Lust, Money & Murder (31 page)

The judge was asking him a question.

“What?” he said dully.

“I said, are you represented by counsel?”

Cattoretti stared blankly up at the woman. The words meant nothing to him. His life was over.

“Do you have a lawyer?” she said.

“Lawyer? Um, no.”

“Then the court will appoint one for you. You are ordered held in jail, in lieu of one hundred thousand dollars bail.” She banged the gavel down. “Next case.”

Cattoretti had no recollection of being led to the cell.

* * *

Cattoretti plunged into a state of utter despair. Only eight months in America, and already arrested! And with nowhere to turn for help.

His life was down the sewer.

Sometime early the next morning, the cell door clanged open. Cattoretti was curled into a ball on his bunk.

A clean-cut young man in a blue pinstripe suit entered. A briefcase was in one hand, a small metal folding chair in the other.

“Hello, Mr. Cattoretti,” he said, sitting down. “I’m Stephen Petit, your court-appointed attorney. You want to tell me what happened?”

Cattoretti looked into the man’s eyes. Suddenly, some survival instinct took over.

“He forced me to do it,” Cattoretti blurted, on the verge of tears.

“Who forced you?”

“My uncle. He—he said if I could find a way to get to America, he would give me a job. I had no idea he was a criminal.” Cattoretti started to blubber, but checked himself, pretending to be ashamed. “He t-told me I had to sell the watches, or he would throw me ou-out on the street.”

“Who is your uncle? What’s his name?”

Cattoretti wiped his eyes. He hesitated, remembering
omertà
, the Mafia’s code of silence. But Silvio wasn’t in the Mafia, he was just a small-time crook, a nobody. “His name is Silvio Lombardi.”

* * *

Stephen Petit came back the next day.

“Your uncle was clean,” he said. “The police searched his apartment and came up empty.”

I should have known he would have been prepared
, Cattoretti thought. “My uncle is a snake. I never should have come to America.” He started crying again.

Petit sympathetically put his hand on Cattoretti’s shoulder. “Look, you’re just a young guy who’s been taken advantage of. I’ve already spoken to the DA. He isn’t interested in ruining your life—what he’s interested in is stopping all these fake Rolexes from pouring into the city. He’s under a lot of pressure from the mayor. It’s bad for tourism—people buy those watches around Times Square, get ripped off, complain to the police.” He paused. “If you could give them something to go on, something that would lead them to the
source
of these watches...”

Cattoretti hesitated. It was his only bargaining chip. “I...I’m not sure.”

Petit leaned forward confidentially. “Look, I know how it is with Italians, Giorgio, with Silvio being family and all. But you’ve got to look out for yourself. America is dog-eat-dog, especially in New York City. If you know who’s sourcing your uncle’s watches, I can cut you a deal with the judge. You can plead guilty and get off with six months, and the sentence will be suspended. You won’t serve a day behind bars.”

Cattoretti didn’t understand the American legal system. To plead guilty sounded dangerous.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Of course I’m sure about it, I’m your attorney. It’s called a plea bargain, it’s done every day. You change your plea to guilty and spill where the watches come from, and you’re off the hook. Nobody is interested in punishing small fry like you—our prisons are overcrowded as it is.” Petit motioned to him. “You look the judge in the eye and say you made a mistake, you’re sorry, that you learned your lesson. It’s your first time—that’s all he needs to justify letting you off with a slap on the wrist.”

Cattoretti swallowed.

* * *

There was a distinguished-looking man seated on the bench in the courtroom. He had a craggy face and thick, styled hair. He looked down at Cattoretti.

“The court has been informed that the defendant wishes to change his plea from not guilty to guilty,” he said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

The judge looked at the others. “All parties in agreement?”

Stephen Petit nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“The State agrees, Your Honor,” the district attorney said.

A wave of relief passed over Cattoretti.

The judge looked down at him, silent for a long moment. “One reason this city is such a cesspool of crime is due to people like you, vermin who enter the country illegally and then prey on our good citizenry, selling them counterfeit goods, drugs, and God knows what else. People who thumb their nose at the laws of this great country. People who have no respect for honest, decent Americans.” The judge’s voice trembled with righteousness. “There are some judicial systems which coddle such people. In Manhattan, we punish them to the fullest extent of the law.”

Cattoretti had a panicky feeling. He glanced at Stephen Petit, but the man just stood there, his hands folded, his eyes fixed on the judge.

“Giorgio Cattoretti, you were caught red handed in a hotel room with counterfeit merchandise, with a clear intent to sell said merchandise. To make an example of you, I sentence you to serve five years at the state prison in Attica, New York. After you pay your debt to society, you will be deported from the United States.”

The room began to spin. Stephen Petit was calmly closing his briefcase.

“There’s been a mistake!” Cattoretti shouted, as the bailiff grabbed his arm. “My lawyer lied to me...I’m innocent! I was framed by my uncle! I was framed!”

He was dragged away screaming.

For an instant, he glimpsed the face of Joey Russo, who was standing in the back of the courtroom.

There was a smile on Russo’s face.

CHAPTER 3.5

The men at the Attica State Prison fought over the young, handsome Italian like horny dogs.

Life became a living hell for Cattoretti. The first few weeks he was auctioned off nightly, like a prime piece of beef. He fought the rapists tooth and nail, had his nose broken repeatedly, along with his jaw, several ribs, both wrists...but of course in the end he always lost. When things settled down, three trustees ended up sharing him, passing him from one cell to another. The only way he kept his sanity was to tell himself that he was lucky they didn’t kill him.

