Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol) (5 page)

Chapter 9

Aftermath of Atlantic City

Monday, after the debacle of Atlantic City,
Victor is back in Duryea. It has been three weeks without a funeral, his credit
cards are nearly maxed out, and his checkbook balance is all but nonexistent.

“Should I just walk out?” Victor thinks out loud.

Giving the keys back to his father and quitting
would be the quickest way to end the pain. But for now, Vic decided once again
put off any hard choices and does nothing. He hopes that just one funeral
coming in the door right now would make a payment to his father and buy him
some time. But unfortunately, he can’t create this business by running a sale
like some retailer would do. He has to wait patiently.

Back in New York City, Sam Gianetti, the attorney
with mob connections that Victor mysteriously met in Atlantic City is sitting
at his desk and reflecting on his life.

Sam remembers growing up in Plainfield New Jersey.
It was a middle class neighborhood with tree lined streets dotted with modest
ranch houses. Sam’s dad was a machinist at the local Mack diesel engine plant.
Sam’s mother was a secretary for a local attorney. Many times, over the years,
he heard stories from his mother about the more interesting parts of the law.
Some of the cases were as if they were from a screenplay on TV. They were real
with people you could identify with. He also found that, by the time he reached
high school, he had an aptitude for the social sciences and English.

After graduation, Sam applied and was accepted in
pre-law at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. After graduating in
four years, he was accepted into Rutgers Law School and graduated with honors
three years later. Now, Sam, like so many recent law graduates, headed to the
Big Apple across the Hudson River to find employment.

The first job he lands is as an Associate at Carmine
Associates in Queens, New York. While not a ‘mob’ connected firm, they did have
a client who had a brother who was connected. The firm agreed to defend one
Mario DeSilva on a drug distribution rap. As the new lawyer on staff, Sam drew
the straw to defend Mario. Sam handled the case well, but got lucky when the
key prosecution witness against Mario couldn’t be found to testify. Mario was
consequently acquitted of all charges in a short two day trial. What Sam didn’t
know was that Mario was a ‘soldier’ for the Delveccio organization, and that
Carlo Dellveccio, the Don of the family, was watching the court proceedings
with great interest.

Carlo called Sam a week after the trial and set up a
meeting at Carlo’s office in Brooklyn. Carlo’s office is down by the docks and
is a commercial garbage hauling company. “DeLorenzo and Sons” is the name on
the door of the old redbrick three-story warehouse. He was directed up a narrow
steel staircase to a mezzanine area overlooking the large truck garage below.
However, after entering a glass framed door, Sam was in a very well-decorated
formal office suite. A well-dressed and good looking secretary, probably in her
fifties, told Sam to follow her to Mr. DellVeccio’s office. It was a large oak
paneled room with a beautiful multi-colored Persian rug and other very
expensive furnishings to match.

“Good to meet you at last Sam.”

With this, Carlo asked Sam to be seated on a large
crimson leather sofa. After exchanging pleasantries with this very urbane and
pleasant person, he felt at ease. After a discussion about Sam’s depth in
criminal and civil legal proceedings, Carlo made Sam an offer. He was to start
up his own practice in Brooklyn and would be given all of the set-up money he
need to have an independent law firm.

It was agreed that Sam would bill Carlo for all work
done at $300 an hour with a guarantee minimum of $150,000 a year. In addition
Sam would receive $100,000 a year for office expenses, a secretary, and any
other things that he may need. The only stipulation was that Sam had to agree
that Carlo, or anyone he designates, would be the only clients Sam would take.

The package offered was more than twice what he
earned as an Associate at Carmines, where raises will be much slower coming and
moving up would take years; if you even get promoted at all. There are also too
many lawyers in circulation, so promotions would be slow coming in any other
law firm.

Carlo’s ‘other’ operations need a business manager,
and Sam would have a future there with an even larger salary for operating the
legal part of Carlo’s underworld operations. (It should be noted here that
while the mob does many things off-the-books with drugs, prostitution, and
gambling, they also are involved in legitimate businesses. These are necessary
to operate so that they can launder money generated from their illegal
operations.)

The mob owns, through straw purchasers: laundries,
restaurants, trucking companies, garbage disposal firms, and many other
businesses. All of these need legal representation and business management. This
was a tough decision for Sam; he held no illusions that he was dealing with a
branch of the mob. But, he rationalized that he would be dealing with just the
legal and criminal defense portions of their business, not the illegal stuff
under the surface. And Sam thought Carlo might be more of a modern day Don
cutting loose the old, crude illegal operations like you see on TV and
concentrating on the legal businesses. He had thought,
That’s why he wants a
business manager, right?

Deep down Sam  knew that once you became
ensnared with an organization like Dellveccio’s, you don’t just walk away. But
Sam was under thirty, unattached and living in pretty rundown quarters in a
small efficiency in a downtrodden neighborhood in Queens. He could really see
himself living in a modern condo in the right neighborhood with a shiny new set
of wheels in the garage underneath. No more fast food, and Chinese takeout, he
could dine in posh restaurants, and maybe meet a suitable partner along the
way. Sam did the math and was sold; he will be Dellveccio’s
mouthpiece
.

It is three years later, and Sam is sitting in his
office with the Brooklyn Bridge framed out his office window, reviewing a case
that he is fully involved in for his employer. One Bruno Albino is two years
after the fact being accused of murdering a police informant. Why is this
happening now so long after the event? It’s because on a suspicion of finding
new evidence, the State exhumed and autopsied the body of a Joe DeSilva for a
second time. With new and advanced spectroscopic testing it was found that
Desilva’s body had residues of the same lethal compound in it that was found in
Bruno’s kitchen. In updating Carlo, Sam relayed this information over the
phone.

