He called himself a financial adviser now. Stock promoter just didn"t sound prestigious enough. It was too P.T. Barnum. Financial adviser had a ring of old money to it. And he"d achieved a kind of balance between his personal and business lives. It hadn"t been easy.
First he"d first had to resolve problems that surfaced with Andrea. She"d had some addiction issues and than become involved with a guy who was involved in dealing narcotics. This had created a certain amount of intra-sibling friction, to say the least. She was now telling him she"d gone straight, but she still was unable to hold a real job for more than a few weeks. She would call him at least once a day, usually more. They had always had a strange relationship, since the time when he was ten and she was eight and he was helping her get off to school each morning in that big old empty Oyster Bay house. Now their relationship was even stranger. They were supposed be both brother and sister and also mother and father. They had shipped Erin up to New York and put her in a boarding school in a rural county as far away from the city as Cary could manage. It was a lot of work, this parenting business.
There were rewards. When Erin first arrived, she was not used to being told what to do. She got used to it, and once she had settled into school in Orange County, New York, and was learning to grow up a little bit, she made it clear that Cary was a kind of savior. They overcame age differences. He made sure she went to school and took care of herself. In one letter in which she refers to herself in the third person, she wrote, "Well aside from G.o.d, I do believe she wouldn"t have turned around so glorious if it hadn"t been for the care and concern of her older brother, Cary Cimino. She can thank him every day for the dedication he put towards her in having a better life and there will never be enough grat.i.tude she can show to him. However sad this may seem, it is 100% true-he has given me more than our own mother has."
Sometimes Andrea was able to help out as well, in other ways. In the spring of 1994, Andrea took up with a new guy, an older silver-haired married guy from Brooklyn named Sal Piazza. Andrea was thirty-two; Sal was in his mid-fifties. He called himself a businessman, an owner of Doc.u.ment Management Network, a fax company he owned with another guy. Piazza had seen that Wall Street was beginning to rebound and he wanted to get in on that. He proposed turning Doc.u.ment Management Network into DMN Capital. He put it in his wife"s name. He was actually quite soft-spoken and pretty savvy about business, and he and Cary got along quite well. One evening when the three were socializing, Sal mentioned a guy he knew, his new business partner, who might be interested in talking with Cary about a deal he was working up. Sal had mentioned to this guy that Cary was a registered stockbroker with plenty of connections to heavyweight investors and other stockbrokers. The guy was less interested in the investors and more interested in the stockbrokers. The guy"s name was Jeffrey Pokross.
Cary couldn"t believe what a small world it was indeed.
They met at the offices of DMN, in an office tower on Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan, a block or two from Wall Street. Cary was less than impressed. DMN was just unfinished office s.p.a.ce with a couple of desks, some phones and computer monitors, and empty coffee cups strewn about the badly carpeted floor. It was, Jeffrey made clear when he greeted Cary at the door, just a start-up.
Cary hadn"t seen Jeffrey in years, but he looked exactly the same. His hair was thinner and he was a little thicker at the middle, but he still had those hungry little eyes and the rodentlike mustache.
"We"re going to be rich," Jeffrey said. "Let me tell you about s.p.a.ceplex."
When Cary Cimino got involved in a business deal, he liked to know all the details. When Cary Cimino walked into DMN Capital in late 1994, he definitely did not know all of the details.
He did know some. The partners included Sal Piazza, the guy who was dating his sister. Sal he knew. Jeffrey Pokross he also knew. Cary was vaguely aware that there were issues with Jeffrey, but he could live with that. He did not see Jeffrey Pokross as a man with a problematic history who could drag him into the tar pit of criminal conspiracy. He looked at Jeffrey Pokross as a solution to his many personal problems.
"Jeffrey was a bombastic, caustic, arrogant man who bullied people, who literally threatened people, bullied people and a.s.serted himself in a methodology I didn"t appreciate. But I was being substantially rewarded for bad behavior. The term is "easy money," and Jeffrey provided product, had contacts, and I had substantial distribution. It was, again, a meeting of the minds."
Then there was this other guy, Jimmy Labate. There was no way this guy went to the Wharton School. Jimmy was probably six feet, two fifty, a young hotheaded guy with thinning reddish hair who was built like a refrigerator with a head. He wore knee-length leather jackets. He carried rolls of bills, drove a Lincoln and was able to craft unique combinations of epithets without even trying. He would say, "f.u.c.k you, you f.u.c.king f.u.c.k," and not even appreciate the alliteration. He was a partner in DMN.
