Getting the sales division going proved to be a much greater challenge. The previous owner had promised that his bank would continue to provide the floor plan financing. They would buy the new cars as they came in and hold the titles until they could be sold off the lot. But no sooner had the transfer papers for the dealership been signed than the bank backed out of this commitment. I learned of this just as a carrier truck with eight new cars pulled onto our lot. I called Mazda headquarters and was able to convince the regional sales manager to leave the automobiles without receiving the $80,000 bank draft he had been expecting.
"Give me a month to get a new floor plan," I pleaded, and he agreed.
So now I had to go shopping for a new bank, and it was a great challenge. Personally, I was twenty-four years old and had no credit history, and the business was so new that I had no way of producing a financial statement. I had nothing but a trail of negative newspaper articles that I was hoping the bankers hadn't read. I was turned away at bank after bank until time began to run out on me.
I went back to Mel Cooper, the financier who had helped start me in the leasing business. I was desperate.
"Give me some names," I pleaded. "Anybody."
Cooper directed me to the Small Business Administration (SBA), a government agency, and the Small Business Investment Corporation (SBIC), private lenders who are supported ninety percent by the government. I figured I'd have my best luck with the SBIC. Cooper gave me the name of SBIC agent Thomas Scharf of Lloyd Capital Corporation in Edgewater, New Jersey, and I paid him a visit.
"Who makes the final decision?" I asked the affable Scharf.
"Me," he said. "I'm the loan committee."
Scharf was intrigued by my description of the Mazda operation, and he made arrangements to visit the dealership the next day. He arrived with his accountant as scheduled. Despite Mazda's troubles, our place was impressive. The showroom was large and beautiful, and the service bay was hopping. Scharf and his accountant went over the existing books and reviewed the entire operation.
"Let me and my accountant meet in private for a moment," he then suggested.
"Sure," I said, directing them to the manager's office.
They emerged fifteen minutes later to say, "We've got a deal."
Some deal it was! Scharf offered us a $250,000 line of credit, but at fifteen percent interest, about three percent higher than the banks were offering. And, on top of that, he wanted a $75 to $150 "consulting fee" per car sold.
"Tom," I said, protesting these near-usurious terms, "this is expensive.
But he was the only game in town at the moment, and so I had to agree to his terms.
Despite the financial burden, the dealership prospered. Mazda upgraded its line, began producing conventional piston engines, advertised heavily, and regained a reasonable share of the market. Within a few years, the operation began taking in $100,000 a month, $25,000 of which was profit. Everyone was happy.
When the SBA began a routine investigation of Scharf, I spoke up for him.
"Without his `consulting' advice, I'd have never made it," I lied. "He's important to my business."
48
As word of my financial rebound spread, many criminal types again began to visit me. Among them were some prison-fresh entrepreneurs directed to me by my father. The first was Jimmy. Jimmy was said to be a wizard at the fruit-and-vegetable business, and Dad had highly recommended him. I put up $25,000 to open a market in Suffolk County, called Sonny's Farm Circle. The market promptly went under since Jimmy made off with most of the capital.
Next came Joey, a burly truck driver. Joey told my father about all the money they could make in the long-haul trucking business. All they needed was the tractor.
"Michael, I love your father," he told me. "If anybody hurts you, I'll bring you their head on a platter."
I bought Joey a $12,500 tractor, painted it shiny black, and added new chrome bumpers. Joey nearly cried when he saw that truck. He was so happy he hugged and kissed me and again vowed his undying loyalty. He then got into the truck, threw it in gear, rolled down the road-and was never seen again.
"Dad," I said during my next prison visit, "don't send me any more of your friends. Please."
Undaunted, Dad tried again. Another ex-con, Ronny the Shark, came with impeccable credentials as "the best loan shark in town," and I fronted $100,000 to put him on the street. Despite getting up to four points a week, I got back only $80,000 at the end of the year instead of receiving the expected $300,000. The guy, without question, was a great shylock, and he had generated a couple hundred grand in interest. The trouble was that he was a lousy handicapper. He had gambled away all of the interest, and part of the principal, on the ponies.
"Dad, please-no more of your guys," I pleaded anew.
In June of 1975, I finally ran out of excuses and married Maria. She had stood by me through all the arrests and trials, never wavering once in her love, and I had come to care for her in a way that was deeper and more meaningful then the cheap thrills I thought I wanted. There was no question that she would make a perfect wife. She would be devoted and faithful and never give me a moment's worry.
The reception was held at Queens Terrace, a catering hall in Queens that was a mainstay for mob marriages. Six hundred people attended, including a battalion of Cosa Nostra soldiers. Among the people paying their respects was Al Gallo, Crazy Joe's brother. That was ironic: it had long been rumored that my father had ordered the hit on Crazy Joe. Apparently, it was all just business.
But this was just a sidebar to the events of the afternoon and evening. Maria and I were the stars of the moment, and ours was a union that made both my mother and father very happy.
