Shortly before Thanksgiving, 1987, I was roused out of my bunk at Terminal Island early one morning by an unfamiliar guard.
"Wake up," the corrections officer demanded. "Pack your things. You're leaving."
I instinctively glanced at my watch. It was just before 3:00 A.M. This was not a good sign.
"Why?" I asked.
"You're on the list, Franzese," the man said, showing me a sheet of official-looking paperwork.
I knew that statement was probably the full extent of the guard's knowledge. Everyone had his job in the rigidly organized prison. The answers that morning would have to emerge in bits and pieces as I was processed through the system.
It took a surprisingly long time to pack, and I marveled at how much I had accumulated in my one-room home. The guard kept rushing me, but I gathered my possessions at my own pace. A shaving kit. Soap. Notebooks. Legal paperwork. Photographs. Letters and cards from Cammy. A few items of clothing. And my books-Fatal Vision, Iacocca, Born Again (by President Nixon's former special counsel Chuck Colson, who served time on a Watergate-related charge), and some escapist novels by Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins.
I was escorted through the dark prison and taken to the receiving and discharging room.
"What's going on?" I asked the officer there.
"You're being transferred," he said.
"Where?"
The man looked at me, paused, and flashed a sympathetic expression.
"Marion, Illinois."
I recoiled. Marion means nothing to most people, and few could even find it on a map, but every two-bit burglar knows the significance of the place. Marion was, at the time, the location of the only Level Six federal prison in the United States: maximum security and beyond, absolute lockdown twenty-four hours a day, home for 350 of those whom the federal prison system viewed as their most dangerous inmates.
Marion, Illinois, is also the last whip the federal corrections system uses against recalcitrant prisoners. Even Death Row inmates and lifers have to fear something in order to be controlled, and Marion is the sword of punishment that hangs over the heads of every federal prisoner. This was terrible news indeed.
"What for?" I asked.
The guard shrugged. He didn't know. I was just on the list. My thoughts spun, and the first of them was of Cammy. She was scheduled to visit me later that same day. If she arrived and found me gone, she'd panic. And then, when she learned where I was being sent, she'd really panic. It didn't occur to me that a young Christian girl like Cammy wouldn't know Marion, Illinois, from Omaha, Nebraska. Normally, she wouldn't have, but my wife was no longer the innocent person she'd been when we met. Two years of standing in jailhouse visitors' lines, chatting with wives, lovers, parents, and children of other inmates, had educated her on the prison system. I was sure she must now know what the levels meant and what the differences were between Level One and Level Five.
There was no doubt in my mind that Cammy had heard of Level Six, one level above hell. The guards at Marion were rumored to be as twisted and sadistic as the prisoners. They sometimes wore full riot gear, complete with flak jackets, helmets, Darth Vader face masks, gloves, and heavy boots. They often carried pistols, rifles, and shotguns, along with three-foot-long clubs with ends weighted by steel beads.
I had to call Cammy. I had to ease her fears, even if my own were running wild at the moment. I would ask her to contact my attorney so that he could find out what was happening and then take measures to stop it. This task would not only take her mind off of the perceived horrors of Marion; it would make her feel, rightly or wrongly, that the process could be thwarted. As soon as I could get to a phone, I would call.
As I waited, I tried to guess what had sparked this latest development. An obvious answer came quickly to mind. An edition of Life magazine with a lengthy article about me had hit the stands three days before. I had consented to a rare interview, and the story was given big play. Life proclaimed me "the mob's young genius" and once again hinted at special treatment.
The Life article detailed my wheeling and dealing with the government and my unusual plea agreement. It also claimed that Cammy had given me an ultimatum to quit the mob and had threatened to leave me if I refused. That part of the story infuriated me, because Cammy had made no such demand.
I steered my thinking back on course. Prison officials must have read the article, thought my life was in danger because of its "Quitting the Mob" headline, and decided to ship me off to Marion for my own protection and to avoid liability.
"What can I do?" the receiving and discharging clerk said. "It came over the teletype. It's a writ."
