"Shelly's with me," Glitz said, chomping on his cigar, thumping his chest and offering the traditional Cosa Nostra opening. "He's been with me for a long time."
"Don't lie to me," I growled. "Larry smacked him, so he ran to you. Don't hand me that `long time' line. And if Shelly's with you now, then you're responsible for the $270,000 he owes us. That's the first matter of business. Without that, we have nothing to talk about."
Glitz didn't argue. The Genovese soldier agreed to pay the debt and put it on record with his family. It wasn't hard to figure Glitz's angle.
"I want to get into the gasoline business with this guy," he said. "We need your help. Give us a line of credit so we can get rolling."
I had no alternative but to agree. It was a courtesy one made man expected of another. In the end, I got what I wanted: Shelly's extensive operation would be swept under Galion Holdings along with everyone else. The only trouble was that there was now another gangster fly in the ointment.
After a satisfied Joe Glitz departed, I confronted lorizzo.
"Slapping Shelly was the stupidest thing you've ever done. You just introduced another family into the business," I lectured. "Don't ever chase anyone away from us again."
72
After that bit of unpleasantness, we shifted our attention to one of our reasons for being in Florida in the first place. We had expanded our operation to the Sunshine State through a Fort Lauderdale company called Houston Holdings. Within months, we were moving forty million gallons of tax-free gasoline a month, taking in another half million per week each.
lorizzo quickly got back into my good graces by updating me on a side operation he had going. In the Learjet on the way to New York, while we feasted on shrimp and steak, lorizzo laid it out.
"We're going to make a bundle this weekend," he announced.
lorizzo had bought off the dispatcher at a New York gasoline loading dock. From Friday night to early Monday morning, he sent a succession of tanker trucks to the station to fill up. As we worked on our tans, lorizzo kept a running tab of how much gasoline he was stealing. With each report, he sang, danced a Jackie Gleason jig, and toasted another successful hour of thievery. By Monday morning, he had emptied the tanks of three million gallons of gasoline, which we immediately sold for a pure profit of $2.5 million.
The fat man already had all the money he could ever spend, but that didn't matter. He was totally hooked on the thrill of stealing and the vicarious power he wielded through me.
My "success" wasn't going unnoticed in Brooklyn. Although Persico was back in prison, he issued an order that was quickly relayed down the pipeline, and I received a call requesting my presence at a designated house in Brooklyn. When I arrived, I was greeted by Jimmy Angellino and other family members.
"The boss says he wants to make it official," Angellino said. "You are now a captain in La Cosa Nostra. Congratulations, Michael."
I thanked them and returned to Long Island. Becoming a caporegime meant I could officially be the leader of a band of soldiers and associates. I was already doing that and had been for years, so as far as my day-to-day activity went, this didn't change anything. But the new title gave me increased authority, more recognition among the made men and mob associates on the street, and more power in dealing with members of other families. It also meant that, along with recruiting my own crew, made men soldiers would also be assigned to my command.
There was a downside. Being a captain gave me more responsibility and tied me in closer to the central command in Brooklyn.
73
At the same time lorizzo and I were running our gasoline scam on Long Island, a flamboyant mobster named Michael Markowitz was running his own billion-dollar gasoline scheme in and around New York City. For most of the 1980s, Markowitz, a jowly man with thinning, curly brown hair, reigned as the king of the mysterious wave of Russian and Eastern European immigrant gangsters who settled into areas like Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. While my army of kinder and gentler mobsters and I were ushering organized crime into the 1990s, Markowitz and his fellow Eastern Europeans were dragging it back to the violent 1930s. A similar invasion of Cuban immigrant thugs, dumped ashore during the 1980 Freedom Flotilla, was ravaging Miami.
