The Good Rat (7 page)

• Q:
  After you gave Casso the packet of information, what did Casso tell you he did?
  
• A:
  He had a bunch of people out, other Mafia guys, out looking to catch the people who were mentioned in the report, and specifically Jimmy Hydell.
  
• Q:
  Did Casso indicate to you what he had intended to do to the people who had shot him?
  
• A:
  He intended to kill them.
  
• Q:
  Did Casso mention anything to you about people who might have approved of the attempt on his life?
  
• A:
  Well, it was important for him to try and get a hold of Jimmy Hydell alive so that Jimmy would tell him who ordered the hit on him. Nobody goes and shoots a made Mafia member without an approval from up above them.
  
• Q:
  And you said that Casso wanted to question Hydell himself. Did he tell you that?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  At that time did you know whether anyone besides Casso was looking for Jimmy Hydell?
  
• A:
  The Gambinos. They had ordered the hit on Casso, and they wanted to kill Jimmy Hydell themselves in order to end it, to silence it, where it came from.
  
• Q:
  And did there come a time that Casso asked you if you could get your cop friends and get Jimmy Hydell and look to arrest him and turn him over to Casso?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Did Casso mention any reason why he wanted that to be done by Santora’s cousin and Santora’s cousin’s partner?
  
• A:
  No way Hydell would ever get in a car with the Gambinos or the Luccheses. He knew either side was looking to kill him. But Eppolito and Caracappa could attempt to arrest Jimmy Hydell, and he would go with them willingly, and then Casso would get him alive.
  
• Q:
  Did you and Casso discuss a price for kidnapping Jimmy Hydell?
  
• A:
  He says, What do you think they would take? And I told him the figure I had given them before, and he said, Well, give them more, tell them I’ll give them thirty-five thousand. I called Frankie Santora’s house, told his wife or his daughter that I was looking to speak to Frankie and I had a beeper number and told him to beep me.
  

The figure of $35,000 mentioned here was what Casso and Kaplan had paid the cops for the first murder they did, that of Jeweler Number Two, Israel Greenwald. The money is so small for a kidnap-murder that it should be paid in a candy store. The two cops didn’t earn enough from their treachery and betrayal and murder to live any better than honest plumbers.

• Q:
  Did you have a meeting with Mr. Santora?
  
• A:
  Yes, I did. I asked him if his cousin—him and his cousin, the detective, and his cousin’s partner would take the contract to kill Mr. Hydell. No, definitely not to kill him. To kidnap him. They wanted him alive by all means. I told Frankie thirty-five thousand.
  
• Q:
  Mr. Kaplan, did there come a time where you provided a car for use by Mr. Santora and Mr. Santora’s cousin and his cousin’s partner?
  
• A:
  Actually, Casso supplied it, gave it to me to give to them.
  
• Q:
  And can you tell the jury about that?
  
• A:
  Yes. I told Frank—Frankie requested a car and requested that it looked like a police car, detective’s car, and Casso went to Patty Testa, who was a made member of the Luccheses and who was in the car business, and got him to buy a car that looked like a police car.
  
• Q:
  You said that car that looks like a police car. Can you tell the jury what you mean by that?
  
• A:
  A car that looks like a detective car, that has the hubcaps with the holes in it and looks like an unmarked police car. I been pulled over many times by an unmarked detective’s car. I gave them the car this time and they—they went out looking to get Jimmy Hydell. And they were not having too much success. Casso at the same time had his own crews looking for him in case they didn’t get him, and on a Saturday, Casso came to my house and he said, It’s imperative that we get this guy real quick, because the Gambinos are looking to clip him, kill him, and are you sure your friend and his cousin are out looking for him? I said, I’ll reach out for him and light a fire under him, and I did that. I called Frankie. When Frankie called me back, I said, Frankie, it’s imperative that we get this kid, because someone else is going to kill him and we want him alive, and he says, We’re out looking for him right now. I said, Please, Frankie, it’s important. Make sure that you try very hard to get him.
  
