See No Evil (18 page)

The days following the beginning of testimony in the trial of the Columbos and the announcement of the Commission indictments were no less painful for Scopo. Named as a
principal
in both cases, his hours in Manhattan’s federal
courthouse
were spent surrounded by attorneys, in the company of his boss, Carmine Perisco, and nine other members of the Columbo hierarchy, listening to witness after witness, tape after tape of contractors describing the manner in which they had been shaken down by the district council president.

In one tape of a meeting between Robert Sisto, a
contractor
, and Scopo at the Bow Wow restaurant in Howard Beach, Queens, on May 17, 1984, played for the jury, Sisto tells Scopo that he’s going to “give him two [now]” and would pay him “four next week.” In a second FBI taped conversation of a meeting between Scopo and Carlo D’Arpino, of Cedric Construction, the district council president is heard asking D’Arpino, “How much you got here?” “Fifteen,” D’Arpino replies. “Well you still owe me eighty-five,” Scopo answers. In yet another discussion between Scopo and Mineo D’Ambrosi,
of All-Boro Paving, taped on March 19, 1984, Scopo tells D’Ambrosi “you can’t bid on projects over $2 million … those are awarded to members of the club, who pay two points, not one.” When D’Ambrosi complains asking, “Who do I got to go see?” Scopo replies, “You got to see every family. And they’re going to tell you ‘no.’ So don’t even bother.”

All of this by itself would seem ambiguous and hardly solid evidence in light of the fact that most witnesses were themselves involved in one scam or another and had gotten immunity in return for their testimony. Nevertheless, these were living witnesses who, if they could not testify credibly about the operation of the Commission, could at least support the context and veracity of the tapes in a court of law. More, through their testimony and the subpoenaed financial records of the companies they ran, a detailed accounting of payoffs was created that, representing only a fraction of the Commission’s total take, accumulated well into the millions for the years 1981 through 1984: XLO Concrete Corporation, $619,000; S&A Structures, $240,000; G&G Concrete, $117,000; Technical Concrete, $235,000; Century Maxim, $377,000, to name only a few of the dozens the indictment listed.

It was soon after, on November 13, 1985, that an
incredible
turn of events occurred affecting Elliot irreparably. While listening to prosecution tapes of himself secretly recorded by the FBI in the midst of the Columbo racketeering trial, Ralph Scopo began a response, stared strangely out into the
courtroom
toward his wife and two sons, then clutched his chest in agony. Struggling for breath, the 300-pound, fifty-six-year-old Mafia capo stood up, grasped the oak railing behind him, then collapsed.

Moments later, Scopo was put on a gurney and rushed to the Beekman Downtown Hospital where he was treated for severe chest pains resulting from angina and hypertension, his
condition listed as “serious but not critical.”

By year’s end, the prognosis for Elliot Litner, M.D., would not be nearly so good.

F
ederal prosecutors held more than one ace up their sleeve for the upcoming Commission trial: two informers within the Gambino Family, Willie Boy Johnson and John Gotti confidant Billy Battista; the tapes recorded in Tony “Ducks” Corallo’s Jaguar, along with Angelo Ruggiero’s ramblings about drugs and the Commission. Most stunning of all,
however
, were the secretly recorded dialogues of the boss of
bosses
himself, Paul Castellano. The prosecution would not waste these legal haymakers on preliminaries like the Columbo trial. They would be held back for the main event, their epic battle to put behind bars the entire leadership of the New York Mafia. Jury selection for Giuliani’s Mafia coup de grâce began in September 1985. But even as that was happening, seismic underworld rumblings involving the ongoing Columbo Family racketeering trial and the Gambino car-theft ring trial were setting the stage for the tsunami to follow.

No question Paul Castellano was in ever deepening trouble as chief prosecutor Walter S. Mack’s case against ten Gambino Family members and their godfather unwound at federal
district
court in Manhattan. On December 3, 1985,
thirty-seven-year-old
Vietnam war veteran and family-associate-turned-
government-
witness Dominick Montiglio testified to being a “
collector
” for Castellano’s loansharking and extortion activities and a “go-between” in “big narcotics transactions.” He went on to tell a hushed jury about rigging hand grenades to
automobile
ignitions to “blow to pieces” Castellano’s enemies and about the murder of nineteen-year-old Cherie Golden,
girlfriend
of a suspected informer, by DeMeo crew members Joey Testa and Anthony Senter. According to Montiglio, the two hit men flanked the petrified girl in a car, and while Testa drew her attention toward him by talking to her, Senter “blew her brains out” from the opposite side.

