See No Evil (20 page)

Once a member of the Bergin crew, Gravano and Gotti formed something like a mutual admiration society. Gravano,
a cold-blooded murderer personally responsible for dozens of hits, admired Gotti’s charisma and sense of style. Gotti, the ruthless, Machiavellian leader, had early along seen Gravano as savvy and business minded enough to be competition for him in his climb to the top. Gotti decided to co-opt those
talents
keeping Sammy out of play while reaping the financial benefits of his work. All of those capabilities Gotti would be calling upon in the days to come as he used Gravano as a
messenger
gathering support among the Fist of Five and others for his plot to kill Castellano.

First on his agenda was to get Frank DeCiccio and Jimmy Failla on his side. Using Sammy as the go-between, Gotti
convinced
both that they were never going to make any real money under the boot of the greedy Castellano and his “scumbag” underboss Tommy Bilotti. They agreed. Next, Gotti put feelers out to leaders of the other families. He used Angelo Ruggiero to meet with Gerry Lang of the Columbos who wondered, “What’s John waiting for, his own funeral?” Then, he met with Joe Messino, underboss of the Bonannos, who Gotti bragged he had “in his hip pocket.” As for Tony “Ducks” Corallo of the Luchesse Family, Sammy was pleased to report back that Castellano was hated by him; more, that Corallo, who’d been secretly recorded talking
conspiratorially
about Big Paulie, was concerned himself about getting clipped by the Todt Hill godfather, an additional incentive for wanting him out of the way.

The only family boss who would be opposed to a Castellano hit, the plotters of Fist concluded, was Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, aging godfather of the Genovese Family. It was suspected that Gigante, upset at rampant narcotics
trafficking
within the Bergin crew, had already arranged for a shot to be taken at Gotti outside his Ozone Park
headquarters.
Beyond that, the Chin was a Sicilian traditionalist who
hated the instinctive brashness of the Neapolitans that Gotti represented. He and Big Paulie went back to the founding of the Gambinos and were joined at the hip by loyalty to Carlo Gambino. All agreed that Gigante would never go along with a tradition-shattering plan akin in his eyes to something as unforgivable as patricide. Nevertheless, even someone as powerful at that time as the Chin was not going to stop John Gotti. In characteristic fashion, it was Gotti who puffed out his chest in front of the others and proclaimed,
“Fuck
the
Chin!
We’re
going
after
Big
Paulie.
If
it
comes
down
to
it,
we
go
to
war
with
the
Genovese
Family,
too!”

B
y early December as the strings of destiny were pulled taut and the lives of Gotti, Giuliani, and Elliot coalesced, the name Ralph Scopo loomed large on the horizon of each. Call it a premonition, but on the morning of December 5 when Scopo’s wife and son, a bodybuilder in his
midtwenties
, met with him for the first time at Mount Sinai, Elliot knew that dice were set rolling that would seriously change his life. If there was a single impression that struck him
during
their discussion about the surgery to come, it was the
family
’s conviction regarding their husband/father’s innocence and genuine concern about his health. When Elliot was with them, they were polite and respectful. But after he left the room, they spoke about him with the kind of reverence reserved for
Reader’s
Digest’
s “Father of the Year.”

According to them, Ralph Scopo was a hard-working
family
man caught up in a tangled web of FBI and New York City lawmen and prosecutors out to take down anyone who wouldn’t cooperate as a state’s witness against alleged Mafiosi with little concern for innocence or guilt. In some obvious
ways, Elliot’s consultation with them was similar to the
hundreds
of others he’d had over the years. But as he explained the combined right and left cardiac cauterization procedure and got a sense of the kind of people they were, he wondered if Ralph Scopo was, in fact, a corrupt union boss or the victim of an overzealous prosecution machine set into a Mafia
feeding
frenzy.

Though he’d already determined, after viewing the Beekman charts, that Scopo probably needed aortocoronary bypass surgery to survive, Elliot wanted fresh x-rays of his heart to diagnose exactly where and how the narrowing of his coronary arteries had progressed. This he explained to Scopo’s wife and son as the union boss was being prepped for testing.

“This morning we’re going to X-ray Ralph’s heart using a contrast medium, a kind of dye, that’s injected via catheter through an artery in his arm. I know this was done before, but I insist that it’s performed before any surgical treatment for coronary heart disease to determine the best possible
treatment
,” Elliot explained, all the while thinking about two men he’d personally known without any mob ties that had been prosecuted and served prison time, their lives shattered, by headline-grabbing prosecutors not so unlike Rudy Giuliani.

“The principal problem that this cauterization procedure helps to diagnose is narrowing of the coronary arteries caused by plaque formation. You see, the arteries feeding blood to the heart are relatively few and small—about the size of the lead in a pencil. The process of plaque formation once it’s started, not only narrows the artery, but can enhance the tendency of blood near it to clot,” he continued, staring into their faces as he remembered the nightmare Congressman Cornelius “Neil” Gallagher, of New Jersey had lived after forming a subcommittee to investigate FBI/CIA abuses
during
the late 1960s.

In danger of uncovering “black-bag” break-ins (
COINTELPRO
), brainwashing programs (ARTICHOKE), and assassination squads (PHOENIX), Hoover using the
ubiquitous
Roy Cohn as a go-between, tried to blackmail Gallagher with phony
Life
magazine exposés based on alleged Mafia connections. That failing, the FBI launched a relentless series of investigations into the congressman, his friends, and
family
that spanned nearly four decades. By the time the attacks ended, Gallagher, a war hero who’d been awarded three Purple Hearts and Bronze and Silver Star medals during World War II, had served two stints in federal prison, lost his congressional seat, his license to practice law, his good name, and entire life savings. All of this without a single mob-
related
charge ever having been proven or even substantiated.

“If the clot, or spasm caused by it, is large enough to block the artery, a person can have a heart attack. If the clot isn’t that big, but still interferes with the flow of blood, he may experience angina like Ralph did several weeks ago—severe chest pain that results from the heart muscle not receiving enough oxygen. If either heart attacks or angina deprive the heart of oxygen long enough, a portion of the heart muscle called the myocardium dies. The result can range from almost undetectable to immediately fatal,” Elliot elaborated,
thinking
now about Joseph Salvati, a truck driver fingered by a hit man named Joseph Barboza. Salvati served thirty years in prison for a murder he knew nothing about.

In March 1965, during the twilight of Bobby Kennedy’s war on the mob, agents overheard Barboza on a wiretap requesting permission from his boss to ice a small-time hood named Edward Deegan, who later turned up dead, shot six times, in an alley. When indictments were handed down, Barboza, the real murderer, was not named because in
addition
to being a professional killer, he worked as an informant
for the bureau. Unbelievably, the four innocent men,
including
Joseph Salvati, who were named, were subsequently
convicted
of Deegan’s murder on Barboza’s testimony with the FBI fully cognizant of their innocence. Salvati, who was
targeted
because he owed Barboza $400, wound up serving
thirty
years in federal prison, two others died while serving their sentences, and the fourth man, Peter Limone, was sentenced to die in the electric chair.

“If our testing demonstrates that Ralph’s condition
warrants
, we may go ahead with an aortocoronary bypass
procedure
,” Elliot told them, watching as Marie Scopo’s dark and worried eyes met his. “A coronary bypass takes anywhere from two to four hours to perform and is essentially the same
regardless
of the number of arteries to be bypassed. But just so you understand the procedure, let me briefly take you through what will happen,” he said, stopping suddenly as he observed a look of exasperation pass between mother and son. “Mrs. Scopo, have I said something wrong? I don’t want to continue if this is upsetting either you or your son.” He stared into each of their eyes for some signal about what they were feeling. “I simply wanted to reassure you and your son that bypass
surgeries
are performed here at Mount Sinai many times each day and that your husband is under the best possible care.”

“Dr. Litner, Dottore, we know who you are and have every confidence in your abilities. When we talked about Ralph’s condition to people we trust like family, it was you who they recommended. You don’t never have to explain what you do to me or to my son. This is all we ask, please don’t let my husband and the father of my children die in no hospital. Ralph’s no angel, but he’s a good man who never did nothing worse than anybody else. He’s been a provider to his family and a loving father to his children. He don’t deserve to die on no operating table. We love him too much for that.”

“I know that you care about your husband very much, Mrs. Scopo. I could see it from the moment you walked into my office. So please don’t worry,” Elliot vowed. “Everything that can be done will be done.”

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears as her son
dutifully
helped her from her chair, looking more like visiting clergy than the bodybuilding son of a Mafia capo.

“We trust you, Dottore,” Joey Scopo stated like the politest, most stand-up guy on the planet. “No matter what happens, we know you’ll do everything in your power to fix my father’s heart.”

It was one in the morning by the time Elliot left Mount Sinai with his initial assumptions about surgery confirmed for Scopo. He was exhausted physically from the work, but more from the nonstop stress. The insulation was gone. For him, it was down to bare wire. With surgery scheduled for 3:00
P.M
. that afternoon, he didn’t have much time to try to ruminate over just how he would handle the most serious dilemma of his life.

On the one hand, Rosengarten, who carried a lot of weight himself, but not nearly so much as his bosses, had made it about as clear as anyone could that the godfathers who headed the Commission needed and expected Scopo to die on the operating table. On the other, there was the
genuine
allegiance Elliot held for the Hippocratic oath he was sworn to, along with a sincere liking not only for Ralph Scopo, but for members of his immediate family whom he found to be profound in their story of how this husband and father’s life had gone awry. “Misunderstandings of this
magnitude
were certainly possible,” Elliot lamented as he walked from the elevator into the hospital’s underground lot. “Just look at me.”

Then as he walked toward his ’Vette and switched open
the locks, Elliot noticed a long black Lincoln Continental slowly prowling with lights on bright. It moved like a shark gliding through water, methodical, as it positioned its high beams directly on him, so that he felt like he was an actor on stage caught up in a play no sane man could ever have
written
. There he stood, just outside the Corvette’s driver’s door, frozen in the glare of those headlights, waiting for he didn’t know what, when suddenly his cell phone rang. Once, twice, three times. Since it was already after 1:00
A.M
., he had to believe he was meant to answer it.

“H-Hello?” Elliot asked in a voice so quiet and so
frightened
that it must have sounded like something between a mouse and a lamb.

“You know who this is, don’t you? You do, I know. So don’t say nothing. I wanted to call. Let you know that we’re counting on you to do the right thing tomorrow. You’re a good fucking kid. Everyone says so. Now you get to prove it. Do what we ask, you’re the next director of heart surgery at Mount Sinai. Don’t, you lose more than your fucking job,
capesci
?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, having recognized immediately the voice of John Gotti, who now that Gravano was a
member
of the Concrete Club, also had a vested interest in Ralph Scopo’s demise. “Thanks for taking the t-time to call. I
kn-know
how busy you must be,” he added stupidly.

“Busy? Never too fucking busy to say hello to my friends.”

“Your people, was it them that assaulted my father-in-law, Mort Shapiro the other night?”

“Dottore, on my mother’s eyes, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, but this much I’ll tell you. If your father-in-law was talkin’ to any-fucking-body about this trial, about this rat scumbag we both know and these lies he’s been tellin’ about us, what did you expect? What the fuck did you expect from
any of this? You stick your nose up somebody’s ass, and you think it’s gonna smell like what, roses?”

“No, not roses.”

“Good. You remember that ’cause this thing has got to be handled just right, or it’s gonna hurt people at very high
levels
. So you all right with that now? What we were talkin’ about?”

“Yes, sir, we’re j-just fine.”

“Okay, then, let me tell you one last thing. It’s about my fucking health. My stomach is good, and my shit still don’t look like fucking coffee grounds. That’s a good thing,” Gotti said laughing. “Now get a good night’s sleep, and don’t ever forget this conversation.”

With those words, the connection went dead. Elliot stood silently watching as the Lincoln’s headlights ratcheted down to normal and the black limousine turned around and drove off, its red taillights disappearing into the dark like a mirage that he had to convince himself was real. Then, with hands still shaking, he fumbled with his keys, entered his car, and got the hell out of Mount Sinai’s underground parking lot as fast as his Lil’ Red Corvette would take him.