The Exceptions

TWO


There were two reasons to kill the McCartneys: to keep them from testifying or to punish them for having testified. Either way, bleak.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department started working its sloppy sleight of hand, a magician with only one trick in its repertoire: the disappearing act.

Federal Witness Protection.

This suburban family had witnessed less than fifteen seconds of criminal activity, and once the Department of Justice was done getting theirs, the McCartneys would be thrown out in the wild to fend for themselves, protected by the illusion of contrived existences. Five years earlier, Louie Salvone had tried giving my dad up in a plea bargain, gave the feds four crates of documentation, and they still couldn’t nail Pop for a single thing.

Things didn’t turn out very well for Louie. All I can say is this: shiv.

In Salvone’s case, he had it coming. He could have done his six months and come out a stronger man in the organization as a result. But by that time Louie’s desire to party had matured into a pretty serious coke habit, and the combined thought of going a half year without a fix—not to mention the nightmare of going through withdrawal in prison—had him looking for the fastest way out.

The McCartneys, on the other hand, were guilty of nothing more than wanting a plate of eggs, some orange juice, and a pair of cappuccinos. You can’t even say it was an error in judgment; they were simply customers, and frankly the kind any restaurateur would want in his establishment. Going down the alley might have been a bit much, but what father wouldn’t go knock on a few doors for his child?

A little over a year later, I started to hear more and more about taking care of the McCartneys. On our retainer were not one but two of New York’s most powerful law firms. The bigger of the two, the firm with the most connections and people on the take, crafted a gorgeous defense for my father. The Justice Department wasn’t foolish; they had the McCartneys deposed to what they’d witnessed mere minutes after they were thrown into Witness Protection, produced enough videotape to single-handedly turn a profit for TDK. But Pop’s legal team somehow managed to get anything this innocent family said in the videos thrown out on some technicality I never fully understood, which had little impact on how airtight the government’s case was; the witnesses would simply be able to retell it live in court—and Pop’s legal team knew it. What it gave the Bovaros, you see, was time.

Time to eliminate the witnesses.

I was getting older, had just turned twelve, and as my usefulness surged, so did the significance of conversations I might be privy to, or at a minimum overhear. Couple that with my oldest brother, Peter, basking in the glory of knowing and hearing more than the rest of us and desperate to prove it, and the image of the future started taking shape, its brightness and vibrancy hinging on finding the McCartneys. Without them, the Justice Department would have to return to Louie Salvone’s ineffective documentation of how the Bovaros ran numbers back before I was born, a business line our family all but exited once most states in the Union had sanctioned lotteries. I grew a lot during that period—physically, of course, I started to resemble the rugged structure of my older brothers, Peter and Gino, eighteen and fourteen, respectively—but psychologically, too. Prior to then, I thought my dad was in the restaurant business, and he was, sort of. He owned many—as a means to launder money and shuffle stolen goods out the back. But I soon came to realize that we were special. Mafia special. The terms my father’s family and associates started using in my presence began sounding more significant. Guys were getting whacked, deadbeats were getting roughed up, troublemakers were having their balls handed to them and occasionally shoved down their throats. In my younger days, where my uncle Sal told me to stay out of Vin’s kitchen to forestall the horror of my father’s brutality, now he’d ask me to grab a mop and do my share.

I was, however, only twelve, demonstrated by my assumption that the only targets were the senior McCartneys. But once I heard my father speak of the plan to eliminate all three of them at once, I experienced the very first instance of disrespect for the way my family conducted its business. Why would anyone want to off a child? A child that was probably still learning how to read? Wouldn’t it be easy enough to confuse or scare the kid on the stand?

But here’s the term I heard over and over in our house like a frigging mantra: no loose ends.

