Sins of the City

ON THE NIGHT of March 25, 1990, Lydia Feli­ciano, a woman who checked coats and occa­sion­al­ly bar­tend­ed at the Hap­py Land social club in the Bronx, got into a vio­lent argu­ment with her boyfriend, a Cuban immi­grant named Julio Gon­za­lez. Accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny before the grand jury that lat­er indict­ed Gon­za­lez for the largest mass mur­der in U.S. his­to­ry, he left in a drunk­en, jeal­ous rage and returned a short time lat­er with a dollar’s worth of gaso­line and a match. The club, which catered to the local com­mu­ni­ty of Hon­duran immi­grants, had no fire exit and only one door, lead­ing down a steep flight of stairs to the ground lev­el. At about 2:30 A.M., as cou­ples danced to “Young Lover,” a reg­gae tune, flames roared up from the vacant first floor. In the pan­de­mo­ni­um, only five peo­ple got out alive, one of them Lydia Feli­ciano. Eighty-sev­en peo­ple died, many of them almost instant­ly from smoke inhala­tion, their drinks still in their hands.
     The media played up the tragedy as if it were The Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties—dis­en­fran­chised vic­tims, rich cul­prits. Bet­ter yet, rich land­lords, a most unloved species. The fire brought instant noto­ri­ety to Alexan­der DiLoren­zo III, the mul­ti­mil­lion­aire prop­er­ty own­er, and to Jay Weiss, the mil­lion­aire lease­hold­er, who might have been spared some of the atten­tion had his wife not been the actress Kath­leen Turn­er.
     It was soon revealed that a full year and a half ear­li­er, the Fire Depart­ment had brand­ed Hap­py Land haz­ardous and issued a vacate order, which had been ignored. In the wake of the infer­no, civ­il suits in the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were served on DiLoren­zo, Weiss, and Weiss’s part­ner, Mor­ris Jaffe. There was talk that the Bronx D.A.’s office was con­sid­er­ing fil­ing crim­i­nal charges against the three men.
     What didn’t make it into the news was DiLorenzo’s vis­it the day after the tragedy to Weiss’s office, which hap­pened to be around the com­er from his own. In a recent inter­view, he recalled find­ing Weiss “in shock,” talk­ing deject­ed­ly about pack­ing it in and mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia. “He said, ‘I’m fin­ished! I’m broke! I’m bank­rupt! I’m ruined!’ Jay kin­da goes on, he gets crazy. I don’t think he ever dreamt some­thing like this would hap­pen. He had vio­la­tions, he sent them to the ten­ant. The city issued these things as a reg­u­lar rou­tine, and then peo­ple would go down and get them lift­ed. Jay is not a stu­pid guy, O.K.? He didn’t see it. He didn’t put it all togeth­er. I’m telling you. I know the guy. I know him since he’s a twen­ty-year-old kid, you fol­low? He wasn’t play­ing with me. He didn’t real­ly under­stand it. He thought it was a card game, you hear me?”
     DiLoren­zo laughed soft­ly, ner­vous­ly. “A card game.”
     It had seemed unlike­ly that DiLoren­zo would agree to talk about Hap­py Land. Apart from his legal prob­lems, he has a rep­u­ta­tion for secre­cy, even reclu­sive­ness. His for­mer lawyer, John Burns, con­firms that “when Alex isn’t sure what he wants to do next, he’ll hide behind unavail­abil­i­ty.” But above all else, DiLoren­zo is unpre­dictable. And so, after some cajol­ing, he entered into his only con­ver­sa­tion with a reporter since the fire.
     Of the three land­lords, DiLoren­zo stands the best chance of going to jail. As the building’s own­er, he was named on the Fire Department’s 1988 vacate order, and when it went unheed­ed, a bench war­rant was issued for his arrest. It was nev­er served, which is not unusual—by one esti­mate, the city has more than 100,000 unserved war­rants against New York land­lords, dat­ing back to the 1970s. But after the fire, DiLorenzo’s lawyers told him it would be pru­dent to turn him­self in. On April 3, he sur­ren­dered in Man­hat­tan Crim­i­nal Court.
     At the time, there were forty-three oth­er unserved war­rants for his arrest, some dat­ing back to 1978. Indeed, DiLoren­zo is infa­mous as a land­lord: this year the New York Dai­ly News con­duct­ed a review of eighty-nine build­ings owned by DiLoren­zo and turned up 5,642 code vio­la­tions, rang­ing from water short­ages to struc­tur­al flaws.
     If con­vict­ed of will­ful­ly neglect­ing the vacate order, DiLoren­zo could face nine­ty days in the slam­mer. On July 26, he appeared in Bronx Crim­i­nal Court and entered a plea of not guilty. It was the sec­ond time he had been arraigned on the mis­de­meanor charge; the first indict­ment was with­drawn after DiLoren­zo’s lawyers object­ed on tech­ni­cal grounds.
     DiLoren­zo turns out to he a man of sur­pris­ing can­dor. His assess­ment of the cacoph­o­ny of legal advice he has received since the fire is typ­i­cal­ly blunt: “What I feel in my gut, after talk­ing to all these genius­es, is that this is a polit­i­cal night­mare. Eighty-sev­en peo­ple are dead, there are Hon­durans scream­ing, and ‘Who is this rich prick?’—you fol­low?”
