Nothing But Money

All the men left the restaurant and got into the Camaro. Dirty Danny agreed to drive, Louis Tuzzio got in the passenger seat. Robert Lino got in the backseat behind Tuzzio. Ambrosino and Frank got in a second car, which was to follow a ways behind. Frank’s pals went off in their own direction. As far as Louis Tuzzio was concerned, he was on his way to joining the brotherhood of thieves and murderers, a life goal realized at last. The two cars pulled away from curbside and headed out into the frigid Brooklyn night.

Before this night, Robert from Avenue U had never actually pointed a gun at another man and pulled the trigger. True, he was a criminal. He had collected illegal protection payments, he’d run a sports book, he’d dug a hole for Gabe Infanti. He also had knowledge of many bad acts committed by his father and his father’s cousins and friends. But to be an actual shooter—that was a different matter. You could scheme, you could extort, you could even threaten. But to actually look a man in the eye and know you were going to take it all the way—that brought you to a different place.

It was a powerful feeling, with a price. It was, like anything else, a choice. You could say you were just following orders, but in the end, you chose to follow the orders. You personally acquired the gun, inserted the clip, made sure the safety was off, sat in the backseat in the dark knowing what you were about to do. You knew that physically, all that was required was to squeeze a trigger. That was easy. But to actually point the gun at another man’s head and blow out his brains—that was new to Robert of Avenue U.

What did he think about as he sat there in the darkened car, gun fully loaded, ready? Did he think of his father? His father had done things like this. He had shot his good friend, Sonny Black. Did he think of his own future? From now on he would be different from the average salary-earning dope who walked this earth. Did he think of Louis Tuzzio? Louis had a wife, a mother, maybe future kids. Did he think about what he had to gain? After, Robert would be able to say he was a capable guy. He could become a man of honor, a man of respect. He could get his button, and everybody who needed to know would know how he got it. Everybody would know that Robert of Avenue U was capable of taking another man’s life. How many people who prowl the malls and buy a newspaper from the guy on the corner have taken another man’s life? By the time he sat in that Camaro with Louis Tuzzio, Robert of Avenue U had known quite a few murderers. His father. His cousin Eddie. For all he knew, his cousin Frank. In a way, taking that final step, making that ultimate choice, wasn’t really that surprising for Robert. In fact, you could argue, it was expected.

The car came to a jarring halt. A figure jumped out of the driver’s side and ran away from the car, leaving the door open. This was Dirty Danny, Louis Tuzzio’s childhood friend. Now the car itself was rocking back and forth, with screaming inside. A figure in the front seat was flailing madly, kicking at the windshield as if restrained from behind. Shots were fired and the car stopped its rocking. All was quiet. A few moments later, a second figure emerged, from the backseat, straightened himself up, brushed off his jacket. The two figures ran toward an approaching car and jumped in. Robert’s childhood pal, Ambrosino, was at the wheel. They sped away from the scene and disappeared into the streets of New York.

A few hours later two beat cops on street patrol noticed a Camaro with the door open. There was a body sprawled across the front seat, with blood all over. The windshield had been kicked out from within. The body still had a wallet filled with bills, and the license had the name and face of one Louis Tuzzio. When the forensics team showed up, they estimated Tuzzio had five bullets inside his body, including one inside his cranium. Canvassing the neighborhood began. The shots were heard by no one. There were no suspects. The police theorized it was an organized crime hit because of the professional nature of the killing and the fact that no money was taken. And they mentioned that Tuzzio had certain associates who were known figures in the underworld. The cops loved to talk like this. They’d seen all the movies. They knew the lines. What they didn’t know was who killed Louis Tuzzio.

Mafia induction ceremony etiquette is subject to interpretation. Not everyone agrees on the correct way to swear allegiance to a secret society of murderers, extortionists, etc. There is no Emily Post of la cosa nostra to straighten things out. The rules are somewhat vague. The ceremony itself must take place away from the prying eyes of the government. It can’t be held at Red Lobster, for example, or Olive Garden. The location is supposed to be known only to a select few, and made known to the inductees only at the last minute. Usually all of corporate management shows up: the boss, the underboss, the consigliere and as many of the captains as they can fit in the basement of a split-level ranch with faux wood paneling and wet bar. Those who are incarcerated are excused. Inductees are brought in one by one by their respective sponsors. Almost everybody does the business with pricking the trigger finger that’s become quite popular on television shows and in movies that portray organized crime as a fun-loving group of miscreants similar to Long John Silver and his band of merry pirates. A made guy—sometimes it’s the sponsor, sometimes the consigliere—uses a pin to prick the index finger of the inductee to draw a little blood, which is then smeared on a small card depicting a saint. Sometimes it’s Saint Anthony. Never is it Saint Jude. The saint card with the blood is placed in the open palm of the inductee and lit. As it burns, the inductee must repeat something along the lines of “If I ever give up the secrets of this organization may I burn like this saint.” Most everybody has a gun and knife present on the table to symbolize the tools of the trade. Inductees are asked if they know why they’re there, and they’re supposed to say no, even though without exception they all know. A list of rules is read, and everybody locks up—a circle of men holding hands, symbolizing either unity or the eternal fear that the guy next to you will turn informant and the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.

