And Never Let Her Go (14 page)

Sometimes, after that day, he would remind her, “Remember, I closed your mother's eyes.”

It was hard to grieve for a mother who had never been there, but Debby did—more for what might have been than for what was.

T
OM WAS THERE
for so many people when they were in crisis. His quiet voice, his calm manner, and his ability to make people understand what they needed to understand made him a natural mediator. Everybody who met him just seemed to like him.

But while Marguerite's favorite son rose in stature in Wilmington, her younger three were having their problems—and not just Gerry, who seemed to care for nothing but guns, shark fishing, big game hunting, and girls with big hair and clothes that fit like a second skin.

Louie had built his father's business into a major construction company, with both commercial and private projects worth many millions. When Louis Sr. died in 1980, his estate had been worth $1.2 million, and it included the Cavalier Apartments, part of a Holiday Inn in New Jersey, several housing developments, investment funds, and even a portion of a Pennsylvania coal mine. Tom, Louie, and Joey were designated as the trustees of the estate, and as such they were given the power to invest the money, open new businesses, and continue whatever current businesses they deemed proper.

That was only a jumping-off point for Louie and, of course, Joey, who had joined him in the business. Tom had never been interested in Capano & Sons, and his lack of interest continued. Lou's will stipulated that his three older sons were to pay Marguerite, Marian, and Gerry a monthly stipend, and give Gerry shares of the estate when he reached twenty-one, and again at thirty-five. Marian was given no share.

Eventually it had become apparent that Gerry didn't have the slightest aptitude for construction, and even less patience in dealing with clients. It was agreed that he should operate his own business,
one that would complement Capano & Sons' many real estate holdings. Gerry started a landscaping and lawn care business. Among other contracts, his work crews took care of the grounds at Cavalier.

Since Gerry eschewed Wilmington in the summer in favor of the shore, he rarely took a hands-on approach during the peak months of his business. Indeed, he would one day hire a gardening service in Stone Harbor to take care of the house he bought there. His brothers feared that Gerry was still involved with drugs, but they tried to keep that from Marguerite.

Marian had two early marriages that were short-lived, but she finally made a match that seemed to make her happy. In the early seventies, she married L. Lee Ramunno, an attorney who practiced in one of the historic, one-story brick buildings on French Street near the courthouse in downtown Wilmington. They had three children together.

Lee, who obviously doted on his attractive wife, did not feel as kindly toward her brothers, particularly Louie. He may have resented the fact that Marian, the oldest child and for five years the
only
child of Lou and Marguerite, had been omitted from her father's will, except for a monthly dole at the pleasure of her brothers. It may have been some other dispute over money, but beginning in 1982, there was very bad blood between Lee Ramunno and Louie Capano.

Lee initiated a lawsuit against Louie, and Louie was served with it as he was having a good time acting as a guest bartender at a Wilmington restaurant. Outraged and embarrassed, Louie stormed out to the Ramunnos' home in Forest Hills Park. He hadn't come to visit and he didn't use the front door; he smashed a wooden chair through a sliding glass door and stepped in through the broken glass.

Louie grabbed Lee by the throat and began choking him, as Marian, nearly hysterical, tried to pull him off. The brothers-in-law fell to the floor and continued to struggle, while Marian tried to separate them. When she couldn't, she called the police. Louis, twenty-nine at the time, eventually entered an Alford Plea (no contest) to charges of second-degree reckless endangerment.

Family celebrations that included Louie and Lee were sparse after that, and the incident put a big strain on their espoused belief that family was family, no matter what. Tom got along well enough with his only sister's husband, but then, Tom got along with almost everyone.

D
AN
F
RAWLEY
ran for mayor again in 1988 and Tom worked hard to get him reelected. He had a great deal of positive impact on Frawley's campaign, and it was assumed that Tom would continue as chief of staff. But it didn't work out that way. In mid-January, Tom resigned from his city position. Everyone who knew him well was surprised to hear that he was leaving to join Capano & Sons.

