Nothing But Money

by Smith, Greg

  Lying in the hospital bed with the Big C looming over his head, it could happen that all of a sudden you saw all the people you’d clipped from a different point of view. Getting close to the end of the book had a way of doing that. Things you never spoke of had a way of coming back, even if you couldn’t remember all the names.

  One of the guys he remembered was Bobby C. He didn’t really know the guy too well and somebody else did most of the work. It was explained that Bobby C owed everybody in Brooklyn money, and everybody in Brooklyn believed Bobby C was about to turn into a government rat. There were no documents or anything to prove this, just strong belief. Strong belief was usually good enough. When Bobby Senior was told to do it, he did it. Simple as that. He was also quite aware that if he didn’t do as he was told, they would clip him and he would be the guy who winds up in Tommy Karate’s bathtub. That’s what happened with Bobby C, rest his soul. There was this two-family house on Bay 50th Street in Brooklyn; Bobby Senior couldn’t ever remember the address. It was one of Tommy Karate’s houses. Tommy had shot Bobby C while Bobby watched, and then they both dragged Bobby C’s body to the bathtub, where Tommy went to work. In a way, it was pretty low-key. He didn’t have to pull the trigger, and he didn’t even have to do any of that business with the saws and knives in the bathtub. He just had to be around and lug first the guy and then the bags with the guy inside to a lonely spot in Staten Island, and then speak no more of Bobby C.

  There was a reasonable explanation for what had to be done about Bobby C. This was also true about the other piece of work, the business with Sonny Black. Although in that case, it had almost been a disaster.

  Sonny was a well-known man’s man, a respected guy who many believed could one day wind up as boss. Everybody loved the guy, but everybody knew he had to go. Although it is true that in the civilized world, ignorance is not a sin, in Brooklyn, ignorance is a good way to get clipped. Ignorance was certainly the reason Sonny Black had to go. He had vouched for this knock-around guy named Donnie Brasco, even putting him on a list to get made. That would have been fine except for the fact that Donnie wasn’t really Donnie. He was really Joe the FBI agent. And he’d been hanging around with Sonny Black and the rest of them for a very long time. Things were discussed. Conversations took place. Who knew that not every rat agent hired by the FBI looked like he came from Nebraska and hadn’t laughed at a joke in years? This guy Donnie/Joe talked the talk, walked the walk, knew the game inside and out. Plus he was apparently very good at taking notes and sometimes even tape-recording. Sonny Black had been the one to embrace this guy, assuring everybody that Donnie was a stand-up guy who could be trusted. Sonny had confided in him, even asked him to do a piece of work. When Bobby Senior got the word that he’d be involved in clipping somebody and he realized Sonny Black might be the target, he understood why completely. You couldn’t be a captain and open up the door to the federal government like that.

  For Bobby Senior, the Sonny Black job was different. This time Bobby Senior had been forced to really pull his weight. Bobby had been around for a long time but never pulled the trigger. He would lure the guy to the meeting, or roll the guy in the rug, or dig the hole in the frozen ground of the fence company back lot. With Sonny Black, Bobby Senior had to do a little more.

  The day of the job it was summer of 1981. It was not long after the FBI agents showed up at Sonny’s bar and showed him a photo of this guy Donnie and asked, “Do you know this guy? He’s an FBI agent. We just thought you’d like to know.” There were a lot of meetings after that little interlude. Bobby’s cousin Eddie approached Bobby and his other cousin Frank. The Lino family gathering got right down to business. Eddie inquired about finding a location for a murder. He didn’t say who. Eddie said that Frank had been recommended for the job by a gangster in the Gambino family, which always had an interest in Bonanno family business. To Frank, this talk of setting up a meeting was probably bad news for Frank. Frank was always convinced that he was going to be the guy clipped. To Bobby, there was no back and forth. It was simple. They say do it, you do it. And there were certain pluses to these things. Being recommended for a murder could offer him some stability or even a promotion. Bobby and Frank said they’d find a convenient place right away.