     Jay Weiss and Mor­ris Jaffe, mean­while, have refused to dis­cuss the Hap­py Land dis­as­ter, or any­thing else. Their attor­ney, Shep Gold­fein, a fire spe­cial­ist at Skad­den, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, ini­tial­ly agreed to respond to writ­ten ques­tions, then backed off on orders from Weiss. Gold­fein says Weiss feels embat­tled. Short­ly after the fire, some­one left a threat­en­ing note on his black Jeep. Weiss and Turn­er have put their $885,000 Green­wich Vil­lage town­house up for sale and moved else­where in the city. Weiss has also relo­cat­ed his office from East Fifty-sec­ond Street to a down­town address. (He and his rock band, Blue Suits, recent­ly put in unpub­li­cized appear­ances at Manhattan’s Cat Club and Chi­na Club, how­ev­er.) Though Weiss has kept his silence, his wife elect­ed to defend his actions on the evening news. “I’m very sor­ry that my hus­band has any link with this,” Kath­leen Turn­er said, “but I can’t con­ceive of any respon­si­bil­i­ty for him or for me.” Syd­ney Schan­berg, edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing in News­day, was roused to rage. “It’s a pity,” he wrote, “Jay Weiss is so fright­ened that he lets his wife do the ali­bi­ing for him.” He summed up Weiss’s occu­pa­tion in one curt phrase: “the guy who does all those deals with that mas­ter-shark, Alexan­der DiLoren­zo III.”
     Actu­al­ly, “mas­ter flake” seems more appro­pri­ate: at forty, DiLoren­zo may be one of the few Forbes Four Hun­dred mem­bers who pre­fer to trav­el by sub­way. He lives in a rather lugubri­ous three-bed­room apart­ment on Manhattan’s East Side, full of pack­ing box­es and mis­matched, hand-me-down fur­ni­ture. Short, stocky, and beard­ed, often dressed in jeans and a checked lum­ber­jack shirt, he ven­tures incon­spic­u­ous­ly into neigh­bor­hoods such as West Harlem, where he owns forty-odd brown­stones with more than two hun­dred apart­ments delib­er­ate­ly kept vacant—for which angry ten­ants have repeat­ed­ly hanged him in effi­gy. He car­ries a Japan­ese grav­i­ty knife he bought at a trade show a few years ago after being mugged.
     Alex III, as col­leagues call him, is the eldest child of the late Alex DiLoren­zo Jr., one of New York’s top real-estate moguls, who, in part­ner­ship with Sol Gold­man, once held the lease on the Chrysler Build­ing. A bach­e­lor with four children—twice divorced from the same woman—DiLorenzo has a net worth exceed­ing $500 mil­lion and con­trols almost four hun­dred prop­er­ties, forty-two acres’ worth in Man­hat­tan alone, rang­ing from slum ten­e­ments to gems like the Wash­ing­ton Square Mews and the land under the St. Reg­is hotel. He is, in fact, the city’s largest pri­vate land­lord (unless you count the estate of Sol Gold­man, who died in 1987).
     Jay Weiss is a self-made man, worth, DiLoren­zo esti­mates, $10 to $15 mil­lion, not count­ing Turner’s income. The two men met in 1975, when Weiss, twen­ty years old and broke, asked DiLoren­zo for a job. Weiss went on to make his for­tune by leas­ing small com­mer­cial build­ings, includ­ing about thir­ty owned by DiLoren­zo, and then sub­let­ting them. One of these is at 1959 South­ern Boule­vard, the site of Hap­py Land, part of a row of store­fronts that DiLoren­zo bought in May 1985, putting $120,000 down on an $885,000 mort­gage. Three months after the pur­chase, DiLoren­zo “net-leased” the build­ing to Lit­tle Peach Real­ty, one of sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions owned by Weiss and Mor­ris Jaffe, a for­mer ladies’-hat mer­chant. Net-leas­ing, which typ­i­cal­ly involves pass­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for upkeep to the net-lessee, is a favorite device for DiLoren­zo, who has more hold­ings than his own employ­ees can sen­si­bly man­age. Lit­tle Peach became the building’s sole ten­ant for thir­ty years.
     Of course. for Lit­tle Peach to prof­it on the deal, it need­ed to find a sub­tenant will­ing to pay a high­er rent. In late 1987, Weiss and Jaffe believed they had found such a man in Elias Colon, who would soon con­vert the sec­ond floor of the build­ing into Hap­py Land. By ear­ly 1990, Lit­tle Peach was charg­ing Colon about two grand a month, plus insur­ance pre­mi­ums and real-estate tax. Colon was able to draw on the neighborhood’s large Hon­duran pop­u­la­tion and fill the club to capac­i­ty, which was not difficult—the room’s dimen­sions were a tiny twen­ty-two feet by fifty-eight feet, and the ceil­ing was so low that a per­son could touch the mir­rored ball that spun above the dance floor. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though the club appeared to be thriv­ing, Weiss and Jaffe con­sid­ered Colon a dead­beat. In Feb­ru­ary, one month before the fire, Lit­tle Peach alleged that Colon owed almost $15,000 in back rent and insur­ance, and filed papers to evict him.
     The city of New York also want­ed Colon out, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Hap­py Land had a sin­gle, unmarked exit door, lead­ing to a nar­row stair­case. There was no fire alarm and no sprin­kler sys­tem. In Novem­ber 1988, soon after police had arrest­ed three peo­ple at the premis­es for the ille­gal sale of liquor, the Fire Depart­ment issued a vacate order on safe­ty grounds. It was sent to DiLoren­zo, who says his office passed it on to Lit­tle Peach. The order was ignored. The fol­low­ing July 24, the police made anoth­er arrest at the unli­censed bar, and, on the same day, the Fire Department—now appar­ent­ly aware that Lit­tle Peach was in charge of the building—phoned Mor­ris Jaffe to tell him that the vacate order was still out­stand­ing. Jaffe report­ed­ly said it would be tak­en care of. At this point, the sto­ry of Hap­py Land was no more than stan­dard fare in the Jay Weiss reper­toire: the Dai­ly News inves­ti­ga­tion lat­er found that eigh­teen build­ings leased by Weiss (and owned by DiLoren­zo) had a com­bined total of 1,241 vio­la­tions. In Man­hat­tan, one of Weiss’s build­ings was cit­ed for 119 vio­la­tions, includ­ing lack of smoke detec­tors and blocked fire escapes.
