Business or Blood (18 page)

His trip to court marked the culmination of the police investigation into the murder of Vito's former Toronto lieutenant Guy Panepinto. The investigation was dubbed Project RIP, a not so subtle allusion to the dead man's discount casket business. Panepinto's killers were never charged, but the investigation provided enough evidence to bring Fernandez to court for conspiring to murder one of Panepinto's crew, Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos, over a rip-off. That murder plot fell apart when Fernandez contracted a police undercover officer to do the hit. There was also a convincing case from prosecutors that Fernandez had conspired to move a thousand kilos of cocaine with Vito and Woodbridge Hells Angels.

Fernandez didn't flinch that day when Mr. Justice Joseph Kenkel hit him with a twelve-year prison term. However, the mobster became visibly upset when he heard that he might not get back all of his jewellery, including bracelets, a gold chain with a cross and a Rolex watch that
was said to be a gift from Vito himself. Fernandez was obviously proud of his connection to Vito, and police bugs picked him up referring to the Montrealer alternately as “V,” “the old man” and “my partner.”

Federal prosecutor Rosemary Warren told the court that she wanted to be satisfied that none of the jewellery was stolen before it was handed back to him. Fernandez snapped at the insinuation. “It's not just a bracelet,” he called out from the Plexiglas-enclosed prisoners' box, his wrists bound now with far less expensive metal.

The outburst contrasted sharply with his show of indifference earlier in the trial when he pleaded guilty to the murder plot, drug-trafficking conspiracy and fraud. Those charges were tough to dispute, even though he availed himself of veteran Toronto lawyer Joseph Blumenthal, counsel of choice for many of the province's top mobsters.

In passing sentence, the judge said that Fernandez exhibited a “level of market sophistication in his criminal activity.” His sentence would be more than cut in half, as he received fifty-one months' credit for time spent in pretrial custody. The time he did serve was softened by an affair he had with a female staff member at Toronto's aging Don Jail, where he had a reputation with staff as a perfect gentlemen, once even providing them with Valentine's Day chocolates.

Although Joe Renda was supplying Vito with brains on Toronto-area streets, Fernandez's departure left a void in the muscle end of the family business, and Vito enlisted
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Frank Arcadi to help fill it. Flanked by his bodyguards,
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Frank made frequent trips to Woodbridge for Vito in the early 2000s even before Fernandez was nabbed. It didn't hurt that Arcadi was Calabrian as he attempted to build ties between Vito's group and the GTA 'Ndrangheta.

In the year that followed, as Vito found himself in a Quebec jail awaiting extradition, new faces appeared in the mob-connected social clubs of Woodbridge. First to arrive was Bruzzese's son-in-law Antonio Coluccio, whose Canadian wife sponsored his emigration from his family home of Marina di Gioiosa Ionica in southern Italy in December 2004. Most unsettling among the decorations in his million-dollar
Richmond Hill home was a five-foot-high portrait of his murdered father, Vincenzo.

Antonio's older brothers, Giuseppe (Joe) and Salvatore, soon followed. Both were considered among Italy's thirty most dangerous men and were on the run from charges in 2005 stemming from an Italian police operation dubbed Project Nostromo. The project had pursued money that was initially extorted from tuna fishermen and then invested in a South American drug ring of global scope.

An Italian court eventually sentenced Salvatore
in absentia
to six years and eight months in prison for a string of charges including drug and weapons possession and membership in the 'Ndrangheta. Giuseppe was also sentenced
in absentia
to twelve years for organized crime–related charges, including 'Ndrangheta membership and cocaine trafficking. He already had a criminal record in Canada, and his serious drug conviction from 1993 would have made him ineligible for citizenship even if he wasn't a fugitive.

Not surprisingly, Giuseppe and Salvatore Coluccio both entered Canada using false names and papers. Salvatore chose the new name of Maurizio Logozzo, which appeared on his Ontario driver's licence, health card and Canadian Social Insurance card. Giuseppe chose the new name of Giuseppe Scarfo, using his mother's maiden name as his surname. It appeared on several pieces of false identification, including credit cards, a health card and an Ontario driver's licence. In case life in Canada got too complicated for Giuseppe Scarfo, he had a set of backup fake identification bearing the name Antonio Bertolotti.

