The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter (14 page)

Sometime in January 1992, my father was out hunting in Brooklyn with Larry Mazza and Jimmy Delmasto. They pulled up alongside Joe Waverly's car. They opened the window so my father could shoot him, but the gun got stuck. It didn't fire. Waverly shot back, but he missed them. Nobody in the car got hit that day. But if they hadn't gotten out of there fast, they could have been killed.

After that, they came home and were laughing about it. They thought it was pretty funny. They were saying things like: “I can't believe what happened to the gun. This is nuts. That was crazy. Holy shit!”

I was just sitting there in the living room, listening to them. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The whole thing was entertaining to them. Just a little before that happened, Larry and Jimmy had both just had babies. So it was shocking to me to witness them become killers, because they had just become fathers. I really thought their kids and their families would have taken priority over them becoming full-fledged hit men.

Most men would have felt the need to go to work to provide for and protect their new babies and families and learn how to be fathers. But these guys found the need to go to war to protect their Mob family, the Persico faction, and learn how to be Mob killers.

I grew up around these guys. They were always fun and loving guys, listening to Elvis, listening to music, playing card games in the house, making jokes and laughing all the time. I was so confused how some of these guys could flip a switch and become the type of people to take another life and show no remorse.

But then again I watched this, growing up around my father—he never showed remorse, either. It was second nature to him, and it came so natural. So being around that, being in that life, I felt these guys learned how to kill and show no feelings.

They were taking this war seriously. They had my father's back and were going out and killing people with my father—and enjoying it.

So they missed Joe Waverly, and, of course, that didn't sit well with my father. That meant they had to go back and get him another time, which they did.

So on February 26, 1992, my father took the family car, which was a black Mercedes-Benz, and went looking for Joe Waverly—but I didn't know he did that at the time. To me, that's pretty sick—to take a car that your kids drive and go and shoot somebody on Avenue U.

But that's what he did. He saw Joe Waverly in front of the Party Room Social Club on Avenue U and shot him. He didn't care that he had the family car. That's what he wanted to do. Period. The end. Joe Waverly shot back, but he missed my father. My father shot him in the stomach, but he didn't kill him.

When my father came home, he told us what happened, never mentioning he was driving the family car.

“I shot him, but I fucking didn't kill the guy. But that's all right. He'll be damaged for the rest of his life.”

I'm not sure how he knew that—maybe because of where he shot him.

As all of this was happening, my father gave me certain instructions. All of a sudden I had rules. He told me I wasn't allowed to drive on certain avenues, such as Avenue U, and I wasn't allowed to drive at night.

After he shot Joe Waverly, my father and my mother told me not to take the family car out, but they didn't tell me why. So, of course, I took the car out. I had no idea that he had taken the car to go shoot somebody—he didn't tell me that part!

I took the car and drove to Lester's clothing store on Avenue U. I was driving back to the house on Eighty-Second Street. I think I was somewhere around Eighty-Fourth Street and Twentieth Avenue when I noticed this car behind me. It was another Mercedes. The lights were on because it was around five in the afternoon and it was dark. And then the lights went off, and I was scared.

When I got to the stop sign, this guy pulled the car up next to me. He opened his window and motioned for me to roll down my window. Stupidly, I rolled down my window.

“Whose car is that?”

“Why?”

“I'm just wondering whose car that is.”

I decided to answer him because I knew this was going to be a problem.

“This is my father's car.”

“Oh, really? Why are you driving your father's car?”

“Well, because it's my father's car, and I think I can drive it.”

I was acting all tough, but meanwhile I was shitting myself.

There were two guys in the car—one was a good-looking guy, dark with very dark hair. The other one was light-skinned, with light hair and light eyes. He kept telling the dark-haired guy, “Leave her alone. Leave her alone.”

“What's the matter? You look scared,” the dark-haired guy said.

“Yeah, well, you pull up next to me, you shut your lights and you're asking me questions. Yeah, you scared me a little.”

“Yeah, well, you have reason to be scared.”

“I do? Why?”

The light-haired guy told him again to leave me alone.

But then the dark-haired guy took out a pocketknife from somewhere and held it in his hand. He put his hand on the steering wheel so I could see the knife.

Then the blond guy said, “Just leave her alone. Come on, let's go.”

“All right, you know what? I'll leave you alone. Take care.” And then he drove away.

I drove home as fast as I could. The first thing I did was tell my parents what had happened. My father—and my mother—started screaming at me.

“I told you not to take that car out!”

“Why? What's the big fucking deal with the car?”

Then they told me.

“Oh, my God. This could've just ended up tragic for me! I'm driving around in a car you just shot someone in? Holy shit!”

“What kind of car was it? And what did he look like?”

I described the guy to my father, but he said he wasn't sure who it was.

