TWO (OTHER) NICKYS AND A FUNERAL
I was a numbers guy and I was never wrong about them or this: companies could be bought and sold and so could people . . .
Even on his deathbed, my father was a monster.
He was diagnosed with colon cancer around the time of my wedding to Dorian, and during his final months, I set up twenty-four-hour hospice care in the Gerhardt house next door. I bought it after Midge died a few years earlier to keep my parents away from each other and more importantly, to lessen the amount my mother got hit.
Midge lived a long time after Charlie died, well into her nineties. She eventually went into a nursing home for her final years and my mother was the only one to visit her.
“They’re not taking proper care of her,” she told me one day. “It’s horrible.”
This was my chance, I realized, to make up for the heartless way I treated Charlie before he passed away. I drove to the nursing home in Passaic and found Midge drugged and parked in a wheelchair in the hallway with a row of other sickly patients, sitting in her own shit.
“Take me to the doctor in charge,” I said to the head nurse. “NOW!”
I had to hold myself back from choking the guy as soon as I walked into his office. Let me cut to the chase: Midge was taken care of like a queen after my visit that day. And I hoped that for all the love Charlie and Midge had given me, this was giving just a little bit back.
Buying their house later and separating my parents was the best thing to ever happen to their long-suffering marriage. She was safer, and he watched TV all day in peace.
A week before my father died, I took Dorian—eight months pregnant at the time with baby number two—with me to my parents’ home to say our goodbyes. He knew he was dying and I was hoping he might have a word of regret or apology or kindness for me—something, anything—before it was too late. It was our last chance.
We stood at his bedside in the living room where he was hooked up to a bunch of tubes and oxygen.
“Dad, we’re going to name our son after you,” I told him. He glared at me and hissed, then looked at Dorian.
“Get away from him . . . as quickly as you can,” he said, laboring for breath. “He’s . . . no good. He’s . . . the devil.”
Those were pretty much my father’s last words. He died in September 1996, one month before his namesake, baby Joey, was born. He left this world hating and abusing his own son until the end, certain I was a failure and even worse—evil. I guess my full-moon Botswanan exorcism didn’t take.
At his funeral, no one got up to speak about him. What could they say? Everyone knew he’d abused his family for years, and they were all glad the motherfucker was dead. As for me, I felt sick as I saw his coffin lowered into the ground. I both hated him and loved him, and I had no idea how to make sense of those conflicting feelings.
I spit on his grave.
The irony was that my father died believing I amounted to less than nothing. But that year, I was about to make the biggest, most lucrative deal of my career.
Cambridge went bankrupt after I looted the funeral homes and Audi dealership, but I immediately started a new investment company, Wellesley (another London street I used to frequent with Kate), and I took my cast of loyal and unusual suspects at Cambridge—David, Rob, and Freddy—with me.
My new brilliant idea? Garbage. Garbage!
What I did with the courier companies and trucking, I could do with garbage! It was a highly profitable industry already and my approach—packaging small companies together to sell to a larger, strategic partner that was already public—had never been done before, either. When you think about it, my entire life had been about doing things that had never been done before. I knew the deal would be a winner because my hands got itchy just thinking about it, and I could smell the stench of the Meadowlands dump. I took that as a good sign.
To pull off my deal, I was going to need more than my usual Golden Tongue touch. Garbage was even more mobbed up than trucking, and no company would consider cooperating with me unless I had the power of the mob behind me.
Fat Pauly—still flush from his $20 million windfall from the courier deal—was eager to help and make more money, so we met at the Tick Tock Diner to discuss it.
He knew the top two people in garbage in the Tri-state area: Bruno Paglia, also known as “the king of New York garbage,” and Marco Benelli, also known as “the king of New Jersey garbage.” Like me, they were both Genovese-associated, so we were already family. Both had sold their companies to a big conglomerate, so they couldn’t be part of my deal. But they knew everybody who was anybody in the garbage industry and would talk me up to all of them for a price.
Before we even did that, though, I had to get approval from the big, big boss of all of us.
In the winter of 1996, I made my way down a dark staircase to the basement of Angelo’s of Mulberry Street in Little Italy to “go to the well.” I went to meet with Vincent “The Chin” Gigante—the head of the Genovese crime family and capo of all five New York crime families.
It was months before the mob boss’s dramatic trial the following summer in which he’d be convicted of racketeering and conspiracy and later sentenced to twelve years in federal prison. With a waiter standing lookout at the top of the stairs, he and I met in the bathroom, then stepped into a little “office” down the hall. I wasn’t nervous. His sons, Sal and Andrew (whom I met at A-Z Passage with Alberto Lido), already told him I was one of the family’s biggest earners who could make him a lot of kickback dough with this garbage deal.
