For the Sins of My Father

by Demeo, Albert

  So were the feds. Federal agents had showed up within hours of my admission and stayed in the operating room for most of the surgery, ready to take notes in case I said something under anesthesia. They came and went regularly from my room, sometimes questioning me openly, other times posing as attendants or orderlies. Their faces swam in and out of my view. I had told no one what really happened that night; as far as anyone knew, I'd had a bad car accident and smashed my face on the windshield. Yet the officers were suspicious and used the opportunity to try once again to secure my cooperation. It was easy enough to evade their questions, in spite of my being a captive audience in the hospital bed. Between the pain, the pain medicine, and the weakness, I slipped in and out of consciousness for days. It was simple enough to pretend unconsciousness when I wanted to be left alone. Besides, it was difficult for me to speak with the extensive damage to my face, so they didn't press the issue.

  I had not been in the hospital since I was four years old, for the surgery that helped correct my vision. I thought about that first surgery as I lay there with bandages covering one eye. This time, though, my father wouldn't be there when the bandages came off. The long weeks of recovery in the hospital gradually began to bring a clarity I hadn't had since my father's murder. Pain and immobility served as a kind of truth serum, producing not the truths the government wanted, but the truths I needed. I'd told myself that I owed it to my father to take revenge, but I had been deluding myself. My father's “friends” had murdered him and nearly killed me on behalf of an organization that glorified loyalty. My friend Nick, on the other hand, with nothing to gain but at genuine personal risk, had put himself on the line once again to save my life. When the room swam back into focus following my surgery, his face had been there next to my mother's and sisters', anxiously peering down at me. I owed it to all of them never to put myself in that kind of danger again. They had already suffered enough.

  When I finally got out of the hospital, I did my best to leave the past behind. Searing headaches hit me sometimes, but each time one did, I used it to remind myself how useless vengeance was. The crew, their warning delivered, left me alone, and I never contacted any of them again. I even stopped visiting Freddy. It was time to bury the past.

  The school year ended while I was hospitalized, and summer came to Long Island. I did my best to return to the business of being seventeen years old, swimming in the backyard pool and boating on the canal with Tommy and my girlfriend. College was only a year away, and I began filling out applications. I did not want to spend the rest of my life as the mobster's son.

  Unfortunately, the government had other ideas. The federal task force that had been pursuing the New York Mob under the RICO statute for so many years had reached a crucial point in the Castellano investigation. With convictions multiplying and top mobsters turning informant, they scented victory. District Attorney Rudolph Giuliani and his prosecutors were waging a holy war, and as in all wars, personal rights were expendable in the conflict. I became collateral damage in the all-out assault on the crime families of New York.

  With my father gone, I thought the surveillance on our family would fade away. Instead it shifted focus, from my father to me. Every time I left the house, someone followed me. I assumed that once the officers saw I had no further contact with my father's associates or enterprises, they would leave me alone. I was wrong. They followed me everywhere: to school, to the movies, even on dates. Like my face, my car had been restored after the wreck and was almost as good as new. It became a beacon for local police. Cops repeatedly pulled me over for imaginary traffic violations, searching my car for God knows what. It was humiliating. I found myself standing on the side of the highway next to my girlfriend while agents rummaged through my car and passing motorists slowed down to stare. My girlfriend was supportive and patient, but it was deeply embarrassing. The only illegal item I was transporting remained untouched, hidden in its compartment under the dashboard. I still didn't feel safe leaving the house without my gun. The superchargers I'd installed on my car enabled me to escape the surveillance vehicles at times, but they also led to a long string of speeding tickets and a suspended license. As summer turned into fall and I returned for my senior year of high school, I became increasingly angry and frustrated. Why wouldn't they just leave me alone? I wasn't doing anything wrong.

