Blood Covenant

by Michael Franzese

  57

  Dad taught me which family members could be trusted, whom to be wary of, and whom not to trust. He advised me never to say anything of consequence on the telephone or in an enclosed room, and to treat all strangers as if they were undercover FBI agents.

  "Don't let your tongue be your worst enemy," he said.

  I gave him an office and a job as a Mazda salesman, one of the conditions of his parole. I then held my breath, expecting the earth to shake under his feet as it had done before.

  Dad requested that I transfer to his army, but Andy Russo, my capo, vehemently protested. The Colombo ruling council decided that I belonged with my father.

  Although my immediate family was elated to have Dad home, things didn't work out as I had imagined. For one thing, the strict parole conditions imposed on him severely hampered his activities. For another, his once loyal and feared army had dissolved during his decade-long incarceration. Among those still alive or free, the only one who asked to transfer back to him was Jo Jo Vitacco, and he was refused permission. Officially, the Colombo family still viewed Sonny Franzese as being either too hot or too dangerous, and they did nothing to help return him to power.

  Dad knew the score, so he remained low-key, explaining to me, "There's no rush." Because of this, I never got to see the legendary Sonny Franzese of the 1960s whom Phil Steinberg knew. I understood the reasons, but still it was disappointing. I had always idolized Dad, and now, for the first time, I realized that he was just a man.

  I was once again angered by the Colombo family's refusal to give my father his due. It no longer surprised me, after the way they'd treated him while he was in prison, but I'd always believed that things would be different once he was back on the streets. Besides, I was now part of the family. Where was the brotherhood? Where was the respect my father had earned by keeping his mouth shut and giving up a decade of his life rather than implicate someone else?

  Complicating matters was the success of Carmine "the Snake" Persico Jr. He was paroled around the same time as my father and promptly took over the family. He had also served ten years in prison, but his fall, from a much lower perch, had been softer. He was able to keep his army together during his incarceration, install the aging DiBella in his place when Colombo was shot, and power his way to the top.

  The Snake was a throwback, a don right out of Central Casting. He was a tough, gritty man who stood five-foot-seven and ate, drank, and slept the mob. He was a veteran of the streetwar days and was comfortable with the violence so often associated with organized crime. To the Snake, murder was a vital cog in the business machinery of the family. A forceful, aggressive leader, Persico brought an ironfisted rule back to the Colombo family. Dad's fortunes would never return, but with Persico in power, mine were about to soar.

  58

  Carmine "the Snake" Persico wasted little time flexing his muscles. A parole board's worst nightmare, he left prison determined to settle a list of old scores. By chance, there had been a breakthrough in one of the oldest and most painful. In the early 1960s, an insanely courageous band of young toughs hit upon a wild scheme of making quick cash by kidnapping mob soldiers and holding them for ransom. The families paid off, more to silence the insult to their image than to protect the lives of their men. They ground their teeth and handed over the money, vowing never to rest until all the kidnappers were identified, hunted down, and killed.

  Nearly two decades had passed now, and only a few remembered about the kidnappings, and even fewer cared. Among those who did remember, some held a grudging admiration for the accomplishment of the reckless band. Plus, it was widely believed that some, if not all, of the kidnappers had eventually joined the various mob families.

  Shortly after Persico took over, someone erased a heavy shylock debt by playing an ace carried for twenty years and fingering some of the kidnappers. An investigation was launched, and the information was confirmed. Not surprisingly, one of the former kidnappers had become a trusted Colombo family associate. He was a tough, fiercely loyal man who was part of my growing crew. Both my father and I respected him, knew his wife and children, and considered him to be one of our most valued and dependable men. In late 1978, I received a call from Persico that unsettled my world. The family boss explained that he had ordered the death of this man.

  It was the first time I'd had to face anything like this. I didn't know what to do, so I did what came naturally: I protested. My strong feelings for the man prompted me to tread on dangerous ground. I challenged the order and questioned the accuracy of the information. Persico tolerated my insolence and took the trouble of outlining the case against the man. There was no doubt. The associate had unquestionably been part of the gang of renegade kidnappers.

