Murder Machine Read online

  Soon, big-spender Matty Rega invited several friends to fly with him to Las Vegas for a week’s frolic at the MGM Grand Hotel. The group included a Rega girlfriend and the two women in Dominick’s life—Cheryl Anderson and Denise, still in the dark about Ma Barker’s real relationship with her husband. Cheryl stayed in a room by herself, Dominick stayed with Denise in a fancy suite, until she fell asleep.

  Before departing, Rega said he tried to score cocaine for the trip from Paz, but Paz, untypically, was “dry” and wanted Rega to score for him. Dominick called Henry, who came up with five ounces. Rega and Dominick extracted a half-ounce surcharge for themselves, gave the remainder to Paz and left for Nevada.

  In Las Vegas, trying to play blackjack while stoned, Rega and Dominick lost thirty-six thousand dollars they had made from drug deals. Coming down, they judged the cocaine as so “harsh” even Lemon 714 Quāaludes failed to ease the crash. They called Paz, who said he liked the coke and could they get some more? They called Henry, who, chuckling licentiously, said sure, and: “Paz should know where this stuff comes from. This is a little stuff that Roy was keeping. It’s from the Cuban deal.”

  Over the summer of 1979, Dominick became a runaway freight train. If his vice were gambling, he would have gambled his way into the Fountain Avenue dump. But his were wine, women, and song—and all the cocaine anyone could ingest and still be alive. With a wife at home who gave him all the rope he wanted and an uncle in Florida who (especially after the way the Cuban cocaine proceeds were dispersed) had as much sway over him as a store owner over his delivery boy, he flew out of control.

  Hopping about in his Matty Rega–supplied black Mercedes, he would hook up with Rega—who was still more treacherous than Dominick imagined—at the Bottom of the Barrel; with Henry in the South Bronx after-hours social club they ran; with Cheryl Anderson at the Hole in the Wall; with old high school pal Richard Emmolo in SoHo; and with now best pal Buzzy Scioli everywhere.

  After one evening of debauchery and cocaine deals by the women’s lounge at Studio 54, he and Buzzy rented an expensive suite at the landmark Plaza Hotel at Central Park and continued drinking themselves silly. “We were born in the wrong century!” Buzzy shouted as they crossed swords into the same toilet. “We would’ve been great pirates!”

  “Fuckin’ right, buddy! We’re buccaneers!”

  At the altitude they were flying, with everything they were up to, it was only a matter of time before someone in the Montiglio orbit crashed. The first to fall were Matty Rega and Cheryl, who were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan for peddling substantial quantities of Quāaludes. Drug agents got onto them while investigating Frank Elman, the elderly Greenwich Village pharmacist who supplied Cheryl, who in turn supplied Rega. Agents also raided a Connecticut country home Elman stayed at and found seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash buried beneath the driveway—Ma Barker had known what she was talking about when she urged her friends to rip him off the year before.

  Dominick immediately assumed the agents were within striking distance of him and the others, if not already there. As the Hole in the Wall was closed down, all he could hope was that Rega and Cheryl would do the right thing and stand up. Cheryl immediately took herself out of the equation by “getting into the wind” (as the act was known in “that life”)—becoming a fugitive.

  Against this suddenly uneasy backdrop, Nino came north for business. Informed of Rega’s arrest, he and Roy decided to “call” their loan to him—demand immediate payment of what now amounted to about two hundred fifty thousand dollars. A customer about to go to jail was not a good risk.

  In a meeting with Nino and Roy, Rega protested that he owed thirty thousand less because he gave that much to Dominick for Nino over the summer. If Nino had not received it, then his nephew must have stolen it and then probably lost it in some scheme with Henry.

  “We’ll talk to Dom about that and get back with you,” Nino said.

  Dominick was indignant. He told Nino: “Matty is a fucking liar! I’ve never stolen any money from you. I’ve picked up a million or so for you and never lost a penny! Matty, he’s a weasel, he’s just tryin’ to get out from under the loan.”

  As he spoke, he realized he had lost some of Nino’s money—Nino’s share of the destroyed Danny Grillo markers—but this was no time to admit that. He was gratified to hear Nino say: “I know that. Don’t panic, I believe you. And now, you watch, we’re going to grab his restaurant, the little asshole.”

