Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (24 page)

“I think this is a great thing. I’m thinking, wow, I’ll invest this guy’s money. Look at him. He knows everybody. He’s definitely—he’s
out there. Everybody knew him. Kissing him hello. Charlie is very tan. Always tan. Dead-of-winter-tan. No-matter-what-tan.
But he denies that he ever goes to a tanning salon. Slicked-back hair. Kind of receding hairline. Good-looking guy. Very distinguished
guy. Stocky. A little muscle behind him. And you would not mistake him for who he is. If you put a picture of him in your
mind, that’s what he looks like. He just looks like that typical Brooklyn gangster.

“He wears black mockneck shirts. Not a high turtleneck. Low. Silk black turtleneck, mockneck shirts. That’s what he wears.
He’ll wear a sports jacket, slacks, and, like, snakeskin shoes. Really flashy shoes. Gold watch—Rolex. No chains or anything
around his neck. Nothing like that. Ring, Rolex. That’s it. Very sharp-dressed. Very sharp. Always a different-color sports
jacket. So if he was wearing all black it would be a printed sports jacket. A sharp dresser. Dressed very well.”

Impressed as he was with how Charlie dressed, Louis could see that Charlie was only vaguely familiar with Wall Street, as
if maybe he learned about it by watching the Charlie Sheen movie. But that was okay. The people out there, members of the
public, often have only a slight understanding of how the Street works. But Charlie had one insight into the Street that the
general public, as well as the regulators and the press, just didn’t have at the time. He knew that kids from his neighborhood
were on Wall Street, cold-calling people, and making money. That was all he needed to know. He knew that and he knew he was
entitled. He didn’t know much else. He didn’t know what an IPO was, even though IPOs were getting a lot of press at the time.
That was okay too. Louis read the
News
and
Post
but didn’t get to the business section most days.

Louis told him about the hot new IPO that was due out in a couple of months, Gaylord Companies. It made specialty cookware,
and the lead underwriter was a firm called RAS Securities, which didn’t have the army of brokers that Nation-wide could bring
to the table. But they didn’t discuss the product line or the underwriter or anything like that. What they discussed was that
it was a great deal, and that Charlie could make a lot of money. It seemed like the kind of thing to say at the time—that
Charlie could make a lot of money, and that Louis could make it for him. Louis said that. Said how much he could make. Mentioned
specific numbers. It seemed like the thing to do, there at 101, with people coming over and with Charlie looking so good.

Charlie was definitely interested. He definitely wanted to do business. He wanted to invest. He said that. He would invest.
A new client. Like Craig Kallman, who was not coming through with referrals, or the Jets guys, who were becoming a pain in
the ass, or Baba Booey and Stuttering John, who were more trouble than they were worth. Howard Stern as a client? It wasn’t
happening. Stuttering John didn’t even try.

Louis had to think of the future. Not plan. He never planned. But he was getting married. He was going to start a family.
Maybe Charlie could be good for him. Maybe Charlie could help.

At Brod, Louis got beat out of the money he was owed. At Greenway and now Nationwide, he was doing cash deals. What if Bobby
Cash Deals had decided not to pay? What could Louis have done? Sue? Not for cash deals. They were handshake deals. Deals that
he knew were illegal—“undisclosed compensation,” the lawyers would call it. What could he do if there was a beef over the
cash? Go up against Black Dom and Rico? The kid John had done the right thing. He felt strongly about the $20,000 so he went
to his cousin.

Charlie knew he could be useful. He said so. But he did it in a nice way, a funny way. “Kind of made me laugh, Charlie,” said
Louis. “He was very blunt the way he would talk. He wouldn’t hold anything back. He was that kind of gangster. He wasn’t a
quiet guy. He says, ‘You’re taking down big money over there. All you little pricks think you’re going to run around, make
big money, and not share with us Guys.’ He says, ‘One day you’re going to need a Guy like me.’”

Charlie was older than Louis and had done a lot of living. Charlie didn’t talk about it at first, but nothing had come easy
for him. Charlie was from a blue-collar neighborhood and he was a blue-collar guy. He had never gone to college. Nothing was
given to him. Everything he had, all that he had achieved in life, he took with his own two hands.

