Made Men (22 page)

With Joey O Masella, the FBI had been forced to listen to hours of excuses. With Tin Ear Sclafani, they got a primer in Mafia etiquette. He was the Amy Vanderbilt of La Cosa Nostra. Again and again he would instruct Ralphie in the proper way to do things.

For example:
Ralphie was having problem with Joey Smash, the Gambino captain nobody liked. If you had a problem you didn’t go directly to the boss. You went to Tin Ear, and he went to his boss, Uncle Joe Giacobbe, and then he went to the boss, Vinny Ocean, and things got worked out.
“He’s sick, I heard,” Ralphie said of Uncle Joe.
“Well, he forgets a lot,” Tin Ear said. “But he’s the best with our reputation. Shorty. They called him Shorty.”

“Shorty.”
“From uptown. Only Joey is acting. See if Joey—this is between me and you—if Joey wan’t like this”—he crossed his fingers—“with Vinny, I’d be the skipper.”
“I know that,” said Ralphie, always ready with a compliment. “In a minute. I mean, you should.”
“But they know I fight,” Tin Ear said. “I get in trouble when I fight.”
“Excuse me—you know, you should because you’re right in Brooklyn. You’re right in the action. He’s in Jersey. He’s looking to go to a farm and retire, Joe.”
Giacobbe had been assigned the job of overseeing a small crew that worked in Florida, which to Tin Ear was similar to winning the lottery. Florida was the easy life. “That’s where they should keep him, with the Florida guys. They don’t have no problems down there.”
In all his talks, Tin Ear seemed torn between respecting authority and resenting it. Consistently he knew one thing—he might be out of it, he might be behind the times, but they still needed him around to do the dirty work.
“I’m an action guy,” he explained.
Ralphie laughed, knowing it was true.
“Don’t say nothing,” Tin Ear said.
“Now, come on Joey,” Ralphie said.
“But I think you can figure it out.”
“I know,” said the informant. “Listen to me, you ain’t telling me nothing.”

During a drive to New Jersey on February 24, 1999, Ralphie was at the wheel and Joey Sclafani said, “You can just drive. I’ll talk.” They were on their way to a restaurant on Tunnel Avenue in Secaucus, talking about parenting. Tin Ear was very proud of his two sons, both in their thirties, who had grown up and moved out. Ralphie’s son and daughter were teenagers still living at home. Ralphie’s son was on the edge of leaving home. He was eighteen. He had his son dropping off envelopes of cash to the dreaded Joey Smash.

“The kids are happy, that’s all I give a fuck about,” Tin Ear said. “That’s what it’s all about. You can’t hold your kids... It’s gonna happen to you. Your kids are gonna go.”

“And I got boys. Girls, they stay close. Then when they get pregnant, their mother takes care of them.”
“When you get girls, you gain a son,” Ralphie said. “When you got boys, you lose sons.”
“Now, with girls, they favor the father over the mother when they’re younger. Your daughter’s probably the same way.”
“Yeah.”
“But as soon as she gets pregnant, she goes right back to the mother,” Tin Ear said. “But she’ll always have that soft spot for Daddy.”
“No, she’s really close to her mother,” Ralphie said. “See, I was away all those years in jail.”
Joey Sclafani told Ralphie all about his new idea to scam some money—book publishing.
“What kind of a book is it?” Ralphie asked.
“Christianity,” he said. “Let me example this to you. We have a guy, a representative who comes in if they’re interested in publishing it. Now you got to make your own deal with them. We already got twenty percent.”
“All right.”
“They’re going to try and say, ‘Joey got ten percent and whomever he’s doing it with has ten percent.’ ”
“Is it an easy thing to get done or a hard thing?”
“Let me example,” Sclafani explained. “This is what it is. They got forty million followers.”

