by Linda Scarpa
Being in Florida was a totally different lifestyle. The people were different; the way of life was so different. It was calm, not like city life. And I was free from everything that caused me pain. Sometimes Rob and I would fall asleep on the terrace and wake up in the morning to the cool breeze of the ocean. It was so peaceful. I was so happy. Maybe too happy.
But my dad was not happy that I was alone in Florida with a guy. But most of all he wasn’t happy because I was far away from him. He missed me and wanted me to come home. I told him I was happy and I wasn’t going to leave. He threatened to cut me off. No more money. He figured I’d have no choice but to go home. I got a job pumping gas. I didn’t care. For the first time I was at peace.
My father wouldn’t give up. He sent my mother to Florida to bring me home. I hated them. I cried as the plane took off. I watched everything I loved at that moment—the sparkling blue ocean, the white sandy beaches, the palm trees, my beautiful life—fade into the distance.
I hated going back. I looked out as the plane descended into the city. Everything was cold and gray and lifeless. That was the crossroads of my life. I was going to make them pay for bringing me back against my will. It wasn’t long before I met a guy, got married and got pregnant.
CHAPTER 8
BLOOD BROTHERS
In August 1986, my father developed bleeding ulcers from years of taking aspirin for a back injury. He was admitted to Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn. The medication couldn’t stop the bleeding and the doctors told him he’d need a transfusion.
My mother can tell the story.
We were living on Eighty-Second Street. Greg came home one night and said, “You know, Lin, I don’t feel so good. I feel very dizzy and sick.”
I called the doctor and then I took him to the office. The doctor said that he had to go in the hospital because he was bleeding internally. Greg told me to take him to Victory Memorial Hospital because it was on Eighty-Sixth Street and close to the house. He didn’t want me to have to travel too far if they kept him.
While we were there, I tried to help him get up out of bed to go to the bathroom. He just, like, collapsed in my arms. Blood was coming out all over. I was screaming. They had to call a doctor to do emergency surgery.
The doctor explained that he needed a lot of blood. I called my doctor and he told me to get the blood from people I knew. The nurse at the hospital told me the same thing. I called Larry and he got all the guys from Greg’s club to come down, as well as some of our family. There were thirty people who gave their blood for Greg. Six out of the thirty were Greg’s blood type.
There was a rumor going around that Greg called on his friends and family to give him blood because he didn’t want to take the chance of getting blood from African Americans because he was prejudiced. That was just not true. Greg was pretty much going in and out of consciousness. He didn’t even know what was going on. I was making all the decisions for him.
Because of the AIDS virus, the hospital and the doctors advised me to call family and friends first. The medical people didn’t know much about HIV at that time, but they thought it affected more African Americans, which was probably where that rumor started.
However, the hospital gave him the blood without testing it for HIV. One of the donors—Paul Mele, a weight lifter who was in Greg’s crew—had contracted the virus, apparently from a dirty steroid needle. Paul died six months after donating his blood. Greg got AIDS from that blood.
I went to the hospital and saw that Greg didn’t look good. It was about six o’clock in the morning. He was in the ICU and the doctor was standing over him. Greg had tubes in his nose and blood was coming out. They had him on an ice bed because he had a fever. I asked the doctor what was going on, but he told me Greg was doing good.
I got in touch with Gregory, Greg’s son. Then Scappy called the hospital and told me to “get him out of there.” So I called my doctor and told him Greg was getting worse. We got a private ambulance to transfer him to Mount Sinai in Manhattan. He had three major surgeries—every other day was a surgery. They took out his stomach—we didn’t know he had AIDS yet—and the doctor made a stomach for him out of his intestines. He was in the ICU at Mount Sinai for nearly three months.
Lin DeVecchio even visited Greg when he was in the hospital. One time Lin was in the room and I had gone downstairs for something. I was coming back up in the elevator and two Mafia bosses got on. They were going to see Greg. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew they couldn’t go up there with Lin in the room. I told them that Greg was really bad that day and they couldn’t visit him. So they left.
When my father was first in Mount Sinai, he kept getting a number of infections. The doctors didn’t know where these infections were coming from, since they didn’t know he had AIDS.
In the beginning he wasn’t conscious, and it was very hard for me to see him like that. I started going through a very bad phase, smoking a lot of pot just to escape from the world. I was getting high, trying to take away my pain somehow. I wasn’t able to deal with the real world at all.
One day my mother came home from visiting my father and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. She said the doctors didn’t know if my father was going to make it through the night. So I went to see him with my mother.
When I got to his room, I saw him just lying there. I leaned over him and hugged him.
“Daddy, please don’t leave me, please. Open your eyes, Dad, please. Talk to me. Don’t leave.”
I was crying hysterically. My tears were flowing onto his face. Then for a split second he opened his eyes and spoke.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
My mother was in total shock. She called the nurses and doctors in to tell them that he spoke. I was so happy that he said that to me. And I believed him. I believed that he wasn’t going anywhere.
