See No Evil (8 page)

The jewel in Castellano’s white-collar empire, however, was the construction business where not a single load of
concrete
was poured for any contract worth more than $2 million without the consent of the Commission. The point man was a member of the Columbo Family who happened to be Ralph Scopo, president of the Local District Council of the Cement and Concrete Workers’ Union. Given Big Paulie’s blessing, select concrete-pouring contractors were allowed to be part of what was known as the “Concrete Club.” Each of the five New York families controlled one or more of these
companies
. The only way construction firms could avoid union problems or sudden cutoffs in concrete deliveries was through an understanding with the Commission: union peace in return for a kickback of 2 percent on every contract more than $2 million.

The bid-rigging system for construction projects in New York held genuine appeal for Castellano. When bids were solicited for a project, the Commission decided which of the companies was up for the contract. Once the price was
determined
, the other companies in the club were instructed accordingly and put in higher bids, netting millions per year for the families while raising the cost of a cubic yard of poured concrete to $85, the highest in the United States.

At about the time Castellano was beginning to feel secure in his new role as
capo
di
tutti
capi,
thirty-seven-year-old John Gotti was named “acting captain” of a crew in Queens, New
York’s largest borough. Gotti held a deep disdain for Castellano that everyone in the Gambino Family knew about, not only because he’d superseded his idol, Neil Dellacroce, as godfather, but because Gotti was, like Dellacroce and Capone before him, born of parents from Naples. Gotti was a Neapolitan literally, but also in a figurative sense. He gambled obsessively, often losing $30,000 on a weekend, borrowing from his own loan sharks to make good on his debt. Rumors, too, had been spreading about Bergin crew members like Angelo Ruggiero and Gotti’s brother, Pete, dealing drugs, a practice that had been outlawed by the Commission going back to the 1950s.

More to the point, Gotti believed that Castellano
questioned
his fitness as a family member as much as he
questioned
Castellano’s credentials as head of the family. He
understood
that Paul, with his typical Sicilian bias, had a low opinion of him. Like his ancestors, Castellano thought Neapolitans were brash, garish, and too emotional to hold positions of power in the modern Mafia. For the most part, it was true. Gotti was a man who saw the fierce, foul-mouthed Capone as an icon. Like Capone and Dellacroce, he cared little for
strategies
and diplomacy. The underworld was an arena won and dominated by “men’s men,” not prissy business moguls. Gotti’s was a game of intimidation. The Mafia was a world of traditions, but at its core, he had only to look at how a Sicilian like Carlo Gambino had risen to power to see that, in the end, it was a game of manipulation and brute force.

Gotti had a reputation among family members for
ruthlessness
even then and built upon it by talking to subordinates and enemies in a ferocious style he’d learned from Dellacroce. His crew included three of his six brothers and men he’d known since his teenage, street-gang days. “We’re the fucking toughest guys in the fucking world,” he once bragged to them
after describing how he’d broken a cop’s legs, ankles, and jaw with a crowbar. “I told him, ‘You want to play more? You want to play more, you cocksucker?’ I opened his mouth with my finger and put the gun in. ‘You want to play more?’ He can’t talk, he’s crying like a baby.”

With Dellacroce in charge because of Castellano’s
decision
to separate family operations, Gotti was in an
exceptional
position to gravitate up the Mafia ladder, and he knew it. Already held in high esteem for the McBratney revenge killing, it was common knowledge that Bergin crew members identified more with him than with Castellano, cementing that relationship by buying Gotti a new Mark V Lincoln to celebrate his release from Green Haven and hanging a plaque given him during a prison party the night before his release, “To John Gotti—A Great Guy.”

To satisfy parole requirements, Gotti became a no-show salesman for the Arc Plumbing and Heating Corporation located several blocks from his Bergin storefront
headquarters
. There, he and Angelo Ruggiero “scouted locations” for potential projects for Arc mostly via city contracts including a new police station for the 106th Precinct, Shea Stadium, and the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.

