The Other Hollywood (30 page)

PAM ELLAVSKY
:
The day after Bruce showed up, we were sitting in my parents’ living room. We were both practically in tears because we both had decided that it was over.

Then all of a sudden, we started talking about what was beyond MIPORN. What was there?

And we realized there was us, there were the kids, there was a future. We just talked and talked and talked. From that point on, it got better.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
There’s a certain amount of glamour to working undercover. But after a while, once you’ve been to the same places and done the same thing repetitively and you’re with the same people that you really don’t wanna be with, it gets old, you know? I wanted to go home to my wife and family.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I would never have let Bruce go off to Hawaii by himself. You just don’t do that. So yeah, I felt betrayed when he did that to me. My partner was deserting me in the middle of the mission.

So I went to Hawaii by myself and called Al Nunes. He sent a chauffeur to pick me up and drove me out to his grocery store. Nunes had his offices upstairs.

I meet him there, make a purchase of a pirated videotape cassette, make a purchase of some pornography—and then we talk about doing a deal on some child pornography.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
I put Pat in touch with Al because he sold X-rated material. Al was one of Norm Arno’s biggest accounts. Very nice person. Paid his bills like clockwork. I never knew he dealt in child pornography. What people do is their business.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
It was pretty well-known within the porn industry that you had to be crazy to deal in child pornography. There were a couple of people that made these films—but not many.

BILL KELLY
:
Pornographers were scared to death to deal in kiddie porn because the penalties are horrendous. I mean, you can get a quarter million dollar fine and up to fifteen years in prison. So child pornography was never a big part of the porn industry.

It was bad business because you’re going to get all kinds of heat.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
Al Nunes showed me the films, and some of the kids were really little, and they were performing adult sex acts. I mean, these weren’t eighteen-year-old girls pretending to be little girls. Most of the films featured an adult and a child—either a young girl with a adult male or an adult female with a young boy.

I had two boys around the same age as some of the kids in the films, so I wanted to take this fucker out and just strangle him, you know?

Instead, I had to talk to Nunes about how great the cum shot was.

Nunes was purporting to have a Chinese buyer for the films, and he was holding that up to me, saying, “If you don’t want this I’ve got another buyer.”

So I made the deal.

But it was difficult. I had to get drunk after that one. I mean, I would’ve gotten drunk anyway, but now I just had a better reason.

BILL KELLY
:
Pat went to Hawaii and caught a child pornographer, which was the most substantial conviction we had in MIPORN. But yeah, I heard that he and Bruce had a falling out, but I don’t know what the details were.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
I think if Pat was aggravated about me staying behind, he should have talked to me about it. But Pat wasn’t great about saying what he was thinking, you know? You were supposed to figure it out.

It’s certainly something that we could have talked about. I don’t know what Pat did or didn’t do—I don’t think that he called back and talked to Gordy about it and said, “Do we need to go today?” I think Pat just went.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
Bruce didn’t go to Hawaii because he was afraid the bureau might think badly of him. He was waiting for me to fall on my face—but instead I brought back the goods. I should’ve been pissed; Bruce hung me out to dry. But fuck, I made the kiddie porn deal.

I made the case.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
After that, Pat and I could still work together professionally, but I don’t think we really liked each other anymore. I mean, I wanted MIPORN to be successful, but I also knew it was just a part of my life. But Pat was really obsessed with the case. He was consumed by it.

GORDON MCNEIL
:
I knew Pat and Bruce had grown to dislike each other. I don’t know why—maybe it was spending so much time together.

So Bruce told me he wanted to get out. And I knew, without Bruce ever telling me specifically, that it was because of Pat.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Any time you’re working undercover for a few years, you’re pushing the envelope. I mean, we didn’t go to the office; we had no real association with other FBI agents. Our only contact with reality was through our supervisor, Gordy McNeil, who was fantastic throughout the whole thing.

So I was ready to do something else. I would say to Gordy, “Hey, you know, I’ve had enough. I’m ready to pull the plug. I gotta get out.”