Cary stayed away from Jimmy.
Instead, he listened to Jeffrey. Jeffrey had a plan. The company was called s.p.a.ceplex. They were going to take it public. The company"s formal name was s.p.a.ceplex Amus.e.m.e.nt Centers International Ltd., and although it was certainly not international, it was fair to call it limited. s.p.a.ceplex was actually a small company in Las Vegas that owned absolutely nothing, but had obtained a contract to buy a small family amus.e.m.e.nt park on Long Island. Pokross had found s.p.a.ceplex after getting a call from an old client, a German guy named Goebel who ran the U.S. securities division for one of the biggest German banks in existence. Pokross claimed this German called him to say he had a childhood friend named Ulrich who had control of a bunch of German boiler rooms.
As Pokross remembered it, "Mr. Goebel wanted to know if I could come up with a stock in the U.S. that I can identify and handle the trading of that security and he would pump it out with his friend Ulrich at these various German boiler rooms where they were going to be paying cash bribes to the owners . . . and the stockbrokers. I started looking right away."
After a number of calls to various corrupt brokers looking for a patsy company, Pokross came up with s.p.a.ceplex. The president of the company was a guy named Manas, whom everybody called "Mr. Fingers." Jeffrey didn"t bother to explain how Manas had earned such a nickname, but Cary wasn"t that interested anyway. Pokross said the owner "was looking for stock promotion and to get some money in the company. He was looking for somebody to drive the price of his stock up because he was a big shareholder and he wanted to raise some additional money." If Mr. Fingers was interested in actually running an amus.e.m.e.nt park, Pokross didn"t say.
Working with a corrupt broker named Andy Mann, Pokross said the scheme was to pay off other corrupt brokers and stock promoters like himself with cash and free stock from other companies Mann held in his offsh.o.r.e brokerage firms. He already had the boiler rooms in Germany waiting to begin pumping up s.p.a.ceplex stock. All they needed now was to go out and recruit brokers for the U.S. sales pitch. Once they got the stock where they wanted it, all the insiders would dump en ma.s.se and they"d all be rich. Pump and dump. Pokross would be paying Cary an off-the-books commission of 30 percent, which he could chop up and distribute to his brokers in whatever manner worked for him.
At the time Cary had his sit-down with Jeffrey, he didn"t make it known that, as usual, he was swimming in debt. He did, however, borrow $3,000 from Jeffrey, a guy he hadn"t seen in five years, and then he agreed to promote s.p.a.ceplex. He told Jeffrey he was working for Diversified Investments, which happened to be run by the president of the Upper East Side co-op where he was currently in residence. Actually he wasn"t really working for Diversified; it was more that he was working with Diversified. He claimed to Jeffrey that Diversified had him on salary, that they had leased him yet another Mercedes, this time a 600 S30 (not in his name) and that he was getting cash "incentives" on the side. He told him they could use Diversified as a cover to make "incentive" payments to the other brokers they recruited.
"It made the paying of the other brokers mellifluous. It made it liquid. It made it easier. It hid the business we were doing. It hid it from every regulator. It hid it from the IRS as well. I could be making large sums of money and not paying taxes."
He was aware that he was discussing avoiding detection by legal authorities. He knew all about pump and dump. He was aware that he was involved in criminal activity. But he was also aware that so was just about everybody else he came into contact with on a daily basis in the world of Wall Street. And more importantly, it wasn"t just Cary Cimino that really needed the money. Now Cary had another reason to get "flexible" with the law. He had Erin.
All the hours of headache and heartache he"d experienced as a pseudo father to his much younger half-sister had brought with it a kind of benefit he hadn"t foreseen. The more he"d thought about it, the more he came to see there might be some upside to Erin. Perhaps there was something to all this altruism. There was something powerful about having a motive to earn money that was connected to someone else"s well-being. If he was choosing to bend or even break rules, he was only doing it for his baby sister, and who could argue with that? He had obtained a certain lifestyle that he needed to maintain, but now he had a reason quite pure for getting and having. It wasn"t just about Cary. Cary the pseudo father could say for the first time that his pursuit of wealth was now about so much more.
Of course making tons of money was not guaranteed.
