The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter (10 page)

But there were times that I took advantage of who I was.

One night I left a club alone. I got in my car to drive home. This guy left at the same time and started following me. I didn't know who he was. I wanted to go home, but I wasn't going to let this guy follow me and find out where I lived.

So instead of going to my house, I made him follow me to my father's social club. I pulled up in front of the club, and he pulled up right behind me. He saw all the guys hanging out, but he didn't realize who they were. Greg Junior was standing outside. He came over to my car.

“What's up, dollface?”

“This guy is following me everywhere, and I just want to go home.”

When Gregory got mad, you could see the horns coming out of his head.

“What do you mean, he's following you?”

“He's followed me for like a half hour, Greg. I want to go home.”

Gregory went right over to the guy's car and knocked on the window. The guy opened the window. Gregory picked him up by his shirt and pulled his head through the window. He gave him one shot and knocked the guy out.

“All right, Lin, go ahead. Go home. I got it from here.”

“Okay, thanks, see you later.”

I didn't like people getting hurt because of me. Yet, this guy was annoying me, so what did I do? I turned to Greg. I didn't think he was going do that, but he did.

When I graduated from high school, my father asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to go to our condo in Singer Island in Florida for a week.

But a week turned into five months. I loved living there. Singer Island was gorgeous. It was so different from my life in Brooklyn. My father was sending me money to live on. I was going out to clubs with some girls I met there. I was happy and having fun.

The condo was beautiful. It was right on the water. I could go out on the terrace and look at the ocean and the pristine white sand. I had a Chrysler LeBaron convertible and I'd drive along the coastline, with the top down, listening to a tape of Laura Branigan singing “Self Control.”

And I met a guy. He had curly blond hair and blue eyes. His name was Rob. If he lived in Brooklyn, his name would have been Robert. He was beautiful and so different from the guys I knew growing up. He was a beach bum. He had been adopted and his parents were taking care of him. I was spending most of my time with him. It was the best time of my life.

Being in Florida was a totally different lifestyle. The people were different; the way of life was so different. It was calm, not like city life. And I was free from everything that caused me pain. Sometimes Rob and I would fall asleep on the terrace and wake up in the morning to the cool breeze of the ocean. It was so peaceful. I was so happy. Maybe too happy.

But my dad was not happy that I was alone in Florida with a guy. But most of all he wasn't happy because I was far away from him. He missed me and wanted me to come home. I told him I was happy and I wasn't going to leave. He threatened to cut me off. No more money. He figured I'd have no choice but to go home. I got a job pumping gas. I didn't care. For the first time I was at peace.

My father wouldn't give up. He sent my mother to Florida to bring me home. I hated them. I cried as the plane took off. I watched everything I loved at that moment—the sparkling blue ocean, the white sandy beaches, the palm trees, my beautiful life—fade into the distance.

I hated going back. I looked out as the plane descended into the city. Everything was cold and gray and lifeless. That was the crossroads of my life. I was going to make them pay for bringing me back against my will. It wasn't long before I met a guy, got married and got pregnant.

CHAPTER 8

BLOOD BROTHERS

In August 1986, my father developed bleeding ulcers from years of taking aspirin for a back injury. He was admitted to Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn. The medication couldn't stop the bleeding and the doctors told him he'd need a transfusion.

My mother can tell the story.

 

 

 

 

When my father was first in Mount Sinai, he kept getting a number of infections. The doctors didn't know where these infections were coming from, since they didn't know he had AIDS.

In the beginning he wasn't conscious, and it was very hard for me to see him like that. I started going through a very bad phase, smoking a lot of pot just to escape from the world. I was getting high, trying to take away my pain somehow. I wasn't able to deal with the real world at all.

One day my mother came home from visiting my father and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. She said the doctors didn't know if my father was going to make it through the night. So I went to see him with my mother.

When I got to his room, I saw him just lying there. I leaned over him and hugged him.

“Daddy, please don't leave me, please. Open your eyes, Dad, please. Talk to me. Don't leave.”

I was crying hysterically. My tears were flowing onto his face. Then for a split second he opened his eyes and spoke.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

My mother was in total shock. She called the nurses and doctors in to tell them that he spoke. I was so happy that he said that to me. And I believed him. I believed that he wasn't going anywhere.

He came to shortly after that and we knew that he was going to make it. A couple days later I went to see him and he was sitting up. He was very swollen everywhere. I tried to rub his ankles and his legs, but he asked me to stop because it hurt.

I was just so relieved. My father had been on his deathbed, but I felt that he heard me, and he didn't leave after that. But he was living out a death sentence, anyway.

It wasn't long before the doctors found out that he had the AIDS virus. However, my mother and father didn't tell us about it for about six years. We could see he was getting sicker and sicker, but they told us he had cancer. Ultimately my father sued Victory Memorial Hospital and his surgeon there for negligence for giving him AIDS-infected blood. They settled for $300,000 in 1992.