  Nino’s solution to the problem was not going to be as simple a matter as it would be with most of his other customers because Rega was connected through his father to the hierarchy of one of the city’s four other Mafia families. Some Rega relatives also owned shares in the Bottom of the Barrel. These factors meant there would have to be sitdowns to sort it all out. It might a take a while, but, Nino vowed, he would take the restaurant.

  Dominick drove to New Jersey to see Rega, but Rega had set up house with a new girlfriend and was laying low. He left messages at the Bottom of the Barrel, but Rega never returned them. With much to worry about and Cheryl somewhere in the wind, Dominick laid low too. He began spending more time with Denise and their children. In September, he asked Chuck Anderson, now long gone from the 21 Club and working for Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, if he could borrow his penthouse apartment—the place where he first cheated on Denise, but which he wanted now for a romantic husband-wife evening; that night, the couple’s third child was conceived.

  Dominick even began shaping up at the Veterans and Friends social club again, and for the first time in a while paid his respects to Paul at the Meat Palace. Paul invited him to lunch and surprised him by spending most of the hour railing against Frank Amato, his daughter’s former husband, though the couple had been divorced for several years.

  Paul had not forgiven Amato for cheating on Connie Castellano, whom he too belatedly had tried to steer toward Dominick. Amato was still a fixture in Bensonhurst; he had opened his own clothing store, but was still “doing stickups” too—at least he had told Dominick that when their paths crossed at a different social club some months before.

  “That part of Connie’s life is over now,” Dominick said to Paul, not very convincingly.

  “It ain’t over until that fuck is put away!”

  Dominick was startled to hear Paul speak so ruthlessly.

  “I only wish I could take care of it myself! Today, tomorrow, they’re gonna find that creep dead.”

  Dominick mentioned the outburst to Nino—“It was almost like he caught a virus from Roy. I never seen him that way.”

  Nino threw up his hands and said, “I don’t know why the guy is talkin’ to you about this!” The remark made Dominick believe that Amato’s demise was already in the Gemini works.

  “It just never ends around here, does it?”

  “No, it never does.”

  A few days later, Nino and Rose found the more stately home they wanted. It was just a few blocks away, still in Bath Beach, but on a more prestigious street and across from a pretty park. Dominick wished the happy buyers well and bought them dinner. He suspected a connection between the house and Nino’s windfall in the Cuban crisis, but held his tongue, because during that week—speaking of things that never end—Jimmy Eppolito and his son were murdered and Nino was shot, arrested, and jailed.

  During the next month, Dominick did what he could to help Nino out—he slipped him the fake bullet, he joined the crew in the intimidating visit to Patrick Penny’s brother—but he also grew anxious and depressed about his own problems.

  He was still concerned how much narcotics agents knew or were about to know about him because of their investigation and subsequent arrests of Cheryl Anderson and Matty Rega. It hardly mattered enough while he was doing it, but now he hated the idea of embarrassing Nino and Paul by being arrested on drug charges. Even in Roy’s crew, no one had ever been arrested on a drug case, except Peter LaFroscia, who was not significant enough to m
atter.

  Rega’s accusation that he had stolen cash from Nino and Roy also was still unresolved and troubling him more than he let on. Maybe during some coke storm he could not even remember he had confused their money with his own—maybe Rega had evidence. Now, with no guarantee the efforts underway on Nino’s behalf would work, Nino might go off to prison, possibly for the rest of his days. Rega’s accusation would then become a matter for the master of disappearing acts, Roy. Between the lines, Dominick had a lot to read, all of it bad, and he jumped back into the bottle and the vial.

  At the end of October, with the trial several months off, a judge granted Nino bail—a remarkable achievement by Nino’s lawyers, considering that their client was charged with two murders and the attempted murder of a police officer. He came home Halloween Night, but not to the bunker.

  During his thirty days’ confinement, his family had moved into the new Gaggi home in Bath Beach, after his mother Mary and wife Rose wrapped up the purchase and oversaw extensive remodeling. The couple who intended to buy the bunker agreed to continue renting the top floor to Dominick and Denise.

