The Good Rat (13 page)

We make one important editorial comment here. The career of a criminal, just like that of a politician, often has years pass between noteworthy events. A state assemblyman may sit quietly through two or three terms before he thinks of something that makes even the least bit of sense. The criminal of course can be off the grid for five, ten, and these days even twenty years. The other profession where years frequently are lost is boxing.
The Ring Record Book
runs an annual list of a fighter’s bouts, and here and there it states, “2002–2005 INACTIVE.” During that span the fighter was probably quite active at recreation periods in San Quentin but missing at Olympia Auditorium matches.

• Q:
  After Banda told you about his concerns regarding Jeweler Number One, what did you do next?
  
• A:
  I told him the same thing as I told him on the other jeweler: Get me all the information on him—his name, where he lives, where he works, what kind of car he drives—and I said, You have that already once before from the guy. He said, I don’t really remember where I put it, but I’ll get it for you by tomorrow.
  
• Q:
  Did Banda ever indicate to you that he knew Jeweler Number One?
  
• A:
  Yes, he definitely knew him. He lived in the same neighborhood as Joe, in Williamsburg.
  
• Q:
  Okay. So I will take you to the time where you first learned of the law-enforcement attention with respect to
  this bond deal. What happened after you learned of that law-enforcement attention?
  
• A:
  I asked Joe Banda—I asked Joe what was going on. He told me that—that the banker was being questioned by Interpol and that he was told Jeweler Number Two was going to tell them that he got the bonds—the treasury bill from Joe Banda. I said to Joe, I don’t understand what’s going on. The banker got a hundred thousand, and I didn’t even know there was a Jeweler Number Two. I thought Jeweler Number One had the connection with the bank. He said no, there was another jeweler. So I said, Did the banker get the hundred thousand? He says no. I said, you know, Then what happened? He says, I thought the second jeweler was giving him the money. He deducted it from the cut-up. But he never gave him the money. Then I—I made up my mind that if Jeweler Number Two lied and said he gave the banker the hundred thousand and put the hundred thousand in his pocket, he was a guy that was going to give up Joe Banda, and then Joe Banda was going to give me up, and I would go back to prison, and I put a contract out on the guy. On Jeweler Number Two.
  
• Q:
  Okay. So Jeweler Number Two is the one who actually has the connections in Europe, is that correct?
  
• A:
  Yes. Joe Banda comes and tells me. He said that the banker was being bothered and that the banker called Jeweler Number Two—and was telling him that the government was looking—was looking to investigate this, this crime, and Joe told me that he felt that Jeweler
  Number Two was going to cooperate. Joe would get implicated, and I felt then that I would get implicated.
  
• Q:
  What if anything did you ask Banda to do?
  
• A:
  I asked Banda to get me the—the Jeweler Number Two’s home address, where he worked, what kind of car he drove, the license-plate number.
  
• Q:
  About how much time went by before he gave it to you?
  
• A:
  Very quickly, within a couple of days.
  
• Q:
  What did you tell Banda you needed the information for?
  
• A:
  I told him that we were going to—to talk to the guy and try and shake him up, try and get him to—to go back to the point where he won’t cooperate.
  
• Q:
  When you say “shake him up,” what do you mean by that?
  
• A:
  Scare him, threaten him.
  
• Q:
  In terms of scaring him or threatening him, what specifically do you mean? Do you mean to have him beaten up?
  
• A:
  No. Just to grab him and show him that we could grab him and tell him that he took money to do what he did. He was a partner in this thing, and he was the one who was the liar. If he had given the banker the hundred thousand, there wouldn’t have been a problem. The banker probably would have went along with the scheme. That’s what I told Joe.
  
• Q:
  Okay. Did Banda, in your estimate, have any other indications from you that you were going to have this guy killed?
  
• A:
  No. I called up Frank Santora.
  
• Q:
  All right. After you contacted Santora, did there come a time that you had a conversation with him about this?
  
• A:
  I told him I had a problem and I felt it was going to be a very serious problem, and I asked him if he had the ability to—to take a murder contract.
  
• Q:
  What did he say to you?
  
• A:
  Without any doubt. He said he was going to go and see his cousin and talk it over with his cousin. Frankie said there was no problem. It could be handled.
  
• Q:
  Okay. What happened next?
  
• A:
  I had—Frankie came back and told me that they could do it and give him whatever information I have on the guy, and we discussed money.
  
• Q:
  When Frankie said to you they could do it, what did you take that to mean?
  
• A:
  Meaning him and his cousin and whoever else they were going to use at that point. I didn’t know Steve at that point. When we agreed on the price, Frankie told me it was him, his cousin, and his cousin’s partner.
  
• Q:
  Okay. For the record, did you later learn who Frankie’s cousin was that he was referring to?
  
• A:
  Louis Eppolito.
  
• Q:
  Who was the cousin’s partner that Santora was referring to?
  
• A:
  Stephen Caracappa.
  
• Q:
  Okay. So when you discussed price for the murder of Jeweler Number Two, what was—what were the discussions?
  
• A:
  I told him I had—didn’t have a lot of money at that particular time and—but he knew I was good for it and I said, Would you take twenty-five thousand dollars for this? I could pay it ten, ten and five, every week. And Frankie said, That’s fair. Don’t worry about it. And he—he took the contract.
  
• Q:
  So what was the agreement, the essence of the agreement between you and the other parties?
  
• A:
  That I would pay him twenty-five thousand dollars and that he and his associates, Frank Santora’s cousin and Frank Santora’s cousin’s partner, would kill the jeweler.
  
• Q:
  Did you have any discussions with Mr. Santora about the plan for carrying out the murder?
  