When Paul found out that he had given my father AIDS, he came to the house a short while after my father got home. My father was sitting outside on the stoop. Paul was crying and apologizing to my father. My father was very emotional. He wasn't angry at Paul at all. He was very sympathetic. He felt sorry that Paul was sick. He accepted Paul's apology and forgave him. He told Paul that it was okay, because Paul didn't know and didn't mean for it to happen. He told Paul he needed to take care of himself.

I heard part of that conversation. What stood out to me was that my father didn't make Paul feel worse than he already did. After Paul left, I asked my father what was going on. He said Paul was sick and had AIDS, but I didn't know that Paul was one of the people who had originally donated the blood. I felt bad. I told my father that it was so sad, but I still didn't know my father had AIDS, too.

My father hadn't been home from the hospital very long when he got the call that his brother, my uncle Sal, had been shot in the head. It happened at Sal's social club on Seventy-Fourth Street in the Dyker Heights sections of Brooklyn. It was about 11:50
P.M.
on January 16, 1987. My mother knows more about that than me.

 

 

When my father learned he had HIV, he was kind of on the fence about what to do with his life. He maybe wanted to stop what he was doing, slow down, enjoy his family. He wanted to spend time at the Singer Island condo with my mother. He wanted to lay back and enjoy me and his grandson and my brother and his daughter. He just wanted to enjoy his life a little bit. He was sort of semiretired from the life. That's what he used to say, “I'm retired.” But he always said he wouldn't hide from anyone or anything.

During that time Carmine “the Snake” Persico was the boss of the Colombo family. But in 1986 he and his son, Allie Boy, went on trial on federal racketeering charges. They were both convicted in November 1986: Carmine was sentenced to thirty-nine years in prison and Allie Boy got twelve.

Even though he was in prison, Carmine wanted to maintain control of the family until Allie Boy got out, at which point Carmine would make him boss.

In 1988, while he was still in prison, Carmine put Vittorio “Little Vic” Orena in charge of the family as acting boss. Everything seemed okay for a while, but in June 1991, Vic decided he liked being boss. That's when he announced that he was going to become the official boss of the family, even though Carmine still wanted Allie Boy to be boss when he got out of prison.

Some of the members stayed loyal to Carmine, while others were with Vic. My father hated Vic Orena, so he and his crew were backing Carmine.

Then on June 20, 1991, Carmine Sessa, the consigliere of the family, Bobby Zam and two other members of the Persico faction went to Vic's house to kill him. But the plan failed because Vic had come home early, saw the four guys near his house and took off.

Then next day Carmine Sessa walked into our house with tears in his eyes. He was crying to my father that he had had a beef with Vic Orena and Vic tried to kill him, but he got away.

My father tried to calm him down. He told Carmine that they'd straighten everything out. They sat down and Carmine started explaining to my father what had happened. My father felt a very big obligation to Carmine. He felt indebted to him. He felt strongly that he had to protect Carmine and had to help him.

As a consigliere Carmine was above my father in terms of rank. But even though he was above my father, he really wasn't above my father. My father didn't care if someone was the boss of the entire family. He wouldn't listen to him, anyway. My father was king. My father was on top of everybody. He never wanted to have that actual position of consigliere or even boss. He wanted to stay right where he was. He was happy being where he was. He knew regardless of a title or a specific position, he was going to do what he wanted, anyway. That's what he always said.

When my father first found out he had HIV, he was afraid of people coming near him. He was afraid of other people touching him. He was afraid of anybody in the family getting too close, going into his bathroom. He didn't know much about it, but he didn't want anyone to “catch” it. He was really concerned about that.

But when my father came back from the hospital after he had his stomach removed, Carmine took care of my father. He knew my father had the AIDS virus, but Carmine didn't care. He took care of him. My father had open wounds in his stomach that needed to close, and Carmine would dress the wounds. Carmine did all that for him.

My father was amazed. He couldn't believe that Carmine would actually come near him. My father felt like he had the plague. He couldn't believe that his friend was actually touching his wounds, knowing he could contract the virus. Of course, Carmine wore gloves to protect himself, but other people pretty much didn't want anything to do with my father.

My father had a really close friend, who had grown up with my mother. He and my mother had been friends their whole lives. When he and his wife found out that my father had HIV, they never spoke to my parents again.

The only other person besides Carmine who stood by my father after he got sick—and before he got sick—was my uncle Morris “Moe” Terzi, the husband of my mother's older sister, Maryann. Morris was like an older brother to my mother—he was three and a half years older than she was. From the time she was about twelve years old, he was always there for her.

My uncle Morris, who was Jewish, was my father's best friend, even though he wasn't in the life. Throughout the years he owned a number of retail clothing stores. Uncle Morris and Aunt Maryann came to the house for dinner almost every night. Because Morris was separated from the life, my father didn't have to talk business with him. He didn't have to worry about ever having a conflict with him. Their relationship was strictly a fun friendship, and one that my father really depended on.

Morris was a comedian. He had a joke for everything. When my father was feeling at his worst, Morris came to the house, made jokes and always made my father laugh. He truly was my father's best friend in life.