  A house in Staten Island was procured. It was like any other house, where people ate breakfast and watched TV sitcoms and fought and loved and lived. It was right next to another house and another house and was the kind of place you’d drive by and not think twice about. It was perfect for this kind of work. Twice the house was visited to make sure the layout was just right. There was a basement. This would be where the actual deed got done. Sonny would be lured to the house and walked downstairs, and would never again see the blue sky above, his final moments spent in a basement in Staten Island. The Lino cousins even acquired a body bag from the owner of a funeral home who didn’t really want to know why they needed it. They set up tables and chairs in the basement to make it look like a meeting was going to take place. It was like choreographing a Broadway show, only with a different type of ending. Maybe more like Shakespeare. Everybody had a part to play, and if one guy screwed up, the reviews would be brutal. For Bobby Senior, who’d never actually pulled the trigger before, screwing up was a real possibility.

  The day of the Sonny Black piece of work, Frank Lino got assigned the task of driving Sonny to the house in Staten Island. Sonny Black was a capable guy who knew he’d screwed up with the Donnie Brasco business, but they’d convinced him to attend this important meeting by assuring him that the mistake with Donnie Brasco was everyone’s, not just his. To reassure him about attending the meeting, they had one of the top bosses of the Bonanno group, the consigliere of the family, a guy they called Stevie Beef, come along for the ride. If Sonny thought he was going to a high-level meeting, he would go. Everybody knew that bosses were never around when somebody got clipped. If a boss was there, Sonny Black was safe. Stevie Beef was the cover story. At least that was the thinking as Frank Lino showed up at a hotel in Brooklyn to pick up Sonny Black and Stevie Beef and drive them to the house with the tables and the chairs in the basement.

  On that day Frank Lino drove a certain route to the house in Staten Island so he could pass by an intersection where a van was parked. Inside the van were Joseph Massino and another Bonanno gangster. Massino was the captain who had arranged the entire hit, and when Frank and Sonny and Stevie passed by, Massino saw that Sonny was on his way to another place. He followed in his van. This was gangster choreography.

  At the house, Bobby Lino waited in the basement with gun in hand. He and another guy, Ronnie, were supposed to be the shooters. Standing in a basement waiting to use a gun on a guy you’d known for years was no easy task. They waited and waited, until finally they heard talking at the top of the stairs.

  The door opened and Frank Lino emerged first, followed by Sonny Black and then the boss, Stevie Beef. As they began descending the staircase, somebody—Bobby Senior couldn’t see who—pulled the boss back onto the landing and slammed the basement door shut.

  Frank Lino grabbed Sonny Black by the shoulder and shoved him down the stairs. As he came rolling down, Bobby stepped up. This was his moment, the moment he’d been chosen for, a moment that would surely follow him around for the rest of his life. Bobby Senior aimed and fired. His first shot hit Sonny, but Sonny was still quite alive. Bobby fired again. This time, his gun jammed.

  “Hit me again,” Sonny said. “Make it good.”

  The other guy with a gun, Ronnie, stepped up and fired twice. Sonny Black lay still on the basement floor.

  Frank Lino reached into the dead man’s pants pocket to remove his car keys as proof. The keys were taken upstairs to show to Massino, while the rest of the crew went to work on Sonny Black. Bobby Lino had done his part, so this time he didn’t have to stick around while they sawed off Sonny’s hands so he couldn’t be identified.

  And that was the end of Sonny Black. Bobby Senior had, more or less, done what h
e was supposed to do, more or less. If the other guy hadn’t been there, it might have been a different story. Bobby Senior had to know this. If Sonny had somehow escaped or some other horrific scenario had unfolded, Bobby Senior could have found himself in a different basement with tables and chairs. But it had all worked out. Months later Sonny Black would surface in a Staten Island swamp. The night of the murder there was supposed to be a hole already dug, waiting for Sonny Black, but the crew that showed up with Sonny Black couldn’t find it in the dark. Instead, they dug a makeshift shallow grave, and all it took was one good rain for Sonny Black to resurface for all the world to see. There was a certain lack of dignity in all of this, but Sonny had chosen the life he’d led and died in a way he’d probably expected.

