The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter Read online

  I had been dating Larry for about a year and a half. One night when I wasn’t going out with Larry, a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go to this new bar that had just opened at Seventy-Second Street and Thirteenth Avenue in Brooklyn called the Flamingo Lounge.

  We went to the club and some of my father’s friends were there. We were having a few drinks at the bar. At one point I turned around, and in walked this very handsome man with a big smile on his face. I didn’t know at the time but he was Greg Scarpa.

  He came over to the bar, took his jacket off—he was dressed real sharp—and looked at me. He knew one of my father’s friends and asked him to introduce us. I thought, Wow, but I still didn’t realize that he was a gangster yet. I just knew he was really unique.

  After we were introduced, he stood next to me, bought me a drink and started talking to me.

  “You know, you have the most beautiful black eyes. They’re like olives, black olives. Do you work?”

  I told him I had just gotten a job on Wall Street.

  “Well, you know what I would love to do, Linda? I would love to air-condition that train that you ride on, and just do everything for you.”

  “Oh, Greg, that’s a new one.”

  I had never heard that line before. That night, I knew there was something there. I could see it in him, too, because he came right over to be introduced to me. I was charmed by him, but I didn’t even know he was a gangster. The smile on his face—it was just a beautiful smile.

  As we were talking, I said to him, “Come on. Do you dance?”

  “Of course, I dance.”

  “Well, come on, let’s dance.”

  So he took my hand and led me onto the dance floor. When it was time for me to leave, he asked for my number. But I was dating Larry at the time, so I told Greg I needed time to break up with Larry.

  “Well, you know what, Greg? I’ll call you.”

  “Oh, you want to call me? You’ll wait a week or two.”

  “No. I promise you, I will call you.”

  So he gave me his number. A few days went by and I still hadn’t called him. But I did go out with Larry and we continued going to the Copacabana. We were ready to leave one night when Larry’s wife pulled up in front of the Copa. I didn’t want any trouble so I got in a cab and went to the Flamingo Lounge, where Greg was.

  I told Greg what had just happened and he wanted to know what I was doing with Larry. As we were talking, I heard a horn beeping outside the club. We were sitting by the window at the bar and I looked out and saw Larry. He knew I used to go to the Flamingo.

  Greg and I went outside. Larry said, “Linda, get in the car.” I told him no.

  “She’s coming with me,” Greg said. Now I still didn’t realize that Greg was a gangster, but I knew Larry was a gangster.

  “Well, Greg, maybe I should go.”

  “No, get in the car,” Greg said. His car was parked right in front.

  I got in Greg’s car and Larry pulled right up next to us.

  “Linda, get in the car, come on.”

  I told Greg I should probably just go with Larry. Then, all of a sudden, I see Greg bending down under his seat.

  “No, don’t do that, Greg. He’s a gangster.”

  Meanwhile, so was Greg.

  “Let me just go with him. I’ll talk to him and I’ll tell him that it’s over.”

  I got out of Greg’s car, and I went with Larry. I told Larry that I didn’t want to see him anymore, especially after what had happened with his wife. I said I didn’t want to be bothered. Then I told him to take me home. He was apologizing like crazy, but I told him just to take me home.

  A day or two later I went to the Flamingo and Greg was in the bar. He told me what had been happening.

  “I have a sit-down.”

  “What do you mean you have a ‘sit-down’?”

  He told me it was a sit-down with Joe Colombo, Larry Pistone and somebody from the Gambino family that Larry was with. It was over me. At that point I knew Greg was a gangster in the Colombo family. So he went to this sit-down, and they were arguing back and forth.

  Joe Colombo finally asked, “What does Linda want?”

  Greg said, “She wants to be with me, and I want to be with her.”

  Greg came out the winner. Larry wasn’t supposed to go near me anymore. I was Greg’s, and that was it. And that was how it ended with Larry, and I started seeing Greg.

