For the Sins of My Father Read online

  BROADWAY BOOKS

  New York

  FOR THE SINS

  OF MY FATHER

  A Mafia Killer, His Son,

  and the Legacy of a Mob Life

  ALBERT DEMEO

  with

  Mary Jane Ross

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  1 Family

  2 Primary Lessons

  3 Little Man

  4 Gemini

  5 Inferno

  6 Soldier

  7 Redemption

  8 Vengeance Is Mine

  9 Double Jeopardy

  10 Collateral Damage

  11 The Abyss

  12 Lazarus

  Epilogue

  For my father,

  that he may find redemption

  For the Sins of the Father shall be visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,

  and walk not according to my commandments.

  —Exodus 20:5

  Acknowledgments

  A profound thank-you to our agent, Alan Nevins of Renaissance Agency, for being the first one to believe in this book, and for finding a way to make it happen. Thank you also to his assistant, Karima Ridgley, for her consistent helpfulness. To Charlie Conrad and Becky Cole, our editors, our gratitude for bringing the text to print in record time and with admirable attention to detail. Another thank-you to their support staff at Broadway Books; producing this book was truly a team effort.

  On a more personal note, we are grateful for the practical support of friends and family: for Tommy, who shared his memories and his unflagging friendship; for Delores, who continues to demonstrate what it means to be a good neighbor; for Erma, the first to listen and the last to judge; for Joe and Maryann, who helped us put together the family puzzle; for Julie, who read the first draft and laughed and cried in all the right places; and for Christy, who spent countless hours listening to Mom talk about the book.

  Every book is a collaboration. We are grateful to all who made this one possible.

  Albert DeMeo

  Mary Jane Ross

  Roy Albert DeMeo was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, to working-class Italian immigrant parents. In his late teens he started a small loan-sharking operation to supplement his after-school jobs. In the early 1960s, he became involved with John Gotti and other members of the Gambino crime family, rising rapidly through the ranks to become a Gambino soldier under Anthony Gaggi. When Carlo Gambino died in 1976, newly appointed successor Paul Castellano promoted Roy to the rank of capo, a made member of the family. Roy's business sense made him a valuable financial asset to Castellano, allowing him to develop lucrative enterprises in pornography, loan-sharking, smuggling, and car theft. Roy was the mastermind behind the biggest auto theft ring in New York history. By the late 1970s he had also become one of the most feared assassins in the city. He was murdered by his own associates in 1983 as part of Castellano's purge of family members who had attracted FBI scrutiny. In the years following his death, dozens of murders were attributed to him by former associates who sought plea bargains with the government. Though most of the allegations were never proven, Roy acquired a posthumous infamy through informants' lurid descriptions of the manner in which he disposed of victims' bodies to avoid detection. Roy DeMeo is survived by his wife, Gina; son, Albert; and two daughters, all of whom have gone on to pursue successful legitimate careers.

  prologue

  CHARON'S CROSSING

  I come to lead you to the other shore,

  Into eternal dark, into fire and ice.

  —DANTE, The Inferno

  So far everything had gone according to plan. Each afternoon for the last few weeks, I had ridden my bicycle past the surveillance vehicles in front of our house. A mile or two later I had stopped at various neighborhood hangouts for a soda or a snack, wound through the familiar Massapequa streets, and then disappeared onto the bike trails that weave through the green woods along the Sound. Just a local thirteen-year-old on a bike. The trails were too narrow for a car to follow. My only company was other bicyclists and the occasional jogger.

  Every day my route varied, and every day I emerged from the woods in a different location to stand vigil beside a different neighborhood pay phone. That afternoon the call had finally come. I was relieved to be taking action at last.

  I had told my mother that I would be spending a few days with Dad. She knew he was away on business, had been for over a month. More than that, she neither knew nor wanted to know. It was safer that way—safer for our family, safer for her sanity. She requested no details, and I offered none. She had long ago made peace with the fact that as the only son, I was the man of the family in my father's absence. I came and went as I chose. No questions asked.

  After dinner that night I went to the cabinet in my father's study and removed the cash he'd asked for. Then I went to my room and began packing: enough clothes to last me for a couple of weeks, copies of the evening newspapers, and, of course, my gun. I'd been carrying it for months now, carefully concealed in my clothing. My father didn't like my carrying it, but as he'd explained to me, it was necessary. Our family couldn't hide in the house all day. So I hid the revolver from my sisters, and I hid the fear from myself. It's what a man does, my father had taught me.

  I double-checked the items I'd packed, sealed them tightly inside a plastic garbage bag, slipped into my swim trunks, and lay down on top of the bed to wait. The alarm clock was set for 3:30 A.M., but I couldn't sleep. Instead I lay there in the warm darkness, damp with humidity, and watched the glowing dial on my bedside clock inch away the hours, millisecond by millisecond.

