The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

  RUBY GOTTESMAN: Mickey was one of the smartest guys I ever met. He knew everything.

  When my wife found out Mickey died, she was cryin’, and Norman was cryin’. They were all in the same paddy wagon when they got arrested, and everybody was cryin’ about Mickey. Norman was cryin’ ’cause Mickey was his meal ticket—because Mickey was a made man.

  ARTIE MITCHELL: Mickey was funny as hell. Everything was just business to him. He wanted to be involved in porn, sure, but he didn’t have a big sex thing. All’s he wanted was a girl down on her knees in the back of the limo blowing him.

  Mickey was a real gentleman.

  PAT LIVINGSTON: I found out that day that Mickey Zaffarano croaked. Yeah, it was great. But if you put that in I’m gonna be in big trouble. Law enforcement officers are a little sick. You gotta be a little sick to do this stuff.

  ARTIE MITCHELL: We’d flown in from California for Mickey’s funeral. Our hair was long and blond, and the mob bodyguards assumed we were FBI.

  I said, “No way! We’re the Mitchell brothers, you know?”

  They didn’t know.

  I said, “Like, Behind the Green Door?”

  “Oh, yeah.” So they let us in, and we got to pay our respects. But I thought, we can affect wise guy personas, but what’s the point? The wiseguys and the FBI were both bad for business.

  FRED SCHWARTZ: There was a media splurge a day or two after the arrests. FBI agents around the country were calling the Miami office to ask things. I was calling. Marcella Cohen, the other prosecutor, was calling. Everyone was calling—and Pat wouldn’t put anybody on.

  “Bruce isn’t here,” he’d lie. “Gary isn’t here. I’m the case agent. I’ll handle this.”

  BILL KELLY: The phone would ring and some agent not connected to MIPORN would answer it. Pat would physically grab the phone away from the guy and say, “Listen, Mister, you don’t talk about MIPORN. That’s my case. I talk about it.”

  If you knew Pat before he went into MIPORN and then after he came out—they were like two different guys.

  BILL BROWN: It was my first brush with real big publicity. Newsweek wanted to talk with me. Everyone was calling. And Pat was just loving all the publicity, but Bruce didn’t want any of it.

  And then the Miami Herald article came out with a front page headline that basically said MIPORN was conducted by Pat Livingston and “his inexperienced rookie sidekick, Bruce Ellavsky.” It went on to say, “Pat did this, and Pat did that…”

  My heart and my stomach just did flip-flops. I mean, it was terrible. It was awful. This was the worst thing that could have happened.

  BRUCE ELLAVSKY: Yeah, I was offended over the article because I thought I carried my share of the load, you know? In fact, with the paperwork, I thought that I did the bulk of it. So I was angry and the way I deal with things like that is—I go to the person and say, “What’s the story?”

  BILL BROWN: Pat went all over the place to deny he said it. But any small shred of hope that their relationship could be patched up was gone. Bruce was deeply hurt by that inaccurate, distorted, unfair, and terrible article.

  BRUCE ELLAVSKY: Pat said, “I don’t know anything about it. I feel terrible about it. It’s not true—blah, blah, blah.”

  GORDON MCNEIL: I was astounded by Pat’s behavior. I thought his conduct was just bizarre. I mean, Pat told me, “I want to be a grade fifteen agent, and I want to be set up in West Palm Beach, Florida. And the way I see my future in the FBI is this: I’ll be the rabbi of all undercover operations. Everyone will come to me and bounce their ideas for operations off of me, and I will give it my blessing or thumbs down.”

  FRED SCHWARTZ: Pat was living the life, not of a jet-setter, but of a high-rolling businessman. Gordy McNeil had given both Bruce and Pat pretty much free rein, so Pat could make his own schedule. If he wanted to sleep late, he’d sleep late. If he wanted to stay out late and not get up the next day, he wouldn’t get up. He could make his own rules—the way he dressed, what he did, where he went.

  But the day after the indictments came down, suddenly Pat was a nine-to-five agent again. He had to wear a jacket and tie, and go into the office, and listen to me tell him what was going to happen next.

