Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (32 page)

Later the FBI came up again and asked Louis about the checks. He referred them to his lawyer. He was asked about the stock
certificates. The bombshell.

He said they belonged to one of his clients. They nodded. They believed him. Why not? The certificates weren’t listed as stolen.
Perfectly credible. No law against owning stock certificates.

The interview only took a few minutes. After they left, Larry called him in and fired him. Too much heat. Louis would have
to get out. Right now.

The firing was okay. Louis and Benny could find someplace else. But what wasn’t okay was that Larry wanted his $80,000 in
signup bonuses returned. They had only been there for a couple of months, so Larry felt that, since there had been such a
mess, they should return the money. Usually brokers stay for a much longer period than two months, after all. But Louis and
Benny felt that since they were getting fired it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t stay longer than two months. As for
that FBI visit—hell, whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

If this were a dispute in the Real Wall Street, an arbitration claim would have been filed at this point. As a rule, broker
employment contracts require arbitration of disputes. And that was precisely what was going to happen in this case, whether
they liked it or not. It was going to be “mandatory arbitration” in every sense of those words.

“Within like three, four days I get a call from Vinnie Corrao. Vinnie is Joe Butch’s
^*
son. He says, ‘You know, we’re going to have to meet up. We got some stuff to settle.’ He says, ‘Larry’s looking for that
bonus he gave you.’ So I say, ‘I’ll have somebody get in touch with you.’ He says okay, fine, give me a number. Joe Butch
was basically Larry’s Guy.

“Me and Benny weren’t giving the money back, even if we had it. It was ridiculous. It’s not as if we didn’t want to work.
Larry fired us. But we needed a Guy to sit down with Vinnie. If we used Charlie he’d have kept the money. He’d have made us
pay back the money and took it. He wouldn’t have been reasonable about it. He’d have just said ‘Eighty grand! Twenty grand
for me.’ Frank would have just done the same thing. Killed it.

“So we spoke to this guy John who worked for us at L. T. Lawrence and was Carmine Sciandra’s
^*
nephew. We figured Carmine is the best Guy to use in this situation. John says, ‘All right, I’ll have my uncle take care
of it.’ So now we got to go meet with Carmine. John set it up. He calls over the weekend and says, ‘Let’s meet at Carmine’s.
Tonight at seven.’ He gives me the address, on Todt Hill in Staten Island.

“So that afternoon Stefanie’s best friend Michelle was having a christening. Her baby was getting baptized, and they had a
party at a restaurant afterwards. Everybody’s hanging out, having a good time. I’m saying to myself, ‘I got to get the fuck
out of here.’ I’m sick to my stomach. I didn’t say anything to Stefanie, I just thought I’d say I got a call, and had to go
somewhere for an hour. I figure if I told her she’d get all upset, that I was embarrassing her, blah blah blah. I was just
going to disappear, go to the bathroom like I was sick, but then I thought, naah. I say, ‘I got to go somewhere. I’ll be back
in half an hour.’ Stefanie says, ‘Why now?’ I say, ‘I’ll explain to you later.’

When Louis arrived, Benny and John were there already. Carmine’s house was tremendi—bigger than Paul Castel-lano’s. He even
had a Spanish maid, just as Paul did. They entered the house and in a room on the left, up a few steps, Carmine was sitting
behind a big desk facing the door. To the side was a table the size of a pier. The office was all mahogany. “He had three
chairs set up for us. I was looking around this office. Like, wow. He had this painted picture, of his father, maybe. The
whole house was top-notch. He had a piano in another room, he had a game room. He had two kitchens, one for the maid. Everything
was professionally decorated. He had an in-ground pool, trees. His basement was like Disney World. He had twenty arcade games,
pool table, ping-pong table. He had three Mercedes. The house was just ridiculous.”

Carmine was middle-aged and baby-faced, with tight, receding, slick-backed hair. Soft-spoken, quiet. Like a grocer. Hell,
he
was
a grocer.

“After the introductions everybody sits down. Carmine asks me to explain the situation. So I did because Benny never does.
‘He fired us. I feel we don’t have to give it back,’ blah blah blah. Carmine says, ‘You’re not willing to give him back anything?’
He says, ‘If you’re not, just say you’re not. And that’s it. It’s no big deal.’ So I says no, I didn’t want to give back nothing.
He fired me. I’ll still work there. Carmine says he can understand how he wouldn’t want me to work there. I says I do too,
but if that’s the way he feels he has no right to get his eighty thousand dollars back.

