Dad was furious. “We have so much to offer,” he yelled, pressing the nozzle against my brother’s temple. “We are finally winning. We are finally getting ahead.” He was beside himself.
“Dad, it’s only a couple of times,” Gerard pleaded.
“I don’t give a shit!” my father screamed.
Looking back, I wish I had never told my father because then he wouldn’t have been forced to get involved. Things always get complicated when you try to fix somebody else’s problems, I learned.
After the blowup at Gerard’s apartment, the three of us went out to dinner. Dad was still upset. “I feel like after I cooperated, every decision you and your brother have made has been to spite me,” he said to us. “We lost everything we had. We need to see the big picture when we make decisions.”
Everybody in the family was confused about what mattered: respect, money, forgiveness, family. So much had happened to us that we hadn’t talked about. We were all going through the process of forgiving each other.
Dad had given Gerard everything money could buy. He had bought him his own restaurant. He had given him the down payment on a house. He was at a loss as to why Gerard would want to take such a risk going to New York to do a drug deal. To me it was clear, Gerard wanted respect more than money.
Dad’s resolution was to lend my brother money so he wouldn’t have to go back to New York to do the drug deal. Dad felt he was protecting him from the possibility of being harmed in New York because he was involved in some criminal activity.
Gerard promised my father that he would stop dealing, but he and Mike never really stopped. There were a few more deals. There was this kid named Jason who was a rival seller. Mike and Gerard ended up beating him up outside of a nightclub and leaving him there. They didn’t know Jason was connected to an Israeli crime outfit out of New York, which was transporting a lot of Ecstasy from New York to Los Angeles and Arizona.
The assault on Jason got the Israeli mob really mad. Mike Papa came to the pool office and told my dad that Israeli mobsters found out that he, Sammy the Bull, was in Phoenix and they were going to have him taken down. They were going to kill him and Gerard. Mike told Dad there had been a fight and he and Gerard had beaten up the kid. But he failed to tell both Gerard and my father about his side of the drug dealings and the personal beef that he had with this kid Jason.
Dad told Mike, “Get me a meeting at Uncle Sal’s.”
Dad had no idea what it was about. Jason showed up at the restaurant for the meeting. “I’m telling you right now, if anything happens to my son, there is going to be an all-out war,” my father told the guy.
“We own Arizona,” the Israeli guy replied.
“No,” Dad said. “I own Arizona. Tell your boss that Sammy the Bull is here, and he owns Arizona now.”
* * *
My daughter Karina took two days to be born. I was living at my mother’s, and Dave had just moved into the house. Karina’s due date was June 26, 1999, but she wasn’t born until July 7. My doctor let me go two weeks past my due date, but then he was going to induce me if she hadn’t come by then. On July 5, I went to Desert Samaritan Hospital in Mesa to deliver. Everybody came to the hospital: Mom, Gerard, Aunt Diane, Dad, even Grandma Scibetta, who arrived from Florida to be with me for the birth. I was put on Pitocin, but I was not dilating. So I was going to be allowed to sleep through the night, and they were going to try again the next day. But nothing happened. I was having contractions, but not dilating. I was right next to the labor room and I was going crazy hearing all the new mothers going in and out and having their babies. I begged for a C-section, telling the doctor I’d already been there two days.
The whole day of July 6 went by, and now it was the morning of July 7. I got up to take a shower and pack my things. The nurse saw me walking around the room and asked what was going on. “I’m going to another hospital that will help me have my baby,” I told her. She disappeared into the hallway and returned with the doctor.
“I give you my word, you are going to have the baby tonight,” he assured me.
I didn’t trust him, so I called my father. I reached him at the construction office. “Dad, can you come down here, and if I don’t have the baby tonight, can you do something?” I begged him. He promised he’d make it happen, but not before teasing me.
“Karen,” he said, “you’re like a little bull. The baby doesn’t want to come.” I was ready to kill him.
