Scores

  “There’s a couple of problems, but nothing for you to worry about.”

  Feeling relief, I decided to be a smart-ass. “Mike, I just wanted to warn you in advance, I may need to search you and I hope you won’t be offended. This way we can keep things between us kinky.”

  Sergio looked back with a frown. “Go fuck yourself.”

  When the door slammed behind Sergio, I immediately called the FBI about the requested dinner. Unfortunately the agents were unavailable, so I left messages. A couple of hours later, Casey’s voice came through the office intercom. “You have John from Peter Ginsberg’s office on line twelve.”

  Recognizing my secretary’s words as the code used by the agents to identify themselves, I picked up the receiver to find both Karst and Ready on the line. I went on to describe the morning’s exchange with Sergio and the proposal for an unusual one-on-one dinner.

  They were delighted, speculating Sergio might have something important to share but wasn’t comfortable discussing the matter within Andrew’s earshot. Karst mentioned he wouldn’t be available the following week, so Bill and Paul would handle the dinner.

  We selected a Tuesday night for the encounter. Asked for a restaurant suggestion by Sergio, I proposed Nanni Il Valletto, and he volunteered to call ahead for seven o’clock reservations. Ready agreed to meet me at the condo at half past five for a standard pre-briefing, and he arrived right on time.

  “We’re going to have to use my right leg tonight because the left one hasn’t fully healed from being burned last time. In fact, if we don’t get it right tonight, I’ll be out of legs!”

  Shrugging off my jab, Ready turned to business. Since Sergio would be dictating the evening’s conversational agenda, the only pre-briefing advice was to try and pull out as many historical facts from him as possible to document the Gambino’s relationship with Scores. “It would really be helpful if you were able to get him to talk about things like the grand a week paid in cash, where it actually goes, and how it gets there. We want to start reaching over Sergio into the bosses.”

  When we were satisfied we were viewing the night through the same lens, Ready traversed the room to retrieve the bag of electronics. He removed an F-Bird with attached microphones and a large roll of masking tape. I immediately rolled my eyes in disbelief. “Masking tape? Did they cut our budget? Bill, masking tape is even worse than duct tape. It’ll never work.”

  Ready looked mildly embarrassed at the rebuke, his emotions not as easily hidden as Karst’s. “It’ll work just fine; I couldn’t find any of the silver tape.”

  I stripped off my suit pants without being asked and watched in silent horror as Ready placed the F-Bird on my undamaged thigh, inserting a wad of gauze behind the device as supposed protection for my skin. Next, he went round and round my leg with strips of tape.

  When the job was done, and after viewing the final product, which looked as if my leg had been prepared for shipment to Afghanistan, I interrupted Bill before he had an opportunity to affix the mini-microphones to my chest. Asking for the agent’s momentary indulgence, I walked over to the couch, retrieved my pants, and put them back on.

  Strutting before the wall-length mirror at the entrance to the living room, I did a quick double take and burst out laughing. There was a bulge sitting atop my right thigh that a stranger might reasonably mistake for a severe case of elephantitis. The man-made protuberance was so insanely invasive, my pant leg now rested some four inches above the top of my ankle-length sock.

  “I swear to God,” I barked, unable to get control of my runaway amusement and terror, “you’re going to get me killed; only a blind man could miss this ‘tumor.’”

  Ready stripped off the tape securing the F-Bird, now himself smiling broadly and shaking his head, but causing such pain to the leg, my eyes welled up with tears. Remembering I was partially to blame for the pain, having forgotten to shave affected areas, I jogged to the bathroom and performed a quickie hair removal with an electric trimmer. Upon my return to the living room, “F-Bird Installation—Part II” commenced.

  The second time around resulted in a markedly thinner application of tape. When the F-Bird, microphones, and beeper transmitter were all in place and we agreed they were visually undetectable, I danced around to test the strength of the tape. “I don’t know about this,” was all I could say.

