by Gene Mustain
Frank and Ronnie Cadieux were then assigned to draw Dominick, if he agreed to look at it, a sketch of the investigation thus far. He did.
Frank, with his tough-guy-with-a-heart manner and Italian-American, Bath Beach pedigree, was an apt and deliberate choice. He had already mentioned his Bath Beach connection as the suspect was transported to the Southern District. Now, offering Dominick the brand he also smoked, a Camel, Frank said that while growing up in Bath Beach his mother was acquainted with a local boxing champ—Dominick’s father, Anthony Santamaria.
If the detectives already knew who his father was, Dominick realized they must have been investigating him a long time.
“Vito told us a few things about you,” Ronnie said.
“Matty Rega too,” Frank said. “Would you like to see a picture of Joey and Anthony?”
Barbara Jones and others dropped in and out, but Dominick and the two homicide detectives talked until four in the morning. They kept tossing more surveillance photographs at him—pictures of Paul, Nino, Roy—and, finally, him.
Off his high horse now, Dominick acknowledged to himself that life in the Beverly Hills candy store was at an end. “I might have done a few things for my uncle,” he finally said. “Maybe a few pickups, you know.”
That was an admission to loansharking, one of the “predicate acts” under the RICO law. Only two were necessary to show that a defendant proven to be part of a criminal enterprise had engaged in a “pattern of racketeering” on its behalf. With what was already known about him, Matty Rega, and drugs, Dominick was a dead man, legally speaking. They told him his future involved at least twenty years in prison unless he became a cooperating witness.
The session ended with him calculating the warning and wondering if he could ever take the stand against anyone, especially Nino. He had never “ratted out” anyone—not in school, the Army, or “that life.” He had observed this rule since he was a boy, since the fourth grade when Nino ordered him to resign as class president because “no one in our family can ever be a stoolpigeon.”
Frank and Ronnie went home to their wives, and Dominick was taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center vacated recently by Freddy DiNome. His clothes and other effects were vouchered and he was given an orange jumpsuit—the color reserved for dangerous or important inmates—and led to a cell in the high security wing. Cops always say only a guilty man sleeps when he is thrown in jail the first time, and he nodded off right away.
Later that day, during MCC meals, he met several fellow inmates and became reacquainted with a flashy drug dealer he met in clubs during his Manhattan-nightlife period—Gene Greene, a member of a notorious Harlem-based ring and another example of the eclectic range of Montiglio associations in New York.
“Man, I heard you split the city,” Greene said, after they got over the irony of running into each other again in prison.
“I did, but I came back for a score.”
“Not very cool.”
“Thanks, Gene. You and my wife, you’d get along.”
“Trouble at the crib?”
“Serious. Hey, Gene, don’t tell anyone around here who I am. You know, my uncle, he doesn’t know I’m back.”
“That’s cool, don’t worry.”
On an inmate telephone allowing only collect calls, Dominick dialed Denise again. He told her the situation was “a bit” more serious than he thought, but thinking it best not to elaborate, he kept talking about all the “famous criminals” he was meeting.
“I ran into Gene Greene. He was the biggest dopester in Harlem. I met some people from the Weather Underground who took out an armored car and offed some guards. I met—”
“Dominick, shut up. I’m sick of this crap. You’ve put yourself in a situation that drastically changes our lives. I warned you it was stupid; you wouldn’t listen. What’s going to happen now? How do I feed the kids? Where do I stay?”
“Relax, hang on. We’ll figure something out.”
Hanging up, Dominick realized the federal government was not his only immediate problem, but Denise was more upset than he imagined. After she hung up, she told The Armenian: “I’m supposed to be happy he’s in jail with all those maniacs? He’s screwed up and he’s making like he’s at a party. I’m sick of his attitude.”
Later that day, Dominick was brought to the office of Walter Mack, who expanded on the cooperation pitches made by Jones, and Frank and Ronnie the day before. If Dominick decided to become a cooperating witness, he would have to tell the truth about anyone and everything. He would also have to plead guilty to belonging to a RICO enterprise; the prosecution would note his cooperation, but if a judge wanted, he could sentence him to prison—probably for not as long as he would if Dominick did not cooperate and was found guilty, but Walter could not say for certain. In the meantime, until after the trial, the United States Marshal’s Service, the agency that ran the witness protection program, would find a safe harbor for him and his family in some distant city.
“If you do this, the trial will be in about six months and then you will be sentenced and will know what you have to do to get your life in order,” Walter said.
Dominick asked what would happen to Danielle Deneux. Walter said he was not sure yet. Dominick said he needed time to think.
Later, he was taken before a federal judge for arraignment on the extortion charge. The task force had withheld news of his arrest because it wanted him to decide whether to cooperate before Anthony Gaggi learned he was in the MCC and sent someone like Gerald Shargel in to see him.
In court, however, in front of several defense lawyers, a young assistant United States attorney on arraignment duty that day identified Dominick as a special kind of defendant, in that he was the nephew of a captain in the powerful Gambino organized crime family. No one had clued the assistant in, and all he did was read from the pedigree report that was given to him.
