Friends of the Family

by Tommy Dades

  “And then, then who are we talking about here? These two guys are cops. We’re not talking about wiseguys.” Ponzi was very careful not to tell Kaplan that the only thing he had to do was tell him about the two cops. That wasn’t the way it worked. There is no such thing as conditional or limited cooperation; it’s all you know or no deal. But he wanted to put as much emphasis as possible on Eppolito and Caracappa. “Mr. Kaplan,” he continued, “this is different. We’re talking about two guys who had shields and guns in their pocket and swore to an oath. These guys not only were supposed to uphold the law, but they had a responsibility to every other cop and they betrayed them…”

  On occasion Bill Oldham tried to say something, but every time he opened his mouth Kaplan would either put up his hands to block him, meaning “I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say,” or would simply look at him and scowl. Ponzi got the feeling—that’s all it was, a feeling—that Kaplan was at least listening to what he had to say. That there was the beginning of the beginning of a rapport. That was the first step in the big dance.

  In this meeting Kaplan revealed only a little about himself to Ponzi, telling him that he was “ninety percent legitimate businessman and ten percent gangster,” but just as casually claiming, “I been around gangsters my whole life. I lived my life a certain way; you know what I mean. And when I picked up the paper and saw that this guy or that guy had gone bad, it made me physically sick.”

  For a first conversation Ponzi thought it was going well. Kaplan had made it clear he wasn’t interested in talking, but he hadn’t walked out of the room. That was something. After about twenty minutes of conversation Ponzi decided to take another shot at him. “Listen, Mr. Kaplan, I just want you to know I couldn’t be more serious about this and the people back in my office couldn’t be more interested and I’m not going away. No disrespect to you, but I don’t want you to think I’m here now and then I’m going to ride off into the sunset. You know, you could very well find yourself at Rikers Island tomorrow, writted out of the federal system and into the state system.”

  For the first time, Kaplan reacted to Ponzi. He said evenly, leaving no room for any doubt that he was serious, “Young man, don’t do that. Don’t try to threaten me. I could overmedicate myself any time I want. Believe me, I will commit suicide before you put me in some cell at Rikers.” His whole face was turning red with anger. “I told that guy”—he indicated Oldham—“that I want to go back where I was and play pinochle and bullshit with my guys and take my walks and do what I want to do. I don’t want to be in this place anymore. And you just listen to me: I’m never going to allow anybody to drag me like an animal and throw me on fucking Rikers Island. You understand me.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Ponzi nodded, knowing that if he took one more step in that direction he’d be in the shithouse with Oldham. Kaplan had made it clear that he was resigned to spending the rest of his life in prison—on his own terms—and he wasn’t about to be threatened. Ponzi never mentioned another word about changing his living conditions; instead he tried to dig into Kaplan’s mind, to try to understand why he was so offended by the possibility of putting away two rogue cops. “You know, Mr. Kaplan, you look like you’re in pretty good health. Wouldn’t you like to spend the rest of your life at home with your family?”

  Kaplan wouldn’t respond to questions about his family during that meeting, perhaps believing that showing any sign of weakness might be taken to mean he would cooperate. Instead he continued to come back to the pot bust that had put him in prison. Almost ten years later he was still furious about that, insisting that he had been framed. And his attorney was still filing appeals. “I can’t help being bitter,” he said. “I was a pot dealer, but the bales of shit they rolled into the courthouse, that was not my stuff. And then they put this fucking perjurer on the stand. And I defy you to tell me the last time somebody got a sentence like I got on a pot case.”

  They went around the block, sometimes talking at each other rather than having a conversation. It was like two gears just slightly out of sync. Each time Kaplan began complaining about his drug conviction or the fact that “Gas” had fucked him every which way, Ponzi quietly tried to put him back on track. “Listen, you know this story has been out there ten years and I have reason now more than ever to believe that it’s true. Let me be honest with you. You and I both know that you hold the key to this thing. I’m convinced for a variety of reasons that the story you can tell is going to be the definitive story.”

  No matter how Ponzi approached the subject, Kaplan just wouldn’t bite. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.” Throughout the meeting, every time somebody walked past the room, the old man looked over his shoulder. Ponzi assumed Kaplan was worried somebody would figure out this wasn’t a simple lawyer-client meeting and put out the word that he was cooperating.

  Kaplan started getting really edgy, eventually getting up and pacing back and forth across the room. Finally, he said, “Look, I really gotta go. I wanna go. Again, no disrespect, you seem like a fine young gentleman, but I don’t even want to be in this room. I told this guy already…” His anxiety was growing into anger. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

  “You know you can help us, Mr. Kaplan,” Ponzi said right back. “You can help us and we can help you.”

  He was done. “I wish I could; I can’t.”

  He began walking slowly toward the door. Ponzi was desperate, believing that if he let Kaplan walk out the door he might never get another shot at him. For the first time he raised his voice. “Listen to me,” he said. “You’re telling me these guys had nothing to do with any of this?”

  He didn’t even stop. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Then stop right there!” Ponzi practically shouted at him. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me these two guys had nothing to do with the abduction and murder of Jimmy Hydell. Look me in the eye and tell me that and I’ll never come back here. I give you my word, you’ll never see me again.”