He wore regular street clothes—not the bathrobe and pajamas tourists hoped to catch a glimpse of when he did his “crazy” act in the West Village—a performance he kept up for years to appear unfit for trial and stay out of prison. Our meeting lasted just a few minutes; we didn’t even sit down.
“How you doin’? I’m Tom,” I said, and we did the mob-guy hug.
“I heard all about you,” he whispered.
He was known for his whisper, and I found out later that he talked like that all the time in case anyone around him wore a wire, or in case a place was bugged. We didn’t intend to talk much, anyway. I was there so he could eyeball me. And so he could tell me that if I didn’t kick back to him, they’d fucking kill me.
“Make sure you give my sons the envelopes. Don’t make us come and look for you.”
“You’ll be well taken care of,” I promised.
“That’s good, Tom,” he said. “You go ahead and do this thing and good luck. You got my blessing to go forward with the garbage deal. Make sure you do the right thing.”
It was the same thing Hoffa said to me once. With The Chin’s support, no one could stop me; I would turn garbage into gold.
Wellesley’s first office was in one of the Quirks’ defunct funeral homes in Bergenfield. I’d been stringing the Quirks along for a few years at this point, and they were still waiting for their money to come in. They lost big money in the Cambridge collapse and took back their funeral homes after that. But I was able to convince them to invest half a million in Wellesley and loan me one of the funeral homes to use as an office.
How did I convince them to invest again?
Easy. I didn’t own Cambridge, so it wasn’t my fault they lost money, I told them. I wasn’t the official owner, David Lardier was.
“David did it. David fucked it all up,” I explained, as we sat in the parlor of one of the funeral homes. I could smell traces of formaldehyde in the air. “I was busy doing the courier deal and I put David in charge of the funeral homes.”
Harry had kept the Feds from investigating the downfalls of both the Audi dealership and the funeral homes, but that didn’t stop the Quirks or the Volkswagen Group from filing a lawsuit against David. I thought it best not to mention that David was now working with me at Wellesley, too. Because he took the fall, I put David on the payroll and gave him a company BMW for his troubles, then kept him out of sight.
Meanwhile, I took the Quirks out for expensive dinners at Valentino’s restaurant and got them to invest another half a million into Wellesley, and pledge more as collateral on loans to the company.
“You’re gonna make millions of dollars with the new deal,” I promised. “Come on over to this deal over here. I’ll get back all your money—and more. You can be fifty percent owners.”
I did the numbers for them with pen and paper right there at the dinner table, as the waiter poured champagne, and handed them the pages.
“When we take it public”—I pointed to my scribbles—“you’ll make $27 million.”
Do ya understand yet? I break into people’s lives, that’s what I do.
The official owner and president of Wellesley was Keith Moody, a former investment banker at Smith Barney and a neighbor of mine at the townhouse complex where Dorian and I lived. His best qualification for the job? He came with built-in investors, which was beautiful.
For chief financial officer, I recruited my cousin Anthony Bianco—the nerdy, smart bookworm I used to play with as a kid. He was now a CFO at Panasonic in Secaucus. Like my father and me, Anthony was a crackerjack with numbers and had it in his DNA. He had a double master’s degree in finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Anthony had a very specialized role in the company; I needed him to do the books and checks exactly as I told him to. In other words, I needed someone I could trust to launder money out of the country for me, like Maggie had done years earlier. Every money guy needs another money guy like that.
Our managing director was Mario Sisco, and to handle our insurance, we got Luca Bastone, the son of underboss Pasquale “The Pipe” Bastone, who was in prison at the time. Luca called his father in prison to get dad’s approval before joining us. Luca had an insurance agency, and his clients included all the garbage companies in New York. How’d he get them? The Pipe put pressure on everyone. I was about to use that same tactic.
At Wellesley, I was the “consultant.” I lined up all the good people with honest faces and squeaky-clean reputations, and I stood behind them, a convicted felon, with the power of the mob behind me.
As soon as I had my key infrastructure in place, I got to work bringing in investors and putting together the garbage deal. Our qualifications to be an investor? You had to have a pulse. Fat Pauly was my biggest cheerleader, telling everyone about the $250 million I’d masterminded with the courier companies and the $20 million he made. He was the first to invest a few million into Wellesley and after his lead, the other courier guys from our previous deal followed.
Now I had to convince dozens of private garbage companies to sign “notes of intent” so I could sell them to a bigger, public company.