“What group is it?”
“Christianity. Born-again Christians. They got tapes. Wiseman’s souls. I got to show it to you. When we go to the restaurant, I’ll show it to you.”
“Somebody wrote this book and now it has to be published?”
“Right. It’s got to be published. They got forty-three million. If each one of them buys the book for a dollar, we have twenty cents each.”
“This is a big group.”
“They have lawyers and everything.”
“And they can’t get nobody to touch it.”
“Nope,” Sclafani said. “It’s religious.”
“If Barnes and Noble’s passed on it, it’s big money,” Ralphie said.
They talked about other schemes. Ralphie mentioned that somebody named Paulie knew Bill Cosby, Joey Sclafani mentioned once again that he knew Johnny Depp, and then Joey, without warning, started explaining in detail that the DeCavalcante crime family had been secretly involved in an internal war for the last year. The FBI had some idea that this was going on, but the details had never been made clear. Never one to hold back, Joey Sclafani proceeded to provide the bureau with a play-by-play.
What had happened, according to Tin Ear’s version, was the New Jersey faction of the family—headed by Fat Charlie Majuri—decided the New York chapter of the family was getting too powerful and had to be eliminated. The New York guys, headed by Vinny Palermo, learned about this before it happened. They learned of it because one of the players, Jimmy Gallo, had been approached by Majuri to do the job. Gallo promptly told Vinny Ocean and the big plot failed. Much of this the FBI already knew from the tapes of Joey O Masella. Now they were hearing for the first time what happened after the Majuri “coup d’état” died with a whimper.
Sclafani made it clear that the majority of the alleged three-man panel—Vinny Palermo and Jimmy Palermo— along with the alleged consigliere, Stefano Vitabile, had decided that the New York chapter was earning more than the other chapters, and thus its elimination would be foolish. This occurred despite the fact that both Jimmy Palermo and Stephano Vitabile were Jersey guys whose power remained ensconced west of the Hudson. They had seen clearly that in order for the DeCavalcante family to survive, they needed the New York guys.
From Sclafani’s conversation, it was clear that things had gotten pretty ugly for a while. Sclafani himself had been the target of a hit.
Ralphie asked, “Why would they do something so stupid when things are going so well?”
“ ’Cause they would get all the money.”
“ ’Cause of the money,” Ralphie repeated. “So how do you forget this? How do you put this behind you?”
“You don’t.”
“You keep it in the back of your head.”
“No.”
“You forget about it?”
“I ain’t forgetting about it.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Ralphie said. “How do you forget about it?”
“Time,” Tin Ear said. “They put a hit out on me, and then I’m going to eat with them? Say bye-bye.”
But the war was officially over and the DeCavalcante family was still up and running. In fact, Sclafani was convinced it was stronger than it had ever been. By the end of the decade, the leadership of all five New York families, which were under siege by the federal government, was in doubt. Sclafani mentioned that no new members were being allowed into any of them “on the other side of the border in New York.”
“You told me that,” Ralphie said. “Why?”
“Because they’re too scared over there. They name good guys over here. Everybody wants to go where we are. The whole fucking world wants to come where we are. We have no rats, nobody knows fucking nothing.”
“I fucking love it,” Ralphie said.
With this talk of Jersey as the promised land, Sclafani had dropped all resentments and animosities. He was now strutting. “You got a real street guy here,” he told Ralphie. “Let me tell you something, how you expect a guy to make money here? Guy’s got to be a hoodlum. I don’t want a guy who’s going to be scared of a fucking cop. I want guys who fight these motherfuckers.”
“I agree with you,” Ralphie said.
“I’d always rather go with a hoodlum.”
“If I’m rich or poor, I act the same,” Ralphie said.
“Our time’ll come,” Tin Ear answered.
“It’s gonna come.”
“We’re gonna get it.”

The Biscayne Bay Marriott was not the most expensive hotel in Miami, but it certainly wasn’t the cheapest. At this time of year, with the temperatures hovering consistently near the hundreds, it was easy to book a two-bedroom suite. That gave the FBI plenty of opportunity to enter the suite Tin Ear Sclafani and his new best friend, Ralphie Guarino, booked for a series of “business meetings” and install a special video-camera system that could record for hours at a time. This time they hid the device directly across from the couch in the main room so anyone who was sitting talking would be heard clear as a bell on tape in some courtroom someday. As it happened, Joey Sclafani and the associates he was to meet all liked to sit around on the couch for hours at a time, hatching plots.

The room itself wasn’t so bad, with its sweeping view of the ocean and the pool. It was air-conditioned and had the nice balcony, a big color TV. It was late afternoon and Tin Ear was standing outside looking down at the scantily clad crowd. He was providing commentary, like the guy on ESPN. “Look at that one,” he called in to Ralphie and his—Tin Ear’s—son Anthony. Anthony was a tow-truck driver in his late twenties who spent a lot of time at the weight bench. He considered himself one seriously goodlooking goomba. He was of a different time and place from his father, who had gained a little extra around his middle and ate too much red meat and drank too much booze.

“We’re not eating that much, really,” he had said to assure himself.
“No,” Ralphie said. “What did we eat today—eggs? A hamburger?”
“And I still gained weight,” Tin Ear said. “Anywhere I go, everything I eat, I gain.” Then he had walked out onto the balcony and commented on the beach crowd.
Ralphie soon joined him.
Anthony began talking about a guy named Louie who worked out with weights and got huge. Joey was sensitive about this. He said, “I’m in good shape.”
“Yeah, Pop,” Anthony said. “You look great, honest.”
“Listen,” Ralphie offered, “not everybody could be thin, not everybody could be rich.”
“I know I look good,” Anthony said. “That’s it.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” his father said. “And I look bad.”

