Scores

  Karst stood up and paced around the room, rubbing his hands together slowly. “It’s true. Sergio probably got called on the carpet by DePalma after we savaged him as a big-mouthed washerwoman. He’s definitely scared and we’ve got to get him into a new environment where he’ll feel safe opening up all over again. Any ideas?”

  Nothing immediately came to me and silence filled the office. When an idea struck, I held it back, at first unsure I wanted to creatively assist the FBI in expanding its probe. But it was a really good idea, too tempting in the end to keep to myself. “What about this, I’ve been complaining to Sergio about my inflamed hemorrhoids. I’ve had a lot of pain lately and some blood . . .”

  “Michael,” Jack interrupted, “this is more information than I need to know.”

  “Fine, I didn’t realize you were so squeamish. Anyway, Sergio keeps offering to take me to his proctologist friend in Connecticut. I could accept the offer and maybe Sergio would start talking on the ride.”

  Karst thought the matter over. “There’s a problem. You can’t wear a wire if the doctor’s gonna examine your privates.”

  “I know, but we can wire up my limo and capture conversation on the road.”

  “You know what? Let’s do it. Call Sergio and ask him if he’d take you to the doctor. If he’s willing, we’ll bring your limo into the FBI shop.”

  As I suspected he would, Sergio agreed to make the appointment and accompany me to the Connecticut proctologist. The FBI promptly picked up the vehicle and outfitted it with several backseat microphones. When it was returned, I received instructions in the procedure for controlling the recording equipment through a switch behind a rear seat cushion. All we needed was a date from Sergio.

  On the morning of the appointment, the limo picked me up at home and headed up the FDR Drive north to Sergio’s Bronx apartment. As there were no body wires involved, I was on my own; no trailing team of FBI agents. As we pulled off the highway, and with the passenger cabin concealed from the driver by the limo’s divider panel, I reached behind the seat cushion, located the recording switch, and rolled the tape. The operation took longer than anticipated and I barely had sufficient time to replace the cushion and assume a relaxed pose before Sergio ripped open the door and bounced into a seat in the spacious vehicle.

  He was in a relaxed, gregarious mood, plainly pleased to be spending an afternoon with me away from the city. His conversation opened with reassurances the Connecticut doctor was first-class, followed by a usual spewing of hatred for Andrew, and concluding with some harsh words for the way he was being treated at Scores by the DePalmas.

  As we crossed over the state border into Connecticut, I casually raised the circulating rumor about a pistol-whipping incident outside the club with one of the managers. Without hesitation, Sergio launched into a recitation of the lurid tale, and of the manager who foolishly opened his “big mouth” to a mafia soldier from another family—almost getting killed in a backlash. He named names, times, and the steps he’d been constrained to undertake to smooth over interfamily waters.

  “Sometimes these guys,” Sergio shook his head, scowling as he spoke, “they just don’t think before they speak. The jerk-off was scared shitless, but maybe he learned something from a gun in his mouth.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, having accomplished the day’s investigative goal without breaking a sweat. All that was left was a quick consultation with the Connecticut “ass man,” and back on the road for some extra bonus admissions.

  The proctologist’s office was located in a small, unimpressive, white, boxlike medical complex. The office we were seeking was on the ground floor and, as we entered, Sergio received a boisterous greeting from the receptionist.

  “You seem to be really popular in Connecticut anal circles,” I whispered as we took seats.

  “You’re another one who never knows when to shut his piehole.”

  After filling out insurance forms and sitting through a reasonable wait, I was called and escorted through reception portals on my way to an examination room. As I entered the room, I was startled to find Sergio trailing directly behind me. Turning to my escort, I pointedly said, “Whatta you, my mother now? I can’t see the doctor alone?”

  “Will you please just be quiet? I want to say hello and hear what the man says about your problem.” Our continuing banter was interrupted when a nurse opened the door and handed me a standard paper gown, instructing me to trade it for “all” my clothes.

  After a while, as I sat uncomfortably on a freezing cold table, and Sergio rested himself in a plastic chair, the doctor entered with a flourish. Once again it was Sergio who was the center of attention as he and the physician traded exuberant personal exchanges about family and politics.

  With the pleasantries over, I explained about the pain and blood spotting I was intermittently experiencing. “Well let’s take a look-see,” the doctor responded with a broad engaging smile.

  Now on my knees atop the examining table, with Sergio standing above my head and the doctor making a rear assault on my upturned, helplessly exposed bottom, I quietly withstood a degree of uncomfortable prodding as the physician went about his business. With everyone holding their respective positions, the doctor finally said, “You have a series of common hemorrhoids, which are causing all your pain and blood. Lucky thing is they can readily be treated and I can perform the surgery right now.”

  I gulped deeply in response. I’d been perfectly willing to endure an embarrassing examination to further the investigation; it was a different matter to undergo surgery.

  I twisted my neck around severely to meet the doctor’s gaze. “To be honest, Doc, I wasn’t really prepared to have any procedure performed today. I’d like to think about it.”

  “Think about what?” Sergio roared, causing me to lose balance and crash my upper torso into the table. “We come all this way, you’ve got the best doctor in the world, so stop being a chickenshit and let him fix your ass.”