  After that I was with Greg every day, and every night. He used to send beautiful fruit baskets to my house every day. I lived with my father, and my father loved it. But he didn’t know I was seeing a gangster. He wanted to know who was sending the fruit baskets. I told him it was this really nice guy named George I had just met.

  That went on for a week or two. And then, all of a sudden, Greg started sending flowers instead. My father wanted to know why he was sending flowers. He told me to tell him to send the fruit baskets again.

  Greg bought me a car. He bought me a little dog, a French poodle. I told Greg I was going to give the dog to my father to keep him company. He said whatever I wanted to do was fine. It was all about me—whatever made me happy is what he did.

  As we got closer, he told me all about himself and his family. He was born in Brooklyn in 1928. He was the second of five kids born to Italian immigrants. He had one brother, Sal, and three sisters, Marie, Vincenza and Theresa, who wasn’t well. His mother, Mary, used to take care of her.

  At one point Theresa was in the hospital. One day while she was there, the family brought her food. They left her alone for a few minutes while she was eating. She choked on the food and died.

  When Greg was really young, about seven, he had to work with his father, who used to deliver coal. Greg hated it and always wanted to live a better life—the same type of life the local gangsters were living.

  When we were dating, Greg used to take me to his mother’s house in Brooklyn for dinner. She made the greatest homemade pasta. When I had Linda, she knitted beautiful outfits for her.

  Greg was a family man. Everything was about his family. He just adored his family and the people close to him, and nobody could talk bad about them. Greg and I spent a lot of time with his sister Marie and her husband, Tony. When we bought our condo in Florida some years later, they bought one right next door to us. We were really close to Marie and her husband.

  Greg and Sal used to always butt heads. He loved Sal, but Sal was a thickhead and never listened to Greg. When Sal got made, he wasn’t in the Colombo family, but he became part of that family later on.

  Sal got involved with the Mob first. By the time Greg was about seventeen, he was pretty street-smart. He caught the eye of local mobster Charlie LoCicero of the Profaci crime family, who recruited him into the life.

  Greg told me about the ceremony when he was made in 1950. First, he said, he had to be accepted for membership by all the guys in the family. Then he was called to a meeting with the boss, the underboss, the consigliere, all of the captains and the member who proposed him for membership.

  The boss then asked him if he was willing to kill and obey any orders given to him by his bosses. When Greg said yes, the boss who was running the ceremony asked if he was left-handed or right-handed. When he said he was right-handed, the boss pricked the trigger finger of that hand. A few drops of Greg’s blood spilled onto a card bearing the image of a saint.

  The card was set on fire and, Greg said, he had to pass the card quickly from hand to hand so he wouldn’t get burned. While he was moving the card from one hand to the other, he took the oath of loyalty in Italian to the Mafia family: “With this oath I swear that if I ever violate this oath, may I burn as this paper.” During the ceremony Greg was specifically asked if he would participate in a killing. If he had said no, he wouldn’t have been made.

  When my father met Greg, I introduced him as “George,” and Greg went right along with it. My father loved him. A couple days after they met, my father went to the club to play cards.
Sonny, one of the guys at the club, told him I was going out with a big gangster named Greg Scarpa. He said I couldn’t be going out with Greg Scarpa because I was seeing some man named George.

  When my father got home, he had some questions for me.

  “Linda, this guy, Sonny, just told me that you’re going out with Greg Scarpa.”

  “Well, yeah, Dad. But you’ve met him, and he’s really a nice guy.”

  “Greg Scarpa?” My father was in shock because Greg was a really big gangster.

  I told Greg what had happened—that one of the guys from the club—a guy he knew, too—told my father about us. And that guy got a few smacks for opening his mouth.

  On the street I knew everyone feared Greg. To me, I couldn’t understand it because he was a sweetheart. He did everything for me. People were afraid to go into the Flamingo Lounge because they were afraid to meet up with him. But I didn’t know him like that—to me, he was the best. He was always taking me to beautiful restaurants for dinner and drinks.