I mentally ran through the roster of men in my father’s organization, trying to find the sociopath who might be able to level the barrel at a little girl and pull the trigger. Only one contender came to mind: Paulie Marcone, a nut job who found heartfelt enjoyment in assaulting and killing for any loosely justifiable reason. The problem with Paulie was how odd things would haunt him and cause him to break down. The guy could eat steak pizzaiola every day of the week but couldn’t fathom eating a hunk of veal. He couldn’t bear to see a suffering animal or a crying kid or an old lady struggling to get her groceries to the top floor of her brownstone. Beat him backing into a parking spot on Court Street, though, and you’ll drive home one-handed. This strange, largely unseen sensitive side made him useless in conducting the last hit.

Ultimately, no one materialized—because no one had to; the feds managed to keep the McCartneys well hidden. We had a few people in Justice, mostly lower-level clerks working off gambling debts, who’d occasionally cough up nothing more than advanced notice on what judge we might draw for a particular case or how many boxes of evidence were sitting in a warehouse in Jersey. But getting information on the Federal Witness Protection Program is precisely as difficult as you might imagine. For starters, the program is run out of the U.S. Marshals Service, and the entry points to that system are fragmented; having contacts at Justice wasn’t enough. At the time, we didn’t have direct insiders with the FBI, either—but if we had, they’d have been useless, too. We needed a source at the Marshals Service simply to figure out where to begin.



The entire thing seemed to go away for about a month—for me; tension in our family mounted as the McCartneys disappeared into an oblivion of safety. It should be noted that the one thing the Bovaros have done well since the moment our elders stepped off the boat is the one thing that saved my father from a life in prison. Those things we deal in on a daily basis—money laundering, carting, fixing, bookmaking, loan sharking—are the incidental things that occur as a result of the one integral component. The district attorneys call it fear; we call it influence. Possessing power over others is the most instinctive human concept; you either want it or are willing to succumb to it.

That said, my father’s influence cut a wide swath across this great land, a terribly unfortunate truth for the McCartneys. While the feds did an impressive job of keeping them hidden, they could do little to stop those who served my father. A mere five weeks into their relocation, the little McCartney girl accidentally outed her entire family to her first grade class by using her birth name. Within hours the little Arkansas town was abuzz with what had happened, which eventually spilled its way to a bar where a drunken loser looking to make good on an extended debt in our organization hoped he might turn the information into a clean slate. The feds hurried the McCartneys along, but not before the information got back to New York, not before Arthur, Lydia, and Melody were being followed by men in our crew.

My life began a transformation in that moment. The little girl was to be hunted, killed, buried, her existence whittled down to a memory for her extended family that would grow fainter by the year. The flame of innocence that had been flickering for years in my family would soon be extinguished and redemption would be impossible—and most troubling, I seemed to be the only one who cared. Granted, most guys who took a beating (or worse) from a Bovaro had earned it, and even as a kid I learned to be okay with that. But knowing that this poor little girl would be running her whole life because of me became more than I could bear.



For the next eighteen months, through the countless motions to delay the trial, both the Bovaros and the McCartneys lived out a series of near misses. My uncles were on the trail of the McCartneys repeatedly, with a few opportunities for elimination that ended in empty-handed returns. Other times, the McCartneys inexplicably slipped right out from under us, as though we were right behind them—when we weren’t.

Every trip, every time someone was sent to rub them out, I went sleepless. I lost weight. When I didn’t actually become ill, I feigned it and resigned myself to my bedroom. I spent some time throwing up and more time fighting back tears and a burgeoning anger. Shamefully, the elder McCartneys weren’t my concern, rarely crossed my mind; the little girl would come into my room and haunt me like the ghost she had yet to become.

I’d overhear the conversations and loose planning of how and who would terminate the family. They would run through a generic itinerary like a grocery list. The mother. The father. The plans to evade the feds. And the girl. One conversation in particular stuck with me, a discussion between my father and an associate whose voice I couldn’t quite place.