Soon after Gotti’s release from prison, Castellano
reluctantly
“opened the books,” closed by the ever-cautious Carlo Gambino for fear of inducting a police informer, and initiated Gotti and eight other associates into the family as made men. While Gotti accepted the distinction, it would not temper the disdain he bore for the new godfather. In time, the
charismatic
John Gotti’s power would totally eclipse Paul Castellano’s, as the Neapolitan and Sicilian branches of the Gambino Family clashed in a death struggle that would leave only one of the two men standing.

What neither Castellano, nor Gotti, nor Elliot could know
was that an FBI informer had already been introduced into Gotti’s Bergin crew. His name was Wilfred “Willie Boy” Johnson.

A
fter a six-month courtship, Elliot was ecstatic to find himself marrying, Hanna Shapiro on August 27, 1978. The ceremony, a mixture of modern Jewish and Orthodox
customs
, was held at the Beth Elohim synagogue in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, complete with the ritual signing of the
Ketubah,
or marriage contract, and the tradition of the groom veiling the bride, called the
bedikah,
which means inspection.

In keeping with tradition, the family of the bride was on one side of the synagogue and the family of the groom on the other. In attendance on Hanna’s side was her father, Mort, standing alongside his sister, Marissa Cohen, and her
husband
, multimillionaire real estate developer, Herbert Cohen; Mort’s physician friends, Dr. Simon Dak, Frank and Dorothy Silvio, and Marc Weiner, doctor-professor of clinical surgery at Columbia University, not to mention politicians like Charles Schumer, former New York Gov. Hugh Carey, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer.

For better or worse, Elliot’s side of the synagogue was
looking a little tattered by comparison. Of course, there was his mother, Etta, decked out in a pink, cotton dress, looking happy, but so tragically alone without his father, Abe, who’d died some years earlier; his brother, Steven, veteran of those unforgettable Cowboys and Indians escapades out in the backies, along with his wife, Deborah, and their seven-year-old son, Andrew; and friends from the old neighborhood, Mr. and Mrs. Micelli, to whom he owed so much; Nick, or course; Joey Fischetti; Sal DiGregorio, now married with three kids; and even Officer Kahler, the cop who patrolled Anthony Avenue and Tremont Street, now retired, standing on
crutches
suffering from chronic ischemia, an insufficiency of blood flow to the legs.

Despite all of those that were there, Elliot could almost see along with his father, uncles Saul and Lou, those tough and funny Russian Jews who’d trekked to the Bronx from Vinograd to find a safe haven for their families and set up their luncheonettes, laundry, and dry-cleaning shops to support them. He missed their sentimentality. He missed their
laughter
and stories. But that was life, and though there were no celebrities on their side of the aisle, they had their own
history
and lives that had been lived to the fullest.

At the end of the ceremony, in keeping with a tradition derived from the Talmud, Elliot stepped on a glass with his shoe and smashed it before the congregation. Then, with the ceremony completed, his new wife, Hanna and he left the synagogue, along with Mort and Etta, for a gala reception attended by 350 guests with entertainment provided by singer Lainie Kazan and comedian Jackie Mason.

Over time, as Elliot came to know Hanna more with each day, he saw in her an aspect that to him would prove both a blessing and a problem. Fiercely loyal, she was also fiercely independent and quite capable of attacking a perceived enemy
with the same passion as she would defend a friend. The
terrain
that lay between those two poles was often not very wide so that he was careful never to show too much of his inner self, especially the part so firmly rooted in the underworld.

During those initial happy days of their marriage, Hanna’s response to his private, other life was to leave him alone, often taking trips by herself or with a girlfriend to Switzerland for skiing, Morocco for touring, or Israel for spiritual renewal. Call it genetics, but in that sense, Hanna was exactly like her father, who spoke six languages and had become famous in Brazil during World War II where he led a government-
funded
team of U.S. physicians in setting up the country’s medical system, virtually eliminating a malaria epidemic that
threatened
to kill thousands. Hanna, like him, was bright, self-
contained
, and a world traveler. She was pleased to be Mrs. Elliot Litner, but not about to deeply explore any of the peccadilloes that surfaced over the first months of their marriage.