     A month lat­er, in August 1989, Weiss stopped by Hap­py Land to harangue Colon about the rent. A Police Depart­ment spokesman lat­er explained that Hap­py Land was by then “in the pad­lock mode,” mean­ing the club had bro­ken nearly—but not quite—enough laws for Colon to be forced to vacate. He died in the fire instead.

DiLOREN­ZO has spurned the idea of meet­ing at a four-star Ital­ian restau­rant, say­ing he would not feel com­fort­able in so “fan­cy” a place. Instead, he opts for a small health-food joint on Sec­ond Avenue in mid­town. He wears a gray suit and striped tie, a Casio sports watch, and a beep­er on his belt. He is not car­ry­ing his grav­i­ty knife, because, he says, it is too bulky with a suit. DiLoren­zo looks a bit porcine in pho­tographs, less so in per­son. His beard, which has flecks of gray, is neat­ly trimmed, and his black hair hangs straight down in a mop, rather like that of the Three Stooges’ Moe Howard, near­ly touch­ing his glass­es. DiLoren­zo is about five feet six; his weight is said to go up and down by forty pounds. He speaks so soft­ly at times that you must strain to hear him. He has a ner­vous laugh that sounds like “heh-heh-heh.”
     Per­haps the “shark” descrip­tion fit his father, about whom there were always dark rumors (he attend­ed the funer­al of slain mob­ster Albert Anas­ta­sia). Cer­tain­ly it applied to his father’s part­ner, Sol Gold­man. But Alex III claims he nev­er had the tem­pera­ment or even the incli­na­tion for his cur­rent voca­tion. A for­mer “hip­pie with hair down to my ankles,” DiLoren­zo was twen­ty-sev­en and fresh from run­ning a pro­gres­sive school-with­out-walls in Brook­lyn Heights when his father died sud­den­ly of a mas­sive heart attack. The empire was hand­ed down to him at the worst pos­si­ble time—it was 1975, the city was in the depths of a fis­cal cri­sis, and the real estate mar­ket had crashed. His father and Sol Gold­man had not been devel­op­ers, but tight­fist­ed deal­ers who built an empire on debt and hard bar­gains. The young DiLoren­zo had to learn the game.
     Although Alex III did well, he has the resigned air of a man who is a fail­ure in his own eyes. “I had big­ger dreams,” he admits. “Much big­ger dreams. They’ve been honed down to size.” What did he want to do? “Oh, Christ. I want­ed to save the world. Don’t laugh. A lot of peo­ple were there. I became a lot more cyn­i­cal over time, I guess.”
     DiLoren­zo does have a cyn­i­cal edge, but more often he comes across as almost implau­si­bly naïve. He seems sur­prised that his ware­hous­ing of apart­ments in West Harlem has pro­voked out­rage from neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents. After all, he put $4.5 mil­lion of his own mon­ey into upgrad­ing those dilap­i­dat­ed brownstones—who else is invest­ing up in Harlem?—and, as his reward, “I’m get­ting my ass kicked.” It has not dawned on DiLoren­zo that the work­ing class peo­ple liv­ing in those rent-con­trolled build­ings don’t want remod­eled apart­ments they can’t afford. “Ten­ants always get very emo­tion­al,” he says, as though it’s an epiphany. Well, yes, but we’re talk­ing about people’s homes. “I hear ya,” DiLoren­zo says, nod­ding. “But some­times it gets out of line, in my opin­ion.”
     Scarpa, Sr., ordered that no one but Greg, Jr., attempt to flee—it is believed that he want­ed to learn how strong a case the gov­ern­ment had against his son-and the nine crew­men were arrest­ed on Novem­ber 12, 1987. Greg, Jr., could not be found. Valerie Caproni, the Brook­lyn fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor han­dling the case, was angry. “This was going to be a big, expen­sive case to try, and our top defen­dant was in the wind,” she recalls. He was not caught until August, 1988, after being fea­tured on the tele­vi­sion pro­gram “America’s Most Want­ed,” by which time Caproni had con­vict­ed the nine crew­men. Though she sub­se­quent­ly con­vict­ed Greg, Jr., and he got twen­ty years, she com­plains that it was “not a lot of fun” to have to mount a sec­ond tri­al.
     Caproni, a South­ern­er with a rep­u­ta­tion for tough­ness, has since risen to chief of the crim­i­nal divi­sion of the Brook­lyn Unit­ed States Attorney’s Office. In ear­ly 1994, she learned from two of the con­vict­ed crew­men, who had become coop­er­at­ing wit­ness­es, that in 1987 Greg, Jr., had obtained a list of all her defen­dants. She plain­ly sus­pects Lind­ley DeVec­chio; in a court doc­u­ment she states that there is “some rea­son to believe” he leaked the list. DeVec­chio vehe­ment­ly denies doing so, but Caproni recalls that in the sum­mer of 1987, while the D.E.A. case was being devel­oped, she invit­ed an F.B.I. agent named Michael Tab­man to a plan­ning meet­ing, and that Tab­man took notes. Tab­man lat­er recalled, in a sworn state­ment, that some­time after the meet­ing he’d told DeVec­chio about the D.E.A. case, and found him “very inter­est­ed in this mat­ter.”