  Driving with a suspended license eventually landed me in court. Angry and unrepentant, I faced the judge ready to do battle. I knew I was guilty only of driving with a suspended license. When I was told to approach the bench for a plea, however, I realized that I knew the court officer sitting in front of me. He had been on my father's payroll for years, making cases disappear. About the same time I recognized him, he recognized me. Telling my lawyer I wanted a private conference with the officer, I went aside and said to him, “Now we both know these charges are going to be dropped. Don't we?” The unspoken threat was clear. He would be prosecuted if the authorities knew about the favors he'd done my father.

  Shifting uneasily, he nodded and said, “Certainly, Mr. DeMeo.” The charges were dropped, and my mother was furious. She thought that I was spinning out of control and deserved to be punished. She was right, of course. For me, though, it wasn't that simple. I'd watched the legal system talk out of both sides of its mouth all my life. Many of my father's associates were judges or cops. If the government persisted in treating me as the mobster's son, I thought, so be it. They couldn't have it both ways. They were bending all the rules to get to me. Why shouldn't I bend a few of my own?

  As the months went by and the harassment continued, I became angrier and angrier. Any hope of a normal life was long gone. The government would never let me shed my father's identity. I felt like Exhibit A in the court of public opinion. One afternoon I was pulled over again and told that I was wanted for several outstanding traffic warrants; I was handcuffed and put into a police car for the ride down to central booking. They had cuffed me tightly, but the physical pain in my wrists was secondary to the psychological misery I felt during the ride.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn't the mobster's son,” the officer said as he shoved me in the car. “Don't hit your head!” he cautioned as he cracked my skull against the cruiser's roof.

  His partner chuckled as he took his place up front. “What do you say we take a little ride down to the station, you arrogant little piece of shit?”

  All the way down to the station, they taunted me about my father as I sat trapped behind the steel mesh of the patrol car. When they jerked me out of the car to go inside, I started demanding my lawyer, shouting, “You can't do this to me! I want my attorney!”

  “Can't do this? Who the fuck do you think you are? We're cops. We can do anything we want.”

  Something burst inside, and blind with rage, I lost control completely. I tried to head butt the officer, kicking wildly as they subdued me. One of them pepper sprayed my face while they shackled me, and I collapsed to the ground, blind and writhing in pain. I felt like a trapped animal.

  A few minutes later I was thrust into a jail cell where I was shackled to the wall, still cuffed. The struggle had aggravated my skull injuries, and the pain in my bad eye was agonizing. The rank smell of the man they chained me next to nearly gagged me. There were nearly twenty men crammed in the cell with me, most of them ranting and raving, spitting, and urinating on the floor. It was like being plunged into a nightmare. When a police officer walked by the cell a short while later, a tall black man a few feet from me unzipped his pants and began urinating on the officer. Within seconds a barrage of officers descended on the cell, and all hell broke loose. The man they were after squatted and filled his hands with his own excrement, then began throwing it at the officers. Other prisoners followed suit. I sat against the wall, sickened. How had I ended up in this madhouse? Eventually officers restrained the men they were after, but no one attempted to clean up the pool of urine and bowel movements that littered the floor. The stench was overpowering.

 
With the troublemakers quieted, I became the main attraction for passersby. Officers and jail workers lined up on the other side of the bars to point me out like I was some bizarre species of animal. “Hey, wiseguy!” they called out. “Having fun, little gangster?” The hours dragged on, and I kept asking for a lawyer, asking why I wasn't being booked or taken in front of a judge. Eventually I started talking to the other men in my cell and found out that some of them were pretty good guys, just frustrated with the way they were being treated. They advised me to be patient, said making a scene would only make things worse for me. I knew they were right, and I settled down to wait as best I could.

  I remained shackled all day and most of the night. The arresting officers “forgot” about me for more than twelve hours, finally rediscovering my paperwork shortly before dawn the next day. When I was taken before a judge at last, he informed me that the original arrest was for failing to appear in response to a series of traffic tickets. The odd thing about this was that I had never seen any of the tickets they showed me. God knows, I had been guilty of speeding, but I always paid my tickets. But the pile of citations they put in front of me—these, I had never seen before, and I didn't recognize any of the cars I had supposedly been driving. When I pointed this out to the judge, he sarcastically inquired if someone else had been driving other cars while using my name. I was finally released to my lawyer, but I was very disturbed by what had happened in that courtroom. What was going on here? Who was making up charges against me?