At 5:00 P.M., I was still not dilating. Just as they were thinking about prepping me for a C-section, I started dilating. Within an hour I was fully dilated. Finally, Karina was delivered, weighing in at six pounds, seven ounces.
Unfortunately, Karina had an irregular heartbeat when she was born, so she had to be raced to the NICU before I even had a chance to see her. My brother had been waiting in the hall, and when he saw all the commotion as the team wrapped her and ran her along in her isolette, he busted into the delivery room, where my legs were still in stirrups.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a panic.
“I’m okay,” I told him.
Everybody except my mother and grandmother went up to the NICU to get updates. The team was really scared about Karina’s low heart rate. She was such a fighter, though. She was soon out of the NICU and in my arms. Instantly, she was the love of my life. It was such a crazy feeling realizing I’d made a baby. My perspective changed after that. Once you have a child, you have to be the caregiver. From that moment on, I didn’t want to be in trouble. I wanted to be a perfect mother.
When we got home, Dave didn’t know what to do with her. My little crying baby, she would cry all the time. I’d feel guilty that I was doing things wrong, but she was full of colic. Every time she would start to cry, Dave would hand her back to me. My father called her his little peanut, but he’d hand her back to me, too, if she started to wail.
Dave and I prepared a nursery in one of the bedrooms of Mom’s house. I decorated it in pink and propped a giant pink stuffed bunny in one corner. But we rarely used the room, since it was on the other side of the house from our bedroom. Instead, we set up a bassinet and Karina stayed with us.
I started working for my father at the pool company a couple of weeks after Karina was born. Although I was happy as an aesthetician, I felt that having a newborn I needed a job with more flexible hours. Dad had an office in the back where I could feed and change the baby, so it made more sense.
I was excited to be working with Dad. We were beginning to build up the pool company. We were adding a pool cleaning service that Gerard and Dave were going to run. Dad’s excavation company dug the pools, the pool company installed them, and the pool cleaning service offered monthly contracts to our customers. Being at the pool company meant I would be dealing with Jen, the assistant my father felt so proud of, who I found condescending, competitive, and cold. She had grown up without a father, and made me feel unappreciative of mine. It was okay, though. I was overjoyed to be working with Dad. It was funny, all the resentment just left after I had Karina. I came to realize that your child is the most important thing of all. My father had done the best he could for all of us under the circumstances, and I was going to do my best for Karina. Crime was not going to be the way.
None of us had any idea that the Phoenix police were watching Dad’s construction company. He had been under constant surveillance.
Someone gave the Phoenix police a tip that Mike Papa was hooked up with the Italian Mafia, and said there was some big guy from the Italian Mafia in Phoenix. They found out Mike was friends with Gerard Gravano, and that Mike was investing in a pool company that was owned by Debra Gravano and a restaurant that was owned by Mom, Gerard, and Gina’s boyfriend, Mike.
The cops put surveillance on Gerard and Mike Papa. They were hanging out in the nightclubs and the cops started asking, “Who are these kids hanging out with Mike Papa?” They saw Gerard. They saw Mike reporting to Marathon Development, which was also in the name of Debra Gravano. Now they said,
“Wait a minute, is this Sammy the Bull?” The Phoenix police marked their investigation as top secret, and didn’t tell the FBI what they were up to because they feared the agents would uproot Dad.
They wiretapped all of our phones, and they put a bug under Dad’s desk in the construction office. Dad knew about the Ecstasy, it was supposed to be over. As far as the police were concerned, they saw this organization and that everybody was answering to this “big guy,” because everyone on the cell phones was using Dad’s name to gain respect in the streets. In one conversation, Mike Papa was talking to a guy he had shorted ten thousand dollars.
The drug source called Mike up and said, “The money you gave me is short ten thousand dollars.”
“My Godfather gave it to me and he counted it himself,” had been Mike’s response, which police recorded.
My father had lent Gerard and Mike money. The loan was supposed to be a onetime thing to pull Gerard out of the drug business. The cops had all our phones bugged, so they heard the conversations.