• A:
  That they would find out where he—check his address, check his house, and check where he worked and take him as he was coming down the—the highway, the roads coming from his house to work. They would pull him over with a flashing light. And they told me that they would say that he was wanted for a hit-and-run and that someone wanted to look at him, and if it wasn’t him, they would take him back right away. And they got in—in the car. The jeweler got in the car, according to Frankie, with Steve and Louie, and Frankie drove the jeweler’s car.
  
• Q:
  Okay. So you went from Santora telling you about how it was going to be carried out to when Santora told you about what actually happened?
  
• A:
  How it was done. Next thing that happened is I got called to a—to a business meeting in Arizona, and I
  went to Arizona. Frank called my house, and I called my wife and said, Tell him I’ll be home in two days, but if it is an emergency, give him the number where I’m staying and have him call me. She says, He said he’ll see you when you get back.
  
• Q:
  Prior to meeting with Santora when you got back from Arizona, did you have a phone conversation with him in order to arrange the meeting?
  
• A:
  Yes. He told me that he was going to come and see me.
  
• Q:
  When you met with Santora, what did he tell you about what had happened?
  
• A:
  Yes. That they—the guy was driving his car, and they pulled him over. The three of them were in one car. Frank, Louie, and Steve. And that they put on the flashing light and they pulled the guy over and they told him that he was wanted in a hit-and-run and that they had to take him in for a lineup and that if he wasn’t identified, they would take him right back. And they put him in the car, and then Frankie got in his car. They took him to a—according to Frankie, they took him to a—to an automobile-repair place or collision place that was a friend of theirs, and I said to Frankie, What happened? He says, We shot him. I said, Who shot him? He says, I did. I said, Then what happened to him? He said, I took him out and I got rid of the body. I said, Does—does the other two guys know where the body is? He says no. He says, I wouldn’t trust anybody with that information.
  
• Q:
  In your experience in organized crime, is it common or uncommon to be told where a body is buried?
  
• A:
  Uncommon. Because some days people—later on in life people become informants, and they would be able to lead people to the body, government people to the body.
  
• Q:
  Did Santora tell you anything about what he did with Jeweler Number Two’s car?
  
• A:
  Yes. He told me he took it to the airport. He put it in long-term parking, and he left it there.
  
• Q:
  After Santora told you about what had been done, did there come a time that you paid Santora?
  
• A:
  Yes. A total of thirty thousand dollars.
  
• Q:
  As a part of your cooperation agreement on this case, did you plead guilty to this murder?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  At the time you pled guilty to this murder, did you know the person’s name who was murdered?
  
• A:
  No.
  
• Q:
  Do you know it as you sit here today?
  
• A:
  No.
  
• Q:
  Did you ever get questioned by Mr. Banda about what had happened?
  
• A:
  Yes. I told him the jeweler must have ran away. He must have ran away from the government, from the investigation. Must have run out on a long vacation.
  

“They come in here, fifty of them,” Dominick from Kiev is saying.

He is standing at the entrance to the parking lot and collision garage at 2232 Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn.

“Who?”

“All agents, police, who knew? They wouldn’t say anything to me. They stood here and talked. About nothing. They do nothing. They stand here and talk. Fifty of them, they stand here talking about nothing,”

Dominick is describing the platoon of federal agents who rushed to this place upon Burton Kaplan’s courtroom discourse concerning the unhappy fate of Jeweler Number Two.

“Then come all the televisions. I stood inside the office from them. I still saw me on television. They got it from the helicopter.”

Burt Kaplan testified that this lot was where Lou Eppolito and Steve Caracappa took the jeweler and murdered him on a cold morning.

“We have organized crime in Kiev where I come from,” Dominick says, “but the government is the boss, the top people, so they do not come and take your parking to bury somebody. Why should they? They have all of Russia to bury anybody they kill. The government has some reason they do not tell you for killing a person. Here, the organized crime must shut somebody’s mouth. They know. Organized crime here has a reason. We don’t know anything in Kiev. Here is better. At least some of us know.”

The entrance to the lot is narrow and has a chain-link
gate. On the right is a small hut with a peaked roof and windows, which give a clear view of parked cars. This is the office, where bills are noted and a dispatcher directs the tow trucks. You walk inside the gate to a row of stubby garages, sixteen of them. They face a line of delivery vans and contractors’ panel trucks nosed against a storm fence, which runs along a muddy bank that spills twenty feet down a slope to old railroad tracks. They are covered with so much garbage that only a few yards of track can be seen.

Dominick from Kiev works for the lot’s owner, Peter Franzone, fifty-six, five foot four. Franzone had told police, “I saw three men go into garage number four and only two come out.”

Franzone has his own story. He was nine years old and working at a grocery store after school. He and a couple of other kids broke into a recycling plant. The score was sixty-five dollars. Young Franzone went on rides at Coney Island and ate hot dogs and bought a cowboy hat and a toy gun. Pete and friends were caught two days later. The cowboy hat got him off. Then he becomes old enough to do man’s work, age twelve, in a junkyard. He makes eight dollars a week, and he gives most of it to his mother. He keeps a couple of dollars in order to be a big guy in the candy store. This starts a life in which he did not miss a day of work. He drove a Chinese laundry truck when he was underage, fixed flats at a gas station, worked in junkyards, which creates too much familiarity with cars that belong to others. He is driving with his
friends in a car that does not belong to him. The ride ends as quickly as it starts. Franzone had an accident, and the cops took him to a judge who, discovering that the urchin in the well could not read, sent him to an upstate youth facility that Peter remembers as a farm with classrooms. He evaded reading and writing lessons by studying welding. He went back to the junkyard, where he took radiators and starters out of the smashed cars, cleaned the parts up, and sold them as secondhand. He did this until he was twenty-one and could get a tow-truck driver’s license. You tell me how he got a tow-truck driver’s license without being able to read.