This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (36 page)

Luckily, because I was working for the
Post
, I usually learned of some new development before it was even printed.

It wasn’t easy working for a newspaper that writes about you and your family on a daily basis. But I loved writing my column and interviewing celebrities so much that I made it work. Besides, I was no fool. The paper considered me an asset, even giving me a desk between two of the best columnists at the
New York Post
, Andrea Peyser and Steve Dunleavy. I got special treatment because of the inside scoop the paper got in return regarding my father and my family, and I used it to my best advantage. They used me, and I used them. It was as simple as that. Dad and I often talked about my job at the paper and what my column would be about the following week. He enjoyed hearing about the outside world and lived vicariously through others.

Finally, when we saw him on the third day, looking weak and frail but with a huge smile on his face, we were somewhat relieved.

The doctors gave Dad a clean bill of health a few months later
and marveled at how strong he was for a man his age. He was just sixty and looked like he wasn’t a day over forty. When he was able to, Dad went back to his regular exercise regimen, two hundred push-ups in his cell daily. They said he had the stamina of a twenty-five-year-old and was in remarkable shape given what he’d been through. The doctors also said if Dad made it to one year without a recurrence he had a fifty percent chance of survival. If he’d made it to the second year, he would have an eighty percent chance of survival, and so on.

One week before the first anniversary of Dad’s surgery, I got a call from my father. The cancer was back. We both knew what that meant. I started crying and he spent the remaining ten minutes of the monthly call trying to calm me down. After I hung up the phone I nearly collapsed in my husband’s arms. It was the worst possible news at the worst possible time. I had to tell the rest of the family.

Meanwhile, Lewis Kasman, the self-proclaimed adopted son of John Gotti, continued his efforts to raise awareness of the inhumane treatment Dad was getting. Every television show covered stories about my father’s cancer and prognosis. Kasman did interviews on all the major news shows. He kept a worried face during each of the interviews, demanding “humane treatment” for John Gotti and suggesting the FBI was involved in a plot to kill my father. Kasman claimed he loved John Gotti more than he did his own father.

Lewis Kasman had first arrived on the scene out of the blue. One day he just appeared and from then on seemed to always want to be around John Gotti. He looked for any excuse to be seen out in public with my father. He was not well received by Dad’s other friends and associates, including my brother John. Everyone believed Kasman’s concern for Dad was phony. As a result, I learned early on to limit my conversations with Kasman. I believed
he was two-faced—he loved gossiping about everyone and everything.

When my brother John was around, Kasman’s catty behavior seemed to intensify. It seemed to enrage him that John and my father were close—closer than he would ever be with John Gotti. Kasman let his jealousy get the best of him and was constantly trying to start trouble between them. In fact, after John accepted the plea, it seemed to amuse Lewis to know that Dad was disappointed and the two were not on speaking terms. He often wrote my father letters and almost always mentioned John and the plea. He knew which buttons to push in order to send my father into a rage. Kasman often mentioned John and the plea deal to me. He always tried to extract information from me, from everyone in the family. He would go from person to person talking badly about someone—trying very hard to get each of us to say bad things about the other. Kasman seemed adamant about breaking up such an absolutely close-knit clan.

I
remember when I first found out my so-called hardworking husband was part of the mob. To say I was stunned would be putting it mildly. Most people won’t believe me, but I honestly had no idea he had anything to do with the life. My father knew how I felt about this; we had spoken of it many times. He knew about my intentions to raise my family very differently from the way I was raised, living with constant fear that my father wouldn’t walk through the door at night. We dreaded the phone call telling us that he’d been gunned down in the street like most powerful mobsters before him had.