It was a chilly spring morning, April 16, 1981. Lee Polanski was driving his sky-blue Cadillac convertible down a street in
Merrick, Long Island, when he saw the three guys, walking. Lee was heading north on Frankel Boulevard, taking his wife Jessica
to the train station. The three guys were on the sidewalk, walking south. He saw them. They didn’t see him.

Lee knew one of them. He didn’t know him well enough to wave at him, but just enough to say to himself—not even to his wife,
just to himself—hey, I know that guy. And it was not a bad memory at all. A memory of a nice guy, a young guy, a guy who liked
kids.

It was Charlie. Charlie Ricottone. It was a pleasant memory.

Lee was a young guy himself, in his early thirties, and he was from Brooklyn originally. Now he was manager of a supermarket.
He and his wife were starting a family, and after they were married in the early 1970s they had moved out to a bedroom community
in Nassau County, as had generations of upwardly mobile Brooklyn couples over the years. That’s what happens in New York.
An outer-borough tradition, almost. Bronx people move to Westchester. Brooklyn people move to Long Island or Staten Island.
So Lee moved to Long Island and by the summer of 1979 they had a two-year-old daughter, Annie. Jessica Polanski was pregnant
with their second child, and they were adding a room to the house. It was a last-minute, hurried kind of thing, because Mrs.
Polanski was due in August, so the crew worked hard to get it finished on time. Charlie was part of the crew and he was at
the house, working, all summer.

Charlie stood out in Lee’s memory of that hectic but joyous summer. He was more than just another guy in the crew, hauling
and cutting lumber and painting the freshly installed plasterboard. He was a nice guy. A jovial guy. Lee was home during much
of July, and he got to know Charlie very, very well. Jessica would make lunch for the guys on the construction project, and
they would relax and talk. Charlie was a personable, young guy, just twenty-one at the time. He was hardworking, a go-getter.
He and the rest of the guys on the construction crew worked capably to finish the addition, which they did on the day Jessica
gave birth to Jennie, on August 3, 1979.

Lee liked Charlie so much, and was so pleased with his diligence and good nature, that he had Charlie come back and do some
more painting, once the extra room was finished. When Lee threw a birthday party for Jennie a year later, Charlie was invited.
It was only natural. He was such a nice guy. And it was a great party. Charlie stayed till late that night, drinking and joking
and posing for pictures with the rest of the gang and having a great time.

Now, driving to drop off his wife at the station, it was seven months later, and Charlie and two other guys were walking south.
Toward his house. The thought didn’t really jell in Lee’s mind. He was in a hurry to get his wife to the Long Island Railroad
station for her train. He dropped her off at the station and went home. His two daughters were home. His housekeeper was home.

Lee drove into the driveway, got out of the car, and opened the front door to his house. He had one foot inside when he saw
the gun. A man with a gun was standing to his right, behind the door, wearing a stocking mask.

The man with the gun said, “We have your kids upstairs. Come into the house—” but he wasn’t able to finish what he was saying
because Lee turned around and ran outside yelling, “Help!” As he got to the end of the driveway, he stumbled and fell, gashing
his hands.

The man with the gun and the stocking mask, and a man without a gun but with a stocking mask, walked over to Lee on the ground.
“Don’t do that,” the man with the gun told Lee. “Don’t be stupid,” he told him.

Lee came inside. A voice from upstairs said, “Rip that chain off his neck.” He knew about the chain, even though he was upstairs
and out of sight. Lee took the chain off and gave the man with the gun his chain, his other jewelry, and the money in his
pockets.

The voice again: “Where’s your wife? Where’s her ring?” Lee replied that she wasn’t there, that he had just driven her to
the railroad station.

The voice was angry, impatient.

“You’re lying,” said the voice.

“I’m not lying,” said Lee. “You know, it’s obvious she’s not here.” It was obvious. She wasn’t there. And she was wearing
her ring.

“Where’s the jewelry boxes?” the voice asked. Still upstairs.

“I have no jewelry boxes,” said Lee.

The voice knew about them too. Lee used to have jewelry boxes in his closet. But he had a burglary. So he took them out.