  A psychological war was being waged against me, and I was losing. I wasn't yet eighteen, but I had already developed bleeding ulcers. Home once again, I spent over an hour in the steam room and shower trying to feel clean. Afterward, as I lay in bed, I mentally listed every crime I had ever committed. Speeding and carrying a concealed weapon, yes. Collecting packages for my father? Yes, probably a crime, for some of them had undoubtedly contained illicit cash or stolen property, though I never opened any of them. Aiding and abetting a felon? But my father hadn't been a felon at the time; he'd never even been charged. Failing to report crimes I had known about? Was that illegal? Did it make any difference that I was a minor during all of it? I didn't know. Drenched in fear, confusion, and guilt, I struggled to sort out the nature of my misdeeds. I had never thought of myself as a criminal; I had thought of myself as a son helping his father. Had I been wrong? And what if I had? I knew that if given the same choices tomorrow, I would help my father again. Did that make me a criminal, too? I didn't know. How long was this going to go on? How far would they go? Sometimes I wished they'd just sentence me and get it over with. Anything was better than this constant anxiety.

  The real question that haunted me, however, was not what I had done, but why they hated me so much—and they obviously did. I knew that in their eyes, I was a junior wiseguy, an obnoxious adolescent with a chip on his shoulder. That much I understood, but it didn't explain the passionate contempt they treated me with. One night, sleepless as usual, I went into the bathroom to rinse my face with cold water and caught my own reflection in the mirror. It startled me. Funny, I thought, I never realized how much I look like my father. And that was when it hit me. It wasn't me they hated. They hated my father, and every time they looked at me, they saw my father's face. In their eyes, I wasn't just the mobster's son; I was the mobster. I had spent a lifetime trying to walk, talk, and dress exactly like my dad. In a moment of wrenching clarity, I realized I had succeeded.

  ten

  COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  The question is whether cruelty is used well or badly.

  Cruelty badly used is that which, although infrequent

  to begin with, as time goes on, rather

  than disappearing, grows in intensity.

  —MACHIAVELLI, The Prince

  As the year of my father's death drew to a close, I found myself trapped in a vicious circle. The attorney I'd hired had gotten the government to back off a little, citing my age, but with my eighteenth birthday on the horizon, I knew the respite was temporary. More menacing, my father's former associates were keeping an eye on me again. The Gemini Twins had been arrested and released on bail, under indictment with Nino Gaggi for a long list of charges. My testimony could have put them behind bars for many years, and they knew I had no reason to show them mercy. Even if I escaped government harassment, I could be right back where I started: at the business end of a gangster's gun. I had to get smarter, or I would never see eighteen.

  With no one to advise me, I turned for help to my father's old counselor, that sixteenth-century wiseguy Niccolò Machiavelli. In the wake of my father's murder, I'd come roaring out of my cave of pain like Machiavelli's lion, teeth bared and thirsty for blood. So far, it had only served to make things worse. It was time to look to that other symbol of the Sicilian proverb, the fox. In Machiavelli's fable, the fox represents cunning, the ability to outwit an opponent through manipulation and misdirection. If I were going to escape the system that had me trapped, I would have to learn how to manipulate it. So I fired the legitimate attorney who had been representing me and hired a Mob lawyer, a guy by the name of Jay Silverstein. I picked a man who knew the legal system but had no compunctions about client privilege. I knew for certain that Jay was on the Gambino payroll. It was the perfect defense against the double jeopardy in which I found myself. With a smart and aggressive attorney in the courtroom, I could get immunity and some protection against the government. And since Jay would repeat every word of my legal transactions to the Mob behind my back, they could be sure I had not turned informant.