     Caproni also finds some rea­son to believe that DeVec­chio leaked anoth­er piece of con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to Scarpa in 1987—information that near­ly got a man killed. She recalls say­ing at the sum­mer meet­ing in Tabman’s pres­ence that one of the crew­men she planned to indict, Cos­mo Catan­zano, was “a weak link,” who might coop­er­ate if he was arrest­ed. Tab­man says he doesn’t remem­ber this. That same sum­mer, Greg, Jr., informed one of his crew­men (who lat­er coop­er­at­ed with fed­er­al author­i­ties) that his father’s “agent source” had warned that Catan­zano was “going to rat.” Some­time after that, Scarpa, Sr., ordered that Catan­zano be mur­dered and buried-and quick­ly, because the D.E.A. arrests were immi­nent. Two crew­men dug a grave for Catan­zano in a seclud­ed spot off the Arthur Kill Road, in Stat­en Island, but Catanzano’s exe­cu­tion was foiled by his arrest. He nev­er did coop­er­ate. DeVec­chio denies ever men­tion­ing Catan­zano to Scarpa.

CAPRONI would not say any­thing about DeVec­chio in an inter­view, but she lav­ish­ly praised an agent named Christo­pher Favo, who had worked under him, and who became DeVecchio’s most vocal accuser. Favo, an attor­ney and a grad­u­ate of Notre Dame, joined the Bureau in 1983. “I think Chris Favo is an excel­lent agent,” Caproni said. “He’s an extreme­ly hard work­er. He’s very bright. I have used him as a wit­ness in a cou­ple of cas­es, and find him to be easy to pre­pare. He has a good mem­o­ry.” Dur­ing the Colom­bo war, Favo was, among oth­er things, an infor­ma­tion liai­son between the F.B.I. and New York City police offi­cers, who found him rather straitlaced—”like a young sem­i­nar­i­an,” one recalls. But that was all right: the cops had been giv­en the job of try­ing to sup­press the war by arrest­ing peo­ple for car­ry­ing guns, and they believed that Favo could be trust­ed. The stan­dard crit­i­cism of Favo was that he worked too hard—he seemed nev­er to go home—and that he want­ed to do every­thing him­self and would not del­e­gate respon­si­bil­i­ty.
     DeVec­chio doesn’t share Caproni’s high opin­ion of Favo. “Suf­fice it to say, he’s not a favorite of mine,” he says. “Everything’s black-and-white for Chris Favo. If you were cross­ing the street and missed the cross­walk by a foot, he’d give you a tick­et for jay­walk­ing. And he’s an ego­ma­ni­ac of the worst kind.”
     It was Favo who even­tu­al­ly report­ed DeVec­chio to the Bureau. Though Favo was joined by three oth­er agents when he voiced his sus­pi­cions, DeVec­chio says those agents were “duped” by Favo. They all mis­in­ter­pret­ed his actions, he says, because they all lacked street expe­ri­ence, and had “no clue” to what it took to oper­ate a top-ech­e­lon source. “Favo used to say, ‘I’ve got a lot of expe­ri­ence with coop­er­at­ing wit­ness­es,’” DeVec­chio says. “So what? Any­body can make a deal with some guy who doesn’t want to go to jail for the rest of his life. He nev­er worked in the street covert­ly and devel­oped an infor­mant.”
     Favo’s thoughts and actions dur­ing the Colom­bo war have been pre­served in tes­ti­mo­ny, affi­davits, mem­o­ran­dums, and a dai­ly diary. He was the senior field agent inves­ti­gat­ing the war, and was one of the first agents on the scene on Novem­ber 18, 1991, when its open­ing shots were fired—at Greg Scarpa.
     Scarpa had been pre­dict­ing a shoot­ing war for some time—ever since it became appar­ent that the family’s act­ing boss, Vic­tor Ore­na, Sr., was try­ing to depose the jailed Carmine Per­si­co and take over the fam­i­ly. From Scarpa, and from Scarpa’s girlfriend’s daugh­ter, who was also named Lin­da, Favo learned what had hap­pened. Scarpa was pulling out of his dri­ve­way in his car, and Lin­da, with her infant son, was pulling out in anoth­er car, when a van and a pan­el truck blocked their way. A group of men in ski masks jumped out of the van and opened fire with auto­mat­ic weapons, leav­ing a row of bul­let holes in the fend­er of Linda’s car. Scarpa escaped by dri­ving up onto the side­walk, past the pan­el truck. (He lat­er groused that for the gun­men to have even risked hit­ting Lin­da and her son showed that dis­ci­pline was falling apart in the Mafia.) Favo took down the plate num­ber of the truck, which had been left behind, and traced it to a rental office in Queens. He says he pro­vid­ed that infor­ma­tion to DeVec­chio, whom he had not yet begun to sus­pect of leak­ing infor­ma­tion to Scarpa. He says he didn’t learn until after the war, from a coop­er­a­tor, that some­one had told Scarpa where the truck had been rent­ed.
     Scarpa believed that the gun­men had been sent by William (Wild Bill) Cuto­lo, then reput­ed­ly the act­ing under­boss. Scarpa made plans to dis­guise him­self as a Hasidic Jew and mow down Wild Bill as he left his girlfriend’s house on Thanks­giv­ing Day, 1991, but that morn­ing an arti­cle in the Post men­tioned the snitch rumor about Scarpa, and he was forced to call off the hit so that he could assuage his con­fed­er­ates. Between Decem­ber 3rd and Jan­u­ary 7th, Scarpa did kill two oth­er rebels, wound­ed a third, and acci­den­tal­ly shot and killed a Gen­ovese fam­i­ly asso­ciate, who was blamed for his own death, because he was at a Colom­bo hang­out at the time. There was no more talk of Scarpa being a snitch.
