18

THE KIMBERLY HOTEL

Wednesday, September 18, 1991, was a Jewish holiday. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Schools were closed and many New Yorkers had the day off. The mobsters handling the operations of the Luchese crime family hoped that law enforcement had it off too. They scheduled a business meeting for that afternoon.

Despite the many recent setbacks and the fears permeating their ranks, their marching orders from the boss in jail and the underboss still in hiding remained unchanged: no letup on their enemies, no slacking off on their criminal enterprises. Vic Amuso and Anthony Casso had blossomed into full-blown fanatical despots, prepared to take everyone down with them. They were ruling now purely through terror, ready to execute any who disappointed them.

*   *   *

The meeting began at a fashionable Chinese restaurant called Chin Chin tucked away on East Forty-Ninth Street. It was another favorite of Anthony Baratta, the Upper East Side dining connoisseur and narcotics marketer. Al had Joe Fiore drive him uptown to the restaurant. He arrived promptly at 1 p.m.

When he arrived, Baratta was out front with Frankie Pearl Federico, the drug-dealing assassin who had grappled with carter Robert Kubecka. Baratta told Al they were waiting for representatives of the Bonanno crime family. They wanted to discuss a beef about a bookmaking problem.

Al gave a silent groan. He knew exactly what it was about. He thought he had already resolved the dispute. Frank Lagano, one of the crew members taken away from him in recent weeks, was accused of stiffing the Bonanno family on a hefty debt. Lagano and his pal, Curly Russo, would be there as well.

After a few minutes, Anthony Spero, the acting Bonanno boss, arrived. With him was acting underboss Sal Vitale and a craggy-faced capo in his seventies from Bensonhurst named John Faraci, known to everyone as “Johnny Green.”

Al respected Spero as an old-school gangster. And he was fond of Johnny Green, who had landed at Normandy on D-day. But he wasn’t looking forward to the debate. Lagano was given to raving and rambling. And he knew the Bonanno crew was seriously bent out of shape over the matter.

They sat at a table in the front of the restaurant. Al noticed right away that Baratta seemed nervous. He kept looking at his watch. At one point he called over Federico. “Tell the hotel we’re on our way,” he told him.

Federico’s job was to be the walker. “He’s the guy who takes you to the meeting, since it’s supposed to be a secret where it is until you get there.” Al knew exactly where they were going, however. They had used the Kimberly Hotel around the corner on East Fiftieth Street before for meetings.

When Federico returned, Baratta gestured toward the Bonanno crew members. They followed Frankie Pearl over to the hotel. In silence, Al waited with Baratta. Bowat seemed distracted, he noticed again, still looking at his watch and tapping his feet. There was no small talk.

When Federico came back, Al followed him out to the street. Baratta said he would wait for Frank Lastorino. “On the way out I see Frankie Pearl turn around and look back at Bowat. He makes this little gesture with his hands, like, ‘Where do you want me to take him?’ And Bowat points toward the hotel. I caught that, too.”

Federico seemed edgy as well. “We’re walking up Third Avenue. I know Frankie a long time. We were in prison together and the guy usually talks a mile a minute. Now he’s not saying anything.”

Federico turned onto East Fiftieth Street and paused in the middle of the block in front of the Kimberly. Next door was a French restaurant with green canopies. Federico pulled out a slip of paper with the room number on it. “It’s 29B,” Federico said. He stayed on the sidewalk as Al entered the hotel.

The lobby was surprisingly empty. The clerk behind the reception desk, a short man with close-cropped hair in a dark blue uniform, nodded to Al as he headed for the elevator bank. The room was on the hotel’s top floor.

Sal Avellino opened the door. The Golfer looked tired, like he didn’t want to be there. Al told him that Baratta and Lastorino were on their way. It was a two-room suite. He entered down a short hallway past a bathroom. Beyond was a sitting room with two couches, chairs, a TV, and a bar. To the left was a bedroom with its own sitting room and another bathroom. The Bonanno family officials were back there with Lagano and Russo, already haggling over the money.

The issue centered on a major gambler who was close to Frank Lagano. The gambler had lost $400,000 with one of the Bonanno’s bookmaking outfits. “They claimed Frankie’s guy beat them for some serious money.” Al had tried to work out a settlement a few months earlier, but Lagano had failed to follow through.

It was a lengthy discussion. Baratta and Lastorino arrived in the middle of it. Al did his best to defend his former crew member. It was a losing cause. “Frankie Lagano wouldn’t listen. He was raising his voice all over the place. I had to remind him that he was speaking to an acting boss, Anthony Spero.” The final verdict was that Lagano would have to pay $135,000 to wipe out the debt.