• Q:
  Mr. Kaplan, where were they looking for Jimmy?
  
• A:
  They [had] been looking all over for him, but that particular phone call they said, We just left his house in Staten Island. They had been looking all over for him, and they were going to Brooklyn next.
  
• Q:
  Can you tell the jury what happened next?
  
• A:
  I got a phone call from Frankie, and he said, Can you call me back? And I said yes. And I went out, and he beeped me with a number, and I called him back, and he says, We got him. I says, You’re kidding? I only spoke to you about [a] half hour ago. He says, No, we got him. Where do you want him? I said, Frankie, I’m going to have to call you back. I beeped Casso, and he called me back, and I told him that they had Jimmy Hydell and where did he want me to bring him. And he said to me, Do you remember the toy store where we used to meet? And I said, Yes, I remember. He says, Can you bring him there? I said, What time? He says, In about an hour. I said, Fine. We’ll do that. Then
  when Frankie called me back, I told him about the Toys “R” Us store on Flatbush Avenue—he knew where it was—right off the Belt Parkway, and he said yes. I said, Bring him there in an hour. He says, No problem, I’ll have him there.
  
• Q:
  That Toys “R” Us is on Flatbush Avenue, that is in Brooklyn?
  
• A:
  Yeah, right near Kings Plaza.
  
• Q:
  How did he reach you?
  
• A:
  He beeped me. Once he would beep me, I would go out and call him. I said, Can you call me back?—meaning the beeper. He would never call my house.
  
• Q:
  Did you ever use any pay phones or other phones that were located near your house?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Why did you do that?
  
• A:
  I didn’t want—I was on parole. I didn’t want to be connected with beeper numbers of organized-crime guys who—or phone numbers of organized-crime guys.
  
• Q:
  Did you do that even when you were not on parole?
  
• A:
  I did that as a precaution. I didn’t lead a clean life. I also changed cell phones every month or two so that there was no continuing continuity in the numbers.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time that day that you went to the Toys “R” Us?
  
• A:
  Yes, Anthony Casso was standing about two hundred feet, two hundred and fifty feet from the entrance, the entrance from the street. He was in the parking lot. I
  pulled up and parked my car next to him and got out. He says, Where is he? And I says, He’s coming.
  
• Q:
  And after you and Casso were there, did there come a time that Santora showed up?
  
• A:
  Yes. He pulled in, into the lot with the car that we had gotten him, and I walked—he stopped, he saw Casso and he stopped about fifteen feet from us, and I walked over to him. I said, What’s up, Frank? And he says—he was yelling and kicking in the trunk—and he says, I had to pull over, and I punched him to keep him quiet, and you have to be careful that he don’t start screaming and yelling. And I took the key to the car, and I walked away from Frankie, and I handed the key to Anthony Casso. Casso looked up, and he said, Who are those two guys at the foot of the parking lot? And I looked up, and I recognized Louie and Steve, and I walked over to Frankie. I said, What are they doing here? He said, They followed me to back me up. And at that time I thought, Wow, what great guys they were. And I told Casso that was Santora’s cousin and his partner, and they were backing him up. Casso said, Okay. He says, Tell them to get out of here. Tell your friend to get out of here, and you get out of here.
  
• Q:
  Mr. Kaplan, did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Caracappa or Mr. Eppolito about what had happened that day?
  
• A:
  We talked about how they got Jimmy, how they captured him, and they said that they went to Staten Island
  and went to the—to his house and asked his mother where Jimmy was. And I said to them at that point, I said, Aren’t youse afraid that she’ll pick you out of someplace? And they said, No, we were just doing our job, that’s the way we have to look at it. And then they said, We went into Brooklyn, and we found him in a Laundromat on Fifteenth Avenue off of Eighty-sixth Street, and Louie said that we walked in and we arrested him and he came with us willingly because he knew me and I had some interaction with him before as a police officer.
  