  This would not be the way for Bobby Senior. He wouldn’t be surfacing in any swamp in Staten Island without his hands. Instead he would die slowly from cancer. He was a physical wreck, trapped in a hospital bed, lingering. Natural causes were headed his way. There was little left for him. But as he lay there in a bed used by strangers, dying, his cousin Frank and pals Good Looking Sal and Big Louie at his bedside, he did have one last dying wish to impart.

  “Frank,” Bobby Senior said to his cousin. “Make sure Robert gets made.”

  Bobby Senior’s heartfelt wish was that his youngest son, Robert, should carry on the traditions he had embraced his entire adult life. His eldest, Vincent, was gone, the victim of the drugs Bobby Senior himself sold in the neighborhood. Females weren’t eligible. Robert was all that was left.

  This was not a choice every father would make. Some of the old-timers felt that the whole point of la cosa nostra was that it was a springboard to legitimacy, a starting point to raise a little cash and then be able to participate with the Rockefellers and the Duponts on a level playing field. Look at Joe Kennedy. He started out as a bootlegger. Ideally you do what you have to do so that your children don’t have to. Carlo Gambino never wanted his son, Tommy, in the life. Tommy was a bright businessman, on his way to being a multimillionaire in the garment trade. Why did he need the aggravation of kicking up to the boss, the sit-downs, the walk-talks? Vincent Gigante shook his head in disgust when John Gotti proudly boasted that his boy, John A. Gotti, had just got his button and was now a member of the Gambino family. Of course, Tommy Gambino ended up in the mob when his father died, and Chin Gigante’s son An-drew would end up running a union in Miami and pleading guilty to extortion.

  The allure was strong. In many ways, it made sense to have your own family next to you. A wiseguy needed somebody around he could trust, given that just about everybody else would cut your throat faster than you could say, “Leave the gun, take the cannolis.” Who could Bobby Lino trust more than his own flesh and blood, his son Robert, a quiet, reliable kid?

  Of course there was that part during the induction ceremony when you swore allegiance to your Mafia family above all else—even your blood family. That meant that if you were ordered to do so, you’d have to kill your own. And what if you were caught? Of course, you’d say nothing. Being a rat was worse than being dead. But maybe there would be reasons to be a rat and not be dead, and then you’d be facing a tough choice. The deal with the federal government was always the same: you tell all or you get nothing. So, for instance, if you called your son up in the middle of the night to come out and help dispose of a murder victim, you’d have to bring that up. You’d have to inform on your own son.

  All of that was pretty abstract. Bobby Senior was asking his own blood relation, his cousin Frank, to do him this one last favor before he died. Frank was the perfect one to ask. He had a son, too, Joseph. Frank had taken him under his wing, put him in his own crew. So if anybody could understand, it was Frank.

  “Sure, Bobby,” Frank said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  When he was out on the street, hounded by banks and credit card companies, facing repossession of his car, Cary Cimino had done what any grown man in his position would do. He found a rich girlfriend and moved right in. Her name was Jane, and—for a change—Cary’s timing was perfect.

  “Jane paid for everything for me to move my life forward and get myself back on my feet. I had had it. I had no interest in working hard anymore. I had an interest in getting healthy and playing hard.”

  It’s difficult to judge couples. Cary and Jane seemed a mysterious combination indeed. She was a respected daughter of wealth, with a second home in Aspen and access to plenty of family money. He was a failed stock picker, bouncing from employer to employer, hustling to keep himself from Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. It was easy to see what Cary was getting out of the relationship: “She took care of me. Didn’t judge me and probably was one of the few examples in my life of selfless unconditional love. I guess I didn’t even know what that was. She supported me through thick and thin. Both emotionally, financially and intellectually. She was a marvelous and still is a marvelous person.”

