by James Lepore
“Joe Massi.”
“Ed Dolan.”
They faced each other in the sunlit room, Dolan at his oversized government-issue desk, Joseph settling in a worn faux leather chair with brass studs around the seat.
“You look good,” Dolan said. “Have you quit using?”
“You haven’t changed,” Joseph replied.
“You want some kind of royal treatment? You’re a junkie. State your business.”
“I can help you with the Scarpa and McRae murders.”
“How?”
Joseph drew a DVD in a jewel case from the pocket of his suit coat and put it, with one of his calling cards, on Dolan’s desk. “That’s a snuff film,” he said. “The male lead is an albino who works for Guy Labrutto. Nick and Allison were killed because they found out about the film.”
“I’m not impressed.”
“Labrutto and Anthony DiGiglio are in the snuff film business. Junior Boy ordered the killing, Labrutto and the albino carried it out.”
“How do you know this?”
“It’s on the street.”
“So I’ll subpoena the street to testify before the grand jury, and the case will be all wrapped up tight.”
“I can get Junior Boy on tape.”
It had been obvious that Joseph, who was trying to remain calm and focused and not doing a bad job of it, was on a mission of some kind. But a kamikaze mission was the last thing Dolan expected, and the one thing guaranteed to get his full attention.
“How?”
“My nephew’s fourteenth birthday is on Sunday. Junior Boy’s having a party at his house. You wire me. I’ll get him to talk about the snuff film and the murders.”
“In return for which, you want what?”
“I want you to lay off Chris. You know he didn’t kill anybody.”
Dolan did not respond immediately. He picked up the DVD, read the title and flipped open the case, eying the shiny silver disk inside.
“Where’s Chris now?” he asked.
“He took a vacation. I don’t know where to.”
“Where’d you get this?” Dolan asked, holding the DVD up and tilting it toward Joseph.
“Allison gave it to me. She stole it from Labrutto.”
“How did you know her?”
“She was a friend of an old girlfriend.”
“They fake these things,” Doaln said, “to make them look violent when they’re not.”
“This is the real thing. Take a look at it when you get a chance.”
“I will. If it’s real, we’ll talk some more.”
“What about Chris?”
“If he didn’t kill anybody, what does he have to worry about?”
“You. Your vendetta.”
“And you thought only the Sicilians were good at that.”
“What about Chris?”
“If I get Junior Boy, your brother can walk.”
“I have one other condition.”
“What’s that?”
“If there’s trouble in the house, or the wire goes dead, your people have to be ready.”
“Junior Boy wouldn’t do violence in his own house,” Dolan said, “with his family there.”
“He might. Your guys have to come in. I need your word on that.”
“I couldn’t protect you afterward.”
“I’ll run.”
“Okay. If you go in, you’ll have backup.”
“I ran into an old friend of yours last week,” Joseph said, getting to his feet.
“Who’s that?”
“Johnny Logan, remember him?”
Dolan sat straighter in his chair and stared hard at Joseph. He did not respond.
“He’s got a colostomy bag,” Joseph continued. “The poor fuck. He gets some kind of government check. Isn’t he a cousin of yours or something? I thought he was long dead, actually.”
Dolan, remaining silent, eyed Joseph standing now behind his chair. Logan had survived his stomach wound and told the police that he had shot Dolan in a fight over money, Dolan having drawn first. What else could he say? If he had tried to finger Joe Black, the Velardo family would certainly have killed him. He went off to a five-tofifteen-year prison sentence for manslaughter, and had not been heard from since.
The true story had spread quickly, however, from Logan’s girlfriend at the time, Moira, and Andy O’Brien, who soon thereafter sold Valerio’s and moved to Phoenix. Everyone in the Greenwich Village/Lower East Side/Mafia subculture knew what happened in Valerio’s back room that February night, including, without doubt, Joseph Massi, who was now, incredibly, reminding Ed Dolan of who killed who twenty-seven years ago, throwing it in his face.
But Dolan remained calm. Joseph would soon be dead. Either that or Dolan would have hard evidence of Junior Boy DiGiglio’s involvement, along with Labrutto, in three murders: the snuff film victim, Nick Scarpa and Allison McRae. With that, he could make a deal with one of them, preferably Labrutto, for testimony implicating Massi. He could not lose his cool and scare off Joseph, his junkie stalking horse, no matter how much he wanted to throw him out the window. That Joseph could be the instrument of Chris’ final fall was the sweetest of ironies, a gift from the gods.
“I don’t know the guy,”the prosecutor finally responded.
“He was asking about you.”
“You need to get fixed, don’t you, Joseph,” Dolan said, ignoring this last remark, forcing a sympathetic smile. “I can see it in your eyes. Hold off. I need you clean. Keep Sunday morning open. If this film is the real thing, that’s when you’ll get wired, and we’ll go over the plan. Don’t go and O.D. on me in the meantime.”
