Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (44 page)

             
Things couldn’t have been better for me at that time. I was living in Hilton Head, and I had started up a small contracting business just like I did in Florida. The difference this time was that I was doing a lot less of the grind work. I put together a nice little crew, and they did most of the work. This was my routine for the rest of 1997 and 1998: stay low-key, go to work, relax, enjoy life, and keep makin’ money.

             
In early 1999, I had heard from one of the agents that Lawrence was out of jail and that he was sick with cancer and that Saul Kane was in a prison hospital in Kentucky and he wasn’t doing well. I knew the Blade had had a heart attack and died back in 1995 in a prison hospital in Missouri.

             
I started thinking a lot about the old days in Atlantic City, before my uncle was the boss, and all the fun I had had with guys like the Blade, Lawrence, and Saul Kane. And now these guys were dying. It made me sad. At this time, my mother was very sick and getting sicker with the lung cancer, and my grandmother wasn’t doing great either. I knew it was only a matter of time with my mother. Little Philip, who was now 25 and had just graduated from graduate school, came to stay with us in Hilton Head. As my mother got sicker, we all spent that time being together as a family. It was me, my mother, my grandmother, Maria, and Little Philip. We had been through a lot together, but we toughed it out and we stuck together through thick and thin.

             
I took it very hard, but we knew that it was coming. I had her body flown back to New Jersey and we buried her in the family plot, which was in Pleasantville, just outside of Atlantic City. We all flew back for the services and it was very low-key and quiet. Gary Langan came, and he and I caught up, but after we had the services, we all flew back to Hilton Head.

             
Joe’s a good guy and was one of the best bookmakers in the history of South Philadelphia. He knew every single college team and he knew all of the players; he was like an encyclopedia. I always got along with Joe and I liked him, so did my uncle. Joe and my uncle shared a cell together when we were all at Holmesburg.

             
My grandmother died in 2003, and I flew her back to New Jersey and buried her in the family plot with my mother and my grandfather. And again I saw Gary Langan. By this time, both Lawrence and Saul Kane had died in prison, and so did John Gotti. Joey Merlino had gotten 14 years in his racketeering case and now Nicky Jr. was back in jail doing a 33-month sentence on gambling and loan-sharking charges. I read in the news that Joe Ligambi was now officially the acting boss and my uncle was still in Atlanta with Vic Amuso trying to regain control of the mob and figuring out a way to kill me.

             
Once my grandmother died, I told Maria that I wanted to get out of Hilton Head, and she agreed, so we sold our place there and I sold my contracting business. I had actually grown tired of being on the East Coast and I was ready for a change of scenery. Little Philip was back in Arizona, so we headed west and spent the next few months relaxing and trying to figure out what we were going to do with the next chapter of our lives.

             
Since the day I got out of jail in 1992, I was living primarily in South Florida or Hilton Head or traveling the East Coast on the boat. After a while I got antsy, and both Maria and I wanted to settle down somewhere and make a home where we could stay for the rest of our lives.

             
When we were in Arizona, Little Philip and I flew into Las Vegas a couple of times, and I really liked it because it reminded me of Atlantic City. I liked the action. On one of the trips, we stayed at the Bellagio, and right away, I fell in love with Vegas, but I knew we couldn’t stay there.

             
Eventually, Maria and I headed a little further west and like we did on the boat back in 1995, we went up the coast looking for a nice quiet place to settle down.

The first time we saw the place, I told Maria, “This is it, this is home,” and she agreed. After all these years of moving around, we were finally able to settle down.

             
The phone rang, and he said, “Philip, I got a call from one of the agents in Philadelphia on the Organized Crime Task Force, and he has reason to believe that your identity and location have been compromised and that you and your family are in imminent danger.”

             
I remember getting a pit in my stomach because he sounded concerned, and he wasn’t an alarmist type of guy. I said, “Jesus Christ, where did this come from?” And he said, “We are still trying to piece it together and get confirmation. I am going to have the agent in Philadelphia call you and debrief you.” And then we hung up.