While he was there, Sal Piazza stopped by and said h.e.l.lo. They got to talking and the subject of enforcement came up. Enforcement was a critical issue in pulling off a pump and dump scheme. In order for the scam to work, the clueless investors couldn"t be allowed to sell their stock before the insiders sold theirs. Otherwise the price wouldn"t rise and perhaps the whole thing would never get off the ground. In pump and dump, brokers had to keep their customers in line. And the insiders had to keep the brokers in line. Sometimes persuading the brokers to stay on program involved a certain amount of physical force. Cary knew all about this and until now had never really had to think about enforcement. Enforcement usually required the name of one of a certain group of five families.
"Not a problem," Jeffrey a.s.sured him. "I"m with a guy named Robert Lino. Everybody calls him Robert from Avenue U."
CHAPTER TWELVE.
January 2, 1990
No studies have been presented to learned colleagues in vaunted journals about the amount of time the average gangster spends sitting in restaurants, but it"s fair to a.s.sume it"s about 50 percent of his waking hours. The gangster, of course, has no office. There"s no conference room from which to transact teleconference calls with clients. There"s just the corner banquette at the local diner. The day after New Year"s Day on the second day of the new decade, Frank Lino and two gangster friends sat in a Middle Eastern restaurant on McDonald Avenue and Avenue N way out there in Brooklyn, waiting. It was a nasty cold night, and all the holidays were officially over. People were taking down Christmas trees and dumping the dried out skeletons on the sidewalk, the silver tinsel shivering in the wind. This was the bleak stretch of winter. The fun was over. The weeks of January and February stretched out ahead like so many miles of arctic tundra.
Frank and his pals sat in the restaurant waiting for his cousin, Robert Lino, who was always on time. Tonight Robert from Avenue U was late.
For Frank Lino, the twentieth century-the gangster"s century-hadn"t been so bad. Here he was at age fifty-two, a Lafayette High School dropout by tenth grade, married at age nineteen to a girl not yet sixteen, five kids and a divorce behind him. He"d tried legitimate work, but it didn"t really suit him. He was handling dice games and running sports book by the time he was a teenager, and he never looked back or thought twice about where he was headed. He did have some doubts along the way. For a time, he insisted he wouldn"t carry a gun when they hijacked trucks out near Kennedy Airport. Often he thought everyone was out to get him and that the next sit-down would be his last. But he was still around. He"d been inducted into the Bonanno group in 1977 on his fortieth birthday and elevated to captain in 1983. By the second day of the last decade of the twentieth century, he was a veteran. He made a fortune from a thriving gambling operation. He dabbled in drugs and did quite well. He"d bought up p.o.r.nographic videos in the 1970s when they were still called "French films" and resold them in Las Vegas for hefty profits. Now people paid him money just to use his name. As in "I"m with Frank." Everybody was happy with Frank Lino. He made money for himself and the bosses, who did not understand the concept of enough, and in this life-the life of the made man-he"d done almost no time. This had truly been the gangster"s century. From a street gang in the alleyways of Lower Manhattan, an unwanted import from Sicily, the schemes had grown and grown, the power extended to the highest reaches of business. And Frank Lino was a part of all that.
Of course, Frank still had to sit in restaurants in the middle of the night waiting for things to happen that would never ever happen on time.
Usually Robert was pretty good about these things. He was Frank"s star pupil. Like Frank, he"d dropped out of high school, which was good. Some of these guys who went on to college were a pain in the a.s.s. Robert had embraced the life. He was disinclined to get a real job under any circ.u.mstances. The bosses had put him with Frank, and he was happy to be there. He was obeying his father"s wishes. And he did whatever Frank wanted. He helped him track his bookmaking, collect on his shylock loans, enforce protection collection. He took messages to people. He watched Frank"s back. He was an apprentice, learning the players and all their tricks. In a way, now that Bobby Senior was gone, Frank was Robert"s new father.
Frank was old-school gangster. He"d survived a nasty bit of business in 1981 when he and three captains were invited to a meeting at a social club in Brooklyn and walked into a shotgun attack. The three captains were blown to pieces, and Frank-for reasons he had never quite figured out-had been allowed to leave alive and breathing. Subsequently he"d been welcomed back into the newly aligned Bonannos" loving embrace. He immediately set to ingratiating himself with the bosses by handling another nasty piece of work, the unfortunate and untimely death of Sonny Black. By 1990 Frank Lino was an established player in the family, and Robert Lino was at his side. And late.
