See No Evil

by Ron Felber

  27

  A TANGLED WEB

  “Busy? I’m never too fucking busy to say hello to my friends.”

  By early December as the strings of destiny were pulled taut and the lives of Gotti, Giuliani, and Elliot coalesced, the name Ralph Scopo loomed large on the horizon of each. Call it a premonition, but on the morning of December 5 when Scopo’s wife and son, a bodybuilder in his midtwenties, met with him for the first time at Mount Sinai, Elliot knew that dice were set rolling that would seriously change his life. If there was a single impression that struck him during their discussion about the surgery to come, it was the family’s conviction regarding their husband/father’s innocence and genuine concern about his health. When Elliot was with them, they were polite and respectful. But after he left the room, they spoke about him with the kind of reverence reserved for Reader’s Digest’s “Father of the Year.”

  According to them, Ralph Scopo was a hard-working family man caught up in a tangled web of FBI and New York City lawmen and prosecutors out to take down anyone who wouldn’t cooperate as a state’s witness against alleged Mafiosi with little concern for innocence or guilt. In some obvious ways, Elliot’s consultation with them was similar to the hundreds of others he’d had over the years. But as he explained the combined right and left cardiac cauterization procedure and got a sense of the kind of people they were, he wondered if Ralph Scopo was, in fact, a corrupt union boss or the victim of an overzealous prosecution machine set into a Mafia feeding frenzy.

  Though he’d already determined, after viewing the Beekman charts, that Scopo probably needed aortocoronary bypass surgery to survive, Elliot wanted fresh x-rays of his heart to diagnose exactly where and how the narrowing of his coronary arteries had progressed. This he explained to Scopo’s wife and son as the union boss was being prepped for testing.

  “This morning we’re going to X-ray Ralph’s heart using a contrast medium, a kind of dye, that’s injected via catheter through an artery in his arm. I know this was done before, but I insist that it’s performed before any surgical treatment for coronary heart disease to determine the best possible treatment,” Elliot explained, all the while thinking about two men he’d personally known without any mob ties that had been prosecuted and served prison time, their lives shattered, by headline-grabbing prosecutors not so unlike Rudy Giuliani.

  “The principal problem that this cauterization procedure helps to diagnose is narrowing of the coronary arteries caused by plaque formation. You see, the arteries feeding blood to the heart are relatively few and small—about the size of the lead in a pencil. The process of plaque formation once it’s started, not only narrows the artery, but can enhance the tendency of blood near it to clot,” he continued, staring into their faces as he remembered the nightmare Congressman Cornelius “Neil” Gallagher, of New Jersey had lived after forming a subcommittee to investigate FBI/CIA abuses during the late 1960s.

  In danger of uncovering “black-bag” break-ins (COINTELPRO), brainwashing programs (ARTICHOKE), and assassination squads (PHOENIX), Hoover using the ubiquitous Roy Cohn as a go-between, tried to blackmail Gallagher with phony Life magazine exposés based on alleged Mafia connections. That failing, the FBI launched a relentless series of investigations into the congressman, his friends, and family that spanned nearly four decades. By the time the attacks ended, Gallagher, a war hero who’d been awarded three Purple Hearts and Bronze and Silver Star medals during World War II, had served two stints in federal prison, lost his congressional seat, his license to practice law, his good name, and entire life savings. All of this without a single mob-related charge ever having been proven or even substantiated.

  “If the clot, or spasm caused by it, is large enough to block the artery, a person can have a heart attack. If the clot isn’t that big, but still interferes with the flow of blood, he may experience angina like Ralph did several weeks ago—severe chest pain that results from the heart muscle not receiving enough oxygen. If either heart attacks or angina deprive the heart of oxygen long enough, a portion of the heart muscle called the myocardium dies. The result can range from almost undetectable to immediately fatal,” Elliot elaborated, thinking now about Joseph Salvati, a truck driver fingered by a hit man named Joseph Barboza. Salvati served thirty years in prison for a murder he knew nothing about.