  At 3:25 I turned off the alarm switch and rose silently, picking up the garbage bag from the carpet. I slipped down the hall in my bare feet, past my sisters' rooms, pausing only by the master bedroom to listen for my mother. I held my breath as seconds passed. Utter stillness. Good. Moving stealthily down the stairs, I made my way through the kitchen and down to the basement, past the target range and my sister's art studio to the boiler room.

  The next part was tricky. I would need my flashlight. Turning on the small beam, I aimed it carefully at the windowsill. My hand did not shake. I slipped a flat clip onto the wire that triggered the alarm system; then, taking a deep breath, I unlatched the window and slid it open. To my great relief, the alarm did not go off. I climbed through the window, into the storage area under the backyard decking, and reached back through for the garbage bag filled with my belongings. I could smell the salt air on the wind. I closed the window, removed the clip, and crept toward the door. On the other side were the steps that led to the canal behind our house.

  As I opened the door, I heard Major whine. Pausing for a moment, I whispered, “It's all right, boy,” as he put his muzzle out to lick my hand. Ordering him to stay, I paused once more, searching the night air for signs of intruders. Nothing. Down the ramp in the darkness, to the floating dock at the back of our house. I sat down on the edge of the boards, my ankles dangling in the water, and began to tie the garbage bag around my body.

  It was beautiful that night. The summer air was velvet and warm, the darkness broken only by occasional pinpoints of light, shining down on the water from neighbors' back docks. Yet I was immune to the beauty that surrounded me, focused only on the task at hand. Jerking on the rope to make sure I had tied the bag securely, I slipped silently into the chilly water. I made certain there was no splash.

  I began to swim, my muscles warming quickly to the exercise. The only sounds disturbing the stillness were my
own breathing, the parting of the water as I stroked, and the faint roar of the Atlantic, less than a mile away. My eyes adjusted rapidly to the darkness, and I focused on the empty shoreline three hundred yards ahead. As I drew nearer, the outline of vegetation came into view, illuminated faintly by the carriage lamp in a neighbor's yard. Not much farther.

  Finally my fingers touched sand, and I staggered onto the dim shore, the stirring reeds ghostly in the darkness. I untied the bag, wrapped my arms around it like a sleeping child, and climbed carefully up the embankment through the shoulder-high grass. A few yards later I emerged onto a small residential street that dead-ended onto the canal. In the darkness a car was waiting, lights out and engine purring smoothly. I climbed wordlessly inside, tossing the dripping garbage bag into the back seat as I did so, then turned to look at the driver. He had grown a beard to disguise his appearance, but even in the gloom of the car, the profile was familiar.

  “Anybody see you?”

  “No.”

  Driving quietly into the night, he reached across the seat and patted me, his arm resting on my shoulders.

  “Good job, Al.”

  I leaned my head back against the soft leather upholstery, breathed in the familiar aftershave, and closed my eyes.

  I was safe. I was with my father.

  one

  FAMILY

  Let us go then, you and I,

  When the evening is spread out against the sky

  Like a patient etherized upon a table;

  Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

  The muttering retreats

  Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

  And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

  Streets that follow like a tedious argument

  Of insidious intent

  To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .

  Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

  Let us go and make our visit.

  —T. S. ELIOT, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  My earliest memory is of blindness. I was four years old when I woke up in a hospital crib with patches over my eyes, darkness all around, utterly alone. Confused and disoriented, for a moment I could not understand where I was or why my parents had left me there alone. Then I remembered: I'd had an operation to fix my crossed eye. Fear and loneliness whispered in the invisible room where I lay, and I cried out for my mother and father. When the bandages came off a few days later, the first image to emerge from the blur was my father's worried face. Looking back, it seems fitting. I have spent more than thirty years since then struggling to bring him into focus.

  I was born in a quiet residential Brooklyn neighborhood in 1966, the second child of parents barely out of their teens. I had an older sister named Debra and a teenage stepbrother in my Uncle Joe. My grandfather DeMeo had died when Joe was a baby, and when Grandma DeMeo returned to her native Italy without Joe, my parents took him in as their own. The five of us formed a happy, traditional Italian-American family. A year later we moved to suburban Massapequa, where my younger sister Lisa was born. Grandma returned to Brooklyn shortly before Lisa was born and moved in with her closest friend, Mrs. Profaci—“Mrs. P,” as I called her. Once again, the family was complete.

  Mrs. P lived just down the street from the two-story brick duplex where my father had grown up. It was a green neighborhood in the springtime, with tall, well-established foliage and small shrines to the Virgin Mary in nearly every front yard. The Profacis' towering brick mansion dominated the quiet street. Twice a year until I was five or six, my father took me there to spend the night with my grandmother, down Flatbush Avenue, through a maze of side streets, and up to the corner lot where Mrs. Profaci's house stood. The Profaci home was like another world, a realm of elegant timelessness. The living room was filled with delicately curved gilt French furniture, always perfectly maintained. Pale satin drapes and lace panels covered the windows. Mrs. P was equally elegant in her high heels and pearls. The scent of Chanel No. 5 would wisp into my nostrils whenever she bent to kiss me. With her silver blond hair swept into a French twist, she seemed a human embodiment of the golden furniture that filled her home.