  BILL BROWN: Pat would just let these absurd situations develop. Like some woman would show up at my house and ask, “Is Pat here?”

  I’d say, “No, Pat’s not here.”

  She’d say, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Bill Brown.”

  She’d say, “But this is Pat Salamone’s house, isn’t it?”

  I’d say, “No, this is my house. Pat doesn’t live here, but he’s here a lot. Is there anything I can do?”

  She’d say, “We’re supposed to have a party here at nine o’clock.” I mean, I would try to be as polite to the person as I could. Then Pat would show up, and I’d just let it go.

  But afterward I’d tell Pat, “You tell people that my house is your home, and I’m your guest, and it’s for no reason. If it was part of the operation, that would be wonderful. But it’s over—and this is just some cocktail waitress you met in Hialeah. I mean, come on?!?!”

  It was insanity.

  GORDON MCNEIL: Pat thought he was going to sit there in West Palm Beach, and everyone from the FBI would come to him with their undercover proposals, and he’d say, “Yes, that sounds good” or, “No, that sounds bad.”

  And Pat would make all the decisions. This is really what he was saying to me. This is really the way he saw himself. He felt the bureau owed him.

  So I said, “Pat, I feel relatively sure that the bureau will say, ‘You gotta be kidding. You’re not going to sit up there in West Palm Beach and have all these undercover agents kiss your ring all day.’”

  PAT LIVINGSTON: I wanted it my way, and I tried to get it. And I pissed everybody off. I don’t know why Gordy hung in there. I don’t know why he didn’t punch me out a couple times. He should’ve just fucking decked me, you know? I guess it was because that was the other Livingston—that was Pat Salamone.

  FRED SCHWARTZ: Once there were indictments, I asserted a lot more control. You see, it was Pat and Bruce’s case when they were investigating it, but I had to win it in court.

  I might have gone too far in asserting control, and I think Pat resented that. But I have as big an ego as Pat does—and this had now become my case.

  PAT LIVINGSTON: When do things go bad with Fred Schwartz? When he won’t let me run the case, ha, ha, ha.

  I went from total control to having to defer to prosecuting attorneys. I was thinking, “How can they do it better than me?”

  It was gonna be my way or no way.

  GORDON MCNEIL: Pat almost got into a fistfight with Fred Schwartz. Pat was saying, “I’m the one who’s calling the priorities on this!”

  Of course, Fred told him, “Well, you may be calling the investigative priorities, but we’re calling the prosecuting priorities.”

  And Pat felt he should be controlling the prosecution side, too. It was not a good situation.

  FRED SCHWARTZ: I thought Pat was overreacting in resenting my coming into the case. But I didn’t think there was a psychological problem until a meeting I had with him in March 1980.

  I was trying to push Pat to do something, and I said to Kelly, “Bill, I’d like you to sit in on this meeting.” I wasn’t physically afraid of Pat. I just felt that if there was going to be a showdown, I wanted witnesses. I wanted to have somebody there to make sure it wasn’t my ego that was causing the problem—and to verify if there really was a problem with Pat.

  BILL KELLY: Fred Schwartz called me and said, “You better get down here. Pat and I’ve got a problem.”

  FRED SCHWARTZ: Bill and I sat there for over an hour listening to Pat lecture me—rambling, disjointed—about how he was the case agent; how this was his responsibility; how he saved Bruce’s marriage by bringing Bruce down here; how Bruce resents him now…

  BILL KELLY: It got to the point where Pat was physically threateni
ng Fred Schwartz—the lead federal prosecutor in the case. Pat was about two seconds from throwing a punch at him. And Pat would’ve cleaned up on Fred because Pat was a tough little guy. So I had to get up and intervene.

  Later, I said to my wife, Virginia, “This guy, we’ll never make a regular 8:15-to-5:00 agent out of him again. He’s too far gone.”

  PAT LIVINGSTON: I never got a sense that my emotions were out of control. The way I looked at it, it was the other people having problems. They weren’t aware of the total picture, so if anybody had a problem, it was them. I didn’t want to hear it.

