Made Men: the True Rise-And-Fall Story of a New Jersey Mob Family
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MADE MEN The True Rise-and-Fall Story of a New Jersey Mob Family Greg B. Smith b BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. MADE MEN A BERKLEY Book / published by arrangement with the author All rights reserved. Copyright © 2003 by Greg B. Smith This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com ISBN: 0-7865-3520-2 A BERKLEYBOOK® BERKLEY Books first published by Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc. Electronic edition: March 2003 To Lizzy, Damon and Brendan Acknowledgments Much thanks is due to a number of people who supported my effort to get things right and readable. The list is long and incomplete, starting with prominent members of the New York criminal defense bar Gerald Shargel, Steve Kartagener, Francisco Celedonio, Joseph Tacopina and Gregory O’Connell. On the government side, thanks especially goes to assistant U.S. attorneys Lisa Korologos and John Hillebrecht and FBI special agent George Hanna. The story is not complete without FBI agents Eileen O’Rourke, Jay Kramer and Seamus McElearney, and, of course, New York City Police Department detective John DiCaprio. Also gratitude goes to Bob Buccino, former deputy chief of New Jersey’s Criminal Justice Division for a serious history lesson and to Marvin Smilon for remembering everything. I’d also like to thank my editor, Tom Colgan, and agent, Jane Dystel, for guiding me through the forest when I lost the trail. 1 August 9, 1994 On a hot August twilight in Queens, the taxpaying citizens are up in arms and out in force. Three hundred furious people crowd onto a sidewalk in a neighborhood of mom-and-pop businesses and middle-class apartment buildings called Rego Park. They yell and holler and generally make their First Amendment rights known. Because there are so many of them, they are jammed in behind blue NYPD barricades next to Ben’s Best Deli and Carpet City, a crowd of mild-mannered people wearing khaki shorts, T-shirts, and fanny packs who have gathered together to vent. A thunderstorm that rumbled through earlier is gone and the air is still thick with humidity. Occasionally inchoate shouting coalesces into a discernible chant. “Real men don’t need porn!” “Sleaze must leave!” They carry hand-scrawled cardboard signs such as 63RD DRIVE IS NOT 42ND ST. and XXX = NO NO NO. There are moms and dads and babies in strollers, elementary-school teachers, a city-council woman with a microphone and a podium. Cops working overtime look on, not bothering to disguise their amusement. The crowd is jeering and cheering and jabbing their fingers in the general direction of a storefront at 96-24 Queens Boulevard from which can be vaguely heard a throbbing dunh-dunhdunh of disco left over from the 1970s. Over the door of this smoked-glass storefront in lurid blue-and-red neon is one word that makes the neighbors nuts: WIGGLES It is a strip club, and it has landed squarely in the middle of Archie Bunker’s Queens, right across the street from the old single-screen Trylon Movie Theater, around the corner from the Rego Park Jewish Center, and just up the block from Public School 139. This is the heart and soul of Queens, the borough of choice for millions of striving immigrants who come to this country of promise and McDonald’s to live a better life. They expect decent schools, safe streets, and convenient parking spots. They do not expect ALL NUDE ALL THE TIME, and that is why, since Wiggles opened on July 13, 1994, there have been protests on the street outside nearly every single night. That is saying a lot for people who have to work for a living. They are making time in their busy days to stand outside Wiggles and holler. They are writing letters to their civic representatives. They are signing petitions and cobbling together a lobby. These neighbors, to put it mildly, despise this Wiggles. They loathe this Wiggles with the enmity of property owners who fear the value of their hold ings will soon decline. They also fear for their children, as they are more than happy to repeat to the one reporter who shows up with a notepad from the Queens-based newspaper Newsday. “I raised my children here because of the good schools. This just isn’t that kind of neighborhood.” Ibn Art, a protester who’s lived in Rego Park for twenty-five years, fumes without specifying exactly what “that” kind of neighborhood might be. “I’m one hundred percent against this club.” Marcia Lynn, who helped protest against another strip club down Queens Boulevard called Runway 69, puts forth a more dramatic scenario. She predicts that not only mere children but the children of dedicated religious families attending a nearby synagogue on Saturday evening will, inevitably, wander out of temple and be forced to confront Wiggles. There they will behold the photographs of headliners with interesting-sounding names like Erica Everest, Niki Knockers, and Crystal Knight. “We need to close down all these places,” she warns. “The wrong people are coming in.” There is a blue wooden stage erected on the sidewalk upon which the politicians are holding forth. One of them is City Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz, who has already won votes campaigning against Runway 69 a few blocks away. Koslowitz has come to realize that standing up to strip clubs is an extremely popular stance for an ambitious politician. She has helped organize this protest, and she now stands onstage hammering away. She is a grandmotherly figure who could easily be mistaken for a Barbra Streisand fan. She has a tendency to wear tinted glasses, carry leopard-pattern handbags, and say things like “For this they have the First Amendment?” “Children pass through here constantly!” she tells the crowd. “This is a family community!” The crowd cheers like wrestling fans, stirred by the need to kick this trash out of the neighborhood. They are so organized, they even have their own ribbons—red, white, and blue affairs that are worn on lapels, signifying that the right to protest against the local strip joint is as American as credit cards. Suddenly the crowd notices some customers who are headed into the club. One of the activists, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, whips out a cheap camera and begins taking photographs. One of the customers, a man wearing a black, orange, and blue Knicks warm-up suit smiles and mugs for the camera. He says the girls inside aren’t worth the admission price. Another man is not so amused at having his picture taken. He pulls his turquoise windbreaker over his head like a cliché gangster. He offers up an interesting gesture involving a single finger and disappears inside the club. The crowd spots two strippers strutting down the sidewalk on spike heels, headed for the door. Both have somehow jammed themselves into absurdly tight blue jeans that defy all the laws of physics. The blonde sneers at the amateur photographer, but the brunette, who wears a blackgauze blouse with black bra clearly visible underneath, suddenly wheels around with her own camera and begins taking pictures of the picture taker. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?” she whines as she heads into the club. “We’re just trying to make a living.” Inside the club, all forms of civil protest are obliterated by the thundering disco beat. In the main room three completely naked women—they would call themselves “entertainers”—gyrate to the beat on a stage that is raised two feet off the floor. Their bodies are reflected in the mirrors on all the walls and the ceiling above. There is a “Champagne Room” in the back—a small room filled with tiny booths for “private” dances. There is a poolroom and a TV room and a number of other miscellaneous “lounges” located throughout the club’s three thousand square feet of space. Though the neighborhood protest outside cannot be heard above the din, its effects are obvious. A sign at the entrance that wasn’t there before the protests states: WIGGLES Don’t let anyone take away your individual rights. Celebrate your freedom of choice on us: FREE Admission FREE Buffet FREE Entertainment Wiggles has taken to mentioning—in newspaper advertisements placed in the sports sections of the local tabloids right next to the fishing column and underneath the daily football line—the presence of an ATM “available on the premises” as well as valet parking for the commuter set. On this night of grand protest, there appears to be more strippers than customers, which gives the place a lonely feel. A handful of “entertainers” do their jobs while gazing off into mirrors. A small group of men sip colas and club sodas and stare up in slack-jawed aesthetic appreciation of the dedication these girls show to their craft.