The Vulture's Game (2 page)

That was how it went the first time I met Frank Scanlon.

I was twenty-two years old and had been living with my Uncle Carlo and his family for a little over six years. Carlo had taken me in days after my father’s funeral, my
mom having passed away only weeks earlier during that most horrible summer of my life. I moved out of our small home in the East Bronx and into a large house on the eastern end of Long Island the day after I watched four strangers bury my father in a cemetery across from a railroad station. But even during those early days shrouded in mourning and confusion, I knew my life was heading in an utterly new direction.

My father, Mario, was a long haul truck driver, a proud union man who worked long hours for steady pay. His brother, Carlo, was a crime boss, one of the most powerful Dons in the country, his criminal empire bringing in more than $100 million a year in profits both legal and illegal. The two men had not spoken since they were teenagers. Make no mistake, my father loved his older brother. He simply couldn’t comprehend why Carlo chose to live a life that brought ruin to so many hardworking men and women. Carlo, for his part, could never come to grips with the fact that my father chose to work countless hours making pennies while those above him pocketed dollars for doing very little. And there was no convincing one or the other that his chosen way was the wrong way.

Uncle Carlo was a widower when I went to live with him, raising two children of his own—a daughter, Carla, and a son, Jimmy. Carla was fifteen when we met during that first summer in 1992, and I was twelve. She made it clear as crystal that while she would respect her father’s wishes and allow me entry into their family, she would have as little to do with me as was necessary. She never wavered on that, speaking to me only when the moment called for her to do so, and even then keeping it terse. Which was fine with me. She was a stranger to me when I first entered her home, and that’s how I regard her to this day. And yet if she were ever in any kind of trouble, financial or worse, I would be the first to come to her aid. And I’m confident she would do the same for me. We both have Marelli blood, and in our world that distinction makes all the difference.

With Jimmy, on the other hand, I truly found my kindred spirit. I grew to love him as he did me and I thought of him as no less than a brother and my best friend. Jimmy couldn’t talk. He was born with a degenerative muscular disease that confined him to a wheelchair, stripped him of the ability to speak, and forced him to breathe through a small tube attached to an air purifier lodged behind the seat rest. Jimmy was smart, brave, and stubborn, refusing to allow his handicap to rule his life. He was a
voracious reader with a mischievous sense of humor. He was a year older than me and relished the role of older brother to a cousin who had lost both parents.

He was easy to like. Jimmy had a winner’s smile, his dark eyes sharp and inquisitive. His hair was black and thick and he liked it long on the sides and back, always moving strands of it away from his eyes. He worked hard to keep his upper body as strong as possible, attacking his daily physical therapy sessions with ferocity, never caving in to the pressures of his disease.

Within weeks we devised a method of communication that allowed us to speak using our hands and Jimmy’s quickly scrawled notes. He helped me master the game of chess and opened up the world of game theory, two practices I have kept up to this day and both of which have been enormous help in my work.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you about my work. I was a boy back then, those early days living on my uncle’s estate, trying to navigate the long corridors of a new world. A world that had been turned on its head by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Even the mob had been touched on that tragic day, though in ways different from most people I suppose. There was a new enemy out there now, a much more dangerous one than any they had thought to encounter in the past. An enemy that thrived on chaos and instability, the exact opposite of the environment organized crime bosses preferred to operate in.

It was still too early to tell if this growing threat would change the way the mob went about its business, but the uneasy way it was discussed, and the manner in which the Dons were dismissive of terrorist activity and concerned about the ramifications on how they took in money, led me to believe that the new threat would one day have to be confronted. All it would take was for one Don to step forward and make the initial move.

Meanwhile, l was still angry about losing my parents, confused as to what was expected of me, if anything. There was love in my uncle’s decision to take me into his home. But he was also a crime boss, a man of power and pragmatism, and almost every move he made was done out of respect to that position. He knew he needed to groom a
successor, and in the organized crime world, picking someone outside the bloodlines was only done when all other options had been exhausted. I didn’t know it then, not during those first months living under his heavily protected roof, but when I look back, I can see how the seeds of succession were planted from that very first day.

Uncle Carlo made no pretense about who he was and what he did. He was treated with reverence by any guest, and while always in control of his emotions, there was never a doubt that beneath the relaxed facade resided the brutal rage of a man who took a back step to no one.

I was always aware of his power. He never spoke of it, never made a show of it. He didn’t have to. His was a power so present it was nearly tangible. Initially, I admit, I was frightened to be in his company, never sure what to say in response to a question, not certain how to react to one of the many stories he shared with me and Jimmy, often late in the evening, a bottle of expensive wine on the table, each of us with a glass. Over time, however, I began to grasp the complexity of the man. In the process, I also found out something about myself I had long suspected but could never quite get a handle on.

I loved the feeling of power that emanated from him, and the fear and control that came with it. I was too young to understand the destructive force such power possessed, to know when to let it go, when to put it to use. Even so, I was addicted to its appeal.

And let’s be honest here. What young man my age wouldn’t be? Prior to Uncle Carlo’s entry into my life, I had only read about powerful men in books, and few of those titans bore any resemblance to him. The men in those books built their power on greed and avarice and on the sweat and stains of others. They never got their hands dirty, never ventured out into the darkness unsure of their return, never fought against the odds and somehow managed to come out on top. They left the blood work to others.

