The Prince of Paradise (29 page)

After selecting magnetic tow lights and quick links for the towing operation, Veliz picked up a $9.99 Sheffield Lockback Utility Knife, asking Garcia if it would be suitable for blinding Ben Novack.
Garcia said he thought it would.

“So he bought it,” said Garcia, “and as he was paying, I took it out of the box and put it in my pocket.”

They then drove back to the Crossbay Motor Inn and collected Gonzalez at 10:58
A.M
.
On the way to pick up the Thunderbird, Veliz stopped off at a True Value Hardware store, handing Garcia enough cash to buy a backpack for the tools they needed for the attack on Ben Novack.

Back at 1499 Jefferson Avenue, Veliz tried to hook up the towing lights and cables from the Pathfinder to the Thunderbird, but the plugs didn’t fit.
So he returned to the PepBoys to exchange them, before getting the lights working.

It was early afternoon when Veliz, Garcia, and Gonzalez set out in the Pathfinder on the 1,350-mile journey to Miami, towing the Thunderbird behind them.

*   *   *

On the July Fourth weekend, while her brother was finalizing preparations to kill her husband, Narcy helped Ben Jr.
run a Hispanic Amway family convention in Fort Lauderdale.
It was being held at the Broward Convention Center, where Mark Gatley was now general manager.
He had not seen Ben since the late 1990s, and it was his first meeting with Narcy, who struck him as highly competent.

“She held herself up professionally and dressed well,” Gatley said, “as a loving wife and business partner.”

At Friday’s preconvention meeting, Ben Novack Jr.
attacked the Broward Convention Center for incompetence.
This set the tone for the rest of the convention.

“All of us were a little embarrassed,” said Gatley, “and he picked up on that.
He did a number on the G.M.
of the hotel there, saying the restaurant was less than average, and needed to be fixed.
And he picked on our convention and visitors’ bureau a little bit, for things that [we] should or shouldn’t be.”

After the meeting, Gatley and Narcy struck up a conversation.
Gatley remembered: “And she said to me, ‘You know, Ben has so many enemies.
He has so many people that don’t like him.’”
She then asked if Gatley had observed her husband’s behavior at the meeting, and Gatley agreed that it had been bad.
“And she said, ‘Yeah, but I’m here,’” said Gatley.
“‘I have to protect him.
I’m the one that has to look out for Ben.
Somebody has to.’
I said, ‘Great.’”

The next morning, at registration, Ben Novack Jr.
was in a better mood and was even chatty.
As Narcy helped sign in the convention guests, the Convention Concepts Unlimited employees Matt Briggs and May Abad, and three freelancers, worked behind the scenes.

Ben Novack Jr.
sat to one side of the registration desk with Gatley tinkering on his laptop computer.
Suddenly, he became introspective, and began discussing his father and his childhood at the Fontainebleau.

“Ben and I were having these conversations about his father’s hotel,” said Gatley.
“And he was Googling the Fontainebleau on his computer while I was sitting [there].
He told me that he and Steve Wynn of Las Vegas were very good friends.
He said Steve Wynn grew up in his dad’s hotel, and learned the hotel business there.
And that one of his first hotels was a tribute to the Fontainebleau.”

Novack also spoke about his upcoming plans to relocate to Seattle, Washington, and start taking things easier.

“Ben told me [he and Narcy] were buying properties there,” said Gatley.
“He said, ‘We’ve already been up there and looked at places.
I know I can dock my boat there.’”

Then Narcy came over, telling Ben to apologize to everyone he’d upset at yesterday’s meeting, and suggesting they take those people out to lunch.
She said she always had to look out for Ben, as he caused trouble.

“Ben just shrugged it off,” said Gatley.
“He didn’t pay any attention.”

*   *   *

On Sunday morning, after the conference ended, Ben Novack Jr.
met with Mark Gatley to settle his bills.
As usual he quibbled, complaining that things at the conference center had not been up to snuff, but then reluctantly paid with his black American Express Card.

As they said good-bye, Gatley said he was looking forward to hosting Novack’s upcoming five-thousand-person Amway convention in September, as had been agreed.
Then the convention planner dropped a bomb, saying that this was not a done deal by any means.