Everything was out of control—really out of control. But that's how it was in the neighborhood, even driving in my own car. It was very eerie. All the time, I was watching out behind me. Watching over my shoulder. Always looking around. Always afraid. Not knowing if somebody was going to take something out on my brother or me. So that's how we lived for those months when the war was happening.

A few weeks later I had to take my son to the doctor's office because he had a cold. I was sitting by the window in the office, and who did I see? The guy with the dark hair who had pulled up next to my car. But he was with a whole bunch of guys, and they went into the same building where the doctor's office was.

I called up my father.

“Dad, the guy who pulled up next to me is coming into this building with a whole bunch of guys, like for a meeting.”

“Well, where's the doctor's office?”

After I told him, he said, “Well, I don't know who it is, Linda.”

“But, Dad, this is the guy who pulled up next to me.”

I found out later, on my own, that he was Nicky Black's son. One day I was driving in Brooklyn and I saw the car parked in front of the house of a girl I knew. I didn't really like her and we didn't talk very much, but I knew who she was.

One day I saw her on the street and I started talking to her.

“Whose car is that at your house? It's a really nice car,” I said.

“Oh, that's . . . I forget his name. I don't know if it's Nicky.”

Then she said that he was Nicky Black's son.

“Isn't he so hot? He lives in my house.”

“Oh, yeah. He's really good-looking,” I agreed.

I didn't ask what she was talking about, and I really didn't care. I was just trying to find out who he was.

When I got home, I told my father.

“Dad, that's Nicky Black's son, who did that.”

“How do you know?”

Then I told him the story.

“Well, at least we know who it is.”

I was thinking that he was probably going to kill him because of what he did to me and because he was on the other side. I was also afraid he was going to kill another guy who was with the Orena faction—a guy I liked.

“Well, Dad, listen. There's this guy that I'm friends with, and he's not on your side. I don't want you to hurt him.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Tommy Cappa, and I don't want you doing anything to him.”

“I know Tommy Cappa, but why don't you want me doing anything to him?”

“Because I like him, and I don't want you doing anything to him. He's my friend, and I don't want you to kill him.”

“Linda, if I see him, I'm killing him.”

“Dad, I don't want you to kill him. There's other people for you to kill. Can you not get him? Please don't do anything to him.”

This was the conversation I was having with my father. Tommy was young. He was about my age, maybe a couple years older, so maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. I liked him, and I didn't want anything to happen to him. My father said he didn't care who it was. He was killing anyone who was with the Orenas. Still, I begged my father not to hurt this kid.

During one of the days he was out hunting with Larry and Jimmy, he saw Tommy Cappa. He pulled up alongside the guy's car at a red light. Tommy looked up and saw death right in front of him. My father let him go, though.

When he came home that day, my father told me what had happened.

“Guess who I saw today?”

“Who?”

“I seen Tommy.”

“Dad, tell me you didn't.”

“No, I didn't touch him. But I want you to do me a favor. When you see him, I want you to tell him—because we looked at each other, eye to eye—I want you to tell him that he's only alive because of you.”

“Daddy, are you serious? I'm not going to tell him that.”

“No, really, I want you to tell him that if you see him.”

He wasn't the father I once knew anymore, but he did let the kid live. He let him live, which was shocking, and it was because I asked him.

I did tell Tommy the next time I saw him. He said, “Oh, gee. Thanks.” He didn't really know what to say.

Then on May 22, 1992, my father, Larry and Jimmy drove to the Brooklyn house of Lorenzo “Larry” Lampasi. They waited until he came out of his house. He opened the gate, got in his car and backed out. When Lampasi got out of the car to go close the gate, my father stuck his rifle out the window and shot him. Jimmy started to drive away, but my father told him to stop because he wasn't sure if Lampasi was dead. Then they got out and shot him again, to be sure.

Thinking back, I realize the disease was fueling my father. That's why he was so crazy and was driving the family cars, instead of stealing cars, when he went to shoot people. Would he have done that if he was in the right frame of mind? No, never. My father was a very calculating person. He always planned things, day by day, minute by minute. But none of that was planned. As far as my father was concerned, nothing or nobody was going to stop him—not the cops, not the feds, not the other families. No one was going to stop him—ever.

That was how it was, living with my father during the war.

CHAPTER 13

DO THEY THINK I'M FUCKIN' SLEEPING?

In March 1992, the Brooklyn district attorney's office obtained a warrant for my father's arrest on a gun possession charge after two police officers saw him drop a gun out of his car window.

On March 3, the FBI closed my father as an informant because they believed that he was involved in planning violent criminal activity. Lin DeVecchio, however, adamantly denied that fact. At the beginning of April, Lin started the process to get my father reopened. He was officially reopened on April 22.

During that summer Special Agent Christopher Favo became very suspicious of Lin, thinking he was involved in some kind of misconduct that could disrupt ongoing investigations at that time. So Favo started withholding from Lin any information that had to do with my father.