  One year to the day after the authorities rang our doorbell to tell me my father was dead, the doorbell rang again. I was blowing out the candles on my eighteenth birthday cake, trying to smile for my mother when the chimes sounded. She was waging her own war of survival, and for her that included carrying on family traditions that we found hard to enjoy. On the front steps of our home stood a man in a suit, a process server who handed me a subpoena and said, “Happy birthday, Mr. DeMeo. You're served.” I was ordered to report to the office of Walter Mack, prosecutor for the southern district of New York, at 9:00 Monday morning.

  I drove into the city early on Monday and met Jay at his office, twenty blocks from the Manhattan courthouse that housed Mack's office. I was dressed in my best suit and tie, shoes polished, and hair slicked down against the winter wind. I tried to look adult and collected, but inside I felt like a frightened six-year-old. What were they going to do to me? Threaten me? Arrest me? Jay suggested we walk to the courthouse, and as we made our way down the crowded street, he coached me on what to expect. “Mack's heading up the Castellano investigation, trying to nail him under the RICO laws. I don't think he's after you; he just needs evidence to indict Castellano. He'll probably ask you a lot of questions about your father's business dealings. Be polite but don't give him any information. I'll handle it if there's a problem. I don't want you saying anything unless they offer you immunity.”

  I nodded my head mechanically as he talked, but I was finding it harder and harder to listen. Something strange was happening. The more we walked, the farther away the courthouse seemed. I could see it blocks ahead of us, a tall imposing building with Roman columns and marble steps, symbol of justice for the state of New York. Yet with every step it seemed to recede. The sidewalk had turned into a moving ribbon, growing longer as I walked. I had the curious sensation I was in a wind tunnel like the one I'd seen at a fair when I was a child. Manhattan streets are always windy in January, but this wind was an icy hand pushing me back. I leaned into it. It seemed impossible to make any headway. Jay's voice faded completely as I began talking to myself: “This is my lot, this is what's dealt me, I have to hold on, I have to be left standing at the end.” For a moment I thought I'd said the words aloud; with a start I realized the voice was only in my head. I forced myself to concentrate again on what Jay was saying, but the sights and sounds around us made him difficult to hear. Everything seemed unnaturally bright, abnormally l
oud. Vendors shouted, “Hot dogs!” “Pretzels!” so sharply it hurt my ears. The smell of shoe polish burned my nostrils as a dark face called out, “Need a shine, buddy?” My eyes watered from the glare. I couldn't hear, couldn't think. What was wrong with me? Like a robot, I forced my body up the marble steps to the courthouse, fighting the G-forces one leg at a time. When we finally reached the top, I nearly fell into the lobby, soaked in sweat and weak with exhaustion.

  The white morning glare disappeared abruptly as we entered a dim foyer. The place smelled of varnish, floor wax, and generations of human sweat. Jay gestured toward an elevator, and as we moved toward it, everything shifted into warp speed. The hall disappeared beneath my feet, the elevator seeming to shoot upward. When I got off at the ninth floor and turned to follow Jay toward an office at the end of the hall, I was overcome with vertigo. I fought the impulse to reach out for the wall to balance myself as I walked. Long before I was ready, I found myself in front of a glass door with gold lettering on it: Walter Mack, New York State Attorney's Office. A light shone on the other side. Jay rapped twice with his knuckles, someone shouted “Come in,” and we were behind the door. I expected a receptionist, but instead I saw a man sitting at a desk, looking across at me. Walter Mack. I held out my hand, but ignoring it, he gestured at us to sit down.

  I had come to do what was required of me, and I entered the room expecting to find a man doing the same. Mack was doing his job, my father would have told me; he had nothing personal against me. One glimpse of his face dispelled that illusion. The man looking across at me radiated animosity, the same animosity I had already encountered with investigators. He rose to his feet and walked around the desk to look down at me. At six feet, five inches, Mack's skinny frame towered over me, his face raw and reddened, topped by fair, thinning hair. When he opened his mouth to speak to me, I saw that his teeth were crooked and discolored and wondered briefly why he'd never had them fixed. His clothes, too, were cheap and ill-fitting. Don't they pay this guy decently? I thought. Suddenly I was painfully aware of my own manicured nails and Italian suit. I cleared my throat nervously and waited for someone to say something.