Scores

by Blutrich, Michael D. ;

  This is not a man I would choose for an enemy, I thought nervously.

  As rehearsed, Pearlstein raised the IPO issue and launched into a verbose, detailed description of financing mechanisms. While the spiel would have been appropriate for private bankers or brokers, it was clear DePalma was growing bored and restless, not even attempting to follow the conversation.

  Breaking with the projected plan, I unceremoniously jumped into the fray. “Craig, let’s get right to the point. We can raise hundreds of millions of dollars with this IPO on Wall Street. Scores is now an American institution, and a hot commodity with name recognition thanks to Howard Stern. We want to raise and use that money to build new Scores venues, and to buy existing clubs in Vegas, Florida, Texas, and Atlanta, turning them into new Scores clubs as well. We’ll pay as much as ten million to each club owner who comes on board, and give ten-year management contracts to the sellers to stay and continue running their clubs. After all, there’s nothing to fix in a successful strip bar—nothing’s broken.”

  DePalma’s eyes sharpened, demonstrating he was now interested in the exchange. The phrase “hundreds of millions of dollars” had obviously grabbed his attention. Putting his hand on Marshall’s shoulder, he leaned back and smiled. “And why are we talking about this together?”

  “Can I speak straight?” I returned.

  Craig nodded his gracious assent.

  “We need help in obtaining the rights to successful strip clubs in the best locations. We need to see the ‘real’ books of every club to set fair purchase prices. Once we own the places, we need a presence to keep leftover management honest. And most important, we need to steer clear of winding up in the middle of squeezes between families offering protection. After all, look at our business. Could there be Scores without our friends looking after us? We want you on board to handle these things.”

  While DePalma may have been a professional enforcer, moneylender, and shakedown artist, savvy in the ways of family sit-downs, his eyes and body language transparently revealed he was drooling to be a part of our plan. His eyes were spinning like slot machines with dollar-sign icons. So I decided it was time to spring the trap, to gather admissions that would seal DePalma’s fate.

  I softly slapped my hand on the table and pointed at DePalma’s chest. “Craig, I think I remember you now, it’s been bothering me all night. You came to the office with the others for the sit-down cash. You helped out Mike Sergio. Am I right? You were Sergio’s assistant!”

  I strained to keep an innocent look on my face. I’d intentionally stabbed at the captain’s pride, hoping to produce an ill-considered reflexive reaction, but fearing a slap in the face. And using the elder Sergio as the hammer only deepened the wound.

  I didn’t need to wait long.

  “Did you just say I was Mike Sergio’s assistant?” DePalma seethed, gripping the dinner table with both hands, knuckles immediately whitening.

  Looking pleadingly at Marshall, and then back to Craig, I projected pure confusion. “That’s what Mike said. Did I just say something wrong?”

  Marshall quickly sidled to Craig’s ear. “You know Mike, he’s an old man, he don’t mean things the way they come out sometimes.”

  DePalma looked slightly mollified by Marshall’s words, but glared back at me anew. “Tell me what else Mikey said.”

  I was mightily gratified; DePalma’s reaction was just what the doctor ordered. Trying to look nervous and embarrassed, I lowered my eyes. “I can’t remember anything else.”

  “Michael,” DePalma boomed back, “look at me.”

  I complied slowly.

  “You tell me the truth. I’m not mad at you and I couldn’t give two shits what that old man said. I just want to hear it.”

  Taking an exaggerated deep breath, I circled for the kill. “All I know is the original captain at Scores was Tori Locascio, but when Steve Kaplan called a sit-down over the club in front of Mikey Scars, Locascio dropped the club like a hot potato. That left Sergio to pick up the ball and he saved us at the sit-down. He convinced everyone we were right.”

  Of course my story bore no relation to reality, but neither DePalma nor Marshall could know that. And to add salt to the inflicted wound, I ended my recitation with a real kicker. “He did say you helped him a lot, Craig.”