It was at that time that my father's lawsuit against Victory Memorial Hospital and his surgeon was settled after a three-week hearing. My brother and I knew he was suing the hospital, but my parents told us it was because the doctor had left scissors or some type of instrument inside my father.

One day I was lying on the couch when the phone rang. It was my father.

“I have to tell you something. There are going to be a lot of reporters coming to the house. They'll probably be there any second.”

“What's going on? What's wrong?”

“I really didn't tell you the truth about what's wrong with me. I don't want you to hear it from the reporters. I want you to hear it from me.”

“Okay. What's wrong?”

“I have AIDS. I got HIV from the blood transfusion and that's what the trial was about.”

I was in shock, but I was trying to comfort him. I could hear in his voice how shaken up he was. I wasn't thinking about my feelings.

“Don't worry. It's okay. You'll get through this. We'll get through this.”

I didn't know what to say. I really didn't know a lot about AIDS back then. I didn't freak out about it, though. It was more about comforting him, and feeling sorry that he had this disease. I wasn't thinking about anyone else, or the consequences of living with someone with AIDS. That didn't come into my head at all at first. My initial reaction was to comfort him and to tell him that it was okay. He would fight it and everything would be all right.

Then, later on, I started thinking about it and reading up on it. I was afraid then. After that, I was worried about my son. Then other things that had happened with my father started to make sense.

After he got sick, my father used to tell me not to use his razor. He said his bathroom was his bathroom. I always used to go into his bathroom and use his razor if I didn't have one. He never said anything about it before. So even though he told me not to use his razor, I still did.

One day he saw me in his bathroom using his razor and he freaked out.

“I told you not to use my stuff.”

When he shaved, he cut himself all the time and bled a lot. And I was using his razor and not knowing he had AIDS. Why didn't my parents just tell us the truth? There were always secrets. But the things that should have been secret weren't.

When my father came home after he made that call to tell me that he had AIDS, he was very emotional. He came over to me and was hugging and kissing me and crying.

“I didn't want you to feel like you had to be afraid of me,” he said.

“Don't worry, Dad. I love you.”

I was crying for him, not for me. I just kept thinking that I hoped he wasn't going to die. I didn't really care about me as usual. It was always him. I always put him ahead of my feelings. I always tried to protect him.

My father said he didn't tell us sooner because he didn't want us to treat him differently. He was afraid we wouldn't want to touch him or go near him.

I didn't want him to feel different. He was still the same. He was still my father. I didn't care that he had AIDS. We would get through it. I kept telling him he was strong and he was going to fight this disease.

That's what I told him—but the truth was, after I found out, I was afraid. I tried not to treat him differently, but I felt that he was testing us. When we were growing up, my father would cut fruit at night and we never thought anything of taking something from his fork.

When he was sick, he still did it and wanted us to take the fruit from his fork. I took it because I always put his feelings before mine. It was an unconditional love, but I was afraid.

In August 1992, my father, who was pretty sick by this time, arranged to turn himself in on the gun charge from March. My father called Lin and asked what was going to happen in court. My mother knows what happened.

 

 

 

 

My father was rearrested that day in the courtroom for three murders, including the murder of Larry Lampasi. But Lin didn't know that was going to happen, because the FBI wasn't telling him anything.

Ultimately my father was so sick from AIDS that he was put on house arrest while he was awaiting trial for the murders. At that time we were living in the two-family on Eighty-Second Street. One of my aunts lived downstairs.

When my father was on house arrest, the tension was high in the house. He was trapped with an ankle bracelet on, which made it extra hard for us. Our once-loving, playful father was now being treated like a caged animal. He was suffering from AIDS and was on so many different medications. Some of them altered his moods, so we had to watch what we said. He would get enraged by our words if we said something wrong.

My mother told me that his doctor said he was suffering from dementia, which was a part of the later stages of AIDS. The doctor said he was dangerous—even to us. He was so bad that his doctor wanted to put him in a hospital. My mother tried to convince him to go, but he said he wanted to be home for the holidays. He was not going to the hospital, and that was it.

I was having a hard time believing what the doctors were saying. One day I went into my father's bedroom—he was putting on his socks—and I told him what my mother said.

“Well, nobody said that to me. That's news to me. So, what did they say? Did they say that I'm going crazy?”

“I don't know, Dad. I don't know what it means. I don't think you're crazy.”

I didn't think that he was acting crazy at that time. He did want to go out and kill, but he couldn't. So he was trying to keep his rage to a minimum.

But for my brother, my mother and me, we had to keep things in the house as calm as possible. That was hard, though, because there were two little kids—my son and Joey's daughter—running around the house and making a mess. It was hard for him to be stuck in the house like that, under those conditions.

The disease was making him crazy and it even affected the way he treated me.