  In March 1965, during the twilight of Bobby Kennedy’s war on the mob, agents overheard Barboza on a wiretap requesting permission from his boss to ice a small-time hood named Edward Deegan, who later turned up dead, shot six times, in an alley. When indictments were handed down, Barboza, the real murderer, was not named because in addition to being a professional killer, he worked as an informant for the bureau. Unbelievably, the four innocent men, including Joseph Salvati, who were named, were subsequently convicted of Deegan’s murder on Barboza’s testimony with the FBI fully cognizant of their innocence. Salvati, who was targeted because he owed Barboza $400, wound up serving thirty years in federal prison, two others died while serving their sentences, and the fourth man, Peter Limone, was sentenced to die in the electric chair.

  “If our testing demonstrates that Ralph’s condition warrants, we may go ahead with an aortocoronary bypass procedure,” Elliot told them, watching as Marie Scopo’s dark and worried eyes met his. “A coronary bypass takes anywhere from two to four hours to perform and is essentially the same regardless of the number of arteries to be bypassed. But just so you understand the procedure, let me briefly take you through what will happen,” he said, stopping suddenly as he observed a look of exasperation pass between mother and son. “Mrs. Scopo, have I said something wrong? I don’t want to continue if this is upsetting either you or your son.” He stared into each of their eyes for some signal about what they were feeling. “I simply wanted to reassure you and your son that bypass surgeries are performed here at Mount Sinai many times each day and that your husband is under the best possible care.”

  “Dr. Litner, Dottore, we know who you are and have every confidence in your abilities. When we talked about Ralph’s condition to people we trust like family, it was you who they recommended. You don’t never have to explain what you do to me or to my son. This is all we ask, please don’t let my husband and the father of my children die in no hospital. Ralph’s no angel, but he’s a good man who never did nothing worse than anybody else. He’s been a provider to his family and a loving father to his children. He don’t deserve to die on no operating table. We love him too much for that.”

  “I know that you care about your husband very much, Mrs. Scopo. I could see it from the moment you walked into my office. So please don’t worry,” Elliot vowed. “Everything that can be done will be done.”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears as her son dutifully helped her from her chair, looking more like visiting clergy than the bodybuilding son of a Mafia capo.

  “We trust you, Dottore,” Joey Scopo stated like the politest, most stand-up guy on the planet. “No matter what happens, we know you’ll do everything in your power to fix my father’s heart.”

  It was one in the morning by the time Elliot left Mount Sinai with his initial assumptions about surgery confirmed for Scopo. He was exhausted physically from the work, but more from the nonstop stress. The insulation was gone. For him, it was down to bare wire. With surgery scheduled for 3:00 P.M. that afternoon, he didn’t have much time to try to ruminate over just how he would handle the most serious dilemma of his life.

  On the one hand, Rosengarten, who carried a lot of weight himself, but not nearly so much as his bosses, had made it about as clear as anyone could that the godfathers who headed the Commission needed and expected Scopo to die on the operating table. On the other, there was the genuine allegiance Elliot held for the Hippocratic oath he was sworn to, along with a sincere liking not only for Ralph Scopo, but for members of his immediate family whom he found to be profound in their story of how this husband and father’s life had gone awry. “Misunderstandings of this magnitude were certainly p
ossible,” Elliot lamented as he walked from the elevator into the hospital’s underground lot. “Just look at me.”

  Then as he walked toward his ’Vette and switched open the locks, Elliot noticed a long black Lincoln Continental slowly prowling with lights on bright. It moved like a shark gliding through water, methodical, as it positioned its high beams directly on him, so that he felt like he was an actor on stage caught up in a play no sane man could ever have written. There he stood, just outside the Corvette’s driver’s door, frozen in the glare of those headlights, waiting for he didn’t know what, when suddenly his cell phone rang. Once, twice, three times. Since it was already after 1:00 A.M., he had to believe he was meant to answer it.

