Nothing But Money

by Smith, Greg

  Frank and his pals sat in the restaurant waiting for his cousin, Robert Lino, who was always on time. Tonight Robert from Avenue U was late.

  For Frank Lino, the twentieth century—the gangster’s century—hadn’t been so bad. Here he was at age fifty-two, a Lafayette High School dropout by tenth grade, married at age nineteen to a girl not yet sixteen, five kids and a divorce behind him. He’d tried legitimate work, but it didn’t really suit him. He was handling dice games and running sports book by the time he was a teenager, and he never looked back or thought twice about where he was headed. He did have some doubts along the way. For a time, he insisted he wouldn’t carry a gun when they hijacked trucks out near Kennedy Airport. Often he thought everyone was out to get him and that the next sit-down would be his last. But he was still around. He’d been inducted into the Bonanno group in 1977 on his fortieth birthday and elevated to captain in 1983. By the second day of the last decade of the twentieth century, he was a veteran. He made a fortune from a thriving gambling operation. He dabbled in drugs and did quite well. He’d bought up pornographic videos in the 1970s when they were still called “French films” and resold them in Las Vegas for hefty profits. Now people paid him money just to use his name. As in “I’m with Frank.” Everybody was happy with Frank Lino. He made money for himself and the bosses, who did not understand the concept of enough, and in this life—the life of the made man—he’d done almost no time. This had truly been the gangster’s century. From a street gang in the alleyways of Lower Manhattan, an unwanted import from Sicily, the schemes had grown and grown, the power extended to the highest reaches of business. And Frank Lino was a part of all that.

  Of course, Frank still had to sit in restaurants in the middle of the night waiting for things to happen that would never ever happen on time.

  Usually Robert was pretty good about these things. He was Frank’s star pupil. Like Frank, he’d dropped out of high school, which was good. Some of these guys who went on to college were a pain in the ass. Robert had embraced the life. He was disinclined to get a real job under any circumstances. The bosses had put him with Frank, and he was happy to be there. He was obeying his father’s wishes. And he did whatever Frank wanted. He helped him track his bookmaking, collect on his shylock loans, enforce protection collection. He took messages to people. He watched Frank’s back. He was an apprentice, learning the players and all their tricks. In a way, now that Bobby Senior was gone, Frank was Robert’s new father.

  Frank was old-school gangster. He’d survived a nasty bit of business in 1981 when he and three captains were invited to a meeting at a social club in Brooklyn and walked into a shotgun attack. The three captains were blown to pieces, and Frank—for reasons he had never quite figured out—had been allowed to leave alive and breathing. Subsequently he’d been welcomed back into the newly aligned Bonannos’ loving embrace. He immediately set to ingratiating himself with the bosses by handling another nasty piece of work, the unfortunate and untimely death of Sonny Black. By 1990 Frank Lino was an established player in the family, and Robert Lino was at his side. And late.

  As it happened, Frank had to cut Robert some slack. By 1990, after thirteen years as a gangster, Frank was immersed in middle age. Not retirement age, just slowing-down age. Robert was a young man. Frank was tired of tracking money he put on the street, so he put Robert in charge of that. Frank was less interested in day-to-day occurrences within his crew, so Robert helped out, letting Frank know about internal disputes petty and otherwise. Robert quietly made it his business to know everything. As 1990 arrived, Frank knew that Robert Lino was on his way to becoming a made man at a time when the Bonanno crime family was on the rise. There was, however, a bit of a speed bump. It was the reason Frank was sitting in the restaurant on McDonald Avenue.

  The problem at hand was Louis Tuzzio, a low-level wannabe who someone with not very much sense had assigned the task of killing a guy named Gus Farace. Farace was a lowlife drug dealer who happened to have some Mafia friends. He was heavily involved in selling as much dope as he could and using as much as he could handle, too. He was essentially out of control, and in his drug-addled state he had made a major-league mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake you can make. During a drug sale in Brooklyn he decided he didn’t like the guy doing the buying, so he shot him to death. How could he have known that the buyer was really a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) undercover agent and family man? The federal government was furious. They rousted mob social clubs, letting everybody in every family know that until the shooter came forward, life would be hell for la cosa nostra in New York City. Gus Farace thus became marked as a dead man in every way.

