complete idiot out of myself. (Linda told me years later that she wanted me to think it was referring to me and her.)
So we talked a little bit in front of my house.
“I miss you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know, but we can’t be seen together. We shouldn’t be talking. I miss you, too, but there’s nothing we can do. We can’t see each other or anything.”
Well, that changed in a hurry.
She left and I went inside my house, and I knew she was going to call. I knew it, so I was waiting. I wanted to answer that phone as soon as it rang. A few minutes later she did call.