After Joseph left, Dolan sat and contemplated the various aspects of his windfall. The type of operation that Joseph Massi was suggesting, involving the wiring of a civilian with no law enforcement experience, required the approval of the head of the criminal division in Washington, the number three man in the Justice Department. The approval process took some time, and expedition was rare. For a true national emergency, it might be done in a day or two. And then, if it were known that the civilian was a heroin addict going into a houseful of innocent people, including women and children, the chances for approval would be virtually nil.
But Dolan wasn’t worried about the approval process. He would bypass it. He would put a remote wire on Joseph’s chest himself, a dud, and give him a voice-activated tape recorder to put in his pocket. He would tell him to arrive at a certain time, and instruct his surveillance team to leave when they saw him pull up. If DiGiglio did a strip search, Joseph was a dead man, but who would know or care? If he made it out alive, with Junior Boy incriminating himself on tape, it would be a home run.
He could deal with Joseph later, maybe set him up for a kill by DiGiglio’s people as part of a truly outside-the-box plea deal. His only fear was that Joseph would lose heart and back out. Ed Dolan hadn’t prayed in almost thirty years, and he wasn’t about to start now. But, he readily acknowledged to himself that if he were to start again, his first request would be that Joseph Massi stay strong on his present course, that he walk into Anthony DiGiglio’s Tudor mansion on Sunday afternoon wired for sound and ready to martyr himself for the only religion that really mattered, the only cause worth praying for: Ed Dolan’s revenge.
8.
Despite its great success, Junior Boy DiGiglio was not content as his family entered the new millennium. He was sixty-six years old, and he had no heir. And there was no one in sight that fit the necessarily giant-sized bill. Frank’s son had shown promise. Cautious, reserved, disciplined, and with an inner toughness like his dad, he had gone to college in California, where he met and married, had a child with Down Syndrome, and decided not to return East. Aldo’s two sons, now in their early forties, were undisciplined, arrogant hotheads. Corrupted early by money and power, their antics were an embarrassment to the don – drunk and partying, they had recently crashed a boat into the dock at a marina at the shore – and a constant source o
f friction between him and his brother. Aldo had been the same way as a boy, but their father’s steady, quiet anger had eventually scared him into manhood. Junior Boy did not expect the same thing to happen to his two nephews.
Without the right leader, the family would fall apart, succumb to the pressures of the American popular culture. Personal ambition and greed would prevail over loyalty and honor. The family would descend to the level of the Sopranos on television, where made men had sex in front of one another with strippers in the back rooms of bars, and where young women were beaten to death with golf clubs in parking lots for no reason. The fear of a such a future for the DiGiglios kept Junior Boy up many long nights in the winter and early spring of 2003.
With the botched double murder in Alpine, the don’s brooding over succession to power quickly took a back seat to much more urgent concerns. The don had yet to speak to Labrutto face to face. First Rocco and then Aldo had met with him and extracted his story: Scarpa was forced by Mickey at gun point to drive to the cliff, with the nowdead Woody Smith following. Rodriguez was supposed to jump out, which would be Smith’s cue to ram the car over the edge. At the lookout, Scarpa went wild inside the car. Mickey had to shoot him in order to get free. Chris Massi had shown up unexpectedly with Scarpa. He disappeared soon after Scarpa and the girl went out. Labrutto did not know where or why.
On the Sunday following the murders, Junior Boy sat at his massive desk in his study and went over this story one more time in his mind, deciding again that it was half truth and half lie, that it was a virtual certainty that Labrutto had betrayed him somehow. He would not lie to Aldo, and thus to the don, to cover up a venial sin. The true story would be revealed soon enough. Matt’s birthday party was getting underway. Labrutto was there. Aldo had been instructed to bring him into the study at three o’clock. The surveillance van that had been appearing at irregular intervals at the curb near the entrance to the house’s long driveway had arrived at noon. But Labrutto was a relative, and the party was good cover, and the house had been swept for listening devices early that morning. It was now two forty-five. The knock on the door was premature, but it was time to get to the bottom of this situation. He would learn the truth, if not today then very soon, and the process of protecting himself and the family would begin. If Labrutto had to go, so be it. Aldo would have to accept it, and his wife would never know the truth. The income Labrutto brought in would be missed, but the man would certainly not be. The world would be a better place without Labrutto and his misfit sidekick.
But it wasn’t Guy Labrutto who Aldo led into the room. It was Joseph Massi, Chris’ younger brother, Joe Black Massi’s junkie son.
Aldo directed Joseph, beautifully dressed, his face pale, but otherwise handsome and immaculately groomed, to a leather chair facing the don. He placed a small cassette recorder, a remote mike with duct tape on it, and a DVD on the desk in front of Junior Boy. Then he went to stand behind Joseph. The French doors behind Junior Boy’s desk gave onto a stone terrace littered with dozens of potted plants and flowers basking in the spring sunlight. Junior Boy rose and swung the doors shut. While the doors were open, a gentle breeze, along with noise from the party on the wide, flagstoned patios and lawns below, had drifted in to the don as he sat alone at his desk. Now the room was quiet and still. The don returned to his seat, and looked at Joseph and then at Aldo.
“He asked to see you,” Aldo said. “I said sure and had Nicky search him.”