  I had kept everything inside me for so long and hadn’t gotten any outside help. Because outside help was a threat to my existence.

  PHIL SMITH: Undercover guys gotta live the role. You can’t be thinking about ten other things. And that’s the problem—the better guys get into the role, and they can’t get back out.

  I mean, how are they gonna be normal again? They’re out there knockin’ around, throwin’ money around, shmoozin’ with the broads—now all of a sudden you’re gonna come back and sign in every morning? It don’t happen.

  So how many of these guys do you recover? How many of them ever go back to being a regular agent? Nah. You lose ’em. It’s a fact of life.

  FRED SCHWARTZ: After the meeting with Pat, I looked at Kelly and said, “Bill, I think Pat really has significant problems. I’d like to talk to you and Bruce and see what we can do.”

  I think the bottom line was that it would be best for me to be the one to talk to Gordy McNeil and Art Nehrbass. It’s not something you do lightly—you don’t go to a SAC [Special Agent in Charge] and say you think an agent you’ve been working with for two-and-a-half-years has psychological problems. But I went to them and said, “Let’s at least have Pat evaluated.”

  GORDON MCNEIL: I wrote a communication to Washington saying that Pat Livingston did not appear to be functioning normally after the MIPORN operation came to an end. I wrote that he had delusions of grandeur—he thought he was going to be elevated to some lofty position in the bureau—and that he was just acting strange. I was basically asking for the authority to get a psychiatric evaluation of Pat Livingston.

  But because I didn’t want Pat to get suspicious, I had Bruce Ellavsky evaluated, too. And Bruce was mad as hell at me.

  So I said, “Bruce, I know you appear to be absolutely, totally normal at this point. But just do me a favor and get an evaluation too, so Livingston doesn’t think we’re singling him out.”

  PAT LIVINGSTON: Art Nehrbass and Gordon McNeil sent me to a psychiatrist named Dr. Balasini in Miami. It was presented to me as just a normal thing to do after an undercover operation. I wasn’t advised by either one of them that they saw a problem on my part. As a matter of fact, it was set up that Bruce went along to make it look like a normal practice.

  I was very reluctant to go to the psychiatrist because I thought that would be a threat to my career. The bureau—more so than the banking industry or the other professions—just doesn’t accept mistakes. You can’t have a flaw.

  But I did see Dr. Balasini and basically told him what he wanted to hear.

  FRED SCHWARTZ: The psychiatrist said that Pat was fine. I know Pat fooled him, but Pat’s behavior changed after he went to the psychiatrist. There wasn’t overt antagonism. There wasn’t resistance. There wasn’t that fight for control. It was almost as if he was saying, “I see you have the weapons to hurt me. Therefore, to hell with it; I’ll do what I have to do.”

  PAM ELLAVSKY: Pat wanted to keep going out every night, and Bruce would say, “There’s nothing to go out for.”

  Pat would say, “Oh, yes there is. We’re going to do this, and we’re going to do that….”

  And Bruce would say, “No, Pat, it’s over. I’m not going.”

  BRUCE ELLAVSKY: I went to the SAC and told him I didn’t think Pat should ever work undercover again. I mean, even after the case ended Pat continued to use his undercover name.

  BILL BROWN: We were driving up to Mr. Laff’s restaurant—where Pat was still introducing himself as Salamone—and Pat was telling me, “I want to get divorced from Vickie. I want custody of my kids. I want to be an undercover agent. I want to go to Las Vegas and gamble.”

  I said, “Pat, do you realize how preposterous what you just said is? I know you love your children, but you’re not home long enough to take care of a cat, let alone a child.”

  VICKIE LIVINGSTON (PAT LIVINGSTON’S WIFE): About a month after the indictments came down, Pat was real nice to me all of a sudden. I couldn’t understand why he was being so cooperative.

  BILL BROWN: I said it in a nice way, but I said, “Pat, you are exhibiting the classic symptoms of a person who is neurotic. You think, act, and behave in a dissimilar manner. You probably don’t realize what you’re doing, but you need professional help, and I wish you’d go see a psychiatrist.”