  I tried another tack. The offender had been a raw and ignorant kid back then. He had since matured into a faithful associate. I argued that his value to the family was worth more than the value of revenge. Persico took it all in but was unmoved.

  "We respect your efforts on his behalf," he said. "However, the crime he committed is unforgivable. The guy's gotta go, and that's the end of it."

  This last statement indicated to me that Persico would not allow any more second-guessing on my part, so I left it there. What more could I do? Two weeks later, I heard that the hit had been successfully carried out.

  59

  One day in January 1979, I found myself on the other end of things. Champagne Larry Carrozza rushed into my Mazda office with some disturbing news. One of the middlemen in the Japan Lines scam, a short, thin, dark-haired Italian named Joey Laezza, had been nabbed by the police and was about to sing. I called a meeting of my men and had Larry repeat the information. Before I finished, five different associates volunteered to kill Laezza that same day.

  "Just give the word, Michael," Larry said.

  I knew why my friend was so concerned. He had made the introduction, so Joey was his responsibility. If Joey rolled over, Larry would have to pay with his life. That was the rule of the mob.

  I weighed my words carefully. "Let's get some more information. Let's be absolutely certain."

  The men appeared to be upset. They were distressingly eager to kill. I could see that they were also fiercely loyal and totally dependent upon me. They would do anything, kill anyone, to protect the income and lifestyle I was providing them. A strange and disquieting sense of power swept over me. It was wrong, and it was evil, but it was oh so intoxicating.

  As the newspapers reported, at 10:30 A.M. the following day, January 16, the body of Joseph Anthony Laezza, thirty-six, was discovered slumped in the front seat of his car at 18 Gravesend Neck Road in Brooklyn. He had been stabbed eleven times, six times in the face and head. The placement of the wounds made the medical examiner marvel at the murderer's skill and knowledge of anatomy. The wounds were so deadly and so exact, it was reported, that it appeared as if the knife had been wielded by a surgeon. My friend Champagne Larry Carrozza owned a funeral parlor and was a mortician and embalmer.

  "We had to do it," he reported later that day. "It was too close to home. We followed him and saw him talking with the cops. He was gonna take Michael down."

  In the end, it had not been necessary for me to order the killing. It was taken care of for me.

  Nevertheless, as I drove home that evening, my conscience was tormenting me. I had vowed to myself that I would stay away from the bloody side of the mob, thinking that I could do my business bit and leave the messy stuff for the Brooklyn soldiers. But in the mob, apparently no one could remain clean. I had viewed myself as a white-collar criminal, but the bodies were already starting to pile up around me.

  60

  Not long after that, I was summoned to a dinner in Brooklyn. As I was leaving to make the long, hated drive into the city, an associate entered my office.

  "Michael," he said, "Tommy was hit last night."

  "What? Tommy! What for?"

  "I don't know. Something he did long ago. He was probably one of the kidnapper
s. Someone's ratting them all out."

  Tommy was another one of my men. He had recently gotten out of jail after a long stint, and I felt sorry for him. I knew from my father how hard it was for the long-termers to readjust. Tommy's wife had waited for him faithfully for nearly a decade. My father and I had personally befriended both Tommy and his wife. Now, after she had waited so long for her husband to come home, he had been shot through the brain and stuffed into the trunk of a car. It just didn't seem right.

  The wasted lives and constant killing gnawed at me as I drove into Brooklyn. At the gathering, held in an associate's house, I was introduced to four new recruits. They were young, hard-looking toughs from the streets of Brooklyn. They were pumped so high that I suspected they were on something. In fact, they were-they were flying on adrenaline. It was a party to celebrate the recruits having "made their bones." They had apparently accomplished it by killing my friend Tommy the night before. I surmised that they had invited me as a way of informing me, without ever saying a word, that the hit was "in family" and there was no need for retaliation.

