The Vulture's Game Read Free Page A

great country,” he told me and Jimmy after closing on one such deal. “Not when someone can hand you a check for millions in return for you giving him nothing but a few floors of air.”
    Uncle Carlo shared his profits with the other crime outfits, making sure no one at the table was left empty-handed. This helped guarantee there would be peace among the various factions and secure him favor chits that he could cash in on if need be at a later time. He cashed in on twenty-five percent of the ongoing real estate market—including cutting in on agents’ commissions on high-end buys and sells; taking a cut of rent moneyfrom any building he held a piece of; and dipping into co-op and condo board funds. All told, Uncle Carlo’s real estate businesses netted him and the outfit well over $100 million a year in clear profits.
    But there was more to his holdings than money. As with anything related to organized crime, there was blood.
    In the summer of 2000, Uncle Carlo owned three real estate companies, each with multiple offices in the tristate area. Two of the companies were completely legitimate, their yearly earnings dutifully reported to the IRS, their books open and available for anyone to see. The third real estate company, with six branches in New York and two in New Jersey, sought their buys and sells in an entirely different arena. The offices were spare: two desks, two clear-lined phones, one agent, and a part-time receptionist. They specialized in short-term rentals, one- and two-bedroom apartments, usually at affordable, middle to upper-middle-class rates. The agent working the desk was young and well mannered and always dressed in jacket and tie.
    The agencies in this third real estate company did not advertise or solicit clients. Anyone interested in their specific apartments knew where to go and when. They catered to a specific group of clients who were less interested in an apartment’s décor or proximity to a specific subway line, and more interested in the current occupant.
    Each of these real estate offices was, in fact, an assassination bureau.
    It was effective, direct, lucrative, and beyond the reach of any branch of law enforcement. Uncle Carlo had worked up the idea with Alan Wagner, a former top-tier Mossad operative, Israel’s equivalent of our CIA, only competent and trustworthy. Together, they devised a system so simple as to be virtually undetectable: A man walks into one of the real estate offices and sits across from the young agent. No names are exchanged. The man is eager to find an apartment, somewhere on the Upper West Side, in the mid-eighties. The agent nods and tells the man, “That’s a wonderful location, close to the park and many bus and subway lines. Doorman or walk-up?”
    The man thinks for a second and then says, “Walk-up, no higher than the third floor, preferably an apartment in the front with a street view. I enjoy looking out a window and seeing the street activity below.”
    “Understood,” the agent says. “Have you just started looking?”
    “A few weeks,” the man says. “In fact, I saw a building I just loved. It was on West 84th. I believe the number was 205.”
    “I’ll check and see if what you are looking for is available in that building,” the realtor says. “Are you in a hurry to move?”
    “I would like to be in at the end of the month,” the man says, “at the latest.”
    “Is it just you or do you have family?”
    “No,” the man says. “There will be only one tenant.”
    And so, the death deal is made. The target lives at 205 West 84th Street, third-floor apartment facing the street. He lives alone and is to be killed before the month is out. The price for such a hit is $25,000, a fee the prospective tenant will have placed in a rental car parked on a side street in Long Island City, the keys left in a men’s room stall at a nearby restaurant, the money picked up not by the realtor but by one of Uncle Carlo’s trusted couriers. The cash