  I shifted my weight and waited for an explosion.

  DePalma stood up, looked at Marshall, and half-screamed, “Do you believe this shit? I should smack this old man up the head. He saved Scores? I helped him?”

  Marshall made no further defense, he just shook his head, casting his palms upward, not daring to raise his eyes to meet his boss’s glare. After a pause, DePalma sat down, twisted his neck awkwardly a few times, and leaned toward his guests. “Let me just set the record straight.”

  He then launched into an explosive diatribe recounting how Sergio sent Marshall to him “begging” for help with the sit-down. “There was nothing he could do alone, he’s not senior enough to even attend a sit-down.” DePalma next recounted how he agreed to be our representative; how he attended a series of meetings in the middle of the night to arrange things; and how he—and he alone—convinced Scars to deny Kaplan’s claims. For his grand finale, DePalma revealed he’d also been the one to negotiate the lowering of the demand from an original two-hundred to one-hundred grand.

  “And your friend Mikey Hop had nothing to do with nothing. He was home in bed sleeping while I was taking care of what had to be done. And believe me, I don’t need no credit, I just don’t want you guys misunderstanding what end’s up in this world.”

  I had by now pulled out every admission I’d ever dreamed of obtaining that night, but while the dice were still “hot,” I dared to try for just a bit more.

  “What I don’t understand then, is why didn’t you introduce yourself to us at the office that day?”

  “Because I’m a low-profile guy, ask Willie. I don’t shit where I eat. I just came along to make sure the cash got safely delivered to Mikey Scars and Junior. At that time, you didn’t need to know who I was. You just needed me to do things.”

  Bingo! was the single word flying through my satisfied thoughts, and I contentedly let the issue drop.

  Andrew, Willie, and Craig headed out to Scores after departing the Chinese restaurant, the dinner tab my responsibility. I begged off, citing an early morning court appearance but, in reality, I was heading to an FBI debriefing. After the F-Bird was turned off and the beeper-transmitter returned, I recounted my recollections of the night’s events and the important exchanges traded with DePalma.

  Ticking through the high points, Karst and Ready enthusiastically concluded the excursion had brought us to a whole new investigative level. DePalma, an organized crime acting captain, son of a full capo, at a power station far above either Sergio or Marshall, had openly admitted Gambino family involvement at Scores. More importantly, he took personal credit for his part in the sit-down extortion scheme and confirmed the active participation of Scars and Junior as well—the two men running the international family.

  The “cherry” on the evening’s sundae was, of course, the unexpected admission that Marshall and Sergio, together with DePalma, had hand-carried the one hundred thousand dollars in cash from Scores to Mikey Scars and Gotti Junior.

  The FBI agents were delirious; they well knew we’d crossed beyond a barrier into the realm of family bosses. We’d gotten ourselves into territory few undercover operations ever reach. After these targets, there was nowhere higher to go in the Gambino clan!

  “From what we heard on the transmitter,” Karst said, “if we can put you into Craig’s confidence, this could turn out to be one of the most productive operations in FBI history.”

  His words filled me with an undeniable sense of pride. Despite my gross disappointment with the Florida meeting at the World Trade Center, I was riding a wave of excitement that night along with the agents, eager to find new and additional ways to keep the investigation progressing. As long as I
was active, I wasn’t in Idaho or witness jail.

  But as I walked alone down Park Avenue toward home, my adrenaline rush ebbed and stark reality returned to engulf me. I began talking out loud to myself, arms flailing up and down in birdlike motions, as I strode down the deserted Manhattan streets. To anyone watching from a window above, I would have seemed like an escaped mental patient.

  Michael, why are you doing all this? It’s all a cruel joke; you’re a joke. The only thing you got out of tonight was some terrific shrimp and pork; the government got Marshall, DePalma, Scars, and Gotti. Fair trade, you think? No one but me would be stupid enough to risk his life with absolutely no concrete guarantees for a soft landing in the future. For God’s sake, the government even made us pay the check.