  The job of finding and shooting Gus Farace right away fell to the Bonanno crime group, mostly because Gus Farace was dating the daughter of a Bonanno family soldier. She was seen as the way to get to Gus. As it was told to Frank Lino, Louis Tuzzio got the job because Tuzzio knew Farace and was as close to a friend as a guy like Farace could expect. Tuzzio had set up a meeting, and Farace was supposed to show up solo. Tuzzio pulled up in a van with three other guys, to a spot in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn, and—naturally—Farace was not alone. He was with a guy named Sclafani who happened to be the son of a Gambino soldier. Louis Tuzzio decided on the spot not to call off the job. Instead, he got in a shoot-out with Gus Farace, and Farace wound up dead. Unfortunately for Louis Tuzzio, Sclafani, the son of the Gambino soldier, also ended up shot and badly wounded.

  Which was why a few months later Frank Lino received word that John Gotti, imperious boss of the Gambino crime group and a guy who truly believed he was the boss of everyone, had let it be known that he was apoplectic. He wanted everybody involved in the shooting of the Sclafani kid dead. Everybody. This was his way. He frequently wanted everybody guilty of one or another perceived slight dead. Now the Bonanno group had a big John Gotti headache, and Frank Lino wound up as the guy chosen to administer the medicine. At the time, Frank was feeling somewhat vulnerable. In fact, he was constantly worrying about becoming a victim himself. He felt sure that at any time he would go to a meeting and never come back. This was due in part to his experience inside the social club when his three friends had been shotgunned to death in front of him and he’d been allowed to leave. This event cast a certain shadow over Frank’s life. He needed to make things right, and the way to do that would be to resolve the big John Gotti headache. It was natural that Frank Lino would turn to his cousin Robert for help.

  Gotti had demanded the deaths of the three non-made members in the van when Sclafani was shot. Members of the Bonanno family—including Frank Lino—were extremely upset about this. They felt this was unfair, given that Sclafani was only one guy and he’d survived and Gotti was saying three guys had to go. This was bad math. This was, at best, three for the price of one. The Bonanno group and Gotti came up with the usual compromise—one guy for one guy. Maybe that was what Gotti had wanted in the first place. Regardless, Louis Tuzzio, more or less by default, became the one guy.

  As Frank sat in the restaurant on McDonald Avenue, the plan—his plan—was already unfolding. A Bonanno associate named Dirty Danny was childhood friends with Tuzzio. Dirty Danny was also childhood friends with Robert Lino, so the two were assigned the job of luring Tuzzio to a meeting, where he would be shot in the head adequately to kill him. Everyone involved knew this would not be a simple task. Tuzzio was in a high state of paranoia. Recently another crew tried to convince Tuzzio to show up at a lonely garage in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, owned by a guy named Patty Muscles. On the appointed day, the assigned hit man had a heart attack, so that didn’t work out. Next they tried luring Tuzzio to a meeting in a residential area of Bay Ridge, but he showed up with another Bonanno soldier who was not clued in on the matter. Now here it was, the day after New Year’s, and Frank Lino and two gangster friends sat in the Middle Eastern restaurant on McDonald Avenue waiting for Robert Lino, Dirty Danny and Louis Tuzzio to pull up in a Camaro.

  The story they’d though
t up to get Tuzzio to go along was this: Frank was going to reassure Tuzzio that the business with Gus Farace was, in fact, understandable given Gus Farace’s many problems. Frank would tell Louis that he was about to get his button, to become a made member of the Bonanno crime family. This would be a great honor for Louis. In fact, it would be the biggest day of his life, the thing he’d always wanted, the dream come true. That was the story they figured would work to get a paranoid guy like Louis Tuzzio to show up for his own assassination.