He came to shortly after that and we knew that he was going to make it. A couple days later I went to see him and he was sitting up. He was very swollen everywhere. I tried to rub his ankles and his legs, but he asked me to stop because it hurt.
I was just so relieved. My father had been on his deathbed, but I felt that he heard me, and he didn’t leave after that. But he was living out a death sentence, anyway.
It wasn’t long before the doctors found out that he had the AIDS virus. However, my mother and father didn’t tell us about it for about six years. We could see he was getting sicker and sicker, but they told us he had cancer. Ultimately my father sued Victory Memorial Hospital and his surgeon there for negligence for giving him AIDS-infected blood. They settled for $300,000 in 1992.
When Paul found out that he had given my father AIDS, he came to the house a short while after my father got home. My father was sitting outside on the stoop. Paul was crying and apologizing to my father. My father was very emotional. He wasn’t angry at Paul at all. He was very sympathetic. He felt sorry that Paul was sick. He accepted Paul’s apology and forgave him. He told Paul that it was okay, because Paul didn’t know and didn’t mean for it to happen. He told Paul he needed to take care of himself.
I heard part of that conversation. What stood out to me was that my father didn’t make Paul feel worse than he already did. After Paul left, I asked my father what was going on. He said Paul was sick and had AIDS, but I didn’t know that Paul was one of the people who had originally donated the blood. I felt bad. I told my father that it was so sad, but I still didn’t know my father had AIDS, too.
My father hadn’t been home from the hospital very long when he got the call that his brother, my uncle Sal, had been shot in the head. It happened at Sal’s social club on Seventy-Fourth Street in the Dyker Heights sections of Brooklyn. It was about 11:50 P.M. on January 16, 1987. My mother knows more about that than me.
Right before Sal was murdered, my son was at the club with one of his best friends, Billy. Joey left because Greg had told him to be home at a certain time, but Billy was still there. He told us what happened.
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��Five guys burst into the club and told everyone who was there to get down on their knees. They told Sal they wanted his pinky ring. At first, Sal refused to get on his knees, even though there was a gun pointed at his head. He relented and they shot him.”
One of the gunmen was wearing a mask. The other four were African Americans, but the police said they didn’t know who shot Sal. The guy who killed him said, “This is for Howard Beach.” Howard Beach referred to the area where hate crimes were committed against three black men on December 19, 1986. The police said they didn’t think Sal’s murder was racially motivated.
Sal’s watch, a gold pendant and his wallet with $313 in cash in it were found beside his body.The gunmen may have stolen the belongings of the other people in the club to make it look like a robbery, but that was all bullshit. It was a hit on Sal, and they never found out who killed him.
When my father learned he had HIV, he was kind of on the fence about what to do with his life. He maybe wanted to stop what he was doing, slow down, enjoy his family. He wanted to spend time at the Singer Island condo with my mother. He wanted to lay back and enjoy me and his grandson and my brother and his daughter. He just wanted to enjoy his life a little bit. He was sort of semiretired from the life. That’s what he used to say, “I’m retired.” But he always said he wouldn’t hide from anyone or anything.
During that time Carmine “the Snake” Persico was the boss of the Colombo family. But in 1986 he and his son, Allie Boy, went on trial on federal racketeering charges. They were both convicted in November 1986: Carmine was sentenced to thirty-nine years in prison and Allie Boy got twelve.
Even though he was in prison, Carmine wanted to maintain control of the family until Allie Boy got out, at which point Carmine would make him boss.
In 1988, while he was still in prison, Carmine put Vittorio “Little Vic” Orena in charge of the family as acting boss. Everything seemed okay for a while, but in June 1991, Vic decided he liked being boss. That’s when he announced that he was going to become the official boss of the family, even though Carmine still wanted Allie Boy to be boss when he got out of prison.
Some of the members stayed loyal to Carmine, while others were with Vic. My father hated Vic Orena, so he and his crew were backing Carmine.
Then on June 20, 1991, Carmine Sessa, the consigliere of the family, Bobby Zam and two other members of the Persico faction went to Vic’s house to kill him. But the plan failed because Vic had come home early, saw the four guys near his house and took off.
Then next day Carmine Sessa walked into our house with tears in his eyes. He was crying to my father that he had had a beef with Vic Orena and Vic tried to kill him, but he got away.
My father tried to calm him down. He told Carmine that they’d straighten everything out. They sat down and Carmine started explaining to my father what had happened. My father felt a very big obligation to Carmine. He felt indebted to him. He felt strongly that he had to protect Carmine and had to help him.
As a consigliere Carmine was above my father in terms of rank. But even though he was above my father, he really wasn’t above my father. My father didn’t care if someone was the boss of the entire family. He wouldn’t listen to him, anyway. My father was king. My father was on top of everybody. He never wanted to have that actual position of consigliere or even boss. He wanted to stay right where he was. He was happy being where he was. He knew regardless of a title or a specific position, he was going to do what he wanted, anyway. That’s what he always said.