  It was not so clear what Jane was getting out of the deal. It was probably very easy to see where it would all end up.

  The first sign was the formation of NSPJ Financial Group. The acronym stood for Not So Plain Jane, Inc., something Cary had dreamed up himself, and it was to be founded by Cary but funded solely by Jane. She would appear on paper as the sole owner of Not So Plain Jane, Inc. Cary made it clear he needed to be in the background only. It was better for business that way. He still had his broker’s license, but it had acquired a certain tarnish. The luster was diminished. His relationship with the prestigious world of finance had changed.

  Working with Jeffrey Pokross had changed things for Cary. He was making money, but he was now burdened with a certain reputation that wasn’t helping him get work at the big-name firms of Wall Street. If he was going to continue working in the securities world and scouring the earth for whatever goodwill he hadn’t yet willed away, he’d have to do so behind the scenes. If there was anything he had learned in the eighties, it was that you could screw up and get caught and still make money on the Street. It wasn’t easy, but it could be done. Not So Plain Jane, Inc., was to be Cary Camino’s solution to this problem of reputation.

  The idea was perfect: with Jane’s family money, he would create from nothing a stockbrokerage company, and almost no one besides Cary would know what it was really all about. In corporate filings it was to be listed as the NSPJ Financial Group, which sounded as impressive as the rest of the scam brokerage houses that were again cropping up around Wall Street. It would seek out and reel in investors, promote hot stocks, make millions for everybody. Mostly it would make millions for Cary Cimino. Whenever Cary did any business, he would do it through Not So Plain Jane.

  All the checks he would write or have written to him would come from or go through NSPJ. He would be called a consultant. His car was to be leased by NSPJ. His rent would come through there. His one gesture to Jane was to lease her a new red 1989 Jeep Laredo from Three Star, with her family’s money, of course. NSPJ was the disguise that Cary the biology major would use to make his way in the world without the hassle of being seen. The Securities and Exchange Commission wouldn’t see him. The United States Internal Revenue Service wouldn’t see him. The banks and the credit card companies wouldn’t see him. They wouldn’t see him, but he would be there.

  “Jane paid for everything. I used NSPJ Financial Group as a means to conduct business. Checks were written to NSPJ for consulting work when I worked with Jeffrey. I started expanding my consulting business and started taking checks in as I started to raise money for other start-up deals.”

  In truth, Jeffrey Pokross was the real genius behind Not So Plain Jane. Partnered with Cary, Jeffrey had now branched out into the stock promotion business, specializing in start-ups, companies that were just about to go public. Jeffrey knew all about the stock promotion business. The way Jeffrey planned it, Cary, with his broker’s license, would look for people to make insider commitments on these companies, including his girlfrien
d’s rich family. Cary had no problem getting them to invest in Jeffrey Pokross’s once-in-a-lifetime deal, without having to explain details or let them know that Jeffrey hadn’t made money legally since he quit his paper route at age ten.

  The deal had started at the Vertical Club when Jeffrey and Cary ran into a broker named John who was a senior partner in something called Lowenthal Financial Services. Cary would say he and John formed what he termed “a tacit partnership, and what I mean by tacit, we never had anything formally in writing. It was a handshake partnership.” Translation: his girlfriend’s family also bought Lowenthal Financial Group. His girlfriend’s family took the risk—not Cary. Thus did Cary’s girlfriend and her family become central to a little performance choreographed by Jeffrey Pokross. What is clear is that the purpose of Lowenthal from the day it was purchased was to act as a fig leaf to cover up something Cary and Jeffrey didn’t want everyone to see. It was covering up a reverse merger.

  “I had no idea in 1989 what a reverse merger was,” Cary said. “I was trying to get myself up on the yield curve, so to speak. On different methodologies available to me to raise money.”