With only last-minute notice, Cammalleri’s funeral rites were performed on the morning of Friday, October 5, at almost the same moment that the Colorado prison doors finally opened for Vito. His release date had been moved up a day, with no explanation. The timing of the funeral averted the media circus that would certainly have accompanied Vito’s attendance. Leonardo Cammalleri had largely managed to avoid the media and police in life, and now he had done so in death.
Shortly before midnight, Vito Rizzuto stepped off a direct commercial flight to Toronto, amidst speculation that he planned to settle there. His five-bedroom home in the Ahuntsic–Cartierville region of Montreal was up for sale. It was certainly an appealing property. The stone-faced house had only one owner and the 1,300-square-metre lot backed onto green space, albeit the same wooded area that had provided cover for the sniper who killed Vito’s father. Cabinets in the kitchen were mahogany, all of the bedrooms had bidet-equipped ensuites, and the granite and stairway in the front entranceway were worthy of a Gone with the Wind remake. Press accounts of the mob war certainly didn’t help the real estate agent trying to move the mansion, nor did the media’s affection for the nickname Mafia Row. The asking price had dropped from almost $2 million to $1.5 million, showing the seller was clearly motivated. It went without saying why Vito didn’t want to resume his life there.
If Vito chose to move to the Toronto area, he would have to do so without the muscle of Juan Ramon Paz (Johnny Bravo) Fernandez. Vito’s lieutenant had been deported to his native Spain for a third time months before, after being paroled for plotting the murder of former pro football player and Panepinto crew member Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos, as well as conspiring to import a tonne of cocaine. Big Gus survived the initial murder attempt that put Fernandez in prison. He was finally slain in January 2008 while walking across the parking lot of a Brampton halfway house. His enemy Fernandez had a rocksolid alibi: he was in prison at the time.
No one doubted that Fernandez was capable of murder. A parole board panel wrote to him in May 2011: “Several correctional officers witnessed death threats you made to another guard who was attempting to search you. During this incident, you seemed to flaunt your well-established ties to traditional organized crime in an effort to further intimidate the guard; this implies you remain connected to the same criminal lifestyle that enabled your considerable drug dealing activities.”
The letter also cast suspicion on his connection to a lawyer who routinely visited organized criminals like Fernandez in prison. “Your ongoing visits from a lawyer who has worked for persons identified as being part of organized crime further reinforces your continuing involvement with this criminal subculture,” the letter states. The parole review board lamented his “considerable lack of progress” on rehabilitation while behind bars. “Your lack of treatment in this regard is especially relevant in the context of your involvement in an inherently violent drug subculture.”
The letter added that Fernandez would be a better than average bet to reoffend quickly when finally released: “A statistical risk evaluation places you in a group of offenders where 60 per cent will commit an indictable offence within three years of release. This predictor is concerning in light of your significant criminal history, which includes a variety of serious drug offences and violent crimes.”
Vito was himself now legally free to fly anywhere in the world without restrictions, save the USA, where he would be on probation for three years, and Italy, where he was facing massive money laundering charges. The latter were a nod to Vito’s considerable reach. Italian authorities claimed that, while awaiting extradition in the regional prison reception centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, a forty-five-minute drive north of Montreal in an area replete with maple sugar shacks and petting zoos, Vito somehow helped direct a massive fraud that led to a series of arrests across Italy and France in 2007. Police moved against twenty-two companies and arrested nineteen people, while freezing nearly $700 million in assets. Part of the evidence was wiretap recordings of Vito talking to another suspect in Europe. How Vito managed that was hard to fathom, since it goes without saying that inmates aren’t supposed to be placing overseas calls to plot crimes. The calls from custody notwithstanding, the fraud itself was a particularly audacious one: mobsters were trying to scam their way into a six-billion-dollar contract to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina between the Italian mainland and Sicily. The scheme represented what was possible when criminals worked together, as it involved both the Sicilian Mafia and the ’Ndrangheta on the southern mainland.