             
Now I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “I’ve been out of jail for 17 years and out of
La Cosa Nostra
for 20 years and, all of the sudden, out of the blue, I get this call that me and my family are in danger?” It wasn’t adding up to me.

             
Later that night, I got a call from the agent in Philadelphia and he was very firm with me on the phone. He said, “Philip, we have reason to believe that an attorney who has done work for several
La Cosa Nostra
members may know your name and current location, and if he does, you and your family are in danger and need to move.” I said, “With all due respect, I’m going to need a little more information than that before I consider moving myself and my family. We are established out here; we have a great life.” And the agent said, “That’s all the information I have at this time,” and I thanked him for the call.

             
Now my mind is racing with all of the what-if scenarios, because in all of the years that I had been away from
La Cosa
Nostra,
I had never gotten a call like this from the FBI. When I was in Atlantic City during the summer of 1996, I knew that I was putting myself in danger, but I had no choice. My grandmother was sick. But now 13 years later when I’m living 2,500 miles away and
now
I’m in danger? The whole thing had me confused.

             
The first person I called was another retired FBI agent who was now running a security consulting firm and working as a private investigator. He knew all of the players in Atlantic City and had already heard the news when I called him. He said to me, “Philip, I met this kid a couple of times and, from what I can tell, he’s straight paper. I can’t see him doing anything to cause you or your family any problems if this is true, which we still don’t know for certain, one way or the other.” I spoke to another agent, and he agreed.

             
But the agent in Philadelphia was telling me that this lawyer had talked several times on the phone with my uncle, and that when my cousin Nicky got out of jail in 2005, my uncle sent him to see the lawyer so that they could form a relationship. He also told me that the lawyer had worked with Joey Merlino and had gone to visit him several times in prison.

             
The story I had gotten was that a friend of Little Philip’s knew a friend of a friend of the lawyer’s and had told him that he knew where we were living and what our names were. The story was that the information was then passed on to the lawyer, and the theory was IF he knew my name and location, that he could have told my uncle, my cousin, Joey Merlino, or one of his other mob clients, and that we could all be in danger as a result.

             
This was a very serious concern for me
if
it were true. But nothing was concrete, nothing was solid regarding whether the lawyer actually knew my identity and where I was living—and if he did, whether he had told anyone about it.

             
The agent that I was talking to was just doing his job and his job is to always err on the side of caution, to look out for us. So his philosophy was, “Why take a chance?” The problem was, we were well established where we were living. The last thing I wanted to do was pick up and move again, especially if we didn’t have to.

             
So I decided that I was going to go back to Atlantic City and see the lawyer myself and find out what the real story was, to try and get a read on him before I made a decision about whether or not to move again. I told Maria what was going on and she was scared, but she agreed that we needed to know for sure one way or the other.

             
I decided not to tell anyone in the FBI that I was coming back to Atlantic City, because I wasn’t sure how things were going to go and I knew how they would react.

             
I hadn’t been in Philadelphia since I testified in Bobby Simone’s trial in 1992. There was a lot of things that I missed about South Philadelphia, but I wasn’t there to go sightseeing. I rented a car at the airport and drove over the Walt Whitman Bridge and got on the Atlantic City Expressway and headed straight to Atlantic City, which was an hour away from Philadelphia. After all of these years I was still banned from going into any of the Atlantic City casinos, so I checked into a non-casino hotel and got freshened up.

             
I had arranged for someone I know, who also knew the lawyer, to schedule a meeting for the two of them at a restaurant in Atlantic City called the Knife and Fork Inn. They were going to meet for drinks at 6:00 p.m., and my plan was to get to the Knife and Fork around 5:00, have some dinner upstairs, and have my friend call the lawyer and tell him that he was running late. Once I knew the lawyer was at the bar, I would come downstairs and talk to him. My friend called me at 6:00 on the dot and said, “He’s there,” and I paid for my dinner and walked downstairs to the bar, which was on the first floor.