     In a 1995 sworn state­ment DeVec­chio denied ever delib­er­ate­ly leak­ing intel­li­gence to Scarpa, but he said it was pos­si­ble that Scarpa had inferred infor­ma­tion from his ques­tions, adding, “You can­not debrief a top-ech­e­lon source in a vac­u­um.” Though the entire record is not avail­able, it appears that much of the infor­ma­tion that Scarpa was giv­ing back dur­ing the war was worse than use­less. F.B.I. doc­u­ments show that he repeat­ed­ly pinned his wartime vio­lence on oth­er peo­ple; they also show that DeVec­chio con­ferred with Scarpa on the very day Scarpa com­mit­ted one of his mur­ders.
     As the war esca­lat­ed, DeVec­chio found it dif­fi­cult to reach Scarpa by phone, and one time he dropped by Scarpa’s house. When­ev­er DeVec­chio met with an infor­mant at home, he brought along one or two oth­er agents, to make the vis­it look like an intru­sion. He did not let his sub­or­di­nates par­tic­i­pate in the debrief­ing with Scarpa, how­ev­er; he sat them down in Scarpa’s liv­ing room, with the tele­vi­sion turned on, while he spoke pri­vate­ly with his infor­mant in the kitchen for about an hour.
     Some of Scarpa’s men lat­er told fed­er­al author­i­ties that dur­ing the war Scarpa was paged fre­quent­ly by The Girl­friend. He was warned to be care­ful, and to watch out in par­tic­u­lar for a rebel nick­named Joe Waver­ly. In Jan­u­ary, 1992, Scarpa and Waver­ly had a gun­fight from adja­cent cars, two feet apart, near Avenue U. Waver­ly shot out Scarpa’s win­dow, and Scarpa, whose Tec‑9 had mis­fired, sped off with glass frag­ments in his hair. On Feb­ru­ary 26th, out on Avenue U, Scarpa shot Waver­ly in the stom­ach.
     The fol­low­ing day, Favo appears to have formed his first sus­pi­cions about DeVec­chio. That morn­ing, a loan shark named Carmine Imbri­ale was arrest­ed by the Brook­lyn Dis­trict Attorney’s Office, and he told the author­i­ties that he’d been at a din­ner the evening before at which Scarpa had pro­posed a toast and bragged about shoot­ing Waver­ly. The D.A.’s office alert­ed Favo, and he con­veyed the news to DeVec­chio. Favo says that DeVec­chio then got a phone call from Scarpa, and told Scarpa that the Brook­lyn D.A.’s office had Imbri­ale in tem­po­rary cus­tody, adding, “I don’t know what he’s say­ing about you.” Favo was con­cerned that DeVec­chio had just endan­gered Imbriale’s life. And, in fact, that evening, accord­ing to a coop­er­a­tor, Scarpa said, “It would be a good idea to kill Imbri­ale.” Favo claims that he per­suad­ed DeVec­chio to call Scarpa the next day and warn him that if any harm came to Imbri­ale he would be held sus­pect. DeVec­chio says that nei­ther phone con­ver­sa­tion with Scarpa about Imbri­ale took place, and that he has “no idea” why Favo would invent such a sto­ry.
     A report that Scarpa had boast­ed about shoot­ing some­one was not suf­fi­cient evi­dence to arrest him, but it should have been cause, accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Jus­tice guide­lines on F.B.I. infor­mants, to con­sid­er clos­ing him. DeVec­chio did not seem inclined to do so. Around the same time, how­ev­er, DeVecchio’s imme­di­ate super­vi­sor, Don­ald North, to whom all the Mafia squads report­ed, became uneasy about Scarpa. North had been told by an agent not on DeVecchio’s squad that Scarpa was con­spir­ing to mur­der some­one. (The intend­ed victim’s iden­ti­ty has not been revealed.) North has tes­ti­fied that he asked DeVec­chio if he had rea­son to believe that Scarpa was com­mit­ting crimes of vio­lence. “He was adamant,” North recalled. “He was con­vinced that Mr. Scarpa was not engaged in any vio­lent activ­i­ty.” Nev­er­the­less, North checked on the infor­ma­tion about the mur­der con­spir­a­cy and found it cred­i­ble, so, as of March 3, 1992, Scarpa was ordered closed, and DeVec­chio was told to have no fur­ther con­tact with him. A month lat­er, F.B.I. head­quar­ters per­mit­ted DeVec­chio to reopen Scarpa, after he attrib­uted the mur­der-con­spir­a­cy charge against Scarpa to the “para­noia” among Colom­bo-fam­i­ly mem­bers which had been engen­dered by the war.
     On May 22nd, Scarpa killed again. At about three-thir­ty in the morn­ing, as the rebel sol­dier Lar­ry Lam­pe­si was lock­ing the gate of his apart­ment build­ing, Scarpa shot him with a rifle extend­ed from his car win­dow, then got out of the car with two of his crew­men and pumped some extra rounds into his body. The same morn­ing, anoth­er Colom­bo rebel was wound­ed in a sec­ond inci­dent.
