Atlas (22 page)

The funny thing is, he actually was afraid. Even though Snipes would never in a million years let loose and bang with him, Sammy was still afraid. And having to deal with that fear for one round wiped him out. Exhausted him. All Snipes did was put pressure on Sammy. He never hit him. He just pursued him. But the pressure, the idea that he might get hit, even though he knew he wouldn't, wore Sammy down. He got wild, threw all these haymakers to keep Snipes from advancing,
but he couldn't connect, he wasn't in control, and it physically wore him out.

There came a day when Sammy took me to lunch at this little café across the street from Gleason's and proposed we go into business together. He just said, “Listen, me and my partner are thinking about going into boxing.” He never mentioned Gotti's name. He just said “me and my partner.”

“This isn't something I would even consider,” he said, “unless I could get into it with a person who knows the business and is somebody I could trust. We'd give you whatever you'd need. I was thinking about seventy-five thousand dollars seed money, two thousand dollars a week in salary to start. Plus, there's a building I'm looking at in Brooklyn…. What do you think? Would you be interested?”

Once I got over my initial surprise, I said, “Sammy, this isn't a business you just go into. There's a lot to it, and if you plunge in and spend a lot of money, you're just going to lose it. You can't start at an elite level—”

“Nah, we'll go right up to that level. Don King would be tickled pink to help me and my partner. To help me and John.” He had finally said the name.

“Fine. I understand you have resources. But I'm telling you, it's a very fragile business, very shaky in lots of ways. You don't get into it and just make money. Shows cost money. It costs money to keep fighters and develop them. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a much longer process than you think.”

“Not for us it won't be.”

“People don't keep their word.”

“Well, you won't have that problem no more. I know you've had problems before and walked away from things.”

“I've made choices. It wasn't like I couldn't handle things.”

“I understand that,” he said. “I'm just saying you won't be walking away from nothing this time. They lie this time, I put them in the trunk.”

“I like to take care of my own problems.”

“That's why I want someone like you. You're your own guy. You know the business and I can trust you.”

“I don't think I'd be interested.”

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Would you at least have dinner with me? I've got some friends who all want me to go into the business. I'm not stupid. They want me to go into the business so I can give them jobs, but I ain't going in unless you go in. Would you at least have dinner with us?”

“I'm telling you right now, I'm not gonna do it.”

“Meet with them. Let them speak. If you still don't want to do it, say it in front of them. That's all I ask. It'll be a nice dinner, and I would appreciate it.”

I agreed to the meeting. It was a big deal, very secret. Sammy said, “Louie will call you an hour before and tell you where it is.”

On the appointed day, Louie called me at seven p.m. and said, “It's at La Tavola.”

It was a place out in Brooklyn. In Bay Ridge. I drove there, and Sammy pulled up in his tan-colored Lincoln right after I arrived. The valet hustled up to take his car. When we walked in, I looked around the bar and I could see that he had guys placed in different spots at the bar. I could tell they were his guys just by the way they looked.

The owner came running up. The rest of the restaurant fell into a respectful hush. The owner was gushing. “Mr. Gravano, so nice to see you again.” I couldn't help thinking,
Here's a guy who's never done anything except kill people, yet he's being treated like he's Frank Sinatra.

We walked toward a big table in the back. There were nine guys, and Sammy introduced me to them all. Everybody was there for a reason, each person. There was a guy, Jimmy this, another guy, Al that, another guy, Danny whatever, and they all had a purpose. One guy was going to do the promotion, another guy was going to do ticket sales, another guy was going to do a thing with the hotels.

The chef came out from the kitchen, fawning all over Sammy. “What do you want tonight, the veal? I'll make it a special way. It'll be beautiful. You'll see.” The waiter brought over bottles of wine, the best wine they had, and asked, “Is this good for you?” Sammy enjoyed every moment of it.

When we were all sitting, Sammy got up to do something, leaving me alone with the others. They all looked at me.

“Teddy, you know he's only going to do this if you say, ‘Yeah.'”

“I'm gonna do what feels right for me.”

“No, no, we know, but it would be nice. There's a lot of money. He's got a lot of money behind him. It would be a good opportunity for you.” They kept looking at me, letting that sink in.

Sammy came back, and we got down to it, he broke it all down. He said, “You know, I've gotten really good in the construction business, but I didn't know nothing about the construction business when I started. I brought people in that knew. I'd never get involved in a business that I didn't know unless I had someone that did know and that I could trust. I'm smart enough to know that.”

Everyone nodded enthusiastically. You got the feeling he could have been saying anything and they would have been just as intent and focused on him. “I'm not going to get involved in the boxing business,” he continued, “unless Teddy Atlas gets involved with me, because he knows the business and you can trust Teddy Atlas. His track record shows he's a man and he's been tested.” He turned in my direction and our eyes met.

“The key to running a successful business,” he went on, “is having the right people putting things together and getting the whole thing…what do you call it? Getting it…” He was struggling for the right word, and they were all looking at him, but no one would say it. They all knew the word he was searching for, but they were afraid to say it.

“What's the word I'm looking for?” Sammy said.

“Organized,” I said.

“Yeah, that's it. Organized.”

Now they were all laughing.

“That's the word,” Sammy said. “You could say it, Ted. I can't say it.”

They all thought it was hysterical, the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

When Sammy had finished talking, they again turned toward me, and I felt compelled to launch into a whole explanation of the mechanics of the boxing business, making clear that it wasn't what they thought it was. I was wasting my time. They wanted to get into it. Their minds were made up. Sammy said, “Teddy, everything will be in your name,” and I was thinking,
Does that mean the indictments, too?