  Kaplan continued walking toward the door.

  “You can’t do it, can you?” Ponzi challenged him. “Go ahead, turn around, look me in the eye and tell me how wrong I am, tell me these guys got nothing to do with the murder of Eddie Lino. Tell me that Casso is a complete fucking pathological lunatic liar and I give you my word as a man you will never see me again.”

  Kaplan grasped the doorknob and turned it, pushing open the door. By now Ponzi was shouting desperately, “Mr. Kaplan! Mr. Kaplan! Look me in the fucking eye and you tell me that these two guys had nothing to do with the murder of Nicky Guido. I dare you to look at me, turn around and look at me and tell me that and I swear to God you’ll never see me again.”

  Kaplan stopped. Slowly he turned around. His face was red with anger. Very deliberately, never taking his eyes off Ponzi, he walked back to the table and sat down.

  Nicky Guido, the innocent kid; that was the key. Ponzi was stunned, absolutely stunned. He didn’t know why Nicky Guido struck a nerve in Kaplan, but he did. Maybe because this was the one completely innocent person who was killed perhaps due to his actions. Whatever it was, something about Nicky Guido caused him to stop and come back into the room. Sitting down, he pointed a warning finger at Ponzi. “That’s the problem with you guys. You fucking guys think you know everything.”

  Ponzi smiled. “Mr. Kaplan, I don’t purport to know everything or anything. But I think you do. I think you do and I want to hear it from you. Why don’t you tell me what I don’t know?”

  Kaplan just sat there silently, looking at the biggest step he’d take for the rest of his life. And all he had to overcome to take that step was everything he’d ever done or been or believed.

  Ponzi knew when to shut up.

  “I need some time to think about it,” he said softly. He wanted to talk to his lawyer, he said, mull it over a little. Probably, Ponzi guessed, he wanted to see if he could live w
ith the idea.

  “How long?”

  He shrugged. “I need sixty days.”

  “You can have thirty.”

  “I need forty-five days.”

  They argued back and forth for a few minutes, but both of them knew it was all show. Kaplan held the winning ticket; he could take as much time as he needed and nobody would dare push him. He had been careful not to mention either cop by name, but at the very end of this meeting he asked Ponzi a question. “What if there were more than two?”

  Ponzi tried not to reveal his shock. “What does that mean?”

  “What if wasn’t just these two guys?”

  More than two? More than Eppolito and Caracappa? Ponzi tried to press him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Kaplan smiled knowingly. He’d tossed out the bait but wasn’t prepared to reveal any more information. Rising, he stuck out his hand and said, “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Ponzi.” He walked out of the room without looking back.

  Ponzi, Oldham, and Campanella sat there for another few seconds. There was no deal, not even the outline of an agreement—Kaplan hadn’t even asked what they could offer him—but he was interested. The moment he’d turned around and come back into the room Ponzi had begun thinking they had him—but he’d seen too many guys touch the possibility and get burned. He might get back to his cell, shake his head, and decide he just couldn’t do it. It happened; it happened too often. Once, Ponzi remembered, somehow he’d managed to convince a stone-cold killer named Victor Breland to flip. Breland asked for a sheet of paper and began making a list of the murders he had some knowledge about. Ponzi left him alone—and when he returned to the room a few minutes later Breland stuck the paper in his mouth and swallowed it. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I changed my mind. I can’t do it.”

  So when Ponzi got back to his office the most he dared tell Dades, Vecchione, and Feldman was that Kaplan showed some interest. “There’s at least a possibility,” he told them. He wasn’t superstitious, but hey, you never know.

  Each of the investigators on this case had been through this particular process too many times to feel confident Kaplan would flip. But the possibility…it was pretty damn exciting.

  A month later, on July 30, Tommy Dades officially retired from the NYPD. Exactly twenty years to the day and out. He’d actually turned in his shield and completed his paperwork in early May, then spent his accrued vacation time, but July 30 was the official date. The enormity of his decision didn’t really hit him until the papers kicked in, and then it hit him much harder than he had expected. “Being a cop was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says he finally understood. “It saved my life. Because most of the people I grew up with went the other way. Their lives got turned upside down; they started using drugs or ended up criminals. I was right there with them. But the day I put on that uniform something good began happening for me. I put my life into it. And when I finally decided to quit I made a hasty decision. But when it ended, the way it ended, it made me feel like I was on the bottom of the barrel.”

  Dades began running a boxing gym on Staten Island for the Police Athletic League, teaching kids how to protect themselves. But he also got a brand-new badge when he began working for Joe Ponzi. As a new detective investigator, Dades was back on the cops case—at least temporarily.