Markowitz, alternately referred to as a Russian or as a Rumanian (I always thought he was the latter), extended his ethnicity to a third area when he was dubbed "the Jewish Scarface." Actually, it was a fourth description of Markowitz that was more memorable. Once the money started pouring in, the heavyset Markowitz began enveloping himself in what he obviously felt was the chic clothing of a successful young American. His version consisted of screaming sport shirts open to the chest, shiny John Travolta disco suits, thick gold chains, and a fistful of gaudy diamond rings. In these getups, he reminded many who met him of the shoulder-shimmying, pseudo-hip Czech brothers created by comedians Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live.
As Markowitz's operation grew and his bankroll increased, he glittered around town in his tasteful Rolls and tasteless wardrobe. This high-profile life led to another lesson in Americana. He quickly made himself a target for both the state regulatory office and for various shakedown artists trying to cut into his operation. His problem was the same one that previously faced Larry lorizzo: he had immense wealth but no power, and so he needed a protector.
At the end of 1982, Markowitz's empire was about to come crashing down. The state had pulled his wholesale license just as the shakedown vultures were closing in on him. Desperate to keep his massive business alive, he began to put out feelers for someone to help him. He came in contact with Vinnie Carrozza, the brother of my close friend Champagne Larry, and Vinnie asked me if I could collect a $7,500 debt for Markowitz from a gasoline station operator. The insignificant amount dramatized the Rumanian's lack of influence. I got the money that same afternoon. Vinnie then scheduled a meet at an oversized Mobil station in Brooklyn that Markowitz owned and used as his headquarters. With Markowitz that day were his Russian-born partners, David Bogatin and Leo Persits.
I stifled a laugh when the gaudy Rumanian walked in looking like a rug salesman who had just hit the lottery. Yet, as we talked, I could see that we had a lot in common. We were both more educated than those around us, we both idolized our fathers, we both had a knack for business, and we both liked high-risk operations that produced big numbers. I also liked Markowitz's partners. They were tough Russians who had clawed their ways out of that country, come to America, and made a fortune. Bogatin had an especially rough background, having served three years of hard time in a Russian prison.
Putting aside my warm feelings for the men, I cut a deal with them that was ice cold. I would take over their billion-dollar operation for seventy-five percent of the pie. They would get the remaining twenty-five percent. They were so desperate that they agreed.
74
The deal with Markowitz and associates greatly increased my authority and expanded my influence. My inner circle of soldiers and top-level associates grew to about forty men. Beyond them, there were hundreds of men who were under our command and many more clamoring to come aboard.
The size of my "army" was somewhat ironic because I had never actively recruited anyone. Men were just drawn to the success of the operation. They came to me, and I was then able to pick and choose those I wanted.
Personally, the success, the money, and the level of power I had now achieved were both exhilarating and tiring. There were people around me catering to my every wish, and I could issue any order pertaining to anything, from business to matters of life and death, and it would be carried out without question. I was happy that I had a strong, wealthy crew that everyone wanted to join, but with it all came a tremendous amount of work and responsibility. The mob was not a business-it was a life. And that life consumed all of my time and energy.
As my profile increased, I also became a more inviting target. I knew that law enforcement and prosecutors-or even one of my own men-would one day be coming after me.
At this point, it was said that the money pouring into our operation resembled the gross national product of a mid-sized country. Estimates had lorizzo and me earning anywhere between $5 million and $8 million a week, and this went on every week for nearly three years. Still, despite the enormity of those numbers, some prosecutors have privately admitted that the government underestimated the take to stave off embarrassment. At the height of the operation, Houston Holdings, which swallowed up Galion Holdings and its fifty different paper subsidiaries, was moving three hundred million to five hundred million gallons of gasoline a month in five states. Figuring that we offered discounts of five to ten cents a gallon to monopolize the market, a ballpark estimate was that we were stealing twenty cents a gallon. That was $60 million to $100 million a month in stolen taxes alone, not counting legitimate profits. How much of this money found its way into my pockets and exactly what I did with it were matters for speculation. In comparison, John Gotti, at one time the head of the largest of the five New York Mafia families, was said to have made "only" between $5 million and $10 million a year.