Italian investigators were determined that Vito Rizzuto was somehow the puppet master of the whole operation. “We believe that even from jail they are able to control the organization,” Silvia Franzè, an investigator with the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, told the press in Rome. For the Italian media, Vito Rizzuto gained a new title: “Godfather of the Bridge.”
Vito certainly had the money to retire somewhere warm where he could indulge his passion for golf year-round. His enormous wealth and ability to speak four languages gave him plenty of options. He had always liked the Dominican Republic, and his friends in the Quebec Hells Angels had recently set up a charter there. Perhaps Vito would float between Montreal and York Region. Wherever he travelled, it would be with the realization that he would never again share a smile or a word with his father or his eldest son. No amount of money or wine or female companionship was going to change that. All he could hope for was the dull satisfaction of revenge. Perhaps that would also give his mother some cold comfort.
As Vito headed back to Canada, he appeared robust enough for the challenge. During his sentencing, he had made mention in court that he might have a spot on a lung, but apparently this fear had passed. His prison records contained no mention of cancer, although he remained a cigarette smoker, and Canada Border Security records make no note of serious health concerns. Indeed, he wouldn’t even bother to reactivate his government-issued health card.
On his flight home, Vito got a taste of the attention that lay ahead. A Radio-Canada journalist at the back of the airplane began to pepper him with questions, as a camera zoomed in tight on his face. Vito was stuck in his seat and had nowhere to go, like a zoo animal in a cramped cage. People with cameras and microphones clearly weren’t afraid of him now. What might he expect from people with pistols and rifles?
Once on the ground, it took less than an hour for Vito to shake the RCMP surveillance team and journalists following him. The reporters then filed news items that alternately portrayed him as the most powerful man in the Canadian underworld and as a dead man walking. Both theories could be supported, up to a point. Meanwhile, embarrassed police made hopeful plans to pick up his trail the next morning as Vito disappeared into the Toronto night.
CHAPTER 33
Old haunts
Vito’s first days of freedom were spent with a small group of men whom he genuinely trusted. One of his valued York Region contacts lived in a mansion behind a walled compound in King City, with a fish-eye security lens on the front gate allowing a wide view of the street. Vito had been welcome there in the past and there was no indication that they had turned against him. He knew many mobsters, businessmen and politicians, but there was just a short list who had earned his absolute faith. Vito had remained solid in prison, and now he needed to be around equally solid men as he sorted through eight years of intelligence. Vito had well-placed sources within policing as well as on the streets, so there was plenty of information. There was also much to consider. Men who valued the motivations of business over those of blood would be quick to betray him, if they hadn’t already.
Vito felt he could also still count on his father’s old lieutenant, Rocco Sollecito, who was due to walk out of Leclerc Institution on October 16. In Vito’s absence, Sollecito had been number four in the Rizzuto group, but the murders of Nicolò and Agostino Cuntrera and the kidnapping and disappearance of Paolo Renda pushed him up the ranks. Sollecito had been responsible f
or construction and bookmaking as well as managing the Consenza Social Club; Vito would need him to do even more now. He was a tough, experienced man who was good with numbers and had contacts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He was finally getting freed on statutory release, meaning he wouldn’t be subject to any parole conditions, which made him all the more useful to his boss.
As Vito settled into his new life, the general public was strangely engaged with his private war and personal odyssey. There was strong Internet debate about where he would live. One rumour had him setting up camp in a property north of Toronto believed to have once belonged to pop superstar Elton John. There was no substance to the speculation, but it filled the need for cyber-chatter, until the next gangland slaying.
While Vito had finally returned, the country he had returned to was irreparably changed. So was Vito. What man could be diplomatic after the murder of his father and son? There was also his mother to consider. What would please his mother most: revenge for fallen family members or a long, quiet life for her only son?
