Made Men (13 page)

Intercostal Waterway behind the hotel. Joey O Masella and Ralphie Guarino—two guys who spent most of their time lamenting how broke they were—booked two of the most expensive rooms in the hotel: Rooms 1411 and 1417, two suites on the fourteenth floor looking out on the white sand beach. They were typical Florida hotel suites, with seashell-pink sofas and black lacquer furniture and balconies looking out on the Atlantic. The TV had all the cable channels and there was a huge vase filled with fake flowers. There was also a video camera secretly installed in the wall by specially trained FBI agents.

It was set up to capture most of the room with a wideangle lens but specifically anybody who happened to sit on the sofa in the main room. It faced the sofa directly, slightly tilted toward the ceiling so anyone caught in its focus would be presented in the slightly menacing camera angles of
Citizen Kane.
Its microphones were not terribly sophisticated, so that if the TV set was on, it was sometimes easy to hear
Oprah
but difficult to hear what people in the room were talking about. The FBI agents listening in a few rooms away did the best they could.

On this day in the middle of a working week, Joey O and Ralphie were supposed to be meeting with Vinny Ocean and a lawyer named Kenny Weinstein. Later Anthony Capo was supposed to show up. On this first day, Joey and Ralphie and Vinny sat around in the middle of the afternoon when most taxpaying citizens were out working for a living, making fun of Anthony. They made fun of the fact that he liked golf. They made fun of the fact that he stole nearly everything not nailed down from hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Vinny was on the phone with his daughter Danielle, asking her about school. Then he was on the phone with somebody else, talking about stocks. Outside, the Florida sun blazed down; inside, the airconditioning was cranked all the way up.

They ordered coffee and dessert. There was some discussion about whether anybody wanted cookies, and everybody did. Ralphie was flipping through the TV channels, checking it out. He found a movie with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