A supervisor appeared, and I confronted him. "How can you writ me to Marion?"
The supervisor seemed surprised. "Marion? Who said anything about Marion? You're going to Chicago."
It had probably been an honest mistake. Chicago, IllinoisMarion, Illinois. The other guy had just assumed that I was being sent to the worst prison in America. Chicago was still too close to Marion for comfort, but the supervisor insisted there was no connection. I was then able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Chicago, welcome as that news was, created a whole new set of confusing scenarios.
"Why Chicago?" I asked.
"I don't know," the supervisor said. "You have to appear before a grand jury on Tuesday, so we have to get you there. That's all I know."
It must be a mistake, I thought.
I had made no agreement to testify in Chicago. I couldn't testify. With La Cosa Nostra, to testify was to die, or worse, to be imprisoned in the Witness Protection Program the rest of life.
"I've never been to Chicago," I said.
The supervisor knew what I meant. Chicago had its own mob hierarchy dating back to the days of Al Capone. That was the turf of Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo and the late Sam Giancana and their crime families. I had nothing to do with them.
It was mid-morning before the prison bus arrived at the small San Pedro airport. I still hadn't been given any answers, nor was I allowed to get anywhere near a telephone. I asked another prisoner to call Cammy and have her phone my attorney. I was confident that by the time I got to a phone, my lawyer would already be on the job.
Handcuffed and manacled, I was herded onto a beat-up 707 sitting on the San Pedro runway. The marshals' jets were generally broken-down machines inherited from some other department or confiscated from drug dealers. The insides had been altered just enough to shift from carrying illegal freight to transporting human cargo. The jet was slowly filling with criminals of one sort or another being transferred around the federal prison system for whatever reason.
By takeoff time, the lumbering jet was packed with nearly a hundred convicts. Most of them quietly accepted their fate. A few, however-those who didn't quite know their fate, those who knew their fate and didn't like it, or those who were afraid of flying-had to be dragged onto the aircraft, screaming in anger or terror.
As the battered 707 lifted off, the anguished wails of those prisoners acted to drown out the disquieting creaks of the old jet's fuselage and engines. In a strange way, that eased the minds of the other prisoners. Screaming was somehow better than rattling motors.
19
Lunch was served shortly after the jet leveled off. I struggled to maneuver my handcuffs enough to be able to eat the baloney sandwich, apple, and cookie I'd been given. Some of the food ended up on my shirt or bouncing down my chest to the seat or floor. Most of my fellow prisoners seemed to be more skilled at eating with cuffs, and they fared far better.
Shuffling slavelike off to the restroom, I took in a full panorama of society's underbelly. Instead of picture-perfect families, foreign tourists, college students, and the suited businessmen who populate most commercial flights, each seat on "Convict Airlines" was occupied by some craven-faced criminal with hard eyes. Most were forgotten men who'd started life with nothing and had sunk even lower since. I saw the same pathos in every face, and it made me wonder if I, too, now l
ooked that way. I decided the first thing I would do in the tiny restroom would be to get as close as possible to the mirror and search for any sign that prison life was eroding my features.
As it turned out, there was no mirror. A mirror could be broken and turned into a weapon. No one on the plane needed to see himself anyway. After relieving myself, I leaned over to flush the stainless steel toilet. Instead of swirling down the dark hole, the foul water shot back up and splashed across my face, hair, and shirt. I shuddered in revulsion and quickly washed off as much of the fluid as I could. But no matter what I did, I couldn't kill the creepy feeling, or the smell.
"The mob's young genius," I thought as I returned to my seat. The billionaire Cosa Nostra prince, ushering in a new age of smooth, white-collar crime. People were reading those sentiments in Life magazine at that very moment. And there I was, getting splashed with rancid sewage on a "Convict Airlines" flight to nowhere.
A couple of hours after takeoff, the jet's whining engines changed their pitch. I could feel the plane descending-apparently by design. It was too early to be arriving in Chicago, but that hadn't been a consideration. Most prison flights landed in El Reno, which acts as a way station for convicts in transit.
