Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol)

by Jerry Weber

  Another $4,500 was now in jeopardy and Vic was furious. He called his lawyer Steve Lamont and recounted “I did all of this work for them and the funeral went off very well and now they don’t want to pay me, this is nuts.”

  Three days later Lamont phoned back but the news was bleak for Vic. If the State Board called a formal hearing in Harrisburg, Vic could face sanctions. They could tell Vic to disavow the bill all or in part; they could fine him separately; and they could suspend his license for an indeterminate amount of time. The news got worse; they would publish the hearing findings in the local newspapers. Steve’s advice to Vic was to write off the funeral bill and apologize to the Tibursky family.

  CHAPTER 8

  Circling the Drain

  With a year going for him like this, Victor found himself in the worst financial condition of his short career. The refrain in the town “Don’t call Vic”, was taking its toll on Vic’s checkbook. His normal checking reserves of $6,000 had fallen to below $3,000. From this he owed his parents $3,000 not to mention the utilities, taxes and other expenses of keeping the place going. He also needed something to live on.

  It worried Vic enough that he even contemplated playing the role of his father and grandfather before him. Attend church, volunteer for the bazaars and even ride the rubber chicken circuit of the bowling banquets. However, these were all long range plans, and Victor needed cash now. Vic did what he always did in a crisis, nothing. He slid back into a stupor and became mostly invisible in Duryea. And yes, the business continued to decline to only twenty-five funerals per year average. This was down more than half of what he started with.

  Immediate action had to be taken, or his parents would soon know that he had failed them when the next check didn’t arrive. Victor then called the two local banks in Duryea and got an appointment to see the commercial loan officers. After reviewing Vic’s books the message was the same from both bankers. You do not have sufficient assets, cash flow, and collateral to justify a line of credit for your business. In a final desperate move, Vic thought of Randy Simcoe, a classmate who made it big with cable TV franchising. So, he called Randy and explained his plight.

  Randy was comforting and interested in Vic’s situation, but he had invested all of his reserves in another venture and couldn’t get at them at this time. Vic got the message and knew that he was on his own. He alone would have to come up with a solution to his problem.

  He had to try everything before he gave up. Victor went to the corner convenience store and bought $400 worth of Pennsylvania lottery tickets at one time. After scoring a minor $50 hit, he was now behind $350. Vic mused, for one number I could have won $5,000 instead of $50, I’m getting close. The next night he got in his car and drove to the Mohegan Sun Casino outside Wilkes-Barre to try his luck on a larger scale. After hitting at blackjack on two separate nights for a total of $3,000, Vic had a major setback on the third night and lost $4,000.

  Vic yelled at himself in the car going home, “I was so close to winning another month’s respite; so close!”

  With options closing for him at home, Vic needed to try one more thing. Finally, as one last desperate move, Vic packed up the car and headed for Atlantic City; the Vegas of the East. He still had his credit cards and he needed to make just one big score. If he got $6,000 ahead he could leave and call it a victory.

  On a Friday night, Victor arrived at Bally’s, a casino on the boardwalk. He checked in. Forgoing supper, he hit the tables. Luck finally turned in Vic’s favor and by midnight he was up $5,000. Tired from the three-and-a-half hour drive, he decided to turn in and make his final ‘withdrawal’ the next night. But, Saturday was not to be a repeat of Friday. By 11:00 p.m. Vic was down $6,000 and he started to hit the booze harder. By 1:00 a.m. Vic was down $10,000, the five he won yesterday plus five more in the hole. All of it was gone. He sat despondent at the bar in a cocktail lounge next to the blackjack tables drowning his sorrows. Just then, a well-dressed man, maybe a few years older than Vic, took a seat next to him. The stranger looked over at Vic

  “You had a bad night at the tables too?”

  Victor sullenly nodded and figures misery must love company. By 3:00 a.m. Vic knows his new friend is Sam, an attorney from New York City. Victor tells Sam his sad life story, but Sam stays sketchy on any details of his life.