Louie needed him. The family business needed him, and as much as he dreaded the thought of working in the construction business, Tom had acquiesced to his mother's pleas. He had a knack not only for getting along with everyone, but also for dealing with the sometimes onerous details that kept a company going. In 1989, the details were not onerous; they were scandalous, and his mother had begged him to help his brothers, to help the family.

Tom had promised her 365 days, and 365 days only.

Louie had the genius and the vision to make Capano & Sons boom, but along the way he had taken some shortcuts to grease the wheels of county government on a rezoning issue that he needed badly. County council members were the ones who voted on rezoning bills, and Louie had given Councilman Ronald J. Aiello $10,000 in 1987, in what was essentially an illegal campaign contribution. A year later, Louie went further over the line and gave Aiello $9,000 in an outright payment for a rezoning vote favorable to one of his developments.

Federal agents had heard rumors of Aiello's unlawful side income and they were watching him closely, but they needed evidence to trap him in a corruption scandal. Tom stepped in to handle the delicate negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department and his brother. It was Tom who played the pivotal role in extricating Louie from the threat of charges against him. The FBI needed someone who could set Aiello up in a sting operation so he could actually be witnessed taking a bribe. Once they had him, they could move in to seize physical evidence that would link him to dirty money.

On Tom's advice, Louie agreed to cooperate with the sting and set it up in his own office. The FBI special agents witnessed Ron Aiello accepting $25,000 in marked bills from Louie Capano. That was enough.

Louie was never charged with any crimes in connection with the situation. “I think he [Tom] straightened out Louis, who was in kind of a jam,” former Wilmington mayor Thomas Maloney remarked. “Tom worked carefully with the Justice Department to solve a problem and alleviate a situation.”

Everyone but the man arrested seemed content with the outcome
of something that could have been really sticky. Louie moved easily back into doing what he did best, but Tom was chafing at Capano & Sons, waiting eagerly for the year he'd promised his mother to pass. “It wasn't the work,” he explained later. “I had a different way of looking at things than my brothers. [They] had been in business together for a long time. . . . They had both started working when they were in college, and it was tough—even though I was the older brother—to impose the order that needed to be imposed.”

In plain terms, neither Louie nor Joey would take orders from Tom, not about the business. The last months of Tom's year of servitude to his mother were tense.

Louie Capano's reputation was scarcely tarnished by the unpleasantness of 1989; he was a dashing figure, far more than his soft-spoken brother. Over the next decade, the family interests burgeoned exponentially. With Louie at the helm, the Capanos would soon own hundreds of prime acres around Wilmington and several more shopping centers. They continued to build high-end housing developments. “I don't think we've seen half of what he's going to do,” the banker who funded Louie's father said. “It's almost as though he was born for it.”

Many builders faced ruin when the real estate market took another dive in the early nineties, but the Capanos flourished. Other developers were poleaxed by Louie's cliff-hanger deals. Harry Levin, whose chain of Happy Harry's Drug Stores was ubiquitous on the Eastern seaboard, marveled at Louie. “Louie does so many things wrong,” he laughed in the 1980s, “and they all turn out right.”

Louie was by far the richest of Lou's sons. He and his first wife, Deborah, who had borne him a son, divorced amid rumors of Louie's roving eye. Deborah Capano went on with her life and became a state senator. All four Capano brothers had an appreciation for beautiful women, and they were not known for their faithfulness to their marriage vows—although even his own brothers didn't know about Tom's affair with Debby MacIntyre.

Louie's second wife was a nationally known athlete. Lauri Merton was a leading contender in the Ladies' Professional Golfing Association, winner of the national trophy in the early nineties, and a pretty blonde with light blue eyes and a deep tan. Louie got a big kick out of being Lauri's caddy in championship rounds; he was probably the wealthiest caddy ever to shoulder a golf bag, but he was more than self-confident enough to follow Lauri around the links. He enjoyed the pictures in the papers of himself and Lauri.