  On paper, the bunker had always been solely owned by Dominick’s mother Marie—a big secret the Gaggi wing of the family kept from the Montiglio wing when Marie died six years before. Legally, the home could not be sold without her permission, an obvious problem no one in the Gaggi wing was about to admit now to Dominick’s stepfather Anthony Montiglio, who would have inherited the house or been entitled to sell it, if only he had known the truth.

  The problem was solved on October 5, while Nino was in the Rikers Island hospital. Records of the transfer of the deed to the new owners indicate that on that day, someone signed Marie Gaggi’s name.

  Dominick was unaware his mother had been the home’s actual owner, but did believe she had contributed to the mortgage payments for many years. He telephoned Anthony Montiglio and said the Gaggis should give some of the sale proceeds to Anthony and Marie’s children, Stephen and Michele. When Nino’s sister died, Nino had promised to help them financially, but he had not. Stephen was now paying his own way to art school, and Michele had taken an administrative job at the hospital where her mother died.

  “They ought to do the right thing,” Dominick told his stepdad, “but unless you ask, they won’t.”

  Anthony Montiglio, happy to have the Gaggis out of his life, felt it was useless to make a fuss, and did not.

  For two years, Dominick had been thrashing about trying to fashion a life separate from Nino’s, but when Nino was freed on bail and began living elsewhere, he began feeling insecure. Including the decade spent with him as a boy, he had lived under the same roof as Nino for sixteen years. For better or worse, they had a history.

  The insecurity was heightened by the Matty Rega situation, which Nino, now free on bail, would try to solve. Dominick’s underworld integrity was at stake; in his mind, living in separate homes put a new symbolic distance between him and his uncle that could not have come at a worse time. Even just the physical separation had its disadvantages. Communication with Nino was not going to be as convenient now, and it was a bad time not to know when manipulative Roy was dropping by. Roy, Dominick was sure, was carrying a grudge against him from the Chris situation; if Roy wanted, he could burn Nino’s ears with tales of Dominick’s womanizing—in Nino’s book, the most shallow misconduct. Roy could make him look so bad Nino might begin believing Rega.

  Of course, this was always possible before Nino moved out, but bouncing up and down on cocaine and alcohol, Dominick was not only feeling insecure and depressed but also paranoid.

  In a meeting, Nino told Dominick that Rega, awaiting trial on drug charges, was still holed up in New Jersey, insisting via his father’s friends in the Genovese Mafia family that Dominick had stolen thirty thousand dollars.

  “I didn’t do it, I’m telling ya.”

  “You’re a fuckup, but I believe that. Still, he says he can prove it.”

  “Let him try!”

  Three weeks passed. When asked, Nino indicated he was consulting with Paul about scheduling a sitdown. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, Dominick argued bitterly with the Gemini twins—and then Roy—after, of all things, the Mercedes that Rega had given Dominick to use was stolen while parked outside the bunker.

  Dominick telephoned Joey because he believed the thieves had to have come from Canarsie and Joey would know them. He was right on both counts. Joey checked with Anthony and discovered the Mercedes was stolen by two “kids” they knew. They gave the pair five hundred dollars to give the car back, then asked Dominick for reimbursement.

  “No way! I’m not payin’ to have my car stolen!”

  “Hey, look, you take the same chance as anyone else,” Joey said. “They didn’t know whose car it was.”

  “Too fucking bad.”

  “It was our money we paid,” Anthony said.

  “I didn’t tell you to do that. I wouldn’t have paid the fucks a dime.”

  Joey and Anthony complained to Roy, who called Dominick and urged him to pay the money, but Dominick said: “Not in a million years. No fucking way. The punks broke the windows, the ignition, it’s gonna cost me five to fix it.”

  “Joey and Anthony did you a favor.”

  “Ah, fuck you, Roy, I’m sick of all your Canarsie bullshit. Cock-a-doodle-do, Roy. Goodbye.”

  Other people had died for less disrespect. But Roy had no choice but to complain to Nino that Dominick was “gettin’ out of line.” But Nino said: “Forget it, Roy. Those kids fucked up. Don’t even talk to me about this. It’s too stupid.”