The Coluccio brothers were living, breathing proof of the 'Ndrangheta's capacity to continually change and refresh its leadership. They arrived in the Toronto area around the time Antonio (The Lawyer, The Black One) Commisso was facing deportation from Canada for Mafia association. Commisso had lived in Canada for about a year before his deportation was ordered in July 2005. The Coluccio brothers' arrival immediately changed the balance of power in Ontario's underworld. In deference to his international power, Giuseppe was quickly given a seat on the 'Ndrangheta
camera di controllo
.

In the course of his new duties, Giuseppe Coluccio made frequent
drives from his downtown Toronto waterfront condo to Woodbridge. Sometimes he travelled in a yellow Ferrari or his silver Maserati. Other times a chauffeur drove him in a Range Rover or a Porsche Cayenne. Salvatore wasn't quite so flashy, but he was certainly active as well.

Surprisingly, Giuseppe Coluccio was spending time in Woodbridge with members of the Cuntrera–Caruana crime family. It was easy to wonder if something major was happening. The Coluccio brothers' group in the 'Ndrangheta looked to be forming an alliance of sorts with the Cuntrera–Caruana group of the Sicilian Mafia, which would amount to a seismic shift in the underworld landscape. Antonio Coluccio was also in contact with a money launderer and fraudster from Vito's group, who had been active in a Toronto-based recycling company. Vito's wish to forge ties with the Calabrians was being fulfilled, but without him. And his supposed allies in the Cuntrera–Caruanas seemed to be leaving him behind.

October 10, 2006, saw a startling arrival at Pearson International Airport, the timing of which would be hard not to connect to the emerging alliance. At sixty-one, the Italian fugitive was a long-time veteran of the Sicilian mob and the suspect in a number of hits for the Sicilian Mafia, as well as a suspected weapons smuggler. Interpol had issued a “Red” notice, which called on its 190 member countries to locate and arrest him on sight. The suspected hit man, who had dual Italian and Belgian citizenship, was detained at the airport by the CBSA under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and deported back to Belgium to face extradition to Italy.

Not long after that, Salvatore Coluccio fled Canada for Calabria, where he disappeared into a secret bunker with an electric generator, air conditioning and lots of food. His subterranean hideout was just a few kilometres from the five-star Parco dei Principi hotel in Roccella Ionica on the Ionian Sea, in Calabria. The swank hotel featured Turkish steam baths and a helicopter pad, and was considered by authorities to be the crown jewel of the brothers' Coluccio–Aquino 'Ndrangheta group.

There was a high-level meeting in Woodbridge two months after Vito's August 2006 extradition to the USA. Sitting together at a restaurant were Frank Arcadi, Francesco Del Balso, Skunk Giordano and
Giuseppe Fetta, from Vito's Montreal groups, and Antonio Coluccio. The agenda for the meeting concerned a $200,000 gambling debt owed by hit man/restaurateur Salvatore (Sam) Calautti to Del Balso. It was the same $200,000 debt that had been the focus of the Woodbridge hotel gathering in 2004, and the matter wasn't yet resolved. The debt was assumed by an Ontario-based 'Ndrangheta boss who was wanted in Italy on weapons and Mafia association charges. In return for settling his debt, Calautti owed the 'Ndrangheta boss his services. One way of working it off could be for Calautti to kill someone important. For a killer like Calautti, this would be a means of combining pleasure with business. Two hundred thousand dollars was a large sum of money for a hit, since in his world a life can be ended for the price of a cheap used car.

P
aolo Renda called home around noon on Thursday, May 20, 2010, to tell his wife, Maria, that he had just finished his round of golf and would be home as soon as he picked up four steaks for a barbecue. Beyond the tumult in Montreal's
milieu
, life was agreeable for the seventy-three-year-old: he was cruising along Gouin Boulevard in his luxury grey Infiniti sedan towards his home in the same enclave in the leafy, well-heeled borough of Ahuntsic–Cartierville as Vito and Nicolò. He was nearing Albert-Prévost Avenue and only a few minutes from home when he saw the flashing lights on the roof of a black Dodge Cobra. It was annoying, but there was no need to argue with police and spoil his dinner plans. He eased on the brakes and slowed to a halt by the curb. Two men got out of the Cobra, ushered Renda out of his Infiniti and into the black car, and drove him away.