Louie and Lauri moved into a huge mansion in the Greenville
section that had once belonged to one of the du Ponts. Greenville was
the
address to have in the Wilmington area, and the gray-stone house with its garden paths, swimming pool, and parklike grounds was an estate any millionaire could be proud of.

I
N
January 1990, Tom heaved a sigh of relief as he finished out the 365th day of his servitude at Capano & Sons. It had taken a toll on him, but he had kept his promise to his mother, and he was more than ready to go back into government service. And what heady service it would be. Delaware governor Michael Castle had made Tom an offer that rather surprised him because he was a lifelong Democrat and Castle was a Republican. It was the position as Castle's chief counsel. The job paid about half of what Tom could have made at the law firms that had tendered job offers, but it was an honor to be asked to advise a governor on complicated legal issues. And it was an excellent way for him to move back into public service.

Tom Capano, not yet forty, now had an enviable reputation not only in Wilmington but in the whole state of Delaware. The Attorney General's Office was responsible for defending the state in all matters, but as Castle's chief counsel, Tom would be called upon to advise the governor on the constitutionality of all pending legislation. The prestige factor alone was more than enough to make up for any diminution of his salary. And of course, Tom shared in the legacy his father had left for his sons; he would never hurt for money. He could well afford to accept Castle's offer.

For some reason, Tom always played down his wealth, although he was probably worth $4 million or more by the early nineties. He and Kay still lived in their sprawling bishop's residence, but they didn't have a beach house as his brothers and sister did. “When I go to the shore,” he said, “I mooch off my mother.” He and Kay drove utilitarian vehicles rather than high-priced trophy cars, but of course, their daughters all went to private schools and money was not a problem.

While Tom was advising Governor Castle on legal issues, another of his brothers embarrassed the family. It seemed that Tom was always having to put out little fires set by his siblings. Joey was a handsome devil, and he had a beautiful wife, Joanne, and four children. But he also had a woman he had been seeing on the side for at least nine years. She had once been the baby-sitter for Joey's children, and she was a decade younger than he was. When they began as lovers, the girl was so young that Joey often had to dash out the back door of her house just as her parents were coming in the front
entrance. Infatuated with him when she was a teenager, the girl had grown up and come to understand that there was no future in their relationship, as passionate and volatile as it was, and she broke off with Joey.

Joey couldn't stand the idea of her being with anyone else. He had finally separated from his long-suffering wife in an attempt to win back his paramour. Then on Halloween night 1991, Joey was in the grip of a sexual obsession that took him way across the line, both in terms of rekindling his affair and with regard to the law.

While her horrified sister looked on, he crashed into the young woman's home, literally carried her away, and held her captive while he forced her to have sex with him. When she was finally able to escape, she went to the police and Joey was charged with kidnapping and rape. Once more, Tom had to walk a fragile tightrope between the authorities and a brother. In the end, with Tom's coaching, Joey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of assault, unlawful sexual contact, and criminal mischief. His ex-lover had relented and asked that the felony charges be dropped. It was a plea bargain that let Joey walk away from prison time for the very serious charges
and
gave him a promise from the state that he would not be charged with assaulting his girlfriend in two earlier incidents.

Eventually, Joey and his wife reconciled, and the rest of the family could sigh with relief. It was just one more thing for Tom to deal with in 1991, which had already been a difficult year. His job was very demanding and he was quickly in the middle of a crushing deadline to complete the construction of a women's prison and an addition to Gander Hill, the prison in Wilmington. He helped bring the projects in on time, giving credit to his connections with the city. But it was probably predictable that he would develop some physical manifestation of the stress he lived under. He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. His gut bled.

And yet there was no doubt at all that Tom relished his role as the governor's adviser, his family's cleanup man and shining example, the father of four lovely girls, and husband to Kay—and lover-adviser to Debby—just as he appeared almost to enjoy being the put-upon martyr, the man who had every right in the world to occasionally demonstrate a mercurial temperament with his women. People expected too goddamned much of him, often treated him badly—at least in his eyes—and didn't give him the allowances he deserved with the heavy load he carried.