Blood Covenant

by Michael Franzese

  For a time, it was money well spent. Business boomed, and within three years, Walters and Bloom had signed forty-three top athletes. Among their catches were such big-name professional football players as Rod Woodson of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tim McGee of the Cincinnati Bengals, Reggie Rogers of the Detroit Lions, Brent Fullwood of the Green Bay Packers, Tony Woods of the Seattle Seahawks, Terrence Flagler of the San Francisco 49ers, Ronnie Harmon of the Buffalo Bills, and Paul Palmer of the Dallas Cowboys.

  During the recruiting process, Walters talked such fluent jive that many of the black athletes who spoke with him over the phone thought the New York Jew was black. And that was no small feat. One athlete told Sports Illustrated that Walters affected a walk complete with a juke in his step, like a hip black man.

  It wasn't all walk and talk. Walters bragged about introducing the athletes to all the famous music superstars he knew. He sent several of them on trips to New York and Los Angeles, where they mingled, wide-eyed, with the stars. He even took Palmer, a Heisman Trophy candidate, to the Grammy Award ceremonies.

  The trouble was, according to prosecutors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Sports Illustrated, and the targeted athletes, Walters and Bloom went after sports stars the same way Walters had gone after entertainers. They showered the prospects with cash-a total of $800,000 worth, according to Bloom-to get their attention. After that, it was easy to get their signatures on the dotted lines of postdated contracts. This last measure was taken to skirt the law and preserve the athletes' amateur status until they completed their college eligibility. Bankrolling a prospect was perfectly legal when dealing with a hot new singer down at the local club, but it was illegal when dealing with college athletes.

  21

  To complicate matters, whenever Walters and Bloom would hit a snag, they invariably brought in some muscle. In the early music days, my father had provided this muscle. His appearance at a meeting was usually all it took for Walters to iron out contractual difficulties, keep an unhappy act from jumping ship, or keep the entertainers' noses out of the books. After my father was imprisoned and I was made, I replaced my father as Walters' muscle.

  When Dionne Warwick wanted to cut her ties to Walters in 1982, he called me. I hopped on a jet to Los Angeles, met him, and the two of us went directly to the Sunset Boulevard office of Joe Grant, Warwick's manager. After a few minutes of listening to Walters talk his jive and of Grant explaining that Warwick sought a more "prestigious" agency, I took over. I asked Walters to leave so that Joe and I could chat alone.

  "I don't like what I'm hearing." I explained. "I want you to do me a favor. Stay with Norby another six months. Then, if you still have complaints, we'll talk about it again."

  Warwick stayed with Walters.

  A similar visit between myself and the Jacksons manager, Ron Weisner, nearly resulted in Walters bagging the group's 1981 tour, headed by the skyrocketing Michael Jackson. An unrelated snag killed that deal, allowing another booking firm to take over. I was also called in to lay down the law to the manager of the New Edition when that super group wanted to dump Walters.

  Since such activities are commonplace in the mob-saturated entertainment industry, our activities drew little attention. The same couldn't be said for the undeniably corrupt, but less visibly so, world of big-time college sports. The feds got wind of Walters' new sports agency venture, tapped Bloom's telephone, and turned up a bonanza. They taped Bloom threatening to have his mob pals-presumably me-break the valuable arms and legs of a few college football stars who figured they could take the money and then pull a double cross on Walters by signing with another agent. Other athletes told the National Football League Players Association they had received similar threats from Walters. The Packers' Fullwood took it one step further. He testified before a Chicago grand jury that Bloom had threatened to kill his agent, George Kickliter.

  In the midst of all these threats, which Walters and Bloom steadfastly denied, Kathe Clements, an associate of Chicago sports agent Steve Zucker, was roughed up in her Chicago office by two hoods wearing ski masks and gloves. Clements, wife of former Notre Dame quarterback Tom Clements, had squabbled with Bloom over Zucker taking three of World Sports and Entertainment's clients. The feds suspected that Walters, Bloom, and their muscleman-me again-were responsible for Clements' beating and intensified their investigation.