  Dominick was pleased to see Nino side with him, even if the outcome and his outburst further strained relations with Roy.

  Two more weeks passed. Early one afternoon in December, Nino telephoned and finally announced that a sitdown between Paul and the Genovese boss would be held that night at Ruggiero’s, a restaurant in Little Italy. Nino and Roy would join Paul; the Genovese boss would be joined by a top aide and Rega’s father. Dominick could come to the restaurant, but not sit at the table; he would have to wait at the bar. Matty Rega would not be there.

  At the sitdown, Rega’s father repeated his son’s accusations against Dominick, then got personal. The privileged nephew of Anthony Gaggi, the boy who had eaten at Carlo Gambino’s table and grown up with him and Paul Castellano as role models, had become an unreliable junkie. For two years, he had lived so degenerately he embarrassed the Gambino family all over New York; he had been cheating on Denise with hookers and lying to his uncle about everything. The elder Rega knew all this because his son had been that way too, but was straightening out now. His most serious allegation came at the end: Dominick also was a heroin dealer.

  On Paul’s scale of sins, dealing heroin was still the worst, primarily because it was the drug most associated with the heavy prison terms that could make informers of men accused of trading in it. But Paul had also come to appreciate heroin’s destructive effect on users and the social fabric; at the time, cocaine was not seen with the same alarm. So while he might have suspected Roy, and therefore Nino, of trading in cocaine, it was not the same as being told a young man he trusted was dealing heroin.

  “Don’t worry, though, Paulie stood up for you, he didn’t believe the guy,” Nino told Dominick during the briefing he gave on the way home. “He thinks you’ve used drugs, but not that you’re a junkie. I tell ya, it’s a good thing Paulie likes you so much because otherwise you would be dead on the street.”

  “Are you saying you believe Matty’s bullshit now? The Regas have to keep telling these lies because they started them!”

  “I don’t believe it about the money, but the women, and the heroin—well, you did spend some time in the South Bronx, right?”

  “I never dealt heroin! They’re making that up! They’ll say anything so they don’t lose the restaurant.”

  Nino no doubt enjoyed the sight of Dominick twisting in the wind and believed a good scare might have positive results, but
he also did not realize how sinister he sounded to a suddenly panicky Dominick when he said: “It’s a good thing you’re my nephew is all I’m gonna say.”

  The situation had ended without any resolution. Paul and the Genovese boss agreed to make their own inquiries; in the meantime, the parties directly involved would have their own separate sitdown in a week. The accused and the accuser would meet face to face—along with Nino, Roy, and Rega’s father.

  “We hold onto Matty’s Mercedes until this is over,” Nino added.

  In a few days, Nino told Dominick that he had heard a few “interesting stories” from Roy.

  “Roy has a lot of reasons for telling stories. Did he tell you the one about him and all the barmaids at the Gemini?”

  Nino still did not realize the paranoia his vague and ominous comments were producing. “I don’t know about barmaids, but what about a place called Spartacus? I don’t know, Dom, I don’t know how this is gonna work out, but you’ve really screwed up this time.”

  “I’m being set up,” Dominick began saying to himself, as he ran some of Nino’s errands in the Rega-model Mercedes and surveyed the landscape for signs of life and death under the influence of too much cocaine and alcohol.

  Then, at the Veterans and Friends, Nino made a little joke that landed like a mortar shell in his nephew’s overheated mind. As Dominick came into the club, a cigar chomper commented to Nino that he was surprised to see Dominick a third day in a row—but it was great seeing him back where he belonged.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nino said, “Lassie came home. Why don’t we pet him?”

  The remark caused Dominick to say to himself that for all those years that was all he was, a mongrel Santamaria-Gaggi-Montiglio dog, bringing Nino his slippers.

  On December 15, the day before the second sitdown, Dominick told Buzzy: “I’m feeling done with this life. I just can’t handle it anymore. I feel like a dog in a garbage dump. If I stay around here, I’m gonna flip out, or I’m gonna get whacked, or it’s just gonna be more of the same bullshit.”