I was bused to the El Reno holding pen. No one there had any answers for me either. No one there ever did. El Reno was just a post office for the human equivalent of junk mail.
I was finally allowed to get in line for a telephone at 11:45 P.M. It was Friday night, so the authorities knew a prisoner's chances of reaching a troublesome attorney had diminished. With me, they hedged their bets even further. Phone privileges at El Reno shut down at midnight. Although there were a dozen or so phones up against the far wall, the last-minute crunch had resulted in lines of six or more agitated convicts snaking out from each phone.
For a prisoner, every call is an emergency, and one con's predicament is no more urgent than another's. Pleading for a chance to cut to the front of the line is usually fruitless and can sometimes be hazardous. Still, made men have an advantage, even in unfamiliar prisons. I pulled rank, promptly made it to the front of the line and called Cammy.
She tried to sound calm, but the quaver in her voice betrayed her emotions. Her day had been as emotionally charged as mine. The Terminal Island inmate had come through and called her, and she had immediately contacted my attorney, Bruce Kelton. As I predicted, she had focused her thoughts on coming to my aid, and Kelton had assured her that he would take control.
Cammy was concerned with having to uproot the family and move to Illinois to be near my new prison. Although she was ready to do this without hesitation, she wasn't happy about the prospect. I told her I didn't think a move was going to be necessary. I couldn't elaborate, and she didn't force me to. The conversation lasted only a few minutes. I wanted to save my remaining time for Kelton.
Bruce Kelton was formerly the assistant chief of the Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force (OCSF). In the world of attorneys, experience in a specialized government field gives prosecutors valuable training that enables them to do an aboutface in the private sector. State prosecutors, skilled at convicting thieves, rapists, and murderers, become defense attorneys and work to free wealthy thieves, rapists, and murderers. Federal prosecutors learn how to free federal criminals. Drug task force prosecutors learn how to best defend drug kingpins. IRS attorneys learn how to defend against IRS investigations.
In the old days, this legal seesaw didn't impress the mob. The first-generation mobsters were too full of rage, revenge, and paranoia to trust a former government attorney. They preferred to rely on traditional mob lawyers or family members with law degrees. That changed as the second-generation mobsters became educated and sophisticated, and as the overcrowded court system became even more of a legal casino. Instead of public trials, prosecutors and defense attorneys increasingly faced off in cubicles and plea-bargained. In such an atmosphere, those in need of a good defense attorney learned that connections were more important than sharp legal minds or courtroom skills.
Bruce Kelton had given notice of his pending career change in March of 1986. He was well-liked by his bosses and well-respected by law enforcement agencies, and his credibility and ethics were unquestioned. I had been alerted to his professional movements by New York OCSF man Jerry Bernstein, the same Jerry Bernstein who had hunted me so feverishly. Bernstein recommended Kelton. Kelton retired from the Los Angeles OCSF on May 1, 1987, and I contacted him on May 2 and hired him a short time later.
I reached Kelton now just before midnight at his Los Angeles home. Cammy had called him late Friday afternoon. With the week quickly winding down, he had been unable to learn more than the Terminal Island supervisor. There was a writ and some hoped-for grand jury testimony, but the subject remained a mystery. He told me to hang tight and he'd stay on the case.
The corrections officer began barking orders to end all the telephone conversations, and the prisoners in line grumbled. I ignored the guards, talked for another thirty seconds, and then hung up. The worst was yet to come.
20
At the federal detention center in Oakdale, Louisiana, known as "La Isla Bonita" for its unusually colorful decor, and at the notorious Atlanta federal penitentiary, the fallout from the illfated 1980 Freedom Flotilla between Mariel, Cuba, and Miami, Florida, was about to explode.