  Then an incredible thing happened. In March of 1987, Walters had the gall to file suit against some of his former clients for breach of contract-contracts that were illegally postdated and gained through illegal cash payments (which he now wanted repaid). Then he followed this strange action by telling the Atlanta Constitution that the players had wronged him by taking his money. This bizarre act was similar to someone calling the police to report that an acquaintance has robbed him of his cocaine stash.

  When the authorities came down on Walters and Bloom, a nasty scandal erupted that quickly became national news. Sports reporters dubbed it "Jockgate" and covered every angle of it. Walters and Bloom were made to symbolize everything corrupt and evil in big-time college and professional athletics.

  The more press it received, the bigger the case became for the hotly pursuing prosecutors. When the lawmen connected Walters to me and my father, they could hardly conceal their elation. The high-octane element of organized crime invading college athletics fanned the media fires even brighter, and the press, fed by the FBI and Chicago prosecutors, had a field day. The hallowed halls of academia, places like Notre Dame, Miami, Nebraska, Pitt, and Oklahoma, were supposedly being invaded by bent-nosed mobsters.

  The last thing I needed was a messy national scandal, especially one that starred me as the chief leg-breaker. Walters and Bloom were already becoming household names. If I was suddenly pegged as the pin-striped mastermind behind their operation, it would open me up to an onslaught of media attention that would all but paint yet another giant bull's-eye on my back. Ambitious prosecutors from New York to Los Angeles would come gunning for me again, and any convict looking to make a deal would be quick to sell me out. This was not part of my plan.

  What I failed to realize, viewing the matter from my own perspective, was that the Walters and Bloom case had grown bigger than me. They were getting all the press. The case was in Chicago, not New York, where I had become a household name and favorite target of federal and local law enforcement agencies. Therefore, in the Chicago prosecutors' minds, Walters and Bloom were now the big targets. For the first time in my life, I would be on the other end of things. Instead of being the prized red bowling pin everyone wanted to topple, I was now one of the white pins needed to knock over the red one.

  22

  Once I understood what was happening, my next move was to get a better grip on the expected grand jury testimony. The problems that such an appearance presented were enormous. Testifying anywhere about anything is against La Cosa Nostra rules. But that giant dilemma could wait. There was a more immediate problem to deal with. The Jockgate trial wasn't scheduled to take place for two years. That meant that in the meantime the prosecutors might try to stash me in some dreary, overcrowded, innercity, metro correctional center in Chicago with no exercise field and what amounted to twenty-four-hour lockdown. I wanted no part of that, and it certainly hadn't been part of my plea agreement.

  "No way," Bruce Kelton told prosecutor Howard Pearl. He went on to explain that I was already steaming about getting stuck in El Reno during the Cuban riots. I would simply play my ace and take the Fifth. Pearl hinted that such a posture could lead to my indictment in the case and could also result in a contempt-of-court charge. If cited for contempt, I would be held in a Chicago prison for up to three years with no credit toward finishing my federal term.

  Kelton explained that we were not shutting the door. We just wanted to establish ground rules before we officially opened communications with him. I wanted to go back to Terminal Island. That was nonnegotiable. Pearl would then be invited to pay me a visit and explain exactly what h
e wanted. We would discuss it and take it from there. Pearl agreed.

  Everything had been worked out in Chicago and Los Angeles. In Atlanta, however, things were still festering. The Cubans were hanging tough, refusing, as the weeks passed, to relinquish control of the eighty-six-year-old facility. When they finally caved in, it took another week for the federal corrections system to clean up the mess and get back to its normal pace. Meanwhile, I sat fuming in El Reno for three more weeks before I was sent "home" to Terminal Island.