  By the time I reached home, I was all wound up and severely depressed. There was no seeming way out of this mess, and I felt myself slipping away.

  I reached for the bottle of Xanax on my bedside table.

  In the middle of the next week, Pearlstein strolled into my office and took a seat in one of the red leather chairs. The look on his face mirrored the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “You’re never going to believe who called me.”

  When I steadfastly refused to guess the name of the caller, he added, “Steve Kaplan.”

  It took a few moments for the impact of the information to register. “Steve Kaplan from the Gold Club in Atlanta?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Steve Kaplan who went to Angelo Prisco and called for the sit-down against the club?”

  “Yup.”

  “Steve Kaplan who tried to take Scores from us, and cost us one hundred thousand dollars?”

  “The very one.”

  “What the fuck does he want?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He just said he thought it would be to our mutual benefit to have a conversation.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I’d think about it.”

  After advising Karst and Ready of the unexpected approach from Kaplan, there was no doubt Pearlstein should accept the invitation. “Do you think he’s learned about the IPO project from DePalma?” Andrew asked.

  “Could be,” Ready guessed.

  “Who cares?” I chimed in. “It gives us another chance to sit down with DePalma. It wouldn’t be right to meet with Kaplan without permission.”

  Through Marshall, an urgent meeting was requested with DePalma. Two nights later, Andrew and I found ourselves in the same restaurant, at the same table, eating the same food, facing the same man, in the same running suit.

  Andrew repeated a word-for-word account of his telephone conversation with Kaplan. “After all that’s happened, we didn’t want to entertain his offer for a meeting without getting your advice.”

  DePalma was closed-mouthed about Kaplan, unwilling to share whether, in his opinion, the call was in any way connected with the IPO capital-raising efforts. DePalma’s silence signaled, in my opinion, that he’d been unaware of the Kaplan approach and would be checking with his bosses about the genesis of the odd call from a former enemy.

  In the end, DePalma’s advice was simple: “Do what you want. I don’t care.”

  Andrew phoned Kaplan the next morning to accept his invite. According to Andrew, Kaplan seemed delighted and they agreed to share a cup of coffee at a small cafe in Penn Station.

  “Did he say what it was all about?” I asked.

  “Not a word. He said we’d cover everything when we got together.”

  The meeting was set for the following afternoon at three. We all assumed Andrew would finally be convinced to strap on an F-Bird but, to the group’s collective surprise, he adamantly refused to even consider it. He complained he’d be too nervous wearing the wire and Kaplan would surely suspect he was up to something. As no amount of prodding could change his mind, a compromise was reached: Andrew would try to make the visit a quick one, and would attempt to schedule a full meeting back at the office, under the watchful eyes of hidden ceiling cameras.

  When Andrew set off for Penn Station on his first solo mission, he made a mighty effort to maintain an appearance of serenity. Knowing Andrew as I did, I could see he was terrified.

  Andrew returned exactly one hour after he departed, carrying himself like a conquering hero.

  Sitting in his office, on the phone with the agents, Andrew related his brief encounter. As the tale was recounted, Kaplan opened the conversation with an apology, claiming the sit-down had been a total misunderstanding. He hoped there were no hard feelings and expressed a desire to do business with Scores.

  “Did he mention the IPO?” Karst asked through the speaker.

  “He didn’t, but I did. I told him all about it. I had the feeling he knew all the details but wanted to hear them from me.”

  Andrew went on to say Kaplan revealed he’d been visiting Scores on a regular basis, as a matter of “professional interest,” and had a few “million-dollar ideas” for us. He was purportedly respectful, contrite about the past, and enthusiastic about the future.

  “How did you leave it?” Karst interrupted.

  “It worked out perfectly. He claimed to be pressed for time and suggested he’d stop by the office one night this week. He wants to meet Michael and apologize personally to him as well.”