As it happened, Frank had to cut Robert some slack. By 1990, after thirteen years as a gangster, Frank was immersed in middle age. Not retirement age, just slowing-down age. Robert was a young man. Frank was tired of tracking money he put on the street, so he put Robert in charge of that. Frank was less interested in day-to-day occurrences within his crew, so Robert helped out, letting Frank know about internal disputes petty and otherwise. Robert quietly made it his business to know everything. As 1990 arrived, Frank knew that Robert Lino was on his way to becoming a made man at a time when the Bonanno crime family was on the rise. There was, however, a bit of a speed b.u.mp. It was the reason Frank was sitting in the restaurant on McDonald Avenue.
The problem at hand was Louis Tuzzio, a low-level wannabe who someone with not very much sense had a.s.signed the task of killing a guy named Gus Farace. Farace was a lowlife drug dealer who happened to have some Mafia friends. He was heavily involved in selling as much dope as he could and using as much as he could handle, too. He was essentially out of control, and in his drug-addled state he had made a major-league mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake you can make. During a drug sale in Brooklyn he decided he didn"t like the guy doing the buying, so he shot him to death. How could he have known that the buyer was really a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) undercover agent and family man? The federal government was furious. They rousted mob social clubs, letting everybody in every family know that until the shooter came forward, life would be h.e.l.l for la cosa nostra la cosa nostra in New York City. Gus Farace thus became marked as a dead man in every way. in New York City. Gus Farace thus became marked as a dead man in every way.
The job of finding and shooting Gus Farace right away fell to the Bonanno crime group, mostly because Gus Farace was dating the daughter of a Bonanno family soldier. She was seen as the way to get to Gus. As it was told to Frank Lino, Louis Tuzzio got the job because Tuzzio knew Farace and was as close to a friend as a guy like Farace could expect. Tuzzio had set up a meeting, and Farace was supposed to show up solo. Tuzzio pulled up in a van with three other guys, to a spot in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn, and-naturally-Farace was not alone. He was with a guy named Sclafani who happened to be the son of a Gambino soldier. Louis Tuzzio decided on the spot not to call off the job. Instead, he got in a shoot-out with Gus Farace, and Farace wound up dead. Unfortunately for Louis Tuzzio, Sclafani, the son of the Gambino soldier, also ended up shot and badly wounded.
Which was why a few months later Frank Lino received word that John Gotti, imperious boss of the Gambino crime group and a guy who truly believed he was the boss of everyone, had let it be known that he was apoplectic. He wanted everybody involved in the shooting of the Sclafani kid dead. Everybody. This was his way. He frequently wanted everybody guilty of one or another perceived slight dead. Now the Bonanno group had a big John Gotti headache, and Frank Lino wound up as the guy chosen to administer the medicine. At the time, Frank was feeling somewhat vulnerable. In fact, he was constantly worrying about becoming a victim himself. He felt sure that at any time he would go to a meeting and never come back. This was due in part to his experience inside the social club when his three friends had been shotgunned to death in front of him and he"d been allowed to leave. This event cast a certain shadow over Frank"s life. He needed to make things right, and the way to do that would be to resolve the big John Gotti headache. It was natural that Frank Lino would turn to his cousin Robert for help.
Gotti had demanded the deaths of the three non-made members in the van when Sclafani was shot. Members of the Bonanno family-including Frank Lino-were extremely upset about this. They felt this was unfair, given that Sclafani was only one guy and he"d survived and Gotti was saying three guys had to go. This was bad math. This was, at best, three for the price of one. The Bonanno group and Gotti came up with the usual compromise-one guy for one guy. Maybe that was what Gotti had wanted in the first place. Regardless, Louis Tuzzio, more or less by default, became the one guy.
As Frank sat in the restaurant on McDonald Avenue, the plan-his plan-was already unfolding. A Bonanno a.s.sociate named Dirty Danny was childhood friends with Tuzzio. Dirty Danny was also childhood friends with Robert Lino, so the two were a.s.signed the job of luring Tuzzio to a meeting, where he would be shot in the head adequately to kill him. Everyone involved knew this would not be a simple task. Tuzzio was in a high state of paranoia. Recently another crew tried to convince Tuzzio to show up at a lonely garage in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, owned by a guy named Patty Muscles. On the appointed day, the a.s.signed hit man had a heart attack, so that didn"t work out. Next they tried luring Tuzzio to a meeting in a residential area of Bay Ridge, but he showed up with another Bonanno soldier who was not clued in on the matter. Now here it was, the day after New Year"s, and Frank Lino and two gangster friends sat in the Middle Eastern restaurant on McDonald Avenue waiting for Robert Lino, Dirty Danny and Louis Tuzzio to pull up in a Camaro.
