by Albert Demeo
By 1982 Big Paul was being squeezed so tightly by the FBI that he had begun eliminating anyone who posed a risk. My father knew he was next. He spent hours talking to me about it in his study at night. One night at Freddy's house, as I sat in the living room watching television, I heard Freddy and Dad talking in the kitchen.
“Paul's greedy, and he's not giving respect to the guys who do the work for him. He wants all the money, but he doesn't want to do any of the dirty work himself. He keeps putting us out there, he's going to get us killed even if he doesn't order the hit himself. I don't trust him.”
“You think we should try to take him out?” Freddy asked.
“I don't know. That's some serious shit. And what if we did? Nino doesn't want his job, and neither do I. I don't know. Maybe we ought to have a plan just in case.”
They tossed around several ideas, but the hard part would be getting away without being identified. Paul Castellano was always surrounded by bodyguards. Finally Freddy made a suggestion.
“Tell you what, I could supercharge one of my bikes, and we could use that. If you ride on the back with a Mac Ten, you could take him out easy no matter how fast we were going. And we'd be out of there before his guys got near a car. They'd never catch us, and we could ditch the bike in the river and be home before anybody knew the difference.”
My father said he'd think about it, maybe talk to Nino. They'd put the plan on the back burner for now, but if things got bad enough, he'd think about trying it.
My father's fears were well founded. The first blow that struck close to home was Freddy's arrest. After operating for so many years without attracting suspicion, the crew had become careless. The cardinal rule of all my father's operations was precision and caution. The crew was instructed to dispose of anything in the car that could tie it to its legal owner. My father exploded when he arrived at Freddy's garage one afternoon to find the crew parading around in the clothing of a Hasidic Jew. Many of the cars they stole belonged to the Hasids, whose religious restrictions were nearly identical to the Middle Eastern Arabs that made up my father's primary market. Like Muslims, Hasidic Jews could not sit on leather, so their preferred car was a luxury automobile with velour upholstery. The crew couldn't resist dressing up in the coat and hat they had found in the back seat.
They had also become careless in other areas. They didn't always bother to put on gloves when working on the cars, the first thing my father had taught me when he talked about stolen merchandise. It was awkward to handle the VIN tags with gloves on, so Freddy had swapped a few tags without wearing gloves, thinking he had successfully wiped the prints off. He was wrong. The authorities had figured out that large numbers of stolen cars were being shipped to the Middle East, and they were so determined to catch the thieves that federal agents actually went to Kuwait and dusted luxury cars for prints as they came off the ships. They found Freddy's thumbprint on a falsified VIN tag, ran the prints, and arrested him. They had him dead to rights, for Freddy was incapable of telling a credible story to cover up what he'd done. My father knew that Freddy would never turn on him, but he also knew that Freddy was the equivalent of a neon arrow pointing directly at him.
For a while my father nursed the illusion that even with Freddy in jail, the government still didn't have enough information to stop the theft ring, or enough evidence to indict him. Freddy was old school Mafia, and he kept his mouth shut and took the fall for my father. My father kept his part of the bargain as well, providing generous financial support for Freddy's wife and kids. They came for holidays with our family. The December after Freddy was arrested, I went with my dad to buy them all Christmas gifts.
Only months after Freddy's arrest, there was another blow to my father's operation. One of the stolen cars had Torahs and other holy objects in the back seat, and my father felt it would be sacrilegious to keep them. He told the crew to wrap the things up and drop them off secretly at the local synagogue. They did what he asked, but they couldn't resist touching the objects first—without gloves. The result was another set of prints, and another arrest, this one with devastating consequences.
Vito Arena turned out to be the key the government needed to finally indict my father. My father had taken Vito into his crew a couple of years earlier, as a favor to another Mob family. Vito was a hit man for another capo, and both the capo and another member of the crew wanted Vito brought into the stolen car operation. Vito was unusual, and most of the crew didn't much care for him. At over 350 pounds, Vito was morbidly obese. He was also openly gay in a time when it was totally unacceptable to be out. Anthony and Joey objected strenuously, insisting a “fat fag” hanging around was bad for their image. But my father told them it didn't matter what Vito did in his off time as long as he followed orders.
Ironically, it was his sexual life that helped turn Vito. When Vito was first arrested, my father arranged to get him out on bail, but Vito fled and went into hiding. My father was nervous, knowing Vito would probably turn. He knew that Vito's only real loyalty was to his boyfriend, not to the Mob. When the government couldn't find Vito, they decided to use his boyfriend as bait. They arrested his boyfriend on some charge or other and put the word out that if Vito wanted his boyfriend back, he would have to come and get him. So Vito negotiated a deal. If the government put him and his boyfriend in the same cell and met a list of random demands, including a barber's chair for Vito's cell, Vito would not only return but would turn informant. The government couldn't write up the plea bargain fast enough. They finally had a key figure in the auto theft ring who was willing to tell what he knew. And Vito knew a lot, more than enough to cripple the theft ring and convict my father. In a futile attempt to intimidate Vito, my father raided Vito's apartment and confiscated a large collection of photographs showing Vito engaged in sex acts with other men. He hoped the photos would give him some control over Vito, or at least discredit Vito with the authorities.