  One thing leads to another and Sam says, “Do you ever watch any of the crime shows on TV?”

  Vic responds, “I always liked Law and Order.”

  Sam responds, “Yes, and that show is a good example of all of the forensic science available to the police; it’s getting harder and harder to get away with murder.”

  “You’re right, I know of cases back home where bodies are exhumed years later and enough DNA and other evidence is left to convict someone who thought they got away with murder.”

  Sam responded, “That’s the problem for the bad guys, unless you atomize the body, it’s still there to be found and analyzed far into the future.”

  Vic says, “The closest thing to atomizing a body is to cremate it.”

  “How so?” Sam asks.

  “Look, you take a 200 pound body and in two hours at 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the body is reduced to a pound or two of bone fragments, no larger than gravel, when finally pulverized in a grinding machine; which is used so that the remains fit into an urn.”

  Sam says, “You mean you could never tell who the ashes belonged to, not even with DNA testing?”

  “That’s the way I read it, in fact all states have laws that delay a cremation for a day or two after death so that a coroner or medical examiner can order an autopsy if they feel it necessary to investigate the manner of death of the deceased. They don’t want the body destroyed before they can get a chance to look at it, because after the cremation any possible investigation is over.”

  “Very interesting … say Vic, do you do cremations at your funeral home?”

  “No, we are too small of an operation, so we farm them out to a nearby cemetery that has a retort to do them for us.”

  Sam responds, “Just how involved is a cremation?

  Victor, remembering his seminar at funeral service school, goes into his dialogue.

  “Cremation ovens used to be like large bakery ovens, but are now more compact and lower in price say about $50,000. In fact they are about the size of a car and are delivered by truck fully assembled and usually slid right into position in the intended building. You then wire up, hook up the natural gas and presto you are in the cremation business. But perhaps I am oversimplifying. There are permits and other considerations, but the cost and a garage sized space would be the most significant. Of course, if you need to build a structure for the retort it would cost a lot more; and this is what the cemetery we use has.” Vic further elaborates, “It would not be feasible to install a crematory with his size business, even though more and more people are choosing this method of disposal each year. The wholesale charge for a cremation (like we pay the cemetery) is say $300; the retail to the families is about twice that much. Now you see how many cases it would take to pay back the initial investment.”

  Sam responded, “Suppose someone did cremations for a select market and paid $10,000 for each case.”

  “Sure, it would change the case numbers downward drastically, but who would ever pay that when they can get it for far less anywhere else?”

  “It depends.”

  “No matter, I couldn’t front the money for a retort anyway.”

  “That’s what I do for a living, I work with venture capitalists. We front the costs for startup or expanding businesses because there may be a special opportunity that a conventional bank might overlook.”

  “Yes, but too good to be true in my case.”

  With some final small talk, the two new friends take leave of each other exchanging business cards and promising to stay in touch in the future.

  CHAPTER 9

  Aftermath of Atlantic City

  Monday, after the debacle o
f Atlantic City, Victor is back in Duryea. It has been three weeks without a funeral, his credit cards are nearly maxed out, and his checkbook balance is all but nonexistent.

  “Should I just walk out?” Victor thinks out loud.

  Giving the keys back to his father and quitting would be the quickest way to end the pain. But for now, Vic decided once again put off any hard choices and does nothing. He hopes that just one funeral coming in the door right now would make a payment to his father and buy him some time. But unfortunately, he can’t create this business by running a sale like some retailer would do. He has to wait patiently.

  Back in New York City, Sam Gianetti, the attorney with mob connections that Victor mysteriously met in Atlantic City is sitting at his desk and reflecting on his life.