• Q:
  Did either Mr. Eppolito or Mr. Caracappa indicate where they brought Jimmy Hydell?
  
• A:
  They brought him to the same garage—it was a repair or a collision shop, I don’t know—and that they brought the car and they took him out and put him in the trunk.
  
• Q:
  Did you ever pay anyone any money for that?
  
• A:
  Forty thousand to Frank Santora.
  
• Q:
  Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Eppolito or Mr. Caracappa about that payment of that money?
  
• A:
  We discussed the payment, and they asked me, Well, what did you pay Frankie for the thing with Jimmy? And I said the original figure was thirty-five thousand and Gaspipe put in a five-thousand-dollar bonus, and then they laughed and they said, That’s Frankie. We only got a third of the thirty-five thousand. Frankie put the five thousand dollars in his pocket.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time after the kidnapping of Hydell that you had conversations with Casso about Casso’s interrogation of Hydell?
  
• A:
  Yes. He said that they brought Jimmy in front of a bunch of higher-ups and that Jimmy Hydell said, I’ll tell them exactly what happened, but I want you to—I know you’re going to kill me, Anthony, he says, but I want you to promise me one thing, you’ll throw my body in the street so my mother can get the insurance policy.
  
• Q:
  And meaning what?
  
• A:
  Hydell had an insurance policy on him. It was not a lot of money, but he wanted his mother to get it. And Casso told him, Don’t worry about it, I’ll do that. And he didn’t do that. He told me he didn’t do it. He hid the body.
  
• Q:
  According to Casso, did Jimmy Hydell tell Casso who was involved in ordering the hit on Casso?
  
• A:
  Yes. He said that it was Bobby Boriello and Mickey Boy Paradiso and Eddie Lino, and that they got perfect permission from up above.
  
• Q:
  Did Hydell give Casso any other information about who was involved in the actual shooting of him?
  
• A:
  He told him who all the participants were. One name he gave was Nicky Guido.
  

“One Adam-twelve!” Nicky Guido shouts at the empty street from his twenty-six-inch sparkling blue Schwinn.

“One Adam-twelve, one Adam-twelve,” Nicky Guido calls out in the morning from his bicycle. “415 Seventeenth
Street, a white male killed in the street. Murder on Seventeenth Street! One Adam-twelve.”

Nicky gets “One Adam-twelve” from the television show he likes best of all. He is rushing along on that blue Schwinn, with a push-button siren wailing in the morning air. He makes the first sounds of the day on his block, Seventeenth Street in Park Slope, which is in Brooklyn.

The bike is the first ride of his life, and Nicky Guido is twelve or thirteen. His father oils it, and Nicky washes it each day as if scrubbing his face.

Riding his bike, a twelve-year-old, riding with his eyes seeing past the end of the block, to a sky suggesting that somehow this bright day will turn into the gloom of dusk, Nicky Guido has only these young days of such great beauty that they cannot last.

The music that sings of Nicky Guido delights the heart. The song is of a wonderful young man, dark, slim, energetic, and giving. If he sometimes seemed a little slow, if when he became excited he stuttered, he was not slow of heart or of love for his mother. It only became stronger as he grew. He was twenty-six and worked as a phone installer and was on a softball team, and after the games they all walked to Farrell’s, the famous saloon that had no bar stools and no refrigerator ice cubes, only cracked ice, pieces taken from a big block in an icehouse every day. Everybody on the team went to Farrell’s except Nicky Guido, who walked past the saloon door and went around the corner to 512 Seventeenth Street to be with his mother.

“They used to say that Nicky never could do anything big,” Dottie Laux, who lived next door, at 510, was saying. “I thought being that good to his mother was a pretty big thing.”

Seventeenth Street is sprawling and crowded with people in four-and five-story attached brownstones. It starts at the harbor, under an expressway and the bulkheads pushing into harbor water. It runs up a cement rise through avenues, Fourth and Fifth and Sixth and on up to the block between Eighth and Ninth. Back then it was a block for the poor, the banditos, the drug sellers.