In early 1991, this was more or less what Robert Lino was expecting as he headed with his cousin, Frank, to the pigeon club owned by Anthony Spero on Bath Avenue in Gravesend. On the roof of this three-story Brooklyn apartment building were a number of pigeon coops. In the basement was a group of men, waiting for Robert Lino and another young man, who were about to participate in a ceremony they were supposed to know nothing about. For more than seventy years this ceremony had been going on in the basements and backrooms of Gravesend, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Red Hook and Elizabeth, New Jersey. In the Bonanno group, the ceremonies could be held just about anyplace. Robert’s father, Bobby Senior, had been inducted in an upstairs room of a company called J&S Cake that was really just a social club. Now it was Robert’s turn.

At the pigeon club Frank Lino brought Robert into a waiting room on the first floor to sit and sweat with his fellow inductee, a guy everybody called Richie Shellac Head, a supervising pressman at the New York Post who was known as an earner, not a tough guy. Robert from Avenue U knew he was there under different circumstances. He was a capable guy. Everyone in the room downstairs knew he’d helped with the Tuzzio problem.

This was a point of contention for some gangsters. John Gotti, for instance, favored capable guys. He didn’t want to induct anybody into the family unless they had been involved in a piece of work, just like him. He and a number of the old-timers preferred tough guys to earners. Earners were like Shellac Head. He operated a major-league bookie ring at the New York Post, so he kicked up plenty of money. This was why he was being inducted. Not Robert Lino. Although he was extremely helpful in supporting his cousin, Frank, who was now his sponsor, he was also known as a capable guy.

Since the Tuzzio hit he’d been called upon to repeat his performance. This was the New Robert from Avenue U. From now on, he would be expected to do more than roll a guy up inside a rug. When a marijuana-dealing Bonanno associate complained that some mope had come into his home, tied him up and threatened to kill his family unless he came up with cash, Robert Lino was put on the case. The marijuana dealer paid Robert $25,000 to kill Fat Sally, the mope he believed had terrorized his family. Robert and a friend found Fat Sally at his body shop in Brooklyn, but Fat Sally saw them coming and—despite his girth—managed to hide behind a tree. Lino took some shots but failed to hit his intended target, although he definitely hit the tree. Then it turned out Fat Sally wasn’t involved in the home invasion after all, so now Robert had to go after another guy whose name he didn’t know but who was the new suspect in the home invasion. Robert from Avenue U tried to kill him, too, but this guy wore a bulletproof vest. So far Robert hadn’t experienced a lot of luck in the business of killing people, but he had made one thing quite clear—he was a capable guy.

First Robert was called downstairs. He entered the basement and saw guys he’d known all his life. He was introduced by cousin Frank and was asked if he knew why he was there. He said no. They told him it was not a club, it was a secret society. They asked if he had any problem with any of the men in the room. He said no. They went through the burning saint and pricked trigger finger. Robert Lino was a guy who appreciated ceremony. He believed it elevated the mundane, added a certain resonance to the everyday. There was history here. Legacy. Certainly he must have been appreciative of the fact that he was there in this basement in Brooklyn participating in this ceremony to fulfill his father’s dream.

Never touch another made man without permission from the boss. Never sleep with a made man’s wife or daughter. Always put your business on record with your captain. Soldiers can’t talk with the administration about business; usually the consigliere deals with the captains about issues. You can’t be introduced to another made man except by a made man. No stocks and bonds. That was an old rule, going back to the beginning. And so on. One rule in particular must have made Robert Lino cringe. The rule was “No drugs.”

