This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (38 page)

She was fired a short time later.

A few months passed and I came across a recent bank check signed in the secretary’s handwriting. It was dated a week before I found it.

I confronted Carmine while he was in the bath, screaming and yelling. I was already packing in the bedroom, when he came
running after me with some ridiculous story. I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t take one more lie. All I said to him was, “If having this secretary around means more than losing your wife and kids, so be it!”

In the end, he finally admitted that she was in fact still working for him. He’d told me that he’d kept her on because “she really knew the business like no one else did in the office and that he couldn’t find anyone to replace her.” He said he was sorry a million times and begged, literally on his hands and knees, for me to “please stay.” Also, he’d presented me with a flawless, five-carat, emerald-cut diamond ring. He said he bought it for our anniversary but never gave it to me because he had to wait until the setting was done. That should have been the most telling of all. The next day he came home from work with two first-class seats to Italy. He wanted us to spend our sixteenth wedding anniversary in Rome. Neither of us had ever been to Italy and we often talked about going. But I refused to go into the next room with him, let alone across the world. Instead, he took our youngest son, Frank, and I stayed at home with Carmine and John. We needed space—time away from each other, and the trip couldn’t have come at a better time.

We spoke every night while Carmine was in Italy—mostly we argued. I told him I wanted a separation and he begged me not to leave. He kept bringing up the kids—and what a separation would do to them—and then he would start crying and tell me over and over how sorry he was.

Why I took him back still remains a mystery to me. By now nearly everyone in my family, not to mention everyone at the office, knew about the secretary situation. My husband had my entire family, including my own mother, believing that I was “crazy.” He would tell them over and over that he couldn’t understand why I was so jealous. My family took one look at her and believed him. But Dad did not. During a visit to Marion, my father told my
brother Peter to “look into this matter very closely.” My father was afraid this situation was something that would bring much “embarrassment and heartache” in the end.

A
FEW MONTHS
later, my second novel,
I’ll Be Watching You
, was published. The publisher threw an elaborate book party at Il Cantinori in Manhattan, with hoards of press in attendance. My husband was noticeably absent. When I arrived home later that night, I found him asleep. He’d sent the babysitter home as soon as he got in around seven-thirty. I wanted to slap him, I was that angry. Instead, I undressed, took a hot bath, and went to sleep in the guest room. He had deliberately ruined my night.

He woke up about an hour after I got home. He came downstairs and put the television on in the room next to mine, and turned the volume up. A few minutes later he was standing in the doorway, holding a VHS tape in his hand. “Do you want to watch a movie?” he asked. I pretended I was asleep. He really was crazy. “I got a great copy of
Goodfellas
”, he said. “Sure you don’t want to watch it?” Still, I ignored him. I was too tired to fight with him and too tired even to answer him.

At 3
A.M
., I woke with a start. There was a heavy weight on my chest, crushing me with a viselike grip. I opened my eyes and Carmine was straddling me and pointing a gun—my shotgun—at my face, just inches from my mouth. I couldn’t speak. I was too terrified to scream. Besides, who would hear me? I prayed the kids wouldn’t wake up. I was frozen. Carmine only laughed and said, “So you think you’re going to leave me? I don’t think so.” His eyes were empty of all reason. Empty and dark, with dilated pupils. I was really scared.

“Say something,” Carmine said. “If I shoot you in the face you won’t be beautiful anymore.” Earlier that day, the
New York Post
’s
columnist Liz Smith wrote an item in her daily column about the publication of my second novel. She’d referred to me as the “rich man’s Pam Anderson.” This angered Carmine. Anyone unlucky enough to comment on the article at the office was badly berated or reprimanded. It was one of the reasons he’d decided to boycott my book party.

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” The tears were streaming down my face, and my body was as still as a corpse. In the distance, my son’s voice was coming from the top of the stairs. Frankie cried out for me, as he often did whenever he woke up from a bad dream.

Then just as quickly as the terrifying incident began, it ended. Carmine started laughing and quickly climbed off of me. He threw the shotgun under the bed and said, “Are you scared? Come on, don’t tell me you really believed I’d shoot you.”

I didn’t speak. My body was shaking. I climbed out of bed and headed upstairs to my son Frankie. I hugged him with all my might, carried him to my bed, and laid him down on the pillow. Once he closed his eyes, I retrieved the shotgun and hid it where it belonged, in the wall safe—a safe that Carmine did not have the combination or key to. I’d bought the shotgun a year earlier for safety when Carmine was not home. It was a legal shotgun that was always kept unloaded. The gun was kept on a high shelf in the closet, while the bullets were hidden in a safe, in a different closet, for safety reasons.

I stripped down in the bathroom and took another bath. In the tub, I sobbed uncontrollably in silence. I got dressed in clean pajamas and went downstairs to check on Carmine. He was fast asleep in the guest room. I grabbed the children from a deep sleep and piled them in my Mercedes, just outside the front door. I started the car and hit the gas full force. I arrived at my mother’s house at 4:45
A.M
. I didn’t tell her about the gun, just that Carmine and
I had a fight. I stayed with Mom for nearly a week—agreeing to go home only after Carmine checked himself into the hospital.

Coincidentally, while Carmine was in South Oaks getting evaluated, I woke one morning with excruciating pain in my left arm and shoulder. It was just before Christmas and I had baked six-dozen cupcakes for the boys’ holiday party at school. En route to the school, I suffered a bout of dizziness that nearly caused me to pass out. So I pulled the car over and called the police.

I was taken to St. Francis Hospital by ambulance, where it was discovered that I’d developed a blood clot caused by the defibrillator. The doctor told my mother that the clot was sitting just one millimeter away from my heart. I was put on high doses of the blood thinner Heparin and placed in ICU for observation.

In truth, the doctor believed I was going to die. And so did the media, apparently. Front-page stories ran in all the major newspapers, saying I was “near death.” Magazine news shows did one tribute after another. But once again, I defied the odds. Ten days after I was admitted to the hospital, I was released. I was put on the oral blood thinner Coumadin—and told I would have to take the dangerous medication for the rest of my life.

A
FEW WEEKS
later, on New Year’s Eve 2000, I invited some friends as well as the usual family members to our house for a celebration in honor of the millennium. Everyone congregated in the kitchen while I was busy at the stove. We were all waiting for my father to call. He had written a week or so earlier that he would save his monthly call for New Year’s Eve rather than Christmas. I really couldn’t wait to speak to him that night. Dad was always the backbone of the family, the “voice of reason.” He had all the answers and each of us followed his advice precisely. I really needed to speak to him that night; I needed to hear his voice.

I set up the speakerphone right next to the stove. When it rang at exactly ten, I immediately dropped everything and answered it on speaker so everyone could hear. There was silence in the room as everyone stopped talking in anticipation of it being my father.

It wasn’t. It was a man who asked if so-and-so was in? I let out a sigh of disappointment and quickly told him he had the wrong number. The voice let out a small chuckle and said, “Yes there is. She’s your husband Carmine’s girlfriend.” I froze, even though I had my back to the rest of the guests in the kitchen, I could only imagine the dropped mouths. I quickly hung up and turned to face everyone, and what I saw broke my heart: my oldest son, Carmine, nearly twelve at the time, sat at the head of the table with his head bowed in embarrassment. I was crushed. My husband was upstairs taking a bath.

I took the stairs two at a time and when I’d reached the master bathroom I pushed open the door with such force I nearly broke the handle. That’s when I did something stupid. Earlier in the day I’d treated myself to a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. I removed my right shoe and tossed it at him, hitting him on the left side of his face before it dropped into the water. He wasn’t worth the cost of the shoes.

After the phone call, he flooded me with excuses, from “It’s the government. They’re doing this to fuck with me” to “It’s just some jealous asshole trying to make trouble for us.” I couldn’t even stand there and listen to him; I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. So I went out into the hall and sat at the top of the stairs and cried, too embarrassed to rejoin our guests. I’d had enough. Nothing else mattered but getting away from Carmine Agnello.

T
wo days later, Carmine was arrested for suspected arson in the firebombing incident at the undercover competitor’s scrap metal business. It happened just after he left the house at 6
A.M
. and was heading to work. Two unmarked cars at the corner of our street stopped him. The officers had the decency not to arrest him in front of his family, especially his kids. They took him away in one of the police cars and impounded his black Mercedes. The undercover operatives running the phony business never expected that Carmine would land right in their laps and do something so stupid. They had him on tape arranging to pay $2,000 to a guy who agreed to throw bottles full of gasoline on to the other business’s property. The undercover investigation was initially intended to uncover crimes in the stolen auto parts market. Carmine
walked right into their trap. He threatened them and when they didn’t back down, he ordered the firebombing.

Later that day, Carmine was let out on bail. A few days later, newspaper reports suggested that the recent arrest of Gotti’s sonin-law would be taken over by the feds. There was the predictable amount of jealousy over the state having gotten to Carmine first. Because of who Carmine was—John Gotti’s relative—the feds wanted the glory. All the FBI had to do was prove Carmine had an affiliation with organized crime members—and just like that the case went from state to federal. The fact that the Feds wanted the case was also a telling sign my suspicions about Carmine being involved in the life were true. Immediately, Carmine contacted his attorneys, who tried to arrange a peaceful surrender now that the case was going to be federal, but the FBI refused. Once again, they wanted to do what they do best—grandstand.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, at approximately 6
A.M
., the telephone rang. I answered and was surprised to hear an FBI agent on the other end asking for Carmine. He’d told me there were more than a hundred agents surrounding our house. He requested that Carmine come out quietly. I was stunned. I jumped from the bed and ran to the window. Outside, men wearing navy blue windbreakers with bright yellow letters showing fbi surrounded the house. The agents were armed with large rifles and guns. I even spotted a small group of men wearing jackets that said swat. It was surreal, a far cry from the state arrest a week earlier. Unlike the state, the FBI wanted press coverage. It didn’t matter that there were young children in the house. They couldn’t give a shit. Carmine was accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a competitor’s truck. But, given the show the FBI put on, you would think he was accused of being a terrorist!

I raced out to the hall and before I could get to the kids’ rooms, they were already up and aware of what was happening. I will never forget the look in their eyes as they watched their father being cuffed and dragged away. Carmine was denied bail. At the hearing it was disclosed he’d admitted to bribing a member of the jury during my Uncle Genie’s trial. The trial started in 1989—and Carmine was approached by a middle-aged black man. The man showed up at his scrap metal business one afternoon and told my husband he was on the Gotti jury. He made some remarks suggesting he could be bought for the right price. At first Carmine said he thought he was being set up. So, he checked the guy out and found he was for real. Carmine agreed to pay the man for a not-guilty verdict. My husband actually believed he was doing something good, too! As a result, he didn’t tell my uncle or my father—or anyone, for that matter, about the bribe. He just sat back and watched the trial unfold. Years later Carmine got a grand jury subpoena concerning the jury tampering incident. He conferred with his lawyer and was advised to tell the grand jury everything. Because his lawyer had arranged what’s called “immunity,” Carmine could not be prosecuted. All he had to do was tell the jury
all
the details surrounding the matter—and he was released. Apparently, the key issue then had been the fact that the juror had approached Carmine and not the other way around. According to the law, this could be looked at as some sort of entrapment.

But Carmine did not get off scot-free in the end. His earlier mistake had great impact on his later arrest. In federal court the judge believed Carmine might try to influence witnesses or members of the jury and remanded him without bail.

And the bad news continued. Mom called a few hours later, crying. She had received a call a few minutes earlier from her halfbrother, John. Their father was dying. He had been battling bone cancer for nearly two years and was on his deathbed. Mom was
torn about whether she should go to Florida or not. In the end, she decided to go and say good-bye to the father she had really never known.