Junior Boy stared down at the three items on his ornate, marquetry-embossed blotter, then back up at Joseph.
“Ed Dolan,” Joseph said. “You know who I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” Anthony replied. “I know who he is. What about him?”
“I think he killed my father, and now he wants to kill Chris, or put him in jail forever. I made a deal with him. I would talk to you with a wire on if he’d leave Chris alone. There’s backup outside. Now that the wire’s been cut, they’ll be in here any second. I did this for Chris, Junior Boy.”
DiGiglio stared calmly at Joe Black Massi’s second son, understanding, after hearing this incredible but obviously true statement, why the young man sitting across from him was so pale and on edge.
“The gray van left about a half hour ago,” Aldo said, “and the grounds have been swept all day, including the woods.”
“Talk to me about what?” Junior Boy asked.
“The murder of Nick Scarpa and Allison McRae.”
“To implicate me?”
The don did not receive an answer. Young Joseph was a blood relative to his grandchildren, and had been to a dozen family parties. He had never been searched, and, apparently, did not know about Junior Boy’s policy of searching everyone who asked for a private meeting. “Tell me what Dolan said. About me,” Junior Boy said.
“He thinks you ordered the killings because Nick and Allison found out about the film. The one on your desk. ‘Candy Meets Ron.’ It’s a snuff film.”
“What’s a snuff film?”
“A girl gets killed while having sex.”
“A girl gets killed while having sex?”
“Yes, shot in the head. It’s a thing some guys get off on.”
Anthony shook his head. This was the kind of thing he had been brooding about all winter, America’s insane appetite for sex and violence. What better way to combine the two than in a film such as Joseph Massi had described? He was angry now, although he didn’t show it.
“What does it have to do with me?”
“Guy Labrutto made it. His albino friend stars in it. Dolan knows that you and Labrutto are in the porn video business together. He thinks this is one of your products. Chris took it from Labrutto’s house on Monday, while the murders were taking place.”
“How did Dolan get it?”
“I gave it to him.”
“To set me up?”
“To save Chris. I didn’t think you’d let Labrutto make a film like this. I assumed you’d be shocked and angry when I told you about it, that Dolan would come up empty.”
“Does Chris know you’re doing this?”
“No.”
“Where is he now?”
“Junior Boy. They know I’m here. You have to let me go.”
“We’ve been looking for him.”
“Leave him alone. He doesn’t know anything. This was all my doing.”
“Do you have anything else to tell me?”
Joseph shook his head, slowly, and looked at his watch.
“No,” he said, “I was trying to save Chris’ life. It looks like Ed Dolan set me up. He wants you, too, Junior Boy. It’s not just cops and robbers with him. He’s possessed.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Junior Boy said, nodding, and then, looking up at Aldo, he said: “Make it neat and quick, and far away.”
“You want him to talk some more?”
“No.”
“Tell us where his brother is?”
“No. Go.”
“Let’s go,” Aldo said, tapping Joseph on the shoulder and then, when he was on his feet, guiding him to the far rear corner of the room and down the stairway that led to the garage directly below them.
Far away was DiGiglio family shorthand for a hit in which the body was never found. In special cases, such as those involving the family’s renegade drug dealers in the sixties, the body needed to be found, for the message that it sent. Otherwise, a body and its location were evidence, and there was no need to hand the police their first clues in a murder investigation.
Junior Boy was not without sympathy for Joseph Massi. He had made a play for his brother’s life and would pay for it with his own. He had not fallen apart or begged. It was for those reasons that he ordered Aldo not to torture him to extract information regarding Chris’ whereabouts. His death would be as painless and honorable as possible under the circumstances.
Chris and Joe Black were also on the don’s mind when he gave those orders to Aldo. But he did not dwell on the Massi family very lon
g. There was other business to attend to, like watching “Candy Meets Ron,” which he did on the DVD player Teresa had given him last year, along with twenty-five or thirty of his favorite movies, as a Christmas present. When he was finished, he called Nicky Spags on his cell phone and asked him to bring Labrutto in.
“I just watched this,” Junior Boy said when Labrutto was seated in front of him, holding up the DVD in its clear plastic case. “’Candy Meets Ron.’”
“Thank God it turned up,” Labrutto replied. “You have to destroy it.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make it?”
“No. Mickey did, before he came to work for me. I told him to get rid of it. He said he would, but I know now he never did. How did you get it?”
Junior Boy stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger and stared at Labrutto for a long moment before answering, keeping all emotion out of his eyes.
“Mickey’s your albino friend?” he said, finally.
“Yes.”
“Did you confront him?”
“Yes. He said it was a leftover copy.”
“He wasn’t trying to sell it?”
“He says no.”
“Are there other copies?”
“No.”
“Other films?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell Aldo at first that Chris Massi was at your house on Monday?”
“I didn’t know he would show up with Scarpa. He disappeared right after Nick and the girl went out. When I realized he took the film, I panicked. I thought he might bring it to the police. I tried to track him down to get the film back, but when I couldn’t find him, I decided to tell Aldo. That’s it, that’s the truth. I panicked.”