49
The year 1975 marked yet another milestone in my life. It was the year I decided to get involved in Dad's businesses. I was desperate to earn enough money to pay lawyers and private investigators to help get him out of prison, so I decided to tell him the next time I visited him at Leavenworth that I was giving up my hopes of becoming a doctor to dedicate myself more seriously to business. We argued about it in the visiting room for some time, but when he saw that my mind was made up, he took another angle.
"Michael," he said, "if you're going to be on the streets, you need to do it the right way. I'll send word downtown, and you'll be contacted by one of my associates. He'll tell you what to do."
I wasn't exactly sure what my father was getting at. He had sheltered me from his business affairs for most of my life. We lived in the suburbs, not in the city or in Brooklyn, where mob guys were everywhere and were viewed as celebrities and big shots. I knew the designations "goodfellow" or "made man" meant that someone had been inducted into La Cosa Nostra as a soldier, and that trusted mob associates were often called "wiseguys," but I only had a vague sense of what the secret brotherhood was all about. What I did know was that the organization was my father's heart and soul. If he wanted me involved, it was an honor I could not take lightly.
"Okay," I responded, emotionlessly.
"What would you do if you had to kill someone?" he asked.
I was taken aback by this question.
"If I had to, I could," I heard myself respond.
"Would it bother you?"
"Depends upon the circumstances."
Dad smiled. Apparently, that was the correct answer.
I wasn't completely naive. I knew what my father was saying. Before one could be invited to go through La Cosa Nostra's secret, time-honored induction ceremony, a recruit had to "make his bones." Making one's bones meant doing some "work" for the organization, and "work" included the possibility of killing someone. As with most mob terms, the special language was developed to thwart hidden listening devices and to confuse the courts.
Typically, there was never a clear explanation of why my father decided at that particular moment to "straighten me out." This phrase itself is one of the more quizzical of mob euphemisms and means the opposite of what it might seem. "Straighte
n out," no doubt, developed from the idea of taking a wild, cunning street criminal, embracing him into the mob, and putting his talents to more productive use.
This may explain why I was being invited to join La Cosa Nostra. Despite my history of legitimate business success, I had showed no timidity in venturing over the legal line. My shylock operation at the flea market had proven that. I already had a long history of arrests, grand jury indictments, and trials. I had been branded a mobster by the press while I was still clean and serious about becoming a doctor. Also, the word among the families was that I was "a comer," meaning that I was aggressive, motivated, and determined to be successful. I was also proving to be resilient. The Nassau County police and prosecutors had tried to destroy me, and I had survived.
I assumed that Dad was afraid one of the other four families might "straighten me out" before he had a chance. He figured that if I wasn't going to become a doctor, and I was determined to play both sides of the business world, legal and illegal, I might as well operate under the protective wing of the Colombo family.
A tougher question to answer is why I accepted Dad's proposal. I didn't need the mob. My parents had given me an education, I'd had the opportunity to become a doctor, and I was doing well in my own business ventures. I wasn't a street punk from a broken home in search of the "family" I had never known. I didn't even believe in that stuff. I was a regular guy with a nice wife and a successful auto dealership.
But I was my father's son, and my desire to win favor with him remained as intense as ever. If he wanted me to become a member of La Cosa Nostra, I wasn't going to question it. And I never did.
I never asked Dad why he wanted me to take over his businesses, and I never asked him why he chose that particular moment in time to do it. All I knew-and was comforted in knowing that he knew-was that it would draw the two of us even closer together. Being close to my father, winning his respect and approval, and, more importantly, being accepted as his "son" remained my prime motivation.
50
There was another unspoken benefit in joining the mob. The way I saw it, my father had been forgotten by the Colombo family because of his long prison sentence. Although he understood the life and never complained, I had a hard time dealing with that fact. With me in the family, I might be able to use La Cosa Nostra's influence and vast network of contacts and associations to help free him from prison.
My induction was made possible by a mob high commission decision. From 1955 to 1972, the mob was a closed shop. Virtually no one was inducted during that period. This ironclad policy was developed to keep the families tight and secret and to eliminate the possibility of informers or undercover agents infiltrating. By 1972, with the ranks thinning because of death, old age, and imprisonment, the doors were opened. It was time for fresh blood.
I was formally proposed as a member of the family by Jo Jo Vitacco, a longtime friend of Dad's. Jo Jo was a mite of a man, barely five-foot-four, but he walked with a tough-guy swagger and looked every bit the street soldier he was. Jo Jo spent more time behind bars than free, and in prison he worked as a barber. He could drink with men twice his size, and up to the time of his death, he ran five miles a day. In his later years, he owned and operated a bar on Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn called the JV Lounge.
Jo Jo took me to a house on Carroll Street in Brooklyn. It was a burglar's home that was being used as a meeting place. There, Jo Jo introduced me to Colombo family acting boss Thomas DiBella, a big, lumbering man who had spent fifty years working the unions and the docks. DiBella was seventy-two years old. He had survived in the mob by making sure he never stepped on anyone's toes. It was that quality, along with his advanced age, that had prompted Carmine Persico to install DiBella as boss until he himself could get out of jail.