GORDON MCNEIL
:
I knew Bruce wanted out very badly, but we hadn’t gotten Mickey Zaffarano—and as far as I was concerned, a case without that guy wouldn’t prove the organized crime connection. Without Zaffarano, everybody else was small potatoes. We had to get the principal players. So I pushed Bruce to continue on.

BILL BROWN
:
By the time their personal relationship had deteriorated to the point where it wasn’t worth much, their ability to manipulate the bad guys was so great that they didn’t need any great trust in each other.

I mean, they did trust each other in their undercover roles but not in their real ones.

NEW YORK CITY/LAS VEGAS/
LOS ANGELES/MIAMI/LOUISVILLE
1980

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
The New York Police Department had full-time surveillance on Mickey Zaffarano, and they located him at one of his offices in New York.

I was in Baltimore when I got a call from Bill Kelly saying Zaffarano was definitely in. I immediately flew to New York and took a cab to his office.

I got off the elevator and walked right into Zaffarano. I practically had a heart attack.

FRED SCHWARTZ (U.S. ATTORNEY)
:
We had not been able to get to Mickey Zaffarano. Finally, in the last month of the investigation, we developed a strategy. Pat was buying
Debbie Does Dallas
from a fellow in California—Joe Ariano, aka Joe Black—who claimed he had the right to sell it even though it was generally recognized in the industry that it was a Norman Arno movie; Zaffarano had given Arno the right to sell it.

So the strategy we developed was that Pat would go and talk to Zaffarano and say, “Hey, I want to do the right thing. Does Joe have the right to sell
Debbie Does Dallas
?” and then tie into the conspiracy that way.

GORDON MCNEIL
:
I specifically split Pat and Bruce up at that particular point, so Pat ended up going to New York by himself—and he just walked right into Zaffarano’s office.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I said, “Mickey, I’m Pat Salamone from Golde Coaste in Miami. We’ve done some deals with Joe Black, and we got a lot of tapes of
Debbie Does Dallas,
but we don’t want any problems moving it in South Florida.

“Joe says you gave him permission to distribute
Debbie Does Dallas,
and I want to know that Joe’s okay, that we’re not going to have any problems with you.”

Zaffarano’s looking me over, and he’s a menacing looking guy. My stomach was in knots. I was unarmed. I knew I could get hurt in a situation like this.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Mickey was about five foot ten, five foot eleven, close to two hundred pounds, strong as an ox. He looked like a fighter. He told me he did eighteen years in prison for murder. I don’t know how true that was, but, uh, I mean, you don’t ask somebody that says he was in jail for murder if he did it, you know?

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
Finally, we walked from the hallway into Mickey’s back office with the tapes and film reels, and Mickey says, “Joe’s okay.”

Now I’ve got it.

This tied the whole fucking two-and-a-half-year investigation together because Mickey Zaffarano was acknowledging that he had control over
Debbie Does Dallas
.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Everybody knew Mickey was the boss. Matter of fact, one day Mickey had all those guys up in Stewie Siegel’s office, and he got ’em all down on their hands and knees. Then Mickey said, “Now look, scumbags, Chuck Bernstene wants his money, and you’re gonna pay him.”

Mickey was probably one of the finest guys I’ve ever met in my life.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I knew all I had to do was get Mickey to corroborate a few things, and that would tie him into everything. So I asked him, “Joe Black said he went to jail for you—is that true? Joe Black did time for you?”

It was like a light went off in Zaffarano’s head. You could see it in his eyes. His whole demeanor changed. His body tensed. His eyes got big.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
I told Mickey that I thought Pat Salamone and Bruce Wakerly were cops. He said, “You’re probably right.”

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
If he had a gun, Mickey would’ve shot me—because if I was really Pat Salamone I would not have asked that type of question. Because Mickey Zaffarano was the boss. But it was the absolute end of the investigation so you go for it. You play all your cards.

So Mickey said, “Get the fuck out of here, and don’t ever come around again.”

I got out the door real quick. I think I hit the stairs because I didn’t want to wait for the elevator. All that emotion going through me—it was a rush. Because we got Zaffarano.