It was a little before Christmas that year and we were decorating the tree, but we couldn't find the lights. My mother told me to go to the store to get some lights.

“Why do I have to go to the store and get the lights?”

“Just go to the store and get lights. What's the big deal?”

“Linda, go get the lights,” my father said.

“Okay, Dad. I'll get the lights.” By the time I got back from the store, the tree was all decorated with ornaments and lights. I was pissed.

“What the fuck? You made me go to the store, and the fucking tree is decorated? What are you, fucking nuts?”

I always spoke that way and my father never cared before. That time he looked at me like he was ready to kill me. My father's friend, Louie, was at the house fixing our fish tank. My father had a fish tank put in the house because he found it relaxing to watch the fish.

My father charged at me with a closed fist and pounded my head. I was in shock—not just because it hurt, but because I thought he really was losing it. My father had never laid a hand on me before—ever. I was scared because he looked like he was crazed. I ran behind Louie, but he said not to put him in the middle of it—he was afraid he was going to get hit.

I screamed for my mother and she came running into the room.

“This girl, she better learn how to fucking talk,” he said.

My father was reprimanding me. I was in my twenties and he was trying to teach me a lesson—a lesson he should have given me when I was fifteen.

I was really angry at him. I didn't talk to him for a couple weeks. I was afraid of the fact that he had lost control. It was scary to know that the doctors were right—he was dangerous even to us.

Right around this time my father asked me to help him make a videotape for Gregory Junior to see when he got out of jail. My father thought Gregory was going to be out after he served his twenty-year sentence for racketeering and extortion handed down in 1988.

My father knew he wasn't going to make it until Gregory got out of jail. He said he wanted Gregory to have a video message from him when he came home. He wanted to tell Gregory how he felt about him and that he was sorry for everything that had happened. My father wanted to be sure that Gregory had this video to watch, because his son wasn't going to have him alive. My father wanted Gregory to have a piece of him when he was released.

I told him we could make the video whenever he wanted to do it. But it wasn't long before everything came crashing down around us and we were never able to get it done.

As it turned out, Gregory never got out of jail. After another trial in 1998 for racketeering and murder—he was acquitted of murder—Gregory was sentenced to another forty years to life. I wished I had been able to do the video for my father, but in the end, Gregory probably wouldn't have been able to see it, anyway.

When it became public that my father had AIDS and that he didn't have long to live, people started taking advantage of him and our family.

For as long as I can remember, my father had this huge three-carat pinky ring. He said he had it appraised and it was worth $75,000. It was a perfect, flawless, clear diamond, with absolutely no hint of color. It was in a black onyx setting. I always used to stare at this ring—it was so big that it would blind you. When I told him how beautiful it was, he would try to teach me how to tell the difference between a good diamond and a bad diamond.

Before he was dying, he told my mother that he was going to make an engagement ring for her. My parents never officially got married and my mother always wanted to marry him. They were planning on getting married, but it didn't happen. He never had the chance to get divorced.

When he was sick, he took it to a guy he knew in the diamond exchange in Manhattan to have a ring made for my mother. When he came home, he told my mother he left it with his jeweler friend and he was going to pick it up in two days. My mother couldn't believe he left it there, but she couldn't say anything to him because he would get angry.

When he brought the ring home to show us, I knew immediately that something was wrong.

“Dad, this isn't the same diamond.”

“What are you talking about? That's the same diamond. I brought it to my friend.”

“Dad, this isn't the same diamond. I'm telling you, this diamond has color.”

“What? Are you an expert now?”

“Yeah, I'm an expert on your diamond because I know I've stared at it long enough.”

My father got really angry. He told me I saw the color because now it was in a yellow gold setting and it was reflecting the gold. I thought maybe he was right. He told my mother that if anything ever happened and we needed money, she should take the ring back to his friend to sell it and he'd give her the $75,000.

There came a point where we needed the money and my mother had to bring the ring to my father's friend. He offered my mother $10,000. I screamed that he told my father it was worth $75,000. He tried to make up some story. I went ballistic in the middle of the diamond exchange. He called security to escort me out. I knew he took advantage of my father because he was sick and not thinking rationally.

Even the guys in his own crew were taking advantage of my father when it came to money or whatever they could get from him. Once his disease started progressing, and my brother was on his own, the guys out in the streets started to do things to him that they never would have done if my father was in his prime and in good health.

One day my brother told my father that two guys in his crew, “Mr. X” and “Mr. Y,” were chasing him. They had guns and they were going to kill him. My father didn't believe what Joey was saying.

“What? Are you crazy? They would never do that. They're with me. They would never chase you. What are you taking? You're paranoid.”

My brother was really pissed.

“You're in on it. If you don't believe me, then . . .”

My brother was accusing my father of knowing about it because my father wasn't believing him. My mother asked me what kind of drugs my brother was on. I told her I didn't really know, but I knew he was doing something.