Some things remained clear. There was no possibility of any common ground with relatives of Paolo Violi. Vito had never really liked members of the Commisso–’Ndrangheta family. How things stood with Carmelo Bruzzese wasn’t so clear. They had once been friendly, but Bruzzese’s son-in-law was Antonio Coluccio, and the Coluccios seemed central to the ’Ndrangheta’s attempt to push into Montreal. Bruzzese had problems of his own, as the federal government was pushing to deport him to Italy.
Another important man in the shadows was Peter Scarcella, once considered a Vito ally. Scarcella was free on statutory release after his nine-year sentence for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and possession of a prohibited weapon. That prison time stemmed from his contribution to the failed group effort to have Modica murdered, which resulted in the crippling of innocent mother Louise Russo. Like Vito, Scarcella was now a marked man in some quarters. Scarcella’s parole release form warned that he shouldn’t get too comfortable: “On April 5, 2012, based on new information indicating a threat to your life, the Board altered an existing condition and imposed additional conditions including a condition that you reside at a Community Correctional Centre, or Community Residential Facility (such as Private Home Placement) approved by the Correctional Service of Canada, until the warrant expiry date.”
There was nothing novel about criminals concluding it was a good idea to murder Scarcella. Back in the early 1980s, he was a target of the Commisso crime family. In 2007, while in custody, Scarcella was stabbed by another inmate. That year, he began psychological testing and violence prevention counselling. His parole file concluded that “you do not meet the criteria for the designation of psychopathy,” but also added, “clinical impressions suggest that you represent a higher likelihood for indirect involvement in criminal activity for which you would not be prone to detection or apprehension. Clinical impressions also suggest a higher likelihood of involvement in indirect, instrumental violence should you feel the need for it.”
In short, blue-eyed Peter was a mobster but not a lunatic. The report continued: “Indications are that you have held entrenched criminal values, and professionals assessing you believe there is a significant likelihood of you returning to your criminal lifestyle.” Scarcella’s parole conditions included the usual prohibition against associating with criminals. So while Scarcella was free, he was also a carefully watched man, both by the parole board and by underworld enemies. Meeting with him would be difficult and dangerous.
Some of the other men Vito had trusted also weren’t much good to him now, even if they had remained loyal. Compare Frank Arcadi was serving a fifteen-year sentence as a result of the Colisée crackdown. Even with Canada’s often-generous parole system, Arcadi was out of the milieu for the foreseeable future, and Vito needed help now. Francesco Del Balso and Skunk Giordano were both key lieutenants for Arcadi and their loyalty wasn’t in question. However, they were both also in custody because of Colisée.
Vito’s old biker contacts in the Quebec Hells Angels were mostly in prison. Mom Boucher would likely be a very old man before he was free again, after his first-degree murder convictions for ordering hits on two jail guards. Some of the London, Ontario, Hells Angels were working now with the York Region ’Ndrangheta, but they might still be useful. Also, there was Gregory Wooley. He had run the now-defunct Rockers, a Quebec Hells Angels support club, and was considered the originator of the Syndicate, a teetering alliance of Red and Blue street gangs with clout in Montreal’s downtown.
Obviously, Vito could no longer call upon Raynald Desjardins. Quite the opposite. If the rift had begun when Desjardins got fifteen years for a drug scheme while Vito walked free, that rift became a chasm after Vito’s men murdered Desjardins’s friend Giovanni (Johnny) Bertolo. Another name now embedded in the enemy camp was that of Domenico Arcuri Sr. He had helped the Rizzutos take out the Violis thirty years before, but after making introductions for Salvatore Montagna when the New Yorker first arrived in Montreal in 2009, he had opened the floodgates for the man who had turned Vito’s life into hell.
Giuseppe (Ponytail) De Vito was never a true insider in Vito’s group; he’d pulled away after the murder of his boss and friend Paolo Gervasi. Ponytail had dangerous friends, but after four years on the run he was a convict now, starting a fifteen-year sentence for narcotics conspiracy. Ponytail was in isolation in Donnacona, but protesting that he wanted to be returned to the general population. Since the deaths of his daughters, he was apparently a man without fear and perhaps also without the will to live. According to a prison report explaining the isolation, De Vito was now a threat to the safety of the Rizzuto clan, even behind bars.