  In the elevator, as I prepared to depart the building, my mind was churning about the excursion ahead. The inventory of my cascading thoughts came to an abrupt halt when we reached the lobby and the doors silently slid open. I heard a distinct, quiet thud and, looking down, there was the F-Bird, wrapped around my ankle, peeking out from under my pants.

  Extending my right arm abruptly to block any effort by Ready to exit, and pointing to my leg, I simply reached over and pressed the button to return from whence we came. Not a word was uttered until the cabin doors slid silently shut, then I turned to Bill. “How come James Bond never had these problems with Q?”

  “F-Bird Installation—Part III” was a somber episode. We just stared at each other as I lowered my pants yet again. “I feel like a Scores dancer; do you feel like my regular customer?” I joked with a grin, breaking the ice.

  Taking a moment to think matters through, Ready looked up and said, “I know this will sound odd, but do you have any Band-Aids?”

  Initially confused about the question, the lightbulb above my head finally lit. “By Jove, I think we’ve got it. Band-Aids should do the trick.”

  And in fact, they did. As the masking tape wound its way around my leg yet again, Band-Aids were applied to support areas of particular tension and drag. By the time the recorder and microphones were in place, they felt snug and secure, the extra reinforcement holding up nicely.

  Satisfied the problem was now solved, and after the adhesive bonds held secure for the elevator “stress test,” Ready accompanied me to the building’s garage. I drove out of the basement level and headed north, up First Avenue, for dinner with the mob.

  Entering the familiar vestibule of Nanni’s, I passed into a crowded bar area, and announced myself to the maître d’. Immediately escorted to what I knew to be the restaurant’s VIP table, the waiter advised I was the first of the “Sergio party” to arrive, and accepted my order for a Perrier with lime.

  Left alone at the corner table, memories came flooding over me. This was the same table where Andrew Cuomo and I had first met John F. Kennedy, Jr. I beamed inwardly, vividly recalling the nation’s first son of Camelot, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, greedily sucking down beers from the bottle.

  It became one of those moments of morose and bitter sadness I’d been working to repress. Life as I knew it was coming to an end; all these places and memories to be brazenly wiped from my new life. Since cooperating, I’d refused to even consider the implications of my upcoming life as a federally protected witness, choosing instead to focus only on the reality of my daily dangers and the very real possibility I would never survive to reach the WITSEC stage of rebirthed existence.

  Tears filled my eyes as I momentarily permitted a host of passing regrets to swim through my psyche. I would have made radically different decisions if I could go back and make course corrections; I would not have chosen the same turns in life’s road. I was going to desperately miss my life and the people who gave me reason to live. And in a moment of rare introspection, I decided it really might not be too bad to die. After all, I’d accomplished so very much in my years, succeeded at so many things, dearly loved so many people. Perhaps my last chapters would be of such painful disappointment, it would be better not to live them, to permit things to end on a high note. These weren’t suicidal fantasies; they were, rather, a simple and honest evaluation that my best days, the days worth living, might have already come and gone.

  As I wondered if Harold’s New York Deli pastrami was available in the afterlife, my attention was drawn to a limping man bounding down the aisle. Sergio had arrived.

  The meal swelled my
mood to a better place; the conversation was, unfortunately, not as pleasant. The dinner had been apparently called for Sergio to express his rabid, growing hatred for Andrew, and to warn of the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Andrew and Steve. Sergio repeatedly expressed his fear that his son was going to kill Andrew if the nonsense between them didn’t soon abate. “I tell you right now,” he whispered in angry tones, “Steve’ll crack Andrew’s skull with a baseball bat and put him in his trunk.”

  Sergio wanted me to use my influence with Andrew to put an end to the squabbling. “Let each of them live up to their obligations. No one says they have to be friends.”

  I completely agreed, but expressed my honest sense of frustration at having little influence over my partner in such matters. I did agree to try my best to smooth things over, and the gesture seemed to satisfy Sergio for the moment.

  At the close of dinner, Sergio politely ignored the check and I picked it up. He suggested sharing drinks on Charles Street at a small Italian restaurant owned by one of my friends. Knowing I would feel safe there, I quickly agreed.