The story they"d thought up to get Tuzzio to go along was this: Frank was going to rea.s.sure Tuzzio that the business with Gus Farace was, in fact, understandable given Gus Farace"s many problems. Frank would tell Louis that he was about to get his b.u.t.ton, to become a made member of the Bonanno crime family. This would be a great honor for Louis. In fact, it would be the biggest day of his life, the thing he"d always wanted, the dream come true. That was the story they figured would work to get a paranoid guy like Louis Tuzzio to show up for his own a.s.sa.s.sination.
And then here they were. The Camaro pulled up with Tuzzio at the wheel. Frank watched Tuzzio get out of the car, apparently relaxed, still believing he might live to collect Social Security. Tuzzio strolled into the restaurant with his childhood friend, Dirty Danny, Robert Lino, and-a surprise for Frank-another guy not on the guest list. The guy was Frank Ambrosino, a friend of Robert"s since childhood. They all entered the restaurant and Tuzzio sat down with Frank. Everybody else went to a separate table.
Frank went to work with his avuncular act. He understood why Tuzzio might think that all this talk about him becoming a made guy was not real, what with the other guy with the Gambinos getting shot and all that. But Louis had to know the context. Frank rea.s.sured him that the bosses all considered Louis to be a capable guy for his work on Gus Farace. Sure there had been a bit of mess to clean up, but it had all worked out. Law enforcement seemed far more enthusiastic about finding Farace than about finding Farace"s killers, and-sure enough-after Farace was clipped, the feds backed off. Frank began instructing Tuzzio on what to expect at the induction ceremony, how it was important to pretend you didn"t know what was what when they asked if you knew why you were there. He went through the list of rules that everybody knew and everybody broke on a regular basis and gave the kid Tuzzio a gentle slap to the cheek. Frank Lino told the kid everything would be fine.
"Relax," he said. "This time next week you"re a man of respect."
Sure it was late and it was dark and freezing outside, but couldn"t Tuzzio see he was with his best friend, Dirty Danny? His whole life was about to change. What good was fear misplaced? Frank told Tuzzio to sit with Dirty Danny and send his cousin Robert over. When Robert sat down, Frank asked quietly about the guy Robert had brought along, Ambrosino. Frank needed to know about this guy. Robert made it clear he wanted Ambrosino with him in the backup car. Robert made it plain that he"d known Ambrosino forever and trusted him like a brother. He said he and Ambrosino would carry weapons and follow the car Tuzzio was in. After the shooting they would be responsible for getting rid of the murder weapon.
Everything was ready. Events were set in motion. There was no turning back, no backing away. Soon Tuzzio would no longer be a problem for the Bonanno crime group"s bosses and Robert Lino would have partic.i.p.ated in a piece of work. That would make him eligible to be made himself, which was what Robert"s father, Bobby, had wanted all along. Frank was just doing a dying man a favor here. Robert Lino Sr. would surely understand. Louis Tuzzio surely would not.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
1981.
Warrington sat in a movie theater in midtown Manhattan, waiting for the show to begin. All his friends from school were there, waiting with him. Actually they weren"t there to see a movie. They were there to see Warrington-in a movie.
Warrington hadn"t really made it at Villanova. He"d tried his best to pretend he actually liked economics, but they didn"t call it the dry science for nothing. It was brutal. It was like learning a second language and math at the same time. He loathed every minute of it. He also had loathed the bucolic campus in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. It was what his mother wanted, but not what he wanted. He had so much more to offer. He was a creative guy. In the summer after soph.o.m.ore year, he"d made a decision-he was going to quit and move to New York to become what he was always meant to be-an actor.
It all made more sense than the Laffer curve and John Maynard Keynes. He had an outgoing personality, could ingratiate himself with people in power (teachers, coaches, bouncers), and was growing into his father"s good looks. Hollywood beckoned, but first he had to actually learn how to act. New York City and the Strasberg Inst.i.tute was the place for that.