Everybody knew that Robert’s father had been a major-league drug dealer, and that hadn’t stopped the Bonanno crime family from welcoming him into its protective fold. Everybody knew Bobby Lino sold drugs that had nearly destroyed his own flesh and blood. He’d lost a son to drugs. His daughter was locked within the claustrophobic world of addiction. And here stood Robert Lino, nodding as a skipper said with a straight face, “No drugs,” and everybody else in the room nodded in agreement, especially the guys who’d built second homes and bought nice cars and boats based on the income from narcotics.

In a world of criminals, how seriously could anyone take these rules? In this world, rules weren’t really rules. They were more like guidelines. Suggestions. If you found a good reason to chuck them in the dustbin, if it was good for business or even just good for you, so be it. But you had to have rules. If you didn’t, there was nothing but chaos and anarchy. You had to have rules and recite them so everybody knew what was what. When the reading of the rules was finished, all the men stood in a circle—the newly inducted Robert Lino and Richie Shellac Head—and they all held hands. They swore allegiance to this family—even over their blood family—and then the ceremony was over.

As his father had dreamed, Robert Lino was now a soldier in the Bonanno organized crime family, one of the five remaining Mafia families in America. No one could touch him without permission from the bosses. No one could bother his family. He could invoke the power of the Bonanno family name and reap its benefits, both financial and otherwise. He could make a living without doing a legitimate day’s work. He was part of la famiglia, and his timing was perfect.

As would soon be made clear, the 1990s would be very good for the Bonanno crime family. The government believed that the FBI agent pretending to be Donnie Brasco had delivered a knockout blow to the Bonanno family, so they focused their ample resources on the other four families. The plan was simple: the bosses of all the other families would soon go to prison. Most importantly, John Gotti had just been indicted again. And this time, there were all these tape recordings of the loudmouthed Gotti going on and on about killing this guy because he didn’t come in when he was called and severing this guy’s head just because and so on. Meanwhile the boss of the Genovese family, Vincent Gigante, was parading unshaven around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, pretending to be a lunatic to avoid incarceration. This was hardly a way for a boss to behave. The Colombo family was shooting at each other in the streets, split down the middle by a disagreement over who should run the family while the boss, Carmine Persico, served a life term. And the Lucchese family was pretty much on its last legs, forced underground by its decision to try and kill the sister of an informant. Until the day they went after the sister, family members were off-limits. This constellation of events presented the Bonanno crime family with certain unique opportunities, and Robert Lino was in a perfect spot to benefit. The family had, in fact, survived the Brasco fiasco, and in truth, the FBI agent had not succeeded in bringing the family down. It was a temporary setback. With all the other families jammed up and the family boss, Joseph

When the decision comes down from corporate headquarters to clip somebody, it’s important that the victim stay dead. Ideally that means burying a body so that the authorities never again find even a scrap of the deceased. Bodies provide clues. Clues lead to prosecutions. Prosecutions lead to informants and then it all falls apart. Robert Lino knew that the ideal situation was to make sure the bodies stayed buried. Lately that had been a bit of a problem.

In recent months, the FBI had dredged up numerous missing persons. Sonny Black had floated to the surface in Staten Island. Sonny Red popped up in Queens. A former deputy commissioner at the city’s Marine and Aviation Department showed up in the trunk of a car. A Sicilian hit man was found chopped up and stuffed inside several steel drums in New Jersey. Louis Tuzzio lay there inside the Camaro right on the streets of Brooklyn for the cops to find. Another guy turned up wrapped in a rug and left in the rear seat of his own truck parked at John F. Kennedy International Airport. There wasn’t anything anybody could do about Sonny Black, or the Sicilian hit man, or Louis Tuzzio, or any of the rest of them. They were already government exhibit whatever. But there were others out there still.

No indictment scared the Bonanno family like that of Tommy Karate. Here was a guy involved in who knows how many pieces of work. Usually he personally did the shooting or stabbing or strangling, plus disposal in the bathtub. But he always did it because somebody told him to. Therefore he was a font of information for the FBI, and he’d been indicted on numerous murders and faced the death penalty. The Bonanno family immediately expected he’d turn informant, and then many a ship would be sunk. But if Tommy Karate told the FBI a body was buried at a certain spot and it wasn’t, then the body didn’t really exist, and Tommy might be seen not just as a sadistic killer but, even worse for the FBI, as a manipulative liar. Suddenly in the days after Tommy Karate’s arrest, there were groups of gangsters with shovels gathered in remote sections of Brooklyn, Queens and especially Staten Island, digging furiously in the dark, trying to turn Tommy Karate into a liar.