Fat Pauly, Marco, Bruno, and I started meeting up with garbage guys for dinners to get them excited and convince them to cooperate. We ate too much, drank too much, yelled across the table, and shoved each other around. And by the end of the dinners, they usually said yes. If it wasn’t the money that convinced them, it was something else: one look at Marco and Brunou at the table and they knew I was mobbed up the ass. The understanding was: sell me your company or I’m gonna fucking break your fucking legs.
When some garbage guys still hesitated to take our meeting or do our deal, I brought in guys—the Two Nickys—who had ways of making them say yes.
Nicolas Ola was the son of a high-ranking Colombo underboss, and Nicolas Calo was the son of a high-ranking Gambino underboss (and had recently worked as bodyguard for a major mob boss). I nicknamed them Big Nick and Nicky Glasses, respectively.
I met Big Nick after Dorian found a beautiful stone house for us in Saddle River, one of the wealthiest suburbs in New Jersey. When the owner and builder came to meet me at my funeral home office, I didn’t recognize the name at first. I hadn’t had many dealings with the Colombo family. His father had gotten out of prison while I was in Quantico at the FBI Academy.
Big Nick was a good-looking monster of a guy—about 6′7″ with shoulders like a linebacker.
“How much do you want for the house?” I asked.
“Two point five million.”
I could have taken that out of the petty cash.
“I ain’t got it,” I told him. “But here’s what I do got—$50,000. I want to buy your house but I won’t have the money for another six months, until I do my big deal. I want to give you $50,000 now to hold it for me.”
His face fell. “You want me to take my $2.5 million house off the market for fifty grand?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And while you’re at it, go check around and see who I am. I don’t know you from shit.”
He looked surprised. “I’m also in the trucking business,” he added calmly. “And I do business in the garment center.”
That was all I needed to know to tell me he was plugged in with the Colombos. Big Nick returned the next day to tell me I had a deal.
“My father asked around about you,” he said, “and he was told ‘Giacomaro’s mobbed up and he’s got the right people behind him. But he’s more than that. He’s a sophisticated thief. Give him the house.’ ”
The Saddle River house I bought from Big Nick
I liked the big lug right away. Three days later he brought around his business partner, Nicky Calo, who was just as big. He wore dark shades all the time, rarely talked, and even if you were standing close to him and could see his eyes, he looked right through you.
The Two Nickys were good enforcers when I needed to lean on someone. They were calm on the outside and vicious on the inside. I took them with me to Valentino’s the time I had to convince two brothers who did garbage in Jersey to sell us their company. We were in a private dining room upstairs, and the brothers were being stubborn.
“It’s a family business, you understand,” said one.
“This deal really isn’t for us,” said the other.
“Listen to me,” I told them. “One way or another, you’re going over the goal line with us. Maybe it’s with a broken leg. Maybe it’s in a body bag. But either way, you’re in the banana boat.”
Without saying a word, one of the Nickys (does it really matter which?) grabbed one of the brothers and dragged him to the fire escape door. It was a winter morning after a heavy snowfall, so to get the door open he had to kick it against a two-foot snowdrift on the other side. Once he got the door open wide enough, he threw the brother out the door and down the metal staircase. We heard him bounce against the steps and hit bottom. Nicky slammed the door shut and came back to the table.
“Now,” I said to the other brother, who was frozen in his chair, “are you gonna sign the letter of intent or what?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “And if my brother is still alive out there, he’ll sign, too.”
I could pretty much do anything I wanted and get away with it.
After Harry got promoted following his Camino-trial success, the FBI gave him a new, huge corner office with a view in Newark and made him the head of a new division they would develop especially for him. He was a big shot now.
But he was still my official “handler”—I was the only case that he kept. So any time the US Attorney’s Office asked about me, which wasn’t often, they reached out to him for an update.
“He’s still feeding me ongoing information,” he’d tell them, buying me another year of time. I was supposed to get sentenced for the pension fund money after the Camino trial was over, but I completely fell through the cracks. In the process of covering for me in furtherance of the greater good (my feeding them information), what happened next was against all the ethical rules: Harry and I became friends.
Once a month we’d meet at his new office and walk to a nearby Spanish restaurant for lunch—always making sure he paid for his and I paid for mine, so we followed at least one rule. Harry wouldn’t even take a bottle of water from me.
“I want you to be alert, Tom,” he said, in one of our first post-trial lunches. “Be vigilant. Enzo’s been convicted now—they’re all going to point the finger at you. He might come after you, or send someone to.”
I didn’t tell Harry that some of the connected garbage guys were so nervous about me that they were frisking me before meetings to check for a wire. One time I had to take my pants down in the bathroom to prove I wasn’t hiding a gun.