His father-now remarried and selling real estate in Palm Beach-had helped him out. Though Warrington was now twenty-one and could certainly have gone out and gotten a real job to pay the bills, he was an artist and his father was a patron. Dad paid the rent on Warrington"s Sutton Place apartment and the tuition at Strasberg. Whether his father believed any of this would amount to anything, Warrington did not know. He was just happy that his dad was contributing. He wouldn"t have asked his stepfather for the money. He never liked asking him for anything. He"d come to resent spending any time at Tally Ho, feeling as though he was back at Gilman, living in a stranger"s house. His father"s financial help-limited though it was-was the only a.s.sistance he could bear to accept.
He really needed it to work out. It was important that he succeed, to validate his father"s investment.
It wasn"t easy. For two years he"d won major roles only in TV commercials. When he tried out for a part in the sequel to the hugely popular Friday the 13th Friday the 13th, he"d believed it would take him to the next step. He studied for weeks, watching the first movie again and again. When it came time to read, he was stiff and awkward. He didn"t understand the nuances of character. A speaking role was not to be.
But his enthusiasm showed through. He was clearly committed to working hard, and the casting director came up with an idea: why not give Warrington-who was now using the razor family name Warrington Gillette-a nonspeaking role? Why not make him Jason himself?
Perhaps Jason could be his breakthrough role. Sure there wasn"t a single line of dialogue, and it was difficult to recognize Warrington under all that makeup. He looked like somebody had lit a fire on his face and put it out with a rake. His hair was matted to his head and torn out in spots, the left side drooped, and his mouth hung open wide enough for a bird to fly in.
During shooting, the makeup was always driving him insane. Gobs of rubber and plastic had been glued to the left side of his face. His left eye was completely covered up, replaced by a twisted festering rubber mess that left him blind on one side. He had dentures that forced his mouth to remain open for hours at a time. He wore a skull-cap that caused him to sweat like Richard Nixon. He wore a stained plaid cotton shirt common to people who know how to gut deer and kill small animals. He looked like a lunatic, which was what he was supposed to look like. And who cared? He was in the movies.
Actually it was Friday the 13 Friday the 13th: Part 2, and it was as good as he could manage in this particular moment in his acting career. It wasn"t exactly Marlon Brando in A Street-car Named Desire A Street-car Named Desire, but it would do. Warrington, after all, was a professional actor now, and he understood that you have to pay your dues.
Boy was he paying. His favorite story-one he told every model he could rope into conversation in his many nights out on the town-was the day he was supposed to crash through a window in a deserted cabin in the woods. There were always deserted cabins in these movies, and the best way for the lunatic to enter them was always to crash through the window. The day of the big scene he"d been standing all morning waiting for his big moment. He would crash through the window to slash and chop his way into the hearts and minds of teenagers and the rest of the gore-obsessed world. He hadn"t eaten all morning because the idiotic makeup prevented him from taking food into his mouth. His depth perception was gone because his left eye was hidden behind the foam rubber, and he was enveloped in a fine sheen of sweat. All he needed to do was crash through the window and flail madly for a few moments. Maybe this was method acting. You got so furious at being cooped up inside this makeup that your fury became part of your role. They hadn"t really mentioned that at the Strasberg Inst.i.tute.
Warrington could do this. He"d immersed himself in the story of Jason. He was a lonely, tormented kid, disfigured in a fire, back to kill off his tormentors in a remote area called Crystal Lake. There was an Oedipal aspect. The boy"s mother was killed in the first movie, so now Warrington"s Jason had grown up but kept her head in the refrigerator. His killing orgy had purpose other than to pique the prurient interest of popcorn-munching teens. Allegedly. How did you get inside that character? Why would you want to?
Standing around waiting to crash through the fake window in the fake cabin in the real woods deep in the heart of Connecticut, Warrington had tried to become the best Jason he could be. He had to make this work. Here he was, the scion of old money, the weight of legacy pressing down upon him, living off his father"s dime without a college degree to show for his troubles. It was acting or nothing.
The scene was ready. Jason was on another psycho rampage. Warrington was told to run hard and smash through the grimy window of the cabin in the woods with forearms extended and palms turned backward. The window was rigged so it wouldn"t hurt. At least that was what Warrington was told. Then he would attack the actress Amy Steel, who would scream and try in vain to escape his murderous mission. Pretty simple.
The director called, "Action!" and Warrington ran as fast as he could toward the window.
He hit the window like a brick wall and bounced back, landing flat on his b.u.t.t.