That was it. The investigative phase of the undercover operation was over. Now it was just a matter of mopping up the search warrants.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
A funny thing happened when they indicted us all. It was Valentine’s Day, 1980. I went to Vegas early in the morning to sell a guy some films, and on the way to the hotel my limo got into an accident. It was raining, and we got hit. The next thing I know I’m on the floor, and I’m feeling around to see if everything’s all right, and a paramedic opens the door.

He goes, “Are you okay?”

Now, I know I’m gonna make a claim here because I know this is a good,
good
accident.

So I say, “Oh no, my back is bad; I can’t move. I gotta go to the hospital.”

But then I says, “I got a box in the trunk. I can’t go nowhere without that box!”

So the paramedic takes the box out of the trunk—filled with porn films—and he says, “Look, I got them. They’re in the van, okay? Now you can go.”

So they take me to this county hospital, and I’m layin’ there, and the doctor says he don’t find no broken bones—there’s nothin’ wrong. I says, “What, are you crazy? I can’t move my back!”

As soon as the doctor leaves, I sneak out to make a phone call to my wife—to tell her to come to Vegas for the weekend—and sure enough, I get my son, who tells me that mommy’s in jail, and the FBI ripped up the house.

My son says, “They locked up Mommy!”

So I says, “I gotta get outta here.”

NEW YORK TIMES
,
FEBRUARY 15, 1980: 55 PERSONS INDICTED IN PIRACY OF FILMS AND IN PORNOGRAPHY—FBI INVESTIGATION CALLED BIGGEST ATTACK AGAINST ACTIVITIES
:
“A federal undercover investigation has resulted in the indictment of 55 persons in 10 states in the largest effort ever against the distribution of pornography and film piracy.”

MARCELLA COHEN (U.S. ATTORNEY)
:
On February 14, 1980, there were simultaneous search warrants conducted at thirty locations in sixteen cities throughout the United States. Four hundred FBI agents made the arrests, as well as conducted searches throughout the country, and fifty-five individuals were indicted.

TOMMY SINOPOLI
:
It was like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or some shit.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
I was at our office on Cherokee with Dave Hedley, a couple of salespeople, and a couple of girls—when twenty LAPD cops and a half dozen federal agents came in and busted me.

They made a big production out of it.

They took me to jail in downtown Los Angeles, and when I saw the forty guys in a holding cell—Norman Arno, Teddy Gaswirth, Tommy Sinopoli—we all looked at each other and started laughing. They had arrested everybody in the business.

I looked at Norman, and he just shook his head. I said, “Norman, I told you they were cops, didn’t I?”

He just grunted.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
When I got back from Vegas, I stopped off at some liquor store on Ventura Boulevard, and there’s a big headline in the
Los Angeles Times
afternoon edition, “BIG MOB RAID: FIFTY-FIVE PEOPLE INDICTED,” and they got my name as one of the people missin’.

I called a friend, and he says, “Don’t go home—the FBI is lookin’ for you.”

So I hide out in the Holiday Inn like two blocks away; I call my lawyer up, and he makes a deal. So I give myself up, and I’m in jail, and I hear all kinds of stories about how Mickey Zaffarano—who was my good friend—had died that day.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Unfortunately, Mickey Zaffarano had a heart attack at the time we arrested him. Mickey heard that FBI agents were en route to his office, and he was scurrying through some kind of tunnel under his office complex when he had the big one.

NEW YORK TIMES
,
FEBRUARY 15, 1980: 55 PERSONS INDICTED IN PIRACY OF FILMS AND IN PORNOGRAPHY—FBI INVESTIGATION CALLED BIGGEST ATTACK IN THESE ACTIVITIES
:
“Mr. Zaffarano, who was 56 years old and a resident of Wantagh, Long Island, died, apparently of a heart attack, after learning that FBI agents had visited his business, the Pussycat Theater, and tried to serve him with an arrest warrant.”

MIAMI HERALD,
FEBRUARY 15, 1980: MIAMI BASED FBI INVESTIGATION BREAKS UP PORN FILM NETWORK
:
“Zaffarano, once bodyguard for Mafia chieftain Joe Bonnano, owned theaters in New York, Boston, San Francisco and one in Washington, two blocks from the White House. The Justice Department identified Zaffarano as a capo, or underboss, in the Bonnano crime family. He previously had been convicted of assault and robbery but was
acquitted on obscenity charges in 1977. Zaffarano was considered the major distributor of adult movies in the United States.”