     A few hours lat­er, Favo says he stopped by DeVecchio’s office to report the two shoot­ings. Twice in court, in the past two years, Favo has giv­en a dra­mat­ic account of how he says DeVec­chio react­ed to the news. Favo said he and his fel­low-agents believed that “every time there was a shoot­ing or a mur­der it was a defeat for us”; but DeVec­chio “laughed” and “got excit­ed” at the report, and, with his open palm, slapped his desk and said, “We’re going to win this thing!” Favo said DeVec­chio “seemed to be a cheer­leader for the Per­si­co fac­tion,” and also tes­ti­fied, “A line had been blurred.… He was com­pro­mised. He had lost track of who he was.” DeVec­chio has acknowl­edged mak­ing “some state­ment to that effect,” but thinks it was in front of “prob­a­bly half a dozen agents,” and that he obvi­ous­ly meant the F.B.I. was going to win in its efforts to fight orga­nized crime. He adds, “If I’m sid­ing with an orga­nized-crime fam­i­ly, why would I tell that to my agents? What per­son in their right mind would do that?”
     By late spring, the war was wind­ing down. A num­ber of the rebels had been arrest­ed, includ­ing the fac­tion leader, Vic­tor Ore­na. In June, agents on DeVecchio’s squad placed a micro­phone in a car belong­ing to Scarpa’s crew­man Joey Ambrosi­no, a Per­si­co fac­tion mem­ber. DeVec­chio says he approved of the elec­tron­ic surveillance—bolstering his con­tention that he was not play­ing sides in the war—though there is an odd pas­sage in his sworn state­ment con­cern­ing its use. He wrote that “Scarpa, Sr., was astound­ed to learn that Ambrosino’s car had been ‘bugged’ and that I had not told him of this sit­u­a­tion.” One is left to won­der why Scarpa would ever have expect­ed to be told.
     The bug was a pro­duc­tive one, and DeVecchio’s agents began mak­ing arrests, start­ing with Ambrosi­no, who imme­di­ate­ly elect­ed to coop­er­ate, and who con­nect­ed Scarpa to at least one killing. Still, DeVec­chio made no move to close Scarpa. “I saw this to be a dilem­ma,” one of DeVecchio’s agents lat­er said, in a sworn state­ment. “I know if this was my source, I would have gone to the U.S. Attorney’s to obtain a war­rant for his arrest.” Chris Favo had a plan to do exact­ly that: he asked a Brook­lyn pros­e­cu­tor if he could write up a mur­der-con­spir­a­cy com­plaint against Scarpa as soon as Favo gave the sig­nal. He kept his plan a secret from DeVec­chio. He has tes­ti­fied that by then “I believed that he was liable to say any­thing to Gre­go­ry Scarpa.”
     Mean­while, the squad con­tin­ued to make oth­er arrests—so rapid­ly, in some cas­es, that DeVec­chio was not noti­fied in advance. In late June, agents arrest­ed four Colom­bo sus­pects at an apart­ment in Point Pleas­ant, New Jer­sey. When the agents next saw DeVec­chio, he was vis­i­bly agi­tat­ed. One of them, Howard Lead­bet­ter, a for­mer Army offi­cer who had worked in Spe­cial Oper­a­tions, said in a sworn state­ment that he heard DeVec­chio, “in a very force­ful tone of voice,” tell Favo, “ ‘I’ve had it! You will not arrest anoth­er sin­gle indi­vid­ual with­out my spe­cif­ic approval!’” Lead­bet­ter tes­ti­fied in court that he could not under­stand DeVecchio’s agi­ta­tion until some­time lat­er, when he learned that Scarpa had been at the New Jer­sey apart­ment ear­li­er that day and had nar­row­ly avoid­ed being arrest­ed him­self.
     On the morn­ing of August 31st, Favo dropped by DeVecchio’s office, and told him that Scarpa was about to turn him­self in to New York City police detec­tives on a gun charge. Dur­ing the month that Scarpa had been closed by the F.B.I., he’d been seen toss­ing a loaded auto­mat­ic from the win­dow of his car. DeVec­chio knew all about the gun arrest and, accord­ing to Favo, seemed uncon­cerned: it had been agreed before­hand that Scarpa would be arraigned and released. Only three days ear­li­er, Scarpa had set­tled his med­ical-mal­prac­tice case, and had told a News­day reporter that he was plan­ning to cel­e­brate with a vaca­tion in Flori­da. Favo then sprang his sur­prise: he informed DeVec­chio that imme­di­ate­ly after the gun arraign­ment Scarpa was going to be arrest­ed by two of DeVecchio’s own agents and booked on fed­er­al mur­der-con­spir­a­cy charges. “DeVec­chio was vis­i­bly upset” by that news, Favo says, and tried to alert Scarpa via the con­fi­den­tial hel­lo line, but it was too late.

EVEN then, DeVec­chio did not aban­don his top-ech­e­lon source. He got in touch with pros­e­cu­tors at the Brook­lyn Unit­ed States Attorney’s Office to ask them to request bail for Scarpa. One pros­e­cu­tor, Andrew Weiss­mann, lat­er said he was “incred­u­lous” that any agent would want Scarpa on the street, and, at a Sep­tem­ber bail hear­ing, before the fed­er­al mag­is­trate John L. Caden, Weiss­mann argued vig­or­ous­ly for deten­tion. Caden was not aware that Scarpa was an infor­mant, and the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Scarpa at the hear­ing, Joseph Ben­fante, says he wasn’t aware of it, either. “That would be tan­ta­mount to me think­ing that Moth­er Tere­sa is assist­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein, because no F.B.I. infor­mant goes out and engages in a Colom­bo war—it’s insan­i­ty,” Ben­fante says.