It was ludicrous. There he sat, in all his foam-rubber splendor, mouth agape, stupefied and humiliated. The army of worker bees around him started yelling and casting blame as quickly as possible. Some idiot had forgotten to score the window. A linebacker couldn"t get through it, never mind a twenty-two-year-old Villanova dropout. They would have to shoot the scene again. The show must go on, etc.
"By the time we reached that scene," Warrington was telling his friends, "I was so sick and uncomfortable with the whole process that I really could have killed that girl."
The lights dimmed, the previews began. Finally it was time-Friday the 13th: Part 2. Warrington could barely contain himself when his name flashed on the screen during the opening credits.
Scene after scene unfolded. This was merely the first sequel, so the filmmakers felt compelled to offer up enough backstory that the movie actually contained plot elements. Warrington was Jason Voorhees, who supposedly drowned as a teenager at a camp for bored suburban youth called Crystal Lake. Jason"s mother flipped out and hid in the woods, killing anyone who tried to reopen the camp. In the first movie, she killed eight camp counselors but was decapitated by one survivor. She did this, naturally, on Friday the thirteenth. Her partially decomposed son, Jason, showed up to avenge her death, again on-when else?-Friday the thirteenth. The counselor who killed Mom decided it would be a good idea to return to the camp two months later to face her fears about Crystal Lake. This was convenient for Jason, who burst in and stabbed her in the neck with an ice pick. Her body was never found.
Friday the 13th: Part 2 didn"t end there, although the rest of the story was more or less a variation on that which had already been told. Five years later somebody else tried to reopen Camp Crystal Lake. Jason/Warrington returned and started killing people. As the movie rolled toward its inevitable b.l.o.o.d.y conclusion, yet another scantily clad counselor bimbo attacked Jason with a machete. Warrington/Jason somehow survived to escape into the woods, taking with him the promise of more sequels to come. didn"t end there, although the rest of the story was more or less a variation on that which had already been told. Five years later somebody else tried to reopen Camp Crystal Lake. Jason/Warrington returned and started killing people. As the movie rolled toward its inevitable b.l.o.o.d.y conclusion, yet another scantily clad counselor bimbo attacked Jason with a machete. Warrington/Jason somehow survived to escape into the woods, taking with him the promise of more sequels to come.
The credits rolled. Warrington and his friends stayed to watch his name roll by once again. They were all cheering and clapping him on the back, and in some ways it felt good. There he was, up there on the big screen, looking down on thousands of people who were willing to pay good money to watch Jason do his thing. And Warrington knew they"d all been there just to see Jason. Fame and fortune were within reach. He could taste it. He imagined himself exiting a black stretch limo at the premiere of his first star vehicle, the paparazzi braying at him as he strutted up the red carpet with a model on each arm.
Of course, his mother, father, sister, half brother and anyone else in his social circle could sit through the entire movie and not recognize Warrington up there, and in the entire film he"d uttered not a single word of English prose. The only acting involved running through woods and flailing about with a hatchet or a knife or an ice pick. An orangutan could do that. As he left the theater, he suddenly became depressed. Maybe acting wasn"t for him. Standing outside the theater, the theme song of Friday the 13th Friday the 13th still ringing in his head, he began to think that maybe he wasn"t really cut out for the creative life. Maybe he needed to make a little cash. still ringing in his head, he began to think that maybe he wasn"t really cut out for the creative life. Maybe he needed to make a little cash.
Right away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
January 2, 1990
All the men left the restaurant and got into the Camaro. Dirty Danny agreed to drive, Louis Tuzzio got in the pa.s.senger 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 b.u.t.ton, 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.
Dirty Danny, the driver, steered through the streets. At this time of night in this neighborhood, there was n.o.body around to notice two cars filled with men. Dirty Danny drove the Camaro a few blocks and then made a right instead of the left that Tuzzio had expected.
They were next to a park, known as Legends Field, right around the corner from a graveyard. It was dark and cold. The apartment buildings near the park seemed a hundred miles away. Tuzzio sat in the pa.s.senger seat. Robert Lino sat in the back, where it was very dark. Tuzzio knew right away something was wrong.
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. Canva.s.sing 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 a.s.sociates 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.
Robert from Avenue U certainly did.
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 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 p.r.i.c.k 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. 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 p.r.i.c.k 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 bas.e.m.e.nt was a group of men, waiting for Robert Lino and another young man, who were about to partic.i.p.ate in a ceremony they were supposed to know nothing about. For more than seventy years this ceremony had been going on in the bas.e.m.e.nts 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.