P.S.: Two years later the Feds issued a narcotics-trafficking indictment on Popo Tortora. They came to arrest him at his hotel in Miami. He was sunning himself at the pool. When he saw the G approaching, his heart seized up and he died right there in his lounge chair. We should all be so lucky.
Fish en Papillote in Béchamel Sauce
NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA, 1980 JIGGS FORLANO’S APARTMENT
PEOPLE PRESENT:
Joe Dogs Jiggs Forlano
Their big mistake was trying to scam a scammer. To make a long story short, I was still living with Nena when Bunny called to say our house had been robbed. It turned out it was just some neighborhood kids, but I took the insurance company for all I could get, including a claim that my wife’s $10,000 diamond ring had been stolen. Of course, I had hidden the ring real good before I claimed it was missing.
At any rate, the insurance company made good, and I picked up a replacement ring from a Miami jeweler. But a few months later, when I went to hock the piece, my pal Jiggs—the “retired” Colombo capo and a jewelry expert—informed me that it was costume. I hit the roof. Jiggs agreed to accompany me to the jewelry store, because he knew the people who ran it.
Jiggs and I walked into the jeweler’s separately, with Jiggs walking to a corner, pretending to be window shopping. He was carrying a small fishing gaff under his coat. He told me that if anyone gave me a problem he’d be more than happy to rip their eyes out. I walked to the counter and signaled to the guy who had originally sold me the stone. I’d called before, so they knew I was coming.
“Here’s your piece of glass, you crooked____,” I said.
“Don’t talk to me that way,” this guy says. “Who do you think you are? I’m giving you $6,000 for that ring, and no more.”
With that, I reached over, grabbed this moron by the tie, and backhanded him. Then I pulled his head down onto the jewelry case, cracking the thick glass. He started bleeding from the nose and mouth. Just then, Jiggs appeared at my side. “Hi, Joe,” he said, smiling amiably and flashing the gaff. “You got a problem here, or what?”
“No, Jiggs, I don’t think so. My friend here has a nosebleed, and I’m trying to tell him what’s good for it.”
The clerk recognized Jiggs, nodded hello, ran back to his office, and came back with a $10,000 check. He’d left the name blank.
I said, “Listen, get one of your flunkies to cash this check right away. I want cash, capisci?’7
He went back to his office, returned with the cash, and ordered a salesgirl to bring me a solid-gold bracelet. “Keep it, with our compliments.” Later, I mailed Tommy Agro $2,000 and the bracelet. When I earned, T.A. earned.
On the drive back to Jiggs’ place in North Miami I slipped the old capo a grand for his trouble. Then I made him dinner, his favorite, Fish en Papillote in Béchamel Sauce.
Fish en Papillote in Béchamel Sauce
BÉCHAMEL SAUCE
5 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons flour
4 cups hot milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of grated nutmeg
Melt butter in saucepan. When hot, add flour and stir for approximately 2 minutes. (Important: Do not scorch!) Pour in 134 cups of milk and stir with whisk over low heat. As mixture comes to boil, slowly add rest of milk and the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Cook for approximately 15 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally.
FISH
2 pompano fillets (can also use red snapper)
Salt and pepper to taste
Papillote bag (purchase in specialty supermarket)
1 teaspoon chopped shallot
1 tablespoon chopped celery
3 tablespoons Béchamel Sauce (recipe above)
Season your fish with salt and pepper and place fillets in bag. Add all other ingredients and tie bag tightly with accompanying tie. Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. The bag will rise but will not tear. When serving, pierce bag with knife and pour onto plate (or over rice) with all the juices. Serves 2.
Backed Chicken à la Joe Dogs
LAKE GEORGE, NEW YORK, 1980 THE HOLIDAY INN
PEOPLE PRESENT:
Joe Dogs
Brooke (Joe’s girlfriend) Dominick “Little Dom” Cataldo Lorraine (Little Dom’s girlfriend)
I’d been a member of Tommy Agro’s Gambino crew for over ten years now. In spite of T.A.’s warnings, I was double-banging him behind his back. It just didn’t seem right that I could only earn from one famiglia. It was undemocratic. So when Little Dom called from New York and wanted to know if I could score him some pot, I didn’t think twice about doing business with the Colombos. The Gambinos always looked down on the Colombos anyway, like they were junior members of the mob. And it’s a fact that they did a lot of the Gambinos’ dirty work. Most Colombos were crazy. So I felt like I was working with distant relatives, though I know Tommy wouldn’t have seen it that way.