Carlo responded “I thought we were past this
situation after the original investigation turned up nothing?”

“The problem is Carlo, Sam says, that in murder
cases there is no statute of limitations.”

If only the body had just disappeared instead of
being buried. Now Sam has to resurrect the case and mount a defense to try to
get Bruno off. After all, Bruno is very effective at what he does and has
wacked three more people since killing DeSilva. To lose his talent would be a
blow to the organization. And, there is always the risk of Bruno taking a plea
and singing to the authorities. If this doesn’t give a mob lawyer a migraine,
what will?

 Sam has an organizational meeting tonight, and
will just have to level with the others about Bruno’s chances in court. If Sam
says the odds are against Bruno, he could lose influence with his peers. If he
guarantees an acquittal and doesn’t deliver in court, it would be even worse.
Would they find another mouthpiece? Who knows? That’s why in any criminal law
practice there is always risk, but with the organization the risks are of an
infinitely greater magnitude. Sam has eight hours to fine tune his report for
the meeting.

Chapter 10

The Dinner Meeting

It’s 8:00 p.m. in the rear dining room at
Rosselli’s, which is by the way a very fine Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that
caters (up-front) to tourists and locals alike. The restaurant is operated by a
very fine chef who hails from Sicily.

Luigi Rosselli is a tenant of the Dellveccio family
that actually owns the building and equipment through a straw purchaser. The
rear of the restaurant is the other Rosselli’s that the public doesn’t get to
see. The walls are paneled in fine dark walnut and oriental carpets cover the
inlaid teak flooring. There are brass accents, and classical Italian paintings
on the wall. The ‘club room’ has a beautiful mahogany table set with Irish
linen and German silverware with place settings for twelve. Here the family, a
group of twelve men from their thirties to their seventies, is assembled. The
aroma of pasta with a sauce simmered for hours wafts from the table. Fine
French and Italian wine flows freely, and the talk around the table is jovial
and light hearted. If you’re going to gorge yourself on fine Italian food right
through the antipasto, pasta, veal, and cannoli, this is the place to do it.

Everyone knows the business meeting is about to
begin when the plates are cleared and the Havana cigars are broken out. Carlo
Dellveccio is seventy two years old, meticulously dressed in a Brooks Brothers
navy blue pin striped suit befitting any captain of industry; not to mention
that his Rolex, diamond cufflinks, and ring are also impeccable. This is Carlo,
the Don and undisputed head of this family.

After listening patiently to all of the routine
monthly reports of revenue and expenses, Carlo gets to new business. This is
always the most interesting part of every meeting. Under legal issues, Sam has
to address the problem of Bruno Albino’s recent arrest.

All eyes are on Sam who says, “Because of the solid
forensic evidence, the chances of an acquittal are less than fifty-percent.”

This is not what the eleven others wanted to hear,
but after spending the entire afternoon reviewing similar cases, Sam can’t say
anything more positive. This forces Carlo to have to do damage control. If
convicted, it will mean offering a large payout to Bruno’s wife and children,
who will have to wait patiently for him while he is serving a possibly lengthy
prison term upstate. This does not count the tens of thousands of dollars for
Bruno’s defense and appeals. No business likes to take profits already booked
from deals long closed and have to give them back later. It was ugly, but Sam
had to say it now, because if he promised an acquittal and it didn’t happen,
things would certainly be nasty for him.

After this unpleasantness is dealt with, the main
business portion of the meeting is closed. Next Carlo successively points to
each of his men around the room querying each for their observations and suggestions
regarding various business issues. When it is Sam’s turn he recounts his chance
meeting last weekend in Atlantic City with a young funeral director from
Pennsylvania. He tells his associates about the wonderful world of cremating
bodies; leaving no trace for the authorities to sniff around analyzing later.

“Not now or ever,” Sam recounts. “Consider the case
of Jimmy Hoffa. For thirty years there have been theories as to what happened
to him, his body, or if he is even dead. But, like you read in crime novels, no
“corpus delicti’, no case. If Joe DeSilva’s body had been cremated two years
ago, we wouldn’t be facing this expensive and time consuming problem today.”

Sam goes even further out on the limb with his next
statement. “What if we owned or had use of our own crematory? We would be able
to get rid of these inconvenient pieces of evidence permanently and completely.
We obviously won’t be able to dispose of every body, particularly if the hit
was done in public. But, if the hits are carried out privately in remote areas,
we could take care of these bodies with cremation.”

Sam continues, “Think of all the effort and risk we
take trying to bury bodies in cement to weigh them down in the bay. We know our
friends in the garbage rackets have put many bodies in landfills, but even here
there is the risk that even a small trace can be found and subjected to
increasingly sophisticated analysis, DNA being only one example. Hell there is
even a case where some bozos rented a tree chipping machine and ground up a
body, oblivious to the fact that they were splattering traceable DNA samples
throughout the machine and surroundings, which provided plenty of DNA samples
for a conviction. On the other hand, cremation is neat, clean, and permanent.”

Carlo tells Sam, “Look, it seems far-fetched, but if
we could pull this off there would be a lot less defense work for you in the
future Sam. You might even be putting yourself out of a job (chuckles). Look
into the matter and report back as to its feasibility for us next meeting.”

Sam says, “Okay, and we’ll code name the project ‘
firestop.
’
Meeting adjourned.”