  Remaining on all fours between the two men, my rear facing the heavens and all sense of privacy now abandoned, I attempted to quickly learn about the procedure being foisted upon me. “Doc, can you explain to me exactly what you’re proposing to do?”

  Once again it was Dr. Sergio who jumped in to preclude any meaningful doctor-patient exchange. “He takes rubber bands, wraps them around the damn hemorrhoids, kills off the blood flow, and burns the things off. I’ve had it done and it’s no big deal; it don’t hurt.”

  The surgery seemed to be proceeding as described, with special supervision by the esteemed mafia medical consultant. My bottom was spread beyond any reasonably anticipated human level by devices better suited to an Inquisitor’s torture chamber, and the proctologist actually wrapped rubber band-like straps around each offending nodule.

  To avoid the reality of what was impossibly happening behind me, I lowered my head into a cradle of my folded arms and silently lectured myself in growingly outraged thoughts. It was bad enough I burned and scarred my inner thighs wearing the F-Bird. I thought I’d reached the limits of humiliation when I was forced to lap dance naked in a restroom. And of course, new standards of sacrifice and disgust were surpassed when my only way to survive an undercover sting turned out to be grabbing an eighty-year-old, overexcited penis. But I gotta admit, lying here on this table, my ass spread far enough east and west to drive a truck through me, this is the worst one yet. It’s too much; things like this cannot be expected by the government from cooperators. Were I a betting man, I would bet the ranch I’m the only witness in history to have his butt cut open in the name of cooperation!

  As shots of pain rippled through my body, I just moaned forlornly and mumbled out loud, to no one in particular, “This really really sucks the big one.”

  Walking back to the limousine, I was holding a rubber donut, the size of a child’s toilet seat, which I’d been instructed to sit on for the next few days. Life just kept finding more and more humiliations for me.

  After
opening the limo door, I asked Sergio if he would mind getting in on the other side. As he walked around the vehicle grumbling, I dove into the back seat, my ass screaming in painful resistance, and I managed to pull out and reengage the recording device.

  Sergio plopped himself into the cabin, laughing and looking at me.

  “And what’s so funny now?”

  “I was thinking about how much your first crap is gonna burn. But you’ll be thanking me in a few days.”

  As summer unceremoniously marched on, a problem developed between the New York prosecutors and us. The problem concerned our New York plea deal. The government was still of a mind that we should plead guilty to various crimes in New York deriving, for the most part, from our relationship with the mafia at Scores. Our counsels argued ferociously that being extorted by the mob wasn’t a crime.

  Sipperly and Miller were callously unrelenting; they wanted their “pound of flesh” from us in New York in the form of guilty pleas, arguing the pleas would make us more effective witnesses. Tempers flared to unanticipated heights and, acting as if it were a labor dispute, the prosecutors temporarily “locked us out” from continuing the cooperation. The entire investigation was put on hold, over rabid objections from an appalled FBI, until the matter of pleas could be straightened out.

  A summit was called in the hopes of negotiating a settlement.

  The peace conference was scheduled in the now-familiar upstate hotel. All the players were invited: the two prosecutors, the two lead agents, our two attorneys, and the two of us. When I entered the reserved suite, everyone had already seated themselves around a circular cluster of arranged chairs. Carol and Marjorie seemed to be in unexpectedly wonderful moods; in fact, they seemed to be suppressing chuckles.

  As all eyes bemusedly focused directly on me, little goose bumps appeared on my arms. Although I already suspected what was coming, I realized I was being compelled to “ask” to be humiliated.

  “All right, I’ll bite. Why is everybody looking at me like I have a booger sticking out of my nose?”

  That did it. The entire room lost control and laughter erupted in boisterous spurts. Finally gaining a modicum of control over herself, Sipperly shook her head and cleared her throat. “The agents and your lawyers were telling us for the first time about your intimate encounter with Urgitano . . .”

  “And your recent surgery,” Miller threw in as a kicker.

  Once again the gathered group burst into rolling yelps as I tried my best to preserve my pride and bearing. Sensing my seething reaction, which was actually feigned, Peter Ginsberg leaned toward me. “We’re laughing with you, not at you. But you have to know this is the stuff legends are made from.”

  Then the meeting turned serious. The same old tired arguments were exchanged on the plea issue. It appeared little progress was going to prove possible, until Sipperly made a startling statement. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why you’re fighting us on this point. Your New York sentences are going to be minimal, a matter of months, and will run together with any Florida time you receive. Don’t you understand, a New York plea is the only way for you to keep Scores?”

  “What is she talking about?” I literally screamed in disbelief in the direction of the attorneys. “No one has ever said a single word about losing the club!”

  Sipperly, plainly sensing she’d hit a nerve, went on to explain that Florida was readying a motion to seek immediate forfeiture of Scores. “And you know where that motion will be heard and decided, don’t you? And you know what your chances are in front of a Florida judge, don’t you?” Sipperly lectured. “The one and only way you’re going to keep that from happening is to forfeit the club to us first—that ends the issue in Florida, but requires a New York plea agreement. Things are going to get a whole lot worse for you guys really fast unless you start seeing things our way.”