  "To a job well-done," said Johnny Irish Matera, the recruits' sponsor, raising a glass in a toast. I was lost in thought when Jimmy Angellino nudged me. I saw the glasses raised, and so I raised mine too.

  "To a job well-done," I said, clinking my glass with those of the recruits.

  As I drank the blood toast, the words of another friend, also a made man, echoed in my mind-"You know, Michael, we're all sick. The lives we lead ...we're all sick."

  I was beginning to believe that he had been right.

  61

  Being part of the mob definitely had its advantages when it came to doing business. One day, I received a call from the brother of a girl who had sung in a band I managed in the 1970s. He was Rafael "Big Red" Celli, a six-two, two-hundred-thirty-pound bear of a man. The nickname derived from Rafael's scarlet hair and beard. Big Red was in the construction business and found himself in a quandary over a massive apartment-house renovation project. The three-thousand-unit Glen Oaks Apartments in Glen Oaks, Queens, was going co-op. The owners, Gerald and Reuben Guterman of Guterman Homes, wanted to keep costs down and profits high. The problem was that the powerful New York labor unions had swooped in, pressuring the owners to sign an expensive union contract. If they succeeded, the influx of three hundred union tradesmen and laborers would triple the costs of the renovation, decrease the quality of the work, and postpone the completion date.

  Big Red asked if I could do anything to help, warning that the union representative was a "heavy guy."

  "I don't know if you can handle it," Big Red said.

  I asked who the union rep was.

  "Bob Cervone," he said.

  I smiled. Basil Robert Cervone was a big, fat man in his sixties who sported a cigar, wore a fedora over a shaved head, loved flashy clothes in loud colors, and drove a shiny Eldorado convertible. He always traveled with a wiry little dude who was his man Friday. Cervone had been an AFL/CIO and Laborers' International Union official for nearly forty years. He knew every psychological pressure tactic ever invented, and builders trembled at the sight of him.

  I told Big Red I'd give it a shot, but I would need to speak with the Gutermans first. An introduction was arranged. Reuben Guterman confirmed that they wanted my intervention. Ideally, the goal was to keep the union out. Second-best would be a sweetheart contract. I explained that I would negotiate an arrangement and then get back to them with the terms.

  Bob Cervone agreed to meet me at the Silver Moon Diner, a popular eatery off Union Turnpike in Long Island. He arrived complete with shiny head, hat, cigar, and man Friday, and I got right down to business. "Glen Oaks. Reuben Guterman. Gerry Guterman. They're with me."

  A big smile appeared on Cervone's face. "That's terrific. Whatta you want?"

  "No union," I said.

  "Okay," he responded.

  It had to be harder than that, I figured.

  "You're going to do this out of friendship?" I asked.

  Cervone smiled again. "Come on. The Jews are loaded."

  The man had done his homework. Among other things, Gerald Guterman owned a fine art collection valued at $40 million.

  "We've been contacted by the plumbers, carpenters, painters, and you," I explained. "We'll make a deal, but I want you to handle everybody. Can that be done?"

  "Certainly," he said.

  "Talk to your people, and get back to me," I offered, and our meeting came to an end.

  We spent the next week trading offers. Cervone demanded $200,000 paid up-front in cash, just for starters. That would be on top of a per-apartment fee. I told Basil Bob he was dreaming. After a week of haggling, we eventually settled on a price of $50 per room, which came to $150 to $250 per apartment, depending upon the number of rooms each apartment had.

  The numbers were impressive. The renovations using nonunion labor were expected to cost about $2,000 per unit. With union labor, the cost would have risen to $6,000. So for $250, I saved the Gutermans $4,000 per unit. About two thousand of the three thousand apartments were eventually renovated, and the remainder were bought by residents wanting to stay on. When the project was completed, I had saved the builders $6 million to $8 million, and the union ended up with a long-term payout of about $400,000 for doing absolutely nothing.