Mike was throwing around Dad’s name for credibility, and in this case, to get himself out of a bind. The guy was a thug, and he was trying to shield himself behind Dad and further his street credibility by using my father’s name and his connection to Gerard.
At the same time as Dad learned about the supposed hit from the Israeli mob, John Gotti’s brother, Peter, had a hit team coming down to Phoenix to find my father. The FBI told Dad they had reason to believe there was a hit team in the area looking for him. My father thought he was already in conversation with the guy who the FBI was talking about, the Israeli mobster from the restaurant.
Dad called Mike Papa, “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he lit into him. “I lent you money.”
Two days later, we all got arrested for being a drug cartel.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Karen, come out with your hands up!”
A number of events led up to the fateful morning when my entire family was taken into custody. The Mafia hit team, which included Thomas “Huck” Cabonaro and a guy named Fat Sal, were in Phoenix surveying my father’s construction office. At the same time, the Phoenix police were also watching the office. The FBI was coming to Arizona to talk to Dad about testifying in another Mafia case. The Israeli mobsters were threatening Gerard, Mike Papa, and Dad. And Mike was running the Ecstasy ring behind my father’s back.
Early on the morning of February 24, 2000, I’d gotten out of bed to feed Karina. She was seven months old and prone to colic. I was trying to get her to settle back down with a bottle in the nursery when I heard people talking outside the window.
“Move the fuck over,” a male voice demanded.
When I moved the curtains over, I saw a person in a black mask staring at me from the other side of the window. I didn’t know if someone wanted to rob the house or kill us. I was in complete shock.
A few seconds later, a voice at the front door shouted, “Open the fucking door.” At that moment, the door flew off its hinges and armed men in black masks began filing into the house. They grabbed my mother and threw her down on the ground. Glass was shattering everywhere. I didn’t know what was happening.
Dave came running out of the bedroom. Just when I was about to run after him, I remembered the baby was in the bassinet in my bedroom, so I ran back in and locked the door. The intruders were wearing tactical helmets that had lights shining from them so they could see in the dark. They were throwing smoke bombs into the rooms and the air was thick and black.
I picked up Karina, wrapped her in a blanket, and placed her in the closet.
“Karen, come out with your hands up,” came the husky voice from the hallway. They obviously knew who I was since they were addressing me by name.
“I have a baby,” I shouted back, taking Karina back into my arms.
“Open the fucking door!”
“No, I have my daughter, and she is sick,” I screamed. I didn’t know who the intruders were, but they sure as hell weren’t going to hurt my baby. “She has pinkeye,” I yelled, hoping somebody sympathetic would intervene.
I could hear my mother yelling from the other room. “Please, please. She’s sick.”
I finally opened the door and was immediately confronted by a masked person holding a gun. “Police!” he screamed with an apparent adrenaline surge. “Give me the baby!” He tried to snatch my daughter from my arms. I could feel Karina’s tiny fingers clinging to my shirt, pinching at my skin.
Maybe he thought I was armed, the way he was behaving. “You have two options,” I said firmly. “You’re either going to take me out with my baby or in a body bag, but either way, I’m holding the baby!”
“Let her hold the baby!” My mother was screaming from down on the floor, where she was being handcuffed. I had no idea why the cops were behaving like this or what they wanted with us. I figured it had something to do with my brother. I was just hoping they didn’t find him. Gerard was supposed to be coming by any minute to drop off Nicholas on his way to work.
Our arrests were right out of an action film, way more terrifying if you are on the receiving end of the tactical takedown. I later learned that Phoenix police and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agents had hit about fifteen houses simultaneously. People under suspicion of being drug dealers were being arrested all across town in a sting that had been in the making for more than a year. My father’s had been the first one on the list of suspects they were taking in. He was the big prize.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my brother was in the neighborhood when the cops busted into our house. When he’d pulled onto our street, he saw that the entire house was surrounded and roped off. There were about fifteen cop cars parked in front of the house, and helicopters were hovering overheard.