Anyway, I scored 580 pounds of Colombian Gold for $130 a pound and sent it north to Little Dom with Billy Ray on the auto-train, and three weeks later Dom called to say he’d offered the entire consignment to one guy at $285 a pound. We made $45,000 apiece, which called for a celebration. Dom suggested I grab a broad and meet him in Lake George, beautiful country in the summertime.
I flew up the next day with a cute little honey I’d just met named Brooke and met Dom in his luxury suite. He was there with his girlfriend Lorraine. I hadn’t seen Dom in a while, and it was a happy reunion. The night was so beautiful, the air so sweet, that I didn’t feel like fixing any heavy Italian food. We settled on baked chicken, the perfect summertime dish.
Backed Chicken à la Joe Dogs
4 chicken breasts (remove skin but leave bones in)
1 tablespoon pepper
2 or 3 (to taste) cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
2 teaspoons crushed dried oregano
4 new (red) potatoes cut into 1/4-inch rounds (leave skin on)
2 small onions, quartered
1 tablespoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon Accent (optional)
2 cups chicken stock
1 (15-ounce) can sweet peas
Place chicken breasts, facing bone down, in 14- by 10-inch baking pan or dish. Sprinkle pepper, chopped garlic cloves, and oregano over meaty tops. Arrange potatoes and onions in pan around chicken. Sprinkle garlic salt and Accent (optional) over top of everything and pour 1 cup of chicken stock over chicken breasts. Cover pan or dish and cook in preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, remove cover and pour the other cup of chicken stock, as well as can of sweet peas, including juice, over concoction. Bake, uncovered, for another 20 to 25 minutes. Serve with rice and Dewar’s White Label scotch. Serves 4.
After dinner Brooke raised her eyebrows when Dom pulled out a peanut butter jar filled with cocaine. He began drawing lines on the glass table and handed me a straw. He knew I didn’t do that stuff, but I guess he was testing me. I declined. So he snorted some and Lorraine snorted some, but Brooke was hesitant. So to put her at ease I snorted a line, but Brooke still refused.
We went to the lounge for a few drinks, but after taking that snort I began to feel nauseated. I excused myself and went to the men’s room to upchuck. When I returned the girls were gone. Dom said they’d been in the ladies’ room for quite a while. “I bet Lorraine turns Brooke on,” he added. I didn’t care one way or the other. It was her nose and her business. But Little Dom was right, because when the girls came back Brooke was talking a mile a minute.
During one of the girls’ many subsequent trips to the ladies’ room, Dom leaned across the table and told me a secret. “My friend Johnny Irish has a big problem,” he said. “He led the FBI from Florida to where the boss was on Long Island.” Dom was referring to Carmine “the Snake” Persico. “Now the Snake is really pissed off.”
I was stunned. Dom was telling me that Johnny Irish was probably not long for this world. I told Dom I didn’t want to know any more, and he didn�
��t bring it up for the rest of the evening.
But that night, driving back to our hotel room with Brooke, Johnny Irish was all I could think about. In our business, they’d turn on you and have you capped in a minute. Did this mean that Little Dom or Tommy Agro, my two best friends in the world, could someday turn on me? Brooke talked like a jackrabbit all the way back to our room. That’s not all she did like a jackrabbit that night. And I was surprised. Brooke was a natural blonde.
Mussels in-Light Sauce
QUEENS, NEW YORK, 1980 LITTLE DOM CATALDO’S APARTMENT
PEOPLE PRESENT:
Joe Dogs Dominick “Little Dom” Cataldo Carol (Little Dom’s girlfriend)
We were midway through the ’80 football season, and I was getting wrecked. Not only were my own customers winning, but the four customers I was booking for Tommy Agro were really winning big. This is how T.A. made himself my Florida bookmaking partner:
“Joey, let these guys bet into you, and you keep the tabs. We’ll split the winnings. But if they win, I’m out. I’m not your partner no more.”