  “Did you set a date?” Ready asked.

  “No, but I bet I get a call tomorrow.”

  Andrew was clearly pleased with himself and we agreed to share dinner at Smith and Wollensky on Second Avenue. I like the pea soup there.

  During the dinner, while making every effort to ignore our depressing plight for a few hours, my beeper started vibrating. Pulling out the contraption, I stared at the screen in horror. The message read: “Call Bill Ready. 911.”

  Ready answered on the first ring. “We don’t know how it happened, but the undercover investigation has been leaked to the press. There may be a story tomorrow linking Scores to an active sting against the Gambinos. You may have to be ready to leave New York early tomorrow morning.”

  I could barely speak. “Bill, this can’t be right. You promised us two years. We can’t leave at the drop of a hat. There are a million details to attend to.”

  “Michael, if this story leaks in the newspaper, there will only be one detail to attend to—your funeral. But listen, the US Attorney herself is meeting with the editorial board of the Daily News tonight. They may agree to kill the story. So stay in touch because if things don’t go as hoped, you and Andrew have to spend the night packing.”

  I reported every word to Andrew, who stood stiff and pale in the shadows of the restaurant. Hard to comprehend, but I might have just eaten my last cup of Smith and Wollensky pea soup.

  I spent a wretched sleep-deprived night. Pacing around my living room, watching the darkened city begin to stir, I was forced for the first time to confront the reality and ramifications of my cooperation. It had been one thing to give passing lip service to “someday” entering the Witness Protection Program; it was a horse of different color to be actually packing bags.

  The impact of what could be happening in the next few hours was crushing: leaving behind family, loved ones, businesses, and partners; changing names, abandoning a complex personal history, and replacing it with a sterile manufactured past without substance or comfort; never coming home, never again dining in a favorite restaurant, shopping in a familiar store, calling a trusted doctor. And even worse, spending the rest of my days looking over my shoulder, fearing the next face I saw might be of the man who would kill me.

  Losing an identity is no small thing, yet I had agreed to do so without ever taking in the full implications of the decision. A little late now, buddy, I forlornly counseled myself.

  Questions piled upon questions as my anxiety grew thick: Was I really capable of no longer being Michael Blutrich? Was I strong enough to never return, to never make contact, to cease to exist?

  While my questions were many, answers were painfully elusive, and t
he personal confidence that had always guided every step of my life suddenly left me.

  What the fuck have I done?

  At 7 AM, with paranoia at full throttle, Bill Ready told us that the editorial powers at the Daily News had agreed to “kill” the story in order to avoid both prematurely ending an important undercover investigation and potentially endangering the lives of its cooperators.

  When the conversation ended, and realizing I was still me, and still controlling my life—not being immediately shipped off to the boondocks—I was overcome with waves of emotion. Collecting myself, I vowed to use every additional hour granted to better prepare for the “Day of Judgment” on the horizon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Hemorrhoids to the Rescue

  SUMMER, 1997

  Making home movies for the government in the office continued like monotonous clockwork. At least once a week, one of the FBI team would rendezvous with me after business hours and retrieve the tapes. On this particular evening, after completing the exchange, Karst sat himself down in front of the desk that dominated the room. “Have you heard anything about one of your managers getting threatened at gunpoint by a ‘made guy’ from another family?”

  “Not a word. Are you sure it happened? Because that kind of gossip usually gets back to me.”

  “We recorded Sergio on a phone tap saying something about an incident with another family. I’d love to know the story.”

  “You know, Jack,” I knew I sounded frustrated, “we can kiss good-bye those days when Sergio spilled his guts at the drop of a hat. Ever since he found out about our new ‘friendship’ with DePalma, and ever since Willie Marshall began asserting himself at the club, Sergio’s gotten tight-lipped. I think he’s afraid of getting pushed out of Scores completely and losing his weekly cash.”