  While everyone was waiting, often impatiently, for Kaplan to make his decision, the investigation rumbled forward. The meetings were now being held almost exclusively in the U.S. Attorney’s office and were run by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch. Henoch was another one of those solid, no-nonsense prosecutors, a lieutenant colonel in the army reserves who had served in the Middle East. The meetings generally lasted about two hours and usually were attended by eight to ten investigators. The faces changed meeting to meeting. DEA agent Mark Manko was there most of the time. Joe Campanella was there, and Bobby I. An able young prosecutor from Vecchione’s office, Josh Hanshaft, had been cross-designated to represent the state on the case and attended most of the meetings. After dropping out for a brief period Bill Oldham was back on the case. Ponzi would attend an occasional meeting. Feldman would drop in and spend a few minutes. This certainly wasn’t a cohesive, spirited group held together by the pursuit of a noble cause. Rather there were continuing relationship problems, between both individuals and jurisdictions. And progress was achingly slow.

  Henoch did his best to hold the team together. He would sit at the head of the table, his binder open in front of him. He was calm and organized, a list maker, proceeding logically and methodically, rarely showing any emotion. During each meeting the team would review whatever progress had been made and Henoch would hand out new assignments. Everybody would get an assignment—here’s three things for you to do, here’s three things for you to do. People who had expertise in a specific area would get whatever work there was to be done in that area. Much of that work consisted of searching for old records and files; if they could be found—and a lot of records disappear in a decade—then someone would pore over them, sifting for a nugget. The work wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t made for TV; instead it was the essence of detective work. Corroborate this piece of information. Find out where that guy lived. Get the computer ID locator and pull up this record. See if you can find someone with a fifteen-year-old memory. There were a thousand paths to follow, most of them leading nowhere.

  Out in Las Vegas Louie Eppolito was still hustling to make his big deal. He was working on several projects, including a script about the NYPD’s Harbor Patrol Unit. Legendary Las Vegas casino owner Bob Stupak had been talked into hiring him to write a screenplay about his extraordinary life; he paid him $5,000 but canceled the deal after reading the first few pages. Renowned TV producer Dick Wolf supposedly had Mafia Cop under option for several years, although not much seemed to be happening with that project. Finally Eppolito argued with Wolf, demanding he return the rights if he wasn’t going to develop the movie. Wolf agreed, and Eppolito told his friends that another company was getting ready to make the film. According to those same friends, Louie also claimed he’d done some work spicing up some dialogue for Pulitzer Prize–winning writer David Mamet, showing off a beautiful ring that Mamet supposedly had sent him in appreciation of his effort. If people listened to Louie, director David Lynch had called him several times, and his close friend Robert De Niro really wanted to develop Mafia Cop but wouldn’t put up any money to option it.

  Eppolito played the tough-guy role so well that it had become apparent he wasn’t acting. That was Louie Eppolito: He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He bragged to the FBI’s cooperating witness, Steve Corso, that when he had been caught red-handed with confidential NYPD documents concerning wiseguy Rosario Gambino he beat “a federal case,” after an FBI agent admitted the wrong man had been arrested. In actuality, not only had Eppolito never been arrested, the only charges brought against him in that case had been made in an NYPD administrative hearing.

  The DEA set up a simple scam. Corso had proposed putting together a three-movie package and raising $6 million by selling shares to the public, estimating they could make as much as $250,000 just in filing fees. Louie was gung-ho for the deal, putting up three screenplays he’d written as his contribution in return for stock. Some of Eppolito’s legit friends were considerably less enthusiastic. One of them, a stockbroker, suggested, “Louie, let me meet this guy. There’s just something wrong about this. It doesn’t sound right.”

  “No, no,” Louie said. “Believe me, this is the chance for all of us. We’re gonna have some money, we’re finally gonna get to make some movies.” Reality never got in the way of Louie Eppolito’s fantasies. “We’re gonna be the first real movie company in this town. We’re gonna have complete control.”

  A low-budget movie producer friend who was going to be part of the deal pleaded with him, “C’mon, Louie, what’ll it hurt? Why don’t you just let us meet this guy? In five minutes we’ll know if he’s for real.”
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br />   Eppolito refused and continued to meet with Corso, and Corso continued to tape every single word he said.

  Meanwhile, in New York everybody was waiting for Burt Kaplan to make his decision. A month passed, then two months, and they were deep into the summer. Still no word from the old man. As more time passed Vecchione and Ponzi and Dades began to doubt Kaplan was going to flip. Whenever they got together or spoke on the phone they’d wonder what was going on in his mind. Obviously he was wrestling with the concept, which was a good sign, but thus far it didn’t look like he was winning the match. They also spent a considerable amount of time speculating about his tantalizing suggestion that there was a third player in this scenario. They racked their brains trying to figure out who that might be. There was absolutely no hint of another dirty cop mentioned in Casso’s 302s. Not a clue. It had to be a cop, but who? And how did he fit into the program? They tried to figure out who Louie was closest to, who Steve was closest to, who they trusted enough to bring into the inner sanctum. And did Gaspipe know about this mysterious player and protect him for some reason?

  Whoever it was, they knew they weren’t going to put a name on him until Kaplan handed it to them. If Kaplan decided to flip.

  Occasionally Ponzi would wander across the street to the U.S. Attorney’s office to find out what was going on. At that time Kaplan was being represented by a noted civil rights lawyer in Alabama, who would have to negotiate any deal that was made. “You hear from the lawyer?” Ponzi asked Feldman.