So it went, “belonging” to Tommy Agro.
So I got shafted. What’s new? October. November. December. I took a major bath. I was tapped. And not only was I losing in football, I was also getting killed at the track. So it was a godsend when Little Dom called from New York and told me he’d gotten rid of some coke I’d shipped him during the past summer. My end came to 150 large, and I told Dom I’d be on the next flight to New York to collect.
That night, Little Dom and I were divvying up the cash in his girlfriend’s apartment in Queens when he told me to make a shopping list for dinner. I was in the mood for mussels, and Dom sent the broad out to pick up the food. By the way, those ten pounds of mussels are no mistake—these are guys with hearty appetites. And that goes for some of the broads, too.
Mussles in Light Sauce
10 pounds fresh mussels, scrubbed clean
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
4 dried chili peppers, crushed
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons cooking sherry
1 cup peeled tomatoes, drained and chopped
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed oregano
8 chopped fresh bay leaves or crumbled dried bay leaves
Place mussels in a big pot, add 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 stick butter, chilies, parsley, lemon juice, pepper, and water 1/2 inch above mussels. Cover and bring to boil. Remove mussels when shells open, which should take about 15 minutes. Pour juice from mussels into a frying pan and set mussels aside. Melt remaining 1/2 stick butter in pan containing mussel juice. In pan, sauté remaining garlic for approximately 11/2 to 21/2 minutes, or until limp. Add wine and sherry and cook for another 3 minutes over high heat. Add chopped tomatoes, parsley, oregano, and bay leaves and cook for 12 minutes over medium to high heat, stirring several times. Place mussels, still in shell, on baking tray. Pour tomato mixture over mussels and bake in preheated 400-degree oven for 4 additional minutes. Serve with garlic bread and pasta. Serves 3 or 4.
After our delicious feast, Dom walked me out to his car and told me I had to do him a favor. “Let’s take a ride,” he said.
“Sure, Dom. What is it?”
“I have to go up the Taconic Parkway and dig a hole,” he told me. “I got this mother ____in the car and I need a hand getting him into the hole. I’ll do the digging. I just need a hand getting him out of the trunk. I just can’t leave him in the streets, Joey. This guy was a made man with the Lucchese family.”
He had to be kidding. I began backing away from his car. “Dom, you’re not serious, right? You don’t really have a ____ing body in the trunk, do you?”
“Hey, Joe, what the____’s wrong with you?” he said. “Why would I tell you a story like that?”
With that, he popped the trunk. There was a body inside, all right, all twisted up. The hole in this poor sap’s forehead had already formed a bloody scab. I felt sick. I wished I hadn’t cooked mussels. I had to get out of there.
“Joey, this guy’s been in my trunk for three days now, and he’s starting to stink. I need a hand. What do you say?”
“Dominick, I’m going to tell you like T.A. would say it. I wasn’t made with a finger. What do you want to do, make another two-story job? ____you! Get someone else to help you. I don’t want to know where your burial grounds are.”
“Yeah, Joey, I guess I can’t blame you,” he finally said after a long, icy moment. “But that’s not what I had in mind, honest. Not to worry, I’ll get someone else to help.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and make sure it’s somebody you don’t like.” And with that, we hopped a cab to the nearest bar.
Just Desserts
WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, MARCH 1981
I got people that will eat the ____ing eyes out of your ____ing head! You dumb bastard!
And they’re as loyal as a m____er. With balls the size of cows. All I have to do is tell them to load up, be in this place at this time, and they’ll walk in and blast everybody. No in’ hesitation. No nothin’. And don’t look for nothin’ beside it. No questions asked. They’ll blow you up. You think you got something going? You got nothing going.