If Castellano was concerned about what was going on in his car-theft case, other Commission members like Tony “Ducks” Corallo, Rusty Rastelli, “Gerry Lang” Langella, and “Fat Tony” Salerno must have found the direction of Carmine Persico’s Concrete Club trial even more alarming. The reason was simple. More than tapes, which were subject to
interpretation
; worse than informers, whose own sordid backgrounds could be called into question by clever attorneys like Roy Cohn, government prosecutors had Columbo capo Ralph Scopo, the only direct link between contractors, unions, and the Commission, by the balls.

Day after day, members of the Columbo trial jury were treated to a litany of incontrovertible evidence against Scopo. Too bad if it sealed Persico’s fate, but now the Commission indictment had been handed down, and the government’s RICO strategy was visible for anyone to see. Scopo’s guilt would be used by Giuliani and his prosecutors like a scabbard to gut the Columbo Family hierarchy while establishing the Commission’s existence at the same time. Afterward, with the premise of their RICO case in place, the feds would use that
same weapon to convict each one of the defendants for
criminal
conspiracy, with potential sentences ranging in the
hundreds
of years. In the minds of these men, starting with Castellano and Persico, something had to be done about the “Scopo problem.” In other words, he had to be hit.

Of course, all of this was unknown to Elliot at that time, though a man didn’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that somebody, somewhere, would put out a contract on a witness so important to Giuliani as Scopo. Nearly every morning and night, Frank Silvio and Elliot would discuss the latest word on what had evolved into three ongoing
government
proceedings against “our friends.” Some news came from Silvio’s contacts within the family, but most came from newspapers like the
New
York
Times
,
Daily
News
, and
New
York
Post
, all of which relished recounting dramatic details from the day’s court testimony.

On November 21, Barry Slotnick, argued that his client, who’d been hospitalized on November 13 from hypertension and angina, couldn’t withstand the strain of further
questioning
during the Persico trial and that his case should be
severed
. Judge John F. Keenan, who reviewed opinions by
doc
tors
for both sides, concluded publicly that there was “no greater danger to Scopo’s life now than at the beginning of the trial.” But according to Silvio, Keenan privately ordered the government to provide a paramedic along with a
wheelchair
and oxygen tanks at all future sessions. This, a signal that while the prosecution maintained Scopo was faking his dizzy spells, chest pains, and shortness of breath, there was medical credence to his heart condition that even Judge Keenan was forced to acknowledge. Elliot didn’t press him on the subject, but Silvio claimed to have seen Scopo’s medical records at Beekman Hospital where he’d been treated earlier and
concluded
that he suffered from coronary artery disease caused
by atherosclerosis, an accumulation of fatty deposits on the inner lining of the walls of arteries that could indeed be life threatening.

Given the prepping that Silvio had revealed and the fact that constant battering by government prosecutors could only aggravate Scopo’s condition, Elliot wasn’t totally
surprised
to receive an invitation to dinner from Al Rosengarten on the afternoon of December 4, just three hours after Judge Keenan decided to sever Scopo’s case from the other
defendants
based on poor health. They met that night at the Plaza Hotel, another of Rosengarten’s favorite Manhattan
hangouts
. He was waiting at the bar sipping a vodka martini when Elliot arrived, and as in the past, they were ushered to his favorite table the minute Elliot got there.

Rosengarten had grown up in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, but was now one of the wealthiest men in the city because of his early alliance with Carlo Gambino, and just seeing him would lead a person to assume he was rich—it showed in the way he carried himself, from polished nails to his carefully coiffed, thinning black hair. But while he posed as a
businessman-philanthropist
, to Elliot, he had the look of a gangster from the old Arnold Rothstein school of crime.

Rosengarten’s dress, while meticulous, was overdone, from his custom-made white shirt to the monogrammed cuff links and red handkerchief peeking out from the pocket of his hand-tailored Italian suit. With Al, even polite conversations took on the air of something illicit, his body leaning forward and his right arm hooking around a man’s back as he rumbled observations or instructions, staring into his companion’s eyes like an ardent lover. Rosengarten’s face, tanned from his most recent jaunt to Eleuthera, had a worn look to it, the skin around his eyes noticeably darker than the rest of his face while the eyes, glinting and beguiling, possessed no warmth
whatsoever and were capable of transforming midsentence into a withering storm of cold-blooded calculation.

In fact, if there was a single word that came to Elliot’s mind, seeing the clever, old businessman-mobster that day, it was “reptile” as Rosengarten finished off his martini with a kind of thirst Elliot never thought him capable of—a sign of the times, he guessed. The small talk was nearly nonexistent as the waiter brought Elliot his Diet Coke and Rosengarten swapped an empty glass of Absolut for a full one.