This time Robert Lino was a made man, a soldier in the Bonanno crime family. He now had his own crew of soldiers and reported to his cousin Frank. He was handling most of Frank’s sports book and loan-shark collection, which provided a pretty steady stream of cash. Mostly he was interested in keeping a low profile. That was the most important thing. Look what was happening with Gotti. Here was a guy who openly taunted law enforcement, holding meetings with his crews right there on Mulberry Street, having dinner with actors, making the federal government and the city of New York look stupid with his fireworks out in Howard Beach. He liked being high-profile, and now he was in jail, indicted yet again, this time charged with killing his former boss, Paul Castellano. Sure he’d beaten three previous cases, but this one seemed different. This time there was a bug placed inside the guy’s inner sanctum. This time it looked like John Gotti, the self-proclaimed boss of bosses, was on his way out.

That probably wasn’t such a bad thing. The boss of the Bonanno family, Joseph Massino, had openly courted Gotti’s support. Everybody knew Massino had met with Gotti the day before Castellano was shot dead outside Sparks Steak House on that chilly December evening in 1985. But now Gotti was likely to spend the rest of his life in jail, and the Bonanno family was in a position to take advantage of the expected void left behind.

Actually it wasn’t his. It belonged to a distant relative of the Lino family named Jimmy Labate. Labate was a heavyset redheaded guy with limited memory bank and a stunned expression who happened to have married to one of Robert Lino’s cousins. It was tough to be friends with Jimmy. He had a bad reputation for borrowing money and then forgetting to pay it back. He fancied himself a tough guy. He wore knee-length leather jackets and carried a .38. He was a rugged-looking character with the face of a failed pugilist. His dad had been in construction and close to the Gambino family, so now Jimmy was put with a Gambino soldier named Johnny Gammarano—Johnny G. This Gambino soldier was a nasty guy who treated Jimmy poorly, so Jimmy was looking to jump to the Bonanno family. Robert was trying to help him with the transfer, but to date, Jimmy hadn’t really ingratiated himself with the people who had the power to make that happen.

When Bobby Lino Sr. was alive, Jimmy Labate borrowed money from Bobby’s partner in the pizza place, the Colombo gangster Nicky Black. He and Bobby had been partners forever, and it wasn’t right for a relative of the Lino family to owe Nicky Black all this money. Jimmy, of course, was sure he’d be paying it back at any moment. He had grand plans. He was going to put some of it out on the street and pump the rest into the Staten Island construction business he’d inherited from his father. But construction in the late 1980s had fallen off, and Labate liked to gamble and got behind in his payments. It is one thing to get behind in your payments to Chase Manhattan Bank. They will cut off your credit and try to seize your house. But to stiff Nicky Black would be to willfully invite physical harm upon yourself. Robert’s father, Bobby, became responsible for collecting the debt, bit by bit, from Jimmy and bringing the money to Nicky Black. This was how Robert Lino got to know Jimmy Labate, debtor extraordinaire.

On this night, Jimmy was making up for all his sins. He could handle heavy machinery, and he was doing a competent job with a bulldozer, chipping away at the frozen Staten Island dirt in the frantic search for the late Gabe Infanti. Robert and cousin Frank had pulled up twenty minutes into the job and now sat inside a sedan with the heater on full blast watching as scoop by scoop of potential Gabe was dumped into the back of a dump truck.

One of the guys who was there the night they first buried Gabe had returned to the scene of the crime. It was Ronnie, and he was supposed to help remember where they’d planted Gabe. Ronnie couldn’t remember. Nobody could remember. It had been years, and the actual digging and dumping had occurred in the middle of the night. It wasn’t like somebody had some sort of Treasure Island map with a big X to mark Gabe. Everything looked the same and everything looked different. Gabe could be anywhere. Some of the landmarks that were familiar the night they buried Gabe—abandoned cars in the weeds, some Jersey barriers—were gone. It was possible they were completely turned around and digging yards away from where Gabe lurked. The guy Ronnie scanned the dirt like a scout, looking for who knows what. Gabe’s bones? Gabe’s Rolex? Who knew what would be left of poor Gabe four years later with the lye and everything.

Sitting in the car watching all this, cousin Frank made it clear he was unhappy to see Jimmy Labate and another guy nobody knew with the truck. Robert admitted he didn’t really know the guy with the truck either, but he told Frank he was pretty sure the guy had no clue about what was really going on here. Cousin Frank had to wonder about this. What did the guy think they were doing out here in the middle of the night?