Carmine came home one night and said he had “something important” to speak to me about. Dad was very sick at the time and I dreaded every time the phone rang, thinking it was the prison,
telling me Dad had taken another turn for the worse. That night, Carmine told me he was going to be arrested. It was something stupid, he’d said, and he had no clue when it would happen. But he was sure it would. I was shocked. He was a legitimate businessman who had built an empire—I couldn’t imagine what he could possibly be arrested for. Sure, he’d made mistakes when he was a kid—he had stolen a few cars, but that was behind him. That, I was sure of. He explained to me as best he could. There was a rival auto parts owner who had recently moved in across the street from Carmine’s new metal plant and shredder facility in the Bronx. The guy was his direct competition and to piss Carmine off, he had increased his price of metal. So when customers came in to sell thousands of pounds of scrap metal, they would get more money from this guy. Carmine had the same loyal customers for years, so when the competition stole many of these clients, Carmine went ballistic. He’d confronted the guy at first and made a thinly veiled threat. Something like, “If you keep stealing my customers, you’ll pay the price in the end.” A week later, the man increased his prices yet again. Carmine should have realized then that something was terribly wrong. There was no way the guy was making a decent profit offering those kind of prices; he must have been barely breaking even. A week later, someone firebombed one of the competitor’s tow trucks. A few days after that, Carmine received a call from his attorney, Marvin Kornberg, saying he was to be arrested, something about a sting operation. His lawyer told him there was a witness, a former employee of Carmine’s who claimed Carmine was responsible for the truck fire. I was devastated and angry. Angry that he let a man push him to the point of no return, and angry that he was stupid enough to risk all that he’d built and let his ego get the better of him. But I was most angry when he told me the competitor was in fact an undercover cop. Law enforcement had built a sting operation, and
was intentionally egging him on, and Carmine fell right into his trap.

We lived in a mansion in Old Westbury dubbed Tara. It was Carmine’s dream for as long as I could remember. He often bragged about building his “dream house” one day. It was, in his words, “a testament” to his success after years of manual labor and hard work. I was satisfied with something smaller—something more manageable. In the end I had little say—it was
his
dream. Carmine had never had trouble providing since the day we got married. He left the house each morning at six and didn’t return until eight at night or sometimes even later, his work clothes spoiled with grease from a hard day’s work. That grease helped Carmine build an empire worth an estimated $200 million. Setting aside all my ex-husband’s faults, one thing was obvious—he was a hard worker and a good earner.

That night over dinner, he seemed agitated and couldn’t sit still. I argued with him over the pending arrest—how stupid it was, how stupid he was to let someone set him up, and how he had to move on and start worrying about cleaning up the mess he’d started. I was most concerned about the kids and what other kids at school would say to them.

He put his fork down—he’d hardly touched his dinner. He left the dining room table and settled in the den on one of the sofas. The boys started jumping all over him, wanting some small amount of time with their busy and preoccupied father, but he ignored them. I took the hint and put the kids to bed earlier than usual that night. Afterward, I ran his customary bath in the master suite. While he was in the bath, we talked about his pending arrest. I asked him questions like, “Why you? Why would you be a target for law enforcement?” I reminded him of the fact that he was a scrap metal magnate and not John Gotti. I couldn’t understand why law enforcement was so eager to take him down.

Carmine just shrugged. He didn’t answer, but there was a guilty look in his eyes. He knew more—he just wasn’t telling me.

I went downstairs and called my mother. She, too, was getting ready for bed. I told her everything I knew about the likely arrest and made a comment like, “I just don’t understand why law enforcement is so interested in Carmine. Its not like he’s somebody.” Meaning, somebody involved in the life. My mother’s silence was chilling. I went on to say that I hoped the newspapers wouldn’t start labeling my husband a mobster, for the sake of the kids. I didn’t want the stigma—I didn’t want them to be raised like I was; the whispers, the name-calling, and all the stupid things classmates do.

I also said, “If one reporter prints that Carmine is a mobster, I’m going to sue.” That’s when my mother said, “Vicki, don’t get involved in something you know nothing about. You’ll only look foolish when the truth comes out.” That was when I realized Carmine was in fact part of
the life
—and my mother had known. I was crushed.