“He thinks he’s so good-looking,” Vinny Ocean said while still on the phone.
“Who is she?” Joey O said.
“This is ah . . . Alec Baldwin’s wife,” Ralphie said.
“It all depends on what she’s wearing,” Joey said.
“I’m telling you,” Vinny said, off the phone but still on stocks, “that Viagra stock is gonna go big.”
The movie was
The Getaway.
It was a new version of an old movie starring Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy. Alec Baldwin portrayed a prison inmate with some redeeming qualities. The men in the hotel room seemed familiar with the entire plotline, but were mostly concerned about why a woman who looked like Kim Basinger would be married to a guy who behaved like Alec Baldwin.
“I mean with the cigarettes, with the dirty underwear on the fuckin’ chair,” Joey said. “No wonder his fuckin’ wife wants to throw him out.”
The cookies and pot of coffee arrived. They switched the TV to football and began discussing a strip club called Rachel’s in West Palm. They discussed Michael Jackson and Dan Quayle. Joey O said, “He can’t spell
potato,
” and Ralphie replied, “And he wants to run for president.” Inside the room a few doors away, the FBI agents were getting frustrated.
This was not the stuff of probable cause. This kind of talk about Kim Basinger and cookies and
potato
would surely make the federal judge they needed to keep the bugs up and running shake his head in dismay. The agents also were now sure someone else had entered the room and they couldn’t tell who. In their notes, they scrawled the acronym
UM
for
unidentified male.
UM suggested going to the Gap to buy clothes. They fought over who would have to drive to the airport to pick up Anthony Capo. Still no probable cause on the menu. Somebody mentioned doing something that might be illegal, although it was hard to tell—smuggling bootleg Absolut vodka into Europe.
“Sixty dollars for a bottle of Absolut in Norway,” said UM.
“Yeah,” Joey O said, “but who the fuck wants to go to Norway?”
Somebody paged through the cable listings and found yet another movie.
“Kiss the Girls,”
Ralphie said. “Channel Forty-two.”
This was a new movie with Morgan Freeman as a Washington, D.C., detective with a doctorate in psychology. He believes his niece has been kidnapped by a psychotic killer who commits atrocities but is portrayed as intelligent. Morgan Freeman the detective must travel to North Carolina to rescue the niece. He brings with him one of the psychotic killer’s intended victims, played by Ashley Judd, the one who got away. The members and associates of the DeCavalcante crime family who are supposed to be conducting a “business meeting” in Room 1417 at the Marriott cannot seem to get away from the silver screen.
“Kiss the Girls Good-bye,”
Ralphie said. “What was the other one,
Kiss the Girls Hello
?”
“Hello and Good-bye,”
Joey said. “It’s a good movie. Ya see it? What is he, a cop?”
“He’s a professor,” Ralphie said.
“He’s a psychologist,” said the Unidentified Male.
“This is like a preview of the story,” Ralphie explained. “This is a different case.”
The gangsters discussed plot development and analyzed motive. One of the female characters attacks her husband with a knife after years of abuse. Joey O summarized this aspect of the movie by stating, “If you’re beatin’ the dog every day, sooner or later he’s gonna attack ya.”
They discussed Morgan Freeman’s acting career. “Ya ever see
Shawshank Redemption
with him? When he’s in jail?” Joey O volunteered. They argued about how cold it was in the room. They critiqued the movie.
“That’s North Carolina now?” Joey O asked. “What’s he do, he tied her to the tree?”
“He chops her head off,” UM said.
“The hair,” Ralphie corrected. “Not the head.”
The FBI agents sitting in the other room are now in deep trouble. Instead of recording the inner workings of a nefarious organized crime family plotting to take over the world, they had instead a lengthy analysis of a mediocre serial-killer movie. And it was about to get worse.
Here sat a group of alleged and reputed gangsters, any of whom could have been involved in violent criminal behavior. Joey O just the previous week had had a long discussion about “giving somebody a beating.” The intended victim owed Joey Cars a lot of money. Joey Cars had torched the guy’s van, so the guy bought a new van. Joey Cars then slashed the guy’s tires and put sugar in his gas tank. Joey O had suggested he simply visit the victim and beat him senseless every day until the guy paid all he owed. “Every time you see him give him a fucking beating until he comes up with the money,” Joey O had said.
Now he was in an air-conditioned Florida hotel room, discussing the terrible effects of movie violence on the youth of today.
“See things like this really happen, that’s the shame of it,” he said. “People make movies like that, you know? There’s some serial bastards that are in the movie theater, they think about it. And then they’re copycats.”
“You never know, man,” Ralphie said.
“Who had strawberry cake?” UM asked.
“Just put it down,” Ralphie said. “We have to fight for it.”
But Joey O was not finished. His sense of moral outrage was building. “I’m saying people really do things like this,” he said. “And that’s the fucking shame of it, you know?”
“They go to the movies,” UM said, “and they just get ideas like that. In school. The shooting with these schools.”
“That’s why it’s like a joke now,” Joey O said. “When you ever hear all this shit?”
“You know it’s a scary thought,” UM said. “I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old.”
“And it’s getting worse,” Joey O said.
“Fucking right,” Ralphie said.
“Did you get chocolate ice cream?” Joey O asked.
“Will you shut up and watch the movie?” Ralphie said.
“I didn’t say a word,” Joey O said.
“I gained like five, six pounds,” Ralphie said. “Right back in my fucking gut.”
“It’s your fucking fault,” UM said.
“All you wanna do is eat,” Joey said. “I never seen a guy eat so much.”
“I’m depressed,” Ralphie said. “Hanging out with you. I think I’m gonna start taking Prozac.”

pants in the DeCavalcante family for decades, liked this idea very much. Charlie Majuri—who had also been an active participant for decades—did not. As a result, Joey O had been advised to whack Big Ears.

Joey O was now explaining the murder plot as he paced back and forth in the hotel room in Fort Lauderdale while the FBI videotape rolled. Now here was some probable cause. Joey was going on and on about his problem with the “business.” Joey O told Ralphie (and the FBI) that Vinny Ocean had assigned him to monitor the Majuri hit. This was the first time the FBI had any evidence of Vinny Ocean’s involvement in a crime of violence.

Joey O told Ralphie that he was supposed to act as Vinny’s eyes and ears on the Majuri job, reporting back on all events of note. Vinny, who always retreated to Florida when a “piece of work” he’d ordered was to be carried out in New York, had summoned Joey O to the Sunshine State for an update on the progress of the task. Unfortunately for Joey O, there was no progress to report.

Joey O explained to Ralphie the details of the planned hit, which he clearly felt was turning into a Marx Brothers movie. He paced back and forth in front of the TV set on which a basketball game was quietly playing. He said there were three men involved—himself, Jimmy Gallo, and Anthony Capo. As Joey saw it, both Gallo and Capo were disturbed individuals who were incapable of ordered thought. Joey recounted for Ralphie his conversation with Vinny Ocean about the job. Joey said Vinny told him, “ ‘I want you to do this. I want you to go there. Joey, I know you. I’m not asking you to do this. You never did it before. You don’t wanna do it, I understand.’ I said, ‘Vinny, I’ll do anything for you. If I have to do this, I’ll do it.’ He said, ‘I want you to do it because they’re assholes.’ ”

“They are,” Ralphie agreed.
“Anthony has no brains,” Joey said.
“I know that,” Ralphie said.
“He’s Wild West. Jimmy, now, he’s worse than Anthony. You know what Jimmy Gallo wanted to do? Ring the doorbell, when he came to answer the door, shoot him. In front of the mother and father.”