Novack explained that he had a long-standing beef with the Broward County Sheriff’s Department for not allowing him to park outside one of the terminals at Fort Lauderdale Airport.

“Those were things that he would not just let go,” said Gatley.
“He was getting all red-faced about it.”

Novack explained he had already e-mailed the sheriff, county administrator, and other local notables, inviting them to a meeting on Wednesday.
They had not replied, so he now wanted Gatley to use his influence to make them attend.
Becoming angry, he threatened to pull the upcoming convention, which the city badly needed financially, if they dared snub him.

Gatley promised to do his best to make the Wednesday meeting happen.
Then, as they were leaving, Narcy called him over.

“Ben has so many enemies,” she whispered in his ear.

*   *   *

Late that night, Ben Novack Jr.
called Mark Gatley at home, checking on his progress.

“He called me several times,” said Gatley.
“‘Is that meeting going to happen?
What do you think?’
I said, ‘I’m pretty sure it will, Ben.
They know about your September convention here, and everybody wants to make sure that happens.’”

*   *   *

A few hours earlier, Cristobal Veliz and his two hit men towed the broken Thunderbird into Miami.
As Jefe had nowhere to stay, Garcia offered to have him and Gonzalez sleep in the small room he rented in a trailer, which belonged to an elderly lady named Gladys Cuenca.

“They came over and asked if they could stay for a few days,” Cuenca later testified.
“I said yes.”

On Monday morning, Cristobal Veliz towed the Thunderbird to a mechanic in Miami, leaving it to be repaired.
On his return to the trailer, he asked Garcia to persuade Gladys Cuenca to register the car in her name with the Florida department of Highway Safety, so it could never be traced back to him.

“I said Cristobal was going to give it to me as a gift and both of us could use it,” Garcia explained.
“I never told Gladys what we really needed it for, and she agreed because she didn’t have a car.”

Later that day, Veliz drove his two hired hands to a Kmart to buy equipment for the Ben Novack Jr.
job.

“We were looking for something to beat the man,” Garcia later testified, “and we found some handheld dumbbells.”

In the sports department, Garcia picked out for himself a pair of blue dumbbells weighing about five pounds, and a pink pair weighing eight pounds for Gonzalez.

“We were also looking for [duct] tape to tie up Señor Novack,” said Garcia.
“That was Cristobal’s idea.
It was two inches thick with fibers in it and pretty strong.”

Veliz also purchased two pairs of baseball gloves, so as not to leave fingerprints behind at the attack, and a showerhead and some bathtub mats, as a thank-you present for Gladys Cuenca.

Jefe paid for everything with his credit card.

*   *   *

On Wednesday afternoon, July 8, Ben Novack Jr.
got his meeting with the Broward County sheriff and local government officials.
It began with the angry convention planner standing up and railing against the Sheriff’s Office for incompetence.

“He did his usual thing,” said Mark Gatley, who also attended the meeting.
“It didn’t really have much to do with our meeting.”

Novack castigated the sheriff for the incident several years earlier when police had ordered him not to park outside a terminal, as it breached security.

“It was a stormy meeting,” said Gatley.
“He just wanted to review how incompetent the Sheriff’s Office was.”

Novack also complained that security was far too strict, with too many police checkpoints at the airport and the convention center.

“He is a very aggressive person,” said Nikki Grossman, the president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, who was also at the meeting.
“He wanted to make everyone aware of his issues.”

Finally, at the end of his long tirade, Novack issued an ultimatum.
He threatened to pull the plug on the lucrative September convention if he did not get a letter promising to remedy the situation by the time he returned from New York.

*   *   *

After the meeting, Ben and Narcy Novack took their yacht
White Lightning
out on the water for the first time since it had broken down a year earlier.
Since then, it had been in a boatyard having a $2 million refitting.

They had invited Prince Mongo to accompany them on the yacht’s maiden voyage, but he was too busy campaigning to become the mayor of Memphis.

“He said, ‘Come on.
Fly down and ride on the boat with me,’” said Mongo.
“I couldn’t just pick up and ride on the boat.”