With Markowitz and his crew aboard, the Monday night parties at the Casablanca reached new levels of intoxication. lorizzo would lug his four hundred fifty pounds to the club, do his Carmen Miranda imitation, and rip apart a luxury automobile. Markowitz would follow, proudly displaying twenty pounds of gold jewelry splashed over his latest hideous suit. Both men would arrive with their swelling entourages, including Markowitz's quizzical band of Russian-speaking criminals.
On occasion, Markowitz returned the favor by hosting a gala event of his own at a favored Russian bar in Brooklyn. The Soviet-styled parties included an endless procession of trays piled a foot high with steamed lobsters. There were oceans of wine and vodka to wash it all down, and there were dancing girls to entertain everyone during dessert.
Regardless of where the parties took place, I was always in some inner office overlooking the proceedings and taking requests. My power inside the New York Mafia families had grown with every dollar, and my profile outside the mob had more than kept pace. A deputy attorney general in the United States Department of Justice reported to a congressional subcommittee that my operation had grown so large that I had been awarded my own Long Island-based family and had jumped from being a Colombo captain to a full-fledged, Marlon Brando-like Mafia don. That was an exaggeration. The Colombo family wasn't about to allow that to happen. Still, it's not hard to see how the feds got that impression. Counting all my subordinates in the wide-reaching gasoline industry, along with the savage Eastern Europeans I had organized under my ever-expanding wing, I now commanded an army that was large and financially powerful and capable enough of operating as an independent family. And I was only thirty-two years old. What was next?
75
In the spring of 1983, something began stirring that would change the course of my life forever. On April 21 of that year, representatives from eleven separate state, county, and federal law enforcement agencies marched like suited soldiers into the basement of the federal courthouse in Uniondale, Long Island, to hold what would be the first of three dozen intensive, day-long meetings convened over the next twelve months. These guys were serious.
Seated around a large U-shaped table was an impressive array of government muscle. Assigned to the massive interagency crime-fighting squad were Ray Jermyn, special assistant U.S. attorney and the driving force behind the Long Island Organized Crime Oil Industry Task Force; Edward McDonald, attorney-incharge of the powerful, Brooklyn-based Organized Crime Strike Force of the Eastern District of New York; Jerry Bernstein, McDonald's tenacious assistant and a special attorney with the U. S. Department of Justice; Bill Tamparo and Kevin Craddock, special agents with the IRS; Danny Lyons, head of the Long Island FBI office; Dick Guttler, special agent, FBI; John LaPerla, United States postal inspector; Jack Ryan and Vincent O'Reilly, special assistant U.S. attorneys representing the New York State Attorney General's Office; Jim Wrightson, special investigator, New York State Attorney General's Office; Joel Weiss, Rackets Bureau chief, Nassau County District Attorney's Office; detectives Frank Morro and Al Watterson, Rackets Bureau, Suffolk County Police Department; and detective Bob Gately, Rackets Bureau, Nassau County Police Department.
After a few organizational meetings, the scope of the investigation was broadened even further. Joining the task force were Sam Badillo, special agent, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor Racketeering; Tom Sullivan, special agent, Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and Fred Damski, assistant state attorney for Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) Florida.
This massive, fourteen-agency government task force had one assignment-to bring me down. The reason, I was later told, was that they considered me to be the Mafia's most financially powerful new superstar. Their basement meetings were just the opposite of our Casablanca disco celebrations. Instead of dancing to pulsating music and feasting on lasagna, veal, pasta, wine, scotch, vodka, and beautiful women, the law enforcement agents rolled up their sleeves and went to work. They paused only to dash across the street to a Roy Rogers fast-food outlet and bring back sacks of cold hamburgers and greasy french fries, which they ate while they worked through lunch.