  “H-Hello?” Elliot asked in a voice so quiet and so frightened that it must have sounded like something between a mouse and a lamb.

  “You know who this is, don’t you? You do, I know. So don’t say nothing. I wanted to call. Let you know that we’re counting on you to do the right thing tomorrow. You’re a good fucking kid. Everyone says so. Now you get to prove it. Do what we ask, you’re the next director of heart surgery at Mount Sinai. Don’t, you lose more than your fucking job, capesci?”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, having recognized immediately the voice of John Gotti, who now that Gravano was a member of the Concrete Club, also had a vested interest in Ralph Scopo’s demise. “Thanks for taking the t-time to call. I kn-know how busy you must be,” he added stupidly.

  “Busy? Never too fucking busy to say hello to my friends.”

  “Your people, was it them that assaulted my father-in-law, Mort Shapiro the other night?”

  “Dottore, on my mother’s eyes, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, but this much I’ll tell you. If your father-in-law was talkin’ to any-fucking-body about this trial, about this rat scumbag we both know and these lies he’s been tellin’ about us, what did you expect? What the fuck did you expect from any of this? You stick your nose up somebody’s ass, and you think it’s gonna smell like what, roses?”

  “No, not roses.”

  “Good. You remember that ’cause this thing has got to be handled just right, or it’s gonna hurt people at very high levels. So you all right with that now? What we were talkin’ about?”

  “Yes, sir, we’re j-just fine.”

  “Okay, then, let me tell you one last thing. It’s about my fucking health. My stomach is good, and my shit still don’t look like fucking coffee grounds. That’s a good thing,” Gotti said laughing. “Now get a good night’s sleep, and don’t ever forget this conversation.”

  With those words, the connection went dead. Elliot stood silently watching as the Lincoln’s headlights ratcheted down to normal and the black limousine turned around and drove off, its red taillights disappearing into the dark like a mirage that he had to convince himself was real. Then, with hands still shaking, he fumbled with his keys, entered his car, and got the hell out of Mount Sinai’s underground parking lot as fast as his Lil’ Red Corvette would take him.

  28

  AN “INTERESTING” LIFE

  “Dr. Litner, I was asked by Mr. Giuliani to tell you that if anything happens to Mr. Scopo, the full resources of his office will be devoted to a criminal investigation of you, your business dealings, and medical practice.”

  Elliot arrived at the hospital at nine that morning, late for him, particularly in light of the full schedule of surgeries that had developed over the past couple of days, not the least of which was Ralph Scopo’s. After having been checked in to Mount Sinai, Giuliani’s star witness had been deposited via wheelchair on the third floor of the Housman Pavilion along with two armed members of the NYPD Mob-Corruption Unit, who stood guard on a twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil and whose job it was to make certain that Scopo made it alive to the operating room.

  Once settled into his office, Elliot mulled over the results of the preoperative tests he’d ordered, recorded by Clark Hinterlieter, the resident surgeon, on a patient’s chart. They included an electrocardiogram, blood samples to determine kidney and liver function and cholesterol and mineral balance, blood-cell count, and urinalysis. Also there were the forward and sideways chest X-rays Elliot had described to Scopo’s wife and son, along with four units of blood cross matched to Scopo’s type that were put aside in the hospital blood bank.

  The case, from a medical standpoint, was routine, Elliot was thinking then, but that was where anything simple ended along with any possible pretense of moral ambiguity along with it. No more faking. No more dodging that treacherous crossroad between good and evil. Scopo would either live or die at his hands. But with a poetic twist that even Shakespeare could not have conceived, in murdering a man, he would be saved. In saving a man, he would risk being murdered. It was enough to give a poor Jewish kid raised in the Bronx Excedrin headache #2321!

  From his office, Elliot drifted to the eighth floor of the Annenberg Building where, in a large meeting room, about two dozen attending cardiologists and residents met each morning to talk over cases and compare notes. There, he sat sipping from a cardboard cup filled with Diet Coke, so totally preoccupied with this, the dilemma of his life, that he hardly noticed Clark Hinterlieter as he walked up to the front of the room to present Scopo’s case.