  The worst part of the ordeal was spending a miserable Thanksgiving Day in El Reno. A slab of some kind of compressed turkey was all I received. At Terminal Island the previous year, at least we'd had a complete dinner with fresh turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

  Pearl and FBI agent George Randolph flew to California during the normally slack workweek between Christmas and New Year's. That action spoke volumes about the importance of the Norby Walters case. The prosecutor and the agent laid out their evidence. They even read to me the transcript of a tape on which Bloom had threatened to break a Texas wide receiver's hands if the athlete signed with another agent. Randolph, an honest straight-shooter who didn't play games, knew the extent of my involvement, how much I had invested with Walters, how Cammy's brother had delivered the cash, and the precise details of the Dionne Warwick, Michael Jackson, and New Edition shakedowns. It didn't take me long to realize that the prosecutors had Walters and Bloom nailed.

  Although he wasn't saying it, Pearl also knew that I had little to do with the sports agency or the threats against the athletes. In addition, Pearl had nothing to connect me-or Walters and Bloom, for that matter-to the brutal beating of Kathe Clements. There was little doubt, however, that Walters had been readily dropping my name to push his way around the sports world. And even though I was in prison, I remained Walters' prime muscle. That was enough, the prosecutor explained, to indict me and toss me into the sensational case.

  And not only me, but my father as well. At the very least, they wanted Dad to testify about his longtime dealings with Walters. That threat got my attention. My first reaction was to protect Dad.

  "My dad's been in jail seventeen years," I protested. "He's sixty-eight years old. Leave him out of this."

  Pearl made no promises. It all depended upon how cooperative I was, he said. "We don't want your father. Just between us, we don't even want you. I don't know if we can make a case against you, or if it would stick. But we do have enough to get an indictment."

  I briefly tried my "I'm out of it, let me do my time in peace" routine, but I could see that wasn't going to get me anywhere. The Norby Walters case was too big. The Chicago prosecutors, Howard Pearl and Anton Valukas, were in a national goldfish bowl on this one.

  I also knew what the game was. It didn't matter what I could testify about. My story made no difference at all. My presence was what mattered. All the prosecutors had to do was connect Walters and Bloom with the mob, and the jury would raise their eyebrows, shudder, and convict the pair of anything the government wanted. I merely had to appear, give my name and mob rank, and admit to being a partner in World Sports and Entertainment, Inc. To help the jury members with their imaginations, and to juice the national headlines, the prosecutors would get me to chat about visiting Weisner and Dionne Warwick's guy Joe Grant on Walters' behalf.

  That was it. I wouldn't have to admit to any criminal activity. I wouldn't have to say anything to directly implicate Walters or Bloom. I didn't have to finger them in any criminal act whatsoever. I could testify and still stay semi-clean. The prosecutors would take the ball from there. They would be able to take my testimony, stand before the jury, hum The Godfather theme, and paint a portrait of Walters' operation that would make Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola proud.

  There was only one problem with this: to testify was to die when it came to the family.

  23

  Having gathered their evidence, Pearl and Randolph headed back to Chicago, and then I did some investigating of my own. Despite being in prison, my lines of communication were still operational, and what I learned was distressing. Word on the street was that Bloom was dealing and that he was going to roll on Walters. (This information was good. A year later, Sports Illustrated reported that Bloom had made a deal with state prosecutors in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to testify against Walters in a separate but related case involving a University of Alabama basketball player. If Walters was convicted, Bloom would receive some light sentence, like washing police cars for a week.)

  That was the final straw for me. It was apparent that the Chicago prosecutors had Walters and Bloom where they wanted them. Everything they had told me was true. They had the documents, the wiretaps, and the dirty athletes to prove their case, and it was getting too much media attention for them to allow Walters and Bloom to slip away. If the case continued to its logical end, it would not only grow but would also start sucking others down into the muck. I knew what I had to do. A one-line order, complete with the official Colombo stamp, was promptly dispatched to Walters: "Take a plea. End it for all of us."

  At the time, Walters could have walked away with eighteen months, Bloom less, and he wouldn't have had to turn. Both could have been paroled in three to six months. But Walters refused.

  "Tell Michael they got nothin'-nothin'!" he responded. "I ain't takin' no plea. Tell Michael not to worry. I can beat it. Just tell him not to testify."