  Sergio had imbibed several rounds of cocktails and wine during dinner and his conduct was perfect for my purposes, knowing alcohol loosened his lips. Leaving Sergio’s car uptown for later retrieval, and driving mine, it took little prodding to get my guest off and running on the history of Scores and the Gambinos. During the ride, he chatted happily about securing the coatroom operations for Steve; how he had been honored at the responsibility of bringing the early weekly cash to John Gotti, Sr.’s house in Queens; how Steve now arranged for delivery of the weekly cash to Junior’s home; how difficult the mafia captain on Scores’ First Avenue corner had been about the valet parking; and how unfortunate the whole Kaplan-Gold Club mess had turned out for him personally. For the very first time, Sergio openly admitted the DePalmas and Marshall were eroding the Sergio power base at Scores.

  Once Sergio began his remonstrations, it was as if the FBI had written the script; he was unknowingly covering every area of their interest. I was acutely aware I was capturing valuable admissions, but as was sometimes my wont lately, my heart was filled with an irreconcilable mixture of triumph and guilt. I was responsible for and bearing witness to the ruination of the man sitting next to me, and while there was no doubt that ruination was richly deserved, it still saddened me. How can you still love and care about someone who has totally compromised your life and business as a matter of greed?

  We parked on Charles Street off Seventh Avenue, and strolled the few remaining steps to the restaurant. Securing a small table in the rear of the establishment, over a bottle of red wine Sergio finally revealed the true reason for our evening. “Michael, I’m worried and I really need your advice. You know the name Greg DePalma, the captain in Westchester. Well, that man has the biggest mouth in the mafia. Even though he knows his phones are bugged, he can’t stop himself from talking. His mouth has put away more guys than the feds, and that includes himself. But he can’t change.

  “Anyway, after those murders at Scores, I got called up to DePalma’s house with Willie Marshall. He tells us the family’s honor has been tarnished, that murders can’t be tolerated in ‘protected clubs,’ and he orders Willie and Steve to find the Albanian brothers who committed the murders and whack them.”

  The sudden change in seriousness captured my complete attention. Sergio had just possibly and unexpectedly opened the way to a full-blown murder conspiracy. “What happened next?” was my reflexive response.

  “I said, ‘Why don’t you send your own son to murder them. I’m not ordering my son to kill anybody, I’d rather do it myself.’”

  “And what did DePalma say to that?”

  “He said it was up to me and Willie, that he didn’t care who pulled the fucking trigger, as long as it got pulled.”

  Sergio poured himself another glass of wine and swallowed deeply. “Now here’s the rub, what’s worrying me. I have it on good information DePalma’s house was bugged on the night of that little talk and, if that’s the case, my words were recorded. And knowing Greg, he probably got on his bugged phone and bragged about it all night. So what I wanna know is this: since we never found the Albanians, and never tried to actually kill them, could I get in trouble just for the conversation?”

  I had no meaningful experience in criminal law, but reaching back to law school memories, my instincts pushed me in a definite direction. “Mike, this is off the top of my head. Talking wasn’t a crime last time I read the Constitution, not unless you take what they call ‘affirmative acts’ in furtherance of a conspiracy. So the real question is: Did you or Steve or anyone working with you take any actions to kill these brothers? The answer to that question answers your question.”

  Sergio rubbed his hands together nervously, and his eyes darted to points unknown on the ceiling. “I just don’t know. I don’t really understand this ‘affirmative act’ shit. I don’t fucking know if the conversation was even recorded. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing, maybe I’m a dead man.” He was slowly working himself up into a state of nervous anger.

  “It sounds to me,” I calmly cut in, “as if you never acted in furtherance of the conspiracy, or on the orders of DePalma. But let’s do this, I’ll go do some legal research on ‘affirmative acts,’ and you sit down with Steve and find out exactly what he or Willie or their friends did about the brothers, if anything. Then we’ll get together and compare notes, figure out where things stand.”

  And so it was agreed. Each man had his homework assignment, and the issue was tabled for further discussion to another day.