Harry was worried about me; he liked me. After we got shoptalk out of the way, we talked about our families, history, politics, and his hopes for the future. I’m sure he was the one who pulled a few strings for me to keep my eleven handguns (under Dorian’s name) and cases of double clips of ammunition at the house. I made her buy them soon after we got married even though a convicted felon out on a plea agreement was not supposed to have them. But Harry understood. He knew what I was doing made me a target and was very dangerous, so he wanted me to protect myself.
Harry was biding his time and running the clock until he reached twenty years with the Feds and could retire with a high-level pension for the rest of his life. I had an ulterior motive, of course. I didn’t want him to retire at all.
“Harry, I want you to be my Director of Security and Human Resources at Wellesley,” I told him. “I’ll start you at $150,000 a year salary and a new Porsche Boxster.”
Every time I made my offer, he laughed. But he didn’t say no.
Two of my loves—Lauren and one of my Bentleys, 1999
As my official handler still, Harry tried to keep me somewhat in line when and where he could. When I started living too lavishly again, I got an angry call from the US Attorney’s Office, yelling about the pension fund money I still owed.
“Are you crazy!” they said. “You’ve got Bentleys in your driveway, and the pension fund people are waiting for their money back!”
Harry had to talk me into giving the money back. I had tens of millions of dollars in the bank, but it hurt me to part with one penny of it. We set up monthly payments of $88,000 for a year and as it turned out, returning that money didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would; I took the money out of the Wellesley bank account.
By the end of 1998, as Harry was preparing to retire, my humungous garbage deal was ready to happen.
After two years of convincing, luring, threatening, and bribing, I rented the entire twenty-second floor at the Hilton in Bergenfield, New Jersey, at the end of November and gathered a group of fifteen garbage company owners. I had set up multibillion-dollar contract with the garbage conglomerate Allied Waste to buy a hundred smaller, private companies over the next year in groups of fifteen, and this would be my first group.
At the hotel I had fifteen rooms set up next to each other. In each sat the CEO, lawyers, and accountants of each company with pens in hands, waiting to sign contracts. Everyone would be signing all at once in what was called a “simultaneous closing”—kind of like an orgy where everyone climaxes at the same time, but more fun.
They were all ready and willing, pens poised, until Allied Waste found a contract problem an hour before our start time and we had to delay a day.
“No one is leaving this hotel!” I told them all, after gathering them in the hallway, “not even to go to fucking McDonald’s! You’re on lockdown!”
I couldn’t risk anything happening to anyone, or someone changing his or her mind. I sent out my bodyguards to buy pajamas, toothpaste, whatever they needed to stay the night and got everyone rooms. One day led to a second, and a third, until finally the day arrived.
On December 4, 1998, each group returned to its appointed meeting room on the twenty-second floor, and I ran up and down the hallway with a clipboard, darting in and out of each room. I was like a doctor, running in and out of patients’ rooms in a hospital. At this point, we were more like a loony bin.
One room had Mr. Rotundo and next to him was Mr. Appolito. Down the hall was Mr. Solano, then Mr. Pisanno. Next to him was Mr. Garofalo, Mr. Nicholas, Mr. Aiorielli. For hours I went in and out of the rooms, prepping everyone, until it was time to take the Allied Waste team around for the monumental signing of the contracts and shaking of the hands.
In one hour, we signed the fifteen contracts. The next day $100 million magically appeared in the Wellesley bank account—$25 million of it was all mine. It was like an injection of heroin into the bloodstream. And there was so much more to come.
It was cause for a celebration.
A week later I threw a massive party at the Stony Hill Inn with a twenty-one-piece orchestra, three hundred guests, and all the caviar, oysters, and champagne they could eat and drink. The party tab was $150,000, but to the victor go the spoils.
All the garbage company guys who’d done the deal were there, and so were the ones lined up for 1999. My Wellesley crew mixed it up with my mob crew, and even though it was against the rules, Harry was there. He was two weeks from retirement; what were the Feds gonna do, fire him?
Keith Moody gave a tipsy speech and thanked the garbage guys and me, his humble consultant: “To our special advisor, Tom Giacomaro!” he said, lifting his glass of champagne.
Everyone cheered as I lifted my glass and the band struck up one of my favorite non-Christmas Sinatra tunes—“I’ve Got the World on a String.”
That’s exactly how I felt. That December, I received two Christmas gifts I’d wanted all year. First was the genius deal I pulled off, which was going to make me rich beyond my sickest, most indulgent dreams and imagination.
And my second gift was Harry, who was across the room toasting me with his champagne flute in the air.
I was a numbers guy and I was never wrong about them or this: companies could be bought and sold and so could people, if the price was right. That month I hit the jackpot on both. I really did have the world on a string.
What could possibly go wrong?