Trouble soon struck as they sailed down the Intercoastal Waterway, when a water hose came loose.

“So they had to turn around,” said Mongo, “and limp back to the dock and back to the boatyard.”

*   *   *

Late that night, Ben Novack Jr.
called Mark Gatley at home, asking for his thoughts on the meeting.

“We chatted for about half an hour,” recalled Gatley.
“He went on about, ‘Do you think they paid attention?
Are they going to take care of this?
You know if they don’t, I’m not coming back.’”

Gatley assured him that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office would take care of things for his September convention, and do a good job.

“He would go off on these rants that were unrelated,” said Gatley.
“I got the sense that he was really looking for someone to talk to, as much as anything else.”

Novack suddenly became emotional, complaining that nobody really listened to him or cared about his business.

“He was just rambling on,” explained Gatley.
“I mean some of the stuff was so left field.
I got off the phone that night thinking, ‘This is just a lonely person who wants to talk to somebody.’”

*   *   *

A few hours earlier, Cristobal Veliz had collected the Ford Thunderbird from the mechanic and driven it back to the Blue Belle Trailer Park.
He then instructed Garcia and Gonzalez to pack their best clothes for “the big date,” as he was now calling the attack on Ben Novack Jr.

“That’s when Mr.
Garcia said we are going to do something shady,” Gonzalez would later testify.
“That we were going to commit a crime.
Mr.
Veliz told me that I knew as much as I needed to know.”

Veliz then ordered Gonzalez to drive Garcia back to New York in the Thunderbird, while he went separately in his Pathfinder.

But the two hit men were barely out of the greater Miami area when the Thunderbird overheated and they had to pull into a gas station.

“Mr.
Veliz appeared five minutes later,” said Gonzalez.
“He opened the hood of the car and tried to figure it out, and bought cooling fluid to try and cool it down.”

When the Thunderbird refused to start, a furious Veliz reattached the towing lines to his Pathfinder to haul the car back to New York.

He then called Denis Ramirez from the road, complaining that his car had broken down again.
Ramirez insisted on being paid the agreed-upon $800 anyway, “but he said he was only paying me $300, because the car was no good.”

*   *   *

Early Thursday morning, Cristobal Veliz pulled off the I-95 in Jessop, Maryland, and stopped off at a drive-through Bank of America ATM to withdraw $200.
Wearing a baggy T-shirt and a baseball cap, he was photographed at 6:18
A.M.
by a CCTV camera making the withdrawal.

Three minutes later, his green Nissan Pathfinder was captured by the surveillance camera leaving the bank towing the gray Thunderbird back to New York.

T
HIRTY-
S
EVEN

“PREPARING FOR THE BIG DATE!”

At around noon on Thursday, July 9, Ben and Narcy Novack flew into JFK Airport from Fort Lauderdale, to prepare for that weekend’s Amway convention at the Rye Town Hilton.
Before leaving, a jubilant Ben Novack Jr.
had e-mailed Charlie Seraydar the news that the Miami Beach Police Department had finally agreed to put a plaque with his name on it on the wall of police headquarters, recognizing his thirty-one years of volunteer service.

“We had been trying to do that for him for a long time,” said Seraydar, “and so that was a very ego-boosting thing for him.”

He also called Kelsey Grammar to arrange dinner at his Hamptons spread.
But the actor couldn’t make it, as he was in Los Angeles shooting a movie.

When a limousine from the Rye Town Hilton was not there waiting outside the terminal, Novack went ballistic.
He called up the hotel’s associate director of events, Angelica Furano, and yelled at her, before hanging up and hailing a cab for himself and Narcy.

At 2:00
P.M.
, Ben and Narcy Novack walked into the lobby of the Hilton at 699 Westchester Avenue in Rye Brook, New York, where they were welcomed by Furano.
Ben did not mention the limo problem.

Furano, who would be on call 24/7 during the Hispanic convention, escorted Narcy to the Woodlands Suite, on the fourth floor, where they would be staying.