  To put some frosting on the deal, Cervone reserved the right to provide the bricklayers. He did so from a company he partly owned with a man named Ralph Perry. (Perry later testified against Cervone when Cervone was convicted of receiving union payoffs for an unrelated project.)

  In return for my services, I became Glen Oaks' general contractor. To handle the duties there, I formed four companies: Flexo Contracting, Close-Rite Windows, Bentwood Carpentry, and M.R.C. Business Relations. Among my functions was to facilitate the cash payments to the unions. Union bosses didn't want to accept traceable checks for work never performed.

  The Glen Oaks renovation went so well that I worked with Guterman Homes on a half-dozen other projects. These included Cryder Point in Queens, Hamilton House in New Jersey, the Parc Vendome and Colonade co-op conversion in Manhattan, and the Water's Edge in Patchogue, Long Island. I was able to keep all the unions out of these projects except for the painters' union on two high-profile Manhattan projects. And even with them, I arranged a "sweetheart" deal. In return, I put $2 million in my pocket from my general contracting services.

  62

  Things continued to get bigger and better for me in the business world. The owner of Rumplik Chevrolet in Suffolk County, Thomas O'Donnell, enlisted my financial help in making a run at buying the Twentieth Century Hotel and casino on Tropicana Avenue in Las Vegas, a former Howard Johnson's, later renamed the San Remo Hotel. I lent O'Donnell $70,000 at two points per week. O'Donnell said he needed the money to clear some debts at his dealership so he could pass the Las Vegas Gaming Commission's licensing investigation.

  O'Donnell, who loved to gamble, promptly defaulted on the $1,400 weekly interest payments and offered his seventy-five percent share of the dealership to cover his debt. Another reason he was anxious to divest himself of the dealership's problems was to stave off the Vegas investigators. Although the price of the fiftyyear-old dealership was dirt cheap, included in the deal was the burden of taking on $320,000 in long- and short-term loans. I went to my financing buddy Gerard Nocera and brought in a new, $1 million floor plan.

  O'Donnell and I then became partners on the Las Vegas venture. I arranged for a $5 million financing package to help the Irishman swing the deal. Everything was set, but it all hinged on O'Donnell's receiving a critical casino license.

  As it turned out, it wasn't even close. The commission blew O'Donnell's application away, collapsing the deal. He turned out to be quite a character. He had left the Chevy dealership with such a maze of shady paperwork that it eventually strangled the operation. Included among O'Donnell's tricks was financing cars twice from different banks or selling them for cash and then sending th
rough paperwork claiming that they were purchased on credit. A Mercedes-Benz sold to New York Jets' quarterback Richard Todd had been financed twice, complete with Todd's forged signature on a second set of papers. The former University of Alabama star was unaware of the chicanery until the second bank came after him for back payments. O'Donnell was later convicted of grand larceny and fraud, made a deal, and vanished into the Witness Protection Program.

  The former owner's problems resulted in some unpleasant deja vu. Shortly after I took over the dealership, a squad of twenty-five Suffolk County police officers charged into my office one day, breaking down the door with an axe. They were attempting to confirm my position as Rumplik's new owner and dig up records of illegal financing activities. Fortunately, I was tipped about the raid by an informant inside the Suffolk County Police Department, and I made sure that neither I nor any worthwhile records were present when the police squad paid its visit.

  63

  Another lucrative business opportunity found its way to me when I was contacted by Daniel Cunningham, president of the Allied International Union, a lucrative Great Neck, Long Island security guard union. Cunningham needed help. He wanted to align himself and his growing union with a connected guardian angel before someone tried to squeeze him.

  Although I found the sloppy, freckle-faced Cunningham to be personally repulsive, I did like the man's cash-heavy union operation. I explained that I would be happy to give him protection.

  I installed one of my men, Japan Lines executive Louis Fenza, as vice-president of the security guard union, and together we received an education in union-skimming. Among the scams, Cunningham was paying about $6,000 a month for a health and dental insurance plan for his members, then turning around and billing the union $20,000. The extra $14,000 went into his pocket.