“Carmine says, ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try to take care of it.’ Thank you, and that was it. I explained the situation,
and he talked back vague and rare. So then me, Benny, and John talk outside for another twenty minutes. John was like, ‘Don’t
worry about it, we’ll take care of it, we’ll get in touch with Vinnie and we’ll all meet in Brooklyn.’”

By the time he returned, the christening was coming to an end. Louis never heard the end of it from Stefanie.

The session with Carmine was just a kind of opening consultation, not the arbitration itself. That took place a few days later
at the Top Tomato at 86th Street and Stillwell Avenue in Bensonhurst. It might have been the first time in Wall Street history,
even in the history of Chop House Wall Street, that a broker-compensation dispute was adjudicated within twenty-five feet
of freshly misted arugula.

“Carmine’s got an office up some stairs at the store. A little office. Two couches, a desk, some chairs. Carmine’s behind
the desk again. Larry’s there in his suit and tie. Him and me sit in the chairs in front of Carmine, and Carmine says, ‘Why
don’t you explain yourselves to each other.’ So Larry says, ‘Well, you should give back the money I gave you,’ and I go, ‘Why
should I? For what? It’s ridiculous. You fired me. I’m not giving you back the fucking money. I did a hundred and seventeen
thousand dollars gross and then I did another one-eighteen gross. You paid us for it and kept half the money. So you got that
money back, if you really look at it.’ So it went back and forth, he said we had to be there for at least a year, blah blah
blah.

“Carmine asks if Vinnie has anything to say, and Vinnie says no, and Carmine’s like, ‘All right, I’ve heard both of your sides
of the story,’ and that was it. They’ll let us know. Great. I could give two fucks, to be honest about it,” said Louis. “And
then they let us know. Later on I got a call from John. They wanted us to pay twenty grand back each, whenever we got it.
Half. So I say, okay. No problem.

“I never had the money. They asked me for it. John would say, ‘You got some money to pay back Larry?’ and I’d say, ‘I don’t
got it.’ And John knew I didn’t have it, and they didn’t bust my balls for it. I think Benny paid it back, his half. I paid
two, three thousand. Charlie never found out about it. Then he’d know I got a forty-thousand-dollar signup bonus, he didn’t
get a piece of it. That’s ten thousand right there. It would have been a fucking mess.”

Sometime later Carmine invited Louis, Benny, and John over for lunch. It was semi-social, with Carmine making small talk and
finding out what John was doing with them. “That way John could never get beat,” said Louis.

As often happens in arbitrations on the Real Wall Street, the Top Tomato tribunal left neither party very satisfied. Louis
never found out how much Carmine was compensated for his mediation services, presumably some portion of the $40,000 that Louis
and Benny were supposed to pay Larry through Vinnie. Carmine never pressed the issue. But Larry did.

“He sued me,” said Louis. “I got sued by L. T. Lawrence. Like he didn’t know whether to be legit or a gangster. He was confused.”
^*

“You cursed his wife?”

Charlie didn’t wait for an answer.

Bam! He smacked the guy Rob right across the face. That’s how he did it. Fast. No time for Rob to react. You had to be fast,
if you were going to smack someone across the face. Rob was crying. “You ever fucking call this kid’s house, talk to his fucking
wife,” said Charlie, “I swear I don’t care who’s sitting at the table, I’m going to come personally to your fucking house
and talk to your fucking wife.”

Louis was sitting there, in a packed diner on Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island. A few months before he wouldn’t have believed
his eyes. Now he took it in stride. A sitdown, a smack in public. Charlie earning his money.

It was a money dispute. It was always a money dispute. And Charlie was going to bat for him. That was their relationship.
Louis would come to Brooklyn, give him money, it wouldn’t be enough, and he would get a beating. But when needed, Charlie
would go to bat for Louis.

In this case, Rob had made the mistake of playing gangster and Charlie really hated the gangster act, unless he was doing
the acting. Louis was his bitch boy now, and you don’t curse the wife of a bitch boy.

Louis owed Rob money. Louis was always owing somebody money—Rob, Charlie, dozens of others.

It was 1996, and as the year dragged on it was turning out to be a totally sucky year, as Louis went from one firm to another.
One firm would sour, and he would move on to another. He was in demand. But getting less money. Not a lot less, but enough
less that he noticed.