A few minutes later, Ben Novack Jr.
walked into the suite with the hotel’s general manager, Alon Ben-Gurion, whose grandfather David Ben-Gurion had been Israel’s first prime minister.
The luxury suite consisted of a large parlor doubling as an office, a bedroom, and two bathroom/toilets (one of which was broken).

Two hours later, after unpacking and settling in, Ben Novack Jr.
went to the John Halstead Room on the second floor for a preconvention meeting.
The three-hour meeting was also attended by Convention Concepts Unlimited employees May Abad and Matthew Briggs, and by Furano, duty manager Jeremy Morris, the hotel chef, and the food and beverage manager.
Narcy Novack did not attend the meeting, remaining in the Woodlands Suite to make calls.

The president of Convention Concepts Unlimited began by castigating Furano again for having failed to have the limousine waiting for him at the airport.
Then he outlined in detail exactly what he expected the Hilton staff to do during the convention.
He said that his stepdaughter, May Abad, would be handling the event, and that hotel staff should liaise with her.

*   *   *

Back in the Woodlands Suite, Narcy Novack was busy finalizing arrangements for the attack on her husband, now just three days away.
While Ben was busy at the briefing, Narcy was talking to Cristobal, who had now reached Philadelphia.

While Ben was away, Narcy called her brother four times, with one call lasting forty-five minutes.

“They are discussing what is going to happen on July twelfth,” assistant U.S.
attorney Andrew Dember would later explain.
“They are mapping it all out.
Narcy knows her husband is in a long meeting with staff.
She doesn’t have to worry.”

In Philadelphia, Veliz took the Thunderbird to a mechanic, who told him it was beyond repair.
So after removing the license plates and title papers, Veliz left the car in the mechanic’s yard and drove on to New York in the Pathfinder with Garcia and Gonzalez.

When they arrived, Veliz drove straight to his son-in-law Denis Ramirez’s house at 1499 Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn.
Outside on the sidewalk, Veliz ordered his son-in-law to get him a car for “the big date” on Sunday morning, and told him that Ramirez would now be driving.
He handed Ramirez fifty dollars to buy a cell phone for the job.

“We were going to beat somebody up and rob [them],” Ramirez would later testify.
“He said he would pay me a thousand dollars and told me not to drink anything on Sunday night.”

After Cristobal Veliz left to drop Garcia and Gonzalez off at the Crossbay Motor Inn, where they would be staying, Ramirez called an ex-girlfriend who drove a taxi, who agreed to lend him her Lincoln Town Car for the weekend.

*   *   *

At 8:00
A.M.
on Friday, Ben Novack Jr.
held a briefing for his staff in the parlor of his Woodlands Suite.
Late the previous night, Narcy Novack’s niece Leslie Goyzueta, Maria Gallegos, and Gallegos’s sister Theresa Rivas, had all flown in for the convention, which they would be working on a freelance basis.

While Narcy stayed in the adjoining bedroom, Ben Novack issued last-minute instructions to his team.
Then he sent them off to the Westchester Ballroom to begin setting up the two registration areas, as the Amway Hispanic attendees would soon be arriving.

*   *   *

Thirty miles away, in Ozone Park, Queens, Cristobal Veliz was collecting Alejandro Garcia and Joel Gonzalez to scout out the Rye Town Hilton.
He arrived at 2:00
P.M.
in his Nissan Pathfinder and drove them straight to the hotel, parking just outside.

On the way there, he had instructed them to familiarize themselves with the hotel and visit the Woodlands Suite, on the fourth floor.
They were also to pay special attention to getting in and out of the hotel, avoiding hotel surveillance cameras at all costs.

After getting out of the Pathfinder, the two men casually strolled into the parking lot.
Garcia, who was wearing his new Valentino sunglasses with his white T-shirt and jeans, and carrying a backpack, coolly asked an attendant where the Amway function was being held.

At 2:50
P.M.
the two hit men were photographed by a hotel surveillance camera walking through the front lobby of the hotel.
Ironically, Ben Novack Jr.
also happened to walk straight past them on his way to Angelica Furano’s office, near the front desk.

“I saw the gentleman in the diner at Fort Lauderdale,” Gonzalez recalled.