Dominick got more time to think about his situation because a judge set bail at twenty thousand dollars; month-to-month Dominick never had that kind of money laying around, so he went back into the MCC. Word of who he was arrived there sometime that day. By the next day, it was common knowledge among the inmates. Gene Greene, who had kept his promise and not told anyone, now warned him: “I am hearing ugly talk. Your uncle wants to ice you; some of your Italian friends are gonna do it. My man, be careful.”
The next day, a lawyer (not Shargel) that Dominick had not asked to see, asked to see him. It was a brief meeting.
“Do you want me to call your uncle?” the lawyer asked.
“How do you know who my uncle is?”
The lawyer shrugged. Dominick got up and walked out. “If I want him, I can dial the fucking phone myself, pal.”
Dominick returned to his cell. He asked himself whether Nino was capable of killing him, and quickly decided yes, he was. Nino had accused him of stealing a quarter-million of Nino’s cash when he left the city. To prove he was not lying about the money, just to save face, Nino would try to kill him as soon as he made bail on the extortion charge—if not beforehand, right in the MCC. People were murdered in prison all the time.
That night, Dominick did not sleep. If he did not cooperate, he would either be murdered or have to sit at a defendants’ table with Nino and several people from Canarsie whom he did not fondly recall, especially Joey and Anthony; if he lost at the trial, he would be gone at least twenty years. If he cooperated, he might be gone a few years, after which he might start over with Denise and their children. As bad as he had been, life with them looked good now. The correct course to take began seeming obvious, and if there was a recurring theme to his life, it was that he was a survivor.
Early the morning of his fifth day in custody, a Saturday, he stood in line at the inmate telephone, then dialed a man from the old neighborhood who had given him his number. “I’m not dyin’ for nothin’,” he told Frank Pergola. “If I die, I want to die for somethin’. I don’t want to go down the tubes with these guys.”
> “No reason why you should,” Frank said.
“What’s going to happen to Danielle?”
“Don’t worry about her. We’re cleaning her up. We’ll make sure she gets home.” The task force never intended to prosecute Danielle, but kept it from Dominick until now; Frank also did not admit until later that the hidden recording device on Jeffrey Winnick had failed to work. That meant a judge could have tossed the extortion case for lack of evidence, and Dominick would have been free to go because a RICO case was not ready to be filed.
“Okay, come and get me,” he said. “We’ve got things to talk about.”
He and Henry Borelli had once given each permission to kill the other if they ever informed on anyone, but he had also once characterized his penchant for surviving crashes and explosions in Vietnam and Brooklyn to Buzzy Scioli this way: “I walked.”
Dominick was not afforded much time to change his mind. On March 12, he was yanked out of the MCC on the pretext of a bail-reduction hearing on the extortion case; the hope was that snoopy inmates and lawyers would believe he had posted a lower bail and was released. Instead, he was taken to Walter’s office, where he agreed to give a sworn statement for the grand jury.
After asking Dominick a series of questions designed to show he had been advised of his rights and understood what was happening, Walter’s first question about the case was: “Now, did you at some occasion come into the employment of a gentleman by the name of Anthony Gaggi?”
“Yes.” With one word, the long tug of war between Dominick and his uncle entered the home stretch. For the first time ever, Dominick had an upper hand. As he continued answering questions, the task force members present began to appreciate what a peculiar relationship it was: “My uncle didn’t want me to get arrested for pornography. He said my grandmother wouldn’t like it. Everything else was all right.”
Though holding the advantage, Dominick did not bury Nino as deeply as he could. He said he did not know much about Nino’s relationship with Roy, but for loansharking. He also found it hard to burn Paul Castellano, who was more avuncular to him than Nino. He said he never heard Paul and Nino discuss their relationship, and that while Roy took illegally earned money to Nino, he did not know if Nino took it to Paul.
When asked about Buzzy Scioli, Dominick, rather than fudge an answer, said he could not talk about Buzzy because he was too close a personal friend; besides, Buzzy was not a member of the crew.
“You have to recognize that somewhere down the road your agreement is to tell the truth about all things,” Walter said.
“I know, but Buzzy, he’s more than a friend.”
“That’s something you’re going to have to resolve, okay?”
“Right.”
He was not asked about Henry Borelli—not then—but he had resolved Henry long ago—on the day after Danny Grillo was murdered, when Henry assumed he was next and his friend Dominick was going to do it on orders from Nino and Roy. That meant ice-cold Henry was capable of killing him, despite their supposed friendship.
Walter told Dominick the detectives would be debriefing him extensively before his first actual grand jury appearance—to get him “to do a lot of thinking.”
“A lot of remembering,” Dominick replied. “Because this is stuff I took three years to forget.”
The session lasted only seventy-five minutes, but committed him to an official record and made him begin to feel comfortable with the process. Suddenly, a man whose sister Michele thought of him as just a kid searching for an identity had begun to shed one skin and grow another—secret federal witness. He was hustled out of Walter’s office and stashed in a motel on Long Island.