“You think I’m easy? You think I’m where I’m at today because I’m easy? What I’ve done you haven’t dreamt of, my friend. Why do you think people fear me? Because I was a hard-on, you ____ing moron? You think I got where I was because 1 was a ____off in the street? You’re easy, you m____er. The most wrongest thing you ever did was____me. People fear me, you dumb____. You’re only alive today, my friend, because Don’s wife walked in. Not because we stopped. You wasn’t supposed to walk away no more. And I’m gonna even enlighten you more better than that, while you’re having these____in’ hallucinations. I missed you three times. I was looking for you two other times before this, you dumb m____er.”
That was the apoplectic Tommy Agro, calling me from New York. You might say we’d had a falling-out. I lay in my bed, holding the telephone receiver at arm’s length, listening to T.A. screaming at the top of his lungs. My head ached. My broken ribs burned like kindling. And my nose, splayed across my face, was split down the middle. To T.A.’s dismay, 1 was still alive. Barely.
Six weeks earlier, Tommy A. and two of his sluggers had flown south with the intention of beating me to death. They’d used a baseball hat and a lead pipe, and the last thing 1 remember before losing consciousness was Tommy digging his dainty little alligator loafer into my ribs. And all because I was a lousy three months late on my vig! I’d only survived through fate. Just as T.A. was about to chop off my right hand with a meat cleaver— Mafia symbolism—Don Ritz’s wife had walked into the kitchen of Don Ritz’s Pizzeria on Singer Island, where the beating had taken place, and let out a bloodcurdling scream. She’d spooked the sluggers, and they’d fled.
I’d awakened three days later in St. Mary’s Hospital. The priest giving me last rites called it a miracle. My mother and daughters were there in the hospital room. As well as my wife and my girlfriend. And FBI agents Larry Doss and Gunnar Askland.
Now, six weeks later, Tommy was letting me know he hadn’t cooled down. 1 sipped my scotch, smiled, and watched the tape recorder attached to the telephone unspool. The tape recorder was courtesy of the Florida FBI. But the revenge was going to be all mine. The Feds had dubbed our gig “Operation Home Run,” because of the way they’d used my head for batting practice. They should have called it “Operation Tunnel Vision,” because I was going underground with one thing in mind. Getting even.
Steak au Poivre
LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, 1981 MY NEW APARTMENT
PEOPLE PRESENT:
Joe Dogs Tony Amoroso (FBI supervising agent) Larry Doss (FBI agent) Gunnar Askland (FBI agent) Rossi (FBI agent)
Joey, we’re bringin
g in a new agent to go undercover with you,” said Case Agent Larry Doss. “That’s what
Tony wants. And he wants you to pick the agent you feel most comfortable with. Tony’s bringing over someone tonight for you to meet. So what are you cooking for dinner?”
I was sitting in my new apartment in the backass end of Lake Worth, far from the madding crowd and far from the Mafia, which two months earlier had tried to kill me. With me were FBI agents Larry Doss and Gunnar Askland, my case agent and his assistant. The Eye was paying for this apartment and everything in it, including me. I was now working for the Feds, with one thing on my mind. Revenge. I wanted to see Tommy Agro buried.
Doss and Askland’s supervisor, Special Agent Tony Amoroso, was on his way over. I had convinced Tony that if he could just get me straight, monetarily, with TA., I could worm my way back into the mob’s good graces. I’d wear a wire. I’d tap telephone calls. I’d do anything to nail T.A.’s ass. Amoroso agreed, on the condition that I work with some backup. Tonight, he was bringing a potential undercover over for dinner. I was making Steak au Poivre, for five. The key is how you make the veal stock, which you have to do a day ahead of time.
Steak all Poivre
VEAL STOCK
1/4 cup olive oil (extra-virgin or virgin preferred)
2 or 3 veal bones (butcher will cut for you)
1 gallon water (enough to cover bones in pot)
4 celery tops
6 to 10 tomato ends
2 onions
2 carrots
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Heat olive oil in 8-quart stockpot and brown bones. When browned, add just enough water to cover bones and throw in vegetables. Bring to a boil and allow to simmer, uncovered, for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours (24 preferred). As water evaporates, replace. Two hours from finish, add tomato paste. Now allow water to evaporate. When you get to about half the liquid you started with, it’s done. Strain and freeze in 1-cup portions for later use.
The Mafia Cookbook Page 5