  “This fifty-six-year-old white male has a history of heavy cigarette smoking, is obese, sedentary, and has a family history of coronary disease and elevated lipid levels. The physical exam showed a heart rate of seventy beats a minute, blood pressure 140/75 in both arms, sitting. He was breathing comfortably at fourteen breaths a minute and a febrile …,” Hinterlieter explained to the group as Elliot wondered what had brought him to this juncture in his life. If there was a way out, he didn’t know what it could be at that moment, with little prospect for a breakthrough idea between now and the time of the operation.

  Elliot looked around the conference room to his colleagues including Frank Silvio and could tell as soon as Silvio’s dark eyes met his own, then darted away as quickly, that Frank knew everything that was going on. “That’s right,” Elliot was thinking, “don’t get too close, Frankie. Not now because for the moment, I’m still something between a stand-up guy and damaged goods, with the jury still out.”

  His eyes then fell on Dr. Dak as he observed Hinterlieter’s synopsis. “Unusual for him to attend,” he was thinking, “but that’s no accident.” Like nearly every other powerful man he was acquainted with in New York, Simon’s name had been thrown around by Al Rosengarten during their dinner at the Plaza. Maybe Dak’s being here was a message, yet another intimidation piled atop Gotti’s visit and the rest. “Or maybe I‘ve gone over the deep end,” Elliot concluded, “become totally paranoid reading meaning into the most innocent coincidence.”

  Hinterlieter signaled for the angiograms to be shown at the front of the room where the branchlike patterns of Ralph Scopo’s coronaries appeared on the ten-by-twenty-foot white screen. “As you can see, there’s an 85 percent narrowing of the patient’s left main coronary artery just before the vessel divides into its two main branches, the left anterior descending and the left circumflex arteries, which were themselves blocked downstream. The LAD was 80 percent obstructed, and there seemed to be another 99 percent lesion of its first diagonal branch. But because these deposits were spread out along the narrow vessel lining, I wasn’t sure whether the artery was bypassable.”

  As the resident surgeon droned on, Elliot couldn’t help but ponder his fate now mere hours away. Exactly what were his options? he anguished, remembering something his Uncle Saul had once told him. “There’s a solution to every problem, but most people are either too stupid or too lazy to take the time to figure it out. Now go know!” Fair enough. He considered his options. Clearly there are only two outcomes. Either Scopo lived or he died. If he survived the procedure, there would be only one conclusion killers like Gotti and Castellano could draw, and that is that he betrayed them. And that meant Elliot was dead. If, however, Scopo was to die during surgery or later
from complications, this left a mouse hole for escape because the prosecutors’ conclusions could never be so clear cut. Anyone interested enough to pick up a medical text could read that there are mortality (death) and morbidity (complication) rates running somewhere between 1 percent and 3 percent attributed to aortocoronary bypass. Why not Scopo? Who could prove otherwise?

  “In summary,” Clark Hinterlieter lectured, “chest X-rays reflect lung disease, but this does not seem too severe. Angiography shows double-vessel disease in addition to a left-main lesion, with preserved ventricular function. We suspect recent subendocardial infarction involving the anterior wall related to disease in the diagonal branch of the LAD.”

  Yet, deep within Elliot there was something as strong and visceral as his own survival instincts, and that was his love of healing. True, he’d made many mistakes. He gambled too much. He was unfaithful to his wife and had engaged in questionable activities that jeopardized himself and his family. But not so many that it had totally blunted his need to save, as opposed to snuffing, human life no matter what the motive. He was a healer, not a murderer. Everything he’d learned and been taught by his father, his mother, and uncles sent him hurtling in one direction while all that he had come to know of life since becoming an associate in the Mafia threw him back again where he was trapped, like in one of those 1950s horror films, in the middle of a locked room with stone walls slowly, inexorably, closing in!