When her husband still wasn't home by 3 p.m., Maria telephoned the family butcher. Renda was a man of habits and one of those habits was always to buy his steaks from the same butcher shop. The butcher told his wife that he had come by about ninety minutes earlier. Maria felt a flash of panic. She was Vito Rizzuto's sister and fully aware of the possibilities. Her husband should have arrived home long ago. She called his probation officer, but the officer knew nothing of Renda's whereabouts and called police. At around 6 p.m., officers found his
Infiniti just where he'd left it, on Gouin Boulevard. The steaks were on the front passenger seat and his keys were on the dashboard. The Cobra with the flashing lights on the roof was but a hazy memory for the city workers who had briefly seen it. It didn't take much investigation to know it wasn't a police car.

That was the last anyone heard from Paolo Renda. It was a quiet, tidy exit from the often turbulent
milieu
. It befitted a man who generally worked with numbers, not guns, although police did find a loaded .32 Smith & Wesson pistol inside a hidden compartment of a dresser in his walk-in closet and two rifles in his basement. He could easily have passed for an accountant, which was appropriate since he was the keeper of financial secrets for Vito's family: he knew who was paying what to whom in the lucrative construction industry; he oversaw gambling in family-controlled bars and cafés. On paper, he was also vice-president and administrator of Renda Construction Inc., which helped him explain his posh lifestyle to Revenue Canada.

Paolo Renda was three years from his fiftieth wedding anniversary when he vanished. His disappearance was a major loss to Vito. Even if the exact relationship between these brothers-in-law/first cousins was a challenge to decipher, it did allow for one quick and accurate conclusion: Paolo Renda's abduction and probable murder were a strike deep into the heart of Vito's family.

Renda had immigrated to Canada with his parents in 1954 and became a citizen ten years later. He started his work life as a barber, and in 1972 he was sentenced to four years in prison after attempting to burn down his Boucherville, Quebec, barbershop to collect on an insurance policy. It wasn't a tough crime for police to solve, since he was found near the burning shop, his clothes reeking of smoke. His co-accused in the crime was Vito, who was sentenced to two years in custody. In commiting arson, Vito Jr. was carrying on a family tradition started by his namesake grandfather back in New Jersey in the 1930s, although this would be the last time Vito went behind bars before the Three Captains bust.

Renda had rebounded nicely from his arson arrest, setting up a bistro, a motel and a pair of construction firms. He carried himself with a
Zenlike air of casual success, and often appeared at the Consenza Social Club in a stylish sports jacket and open business shirt, but Renda knew much of the darker side of mob life. He was the Rizzuto crime family's
consigliere
: top adviser and number three man in the organization, behind only Vito and Nicolò

Despite his calm demeanour, Paolo Renda did have serious enemies. His name, together with that of his father, Calogero, was often linked to the 1978 murder of Paolo Violi. This explained why Renda left Montreal for Venezuela in the late 1970s before an arrest warrant could be signed or bullets could be fired in his direction. He didn't return until years later, after he was assured the warrant had been cancelled. By that time, most of the people who wanted to kill him had been murdered, banished to Hamilton or co-opted by Vito's organization.

By the early 2000s, Renda might have preferred to spend more time golfing and barbecuing, but the Colisée crackdown and Vito's imprisonment spoiled those plans. In his own Colisée case, Renda pleaded guilty to gangsterism charges while more serious charges of drug trafficking were dropped. He had been released on parole three months before his disappearance after serving two-thirds of a six-year prison sentence.

Parole had returned Renda to a violent, unstable world. With Vito behind bars, independent drug dealers were comfortable selling their wares in Montreal's downtown—Rizzuto turf. Renda had always preferred to try to defuse tensions on the street. A hidden police bug at the Consenza had once picked up Renda counselling Skunk Giordano not to drink too much or attract attention, after Giordano's unsettling target practice on the testicles of an Iranian-born heroin dealer in a trendy restaurant on Saint-Laurent Boulevard on April 18, 2004.

Renda's parole conditions meant that, until October, he was forbidden from associating with others who were considered criminals or from owning a cellphone, pager or any other portable communications device, or any weapon. He also couldn't go to any Italian cafés or what the parole board described as “European-style cafés,” or keep the company of anyone involved in organized crime or the drug culture.