Made Men Read Online Free Page B
Author: Greg B. Smith
everything they could, and noticed that most of the license plates were from New Jersey. There were a handful of New York plates, including one from Brooklyn captains named Anthony Rotondo and Rudy Ferrone and a longtime, profoundly unsuccessful bookmaker named Joey O Masella.
But on that day, as members young and old paid their respects to the man who claimed to possess royal blood, one name did not surface on any of law enforcement’s radar screens—Vincent Palermo. In fact, as of 1997, Vinny Palermo was able to attend the funeral of his mentor and did not have to worry that his name would show up on some law enforcement database listing who’s who in organized crime. At the time Vinny Ocean did not exist to the FBI. For more than thirty years, Vinny Ocean had stayed off the FBI’s radar.
That was about to change.
2
January 8, 1998
In the heart of a New York City winter it was actually sixty-five degrees in Central Park. People strolled giddily down sidewalks in shirtsleeves and sneakers. Stuck in traffic, they snickered when the radio said it was thirty-six degrees in Albany and trees were exploding in a Maine ice storm. By midday a thick fog settled on Manhattan from the Bronx to the Battery, turning the great architectural icons of New York into ghosts. At the bottom of the island, this meteorological oddity enshrouded the World Trade Center so that the nearly all of the massive twin towers seemed to disappear into a cloud.
From where he stood down near Battery Park, a short, chubby Brooklyn guy with a receding hairline and expanding midsection gazed up at the Trade Center towers. His name was Ralph Guarino and he was trying to see exactly where the towers ended and the fog began. It was an
inspiring sight, filled with the casual majesty that is everywhere on the street corners of Manhattan. Here was one of where on the street corners of Manhattan. Here was one of story citadels of power as tight as the Federal Reserve, swallowed up whole by the sky. The mighty towers seemed almost fragile this way. Fragile was a word Ralphie Guarino needed to explore.
He was aware that the World Trade Center was known as one of the most secure public spaces in the world. First, the huge complex of towers and office buildings was positively brimming with cops. There were all kinds of cops in there—New York City cops, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, Federal Police officers with their unrecognizable initials, FPO. Inside the two towers just about every federal law enforcement agency imaginable was well represented—the United States Secret Service, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—you name it. Cops were everywhere.
Added to that was an atmosphere of paranoia inspired by an incident that occurred just before noon on February 26, 1993. On that day, a group of Islamic fundamentalists drove a yellow Ryder van into the garage underneath One World Trade, parked it in a spot near a bearing wall, and quickly drove away in a beat-up sedan. A few minutes later the van, which contained canisters of liquid hydrogen and extremely volatile urea nitrate, blew into a thousand pieces. In all, six people died and thousands more were injured. A class of suburban elementary-school students was trapped in an elevator for hours. Thousands of employees had to trudge down thousands of stairs through thick black smoke, emerging from the building with their faces smeared with soot, coughing and wheezing and happy as hell to be out of there.
Ralphie knew all about this from his friend Sal Calciano, a guy from the neighborhood in Brooklyn who had worked inside the Trade Center twenty years. Calciano was a supervisor with American Building Maintenance, the company that kept the Trade Center clean, and he’d been inside one of the towers when the bomb went off. He’d carried a woman who was having problems breathing down many flights of stairs. He’d helped many others find their way out and
But on that day, as members young and old paid their respects to the man who claimed to possess royal blood, one name did not surface on any of law enforcement’s radar screens—Vincent Palermo. In fact, as of 1997, Vinny Palermo was able to attend the funeral of his mentor and did not have to worry that his name would show up on some law enforcement database listing who’s who in organized crime. At the time Vinny Ocean did not exist to the FBI. For more than thirty years, Vinny Ocean had stayed off the FBI’s radar.
That was about to change.
2
January 8, 1998
In the heart of a New York City winter it was actually sixty-five degrees in Central Park. People strolled giddily down sidewalks in shirtsleeves and sneakers. Stuck in traffic, they snickered when the radio said it was thirty-six degrees in Albany and trees were exploding in a Maine ice storm. By midday a thick fog settled on Manhattan from the Bronx to the Battery, turning the great architectural icons of New York into ghosts. At the bottom of the island, this meteorological oddity enshrouded the World Trade Center so that the nearly all of the massive twin towers seemed to disappear into a cloud.
From where he stood down near Battery Park, a short, chubby Brooklyn guy with a receding hairline and expanding midsection gazed up at the Trade Center towers. His name was Ralph Guarino and he was trying to see exactly where the towers ended and the fog began. It was an
inspiring sight, filled with the casual majesty that is everywhere on the street corners of Manhattan. Here was one of where on the street corners of Manhattan. Here was one of story citadels of power as tight as the Federal Reserve, swallowed up whole by the sky. The mighty towers seemed almost fragile this way. Fragile was a word Ralphie Guarino needed to explore.
He was aware that the World Trade Center was known as one of the most secure public spaces in the world. First, the huge complex of towers and office buildings was positively brimming with cops. There were all kinds of cops in there—New York City cops, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, Federal Police officers with their unrecognizable initials, FPO. Inside the two towers just about every federal law enforcement agency imaginable was well represented—the United States Secret Service, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—you name it. Cops were everywhere.
Added to that was an atmosphere of paranoia inspired by an incident that occurred just before noon on February 26, 1993. On that day, a group of Islamic fundamentalists drove a yellow Ryder van into the garage underneath One World Trade, parked it in a spot near a bearing wall, and quickly drove away in a beat-up sedan. A few minutes later the van, which contained canisters of liquid hydrogen and extremely volatile urea nitrate, blew into a thousand pieces. In all, six people died and thousands more were injured. A class of suburban elementary-school students was trapped in an elevator for hours. Thousands of employees had to trudge down thousands of stairs through thick black smoke, emerging from the building with their faces smeared with soot, coughing and wheezing and happy as hell to be out of there.
Ralphie knew all about this from his friend Sal Calciano, a guy from the neighborhood in Brooklyn who had worked inside the Trade Center twenty years. Calciano was a supervisor with American Building Maintenance, the company that kept the Trade Center clean, and he’d been inside one of the towers when the bomb went off. He’d carried a woman who was having problems breathing down many flights of stairs. He’d helped many others find their way out and
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