To men like my Uncle Carlo.

He was a physically imposing man, strong upper body honed by his boxer’s workout, pounding at a heavy bag he kept in his basement every day. His dark hair, touches of gray at the edges, was combed straight back, and he was always stylishly dressed, though never in a flashy way. He was ruggedly handsome, Russell Crowe without the accent and minus a few inches in height. He had a flash temper but also a great sense of humor, as quick with a joke as he was with an order to kill.

Looking back now, it should have been clear to me that I was being prepped and groomed to replace my uncle when his time as the head of New York’s branch of the Camorra came to an end. I was given books to read that detailed the history of the organization from the thirteenth century, when its objective was to help the poor survive the onslaught of taxes placed on them, up to the current day, when Carlo’s group ranked in the top echelon of powerful crime syndicates. Combine the reading with frequent trips to Italy and long walks and talks with Uncle Carlo on the beachfront adjoining his property, and my education in the ways and means of organized crime was well under way. I had been given access to a secret world lived out in plain sight, a sinister place held together by rules and bylaws in existence for centuries, a dangerous corner where betrayal marched hand in glove with loyalty. As the years passed, there remained only two questions I needed to answer, and Uncle Carlo clamored to know:
Did I want a place at the table?
And,
Would I survive if I took one?

And that’s where Frank Scanlon enters the picture.

Among his many vast legal holdings, nothing earned my uncle more than his investments in Manhattan real estate. Through the unions, he was able to dictate the budgets of most of the new construction going up throughout the borough and then skim both from the top and from the cost overruns to ensure a profit. He took a fifteen percent commission on all supplies, from wood to windows to nails. He took advantage of owners late on mortgage payments, first coming in as a benevolent partner and then, over time, taking full control of the property, either buying out or taking out the now ruined landlord. He took over tenements simply to secure their air rights, which he then sold to the highest bidder for millions, walking away from each deal with a padded wallet and a wide smile. “Never let anyone tell you this isn’t a great country,” he told me and Jimmy after closing on one such deal. “Not when someone can hand you a check for millions in return for you giving him nothing but a few floors of air.”

Uncle Carlo shared his profits with the other crime outfits, making sure no one at the table was left empty-handed. This helped guarantee there would be peace among the various factions and secure him favor chits that he could cash in on if need be at a later time. He cashed in on twenty-five percent of the ongoing real estate market—including cutting in on agents’ commissions on high-end buys and sells; taking a cut of rent money
from any building he held a piece of; and dipping into co-op and condo board funds. All told, Uncle Carlo’s real estate businesses netted him and the outfit well over $100 million a year in clear profits.

But there was more to his holdings than money. As with anything related to organized crime, there was blood.

In the summer of 2000, Uncle Carlo owned three real estate companies, each with multiple offices in the tristate area. Two of the companies were completely legitimate, their yearly earnings dutifully reported to the IRS, their books open and available for anyone to see. The third real estate company, with six branches in New York and two in New Jersey, sought their buys and sells in an entirely different arena. The offices were spare: two desks, two clear-lined phones, one agent, and a part-time receptionist. They specialized in short-term rentals, one- and two-bedroom apartments, usually at affordable, middle to upper-middle-class rates. The agent working the desk was young and well mannered and always dressed in jacket and tie.

The agencies in this third real estate company did not advertise or solicit clients. Anyone interested in their specific apartments knew where to go and when. They catered to a specific group of clients who were less interested in an apartment’s décor or proximity to a specific subway line, and more interested in the current occupant.

Each of these real estate offices was, in fact, an assassination bureau.

It was effective, direct, lucrative, and beyond the reach of any branch of law enforcement. Uncle Carlo had worked up the idea with Alan Wagner, a former top-tier Mossad operative, Israel’s equivalent of our CIA, only competent and trustworthy. Together, they devised a system so simple as to be virtually undetectable: A man walks into one of the real estate offices and sits across from the young agent. No names are exchanged. The man is eager to find an apartment, somewhere on the Upper West Side, in the mid-eighties. The agent nods and tells the man, “That’s a wonderful location, close to the park and many bus and subway lines. Doorman or walk-up?”

The man thinks for a second and then says, “Walk-up, no higher than the third floor, preferably an apartment in the front with a street view. I enjoy looking out a window and seeing the street activity below.”

“Understood,” the agent says. “Have you just started looking?”

“A few weeks,” the man says. “In fact, I saw a building I just loved. It was on West 84th. I believe the number was 205.”

“I’ll check and see if what you are looking for is available in that building,” the realtor says. “Are you in a hurry to move?”

“I would like to be in at the end of the month,” the man says, “at the latest.”

“Is it just you or do you have family?”

“No,” the man says. “There will be only one tenant.”

And so, the death deal is made. The target lives at 205 West 84th Street, third-floor apartment facing the street. He lives alone and is to be killed before the month is out. The price for such a hit is $25,000, a fee the prospective tenant will have placed in a rental car parked on a side street in Long Island City, the keys left in a men’s room stall at a nearby restaurant, the money picked up not by the realtor but by one of Uncle Carlo’s trusted couriers. The cash will then be shifted to a second car and driven to an auto dealership where the money will be recycled as payment for a preowned luxury car. It was all nice, clean, and painless—unless you happened to be the intended target.