  Mrs. P didn't own a television, so our evenings there were spent in quiet conversation in the kitchen after dinner. Grandma and Mrs. P spoke Italian to each other, but they spoke English to me. Grandma loved to talk about Mrs. P's brother-in-law, Joseph Profaci.Grandma admired everything about him—his custom-made clothing; his luxurious car; the lavish gifts he made to his family; and most of all, the way everyone looked up to him. “Your grandfather was just an ordinary working man, Albert,” she would tell me. “But Joseph Profaci—he was something special. I pray God your father is half the man someday.” One time I asked Mrs. P how her brother-in-law got so rich, but she changed the subject. Mrs. P didn't seem to like talking about him.

  I lived in Massapequa, Long Island, for ten of my first eleven years. It was a wonderful place to grow up. The streets of our neighborhood were wide and clean, the sidewalks lined with children's bikes. It was the kind of place where you could sleep outside on a summer night and feel perfectly safe. My early years there were filled with joy and contentment. At the core of my sense of security was my father.

  No one could have asked for a better father than mine. He was a husky man with dark hair and kind brown eyes, and though he was only five feet, nine inches tall, he was a giant to me. He could pick me up and toss me around as effortlessly as a cotton ball, and he often did. I loved to ride on his shoulders. He spent more time with me than any of the other fathers in the neighborhood spent with their kids. Most of the other fathers were firemen, policemen, teachers, or small business owners who worked on the island and had to be at work by nine o'clock every morning. My dad was different; he was home in the mornings, so he walked me to school while my mother cleaned the house and started lunch. When the other kids were kissing their moms good-bye, I was hugging my dad. Sometimes he brought me a doughnut when he came to pick me up a couple of hours later. I wasn't exactly sure what my father did for a living, and I didn't care. I just liked being with him.

  On sunny weekends my father took my sisters and me for hikes in the nearby nature conservancy. Dad loved being outdoors with us. Dad; our German shepherd, Major; my sisters; and I would all head out after breakfast carrying bags of stale bread my mother packed for us. The path behind our neighbors' house led to a trail through the trees and about half a mile down to a preserve with woods and a small lake. The lake was filled with ducks and swans, and my sisters and I would crouch down near the water's edge and coax the birds with pieces of stale bread. Afterward we would hike through the woods until we got tired. When we were ready to rest, we headed for the big log near our favorite tree to sit down. My father always carried a switchblade. One afternoon my father took the knife from his pocket and carved all of our names on the tree, along with the date. After that we thought of it as our tree, and we visited it whenever we could. It was a DeMeo family secret, our special place in the woods.

  Sometimes my dad took me for rides in the car with him on the weekends. One Saturday he told me he was taking me to the airport to meet someone named Uncle Vinny. “Uncle Vinny isn't a blood relation, Allie, just a friend of mine,” he told me when we pulled into the terminal. I was too interested in watching the planes take off and land to pay much attention when my father introduced me to Vinny.

  “How ya doin', Albert?” Vinny asked as he bent to shake my hand. He had on a blue uniform with his name embroidered on his shirt. We went back into the cargo section with Vinny so my father could talk to him, but I couldn't hear a word they said over the roar of the planes. I explored the dusty cargo area while Dad and Uncle Vinny talked. Vinny looked very earnest and waved his hands around a lot while my father shook his head the way he did when I was naughty. Finally Uncle Vinny gave my father an envelope, and we left.

  It wasn't long until I saw Uncle Vinny again. Early the next Saturday morning Vinny drove up
in a station wagon filled with crates of fresh fruit. My sisters and I lined up on the curb to watch as he carried the wooden crates into our house. We had never seen so much fruit. Along with the ordinary bananas and oranges, there were exotic fruits like guava that not even my mother had ever seen. My mother shook her head as she sorted through the crates, murmuring that there was enough here for half the neighborhood. Uncle Vinny smiled sweetly and murmured, “A little gift for you and the children, Mrs. DeMeo.” The following Sunday he brought us boxes of imported chocolate. The weekend after that he brought beautiful London Fog raincoats for us kids. Trailing behind him back out to the car that afternoon, I asked him where he got all this stuff.

  “They're F-O-T, Albert,” he told me. When I looked blank, he winked at me and said, “You know, F-O-T. Fallen off trucks.” I was amazed. How could the truck drivers be so stupid? This was a lot of stuff. It must be worth an awful lot of money. Uncle Vinny had brought more coats than we needed, so my mom gave the extras to Barbara and Jim, my parents' best friends on the block, for their kids. Jim was a policeman who didn't make much money, so Barbara was really excited to get the coats. Vinny continued dropping things off for us at least once a week, and after a while I started wondering why the truck drivers didn't just pick this stuff up if it wasn't damaged.

  Finally I asked my father about it. He eyed me for a moment, then smiled and said, “Son, can you keep a secret? Man to man?”