  VICKIE LIVINGSTON: What led me to let Pat come back? I don’t know. He came over on Derby Day—the first weekend in May—and said he’d made a big mistake and that he wanted to come back. It was a couple of days before we were going for our final divorce. I just didn’t know what to do. I was really torn. I said, “You’ve got to be crazy. I can’t believe how you’ve thrown me these curves.”

  I was just really confused. Pat was calling me at work and begging me—calling me all hours of the night.

  PAM ELLAVSKY: They were about three days away from their divorce when Pat crawled back to Vickie on his hands and knees. I mean, you just never knew what Pat was going to do next—there was just so much conniving that went on. Pat seemed not to want to intentionally hurt Vickie, but he was constantly hurting her anyway. He never told the truth. And I saw her suffer.

  PAT LIVINGSTON: I knew it was a loveless marriage, but hey, that’s okay. I tried to keep the marriage together for the kids. I was going back to Vickie because I had the two best boys in the world. I could have transferred anywhere in the country, but Vickie wanted Louisville because her family was there. So I let her pick Louisville.

  VICKIE LIVINGSTON: Pat was using moving to Louisville as a way to lure me back.

  I didn’t get back together with him because that’s what I wanted. I told him flat out that I didn’t love him, but I felt I owed it to the kids to see what would happen.

  I thought, “What do I have to lose? I’m planning to move to Louisville anyway. If it works out, fine, and if it doesn’t, I’m where I want to be.”

  PAM ELLAVSKY: Vickie told Pat, “Okay, you transfer us to Louisville, and you can come home.” And that was it. We never spoke again.

  BILL KELLY: Pat and Bruce were praised as the heroes of the whole operation, and they were. They lived in constant danger for a long time. They were both given transfers out of Miami, where naturally they were still in danger. Livingston was transferred to Louisville at the request of his wife. Ellavsky went to Boston.

  PAM ELLAVSKY: We were all on the same bowling team together, and we just couldn’t talk anymore. Vickie just couldn’t face me. She couldn’t look me in the eye.

  VICKIE LIVINGSTON: The weekend we moved to Louisville I was standing outside a church in tears. Bill Brown had said, “He’ll never make the transition back to the real world.”

  I knew he was never again going be the man that I married; I knew in my heart that he would never make it back.

  Then, that night, Pat said he was going back undercover. I was furious. I said, “We’re not even here two days, and you’re going back undercover? My God, what have I gotten myself into?”

  “Ordeal”

  MIAMI/LONDON/LONG ISLAND

  1980

  LINDA LOVELACE: Larry Marchiano was going out with my sister, and I went to Florida for a deposition, and I just started talking to Larry. So then Larry came out to California. And it was a bad choice I made there. When I was getting married to him, I’m like, “Wait a second, can I have my baby and be without you?”

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: Linda moved out to Long Island
and re-associated herself with Larry Marchiano, who is the father of her first kid.

  Linda had been with him before me, that’s how I knew about it. I had a Polaroid picture of ’em. Linda must’ve been fifteen, sixteen, when she met him. I don’t know how they met. I don’t know if he went to high school with her. I just remember the name, and when I was doin’ the E! Channel thing, the guy said, “Yeah, she just broke up with Marchiano, her husband.”

  I asked, “Marchiano? Larry Marchiano?”

  He said, “Yeah.”

  I said, “The guy she fucked before she fucked me, you know?”

  He said, “Really?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  He couldn’t understand how she bullshitted about that because she said the son was really the sister’s, I guess.

  LINDA LOVELACE: When I first got pregnant, I was sixteen. I was in New York, but I went to Florida because my oldest sister, Barbara, said I couldn’t stay with her because she didn’t want her daughters to see me in that condition.

  So I went to a Children’s Home Society in Florida. I was going to give him up to a foster home until I could produce on my own. I went to school to become a keypunch operator. In the hospital, five hours after the baby was born, they brought me papers to sign. I was in such a fog—they doped me up so much—I could hardly talk and could hardly see. My mother said, “These are circumcision papers.”