He circled the block a couple of times, frantically dialing Dad. When he couldn’t reach him, he called cousin Gina. Gina and my aunt raced to our house to get Karina and bring her to their house. The agents kept my mother and me sitting in handcuffs on the couch for forty-five minutes waiting for them.
Gerard drove to Dad’s house, but it had been roped off, too. When both our houses were being busted, he figured a sting was going down, so he took off to find a place to get his head together. He couldn’t help any of us, but he turned himself in a couple of hours after we were taken into custody when he knew there was a warrant out for his arrest as well.
Mom and I were among forty-five people arrested that morning. We were taken in a squad car to police headquarters in Phoenix and thrown in a cell with about thirty other lawbreakers, prostitutes, and drug addicts, and there was nowhere to sit.
“Can she sit down?” I asked a younger person, who had a place.
“She can sit down, but she needs to give me her food,” the lady said.
Mom resisted. She had been given a pack containing a prison lunch.
“Ma, what do you want? You’re not gonna eat this, just give her the food,” I told her. Besides, the food from the prison kitchen was coming in another hour.
I knew we were being linked to Mike Papa’s Ecstasy ring, but I wasn’t sure how Mom and I fit in. We were selected to be taken to a different part of the precinct for processing, special treatment of the wrong kind. I’d overhead officers saying we were part of the “upper echelon” of the “operation.”
One of our new cellmates asked my mother what we were in for. “I don’t know. They’re saying I am a bankroller to a big drug syndicate,” Mom answered.
“Mrs. G., do you think I can get a job when we get out?” she wanted to know, addressing her like an old friend. You can’t make this shit up. Like I said, the celebrity and the life followed all of us wherever we went.
I figured out that we were probably under arrest for selling Ecstasy. But it didn’t make sense. There were so many cop cars, helicopters, and agents with masks, complete overkill for the situation. It was only a couple of drug transactions.
I was also wondering about my father. I knew he had guns, and
I worried what he might do. He later told me he’d woken up to the sound of his dog Petie barking and had already hit the floor.
Dad was always on alert. To me, it seemed he must have been on alert since the day he was born. Once, when we were at a movie theater in Phoenix, he pulled a gun from his pocket and was poised to use it on a guy who seemed to be following us. I didn’t know what was happening. We were just leaving the movie theater when he had grabbed me by the arm and ordered me to keep walking. I watched in horror as he put his hand on the revolver stuck in the back of his pants. The movie patron stalking us turned out to be a guy who recognized Sammy the Bull and wanted my father to autograph Dad’s book, Underboss, which he was holding behind his back. Dad had mistaken the book for a gun and was ready to react. The request was resolved amicably, thank God.
The morning of the sting, the cops got to my dad before he could get his gun. He was crawling for it, but the place was stormed so fast he couldn’t reach it. He thought they were hit men. If it was a hit team, Dad was going to go out with a fight. Dad was a convicted felon so he wasn’t supposed to have a gun, but he always felt he needed one in case anything was to go down.
Dad was brought to the same jail as us, but was being held in a different area, so we were completely in the dark about what was going on with him. My mother and I were released on bail the next day. My brother had turned himself in and it took a couple of days before my grandparents could come up with the money to post bail. All of our assets had been frozen, so Gerard had to wait until my grandparents could put up their house for bail. My father was held at the jail in downtown Phoenix, in solitary confinement. His bail was set at five million dollars cash, impossible to make, especially since they had frozen all of our assets.
Pretty much from that day on, it was like drama. The cops wanted to make an example of my father. They confiscated our homes, boats, and businesses. They told the court that my father was the mastermind of an Ecstasy drug ring, and we in his family each played a role. They were claiming that Dad’s ring was distributing twenty-five thousand Ecstasy pills a week, selling them for twenty-five dollars a tablet to teenagers in the area. Dad and Gerard were also charged with the same crimes in New York, since they were supposedly dealing between New York and Arizona. The charges simply weren’t true. But “the life” follows you wherever you go.
Mob Daughter: The Mafia, Sammy The Bull Gravano, and Me! Page 18