             
I knew what the lawyer looked like and I spotted him at the far end of the bar with his back to Pacific Avenue, doing something on
his phone, maybe texting or e-mailing. He was by himself. I got about 10 feet away when he looked up at me and immediately recognized me, and I could tell from the look on his face that he was startled. I put my hands up to indicate that I was approaching him in a nonthreatening manner and I said to him, “Relax, I just want to talk to you,” and I sat down on the stool next to him, which was angled so we were basically looking at one another. I said, “You obviously know who I am; do you know why I am here?” And he said, “I’m guessin’ it’s not for the tuna tartare,” which made me smile and broke the ice a little bit. I said to him, “I’ve heard a lot of things about you,” and he replied, “I’ve heard a few things about you, too, but I don’t believe everything I hear.” And I said, “That’s good. But what I’m hearing concerns not only me, but my family as well.”

             
At this point, the bartender came over and I ordered myself a drink, and the lawyer said, “I’ll have what he’s having,” and the bartender brought us each a glass of Cutty Sark and a glass of water. I reached into my wallet and took out money and put it on the bar, and when I did, I said, “I want to show you something,” and I took out a picture and I handed it to him. As he was looking at it, I said, “Do you know who that is in the picture?” And he shook his head no, and I said, “James, that’s my wife, my son, and my grandson,” and this time he shook his head up and down, like he understood what I was saying. I said, “I was told by the FBI,” and I pointed to the picture, “that they might have a problem and that’s why I am here.” He handed me the picture back and looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t know what the FBI told you, but I will tell you this: I don’t know and don’t want to know what your name is or where you live—that’s none of my business and none of my concern.”

             
My whole life, whether it was in
La Cosa Nostra,
or when I was dealing with the government, or when I was in prison, or when I got out, one thing about me was I was always good at reading people right away. My uncle was always good at this, too. I had just met this kid and in less than five minutes I knew he was telling me the truth, he wasn’t fuckin’ around. He seemed exactly as the agent described him—straight paper—and while I startled him by suddenly appearing, he didn’t seem scared or intimidated, which told me that he had nothing to hide and was telling the truth.

             
I finished my drink and I said to him, “James, it was a pleasure meeting you, maybe I’ll see you around,” and he said, “I sure hope not,” and we both laughed. I shook his hand as I stood up to go. He said, “For a guy walking around with a $500,000 bounty on his head, you seem extremely relaxed,” and I said,
“Que sera, sera,”
and he look confused because he didn’t know what it meant, and I said, “Look it up on your phone,” and I walked away and that was it.

             
Que sera, sera
means, “whatever will be, will be.” It’s an old song from an Alfred Hitchcock movie, which is basically how I see my life when I think back on everything. Both in the sense of resembling a Hitchcock movie and that line—“Que
sera, sera,
whatever will be, will be”—pretty much sums up my philosophy. If someone comes after me or wants to try and find me so they can kill me, there is nothing I can do about it except be ready and do whatever I need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen and I get them first. So going to see this lawyer was both my wanting to assess and see if the threat truly existed, and if it did, to let him know: I can find you just as easy as you might be able to find me.

             
Now that I was satisfied that neither myself nor my family was in any imminent danger, I went back to the hotel in Atlantic City and checked out and decided to drive to Philadelphia and stay there because my flight back home was early the next morning. On the way back I stopped at the Saloon, which is a restaurant and bar in South Philadelphia, and I had a drink. I used to go there all the time with my uncle, or with Salvie, or with Chuckie when my uncle was in jail. I sat right at the bar, and no one recognized me. I ordered a Cutty and water and sat there and enjoyed a nice quiet drink all by myself.

             
I had just left Atlantic City, and here I was in South Philadelphia, but at this point in my life, I couldn’t wait to get home. I checked into a hotel out by the airport and by 7:00 a.m. the next day I was in the air and headed west.

             
I landed a few hours later and I drove straight home. My black Lab, Bubba, was waiting at the door for me, and I told Maria about my meeting with the lawyer and that everything was fine, and I could tell that she was relieved, and so was I.

             
Life went back to normal, well, our normal. I was always careful with everything I did, even when I was with my uncle. I always
watched my mirrors and took different routes wherever I went—in case someone was following me, whether it was the law or someone else. I’d get to places early. I’d always have my antenna up and be ready at all times for whatever was out there. Nobody was ever going to get the jump on me.