After acknowledging my father and how warmly everyone regarded him, DiBella's speech to me that evening was similar to the standard line given to all prospects. "I want you to understand that La Cosa Nostra comes before anything. You are your own man. If you are inducted into our life, you and your father would then be equals. Fathers have no priority over sons, and no brother has priority over another. We are all as one, united in blood. Once you become part of this family, there is no greater bond among men. Stay close to Jo Jo. Whatever he says, you do. When and if we are ready for you, you'll know."
By this I understood DiBella to be saying, "When and if we feel that you have proven yourself worthy and have earned the privilege of becoming a member of the family, we'll let you know." (Some men waited more than twenty years to be deemed worthy, and their call to join the family never came.)
After the meeting, my name, along with those of the other potential inductees, was circulated around the five families. This was the mob's version of a standard credit check. If anyone had any reason to object to me becoming a member of the family, he would let DiBella know quickly.
The name circulation also had a second purpose. If anyone in another family felt he had a claim on a prospect, he was to let that be known as well. That's exactly what happened with me. Pasquale "Paddy Mack" Marchiola, a Genovese soldier, raised an objection. He argued that I had done some business with one of his friends, and that made me his recruit. Paddy Mack gambled that this would counter my own father's claim and negate the time I spent walking a picket line with family boss Joe Colombo. The mob commission overruled Mack's claim.
A curious factor in the name circulation period was that I was never called in to confirm the heritage of my biological father. La Cosa Nostra only inducts Italians, and stepsons don't count. For all they knew, Louis Grillo could have been Irish, Jewish, or Greek and changed his name. Normally, a recruit would have been scrutinized on that subject, but I was never called in to explain. It was thought that someone must have known that Grillo was Italian or that perhaps my father had cleared the matter.
51
My assigned caporegime was Andrew "Andy Mush" Russo, a cousin of Carmine Persico, and one of my first activities during my "pledge" period was to invite Russo in on a nightclub deal I had in the works. The owner of a discotheque on Long Island needed some cash to book star acts into his youth-oriented club. Russo and I kicked in $7,500 each on the promise of getting a percentage of the weekend take until the debt could be repaid. The percentage could go as high as $2,000 if the place was packed-a return that equaled a healthy 13.3 loan-shark points a week.
Norby Walters, a partner of my father's, booked the acts into the club. He provided such national superstars as the Spinners, the Stylistics, the O'Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Trammps, the Drifters, and the Supremes. These big acts provided a windfall, while the lesser-known groups produced less revenue. Regardless, I made sure that Russo got his thousand every week, often kicking in my entire share to bring his take up to the maximum. Sometimes, after healthy weekends, I still gave my captain my own take, handing over $1,500 to $2,000. I'd explain that it had been an unusually free-spending crowd.
My generosity was a calculated move. I wanted Russo to spread news around that when you made a deal with Michael Franzese, it would pay off. That, in turn, would open the door to bigger stakes for me in the future.
This "pledge" period lasted nearly a year. The family took this time to train the recruits in discipline and carefully measure their character, all the while waiting for the right low-level "work" to present itself. I spent most of my indoctrination acting as a chauffeur and gofer for DiBella. I was called upon to drive the acting boss around on his daily schedule, usually to meetings and restaurants. Ironically, they almost always used my cars because, in this case, the chauffeur owned better automobiles than the boss.
Through this minimal activity, I was able to meet various upper-echelon Colombo family members, along with the bosses and captains of the four other New York families. Almost everyone who greeted me paid tribute to my father. The meets were brief encounters in hallways, lobbies, or on sidewalks, and I was never invited to attend the actual official meetings.
> Outwardly, I performed my functions like the eager hopeful I was supposed to be. Inwardly, however, I was bothered by the servile duties and was not happy about the time they took from my business operations. I also didn't particularly care for Brooklyn, where DiBella's activities were centered. I preferred wide-open spaces. Wisely, I kept those feelings to myself.
As boring as gofering for DiBella was, Jo Jo Vitacco also made frequent use of the yo-yo string I was on. He would summon me to his bar merely to have someone to talk to. I was in the process of building an assortment of businesses and disliked having to spend my afternoons and evenings watching Jo Jo get drunk. But, again, I kept my mouth shut and accepted all of this as part of the process.
On one occasion, things did get interesting. Jo Jo was lathered and in mean spirits when I arrived at his place as ordered one day. He was having trouble with his latest girlfriend, a barmaid half his age. After grousing about her for an hour or so, he leaped off a barstool and decided to go a few more rounds with her over the telephone.
He lost again, and when he did, he slammed the receiver down, retreated into his office, and emerged within seconds waving a .38 Special. Next he started firing wildly at the telephone and cursing his girlfriend. The phone was set against a concrete wall, and bullets ricocheted off the wall and began whizzing around the bar, shattering mirrors and whisky bottles. I ducked and lunged for him, afraid that any second a bullet was going to bounce back and catch the little gangster right between the eyes. I grabbed him, wrapped my arms around him, and, after a struggle, was able to calm him down.
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