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
Mickey was one of the smartest guys I ever met. He knew everything.

When my wife found out Mickey died, she was cryin’, and Norman was cryin’. They were all in the same paddy wagon when they got arrested, and everybody was cryin’ about Mickey. Norman was cryin’ ’cause Mickey was his meal ticket—because Mickey was a made man.

ARTIE MITCHELL
:
Mickey was funny as hell. Everything was just business to him. He wanted to be involved in porn, sure, but he didn’t have a big sex thing. All’s he wanted was a girl down on her knees in the back of the limo blowing him.

Mickey was a real gentleman.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
I found out that day that Mickey Zaffarano croaked. Yeah, it was great. But if you put that in I’m gonna be in big trouble. Law enforcement officers are a little sick. You gotta be a little sick to do this stuff.

ARTIE MITCHELL
:
We’d flown in from California for Mickey’s funeral. Our hair was long and blond, and the mob bodyguards assumed we were FBI.

I said, “No way! We’re the Mitchell brothers, you know?”

They didn’t know.

I said, “Like,
Behind the Green Door
?”

“Oh, yeah.” So they let us in, and we got to pay our respects. But I thought, we can affect wise guy personas, but what’s the point? The wiseguys and the FBI were both bad for business.

FRED SCHWARTZ
:
There was a media splurge a day or two after the arrests. FBI agents around the country were calling the Miami office to ask things. I was calling. Marcella Cohen, the other prosecutor, was calling. Everyone was calling—and Pat wouldn’t put anybody on.

“Bruce isn’t here,” he’d lie. “Gary isn’t here. I’m the case agent. I’ll handle this.”

BILL KELLY
:
The phone would ring and some agent not connected to MIPORN would answer it. Pat would physically grab the phone away from the guy and say, “Listen, Mister, you don’t talk about MIPORN. That’s
my
case.
I
talk about it.”

If you knew Pat before he went into MIPORN and then after he came out—they were like two different guys.

BILL BROWN
:
It was my first brush with real big publicity.
Newsweek
wanted to talk with me. Everyone was calling. And Pat was just loving all the publicity, but Bruce didn’t want any of it.

And then the
Miami Herald
article came out with a front page headline that basically said MIPORN was conducted by Pat Livingston and “his inexperienced rookie sidekick, Bruce Ellavsky.” It went on to say, “Pat did this, and Pat did that…”

My heart and my stomach just did flip-flops. I mean, it was terrible. It was awful. This was the worst thing that could have happened.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Yeah, I was offended over the article because I thought I carried my share of the load, you know? In fact, with the paperwork, I thought that I did the bulk of it. So I was angry and the way I deal with things like that is—I go to the person and say, “What’s the story?”

BILL BROWN
:
Pat went all over the place to deny he said it. But any small shred of hope that their relationship could be patched up was gone. Bruce was deeply hurt by that inaccurate, distorted, unfair, and terrible article.

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Pat said, “I don’t know anything about it. I feel terrible about it. It’s not true—blah, blah, blah.”

GORDON MCNEIL
:
I was astounded by Pat’s behavior. I thought his conduct was just bizarre. I mean, Pat told me, “I want to be a grade fifteen agent, and I want to be set up in West Palm Beach, Florida. And the way I see my future in the FBI is this: I’ll be the rabbi of all undercover operations. Everyone will come to me and bounce their ideas for operations off of me, and I will give it my blessing or thumbs down.”

FRED SCHWARTZ
:
Pat was living the life, not of a jet-setter, but of a high-rolling businessman. Gordy McNeil had given both Bruce and Pat pretty much free rein, so Pat could make his own schedule. If he wanted to sleep late, he’d sleep late. If he wanted to stay out late and not get up the next day, he wouldn’t get up. He could make his own rules—the way he dressed, what he did, where he went.

But the day after the indictments came down, suddenly Pat was a nine-to-five agent again. He had to wear a jacket and tie, and go into the office, and listen to me tell him what was going to happen next.