“I did not say that,” Anthony said. “But that booze is no good for your health.”
“What’s no good?” Tin Ear said. “I do a hundred pushups a day.”
All day Anthony had been talking about different ideas he was working on. His father kept telling Ralphie that Anthony was “a fighter.” He was proud of his boy. His boy was insisting that the way to make money was to open a trendy club in South Beach, like the one called Liquids run by the Colombo crime family. The club was written about all over the country because people like Madonna showed up and got to hang around with the wiseguys and the wannabes and everyone was happy. “All they got is money” was how Anthony put it. He was explaining the need to get the big celebrities and pro athletes into the club, which would attract the suckers who would pay ridiculous prices for watered-down drinks just to say later how they sat a few seats away from Madonna. He was speaking a language that was totally foreign to his father.
“It’s a hot joint,” Anthony was saying. “It’s the flavor of the month. They have no loyalty. Boom, whatever is on the radio. You gotta spend money on the radio. You got Hot Z100. They got Jennifer Lopez to come. Sylvester Stallone. They all go there and people want to go see them. They’re not going to drink. It’s going to see the highlights. I heard at Liquids, they pay a movie star two grand to come and hang out. The attraction is the bait.”
“No doubt,” Ralphie said.
“You know what’s even bigger down here?” Anthony asked. “Fag joints.”
“You gotta have a fag for a partner, that’s the problem,” Ralphie said.
“You gotta have a fag running the joint,” Anthony said.
“Yeah, so?” Tin Ear said. “I’d rather have a fag running the joint, making all that fucking money.”
“All they got is money,” Anthony said. He then suggested opening a topless club under the name Whisker Biscuit.
“Wiskaskit?” his puzzled father asked.
“Whisker Biscuit,” Anthony explained. “That’s a modern nickname for twat... Stupid money. There’s the Booby Trap, the Cheetah. They’re all making money down here. Hand over fist.”
“Can you find a place that’s zoned for it?” Ralphie asked.
“Reynolds is looking for that,” Anthony said.
Reynolds. Reynolds Moraglia was the reason they were stuck inside a hotel room on a beautiful Florida day. He was an associate of the Colombo crime family, a veteran wiseguy who was now living in Florida and helping to run things for what was left of that family down there. The DeCavalcante family was hoping to consummate several deals with the Colombo family, which meant that they had no choice about talking with Reynolds. He’d been around forever, and he was one of those guys who could not wait to tell you just how smart he really is. He had a habit of turning any dialogue into a monologue, and for a guy like Tin Ear Sclafani, who was already having doubts about his place in the universe, the sound of Reynolds’s voice was like the sound of fingernails on the chalkboard. It was annoying, but it was temporary, and then they had plans to have dinner at a nice crab house in South Beach.
“Should I wear a jacket?” Joey asked his son Anthony for the third time.

Reynolds finally showed up. To make matters worse, he was now talking about the Internet. At this point in his life, heading straight into his sixties, Tin Ear hadn’t given much thought to the Internet. He didn’t know a dot-com from a Web site. And now here he was, stuck inside a hotel room on a beautiful Florida day with this windbag going on and on about how you had to get on the Internet pronto or that was it for you, pally. His idea was to sell things over the Internet that maybe people couldn’t get on the street.

“I got more things going on with Viagra,” he said. “Viagra,” Tin Ear said.
“Everybody wants Viagra,” Reynolds said. “Everybody.”

“I want it today,” Tin Ear said.
“Selling it over the Internet,” Reynolds said. “We’re gonna open a Web site, sell it right over the Internet, I’ll make four or five million dollars a week. We’re gonna do it, I got the kid write the program on the computer. What’s goin’ on is unbelievable... That’s the whole thing. If you’re not, if you’re not in this world right now, in this fuckin’ life that we live every day; if you ain’t like a chameleon, if you can’t change—”
“You’re finished,” Ralphie said.
“If you wanna keep thinking like this, fuck you, you’re done, you’re finished, you’re never gonna earn anymore. These fuckin’ kids, twenty-five, twenty-six years old, will teach you things you could not ever believe.”
“They—they make money with the computer?” Tin Ear asked.
“They’re going in banks,” Reynolds said. “They got kids that go like this, they go into the banks, they’re robbing the banks from their computers, send them the money from the banks to Switzerland. Before they know what’s goin’ on, they want ten million from them.”
“This is the thing today,” Tin Ear said.
“They can’t stop it,” Reynolds said.