Under the direction of McDonald and Bernstein, members of the group, known officially as the Michael Franzese Task Force, pooled their resources, shared information, plotted strategy, and struggled to keep up with my rapidly expanding criminal empire. When conflicts arose over jurisdiction and assignments, the FBI's Lyons settled the disputes and acted as sergeant at arms. That wasn't a difficult assignment. Egos were suppressed as the prosecutors, government representatives, special agents, and police were united behind the single-minded cause of bagging the man they had come to call "the Yuppie Don."
It took months just to untangle the maze of my far-reaching criminal domain. The squadron of government agents shook their heads in amazement when Lyons displayed a large, colored chart that outlined my interests. Jermyn counted twenty different Magic Marker colors on the chart, each representing a rich vein of illegal income.
Although the colorful lines on the FBI's chart led to me like streamers to a maypole, the chain of evidence needed to build a court case usually broke down before it reached that far. This was by design. I had taken mental notes during those 6:00 A.M. breakfast meetings when my father sipped freshly brewed coffee and explained the art of insulating oneself from everything except the flow of cash.
I was unaware of the force gathered in Uniondale, but my antennae began alerting me like never before. I could almost feel the weight of the mysterious army that was now shadowing my every move. The cars that followed me to restaurants and nightclubs and parked outside my home and offices no longer were easily identified as pesky Nassau and Suffolk County police units. They didn't even appear to be vehicles operated by FBI agents. These were cars and tags of men that gave off an eerie aura that I had never felt before, not even in my father's heyday.
It was time, my senses warned me, to relocate my base of operations as far from New York as possible. Time to laugh, have fun, and escape to a place where the air was warm, the sun was bright, and people played in the sand. I needed a sensory diversion strong enough to blunt the increasing realization that I was a fox who had stolen once too often from the hen house, and that the cloud of dust hovering over the horizon was being kicked up by a charging herd of snarling bloodhounds and furious farmers. It was time to seek out the mental distraction of the man who had become my court jester, Jerry Zimmerman.
76
Jerome Zimmerman had met my father long before he knew me. Dad had traveled to a Long Island car dealership in the mid1960s to visit a friend named Charlie Gerraci. Dad was at the top of his form then and was widely regarded as the most feared mob enforcer in New York. Gerraci took him for a walk around the lot. The dealership owner spotted the gregarious Zimmerman up on a ladder, fixing the dealership's promotional sign. Gerraci signaled for his partner to climb down.
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p; "Hey, Spaghetti, what's doin', man?" Zimmerman asked.
"What did he say?" my father asked, the muscles in his bull neck tightening.
"What's happening, Spaghetti, my man?" Zimmerman repeated as he descended.
"Hey, what's this guy talkin' `spaghetti' ?" my father inquired of Gerraci.
By then, Zimmerman had reached them. "Jerry, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, Sonny Franzese."
My father gave Jerry a look that nearly brought him to his knees.
"Ah...uh...glad to meet you. I'm...I'm...you know...just a kidder. Me and Charlie, we're tight. We kid around all the time.. .you know?"
My father understood, and what he understood he didn't like. He apparently wasn't too upset, though, for Zimmerman survived.
I met Zimmerman during my Italian-American Civil Rights League days. He was friends with various mob guys and supported Joe Colombo's misguided organization. After Colombo was hit, Jerry and I stayed in touch. When my auto-leasing business began to prosper, I made him one of my managers. When I was inducted into La Cosa Nostra, Zimmerman held his ground and worked himself into my inner circle.
I never trusted Jerry and suspected him of pocketing payoffs and ripping me off for petty sums in countless ways. Regardless, the big Jewish man was a world-class con artist whose crazy schemes were wildly amusing. Despite his flaws, I allowed him to get close to me.
Zimmerman moved to California in late 1979 and acted as an advance scout for me there. He started a used-car dealership, and I frequently shipped him cars that had a higher value on the West Coast than on Long Island. More importantly, Zimmerman's operation gave me an excuse to travel to Los Angeles. I loved the sunny skies and casual lifestyle there. I especially loved the fact that California was three thousand miles away from Brooklyn.
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