More heat on the chop houses from the regulators. Less and less and less money and more and more and more pressure and sitdowns.
More visits and calls and meetings with Charlie, who was getting to know the whole family.

S
TEFANIE
: “I was upstairs and Louis answered the door. Charlie was with this heavy guy. I remember him sitting at the table, and I
was sitting on the stairs. Charlie was yelling about something. Louis said, ‘Calm down, calm down, calm down.’ Charlie’s yelling
at me, ‘He owes this guy money. He’s supposed to have it and he doesn’t have it. The guy wants his money.’

“Then they come upstairs and the heavy guy’s sitting in my kitchen in one chair, and Charlie’s standing there talking to me,
and Louis was like two stairs up to the third floor. I’m sitting on the step.

“Charlie says, ‘He owes him the money and he’s not going to give it to him. This guy can’t wait no more. He needs it. He’s
got to give it to his kids. He’s got bills to pay and Louis owes him all this money.’

“Charlie says, ‘You’re lucky to have me’ with Louis gambling so much—justifying that he’s this good guy. Here’s Charlie trying
to make himself this good guy, and Louis is this big mess-up. ‘Thank God he has me,’ Charlie tells me.

“So then I just started crying. Then Louis says maybe he can get a couple of dollars to him.

“Charlie says, ‘I don’t want you to get upset, Stefanie. I just want you to know the truth here. You need to know the truth.
What’s going on. He tries to hide everything from you. I want to let you know that he’s my friend and I’m trying to help him
out.’ He says, ‘I want you to be aware. He has a problem. He’s gambling. He borrows money. You need to be aware of what’s
going on. He owes this guy money. He owes me money. I just want you to be aware.’

“I’m sitting there crying. And I remember the other guy says something like, ‘Louis, I’ve had it. I’m not playing around.
I need my money tomorrow. If I don’t get my money, I’m going to be back here.’ Louis says, ‘Oh, no, no, no. I’ll get you the
money tomorrow.’ And of course when they leave, Louis is like, ‘He’s out of his mind.’

“So we went to Brooklyn, around Charlie’s neighborhood, so Louis could pay him the money. We parked the car. Louis got out
and he walked over to Charlie. Before they even started talking, Charlie smacked him across the face. When he came back, I
said, ‘I don’t understand. What the hell? Why did he do that?’ Louis says, ‘Oh, he’s losing his mind. He’s just pissed off
and he’s taking it out on me.’ I says, ‘This is your friend, huh?’

“I remember Charlie being there when his father was there. And I remember Charlie yelling about money or whatever, and Nick
saying, ‘Well, we’ll get the money. We’ll get the money. We’ll get it somehow. We’ll get it to you.’

“Everybody’s intimidated by Charlie. I’m thinking you must be Italian to get it, that fear. Because I can be intimidated by
people but it’s not in that way. I figure it’s an Italian thing. My father wouldn’t allow a guy to intimidate him. And my
father never dealt with Charlie at all. Charlie never called my parents’ house but he called Louis’s parents’ house. He used
to call their house and scream and curse. If he called my parents’ house ever, he would use another name. And you knew it
was him. You could tell his voice. ‘Could you tell Lou to call Joey?’ He would never say Charlie in my house. I’d hear from
my mother, ‘Some guy named Joey called.’”

N
ICK
P
ASCIUTO
: “One time I met Charlie in a bistro on Staten Island. It was a bar, club. Me and Louis went there. He’s telling me how much
Louis owed him. He says, ‘This kid’s doing all these crazy things. I got to stop them from getting at him.’ He says, ‘They
want to get paid and I’m holding them off.’ He says he’s always helping him, keeping the wolves away from him. ‘If it wasn’t
for me, he would be gone already.’ I was going to say to him, ‘Who are you kidding?’ But at the time it wouldn’t have mattered.
It just would have made things worse. No way he was going to get away from him.

“I knew about this Charlie, not that he was anything big. I knew he was a knockaround guy and all that in Brooklyn. That’s
what he did for a living. Whatever—rob stuff, loan-sharking, gambling. Whatever he did, and extorting was probably the biggest
one. I met him a few times. Louis was out with him, and he’d be there and I met him. Louis would go out with him, they had
a couple of laughs, and he’d always be a ball-breaker. Talk down to you. Shit like that. That was part of the goof. That was
part of the scene, I guess.