  He had my birthday that first year at the Copacabana. I walked in with him and there was Joe Colombo and a whole bunch of goodfellas sitting at the table. I was getting all these beautiful gifts. It was great to have the respect. People who had never talked to me before would pass me on the street and ask how I was doing. When I was at the Flamingo, I’d order Chinese food from a nearby Chinese restaurant. When they delivered it, the guy always told me I didn’t have to pay. So I ordered Chinese food almost every night.

  Greg and I spent as much time as we could together. He used to pick me up in the daytime, and we’d go to the park and walk around.Then we’d sit in the car just making out. He fell in love right away, and I could tell. He was a happy person, caring, giving to those he loved. But if you did him wrong, he would kill you.

  If you hurt his family in any way or disrespected them, Greg wasn’t the type of person who believed in just giving you a beating, because then you could go to the cops and talk. So either you didn’t say anything or Greg would kill you. That’s what he did. It was just part of the lifestyle—a lifestyle that he didn’t hide from me.

  One night he said, “Let’s take a ride. I have to meet this guy. I have to get some coins and stamps he’s selling.”

  So I took a ride and I sat in the car across the street from the lot where the guy was parked. Greg went into the other guy’s car. I saw him put his arm around the guy; then, all of a sudden, I heard “boom, boom.” He shot him in the head and just took the stamps and the coins. He wasn’t paying for them. Then he came back to the car like nothing happened. He was all smiles. But that was Greg. I think his adrenaline went up when he killed somebody.

  I was always with Greg. If he had to meet someone, I would be there. If people came to my house for a meeting or to talk to him, he never told me to go into the other room. In fact, if I got up to leave, he’d say, “Sit down, sweetheart.” And I’d sit down. Everyone got used to it. It was like I was one of the boys.

  Once Greg and his crew did a robbery at an airport—it was jewelry. Greg said they had to bring the stuff back to the house. I said sure, as long as he gave me something. So the guys came over with these big airport bags and laid all the jewelry out on the table. Greg gave me whatever I wanted.

  Even though I knew what he did, I never thought Greg would get arrested. I never thought he’d get shot. I never thought he would die. It just wasn’t in my head, none of that stuff, because he had a lot of backing from the FBI. I felt very secure with Greg, and I think Greg felt secure, too, because he just did what he wanted. I mean there was nothing he wouldn’t do.And the FBI knew about it before he did it. Greg lived the gangster life. He’d go out killing people or robbing banks, robbing airports or trucks. And he’d talk to the FBI.

  After we dated for a while, I knew I wanted to have kids with Greg. I wanted my own family, my own kids. But in those days, you didn’t have kids without getting married—and Greg was already married. I didn’t want to hurt my father by doing that, so I talked to Greg about it.

  “Listen, I’m going to just meet somebody and marry him. Then we can have kids now, until we can move in together. I don’t want to have kids without being married.”

  “No, what are you crazy? We just move in. We’ll get an apartment.”

  I told him I couldn’t do that to my father, so I married this nice guy named Charlie. I lived with Charlie until I had Joey. Then two or three months after Joey was born, Charlie left; and then a little while after that, Greg moved in.

  I grew up thinking Charlie was my real father. At that time—I was born in 1969 and Joey came along a couple years later—having a baby without being married just wasn’t done. My mother’s marriage to Charlie ultimately ended—they eventually divorced—and Greg moved in with us, but I still called Charlie my father.

  Until I was about four or five years old, we lived with Charlie in Brooklyn. We lived on Fifty-Fifth Street, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Avenues. I didn’t remember exactly when Greg came into the house because I was so young. I just remember that it was Charlie; then, all of a sudden, it was Greg because Greg was always part of our lives.

  I called him “Greggy” at the time—I didn’t call him “Dad.” I called Charlie my dad, and so did my brother. But we were really confused. We didn’t understand why Greg was in the house acting like a daddy, but then we also had Charlie, who was Daddy.