     Benfante’s motion for bail was made strict­ly on the ground of Scarpa’s med­ical con­di­tion. By now, Scarpa had full-blown AIDS, with a T‑cell count of zero (two thou­sand is nor­mal), and at his mal­prac­tice tri­al in August his doc­tor had tes­ti­fied that he had between two and six months to live. Ben­fante says that Scarpa had also begun to show signs of AIDS demen­tia. Dur­ing vis­its he paid to Scarpa in prison, he recalls, “He told me to make a list—he wants to give all the guards attache cas­es, spe­cial cas­es of wine, and filet-mignon steaks. I told him, ‘Greg, you can’t have a steak in prison.’ ‘What do you mean!’ He’d throw the chair. The next day, he’d be fine.”
     Judge Caden agreed to house arrest, with the stip­u­la­tion that Scarpa wear an elec­tron­ic anklet that would alert police if he left the house. All went well until Decem­ber 29, 1992, when Scarpa’s son by Lin­da Schi­ro, Joseph, got into a dis­pute over a drug trans­ac­tion, and was said to have told his father that he had been spo­ken to dis­re­spect­ful­ly. Scarpa rushed out of the house armed, went around the block, and got into a gun bat­tle with two Bay Ridge drug deal­ers, one of whom he is believed to have killed. In the alter­ca­tion, Scarpa’s left eye was shot out. He is said to have walked back home, pressed a tow­el to his bleed­ing eye sock­et, drunk a glass of Scotch, and—because Schi­ro was hysterical—driven him­self to Mt. Sinai Hos­pi­tal. Joseph has since been killed in what was appar­ent­ly a drug-relat­ed shoot­ing.
     Scarpa’s house arrest was revoked. It was agreed that he would be sent to Rik­ers Island, a prison known for its supe­ri­or AIDS facil­i­ty, to serve a year on his gun charge. It seemed incon­ceiv­able that a man with a zero-T-cell count and no stom­ach, who had just had an eye shot out, would live any­where near that long. The fol­low­ing spring, how­ev­er, Scarpa was still alive, and on May 6, 1993, he appeared before fed­er­al Judge Jack B. Wein­stein to plead guilty to three mur­ders and con­spir­a­cy to mur­der sev­er­al oth­ers.
Then, in Octo­ber, at a meet­ing with pros­e­cu­tors at the Brook­lyn Unit­ed States Attorney’s Office, Scarpa offered, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to become a coop­er­at­ing wit­ness for the gov­ern­ment. He had asked his new attor­ney, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor named Steven Karta­gen­er, to make sure that DeVec­chio attend­ed. Karta­gen­er recalls that at one point “Greg says, ‘I’ve always been help­ful to the gov­ern­ment in the past—isn’t that right, Mr. DeVec­chio?’” and goes on to recount, “I assumed DeVec­chio would say, ‘What are you talk­ing about? Stop being an ass­hole.’ Instead, he says, ‘Yes, that’s true.’ My jaw did a bounce off the table­top.” Two pros­e­cu­tors recall hear­ing DeVec­chio tell Favo at an ear­li­er meet­ing that if there were “an O.P.R.”—an Office of Pro­fes­sion­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty inquiry—into DeVecchio’s han­dling of Scarpa “I’ll have your ass.”
     Scarpa’s sen­tenc­ing for mur­der and mur­der con­spir­a­cy took place on Decem­ber 15, 1993. Judge Wein­stein asked Scarpa if he had any­thing to say, and was told no, “oth­er than I expect to go home.”
     “You’re not going to go home,” Wein­stein said. “You’re going to go to prison.”
“I tried to help, Your Hon­or,” Scarpa said. “But it just didn’t work out.”
Dur­ing Scarpa’s final days in prison, his AIDS demen­tia took hold, and he was giv­en to ram­bling. Occa­sion­al­ly, he spoke of the dirty work he claimed to have done for the gov­ern­ment. He told one vis­i­tor how, after kid­nap­ping a Mis­sis­sip­pi man for the F.B.I., “he placed a gun in the guy’s mouth, and start­ed cut­ting his dick off with a razor” and demand­ed that the man tell him the loca­tion of “three kids that were missing”—lending cre­dence to a report, first pub­lished in the Dai­ly News, that Scarpa had led the F.B.I. to the buried bod­ies of the civ­il-rights work­ers Michael Schw­ern­er, Andrew Good­man, and James Chaney, slain in Philadel­phia, Mis­sis­sip­pi, in 1964. He also spoke about a secret assign­ment in Cos­ta Rica for the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment in the six­ties that involved mur­der. On June 8, 1994, Scarpa died, of com­pli­ca­tions from AIDS, at the Fed­er­al Med­ical Cen­ter in Rochester, Minnesota.

FOR a year and half after the Colom­bo war end­ed, Chris Favo kept qui­et about DeVec­chio. He says he was wor­ried that if he accused a well-respect­ed vet­er­an like DeVec­chio of leak­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion the F.B.I. brass “would take it about as well as I would take it if some­body came up to me and said my wife was unfaith­ful.” By Jan­u­ary, 1994, how­ev­er, Favo and three agents on his squad felt com­pelled to come for­ward. Sev­er­al of Scarpa’s crew­men had begun to coop­er­ate, and their accounts of Scarpa and his alleged law-enforce­ment source were dis­turb­ing. Most dis­turb­ing, Favo says, was that dur­ing the Colom­bo war he had giv­en DeVec­chio a par­tial address for the hide­out of the rebel leader, Vic­tor Ore­na, and a phys­i­cal description—a white, two-fam­i­ly house, with alu­minum siding—and an incor­rect address for one of Orena’s men. Now it appeared from state­ments made by a coop­er­a­tor that Scarpa’s crew had tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to locate and kill those two rebels after Scarpa sup­plied them with the iden­ti­cal infor­ma­tion.