On the Friday I was flown to El Reno, the United States and Cuba reached a tentative agreement for the deportation of some three thousand Cuban prisoners, whom Fidel Castro had shipped to America among the hundred thousand refugees who arrived during the flotilla. In a reverse of John Milton's statement about preferring to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, the Cubans preferred to be incarcerated in an American prison rather than roam free in Castro's Cuba. With baffling speed, these prisoners took control of both prisons, taking 122 hostages and torching sections of the historical Atlanta facility, the jail that had once housed Al Capone.
The rioting Marielitos had a ripple effect across the entire federal prison system, and everything was frozen while officials dealt with the Cuban crisis. For me, being in transit during a prison riot, even a distant riot, was like being in an elevator in a tall building when the electricity goes off. I was suddenly locked in place in the massive receiving and discharging corral at El Reno. Cots were brought in so the masses of stalled prisoners could sleep. It was a mess-even for a prison.
On Monday, Kelton was able to trace the writ to Howard Pearl, a federal prosecutor in Chicago. Kelton knew Pearl from his strike-force days and called him. Pearl, knowing he was speaking with a former strike-force prosecutor, didn't bother with coyness. He told Kelton they wanted me to testify in the Norby Walters case.
Pearl didn't have to explain what this case was about. Norby Walters was a onetime bar owner, entertainment manager, and booking agent. By then, he had become a successful sports agent. He was a longtime friend and music business partner of Dad's, and he partied with other top mobsters at his various bars and nightclubs. Walters was flamboyant, gregarious, and quick to entertain friends and strangers with an endless supply of war stories culled from a lifetime of colorful activities. One of his favorite stories was how he got his name.
Born Norby Meyer, Norby and his brother Walter opened a jazz club in Brooklyn in 1953 called Norby & Walter's Bel-Air. The ampersand on the club's neon sign burned out, and the brothers didn't bother to replace it, so everyone began referring to the club as "Norby Walter's." Quick to jump on a good thing, Norby changed his name to Norby Walters, and his brother likewise changed his name to Walter Walters.
Norby Walters' biggest claim to fame was managing or booking superstar black recording acts through his successful agency, Norby Walters Associates. His main associate was his silent partner, my father. They set up the agency in 1968 and were fiftyfifty partners. Norby acquired a notable list of clients, including Janet Jackson, Rick James, Dionne Warwick, Lionel Richie, the Commodores, the Spinners, the Four Tops, Cameo, Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, Patti
LaBelle, Kool and the Gang, the New Edition, and Ben Vereen. Although he was a Jew, Walters had a special talent for communicating with blacks. He could slap hands, talk and walk jive, and blend in with his clients. He was quick to provide his stars with seed money to help launch their careers, and this endeared him to them.
Walters' latest venture had been to buy his way into the sports agency business. It was a perfect target-lucrative and totally unpoliced. Anyone with a smooth tongue or some ready cash could convince a disadvantaged athlete to let him be his agent. Once the talent was signed, the agent could cut himself in for a five percent share of a professional sports contract that might total as much as $20 million. Better yet, there was little skill or knowledge needed for this work beyond recruiting the athletes. The top players' agents set the market each year, depending on how high a player was drafted by the professional teams. All that the other agents had to do was wait until the veteran agents set the year's price range, then sit back and catch the rain of dollars that resulted.
Walters teamed with Lloyd Bloom, a crusty young man with a thick New York accent and a smattering of sports connections. Bloom had been a bouncer at New York's Studio 54 nightclub, once a hot celebrity party favorite. Even though the pair had personalities that clashed like snake oil and ammonia, Walters and Bloom threw in together and formed World Sports and Entertainment, Inc. In 1985, they set out to become big-time sports agents.
Not long after the company's creation, I became a partner in the operation. Aware of the huge contracts being awarded to professional athletes, I felt that it was a solid investment. And what better way would there be to feed the family's gambling and booking operations than to be in direct control of the careers of college and professional athletes? Cammy's brother Dino acted as the bag man for the delivery of my initial investment and took a grocery sack stuffed with cash to Walters' office in the Brill Building on Broadway in Manhattan-the former office of music biz powerbroker Morris Levy, the mob associate my father had chased away from Buddah Records two decades earlier.
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