Joe Di Maulo had backed his brother-in-law Desjardins in early stages of the attempt at a consortium with Montagna, Mirarchi and Arcuri, and his loyalty to Desjardins was unquestioned. Still, Smiling Joe was something of a man of peace in the milieu, his three old murder charges notwithstanding.
Vito would also have to get used to new cityscapes in Montreal and Toronto. The old hangout of the Consenza Social Club was now just a memory, converted into a clothing store. Also gone was the Laennec coffee bar in Laval, where the second tier of the crime family once held court. Laval was now home to more than three dozen significant players in Vito’s world, as the core of power shifted from Mafia Row to luxury Laval neighbourhoods such as Val des Brises and Sainte-Dorothée. The homes on Antoine-Berthelet had once been a statement of wealth and separation from the cramped houses of downtown Little Italy; now Vito couldn’t rid himself of his old home and its memories of defeat and death.
For the time being, Vito had left the safe confines of the walled compound in King City and was holed up in a downtown Montreal pied-à-terre condominium with Giovanna. When he stepped out, it was into a $100,000 armour-plated car he had special ordered from the States. Only his tiny inner circle knew his address.
Clearly, there were informers in Vito’s midst. Someone in his world had betrayed Agostino Cuntrera and Paolo Renda, and maybe also Nick Jr. Perhaps the traitors even smiled at them just before sending them to their graves. A few words in a quick text or phone call and there might be a funeral for Vito too. As he regrouped in his new apartment, there was no way to judge if Vito felt afraid, or if he was so prepared for imminent death that he had already gone cold inside.
CHAPTER 34
The other mediator
In many ways, Smiling Joe Di Maulo was like Vito: likeable, tough, confident, smart and capable of getting along with a variety of people. The fact that they were in different camps now called to mind the old Woody Allen joke: “Why are we fighting? We both want the same thing.”
There had never been a time in the milieu when clear, sharp, trusted thinkers were in more demand. If a third of the underworld was on Vito’s side, another third yearned to see him dead. The remaining third would enthusiastically support whoever emerged as the last man standing. Smiling Joe knew as we
ll as anyone who was in what camp.
For all the current turmoil, there was no record of Vito and Di Maulo ever fighting. Di Maulo had been the first to rise to power, alongside Paolo Violi and Moreno Gallo. While Vito ultimately surpassed Di Maulo in power, Smiling Joe always enjoyed a certain elite status. On the surface, Vito and Di Maulo were long-time golf buddies, with Vito playing in Di Maulo’s hospital fundraisers. These were classically Montreal events, with well-dressed criminals wrapping themselves around a good cause to cleanse their image and public institutions making deals with the devil to gain funding. The golf fundraisers also drew at least one city councillor and strip club owner Paolo Gervasi, in 1992, 1993 and 1994, before Vito had Gervasi killed. Joe’s older brother Jimmy had also been in the trusted circle of Vito’s golf buddies. Vito and Joe Di Maulo travelled together to Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic with three others in 2003. Even after Vito’s arrest, Di Maulo had attended the 2005 wedding of Frank Arcadi’s daughter, suggesting at least some level of solidarity with the old Rizzuto group.
Maybe Di Maulo sensed something bad was about to happen when, back in December 2011, he agreed to meet with La Presse reporter Daniel Renaud in the third-floor office of his loans business on Jarry Street, at Viau. Di Maulo had been upset by a story the veteran journalist had written that linked him to a drug trafficker—Di Maulo had no record for drug trafficking—and left a message on Renaud’s voice mail saying as much. The two met behind two locked doors, in a room with no decorations or bodyguards. Di Maulo was calm and friendly as he insisted he never had anything to do with selling drugs. Sounding like a man trying to cleanse his image for posterity, he told the respected journalist: “I have grandchildren, and I do not want them to have this image of me.”
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