My father was growing desperate. He knew it was only a matter of time before he was arrested, and this time it would stick. Far worse from my father's point of view was his fear that by involving me in the escape plans, he was risking my life along with his. Vito's arrest further upped the ante with Paul Castellano. The theft operation was already crippled, and if the pressure got much worse, he might have to shut it down altogether. It was a given that a member who couldn't produce would be eliminated. If the money dried up, Castellano would certainly have my father killed.
The trips to the Bahamas, which had been less frequent for a while, resumed. My father became increasingly careful with cash, putting as much aside in legitimate accounts as he dared. The house was already in my mother's name, and he had an attorney make sure that as many of our assets as possible were protected. He took out additional insurance policies and supplemented the college funds he kept for me and my sisters.
We had long planned and practiced my father's disappearance. Those plans were no longer adequate, though, for as long as they believed he was alive, the FBI would pursue him. Machiavelli advises that if all else fails, it is best to fake one's own death and disappear into permanent exile. The time had come to plan my father's “death,” and it had to be utterly convincing. There was only one person my father could trust to carry out this desperate scenario. At sixteen, I would be my father's assassin.
We talked about it one night in his study. It was increasingly clear that he would probably need to disappear, and soon, before the FBI had him arrested or Paul Castellano had him killed. We had been meeting every night after dinner for weeks, tossing out ideas, reviewing options.
“The problem is the death certificate. Without it, your mother can't collect my insurance, and the government won't believe I'm really dead. If I just disappear, we'll never get one and someone will be after you forever. Everyone has to believe I'm dead. Otherwise it will never work. It's the only way we'll be safe.”
“Can't we just get some blood? We could smear it on the car. If it's the same blood type, they might not kno
w the difference.”
“They'll never buy it. No bullet hole, no flesh, no blood trail. It has to be convincing. There's only one way. You'll have to shoot me.”
I knew he was right. I quieted the turmoil in my mind and focused on what he was saying. I had to get this right. “What about Mom? What am I going to tell her?”
“You're not going to tell her anything. Everyone will have to believe I'm dead. In a couple of years, when everything settles down, you can tell her and your sisters what happened. Not till I tell you, though. Not till it's safe. It could be quite a while.”
“How do you want to do it?”
“I'll have to take our car so they'll run the plates for an ID. I'll take it out somewhere, the warehouse district probably, someplace in the middle of nowhere. We'll need another car, too. I'll need you to steal one for me, else they might trace it to me. I'll show you how. I'm sorry, Son. I don't like asking you to steal something. You won't ever have to do it again.”
“It's okay, Dad.”
“You'll have to wear gloves, of course. You can use your Walther-PP K-S. It should leave a big enough hole for the blood and flesh evidence.” The Walther was exactly like the gun James Bond carried in the movies. I kept it in a secret compartment my father had built into my bedside table so I could reach it easily if anyone broke in during the night. “You'll need to break it up after and get rid of the pieces when you dump the car. And you'll have to bring bandages and something to disinfect the wound. The bullet will go all the way through, so you won't need to worry about that. After you drag me to the other car, I'll need you to patch me up good enough to get me on a plane. If anybody sees the blood, they might call the cops.”
I managed to keep my voice steady as I asked, “What if I hurt you, Dad? Hurt you bad, I mean?”
“You'll be careful. It'll be all right. Let me show you something.” My father took a medical book down from the bookshelf behind his desk and opened it to a chart of the human body in the front. “Come around here, son,” he told me.
His fingers on the chart, he began pointing out the location of the main arteries and vital organs in the middle of the torso. “You'll have to aim very carefully, but we'll be all right.” He lifted his shirt and pulled a piece of fat out from the side of his body. “See? Right here. There'll be plenty of flesh this way, and you'll be a good two inches from anything vital. It shouldn't be any problem.” Closing the book, he took a ruler out of the desk and told me to get my gun and come downstairs to the garage.
As my father walked around the car, thinking, we considered two possible scenarios. The first was for him to stop the car and open the door, as if someone else had pulled the door open. I would crouch inside the front door near the floor, point the gun up at him, and shoot him in the left side so that the bullet would go through his body and into the back seat. The angle was awkward, though, and he was afraid it might not leave enough flesh evidence.
The second scenario was better because it would look like a real inside job. I would get in the back seat right behind him and shoot through the seat back so the bullet would go into the dashboard. The seat back would be soaked with blood, and the bullet with the flesh evidence would be easy to find in the dashboard.