  The possibility of losing Scores to Florida was beyond threatening and took the wind from our sails, our New York plea resistance movement coming to an immediate collapse. After all, without the significant income from Scores, we would be unable to pay mounting legal bills or maintain our lifestyles. More importantly, without the club as a “front,” the undercover cooperation would be blown to oblivion. The preservation of our ownership and control of Scores had just become the only focus of real importance.

  Perhaps if I had allowed myself a moment of quiet introspection, it might have become obvious the New York prosecutors had an equal, if not greater, vested interest in keeping Scores under our control. Had Florida actually managed to wrestle away ownership, either closing Scores’ doors or installing new owners, the New York investigation would have surely been terminated. A detached, dispassionate observer would have recognized neither New York nor the FBI was about to let that happen, not when they were perhaps only months away from “nailing” the most powerful members of the Gambino and other families.

  Unfortunately, and rather than utilizing the government’s equally compromised position to our advantage, we reacted again out of fear, thinking exclusively of ways to preserve the “cash cow” club. We missed an opportunity to bring the government to its knees, or at least get fair rewards for our effort and risk.

  Sipperly and Miller must have shared a fine laugh, watching their two prized cooperators, unaware of their own value and power, gratefully dancing to the government’s music of pure unadulterated self-interest.

  Over the next few days, Pearlstein and Ginsberg participated in a series of meetings on the forfeiture issue. Out of those negotiations, an accord was finalized: we would plead guilty in New York with an agreement to immediately forfeit Scores; actual turnover of the club to be held in abeyance until we surrendered into custody to begin serving any time; until then, presumably years away, we would continue to act as owners, with all profits earned from the club’s operations being ours to keep and utilize as we saw fit.

  There were caveats: 1) during the period before physical turnover, we agreed not to diminish the value of the club, no “stripping the cupboards bare,” so to speak; 2) the government would have the right to conduct discreet audits of the books to ensure its value was being maintained; and 3) prior to actual forfeiture, we would have the option of selling the club to buyers “of our choice,” for a price not less than two million dollars, the money going directly to the government.

  We were satisfied. Although it was never openly discussed, our right to sell the club to buyers “of our choice” was an open invitation to put together a “friendly” group of new owners to maintain caretaking operations during our brief prison terms.

  It finally seemed the Southern District of New York had found its way to rewarding and recognizing the enormity of our sacrifices. Plainly, this was the promised “soft landing” waiting at the end of the nightmare.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Money Laundering and Florida Craziness

  With plea understandings drafted and signed, I was now back in the saddle, undercover activities fully resumed. And as for subject matter, a cornucopia of new mafia crimes continued to arrive at our doorstep. For example, Willie Marshall announced to the world his intentions to take his longtime girlfriend as his bride. An official wedding date was set for November 1997.

  At a planning session for the investigation, Karst suggested that Andrew urge Marshall to use his wedding to engage in some old-fashioned money laundering of illegally earned cash he’d hidden from past loan-sharking activities. If successful, the agents reasoned they could capture him both admitting his role in loan-sharking and engaging in new financial crimes to avoid federal and state taxes on ill-gotten gains.

  I broke the group’s train of thought. “I’m getting just a little confused. Don’t we have enough on Willie already? Do we really need more than extortion of Scores, the Kaplan sit-down, transport of extortion proceeds to Gotti, and murder conspiracy with DePalma? What I mean to say is, is it worth the risk of getting caught and being exposed just to get Marshall snagged in one more cr
ime he’s not even thinking about committing?”

  Karst and Ready held a quick private discussion in reaction to my queries. After some animated hand gesturing between them, they broke their impromptu huddle and returned their attentions to us. “We think you deserve an overview of our long-term goals here,” Karst opened. “Michael, you’re absolutely correct, we’ve got more than enough right now to convict Willie of twenty years of federal crimes. The same is true for the Sergios certainly, and we’re getting close to that point with Craig DePalma. But as of now, our aim is to turn those three into cooperating witnesses in the future.

  “Unlike you guys, they can take us directly to Gotti, to Scars, and to a bunch of other major players in several crime families. So, if we get Willie to now admit he’s been into loan-sharking, when he turns into a witness down the road, he’ll have to give up all the names and details involved in that operation.”

  “That’s how an undercover investigation sometimes blooms and mushrooms,” Ready interjected. “You guys are the roots; without you we’d have nothing. But when the Sergios, Marshall, and DePalma each find themselves facing thirty years behind bars, they become the next tier of cooperators.”

  When the opportunity arose, Andrew called me on the office intercom. “Michael, I’m here with Willie Marshall, wanna order cappuccinos with us?” I recognized the code signal to start the ceiling tapes rolling.

  “Sure. Where do you want to have them?”

  “Your office in ten minutes.”

  I sighed deeply, thinking about all the physical machinations I had to accomplish in the next few moments. When the cameras were finally rolling, I placed my chair back in its normal position, retraced my steps to the bathroom and, after flushing the toilet and spraying air freshener, opened the dead bolt, and walked back to my desk.