As the Bonanno members got up to leave, the conversation turned to Pete Chiodo and his performance on the witness stand a few days earlier. There were no Bonanno family members in the case, but Spero was seething. There was only one way to deal with the problem, he said. “All the family members of those who become rats should be killed,” he said with venom. “Women, children, everything. Murder them.”

Al listened to the speech in shock. Anthony Spero had been around a long time. If he was talking that way, Al thought, then the Life was changing. So were the men at the top.

It was already 4 p.m. The panel members still had a long agenda. “We went over construction deals, loan shark collections, gambling. We talked about what to do for Vic. It was a lot of stuff.”

An hour later, Baratta called downstairs to Federico to bring up coffee and sandwiches. Al watched his every move. He kept thinking something was off. Lastorino and Baratta seemed to be exchanging little smiles, passing remarks. “Maybe things will be better soon,” Lastorino said at one point, looking at Baratta as he spoke. Baratta smiled and nodded. It was an inside joke of some kind. Al looked at them. Did they think he didn’t notice?

Lastorino kept going into the bathroom by the entrance. Al counted five trips. It was like his kidneys were floating.

“What’d you do?” Al asked when he came back and sat down. “Drink too much last night?” Lastorino, a big man with a head of dark curly hair, ignored him. He sat back down at the end of the couch.

To Al, everything the men did in the room became increasingly ominous. Every little action was magnified. Lastorino kept reaching inside his shirt, scratching his chest. He might be hiding a weapon, thought Al. He’s trying to get me used to it, so I won’t notice when he grabs it.

Baratta stood up and began walking around the suite collecting used glasses, cups, and plates. Al swiveled in his chair, watching him move about the room. What’s he doing that for? Al wondered. The guy’s not a waiter. He’s running a crime family. Al’s mind was racing. Maybe he’s getting rid of anything with fingerprints on it. That must be it, he decided.

Al was sitting upright in his chair. Behind him was a large armoire. There was a long coffee table in front of him. Even the discussions weren’t making sense to him anymore. It sounded like mindless babble. They were filling up time, he decided. Waiting for something to happen.

Al looked out the window. It was getting dark. He checked the clock. It was 7 p.m. Suddenly, Baratta announced he had to leave. “Frank, I have to make that appointment, remember?”

Lastorino looked up. “Oh right, you got to go, right, Anthony?”

They sounded like actors talking on a stage, Al thought, as though they’d rehearsed that little exchange. But it was an opening for him to leave as well. He wanted to get out of there as soon as he could. He’d been there too long already.

Al stood up. As he rose, Lastorino came halfway off the couch, his hand stretched out. “Al, wait a minute,” he said, sounding excited. “Don’t go yet. I got Big Mike downstairs. He wants to talk about that thing with the Koreans and the corrugated cardboard.”

Now Al was on full alert. No one had said anything about Mike DeSantis, the Luchese soldier who had helped bury Sonny Morrissey, being there. He was the owner of an auto body shop on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn with interests in waste-carting firms. The cardboard scheme had been broached a few weeks earlier. Like the garbage rackets, the idea was to squeeze the hundreds of Korean produce stores to get control of the tons of cardboard their shops generated.

Al wanted to tell them to forget about it. He could almost feel the menace in the room. But he didn’t want to sound panicky. “All right,” he snapped. “But we’re like all day here already.” Lastorino promised it would be quick. Al sat down again, still alert, his back not touching the chair.

A few minutes later, DeSantis stalked into the room. Al did a double take. A big man, DeSantis was walking stiffly in blue jeans and heavy black boots. Despite the late-summer warmth, he had on a thick blue sweatshirt. Underneath was a heavy material that made him look several sizes bigger than he already was. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag.

He’s walking like Frankenstein, Al thought. He stared at DeSantis’s sweatshirt. He realized with astonishment he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

“Hiya, fellas,” said the big man. He walked over to where Avellino was seated and placed his plastic bag beside a small table. Avellino, who had been tuning out of the meeting for the past hour, suddenly jumped.

“Oh, a bag!” he said.

Al watched DeSantis put the bag on the floor. As he leaned over, Al saw a large lump under his sweatshirt. The shape came into focus. It was the butt of a pistol tucked into the back of his pants.