Once we decided on the trajectory, we needed to make sure I didn't miss. My father began measuring the front and back seats of the car. He sat down in the driver's seat, pulled out a piece of skin, and had me measure the exact distance from the outer edge of the seat back to the place the bullet needed to pierce his skin. I measured it three times to make certain I had it right. Then I measured the same distance on the back of the upholstery. The seam on the brown leather upholstery was in almost exactly the right position. With a little adjustment, the alignment was perfect. We practiced several times, my father climbing into the front seat and adjusting his body to the correct position, then me climbing in the back and placing the gun barrel against the seam at the correct height. When we both felt confident we had it right, we turned out the garage light and went back upstairs.
Years later, I was asked if I could have actually pulled the trigger. Without hesitation, I answered yes. If the only way to save my father was to put bullets into him, I would have done it. I rehearsed the plan in my mind a hundred times as I lay in bed that night. I was not going to let my father down. I would pull that trigger, and I wouldn't miss.
Before we could put the plan into action, however, another blow descended. Cousin Joe got himself in trouble once again. All of the crew had been told to lie low and be careful, but Joe got tired of staying home. Late one night the phone rang, and Joe's voice said, “Roy, I'm in a jam.” Joe had gotten into a brawl with some guy at a bar, and Joe had pulled a knife and stabbed him. The guy was expected to recover, but the wounds were pretty bad, and Joe knew he would be arrested and probably never get out this time. Still the idiot he had been when he robbed the bank, Joe was actually calling from a pay phone at the bar. My father told him to pack a bag; he'd have someone pick him up immediately.
It wasn't difficult to get the victim's name and address. It was in the papers the next day that an unidentified man in his sixties had stabbed a patron at a local bar. My father put out a few feelers and found out that the guy was determined to press charges. My father couldn't afford to have one more associate implicated in a felony, particularly one who was a relative. That evening my dad said we had to make a little trip. As soon as I got in the car, he handed me a gun and a pair of gloves. The gun wasn't loaded, he told me as I checked the clip. I wouldn't actually have to hurt anybody; he just needed me to help scare the guy Joe had stabbed. Once we were in the guy's apartment, I was to stand behind the victim and hold a gun to his head so he wouldn't move until my father finished talking to him.
It was dark when we arrived. When a man's voice responded to my father's knock, my father held a phony police ID up to the peephole in the door. As soon as the man opened the door, my father shut it and backed him onto the couch. I moved swiftly to my place behind the chair and put the revolver to the man's temple.
Speaking rapidly, my father said, “I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to resolve a problem.” As the man watched in silence, my father counted out twenty-five thousand dollars in large bills onto the coffee table in front of him. “There's twenty-five thousand here. If you drop the investigation against the man who stabbed you, you can keep the money, and you'll never see us again. If you press charges, I'll have to ask my son here to put a bullet through your head. Is that clear?”
The man nodded quickly. “Sure, sure, whatever.”
My father released the man and nodded at me. I pocketed the gun, and Dad signaled me to go to the door. Within seconds we were driving away. I looked back up at the window. The lights were still out, and no one was watching. The street was quiet.
For a while nobody said a word. Finally my father reached over and rubbed me roughly on the shoulder. “Sorry you had to do that, Son.”
“It's okay, Dad. It's not a problem.”
I knew it gave many people a rush to pull a gun on someone. I'd felt no rush, only a sickened pain deep in my stomach. It was the closest I ever came to harming another human being.
The next day we met Cousin Joe at the safe house where he'd taken refuge, stuck him in the back seat of the car, and drove him to La Guardia. The last act of Cousin Joe's tragic little farce took place there. My father had lectured him all the way there on behaving himself; it was essential, my father repeated, that he not attract any unnecessary attention. Joe was subdued, even docile as we passed through the security scans on our way to the gates. Obviously, we had all left our guns locked up in the car. But as Joe put his carry-on bag onto the conveyor belt to pass through the x-ray machine, I noticed the security attendant doing a double take. She peered into the screen in puzzlement, then said to the attendant next to her, “You need to take a look at this bag.” My father and I glanced at each other as the attendants began removing the contents of Joe's bag and laying them out
on the table. What on earth? Surely Joe hadn't been stupid enough to put his gun through the security check.
He hadn't. Instead he had packed a couple dozen of his favorite things, to get him happily through his weeks in exile. Among his other bizarre qualities, Cousin Joe was more than a little perverted. He had a fascination with sex toys, and his large collection of unusual devices took up quite a bit of space in his apartment behind the Gemini. While other attendants and passengers gathered around in fascination, the security personnel systematically unpacked a truly astonishing collection of sexual aids. To say that they attracted considerable attention is an understatement. A small crowd of onlookers was soon juggling for position to get a better view. My father couldn't believe it. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed and walked away, shaking his head in disgust. Joe seemed puzzled by all the attention he was attracting. Eventually the security personnel decided that the objects might be unusual, but as the toys were neither dangerous nor illegal, they soon packed everything back in the bag and sent Joe on his way.