  Sam remembers growing up in Plainfield New Jersey. It was a middle class neighborhood with tree lined streets dotted with modest ranch houses. Sam’s dad was a machinist at the local Mack diesel engine plant. Sam’s mother was a secretary for a local attorney. Many times, over the years, he heard stories from his mother about the more interesting parts of the law. Some of the cases were as if they were from a screenplay on TV. They were real with people you could identify with. He also found that, by the time he reached high school, he had an aptitude for the social sciences and English.

  After graduation, Sam applied and was accepted in pre-law at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. After graduating in four years, he was accepted into Rutgers Law School and graduated with honors three years later. Now, Sam, like so many recent law graduates, headed to the Big Apple across the Hudson River to find employment.

  The first job he lands is as an Associate at Carmine Associates in Queens, New York. While not a ‘mob’ connected firm, they did have a client who had a brother who was connected. The firm agreed to defend one Mario DeSilva on a drug distribution rap. As the new lawyer on staff, Sam drew the straw to defend Mario. Sam handled the case well, but got lucky when the key prosecution witness against Mario couldn’t be found to testify. Mario was consequently acquitted of all charges in a short two day trial. What Sam didn’t know was that Mario was a ‘soldier’ for the Delveccio organization, and that Carlo Dellveccio, the Don of the family, was watching the court proceedings with great interest.

  Carlo called Sam a week after the trial and set up a meeting at Carlo’s office in Brooklyn. Carlo’s office is down by the docks and is a commercial garbage hauling company. “DeLorenzo and Sons” is the name on the door of the old redbrick three-story warehouse. He was directed up a narrow steel staircase to a mezzanine area overlooking the large truck garage below. However, after entering a glass framed door, Sam was in a very well-decorated formal office suite. A well-dressed and good looking secretary, probably in her fifties, told Sam to follow her to Mr. DellVeccio’s office. It was a large oak paneled room with a beautiful multi-colored Persian rug and other very expensive furnishings to match.

  “Good to meet you at last Sam.”

  With this, Carlo asked Sam to be seated on a large crimson leather sofa. After exchanging pleasantries with this very urbane and pleasant person, he felt at ease. After a discussion about Sam’s depth in criminal and civil legal proceedings, Carlo made Sam an offer. He was to start up his own practice in Brooklyn and would be given all of the set-up money he need to have an independent law firm.

  It was agreed that Sam would bill Carlo for all work done at $300 an hour with a guarantee minimum of $150,000 a year. In addition Sam would receive $100,000 a year for office expenses, a secretary, and any other things that he may need. The only stipulation was that Sam had to agree that Carlo, or anyone he designates, would be the only clients Sam would take.

  The package offered was more than twice what he earned as an Associate at Carmines, where raises will be much slower coming and moving up would take years; if you even get promoted at all. There are also too many lawyers in circulation, so promotions would be slow coming in any other law firm.

  Carlo’s ‘other’ operations need a business manager, and Sam would have a future there with an even larger salary for operating the legal part of Carlo’s underworld operations. (It should be noted here that while the mob does many things off-the-books with drugs, prostitution, and gambling, they also are involved in legitimate businesses. These are necessary to operate so that they can launder money generated from their illegal operations.)

  The mob owns, through straw purchasers: laundries, restaurants, trucking companies, garbage disposal firms, and many other businesses. All of these need legal representation and business management. This was a tough decision for Sam; he held no illusions that he was dealing with a branch of the mob. But, he rationalized that he would be dealing with just the legal and criminal defense portions of their business, not the illegal stuff under the surface. And Sam thought Carlo might be more of a modern day Don cutting loose the old, crude illegal operations like you see on TV and concentrating on the legal businesses. He had thought, That’s why he wants a business manager, right?

  Deep down Sam knew that once you became ensnared with an organization like Dellveccio’s, you don’t just walk away. But Sam was under thirty, unattached and living in pretty rundown quarters in a small efficiency in a downtrodden neighborhood in Queens. He could really see himself living in a modern condo in the right neighborhood with a shiny new set of wheels in the garage underneath. No more fast food, and Chinese takeout, he could dine in posh restaurants, and maybe meet a suitable partner along the way. Sam did the math and was sold; he will be Dellveccio’s mouthpiece.