You don’t bring a gun to a meeting unless you’re looking to use it, Al thought. It was one of the oldest rules on the books. It meant you had bad intentions. Al now knew he wasn’t being paranoid. They had brought DeSantis up there with a gun for one purpose. They were going to kill him right there in the hotel room.

“I got to take a leak, guys,” DeSantis announced as he straightened up. He stepped into the bathroom near the entrance door.

Al got up again. He looked around the room. Lastorino was staring at the hallway leading to the exit. Avellino seemed out of it. If he isn’t part of the plot, Al decided, he must be another target. They’re going to hit us both, he thought.

Any minute Mike DeSantis would come out of the bathroom with his gun in his hand. “I was thinking I’d run right at him, try to tackle him. Claw at his eyes. Anything I could do.”

He stood there waiting. Lastorino was now talking about the cardboard scheme, but to Al it just sounded like garbled nonsense. He was hardly listening. DeSantis is in there a long time, he kept thinking. Lastorino is talking just to distract him.

He tensed as he heard the door of the bathroom open. DeSantis emerged. There was nothing in his hands. DeSantis walked back over to the bag he’d left by the table. He leaned over to take something out. The lump on his back was gone.

He hid the gun in the bathroom, Al told himself. He hid it in there and when Frankie goes in to take one more leak, he’s going to come out blasting.

DeSantis offered Al a piece of paper he’d taken out of the bag. “Here,” he said. “You want to look at that?” It was a brochure of some kind about the cardboard business. Al noticed DeSantis was avoiding looking at him.

He thrust out his hand. “Hey, Mike, howya been?” Al said suddenly. The move startled DeSantis. His eyes flickered on Al’s and then immediately looked away. He slowly extended his hand to shake. It was ice-cold and clammy.

When DeSantis turned away, Al took a half step back and jammed his own hand into his pocket. It was the oldest of tricks. All he had in his pocket was his beeper. But he was desperate. He thought he might be able to fool them into thinking he too was armed.

He flung the brochure back at DeSantis. “I don’t want to look at this,” he snapped. “What do I know about corrugated cardboard? You got the best guy in the world right here. That’s his game,” he said, nodding at Avellino. “I’m leaving, I been here too long already. I got Joe Cuz waiting for me all this time.”

He took three long strides toward the hotel room door.

“Al!” said Lastorino loudly, rising out of his seat. Al turned at the door, his hand still in his pocket. “Al, don’t you want to say good-bye?”

Lastorino was looking at him, then looking at the bathroom. He was trying to figure out if he should make a reach for it, Al decided. He didn’t think he had the nerve. Al walked quickly back into the room. He pumped DeSantis’s hand again. “Good-bye Mikey,” he said. He nodded to Avellino. “Good night, Sallie.”

He took the same three long strides out the door. Lastorino followed. “Al, am I going to see you Thursday?” he asked in the corridor. His voice was high-pitched and anxious. There were plans to get together to split up some of their earnings. “Remember? We got to meet tomorrow.”

Al looked at him. “Frankie, you want me to come back up?” He said it with a threatening edge. He wanted Lastorino to understand that if he came back up, he would be ready to fight.

“No,” said Lastorino. “No, that’s okay.” He seemed deflated.

Al punched the elevator button. He watched Lastorino until the doors closed. Alone in the elevator, he let out a long breath. “They were going to fucking kill me in there,” he said out loud.

Out on the street, Joe Fiore was nowhere to be found. Al walked quickly to Second Avenue. He hailed a cab headed downtown.

“Bowery and Spring Street,” he told the driver. He sat back in the seat trying to think what he should do next.

*   *   *

He found Joe Fiore standing on Prince Street in front of Ray’s Pizza. “I thought you didn’t need me anymore,” Fiore said.

Al scolded him for leaving, but told him to get the car out of the garage on Elizabeth Street. “I want to get to Joseph’s place in Brooklyn, fast,” he said. He paged his son to let him know he was coming.

Joseph listened to his story as they walked along Paerdegat Basin near his apartment. “Once they got me, they’d be coming for you next,” Al told him. He asked Joseph if he wanted to come back to the city with him, to stay on Spring Street. “No,” said Joseph. Louise wasn’t feeling well. “I’ll stay here. I’ll come in and meet you tomorrow morning.”

Joseph said he had a pistol in the house. “Load up,” Al told him. “Don’t answer the door. Anybody comes up the stairs, start shooting.”

He hugged his son and walked back to where Joe Fiore was parked. “I was trying to think. I was really nervous. I was hot and nervous.”

*   *   *

Thursday morning, he paged Sal Avellino. He punched in the number for the pay phone at Kenmare and Mott Streets. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It meant he was still alive.