Then they started speaking in Italian, which usually meant they wanted to talk confidentially. The only people in my family who could really get a full grasp of a conversation spoken in full Italian, complete with Sicilian dialect, would be the grown-ups. By then, though, I was well on my way to acquiring broken Italian—learned mostly through discussions like these—that I carry with me to this day, and I was able to understand enough of the language to translate the following exchange while they ate at the small table in our kitchen:

“This is our last shot, amico,” my father said softly. Amico means friend, and everyone was amico—could have been a son, an associate, or someone about to serve him a gelato or take a bullet.

“We know how to find them, Tony. We’re going to take care of it, eh?” said Amico.

“Need to be.” Or something like that.

“You know what this means for our family. For me.”

“I know, ’Tone.”

Then some gibberish about the puttanesca.

“We can’t take them out on the courthouse steps.” I’m not even sure which one of them said this. The point was they seemed more determined than ever. The point was they seemed more desperate than ever. The point was… the McCartneys did not stand a chance.

They were the Smiths this time, and it turned out Melody’s name was Karen. I know that all the Karens who’ve dwelled on this planet were at one time little girls, but the name sounded so mature to me. Karen Smith sounded like a lady running for elected office or the owner of a local business. I overheard the aliases of her parents, too, but I’ve long forgotten them; they were, after all, the second set in a lengthy series. And the fact that they received this series of identities exposes a truth: The Smiths survived. Long after the fact, I was informed that no one had a clear shot. I wondered if maybe even the most villainous guy on the job looked down at little Melody and knew there was no way to end her life, that some glow of purity and promise shielded her and weakened those men of madness and steel, that maybe she crystallized everything that was wrong in the way we led our lives.

But probably… they just couldn’t get the shot.



Then the trial came. Arthur and Lydia testified. And it didn’t matter. Six days after jury selection, an unplanned gathering materialized in our house where celebrating occurred as though we had just won the case. Wine flowed. My mother and her sister produced enough food for an Italian wedding. The house smelled of garlic and basil and braised meats and browning cheeses. Lawyers of all ethnicities and faiths filled our living room, embraced and rejoiced. The trigger of this merriment: An astounding precedent dating back to 1903 on how one is led to the acquisition of evidence, expected to be thrown out of court—laughed out, actually—caught a judge with an open mind. Arguments were well delivered from the prosecution, but remember we had the best defense money could buy (or whatever); these were not stupid men and women defending my father. I remember watching the banter, the outrage by the prosecutors, the quiet confidence of my father’s legal team, the verbal sparring between them and the judge narrowing their responses. From my uneducated perspective both sides sounded well thought out and convincing. The judge let the attorneys battle until all of a sudden, on the final swipe from my father’s attorney the prosecutor came up dry. He’d run out, cornered. And then the ultimate admission of defeat: He looked at the judge, flipped out his hands, and said, “Your Honor, please.” The way he appeared to be whining and begging at the same time was a sure sign there would be a veritable carnival in the Bovaro household.



Let’s say you coach the New York Giants. You’ve had five losing seasons and you’ve got millions of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans breathing down your neck for not just a playoff bid, but a Super Bowl title. You just nailed a powerhouse of a running back from the University of Florida for three years at twenty million. This kid is going to take you all the way. The only problem is the kid breaks his leg during the season opener and will be lucky to walk after a year of therapy. All you can do is let him sit on the bench and pay out his contract. Everyone feels bad for the kid. Everyone smiles at the kid and gives the kid pats on the back every now and again. You think the kid is a great guy, but now you’re heading into your sixth losing season and the truth is you just wish the kid would sort of go away. Because let’s be honest… what you really need is another powerhouse running back.

I can’t imagine how the conversation must have gone with the McCartneys, their having been hurried into the courtroom under the heaviest of protection, testifying under a layer of Kevlar, then rushed back out of the courtroom to a secluded safe house. The brief feeling of relief and accomplishment they must have had. And the complete sense of loss and despair as they were told the last few years were for nothing.

And now, starting right now, run.