Then Garcia led his partner up several flights of stairs to the guest rooms on the fourth floor, turning left and walking toward Rooms 453 and 454, comprising the Woodlands Suite.

“We found it,” Garcia said.
“I said to Joel, ‘This is where the money is going to be.’”

Garcia then decided to leave through an exit just across the hallway, thinking it would be a faster way out.

At 2:58
P.M
.
Garcia and Gonzalez were photographed in the lobby leaving the hotel, and then again walking out into the hotel parking lot to the Pathfinder.

“Cristobal asked us if we had gotten to know the area and found [Novack’s suite],” said Garcia.
“I said yes, everything was fine, and we knew the path we were going to take.”

From the Pathfinder, Veliz telephoned Narcy inside the hotel, telling her everything was going according to plan.

*   *   *

By the time the hit men arrived back in Brooklyn it was late afternoon.
Cristobal Veliz stopped off at a RadioShack on Knickerbocker Avenue, buying a $140 TomTom GPS device.
Then he took Alejandro Garcia next door to the Turbo men’s store to buy him some smarter clothing, so he wouldn’t stand out on Sunday morning at the Amway convention.

“He asked me to look for a shirt, shoes, and pants,” Garcia recalled, “so I would look more presentable for the attack.”

After picking out a black dress shirt, loafers, and a pair of pants, Veliz paid the ninety-five-dollar bill with his Bank of America credit card.

He then dropped both men off at the Crossbay Motor Inn for the night; he would be staying at Laura Law’s house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

*   *   *

Back at the Rye Town Hilton, the Convention Concepts Unlimited staff was struggling to cope with the unexpectedly large crowds that had started arriving for the Amway convention.
That weekend set records, with more than 1,900 Hispanic Amway distributors attending, more than twice as many as the 450-room Hilton could accommodate.

At 5:00
P.M.
, two hours before the convention’s first scheduled event, there was a growing line of angry attendees snaking out into the parking lot.
Over the next few hours, the Hilton staff scrambled to find alternative accommodation nearby, for the overflow, while Ben Novack Jr.
seethed with anger.

Nevertheless, the first event of the convention started on time and went off without a hitch.

At 11:00
P.M.
, as things were winding down, Ben Novack Jr.
was sitting at a conference table alone with the hotel’s associate event director Angelica Furano when he began discussing his plans for the future.

“He said he was very proud of May [Abad] and all the hard work she had done,” Furano would later testify.
“And he was looking forward to retiring … and letting May do more of the day-to-day work, while he stayed in the background.”

*   *   *

On Saturday, July 11, Ben Novack Jr.
and his Convention Concepts Unlimited staff worked a sixteen-hour day.

“We started early at 7:00
A.M.
, said freelancer Maria Gallegos.
“We registered additional people and continued to collect money.”

About mid-morning, Ben and Narcy Novack came down and joined their orange-uniformed employees at the registration desk, issuing name tags and taking money from attendees for the various events.

That night there were two separate banquets, at 6:00
P.M.
and 8:00
P.M.
, with little downtime at the two registration desks.

After the banquets ended, the Convention Concepts Unlimited staff retired to their respective rooms with blue pouches containing a total of $110,000 in cash that they had collected at the registration that day.

“That was standard procedure,” Leslie Goyzueta explained.
“We would collect all the money and put it in pouches given to us by Mr.
Novack.
At the end of the day I would count the money and put the pouch in my room safe.”

Ben and Narcy Novack remained downstairs, requesting that the Tulip Tree Restaurant stay open so they could order dinner.
Not wanting to upset her “difficult” client, Angelica Furano arranged for this to happen.

Just before midnight, Narcy Novack offered to help out Angelica Furano at breakfast the next morning, something she had never done before.

Then, at 12:07
A.M.
, Ben and Narcy used one of their key cards to enter the Woodlands Suite.
As Narcy went to sleep in the bedroom, Ben settled down at his computer.
As usual, he worked through the night on convention business, as well as searching eBay for Batman comics and memorabilia.

*   *   *

Late Saturday night, Cristobal Veliz called Francisco Picado, asking if he could drive some people to Miami the next morning.
Picado agreed, as he knew his mentor always paid well.