He vowed that somehow, someday, he would get even with the three of them.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, Cattoretti developed a deep loathing for the American government and legal system. The thought that this was a country where someone could be subjected to years of nonstop torture for selling a few fake watches was unthinkable to him.

“The Land of the Free.” “Liberty and justice for all.”
What a joke,
he thought. The United States was just as corrupt as Italy, the judges and lawyers and criminals all paying each other off. Stephen Petit had been bought off by Joey Russo, and for all he knew, the DA had been bought off by Russo, too.

A year after Cattoretti was sentenced to prison, Joey Russo was bringing massive amounts of heroin into New York using submersible containers exactly like the one Cattoretti had designed.

* * *

Giorgio Cattoretti was released from Attica after serving two years, three months, and eight days.

Only 22 years old, he was already a broken man. He went through the deportation proceedings in a stupor.

This time, when he saw the Statue of Liberty slide by the cargo ship on his return voyage—paid for by the U.S. Department of Immigration—she seemed to be laughing at him.

CHAPTER 3.6

When Giorgio Cattoretti arrived in Italy, he felt so utterly defeated he could not bear to face his family or friends. He did not return to
Cinecittà
. Instead, he settled in a seedy section of Milan. He took a manual laborer position in a shoe factory, like his pitiable mother.

But Giorgio Cattoretti was a survivor.
The Cat always lands on his feet
, he told himself.

In Milan, Cattoretti observed that Italy lagged far behind the USA in the sales of fake goods, particularly knockoffs of the Italian designer clothing labels. He began to think he could carve out a healthy niche in that business sector, living in the center of the world’s fashion industry. He could gain access to new designs very fast and beat his competitors to the market.

Cattoretti knew that to get into the design and production of fake clothing, he would need a base of operation, a legitimate business of some kind that could serve as a front.

In Attica, he had kept his ears open. He had learned a lot of unusual approaches to entice people to do what you wanted them to do.

After several months of research, he narrowed his choice down to one particular company, a printing outfit. It was called DayPrinto, S.p.A. and was located one hour by car east of Milan. The facilities included printing presses and a large graphics design department, along with plenty of basement and warehouse space.

This firm was owned by a 52-year-old Milan businessman named Reggio Martino. He owned a score of other companies in the area, and was a pillar of the community.

He was perfect.

* * *

Every weekday from 4 to 5 pm, Reggio Martino went to the same tearoom off the Via Torino and had a cognac and a cigar and read
Il Giorno
.

One day, when he went out the door, he ran smack into a blonde carrying a bag of groceries. Or rather, she ran into him—she wasn’t watching where she was going. She fell down on the wet sidewalk, tomatoes and apples rolling in all directions.

“
Signora
, are you all right?” Reggio said, taking her hand to help her up. “I’m terribly sorry...”

“My ankle,” she said, wincing. She looked up at him with big blue eyes that nearly stopped his heart.

He squatted beside her. She couldn’t have been more than 16 years old. More like 14, he thought, looking at her more closely.

“Let me help you to my automobile—I’ll give you a ride to the hospital.” Reggio put his arm around her to support her, and guided her over to his car.

“I’m fine, really,” she said, but he opened the door and helped her inside.

“Let me get your groceries,” he said.

As he bent over the sidewalk, picking up the fruit and vegetables, he wondered if anyone had seen what had happened, but as far as he could tell, nobody was paying any attention because of the rain.

When Reggio got in the car, the girl was inspecting her slender, delicate ankle. It was hard for him to pull his eyes away.

“It’s not broken,” she said. “If you could just take me home...”

“Certainly,” he said, starting the engine.

She told him where she lived. As he drove, he glanced over at her often, making polite conversation. She was from a small village in Umbria, went to secretarial school and shared a flat with her sister, who was a seamstress.

“This is a beautiful car,” she said, glancing around the interior.

“Thank you,” Reggio said proudly. It was a 1967 Lancia. He kept it in perfect condition.

She was massaging her ankle again, her blonde hair hiding her young face. She was stunning. Reggio asked God to help him fight the thoughts he was having.

When they reached her neighborhood—a run-down section in the northeast quarter of Milan—she guided him down several side streets. “This is where I live,” she said quietly. She looked ashamed.

Reggio parked in front of the shabby building. He walked around to her door, cradling the groceries as he helped her out. They went inside the dingy entrance.

“I live on the fifth floor,” she said, turning towards the stairs.

“There’s no elevator?”

“No, but I can make it.”

Reggio helped her up two of the steps, but it was clear that the poor girl was in terrible pain. He bent and scooped her up in his arms, trying not to grunt.

“You’re very strong,” she said softly, slipping her hands around his neck.

Reggio smiled. He tried not to show the strain as he carried her up flight after flight of steps. Her sweet perfume tickled his nostrils, causing the troubling but exciting thoughts again. Whenever he glanced down at her face, it seemed that there was a dreamy look in her pale blue eyes.

He felt himself getting an erection. He hated himself for it—she was a mere child!

When he reached the fifth floor, he gently set her down at her apartment entrance, breathing hard, his forehead slick with sweat.

“Thank you so much,” she said, and fumbled in her purse for her key, teetering on one high-heeled shoe. She opened the door and they entered, Reggio helping her over to a grimy-looking couch.