  It is three years later, and Sam is sitting in his office with the Brooklyn Bridge framed out his office window, reviewing a case that he is fully involved in for his employer. One Bruno Albino is two years after the fact being accused of murdering a police informant. Why is this happening now so long after the event? It’s because on a suspicion of finding new evidence, the State exhumed and autopsied the body of a Joe DeSilva for a second time. With new and advanced spectroscopic testing it was found that Desilva’s body had residues of the same lethal compound in it that was found in Bruno’s kitchen. In updating Carlo, Sam relayed this information over the phone.

  Carlo responded “I thought we were past this situation after the original investigation turned up nothing?”

  “The problem is Carlo, Sam says, that in murder cases there is no statute of limitations.”

  If only the body had just disappeared instead of being buried. Now Sam has to resurrect the case and mount a defense to try to get Bruno off. After all, Bruno is very effective at what he does and has wacked three more people since killing DeSilva. To lose his talent would be a blow to the organization. And, there is always the risk of Bruno taking a plea and singing to the authorities. If this doesn’t give a mob lawyer a migraine, what will?

  Sam has an organizational meeting tonight, and will just have to level with the others about Bruno’s chances in court. If Sam says the odds are against Bruno, he could lose influence with his peers. If he guarantees an acquittal and doesn’t deliver in court, it would be even worse. Would they find another mouthpiece? Who knows? That’s why in any criminal law practice there is always risk, but with the organization the risks are of an infinitely greater magnitude. Sam has eight hours to fine tune his report for the meeting.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Dinner Meeting

  It’s 8:00 p.m. in the rear dining room at Rosselli’s, which is by the way a very fine Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that caters (up-front) to tourists and locals alike. The restaurant is operated by a very fine chef who hails from Sicily.

  Luigi Rosselli is a tenant of the Dellveccio family that actually owns the building and equipment through a straw purchaser. The rear of the restaurant is the other Rosselli’s that the public doesn’t get to see. The walls are paneled in fine dark walnut and oriental carpets cover the inlaid teak flooring. There are brass accents, and classical Italian paintings on the wall. The ‘club room’ has a beautiful mahogany tabl
e set with Irish linen and German silverware with place settings for twelve. Here the family, a group of twelve men from their thirties to their seventies, is assembled. The aroma of pasta with a sauce simmered for hours wafts from the table. Fine French and Italian wine flows freely, and the talk around the table is jovial and light hearted. If you’re going to gorge yourself on fine Italian food right through the antipasto, pasta, veal, and cannoli, this is the place to do it.

  Everyone knows the business meeting is about to begin when the plates are cleared and the Havana cigars are broken out. Carlo Dellveccio is seventy two years old, meticulously dressed in a Brooks Brothers navy blue pin striped suit befitting any captain of industry; not to mention that his Rolex, diamond cufflinks, and ring are also impeccable. This is Carlo, the Don and undisputed head of this family.

  After listening patiently to all of the routine monthly reports of revenue and expenses, Carlo gets to new business. This is always the most interesting part of every meeting. Under legal issues, Sam has to address the problem of Bruno Albino’s recent arrest.

  All eyes are on Sam who says, “Because of the solid forensic evidence, the chances of an acquittal are less than fifty-percent.”

  This is not what the eleven others wanted to hear, but after spending the entire afternoon reviewing similar cases, Sam can’t say anything more positive. This forces Carlo to have to do damage control. If convicted, it will mean offering a large payout to Bruno’s wife and children, who will have to wait patiently for him while he is serving a possibly lengthy prison term upstate. This does not count the tens of thousands of dollars for Bruno’s defense and appeals. No business likes to take profits already booked from deals long closed and have to give them back later. It was ugly, but Sam had to say it now, because if he promised an acquittal and it didn’t happen, things would certainly be nasty for him.