Originally, the plan was to live with Mort near Prospect Park, but Hanna turned out to be fertile. Almost
immediately
after their honeymoon, she became pregnant with twins. The idea then was to find a place of their own before she gave birth, and so Elliot looked for homes, disappointed to find that during those Carter administration years, inflation was running 20 percent with home-mortgage interest rates not much less than that. Worse, between his gambling, which had consumed more than $250,000 over the previous three years, and nonstop partying with Silvio, Elliot had almost no
savings
. So that even for a superstar surgeon, getting a $400,000 mortgage wasn’t easy. But how do you tell your new wife and father-in-law that?

He’d mentioned his dilemma to Frank Silvio one
afternoon
washing up after surgery and the next day was
contacted
by Mount Sinai board member Al Rosengarten. Over
lunch, Rosengarten asked him about his financial problems and was very sympathetic. “You know, Elliot, we have some friends in common, and I know they’d like to help,” the
garment
district tycoon offered. “Why don’t you let me see what I can do? Would you and Hanna be available for a Realtor friend of mine to show you some homes this weekend?” Elliot agreed, and that Saturday, a representative from Burgdorf took them around focusing very specifically on an estate over the bridge in Englewood, New Jersey.

The house, a Colonial, was situated on a hill with three acres of land. It had five bedrooms, a den, playroom, two
balconies
, a hot tub, and Olympic-sized swimming pool. “Oh, I really love it, Elliot!” Hanna sighed, nuzzling up to him. What would a place like this cost, he wondered: $1.3 million? $999,000, bid down, maybe? “Oh, not at all, Dr. Litner!” the Realtor answered. “This home goes for $290,000.” Well, you could have knocked him over with a straw and a deep breath, and with that, he simply said, “Yes.”

The next morning had the same ethereal quality to it as the president of Citibank called him at the hospital to
apologize
for the problems he’d experienced getting a mortgage approval, personally offering to walk through the $250,000 mortgage he’d be needing for the Englewood house. Then, at day’s end, Al Rosengarten came by to see how everything had gone over the weekend.

“I-it’s unbelievable,” Elliot stuttered to the small, tightly wound, impeccably dressed man before him. “You wouldn’t believe the house we’re getting, and it’s only $290,000. I thought it’d be three times that, but I guess your friends know what they’re doing.”

“You deserve that kind of treatment, Dr. Litner. You’re associate director of cardiac surgery at one of the most
prestigious
hospitals in the United States, maybe the world. So
why shouldn’t you get a break now and again. Good fortune is not a disease, is it?”

“No, sir, it isn’t.”

“You know, Elliot, you’re better than you think you are. I spoke with Mr. Castellano, and he thinks highly of you, too. Given your skills as a surgeon and lecturer, there are few
positions
you’d have trouble rising to. Perhaps, even a directorship if things continue to go as they have.”

Elliot shook his head in disbelief. “Why th-thank you, Mr. Rosengarten. That’s nice of you to say.”

Rosengarten tsked him. “No, no,” he said with the wave of a finger, “it’s not, Mr. Rosengarten. It’s Al. And one more thing, about that house. It was owned by a man named Sonny Montella. He’d worked with Mr. Castellano, and Mr. Gambino before that, for a number of years, but then did a terrible thing, an act of betrayal, really. He became an FBI informer, what we call a “rat.” Now he’s in their witness
protection
program. So the place came on the market kind of sudden.” Rosengarten shrugged as he turned to leave. “Oh, well, FBI. You know what that stands for, don’t you? ‘Forever Born Ignorant.’ They just don’t understand people like us, Elliot, and probably never will.”

Al Rosengarten’s words that night resonated for Elliot, especially the part about William “Sonny” Montella, a Gambino Family soldier working the Brooklyn waterfront who had, a short time before, disappeared into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Newspaper headlines carried the story for weeks, treating his defection as a major blow to waterfront
caporégime
Tony Scotto, as well as to Castellano. Montella, it seemed, knew all there was to know about mob infiltration of the International Longshoremen’s Association, having reported directly to Scotto, who also happened to be vice president of the 16,000-member ILA.