“No silencers,” Joey O said. “With a police captain directly across the street. Four, five houses on the block. It’s a deserted area. So if you sit there for three hours, they’re gonna see you. What are they gonna do? There’s a brown car sitting here for three hours with three guys sitting in it. With a license plate. Fucking cops all over the place.”

The day before, Joey O had told Vinny in private about the ludicrous nature of Jimmy and Anthony’s crazy plot to kill Charlie Majuri in front of his ancient parents. When they talked, Vinny asked him first thing, “Is it done?” Joey told him he had walked away from the plan. Now Joey O was not sure where he stood with Vinny. He was hearing that another gangster was walking around claiming that Jimmy and Anthony were blaming Joey O for the failure to kill Charlie Majuri.

“They blamed you,” Ralphie said.
“Yeah,” Joey O said, trying to convince himself that he’d done the smart thing by walking away from the Majuri hit. As he always did when he was upset, he began talking about himself in the third person. “They say when he looks at something he may be a cocksucker, he may do this, he may do that, but I know when he looks at something, he sees the whole picture. Which I do. That’s one thing I gotta say, that’s one of my traits. One of my fucking traits.”
Ralphie said, “That’s why Vinny made you go up there.”
“If I look at something, I’ll tell you it’s good, it’s bad. When I seen this, I says, ‘That’s life in jail.’ Too many ifs, ands, and buts.”
This talk made Ralphie come to believe that Joey O’s relationship with his lifelong friend and mentor, Vinny Ocean, was in deep trouble. Vinny had asked Joey to get involved in the most sensitive of missions, and the mission had been a failure. Now Joey seemed convinced Vinny might no longer protect him from the many people who wanted to do him harm. He didn’t actually say this. It was just obvious from the way he kept trying to reassure himself that Vinny was still, in fact, his friend. He began to drink more heavily in the middle of the sunny Florida day. Joey stood on the balcony, letting a blast of Florida air into the air-conditioned suite to fog the room’s mirrors. He’d been drinking beer since noon and it was now halfpast three.
Ralphie said from inside the room, “You’re gonna fucking fall down, Joey.”
Outside, Joey stared down at the beach and tried talking about hooking up with two women he’d met earlier on the beach—an older redhead and a younger blonde. Even discussing the possibility of sex, he kept returning to Vinny. They were supposed to meet up with Vinny later, but Joey was now convinced Vinny would simply not show up. This would be further proof of Vinny’s disrespect. Again he warned Ralphie not to repeat what they’d discussed.
“No matter how fucking drunk you get, don’t ever mention it,” Joey said.
“Would you listen to me?”
“God forbid,” Joey said. “If he ever tells me to do it, I do it.”
Ralphie said he, too, would do whatever he was told. “Do you need me for anything, Vinny? I’ll be there.”
“This is a serious thing,” Joey said, starting in again with a dose of self-pity about his pitiful position within the La Cosa Nostra universe. Joey again began talking to himself. Vinny, he said, was a big enough deal in the Mafia to attend sit-down meetings with other families that resulted in big decisions. “Where do you fucking go?” he asked himself. “Where do you go? You go to put a fucking bet in and then you get yelled at for putting the bet in.”
“Come on, Joey, stop.”
“You should have made a move like a horse, you should have fucking won the race a long time ago.”
“Well, it’s not too late.
“You gotta start giving a fuck,” he said, again referring to himself.
Ralphie tried to steer the conversation back to the women Joey met on the beach, trying to get him to stop his wallowing. He suggested they would have to decide which one would pair up with the older one and which one with the young one. The two women were getting manicures and massages. Joey suggested the younger one for Ralph.
“Joey,” Ralphie said, “I don’t know how to deal with young girls.”
“Just fuck around with them,” Joey said.
“I don’t know.”
“They like older men.”
“Yeah, but what are you supposed to say?” Ralphie said. “At least you got hair.”
“I gotta take two Viagras,” Joey O said.
“I forgot the redhead’s name,” Ralphie said.
The FBI agent wrote “END OF TAPE.”