He asked Avellino if he’d realized what had been going on in the hotel room.

“Yeah,” said Avellino. He sounded shaky.

“They were going to kill us.”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“Look, you’re my friend,” Al told him. “I’m telling you and your brother. Don’t keep any more appointments. Lay low.”

Avellino didn’t say anything. Al knew what he was thinking. That a shooting war was about to start and he was trying to decide which way to jump.

“Look, we’ll talk,” Al said. He hung up.

He was waiting for Joseph when he got a page from Louie Daidone. “Al, I have to see you,” Daidone said. “You passing by Brooklyn?”

Al wasn’t going to offer any more targets. “You want to see me, I’m at Kenmare and Mott,” he told him.

“I’ll meet you,” said Daidone. “Be there in about forty minutes.”

He was on the corner when Daidone and Patty Dellorusso pulled up. He was glad to see them. If he was going to fight back, Daidone and Dellorusso would be key. “I figured they’d be able to help us do our damage.”

Dellorusso stayed in the car. Daidone came over to Al. He was carrying an envelope. They walked along the street.

Daidone had been bumped up to acting captain of the Canarsie crew after Al had been made acting boss. Daidone was in charge of collecting from members. He told Al he had the money from a shakedown that Ray Argentina was running on an asbestos-removal firm.

Al looked at him. He doesn’t know anything about it, he decided. They were standing on Spring Street in front of Guidetti’s funeral parlor. He decided to trust him.

When he had finished the story he waited to hear what Louie had to say. If they decided to push back hard, Daidone would be Al’s strongest ally.

After a pause, Daidone spoke. “It blows my mind,” he said.

Al looked at him. “That’s it? It blows your mind?”

He’d been expecting a different response from the big ex–football player.

“Yeah, it blows my mind,” Daidone repeated.

Al sighed. He told Daidone to go ahead. He’d see him later. They walked back to Kenmare Street, where Dellorusso was parked. Two less allies, he thought as he watched them drive away.

A little while later he got another page that confirmed it. It was Daidone again telling Al he was going out with his wife that evening, but he was available if Al needed him.

“You’re going out with your wife?”

“Yeah,” Daidone said. “We’re going to Radio City Music Hall.”

“Forget about it, Louie,” Al told him. He didn’t try to hide his anger. “I don’t need you.” He slammed down the phone.

He stood on the corner, trying to count the people he could rely on if he mounted a fight. He didn’t get very far. There was Joe Fiore, Pete Del Cioppo, a few others maybe. And there was Joseph of course, who had arrived in the city in the late morning. His son was urging his father to rally his troops to fight. He had a plan.

“I can get Georgie Neck Zappola,” Joseph said. “We can force him to show us where Casso is hiding, and we can take him out.”

His son John was also beside him, even though John had never been involved in his mob affairs. He’d never wanted him to be. He believed that, unlike Joseph, it wasn’t in John’s blood.

Joseph’s pager buzzed. He looked at the number. “It’s Frank Lastorino,” he told his father.

“Call him,” Al said. “See what he’s saying.”

Joseph dialed from the pay phone. Lastorino picked up.

“What’s up?” asked Joseph.

“Tell your father, Joey. We trunked the architect,” Lastorino said.

Joseph looked at his father. “I’ll tell him,” he said.

“They killed Fava,” he said after he hung up. “He said to tell you they ‘trunked the architect.’”

Al felt a wave of disgust. He had hoped the contract Casso had issued on the young designer would be forgotten, the way other fits of rage by the Luchese bosses had faded over time.

“He was an innocent kid. An architect. He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t part of our life. What did he ever do? There was no reason to kill him.”

He told his sons it was time to go home. His own rage had ebbed. The notion of turning the tables on his enemies and seizing power in the family suddenly seemed like nothing he wanted to do.

“I asked myself, What are you fighting for? To be boss of what? I realized there is going to be treachery like this forever. It wasn’t worth it.”

Forget about it, he told himself. He felt disgusted with the life he had chosen, even more with the people running it.

“They marked me a rat, and I wasn’t a rat. That’s an even worse thing to do. I had gone along with it too. Mike Salerno’s a rat? Bruno gets a canary in his mouth? I believed all that stuff. I saw the whole stinking mess. It was like looking in a mirror. I didn’t want it anymore.”

*   *   *

Friday morning, Joe Fiore knocked on his apartment door. Al stood cautiously to the side. “Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s me, Joe Cuz.”