  Then a second, more urgent, message was sent to Walters through the mob courier system-"Michael strongly suggests that you take a plea. End this!"

  Walters refused again.

  I was infuriated. Walters had benefited from his mob associations his entire life. He used the mob when it helped him and denied it when it hurt. Now he was disobeying a direct order and putting family members at risk.

  The Norby Walters mess was hurting my own future. I was determined to do the minimum, forty months, and get out of prison. Now Walters was putting me into the position of possibly having to do the whole ten years. And that was just my current sentence. If I was dropped into the fetid Jockgate stew, I could have another decade or so tacked on-all to save Norby Walters from doing six months soft time in a case he was going to be convicted in anyway.

  "I'm not doing one extra day for Norby Walters," I vowed.

  But that vow meant doing the inconceivable-testifying.

  The trouble was that the inconceivable clashed with the unthinkable-being locked in a prison cell away from Cammy for up to seventeen more years.

  "I'll answer truthfully. No lies," I told Kelton. "Just the honest truth. Norby is an associate of the family. I am his partner. I don't know what Norby did. I never met a single athlete. I met Lloyd Bloom one time. I never heard of Kathe Clements. I was in jail when all this happened. End of story."

  There! I had started the ball rolling toward the inconceivable! Now what would happen?

  24

  I had more than a year to sit in my cell and contemplate my pending testimony. Messages filtered in from other mob associates about my decision. I was reminded about my oath never to reveal or acknowledge La Cosa Nostra. Yet, at the famous Cosa Nostra commission trials in New York, the heads of the five families had acknowledged its existence. So that section of the oath appeared to no longer apply.

  I briefly considered seeking advice from my father, but I abandoned the idea when I realized how tough the communication would be between two prisoners three thousand miles apart. Short messages could be delivered, but the process didn't allow for give-and-take. I felt that he needed a face-to-face, two-way communication to understand my decision.

  Being unable to arrange such a meeting wasn't critical. I knew my father well enough to know exactly what he would say. He would listen, nod his head, and agree to all my arguments. He would agree that the price was too severe to protect Norby Walters. He would agree that Norby wasn't worth making any sacrifice for-much less one so grave. But then, after I had presented my overwhelming case, Dad would furrow his cons
iderable brow and advise me not to testify.

  In Dad's thinking, testifying just wasn't right. It wouldn't look good. It would embarrass the family. And most of all, it went against the all-powerful oath. Even though my father himself sometimes questioned allegiance to the oath, he always remained loyal to it.

  I knew my father so well that I could almost hear him rendering his judgment.

  "We took this oath, Michael, and we're just going to have to live by it," he would say, ignoring the dire consequences. "We made our bed, and now we've got to sleep in it."

  This is all so crazy, I thought. How could my father still feel that way after all he has suffered, after a life squandered in prison, after putting his family through twenty years of pain and financial hardship, and after being forgotten, betrayed, and demoted by his own organization?

  I thought about the oath, the blood oath I had sealed twelve years before. It seemed exciting back then-a secret brotherhood based upon honor and integrity. I had repeated the ominous words and become a made man like my father. As I lay on my prison bed now, Thomas DiBella's words echoed through my mind in disjointed segments: "If your mother is dying and you are at her bedside, and the boss calls, you leave your mothef.....If you are ordered to kill-even your best friend-even your fatheryou do it. No questions. If you fail, you will be killed...." They were harsh words, but such power was supposed to be tempered with a strong sense of evenhandedness and uncompromising honor.

  "Those who obey will be protected; those who disobey will be killed." But it hadn't worked like that. Those who obeyed were sometimes killed, and those who disobeyed often escaped unharmed. Politics, money, and power weighed heavily on serious family matters that should have been determined by the "honorable" code hidden in the oath we all swore to. I hadn't failed the oath, I reasoned, however conveniently; the oath had failed me! It had destroyed my father and mother and brothers and sisters, and now it was trying to destroy me and my family.