When my father first found out he had HIV, he was afraid of people coming near him. He was afraid of other people touching him. He was afraid of anybody in the family getting too close, going into his bathroom. He didn’t know much about it, but he didn’t want anyone to “catch” it. He was really concerned about that.
But when my father came back from the hospital after he had his stomach removed, Carmine took care of my father. He knew my father had the AIDS virus, but Carmine didn’t care. He took care of him. My father had open wounds in his stomach that needed to close, and Carmine would dress the wounds. Carmine did all that for him.
My father was amazed. He couldn’t believe that Carmine would actually come near him. My father felt like he had the plague. He couldn’t believe that his friend was actually touching his wounds, knowing he could contract the virus. Of course, Carmine wore gloves to protect himself, but other people pretty much didn’t want anything to do with my father.
My father had a really close friend, who had grown up with my mother. He and my mother had been friends their whole lives. When he and his wife found out that my father had HIV, they never spoke to my parents again.
The only other person besides Carmine who stood by my father after he got sick—and before he got sick—was my uncle Morris “Moe” Terzi, the husband of my mother’s older sister, Maryann. Morris was like an older brother to my mother—he was three and a half years older than she was. From the time she was about twelve years old, he was always there for her.
My uncle Morris, who was Jewish, was my father’s best friend, even though he wasn’t in the life. Throughout the years he owned a number of retail clothing stores. Uncle Morris and Aunt Maryann came to the house for dinner almost every night. Because Morris was separated from the life, my father didn’t have to talk business with him. He didn’t have to worry about ever having a conflict with him. Their relationship was strictly a fun friendship, and one that my father really depended on.
Morris was a comedian. He had a joke for everything. When my father was feeling at his worst, Morris came to the house, made jokes and always made my father laugh. He truly was my father’s best friend in life.
They met when my father first started dating my mother. But as they got older and my father got sick, that was when Morris showed his real feelings for my father. He stood by him. He helped take my father’s mind off his illness.
Morris took everybody’s minds off their problems. You could be sitting there crying, and Morris would walk through the door and you would just start cracking up. He would always say something or do something that was hysterical.
He was always so much fun. My brother and I loved it when he came to the house. Although he was there almost every day, we still couldn’t wait to see him. Even when Morris had problems, he smiled. He was a great guy and my father really cared about him.
When my father was sick, Morris would eat, even when he didn’t want to eat, just to make my father eat. Morris had to sit there and eat with him because my father didn’t like to eat alone. He always wanted to have someone with him. My uncle Morris would come to the house with food, but my father would say he wasn’t hungry. Uncle Morris would say, “Come on, just have a little.” He would sit there and eat with my father to help him build up his immunity and gain weight. Morris got fat, but my father wasn’t gaining any weight. He really couldn’t, since he didn’t have an actual stomach anymore.
When my uncle got diagnosed with cancer, the whole family was devastated. It was a horrible experience for everybody. Uncle Morris was the life of the party. He was the life of the family. He brought laughter to everyone. It was a major setback for my father to lose him.
When Morris was gone, there was really nobody else. His lifeline to the normal world was gone and my father was alone again. He had us and he had my mother, but he didn’t have his best friend, who had been there every day to keep him company, laugh with him and eat with him.
My father was so angry because Morris had to be buried in a simple pine box, according to Jewish tradition. He thought Morris deserved better. He wanted the best for Morris, but my father wasn’t Jewish and didn’t understand why it had to be that way.
So Uncle Morris was the only one outside the life to be there for my father when he was sick, and Carmine was the only person in the life who came to the house day after day to take care of my father. That’s why my father was so committed to Carmine.
Even though he felt a sense of responsibility to
Carmine, he was still on the fence because he had the AIDS virus and didn’t know how long he was going to live. He didn’t know if he really wanted to get involved in a war.
After Carmine left, my father talked to my mother in the kitchen. Then he pulled me to the side to talk.
“What do you think about this?”
“Dad, do you really want to get involved with this? What if something happens to you? What if you go to jail?”
“Linda, what do you think, I’m stupid? I don’t go to jail.”
“Dad, if you’re going to be in the middle of this, and people are killing, and you’re killing people, you don’t think you’re going to go to jail. You’re not above the law that much.”
He didn’t like that. He got annoyed.
“I just want to know what you think.”
“Dad, I don’t know. If you think this is something that you have to do.”
He wanted our permission. He wanted to do it, but he also didn’t want to disappoint us if we didn’t want him to do it. We really didn’t want him to do it, but we didn’t want to disappoint him if he wanted to do it. That’s what was going on in the house.
“Dad, if you feel that you’re going to be okay, you’re going to be safe. . . .”
I didn’t comprehend that it was going to be an all-out war. I had never been involved in a war.
“Okay, Dad. If that’s what you want, just be careful.”
My mother told him to do whatever he wanted to do. She knew his feelings for Carmine. He said he had to think about it. But he didn’t want people to think he was soft just because he had HIV. He didn’t want people to think that he was washed up—that he was done. He had to show them who was boss. He was still boss and he could still do this.