Usually I played the role of the dutiful wife and hands-on mother: I took care of the kids, always making sure they were clean, fed, and did their studies every evening before tucking them into bed.

I had a career, but I always made sure my family and household duties came first. Writing my novels and my column allowed me to work from home, so I could tend to my house and raise my kids myself. Having someone else raise my children was never an option. Besides, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment I spent with my kids, even the colicky, crying fits or late-night feedings. I always took the good with the bad, and the good always outweighed the bad. I was taught to take care of my husband, much the same way my own mother had taken care of my father. It was instilled in me to have a hot meal waiting on the dinner table every night when my husband
came through the door—no matter what time it was. In the end, I really enjoyed the life we had built as a family.

After the phone call with Mom, I was numb. Listening to her speak nearly shattered everything I’d built in my life. I was crushed and appalled. How could he be so stupid? How could I?

It infuriated me. Obviously my father knew this—in fact, he’d allowed it. I couldn’t understand why, especially since he knew my feelings about the life. I wanted better for myself, my children—didn’t he? I didn’t know who to talk to. I didn’t know who knew about this, and even after he lied and deceived me, I did not want to betray my husband. So I kept it bottled up inside of me, and when we finally spoke and I asked Carmine about it, he denied any claims that he was in fact involved in the life.

The notion that my marriage and my life were in fact a big lie really took its toll on me. I stopped socializing and threw myself into my work at an even more rigorous pace than before. I went from writing twenty to thirty pages daily to nearly fifty in an effort to get my first novel,
The Senator’s Daughter
, finished before the expected deadline. I looked for any distraction rather than having to face what was right in front of my eyes.

Carmine and I never brought up the subject again but we found ourselves fighting over the smallest things. I spent much of the next few months sleeping in the guest room of our five-bedroom house. I’d found it difficult to lie beside the very man I’d married, for whom I had lost a tremendous amount of respect. As I often confided to my mother, I felt as if I had been “sleeping with the enemy.”

Only once during the next few weeks did I bring the subject up again—and of course my husband denied
any
involvement in the life. He went as far as to shout things like, “I work twelve-, thirteen-hour days, I come home covered in grease and oil, I’m home by seven or eight
P.M
. and in bed by ten, do you really think I even
have the time for that shit? Do you think I even want that kind of life for myself?”

I tried hard to believe him, probably because I wanted to believe him.

O
N
H
ALLOWEEN
, I’
D
suggested we have a small party for the kids and their classmates. We don’t live in a densely populated area, so trick-or-treating is not something easily done on foot. Carmine turned the “simple” party I’d suggested into a carnival—literally, with a Ferris wheel, a specially built funhouse, rides, popcorn and cotton candy stands, and a hayride that went on for hours. And of course for the adults, there was an Elvis impersonator, flown in from Las Vegas, who not only looked like the real deal, but sounded like him too! The party was completely over-the-top to any sane person.

Another strange event happened a few days later; Carmine called me to say he’d bought a new Mercedes sedan and it was ruby red. He hated the color red, so this really surprised me. When he pulled into the driveway later that night, he was not happy. “I hate the color,” he’d said as he got out of the car. “I’m bringing it back tomorrow. I already ordered a black one and even a white one for weekends.” This sort of behavior was baffling. Usually, he was extremely conscientious when it came to spending his “hard-earned” money. He was usually not a frivolous spender—and, in fact, often complained about the ever-increasing cost it took to maintain the household. I also found out he’d started gambling—betting roughly $20,000 a week on horses at the racetrack.

These manic episodes became more and more frequent, as did the depressive ones. Just as over-the-top as the bouts of mania were so were the bouts of depression. These “dark funks,” as my husband called them, occurred without notice and almost always around
the holidays. It was difficult for me to deal with my husband being happy one day and then deeply depressed another. I urged him to see a doctor. I even went as far as to set up consultations with a few well-known specialists.