The voice upstairs kept asking about the wife, and the ring, and kept getting the same answer. Not there.

The two men with stocking masks led Lee down to the basement. The voice continued to ask about the wife and jewelry and the
ring. As if asking would make them appear.

A knife ripped the shirt up his back. An order was given. He removed his pants. Another order. He removed his underpants.
He put his hands behind his back and they were bound with duct tape. His hands hurt. They were still bleeding from the fall,
but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

The voice said, “Is that all you have? I thought it was a lot of money.” It was a lot of money—$1,500. Lee’s store was open
late the night before and he hadn’t had a chance to deposit all the cash. But the voice expected more. The voice wanted more
and the voice was threatening.

The voice told him that if he didn’t do everything he was told, he would take the children. The voice told him that if he
loved the children, he would not do anything stupid.

The men with the stocking masks left. The voice stopped talking. The housekeeper came downstairs and untied Lee. The police
came.

Lee was reluctant to tell the Nassau County detectives that the voice belonged to his friend, the nice young guy he got to
know a couple of years before, who came to his kid’s party. He was reluctant to show them the pictures that he took on the
deck, the ones showing Charlie. He was reluctant to tell the detectives that he knew where they could find Charlie. He was
afraid that, maybe, Charlie might come back.

But the detective in charge of the case knew just what to say. He had heard that kind of thing before. Charlie might come
back anyway, he told Lee. Better that he be in jail.

Lee told him what he knew. By the end of the day, the three men who came to his house were in custody and were arranging bail.
There was Charlie, his sister’s boyfriend Anthony Cella, and a third man they both knew.

While he was in police custody, Cella gave a statement to Nassau County detectives implicating Charlie. He described the weapons.
He described the split. About enough to buy each of them a nice 27-inch color television set.

Charlie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery in the first degree, and on May 21, 1982, he appeared for sentencing in Nassau
County Court. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Thomas Davenport.

“I have just had occasion to read the probation report,” said Davenport. “It is one of the most scathing reports I have ever
read, I must confess.

“The one aspect that concerns me the most that I [have] personal knowledge on is the lack of Charles Ricottone’s remorse.
I think, unfortunately, Mr. Ricottone gives the appearance of a sense of swagger. I think that is done to mask and not to
betray his feelings.

“I have a deep sense that he is remorseful not just that he was caught. I think he did a foolish thing and he recognizes it
and he violated a trust and a friendship and he recognizes that.”

Apparently the judge recognized that too. Charlie was sentenced to six to ten years in prison, which was the least severe
sentence he could have received. While serving his time at the Clinton correctional facility in Dannemora, Charlie tried to
appeal his conviction. A lawyer was appointed by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court. After investigating
the case and interviewing Charlie, whose charm and loquaciousness impressed him, the lawyer asked to be relieved on the grounds
that there was no basis for appeal. The request was granted.

Charlie was released from Mid-Orange Correctional Center on February 12, 1988.

The prison experience molded Charlie’s psyche, and his career. By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he was well on his
way to achieving his goal of becoming a Guy.

A little over four years later, Charlie and a friend had dinner at a restaurant on a pier jutting into Jamaica Bay, in the
Canarsie section of Brooklyn. They climbed into a car. Charlie’s friend was behind the wheel. It was about eight-thirty in
the evening of April 23, 1992.

The restaurant was on U.S. government property—the Gateway National Recreation Area. Charlie and his friend might not have
known that. A lot of Brooklynites don’t know that much of Jamaica Bay is a national park. Property of the U.S. government.

A National Park Service policeman, Paul Dorogoff, observed the vehicle traveling at approximately ten miles per hour in a
five-mile-per-hour zone. Dorogoff motioned for the car to stop. Charlie’s friend, not identified in court records, was civil
and consented to administration of a sobriety test. Charlie was not civil. While his friend was being administered the test,
Charlie “exited the vehicle and repeatedly approached your deponent and interfered with the sobriety test,” Dorogoff stated
in an affidavit in support of the arrest of Charles Ricottone for assaulting a federal officer. Dorogoff’s affidavit continued: