Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (31 page)

I felt drained, and nothing had helped-not the shower, not the fresh shirt Karen had ironed, not the cologne. Nothing could get the smell of the jail and fear out of my nose. Jimmy stood up. He was smiling. He opened his arms to give me a bear hug. My court papers were all over the table. Jimmy had gotten them from the lawyers. When I sat down with him, it almost felt like it was the old days.

On the surface, of course, everything was supposed to be fine. We were supposed to be discussing my drug case, just like the dozens of other cases of mine we had discussed together, but this time I knew that the thing we were really discussing was me. I knew I was hot. I was dangerous. I knew that I could give Jimmy up and cut myself a deal with the government. I could give up Lufthansa and I could give up Paulie. I could put Jimmy and Paulie behind bars for the rest of their lives. And I knew Jimmy knew it.

None of this was said, of course. In fact, almost nothing was ever really said. Even if the feds had somehow wired our table, and then played back the tape, they wouldn’t have been able to make much sense out of our conversation. It was in half words. Shrugs. We talked about this guy and the other guy and the guy from over here and the guy from over there and the guy with the hair and the guy from downtown. At the end of the conversation I would know what we talked about and Jimmy would know what we talked about, but nobody else would know.

Jimmy had been through the papers, and he said that there had been a rat in the case. I knew he meant Bobby Germaine’s kid, but I tried to slough it off. I said that they hadn’t found any drugs on me or in my house. I kept saying that they didn’t have a strong case, but I could see Jimmy was very nervous anyway.

He wanted to know about all the people I had working for me. He wanted to know whether Robin and Judy and the rest of the people arrested knew about him. I told him they knew nothing, but I could see he didn’t believe me. He wanted to know if I had talked to Paulie yet. I said no.

Jimmy was trying to look confident. He said he had some ideas about my case. I could see what he was doing. As long as I thought he was trying to help me, he knew that I’d stay close. Then, when he felt the time was right, when I was no longer dangerous to hit, he would whack me. Jimmy was biding time to make sure he could kill me without getting Paulie upset and putting his own neck on the line.

As long as Jimmy thought I didn’t know what he had planned, I had a chance of copping time on the street and scooping up some money. I had to pretend to Jimmy I didn’t know what he might have had planned, and he had to pretend that he had nothing but my best interests at heart.

Then he said that he wanted me to go down to Florida in a few days. He said there was some money to be made. He said he had to meet me again soon about the case. He said we should meet on Wednesday in a bar owned by Charlie the Jap, on Queens Boulevard, in Sunnyside.

I’d never heard of the place. I’ve been operating with Jimmy for twenty-five years. We’ve been in a thousand bars together in Queens, and we’ve spent six years in the can together, and suddenly he wants to meet me in a bar I’ve never seen before.

I nod yeah, sure, but I already know there’s no way in the world I’m going into that bar. As soon as breakfast is over, I drive past the place. I’m not waiting till Wednesday.

It was just the kind of place Jimmy has used in the past for hits. The place was controlled by one of the crew. It had a back entrance, and there was a parking area in the rear where you could take out a body bag in a rug without anyone seeing. Forget it. If Jimmy thought I was meeting him in that place on Wednesday he was nuts.

Instead, I showed up at Jimmy’s sweatshop on Liberty Avenue on Monday. I had been out all morning trying to raise money. In the afternoon I had Karen drive me over to his shop. While I waited in a bar across the street, she went inside and told him I wanted to see him.

He came right over with Karen. I could see that he was nervous and surprised. He wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then he said if he gave me the name and address of Bobby Germaine’s kid in Florida, would I go down there with Anthony Stabile and whack him. This was crazy, but I wasn’t going to argue. Jimmy had never asked me to do anything like that before. And he’d never asked me to do something like that in front of Karen. Never.

I went along with him, but I reminded him that the kid was Germaine’s son. I mean we were going to whack the guy’s kid. Jimmy shook his head and said it was okay. He said that one of the lawyers had gone to see Germaine in the can and had told him that his kid was the informant and that Germaine had told the lawyer to “hit the rat. ” This was where we were. We were putting hits on our own kids.

Meanwhile Jimmy’s at the bar waving around the piece of paper with the kid’s alias and address on it. He wants me to go to Florida and whack the kid with Stabile. But I know that Stabile and Sepe were the two the feds had mentioned who were pushing Jimmy to whack me. If I go to Florida with Stabile, I know I’m not coming back.

I dropped Karen at the house and went out looking for more money. I gave her the gun that I had been sleeping with ever since I got out on bail. I had a small rented car that could not be traced to me, and I even got her a rental so that we wouldn’t be driving around in cars that were known. The Nassau DA had confiscated my Volvo.

My plan was to stay on the street as long as I could and to make as much money as I could. I felt I was pretty safe because Jimmy was expecting me to go to Florida. But my plan didn’t work. When I pulled up to the house later that afternoon I was surrounded by eight agents. They had found out I was loose. McDonald wasn’t taking any chances. They arrested me as a material witness in Lufthansa. I was going to cut a deal or I was going to sink.

Twenty-Two

KAREN: As soon as they picked him up, the kids and I went to the FBI office in Queens. We had FBI men and federal marshals all around us. My mother, who was going crazy by now, came along. I went into Ed McDonald’s office, and he said that we all had to go into the witness program. He explained that we were all in danger. Henry. Me. The kids. He said that the only chance we had was for Henry to cooperate. We had to start a new life. I asked, what ifI let Henry go into the witness program and the kids and I stayed at home? McDonald said we would still be in danger, because they might try to get to Henry through me and the kids.

McDonald made it plain. He had federal marshals with him. They all explained. They said that when Henry appeared in court, the people he was testifying against would be looking for us. Henry was the only thing that stood between those people being free and spending the rest of their lives in jail. If they thought my parents or my sisters knew where we were, their lives wouldn’t be worth two cents. They would make them tell where we were, and then we would be killed.

Then McDonald started his little blackmail. He said that there was enough evidence to indict me in the narcotics case. He said that we would all be on trial, and he asked what I thought the effect of that might have on the kids.

I was pretty much in a daze, but when I walked out of his office I knew I was going into the program. Henry had told McDonald he would cooperate if I agreed to go into the program with him. He said he wasn’t going in alone.

I had no choice. They’re going to prosecute my husband and me. “How could you look after the kids?” McDonald asked me. They made it impossible for me to make any other decision.

The minute I walked out of McDonald’s office Henry grabbed me and said I had to stay with him. He didn’t want to go into the program alone. He wasn’t going to go without me.

My mother had been waiting outside McDonald’s office with the kids. She was very upset. She wanted Henry to go into the program alone. I said what other choice did I have if my life was in jeopardy? They could kidnap me and the kids just to get to Henry. She started yelling about Henry, how he had never been any good, how he had brought all this upon us.

McDonald had said that they would pack me and the kids right then. They’d take me home under guard and pack me. We would be gone. It meant leaving everything immediately. My mother. My father. My sisters. I couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening. We wouldn’t be able to even contact them again, ever. It was like a death.

My mother and I and the kids were driven home by the marshals. When we got home there were marshals inside the house and out. They had four cars. They had shotguns and rifles. I had to pack enough stuff for two or three weeks or until they could move us into another place. My father and sisters were waiting at the house. They all helped me pack. We were all packing and crying. When they were not looking I whispered to my mother that she should give us some time. We’d get in touch. My father was very good. He held together.

The kids were excited. All they knew was that we were going away. They thought of it all like a vacation. I said that it was more than that. We had to go away so that some people who wanted to hurt us couldn’t get to us. I said that they could not call any of their friends and they couldn’t go back to school and get their books or sneakers or gym clothes.

The kids had read the papers. They knew about all the people who had been killed. There were stories every week about Jimmy and Paulie. They knew about Stacks and Marty Krugman. They knew Tommy had disappeared. They could see that everything we had was falling apart. Remember, there had been about a year of craziness between Lufthansa and their father’s arrest.

I made up a long list of things for my mother to do. There was still stuff at the dry cleaner’s. I had bills to pay. My mother cleaned out the refrigerator. There were pictures of a party we’d had. When my mother called about the pictures, the word was out that Henry had turned, and the photographer, who was a friend of Raymond Montemurro’s, didn’t want to give her the pictures. She said if he didn’t give her the pictures she’d send over the marshals. He said okay, but when she went to pick them up he threw them at her. He wouldn’t even take the money.

We had packed up everything in large black garbage bags. The kids and I were driven by marshals. There were four or five marshal cars all around us. They took us to a motel in Riverhead. It was a very nice, clean place. They moved us every couple of days. They always had the reservations made and we went right to our rooms. The marshal just gave us the keys, but they always stayed outside the door. They stood around with walkie-talkies and rifles in slings under their raincoats.

We’d stay as far away as Connecticut or Montauk. In the morning they would drive us all to the FBI headquarters in Queens or to McDonald. s Strike Force offices in Brooklyn. I would sit around doing needlepoint, and the kids would play or read, and Henry would sit inside talking to the investigators.

We were just hanging around while the Marshal Service recreated us as different people. The paperwork took time. They asked us if we had any choices for our new names. They had shredded everything about our past. It was an amazing moment, sitting there in one of the Strike Force corridors with the kids, trying to dream up new names.

We got new Social Security numbers, and the kids got new identifications for school. The marshals explained that the kids would keep their grade records but that the transcripts submitted to the new school under our new name would be blank where the previous school was asked for. Also, when the girls registered in their new school. a marshal would go to the principal and explain that they were part of a family involved with government security. They would make it sound like their daddy was a government master spy or something very important.

The marshals were very nice. They were very good with the kids. They talked to them and played cards with them and kidded around with Ruth. They treated everyone with great respect. They were always gentlemen. The way they did it helped enormously.

After a couple of weeks I went back to the house in Rockville Centre. There were marshals all over the place. They had arranged for movers. There were trucks waiting and so were my parents. I still didn’t feel as though I was leaving them behind forever.

But my family, and mostly my mother, had always been telling me what to do. All my life her nudging had driven me crazy. She was one of those smothering people. She did it out of love, but she smothered you anyway. My mother is one of those people who has got to be in control of everything twenty-four hours a day. I had this little notion in the back of my mind that maybe if we had a new life and new names and new everything it wouldn’t be too bad. I would be really independent for the first time in my life. If Henry and I were to go away and get new names and new identities, I’d be able to breathe and take over my own life.

I thought a lot of things might change. There’d be no more Jimmys and no more drugs and no more Robins. Our lives would have to be different. Henry would live normally for the first time in his life. He’d be home at night. We would have regular friends. It could be like wiping everything clean.

On May 27, 1980, Henry Hill signed an agreement with the United States Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force (Eastern District of New York) that read:

This will serve to confirm the agreement reached between Henry Hill and the Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York.

This office is conducting an investigation of possible illegal activities on the part of James Burke, Angelo Sepe and others in connection with the theft of several million dollars in cash and jewelry from the Lufthansa Cargo Building at John F. Kennedy Airport. You have agreed to inform officials of the Department of Justice of everything you know concerning the above-mentioned crimes and any other criminal activity in which James Burke and Angelo Sepe have participated. In addition, you have agreed to testify, if called, before all federal grand and petit juries hearing these matters.

It is understood that no information or testimony given by you (both before and after the making of this agreement), or evidence derived from information or testimony given by you will be used against you in any criminal proceeding other than as indicated below. As you know, at the present time, you are under investigation for your involvement in the robbery at the Lufthansa Cargo Building. It is understood that this office will forgo any prosecution of you which could arise out of this matter in light of your cooperation in these matters. In the event that any other law enforcement authorities contemplate prosecuting you in connection with your involvement in the Lufthansa robbery we will recommend they not do so. In addition, it is understood that this office will forgo any federal prosecution of you which could arise out of a narcotics investigation presently being conducted by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office and in connection with which you were arrested.