“Times are not easy,” Rosengarten observed. “Our friend in Staten Island has his hands full, and unless things start to straighten up, most people think he won’t make it. Maybe you’ve been following what’s going on?”

“Not much. Just the papers like everybody else.”

“Well, Elliot, everybody always said you were a stand-up guy. Hell, from the very beginning back in, what was it, the Bronx? It was no different for me. My father was a German Jew and a tailor, can you imagine? When Carlo first laid eyes on me, I was a kid with ambition, smarts, and a set of brass balls. What did I know about life? Nothing. But I knew about suits and dresses, and that was all it took for Mr. Gambino to cut me a break. I’ll never forget him for that, God rest his soul. No different for you, I’d venture, and that was the goddamned charm of our world. It was entrepreneurial! No one asked where you came from. If you had the brains and the
cojones
, you were given the opportunity to become an earner. That was the freedom we enjoyed before this bloodsucker Giuliani put his fangs into our lives!”

“Look, Mr. Rosengarten, if you don’t mind, maybe we should order something because I’ve got to get back to the hospital later tonight.”

“Right you are, young man!” he said reaching across the table, resting his hand on Elliot’s. “These are the virtues that
Simon and I always admired about you. You cut to the chase, Elliot, and that’s what I’m going to do tonight. No bullshit!” Rosengarten leaned forward across the table and dropped his voice to a whisper. “So let me tell you now that tomorrow morning a patient is going to be admitted into Mount Sinai for cardiac cauterization. His name is Ralph Scopo. Now, after the testing, he most probably will need to have bypass
surgery
, which you will also perform.” He looked straight into Elliot’s eyes. “You know who Ralph Scopo is?”

“I’ve r-read about him in the
Times
.”

“He’s the government’s key witness in that lynching of Carmine Persico that’s passing for justice down at federal
district
court. And, while he’s got nothing to do with Mr. Castellano’s current proceedings, he’ll also be acting as Giuliani’s star witness in this Commission circus they’re
trying
to dredge up. It’s a case that’s got some important men extremely concerned.”

“Yes, I know about that, too.”

“Good,” Rosengarten concluded, sitting back in his chair, “because if you understand those facts and what it means to these friends of ours, you’ll understand why it’s got me
wondering
about the risks involved in a bypass surgery like the one Scopo is about to have. I mean exactly what kind of
sur
vival
rate is there for a man of Ralph Scopo’s age, with his being so overweight and such a heavy smoker?”

Suddenly Elliot could feel the heat of Rosengarten’s eyes as they honed in on him. “Well, of course, you’re right in
saying
that age, excessive weight, and the fact that he’s a heavy smoker are all negative f-factors, but Mr. Rosengarten, umm, Al, the mortality rate even among patients over sixty-five is low, maybe 1 percent to 3 percent on the outside.”

“Exactly! One percent, 3 percent, who’s counting? Point is, there’s risk entailed in any of these procedures. It’s a fact
that can’t be denied by you, me, even Mr. Castellano. Each of us understands that life doesn’t give a pass to every sick man that lies down on the operating table, even when he’s in front of a surgeon as skillful as you.

There was a pause and then Rosengarten continued, “After all, you’ve been a friend since you were a small kid back there in the Bronx when Sal Micelli took you under his wing and helped pay for your education. Favors like that? These are the bridges that lead us from one life and into another, don’t you agree?”

“Sure, y-yes,” Elliot stammered, understanding more than he wanted to about the intended fate of Ralph Scopo. “I would never want to disappoint you, Mr. Castellano, or Sal Micelli.”

“Of course, we know that. Hell, even Dr. Dak brags about your loyalty to him and to the hospital,” Al confirmed, patting the back of Elliot’s hand again as he motioned for a waiter. “Bobby, why don’t you bring Dr. Litner and me two of your best New York strip steaks. One ‘rare’ like it’s still breathing. The other ‘well done.’ You know about these doctors with red meat. If it don’t taste like shoe leather, it’s got to be fucking bad for you. Heart disease,” Rosengarten added with a sense of irony that only Elliot could appreciate. “Thousands of
people
die from it every year.”

“Yes, th-that’s true, Mr. Rosengarten.”

“Fine. You just remember that, Elliot. Oh, and one last thing. Your father-in-law, Mort? He’s gone to Simon with some wild notions about you and some kind of relationship with organized crime types. Mort’s getting up in years and has been depressed since Hanna’s mom passed away. We all understand that. Still, that kind of talk is very unwise, Elliot, particularly during these trying times, and so I’ve spoken with him indirectly about it.”

“Spoken with him?”

“A couple of our associates went over to Prospect Park to visit him last night, just as a kind of reminder. I’m sure you can understand our sensitivities about the subject.”