  And then here they were. The Camaro pulled up with Tuzzio at the wheel. Frank watched Tuzzio get out of the car, apparently relaxed, still believing he might live to collect Social Security. Tuzzio strolled into the restaurant with his childhood friend, Dirty Danny, Robert Lino, and—a surprise for Frank—another guy not on the guest list. The guy was Frank Ambrosino, a friend of Robert’s since childhood. They all entered the restaurant and Tuzzio sat down with Frank. Everybody else went to a separate table.

  Frank went to work with his avuncular act. He understood why Tuzzio might think that all this talk about him becoming a made guy was not real, what with the other guy with the Gambinos getting shot and all that. But Louis had to know the context. Frank reassured him that the bosses all considered Louis to be a capable guy for his work on Gus

  Farace. Sure there had been a bit of mess to clean up, but it had all worked out. Law enforcement seemed far more enthusiastic about finding Farace than about finding Farace’s killers, and—sure enough—after Farace was clipped, the feds backed off. Frank began instructing Tuzzio on what to expect at the induction ceremony, how it was important to pretend you didn’t know what was what when they asked if you knew why you were there. He went through the list of rules that everybody knew and everybody broke on a regular basis and gave the kid Tuzzio a gentle slap to the cheek. Frank Lino told the kid everything would be fine.

  “Relax,” he said. “This time next week you’re a man of respect.”

  Sure it was late and it was dark and freezing outside, but couldn’t Tuzzio see he was with his best friend, Dirty Danny? His whole life was about to change. What good was fear misplaced? Frank told Tuzzio to sit with Dirty Danny and send his cousin Robert over. When Robert sat down, Frank asked quietly about the guy Robert had brought along, Ambrosino. Frank needed to know about this guy. Robert made it clear he wanted Ambrosino with him in the backup car. Robert made it plain that he’d known Ambrosino forever and trusted him like a brother. He said he and Ambrosino would carry weapons and follow the car Tuzzio was in. After the shooting they would be responsible for getting rid of the murder weapon.

  Everything was ready. Events were set in motion. There was no turning back, no backing away. Soon Tuzzio would no longer be a problem for the Bonanno crime group’s bosses and Robert Lino would have participated in a piece of work. That would make him eligible to be made himself, which was what Robert’s father, Bobby, had wanted all along. Frank was just doing a dying man a favor here. Robert Lino Sr. would surely understand. Louis Tuzzio surely would not.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1981

  Warrington sat in a movie theater in midtown Manhattan, waiting for the show to begin. All his friends from school were there, waiting with him. Actually they weren’t there to see a movie. They were there to see Warrington—in a movie.

  Warrington hadn’t really made it at Villanova. He’d tried his best to pretend he actually liked economics, but they didn’t call it the dry science for nothing. It was brutal. It was like learning a second language and math at the same time. He loathed every minute of it. He also had loathed the bucolic campus in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. It was what his mother wanted, but not what he wanted. He had so much more to offer. He was a creative guy. In the summer after sophomore year, he’d made a decision—he was going to quit and move to New York to become what he was always meant to be—an actor.

  It all made more sense than the Laffer curve and John Maynard Keynes. He had an outgoing personality, could ingratiate himself with people in power (teachers, coaches, bouncers), and was growing into his father’s good looks. Hollywood beckoned, but first he had to actually learn how to act. New York City and the Strasberg Institute was the place for that.

  His father—now remarried and selling real estate in Palm Beach—had helped him out. Though Warrington was now twenty-one and could certainly have gone out and gotten a real job to pay the bills, he was an artist and his father was a patron. Dad paid the rent on Warrington’s Sutton Place apartment and the tuition at Strasberg. Whether his father believed any of this would amount to anything, Warrington did not know. He was just happy that his dad was contributing. He wouldn’t have asked his stepfather for the money. He never liked asking him for anything. He’d come to resent spending any time at Tally Ho, feeling as though he was back at Gilman, living in a stranger’s house. His father’s financial help—limited though it was—was the only assistance he could bear to accept.