His new journey would be a series of emotional upheavals. At the outset, he thought Denise would be pleased when he telephoned to tell her his decision. Instead, she had her own announcements to make. She and the children would not join him in the witness protection program. It was obvious she would have to leave Westlake, but she would leave the marriage too. She would come to New York, but only to be with relatives until she got on her feet.
“I have fallen out of love with you,” she said.
“C’mon, we can work this out. Let’s give it a try.”
“No, the time has come to say what I feel. I am not going to hide out with someone I don’t love; I’d hate myself for it.”
“Just think about it. I need you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Camarie Montiglio, now almost nine years old, was in the room when Dominick telephoned. Denise did not conceal her feelings. “I am going to call it quits with your dad because he has been a bad man,” she said. “He left us alone all the time.” Camarie, a smooth-faced, silky brunette image of her mother who had also inherited her father’s musical talent, was angry at her dad too and unhappy about leaving California but unsure her mother was making the right decision. When he was home her dad was fun to be around. Denise informed the younger children, Dominick, Jr., and Marina, they would be taking a vacation to New York; Marina had never met relatives on either her mom’s or dad’s side.
Knowing he deserved the treatment Denise was giving him did not make Dominick feel any less bad. “I have treated her like shit, but I do love her,” he told Frank Pergola. “I want to get back with her and resolve this mess I got my family into.”
Hoping to stabilize their new witness’s emotions, and becoming marriage counselors, as Artie Ruffels predicted they would, task force members telephoned Denise too and spoke on his behalf. He wanted to save the marriage and be a good husband and father, they told her. None mentioned Danielle, a bridge he would have to cross on his own.
It did not matter. Denise was adamant. Dominick’s sentiments were of dubious sincerity; the time for saving was past.
Artie and the others were concerned about her and the children’s safety when they returned to New York. On the night their plane arrived in Newark, New Jersey, a few days after Dominick’s decision, Artie and another agent watched them as a relative met the fatherless family and drove them to a sister’s house in Queens.
The next day, Artie visited her and asked if she would come to the motel on Long Island where Dominick was and listen to what he had to say. He added, “I don’t want to frighten you, but many people will be very angry at Dominick. You need to be safe. Why don’t you see if you can patch it up with him?”
Dominick and Denise spent two hours talking it over. He did not tell her about any of his girlfriends, but promised to stop using drugs and to be a better husband and father. “I’m ready now to walk away from all that. My head’s already gettin’ clear. Being arrested was the best thing for me. I have been saved.”
Denise was still dubious. “You’ve made promises before. The problem now is, I don’t know when to believe you. I don’t think you will ever change.” Before returning to her sister’s home, however, she said she would think it over.
While Denise pondered a week, the security-conscious Gaggi task force kept moving Dominick to motels on Long Island and in Connecticut. The detectives did not want to release him to the United States marshals in charge of the witness protection program until he was debriefed at length and they knew whether they were handing over a witness or an entire family.
The FBI, perturbing Walter, had continued to refuse to commit more agents to the case because bureau bosses, despite all the graves the Gaggi task force was digging up, believed their John Gotti case was more important. Artie Ruffels tried to compensate by using his bureau credit card to pay for the care and feeding of Dominick and several detectives around the clock. He quickly became alarmed at the size of the bills—seven hundred dollars one day.
Ronnie Cadieux proposed an alternative whose only effect on Artie’s credit card would be the cost of food and gas. A friend of his operated a campground in upstate New York. It had cabins, trails, a recreation center, and was so far in the still wintry woods, no one would even know they were there. “She says as long as we don’t tell anyone she let the cops use
it, it’s okay with her,” he told the task force.
At about the same time, Denise made her decision: Yes, but reluctantly, she and the children would relocate with Dominick. She told Artie she did not believe the marriage was salvageable, but was concerned what her husband’s former associates might do when they learned he was cooperating. “I don’t want this to be permanent, but I understand the danger to my kids. I will go.”
Artie told her to be positive, things might work out. He now thought the campground was an inspired idea. The debriefing could continue under relaxed conditions, and the Montiglio family would have time to begin healing itself before the certain shock of deposit by the marshals’ service into a city certain to be unlike New York or Southern California.
The only problem with the campground, as everyone discovered after a caravan of government cars wound its way north, was that only one cabin was heated. The witness, his wife and children got that one, and the detectives began taking turns staying in an unheated one—when keeping tabs on the family—or in a nearby motel. Every morning, the detectives in the unheated cabin lined up with their rifles outside the heated one to use the bathroom.
Despite the cold and inconvenience, the camp was a perfect place for people to get to know one another—again, or for the first time. When done debriefing for the day, Dominick and the detectives swapped stories, jogged, and shot pool. They took Denise and the children—the younger two had never seen snow—on long walks through the forest and to a movie theater in a town not far away. Denise, a gourmet cook, came up with great meals for all each night.
Denise was still distant toward her husband, however. They slept together, but did not make love. He wanted her absolution; she would not give it. He also wanted her to see his decision to cooperate the way he did: It was an act of survival, not of betrayal of family. “I didn’t do this to sell my uncle out, but there was a serious threat to my life if I stayed in prison,” he said. She said, “That’s what you say; like I said, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”