     Favo’s diary records what hap­pened when he and the three oth­er agents—Raymond And­jich, Howard Lead­bet­ter, and Jef­frey Tomlinson—came for­ward that month to voice their con­cerns to offi­cials at the New York office. At first they were com­mend­ed for tak­ing action, and assured of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but only two weeks lat­er, Favo wrote in his diary, an F.B.I. offi­cial care­less­ly exposed him and Lead­bet­ter as whis­tle-blow­ers; when he com­plained, he says, the offi­cial told him that he per­son­al­ly believed in DeVecchio’s inno­cence, and that “we will have to live with the prob­lems.” A few days after that, Favo wrote, DeVec­chio called a squad meet­ing, at which he angri­ly denied the charges and added that “any­one that did not believe him could go f— them­selves.” Before long, Favo had con­clud­ed that blow­ing the whis­tle on DeVec­chio “was a mis­take that would fol­low us for our careers.”
     By March, 1994, an inter­nal O.P.R. inves­ti­ga­tion of DeVec­chio was under way. He was even­tu­al­ly moved out of orga­nized crime and into drug enforce­ment, and, in the mean­time, his inves­ti­ga­tion was trans­ferred from the Bureau to the Pub­lic Integri­ty Sec­tion of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. The inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ceed­ed slow­ly, and was kept qui­et, even as alleged par­tic­i­pants in the Colom­bo war con­tin­ued to go to tri­al for mur­der and assault.
     It was not until the sum­mer of 1994 that, large­ly through the efforts of the New York attor­ney Alan Futer­fas and his asso­ciate, Ellen Resnick, the inves­ti­ga­tion came to light. Futer­fas and Resnick had been retained by a num­ber of defen­dants accused of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Colom­bo war. They imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the DeVec­chio con­tro­ver­sy as a gold mine for the defense, and they used it to for­mu­late what might be called the “com­rades in arms” the­o­ry of the war. Accord­ing to this the­o­ry, the F.B.I. had delib­er­ate­ly fed Scarpa infor­ma­tion, to help foment the war, and to make cer­tain that he would emerge vic­to­ri­ous. Futer­fas argues that when DeVec­chio alleged­ly declared, “We’re going to win this thing,” he was express­ing the hope that Scarpa would end up as a boss when it was all over, with a seat on the Mafia’s rul­ing com­mis­sion.
     The com­rades-in-arms the­o­ry, what­ev­er its mer­its, has been an unqual­i­fied suc­cess with juries. There have been nine tri­als stem­ming from the Colom­bo war, and at two of them the judges have per­mit­ted evi­dence of DeVecchio’s rela­tion­ship with Scarpa to be intro­duced. At both tri­als, every defendant—fourteen in all, includ­ing Wild Bill Cutolo—was acquit­ted of all charges. At the con­clu­sion of one tri­al, a juror told the Dai­ly News, “If the F.B.I.’s like this, soci­ety is real­ly in trou­ble.” Some peo­ple who were con­vict­ed before the DeVec­chio con­tro­ver­sy became known have made motions for new tri­als. It was at a hear­ing on one such motion last May that DeVec­chio took the Fifth.
     Despite its inter­est in win­ning con­vic­tions, the Brook­lyn Unit­ed States Attorney’s Office has done noth­ing to make DeVec­chio look good; the gov­ern­ment has even con­ced­ed that DeVec­chio “may have” dis­closed con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to Scarpa, includ­ing, as Favo had charged, the where­abouts of peo­ple Scarpa was look­ing for. Dou­glas Grover, the lawyer for DeVec­chio, blames the “rape” of his client by the Brook­lyn Unit­ed States Attorney’s Office on Valerie Caproni, the head of the crim­i­nal divi­sion. He says that she con­tin­ues to bear a grudge against DeVec­chio in the mis­tak­en belief that he leaked word of her 1987 drug indict­ment, caus­ing Greg Scarpa, Jr., to flee. “A gov­ern­ment pros­e­cu­tor should be defend­ing the government’s actions, but Valerie want­ed to get Lin,” Grover says. Caproni dis­putes this. “I don’t know what Mr. Grover would have had us do, giv­en that evi­dence,” she says.
     Grover nev­er­the­less had been pre­dict­ing since ear­li­er this year that DeVec­chio would be cleared. And on Sep­tem­ber 4, 1996, after two and a half years, the O.P.R. inves­ti­ga­tion end­ed abrupt­ly with a two-sen­tence let­ter stat­ing that pros­e­cu­tion of DeVec­chio was “not war­rant­ed.”
     DeVec­chio has con­tin­ued to invoke his Fifth Amend­ment priv­i­lege, how­ev­er, and the con­tro­ver­sy may not be over. Scarpa’s rela­tion­ship with the F.B.I. may be an issue at the upcom­ing tri­al of Gre­go­ry Scarpa, Jr., who is still serv­ing time on his drug case, and who was indict­ed last year for acts of rack­e­teer­ing, includ­ing mur­der. He dis­putes DeVecchio’s claim that DeVec­chio nev­er leaked infor­ma­tion. Greg, Jr.,’s defense is expect­ed to be that his alleged crimes actu­al­ly were com­mit­ted by his late father, and that the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to pin them on Greg, Jr., to cov­er up its cor­rupt rela­tion­ship with Scarpa, Sr. Through his attor­ney, