Tragic

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Will we be getting room service?” Rosie LaMontagne asked, eyeing him as if putting the final touches on a delicate deal.

  “We’ll make sure you’re well fed,” Karp replied with a laugh. “And if you’re hungry now, let Detective Fulton know and he’ll be happy to order in.”

  “Good! Pizza with the works, boy, and make it hot and snappy,” Rosie ordered, looking happily at Guma. “ ’Tis time . . . for lunch.”

  29

  ANNE DEVULDER’S REVELATIONS AND HOW to use them were still swirling about in Karp’s mind as court resumed after the lunch hour. As an officer of the court, he had a duty to be able to vouch for the credibility of any witness he put on the stand. He believed Devulder’s story—it corroborated with those of his other witnesses—but he needed to be able to put her at the scene, which was why he’d told Fulton to get the handkerchief she’d brought to the courtroom tested as soon as possible.

  However, for the moment, he needed to put her out of his mind and focus on his strategy to use Vitteli’s phony bravado that he’d noticed in the first trial to goad him into testifying. Such a plan had a far-from-certain outcome and was usually strategically inadvisable from the defense point of view. Hopefully, all that would follow in logical sequence. Now the demands of the trial order beckoned his complete attention as he prepared to question his key witness.

  “The People call Jackie Corcione,” Karp said, standing behind the prosecution table.

  Looking frightened and like a man on the verge of changing his mind, the witness entered the courtroom from the side door and hesitated as he glanced at the defense table, where Vitteli and his attorney sat with their backs to him. Neither looked around, as if dismissing him and the danger he represented.

  Karp watched as the witness scanned the gallery, searching for that one face in the crowd that he needed to see. Spotting Greg Lusk, who sat several rows behind the prosecution table smiling slightly and nodding encouragement, Corcione visibly straightened and strode forward until he reached the gate and entered the well of the court. Having then sworn to tell the truth, he stepped up into the witness box and took a seat, focusing on Karp.

  Despite Corcione’s initial reaction upon walking into the courtroom, Karp thought he recovered nicely and overall seemed like a different person than the guilt-ridden, tired man with haunted eyes and shaky hands he’d met four months earlier.

  He’d been driving back from Sing Sing with Fulton when he got the call from Guma that Jackie Corcione wanted to talk to him. The young man was at Bellevue Hospital, where he’d been transported with Lusk following the fight with Joey Barros. “A detective was asking him about the assault when apparently Corcione stopped the interview and said he would only talk to you,” Guma told him. “The detective called the night desk, and I happened to be kicking back in your office when the ADA on call came looking for you.”

  “Guma, kicking back in my office? Oh no! Please tell me that Mrs. Milquetost had already gone home for the day?” Karp pleaded only half-jokingly as he tried to banish the image of “the Italian Stallion,” as Guma liked to refer to himself, and his widowed receptionist “kicking back” in the inner sanctum.

  Guma had laughed, though it was hard to interpret what that meant, as was how he replied. “I do believe she was still around here someplace. But what are you getting at?”

  Karp wisely dropped the subject and instead asked, “What about Barros?”

  “Apparently he did a swan dive into a windshield from Corcione’s loft,” Guma replied. “Official cause of death was VERY blunt force trauma. Seems that he went to Corcione’s place to kill him but ran into the wrong friend. I have to say, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer ghoul. The friend, a guy named Greg Lusk, nearly bled out after Barros slashed his thigh, but I talked to the ER doc, and it looks like he’ll pull through.”

  Karp had already been planning his next move following his talk with Frank DiMarzo, and to have this dropped in his lap was serendipitous. Karp had asked Guma to arrange for Corcione to be brought to the Criminal Courts Building. He and Fulton had arrived an hour later and found Guma and the young man waiting in his office conference room.

  Wondering how this conversation would go, Karp barely had time to take a seat when Corcione blurted out, “I was part of a conspiracy with Charlie Vitteli and Joey Barros to murder Vince Carlotta.” He stopped the young man long enough to give him the Miranda warnings, which Corcione waived, and then mostly listened as the shaken but determined co-conspirator laid it all out. After that, Karp spent two more hours taking a Q&A statement to fill in the details and cross-reference to what he’d just learned from DiMarzo, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of all the facts of the case. The next day, Corcione and Frank DiMarzo had appeared with Karp before a grand jury, which had then not hesitated to indict Vitteli for murder.

  Afterward, while Kowalski and Vitteli were doing damage control and trying to manipulate the jury pool through the media, Karp moved quickly to separate the wheat from the chaff with his case. He passed on the potential case against Vitteli for the murder of the Russian gangster Marat Lvov to the Brooklyn district attorney, who’d since decided to wait on the outcome of the New York trial before determining whether to go forward. Karp had also dismissed the idea of adding the attempted murder of Corcione by Barros to the charges against Vitteli. He would have had to prove the linkage between the now-deceased Barros acting in concert with his boss, while the defense was already spinning the assault as a falling-out between the killer and Corcione. Karp wasn’t a believer in adding a bunch of lesser charges to a murder indictment; it showed a lack of confidence in the murder case. It cluttered up a straightforward trial, and gave a potentially deadlocked jury an easy way out if some juror held out against the murder charge. Simply, Karp was no believer in getting compromised verdicts.

  Now, with a last glance at his yellow legal pad, Karp walked out from behind the prosecution table to stand alongside the jury rail. After asking Corcione to describe briefly to the jury his educational and professional background, Karp moved in for the kill. “Mr. Corcione, would you please explain to the jury why you’re here today?”

  Corcione glanced down for a moment and cleared his throat before looking back up at the jurors. “I was one of the men who plotted the murder of Vince Carlotta, and I’m here because I couldn’t live with the guilt anymore.”

  “And who were the other men?”

  “Joey Barros was one,” Corcione said before looking over at the defense table where the two men seated there now glared at him. He pointed. “And that man, Charles Vitteli.”

  Karp turned to face Vitteli, who, seated only a few feet away, had no choice but to look up at him. “You’ve identified the defendant as the man who in concert with you and Joey Barros planned the cold-blooded execution of Vince Carlotta.”

  Corcione swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”

  “What was the defendant’s role amongst the three of you?”

  “He was calling the shots.”

  “And Joey Barros?”

  “He was Vitteli’s right-hand man. They kind of came up on the docks together. Joey was his attack dog.”

  “What do you mean by ‘attack dog’?”

  “Joey Barros is . . . was . . . a violent man.”

  “You said ‘was’ because Joey Barros is now deceased?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just testified that Barros would essentially do whatever Vitteli told him to do, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please give us an example.”

  “Commit murder.”

  “Objection!” Kowalski growled as he rose from his seat. “Your Honor, what is the point of this questioning? I mean, who is on trial here? The ghost of Joey Barros or my client?”

  “No, no, Your Honor, counsel doesn’t quite understand. It’s not that Barros was a killer,” Karp retorted, “it’s that he killed at the direction of the defendant.”

  “Overruled,” Jud
ge See remarked. “Be careful, Mr. Kowalski, which doors you open, because they can swing back at you. Please proceed, Mr. Karp.”

  Karp turned back to Corcione. “So it’s your testimony that the defendant Vitteli was the puppet master and that you and Barros were on his strings.”

  “I guess you’d call me the moneyman,” Corcione replied. “I was the union’s chief financial officer and counsel to Vitteli, the union boss, who directed me to siphon money from union accounts, especially the pension fund, into offshore banks and eventually our pockets.”

  Karp leaned against the jury box rail. “Can you tell us how the plot to murder Vince Carlotta began?”

  “Yes,” Corcione replied, but it took him a moment to gather his thoughts before letting out a deep breath and continuing. “I suppose it really began when I started stealing money from the union . . . a few thousand a month . . . then one day Charlie Vitteli walked into my office and said he knew what I was doing.”

  “What, if anything, did the defendant do or say?”

  “He threatened me. He said he would tell my father, the union members, and the police. He said I would go to prison if my father and the membership didn’t kill me first.”

  “Did he demand something in return for keeping your secret?”

  “Yes. He wanted me to keep stealing, only now he wanted me to steal much more than I had been, and the three of us, the defendant,” he said now staring at Vitteli, “Barros, and me would get wealthy. He called it his ‘retirement account.’ ”

  “How much did he want you to steal?”

  “Instead of a few thousand a month, he wanted me to figure out how to steal millions every year.”

  “This money rightfully belonged to union members and their families?”

  Looking out to where T. J. Martindale and his men sat scowling, Corcione nodded sadly. “Yes, I took their money.”

  “In addition to threatening to expose your illegal activities, did the defendant make any other sort of threat in order to get you to cooperate with his demands?”

  “Yes, he said he would tell my father, Leo Corcione, that I was gay.”

  “Are you gay?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you have a companion who was living with you at the time you came to my office to confess this crime?”

  “I did,” Corcione said, his voice cracking slightly as he smiled wistfully at Lusk. “We’re just friends now.”

  “Did you consider Vitteli’s statement that he would tell your father you were gay a serious threat?”

  “Yes. I know my father loved me, but he was pretty old-school and I thought it would have been difficult for him to accept my lifestyle choice. I already believed that he was disappointed in me—for not being more like him—and I thought being told I was gay would be the last straw. That he might stop . . . that he might stop loving me.”

  “Do you still believe he would have reacted negatively?”

  Pausing for a moment to consider the question, Corcione then shook his head. “No. I’ve thought about this a lot, and while he may not have liked it, I know he loved me and would have done his best to support me . . . if that had been all there was to it. But stealing the money from union people he’d fought for all of his life would have been a much bigger disappointment; I don’t know that he would have forgiven me for that.”

  “So between the threat to expose your criminal activities and tell your father about your lifestyle, you agreed to participate in Vitteli’s schemes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you have said no?”