  My father had another family—his wife, Connie, and four kids: Deborah, the oldest, Greg Junior, the second oldest, Bart and Frankie, the youngest. When my father separated from Connie, she and the kids lived in New Jersey.

  I called Greg Junior, “Gregory.” He was about twenty years older than me. In the beginning I didn’t know he was my brother because I didn’t know Greg Senior was my father. But Gregory was very good to me. He acted fatherly toward me. He used to call me “dollface,” and he always gave me hugs and kisses. He was very affectionate like a family member would be—and that just confused me even more.

  We asked a lot of questions, but my parents—Greg and my mother—didn’t really make it easy for us.

  “Well, Charlie is your dad. You have to see him every other Sunday, or every Sunday—whenever else you want, you could see him. But you see him on Sundays,” my mother said.

  Even so, Greg acted like a real father in the house. He put us to bed, helped us with homework—all the things fathers did. Except for Sundays when Charlie picked us up. But the fact was even when we were young, we were being taught that Greg was in charge.

  “Something happens, you tell me, and I’ll take care of it,” he told us.

  When my little brother, Joey, was about four, he got into a fight with another young boy. The kid bullied my brother, and my brother came home crying.

  “What happened, Joey?” my father asked.

  My brother told him that this kid had bothered him. My father went into his bedroom and came out holding a baseball bat.

  “Okay, take this bat and hit him over the head with the bat, and then when he’s crying, tell him to go get his father.”

  He was telling this to a little four-year-old. So my brother went out to do what my father told him to do. But Joey made up with the other little boy and didn’t end up hitting him.

  Most of the time growing up on Fifty-Fifth Street was pretty normal. My father used to watch TV with us and play video games. He was a regular dad. Taking care of us when we got hurt or when we were sick.

  One day I was playing outside and I fell and hurt my knee. I was screaming like somebody was killing me. My father came running out of the house because I was yelling at the top of my lungs. He jumped over the patio, thinking I must have been really injured. And there I was, with a little scratch on my knee.

  He picked me up and said, “Oh. What happened, my baby? You got a little boo-boo.” But meanwhile he was having a heart attack because he thought something really bad had happened to me.

  Another time I was extremely sick. I had such a high fever and
my father and my mother couldn’t bring it down. They took me into the bathroom to put me in a cool bath. I was crying and screaming and my fever just kept getting higher and higher. My father couldn’t deal with the stress. He got so crazy that he actually punched himself in the head, knocked himself out and fell into the tub. He literally knocked himself out.

  One summer after dinner I was playing on the front steps with my toys. I was ready for bed, wearing my Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas. I was about six. My father came outside to tell me it was time to come in. We started talking and sometime during the conversation I called him “Dad.” I caught myself.

  “Oh, I mean Greggy.”

  “It’s okay, honey. You can call me ‘Daddy.’”

  “Okay, Greggy.”

  But I still wasn’t sure. Most of the time, I called him Greggy. But every once in a while I’d call him Daddy, and he loved it. He’d always tell me it was okay to call him Daddy. I think the day I first called him Daddy was the happiest day of his life.

  Then I started getting used to calling him Daddy, even though I didn’t really think he was my dad. He felt like my dad, but at the time Charlie was really still my dad. I never let Charlie know that I called Greg, Dad. So whenever I visited Charlie, I always had to say Greg. I knew that I couldn’t refer to Greg as Daddy in front of Charlie. I was just a little kid. It was very confusing and I was very torn.

  Sometimes when my parents went out, our neighbors, Maria and Louis, used to take care of us. I hated it—I didn’t like just anybody else taking care of us. I wanted my mother and my father home. At that point I had started to think of Greg as another father.

  One day when they were babysitting us, I was watching a movie. In the movie the girl’s father died. When my parents came home, I was crying my eyes out.

  “What’s the matter?” my father asked, sitting down on the couch with me.

  “Are you going to die?”