Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street Read Free

Island. Women could walk the street at night without being bothered.
     People knew each other. Strangers, be they burglars or FBI men, were conspicuous.
    Stefanie was the first to wake from the FBI knocks. She sat up and cursed. More strangers at the door. Over the past few months
     there had been other predawn knocks. There were a lot of visits by people who didn’t like Louis, or wanted something from
     him. Once, when she wasn’t there, the visitors had come by car and tried to smash it through the front door of the garage.
     She had gotten used to that kind of thing, but not used to it so much that she was willing to continue living with Louis.
     They were on again, off again, on the rocks.
    The FBI men politely removed Louis’s computer and gave him time to dress in a sweatshirt and jeans. Then he was escorted in
     a van directly to the FBI field office at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.
    At that point, Louis had to pick between two distasteful alternatives. He chose swiftly.
    Having made that choice, the only reasonable choice under the circumstances, Louis called Charlie. Charlie expected his call.
     Charlie was always available on the phone. That was why he paid Charlie. Charlie was a problem-solver. Of course, the other
     reason he paid Charlie was that Charlie was a problem-creator as well.
    Louis grinned as the FBI tape recorder began humming and Charlie began screaming.
    Taping Charlie as he screamed was a labor of love. Charlie loved to scream. When Louis was arrested, the idea of not hearing
     Charlie scream, of being in a position to not see Charlie’s phone number in his pager, gave him a feeling of serenity.
    His hatred of Charlie was combined with another emotion. Fear. After a few days fear overcame hate and he stopped cooperating.
     So his bond was revoked and he was transported to the HCCC, where federal defendants awaiting trial were housed when the Metropolitan
     Correctional Center was filled up. Or at least that was the explanation. Louis theorized that he was sent to the HCCC, and
     not the allegedly less unpleasant MCC, because the federal government, for a growing list of reasons, did not like him.
    The feds kept him in HCCC, he theorized, because Louis knew about the Guys. He knew why they were on Wall Street. He knew
     their names. He knew the scams that had fed them.
    So there he was, three weeks after his arrest, two weeks after he was sent to the HCCC, lying on his bunk and listening to
     the snores and thinking about the Guys. The Guys could get him out of there. Charlie was his Guy, but there were plenty of
     others who had come into his life over the years. Ralph. Phil. Sonny. Frank. John. John. Two Johns—the Turk and the Irishman.
     Elmo. There were so many Guys, and they were so different in age, appearance, and ostensible socioeconomic strata. Carmine
     was a fruit man. Sonny was a media icon long before Guys became media icons. Phil was educated and Frank wore a mink jacket.
     Ralph was from Pennsylvania. Whoever they were, it was always first names and nicknames. Cigar. Dogs. Fat Man. As if they
     were schoolkids. And they traveled in gangs, like schoolkids and prisoners. Gangs of fat, stupid, violent, middle-aged men.
     Not
Goodfellas
. Not
The Godfather
. At times they seemed to Louis to be a kind of weird amalgam:
The Sunshine Boys
meets
The Warriors
.
    To the Guys, Louis was a piggy bank they would crack open, literally if need be, when necessary to get money. Louis would
     fill his piggy bank with other people’s money. When he had the money it always seemed to go somewhere, and quickly. Most of
     it went to his debts, because Louis gambled and was the most inept gambler since Staten Island was settled in 1670-something.
    A lot of it went to Charlie, but never enough.
    All he needed were a few more scores. All he had to do was get out. Maybe he could give the FBI some Guys, and get out.
    The Chinese guy stopped snoring, and for just a little while he was doing what he