I told them I appreciated that they thought so much of what I did, but that I was committed to the guys I was training and didn't feel like being tied down and getting involved in the business end of boxing.
A couple of Sammy's guys tried to reassure me that it wouldn't work that way with them.

“You won't have to do that stuff. We'll do all that. You won't be burdened with the promotional and business side of things, we will.”

“Yeah, but I just—”

Sammy cut it off. He said, “You want to stay free is what you're saying. You wanna be your own man.”

“Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying. I've turned other things down for the same reason.”

“Yeah, I know. I know I'm not the only one you've said no to.”

In fact, he knew I'd turned down Josephine Abercrombie; I'd turned down the Duvas.

“Well, that's good enough for me,” he said. “If that's your final word, that's your final word. Like I said at the beginning, it doesn't work out, we'll just enjoy a good dinner together.”

So that was that. When I told Nick Baffi about the meeting later, I mentioned how Sammy had said everything would be in my name, and Nick said, “The indictments, too?”

I laughed. “Jesus, Nick, that's exactly what I was thinking when he said that.”

Nick said he had been worried that I'd wind up saying yes to Sammy, but the fact that I'd said no also worried him.

“This guy is dangerous. You don't know how he's gonna react. I know he says he likes you, but he also told Philly that you know a lot of stuff, all the discussions you've been having with him about boxing and fear. He wanted to know from Philly whether you've ever said anything to me about him. He might think you're talking about him and be worried you know his weaknesses. He's the kind of guy who kills people for that.”

But Sammy never brought it up again, and there were no repercussions. We kept training together at the gym and everything was okay. Then one morning he showed up and said, “There's indictments coming down.”

“Yeah?”

“I might have to…You might not see me around for a while.”

We went into our regular routine with the weights. I spotted for him, he spotted for me. He didn't tell me exactly what he was going to do, but it was clear that he might go into hiding or something.

“It's the fuckin' U.S. government coming after me, Bo. They invade countries and they're coming after me. What the fuck are they coming after me for? They want me to do bad things to my friend John. They want me to hurt my friend. They want me to forsake him.”

I was stunned that he was telling me this. He wrestled the weight back on its rest and got up off the bench.

“They want to take my manhood. They want to take it, but they can't take it. The only way they can get it is if I give it.”

“That's right,” I said.

“Take a walk with me,” he said. We left the weight room and went outside. We stepped outside into the cool, late fall air. The street was empty. We started walking. Halfway down the block, he said, “Listen, I hate to even ask you this….”

“What?”

“Could you do me a favor? Would you train my son in boxing while I'm gone?”

I looked at him.

“I just want him to be all right,” he said. “If he's with you I know you'll make him strong and you'll make him all right.”

“Yeah, I'll do you that favor,” I said.

“Thank you.”

He never showed up at the gym the next day. It was strange, after all that time, to be there alone. I was training and he was gone. Louie was gone. They went on the lam. Pennsylvania, Florida, all over the place. One night, they even snuck back into town and showed up at one of Snipes's fights in the Garden wearing fake beards. But eventually they came back for real because Gotti ordered them to come back. Sammy didn't want to, but Gotti did a lot of things that got people screwed.

A few days later, December 11, 1990, the feds went to the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street and arrested Sammy and John and Frankie Locascio and Tommy Gambino and Jimmy Fiello, a.k.a. Jimmy Brown. They brought them out single file. It was on all the news channels. Everyone in the world saw them parading out in handcuffs five of the heaviest wiseguys around.

Not long after that, Louie got in touch with me. He said, “Sammy said you promised to train his son while he's in the can.” At that point, Sammy was still being a stand-up guy, and I felt something for his kid,
Gerard, what he must have been going through, so I made good on my promise. Four or five days a week, Louie would pick up the kid, then he would pick me up, and we'd drive over to Gleason's.

I trained him like I trained any other fighter. He was only fifteen, but he was strong, and he learned. When he progressed to a certain point, I let him spar with Tyrone Jackson, my old fighter. It was good. Louie videotaped it with these small video cartridges, and he was able to get them to Sammy's lawyer. Louie was funny. He would make everybody get in on it. Sammy's father-in-law, who was there, me, Tyrone, everybody. Louie would say, “Okay, this is Howard Cosell here with Gerard “the Bull” Gravano, getting ready for the Golden Gloves….” And he would do this whole shtick. “I got his trainer, Teddy Atlas, here. Teddy, you got anything to say?”

“Yeah, the kid's doin' all right. He's looking okay….” It was funny, the stuff Louie would put together. The lawyers would sneak the tapes in when they were conferring with Sammy in a meeting room. They had monitors and VCRs set up there, because sometimes they needed to go over footage of stuff for the trial. But instead of or in addition to doing that, they'd watch tapes of the kid training and sparring. Sammy would ask Louie while he was watching them, “Is Teddy gonna put him in the Gloves? Does he think he's ready?”

The thing was, Gerard didn't want to fight in the Gloves. “Are you gonna make me go in the Gloves?” he'd ask me.

“I'm not gonna make you do nothing.”

“My father wants me to do it.”

“The only thing I'm doing is training you. Your father felt it would help give you confidence and some direction. But something like the Gloves is up to you to decide, if you want to take boxing that seriously.”

Gerard was very quiet and careful, and he was a little beaten down by having a larger-than-life father. He was afraid of saying how he really felt. One day we were driving to Gleason's. Louie was driving, and we were crossing the Verrazano Bridge. I could see that Gerard didn't want to train, that he was lacking enthusiasm. I said, “You don't wanna train today, do you?”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Tell the truth if you don't wanna train. You don't feel good, take a day off.”

“No, my father will go crazy.”

“You can take one day off.”

“No, I mean I like doing it, it's just sometimes I don't feel like it.”

“Louie, turn the car around.”

“What!” Gerard said.