While none of this sounded benign, it wasn’t until
several
months later, with Hanna seven months pregnant, that the Litner family experienced the full impact of the situation. As was his way during these times, Elliot had spent the night at the apartment he kept near the hospital. But the next
afternoon
when his Corvette finally did pull into the driveway of their Englewood home, he immediately sensed something was wrong.

Standing ominously outside of his front door was a man he’d never seen before, and in the driveway, very near the entrance, was an unmarked industrial van.

“Dr. Litner?” the man called to him before he’d switched off the ’Vette’s ignition.

“Yes, I’m Elliot Litner. Is something wrong?”

The man, squat and broad as a professional wrestler, approached him. “Maybe you want come with me, Doc,” he muttered, taking hold of Elliot’s arm at the elbow.

“What’s wrong? Who are you?”

“Just come with me, and everything will be fine. You see, there’s been a little misunderstanding that we’ve come to straighten out.”

“What kind of m-misunderstanding?” Elliot asked as he was shepherded through the entrance and into the foyer,
suddenly
cognizant of a cadenced thudding coming directly from the basement beneath them.

“We’ve come to get what’s ours,” the man answered, all business. “My friends are downstairs in your basement. Did you know there was a safe down there, hidden behind the wall in the wine cellar?”

“Where’s
my
wife?
Where’s
Hanna,
she’s
pregnant
and,
I
swear,
if
she’s
been
hurt
in
any
way
…”

“Don’t make this tough on yourself, Dottore. It’s the safe we care about, not your wife. She’s in there,” he said
motioning
toward the kitchen, “relaxing like you should be.”

“Yeah, while your
gumbas
tear my g-goddamned house apart, is that it?” Elliot snapped back, rushing into the
adjoining
room where Hanna sat at the kitchen table, sipping from her cup, angrier than scared. “Hanna, are you all right? Are the babies …”

“I’m fine, Elliot, but I don’t know what’s happening. I think we’re being robbed!”

“No, no, it’s not anything of ours they want. It’s
something
in a safe hidden in the cellar …”

“Oh, Elliot! They’ve been here since four o’clock. They said they were friends of yours, so I let them in. Then they made me sit here, threatened to hurt me if I didn’t, while the one stayed up here watching me and the others started
breaking
the basement wall down with sledgehammers!”

He took her into his arms, a deep anger rising up within him. This was
his
house. This was
his
family.

“I hope you know what you’ve d-done,” he sputtered in a voice as threatening as he could make it.

The short, muscular man, dressed in a dark, polyester suit, could hardly keep from laughing. “Oh, don’t you worry about us, Dottore. This will all be over soon, and we’ll just be on our way.”

Elliot cast him a look that left a vibration in the air between them, then turned to Hanna as a sudden explosion erupted beneath them shaking the house to its very foundation.

“We got it! We got the safe!” someone shouted up from below. “Man, this sucker’s heavy,” one of the two men carrying the safe up the stairs to the side-door exit complained. A third man ran outside to start the van’s engine. “Must be $2 million in diamonds and emeralds old Sonny stashed away for himself. That’s what Little Pussy promised, and he better be right!”

“Okay, then,” the wrestler said addressing them a final time, “but before I go, maybe you want to promise that this
little withdrawal of ours stays between us.” He took the
telephone
cord into his right hand and ripped it from the wall. “No need for police. No need to make this more than it is ’cause what was in that safe was ours, not yours, and not Sonny Montella’s,
capesci
?”

Elliot swallowed hard, then nodded.
“Capesci.”

Then, the men left, and with the squeal of burning
rubber
, the van, too vanished from their driveway and into the street so that Elliot and Hanna felt forced to wonder if any of it had happened at all, so surreal had it been.

Like survivors of some natural disaster, the two wandered downstairs into the basement in a daze. The air was thick with dust, the basement, cluttered with debris. Beyond the
blown-off
door, in what was to have been their wine cellar, there remained a huge hole in the wall where the safe had been.

“My God, Elliot, I’m calling the police!”

“No, no, the phone. It’s dead.”

“Then I’ll go next door to our neighbors. They have to know something’s happened, don’t they? They’ve probably called 911 already.”