  Corcione looked at Vitteli, whose brow knitted above his look of hatred. “At the time, I didn’t think I had a choice. But in hindsight, yes, I could have refused to go along with the plan and suffered the consequences. But I was a coward.”

  “Mr. Corcione, would you please explain how the scheme to siphon millions of dollars from union accounts was accomplished without being detected?” Karp asked.

  “Yes,” Corcione replied.

  As simply as he could, so that the jurors could follow, Karp then had Corcione explain the formation of offshore accounts “not subject to U.S. reporting laws,” and how phony corporations and “pass-through” bank accounts covered up the theft of “approximately forty-seven million dollars” from pension funds, as well as dividends paid for investments of those funds.

  “There were fifteen main accounts in the Cayman Islands that the money went to first,” Corcione said. “Some of the money would remain there to keep those banks happy and uncooperative if investigators from the U.S. came calling. The rest of the money would be transferred into other accounts held by several layers of dummy corporations, each passing the money further down the chain, and gradually into three accounts I set up for each of us—under fictitious names of course.”

  “Who created the fifteen main accounts?”

  “I did.”

  “Who had access to them?”

  “Two signatures were required from the corporation’s executive committee members. ExCom was comprised of Vitteli, Barros, and me. To insulate himself, Vitteli never signed money transfers; he directed Barros and me to execute all the fraudulent documents.”

  Karp acted surprised, though he was far from it. “But if Charles Vitteli was ‘calling the shots,’ like you said, why would he not be the one who controlled the accounts?”

  “Because if someone got suspicious and looked into it, Barros and I would be the only ones with signatures on anything and the only ones to take the fall,” Corcione said. “He controlled the accounts by controlling us.”

  “Who had access to the three personal accounts into which the stolen money was deposited?”

  “We each only had access to our own account.”

  “How did you figure out who got how much money?”

  “Charlie got fifty percent. Barros got thirty. And I got twenty.”

  “Who decided who received these shares?”

  “Vitteli.”

  “Do you know what happened to the money once it reached these three personal accounts?”

  “Only mine,” Corcione replied. “In my case, I reported the income from my investments to the IRS to keep Uncle Sam from getting suspicious. After taxes everything else was gravy.”

  “A lot of gravy?”

  “Millions of dollars’ worth of gravy.”

  “Was there just one way, or were there many different ways, you went about stealing these funds?” Karp asked.

  “Quite a number,” Corcione replied. “I found new ways, or we changed things around sometimes to avoid raising suspicions.”

  “Could you give the jury an example of one way?”

  “Yes. Part of my job was to invest union funds, including the pension accounts, into stocks, or mutual funds, or hard assets like gold,” Corcione explained. “And as with any investments, there were risks involved; even some legitimate investments turn sour, though you try to offset those by making more good choices than bad. However, sometimes I’d invest in dummy corporations that we’d set up under fictitious names; then when these companies ‘went out of business,’ or filed for bankruptcy, we’d just declare it the cost of doing business and write it off as a loss. Of course, the money wasn’t actually gone; it just passed through to our other accounts.”

  “Was there another source of income for the three of you besides stealing union money?”

  “Yes,” Corcione answered. “Vitteli had worked out an agreement with a Russian organized crime syndicate called the Malcheks to use our docks for shipping in exchange for monthly cash payments based on their activities, which to my understanding was mostly going to involve drugs and gunrunning.”

  Corcione’s answer brought an angry murmur from the union men seated in the gallery. Someone seated in the row alongside Martindale muttered just loud enough to be heard, “Vitteli, you son of a bitch,” before Judge See gaveled him into silence. “Members of the gallery will refrain from responding to what the witness says or be remov
ed from the courtroom, am I clear?” the judge growled. When he was satisfied that his point had been made, he looked back at Karp. “Continue, please.”

  Karp left the rail and moved in front of the prosecution table. “Mr. Corcione, after confessing to this crime, did you reveal the location, accounts, and passwords of the fifteen main accounts, as well as identify the dummy corporations and pass-through accounts to one of my assistant district attorneys, V. T. Newbury, the chief of the Frauds Bureau in the District Attorney’s Office, so that he could attempt to trace and recover the stolen money?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you also include your personal accounts, as well as investment portfolio and assets?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And of the approximately forty-seven million dollars you estimate was stolen, do you know how much of that was recovered?”

  “I worked with ADA Newbury on some of this and the last time I talked to him, a few days ago, about seventeen million had been recovered.”

  “Where’s the other thirty million?”

  “Some of it’s been spent. The rest would be wherever Vitteli and Barros sent it after it reached the personal accounts I set up for them.”

  “How long could this scheme have lasted?”

  Corcione looked up at the ceiling and exhaled through his pursed lips. “As long as no one really looked at the books or tried to account for all the money that was coming in and going out, it could have lasted indefinitely,” he said.

  “In fact, how long did it last?”

  “For several years while my father was alive, right up until I told you about it in May.”

  “Did your father suspect?”

  Corcione hung his head. “I don’t think so. He trusted me.”