  He really needed it to work out. It was important that he succeed, to validate his father’s investment.

  It wasn’t easy. For two years he’d won major roles only in TV commercials. When he tried out for a part in the sequel to the hugely popular Friday the 13th, he’d believed it would take him to the next step. He studied for weeks, watching the first movie again and again. When it came time to read, he was stiff and awkward. He didn’t understand the nuances of character. A speaking role was not to be.

  But his enthusiasm showed through. He was clearly committed to working hard, and the casting director came up with an idea: why not give Warrington—who was now using the razor family name Warrington Gillette—a nonspeaking role? Why not make him Jason himself?

  Perhaps Jason could be his breakthrough role. Sure there wasn’t a single line of dialogue, and it was difficult to recognize Warrington under all that makeup. He looked like somebody had lit a fire on his face and put it out with a rake. His hair was matted to his head and torn out in spots, the left side drooped, and his mouth hung open wide enough for a bird to fly in.

  During shooting, the makeup was always driving him insane. Gobs of rubber and plastic had been glued to the left side of his face. His left eye was completely covered up, replaced by a twisted festering rubber mess that left him blind on one side. He had dentures that forced his mouth to remain open for hours at a time. He wore a skull-cap that caused him to sweat like Richard Nixon. He wore a stained plaid cotton shirt common to people who know how to gut deer and kill small animals. He looked like a lunatic, which was what he was supposed to look like. And who cared? He was in the movies.

  Actually it was Friday the 13th: Part 2, and it was as good as he could manage in this particular moment in his acting career. It wasn’t exactly Marlon Brando in A Street-car Named Desire, but it would do. Warrington, after all, was a professional actor now, and he understood that you have to pay your dues.

  Boy was he paying. His favorite story—one he told every model he could rope into conversation in his many nights out on the town—was the day he was supposed to crash through a window in a deserted cabin in the woods. There were always deserted cabins in these movies, and the best way for the lunatic to enter them was always to crash through the window. The day of the big scene he’d been standing all morning waiting for his big moment. He would crash through the window to slash and chop his way into the hearts and minds of teenagers and the rest of the gore-obsessed world. He hadn’t eaten all morning because the idiotic makeup prevented him from taking food into his mouth. His depth perception was gone because his left eye was hidden behind the foam rubber, and he was enveloped in a fine sheen of sweat. All he needed to do was crash through the window and flail madly for a few moments. Maybe this was method acting. You got so furious at being cooped up inside this makeup that your fury became part of your role. They hadn’t really mentioned that at the Strasberg Institute.

  Warrington could do this. He’d immersed himself in the story of Jason. He was a lonely, tormented kid, disfigured in
a fire, back to kill off his tormentors in a remote area called Crystal Lake. There was an Oedipal aspect. The boy’s mother was killed in the first movie, so now Warrington’s Jason had grown up but kept her head in the refrigerator. His killing orgy had purpose other than to pique the prurient interest of popcorn-munching teens. Allegedly. How did you get inside that character? Why would you want to?

  Standing around waiting to crash through the fake window in the fake cabin in the real woods deep in the heart of Connecticut, Warrington had tried to become the best Jason he could be. He had to make this work. Here he was, the scion of old money, the weight of legacy pressing down upon him, living off his father’s dime without a college degree to show for his troubles. It was acting or nothing.

  The scene was ready. Jason was on another psycho rampage. Warrington was told to run hard and smash through the grimy window of the cabin in the woods with forearms extended and palms turned backward. The window was rigged so it wouldn’t hurt. At least that was what Warrington was told. Then he would attack the actress Amy Steel, who would scream and try in vain to escape his murderous mission. Pretty simple.

  The director called, “Action!” and Warrington ran as fast as he could toward the window.

  He hit the window like a brick wall and bounced back, landing flat on his butt.