  The FBI debriefing began about 2 AM at the deserted law firm. Ready was beyond elated at the content of the night’s conversations overheard through the beeper transmitter. He took copious notes as I recounted all I could remember, and Roman exchanged the recorded tapes in the closet for blank ones.

  Sergio had unexpectedly led the investigation into new and fertile ground that appeared to reach to the highest tiers of power within the Gambino family. Without saying it out loud, each of us knew we were on to something potentially enormous. It’s just that we were too tired and spent to articulate our hopefulness.

  As we prepared to call it a night, Ready turned to me. “I have to go home with you. Jack wants a pair of your underwear.”

  I was slowly trying to formulate an appropriate response to Ready’s bizarre request when the agent held up his hand. “Not a word. I’m too tired for one of your smart-ass comebacks.”

  Once we got back to my apartment, we found ourselves in the master bedroom, together going through my closet containing my boxer briefs in assorted colors. As I selected a black pair, there seemed to be some subtle impatience in Ready’s body language. “Just one more second, Bill, I’m trying to find a pair without shit stains.”

  Ready looked up and shook his head in obvious defeat. “I knew you couldn’t resist. You can’t control that mouth of yours.”

  The following morning, Andrew and I took a quick moment to confer in our stairwell hideout. I shared the events of the evening in detail and we agreed there was substantial potential in the new murder conspiracy. Not for lack of diligence, I had no success in reaching Karst or Ready or Roman to discuss their reactions.

  I was relieved the next morning when Casey announced John from Peter Ginsberg’s office was on the line. When I picked up, it was an exuberant Jack Karst with a cornucopia of developing news. According to Jack, the evening with Sergio earned a “five-star” rating. The agents had in fact spent the entire prior day meeting with the prosecutors reviewing the F-Bird recording and exploring certain legal issues raised by the conversations.

  “We were initially concerned that your status as an attorney, and the fact Sergio was seeking legal advice from you, might raise certain sticky privilege problems down the road.”

  I was caught off guard; I hadn’t given any thought to issues of attorney-client privilege. But before I could mull it through, Karst explained the prosecutors
dismissed the FBI’s worries. “Since Sergio hasn’t yet been indicted, since he’s seeking your assistance in covering up a crime, and since that in itself is an ongoing crime, there’s no applicable privilege. We’re clear.”

  With privilege issues put to bed, Karst turned to Sergio’s fear of whether his conversation with DePalma about murdering the Albanians had been recorded. “It didn’t happen, there were no bugs in the captain’s house that day.”

  Just as my spirits began to sink, with hopes for exploring the conspiracy fading, Karst came back. “We’re not worried though. We think we know where Sergio gets his information about investigations. We’re going to let that source ‘discover’ there was a listening device in the house that night and we did capture the exchange. We’re hoping we’ll light a fire under Sergio and he’ll come running back to you for more advice.”

  “What good will that do if there’s no recording?”

  “Michael, tell me something, what’s the difference between having the original conversation in DePalma’s house on tape and having each of the participants confess the facts to you on tape?”

  I couldn’t think of any significant difference.

  “Before we’re done,” Karst finished up, “we’ll have Sergio, his son, Willie, and maybe even DePalma himself, all confirming to you DePalma’s orders to find and execute the brothers; and that they conspired together to do it. That, my friend, is a serious federal crime.”

  At eight on a lazy Saturday morning, my telephone rang out. Startled to attention, I grabbed the receiver.

  “It’s me, Mike Sergio. I’ll pick you up at ten, we’ll grab something to eat and talk.”

  “I can’t do it, I have a house full of guests and plans for the afternoon.”

  “Fuck your guests. Fuck your plans. Be outside at ten.”

  Unsure what to do, I carried the phone to the balcony and dialed Karst’s beeper number. The call had triggered a potential disaster: if I met Sergio without an F-Bird and couldn’t record important information, it would be a major missed opportunity; if I stood Sergio up, I’d be in a personal pickle. Knowing I needed to make a quick decision, I added 911 to my message.