Al didn’t open up. “Joey, go down to the restaurant. Wait for me there,” he said.

As he waited to make sure Fiore had left, the phone rang. Dolores answered. They used it only for their own family members.

“It’s Mr. Veltre, from parole,” she said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

Al took the phone. “Yes, Mr. Veltre,” Al greeted his parole officer. The two men always addressed each other formally.

“Mr. D’Arco,” he said, “the FBI called me to say that they’ve learned there is a contract on your life.”

Al felt himself tighten. So even the FBI knows, he thought.

“Would you like to speak to someone there?”

Al cut him off. “Mr. Veltre, I don’t want to speak to anybody.”

“Well, Mr. D’Arco, this is serious. It’s not something to sneeze at. The FBI has called me a couple of times about this. I can give you the number.”

Joe Veltre had been Al’s parole officer almost since he got out of prison in 1986. On his end of the phone, he had the sense that Al heard the genuine alarm in his voice.

“I don’t want any phone numbers,” said Al. “Look, I’m not going anywhere, but are you going to be in your office in a few hours?”

Veltre said he would be there.

“Well, I’ll walk down to see you, and whatever you got to tell me, you can tell me then. But I don’t want to speak to anyone from the FBI.”

“Okay,” said Veltre.

Al hung up the phone. He could take care of himself. But his family was now a target as well.

“We got to start packing up, right now,” he told Dolores. His two younger daughters, Tara and Dawn, were home. They all heard the panic in his voice.

“Why? What’s going on?” they asked.

He ignored their questions. “You got to get out of here and that’s it,” he said. He started throwing things into boxes, grabbing clothes, and putting things into bags.

The girls were sobbing.

“Look, there’s bad stuff going on,” he yelled. “Joseph knows about it. John knows about it. Just do what I say.”

His house was chaos. Dolores knew without being told what was happening. But she was also distraught.

He tried to ignore the crying. He told John to go to a travel agent. “I want you to get airline tickets and make reservations for you, your mother, and the girls,” he said.

“To where?” John asked.

Al was briefly stumped. “Hawaii,” he said finally. The family had been there a couple of times before. Dolores had friends there.

They packed most of the afternoon. At 5 p.m., Al realized he had forgotten to visit the parole office. He dialed Veltre’s number. He was still at his desk.

“Mr. Veltre, I said I’d get back to you. I’m still here but I want you to know I am packing up my family. I am getting them out of town.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Veltre said. “Why don’t you come in?”

“No,” said Al. “If anything happens, I know how to reach you. If I make any decision, I’ll let you know.”

After he hung up, his own words echoed in his ears. What decision?

*   *   *

Joseph tried to talk him out of it. They could still win, he told him. If he could get to Gaspipe, he could also get to Frank Lastorino. Joseph said he had a way to get into Lastorino’s home.

“It would be, ‘Hello, Frankie?’ Boom. He’s gone,” he told his father. As for Anthony Baratta, they could get Steve Crea to make good on his offer to take him out.

But Al had reached a turning point. Winning no longer counted. He had broken none of the rules of the street. The rules had been broken against him. What counted now, more than anything else, was keeping his family safe.

“Fuck the street, fuck the mob. My family comes first. I wasn’t worried about Joseph. I knew he could take care of himself. But say I try to stick it out, and they catch up with my daughter? They catch up with my son John? I can’t do it alone. I’m only one person. There was only one way.”

*   *   *

Saturday morning, he got Dolores, John, and his daughters off safely. He and Joseph drove out to Long Island, to his mother’s house in Bayville.

Sitting on a porch that Joseph and Al had helped his own father build when they first moved out there, they continued the discussion.

“What are we going to do, Dad?” Joseph asked him.

Al didn’t answer right away. He took a breath. “We’re going to call the FBI,” his father said. “We’re going in.”

They sat there for a few moments thinking about what had just been said.

Before he knew it, they were both crying.

“You got to decide for yourself, though,” Al told him.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Joseph said. “But I’m staying with you. I’ll do it for now.”

Al had refused to take the phone numbers parole officer Joe Veltre had offered him. But he knew that his lawyer, John Zagari, had been bothered by agents after the Matamoras landfill deal fell apart. He had to have the number of someone to call.

He reached Zagari at home in Pennsylvania.

“You’re talking about the witness protection program,” the lawyer said after Al told him what had happened.

“I guess so,” said Al. “What do you think?”

“It’s a good idea,” the lawyer said.

“Make the call for me, John,” said Al.

“I will,” said Zagari. “Stay by the phone.”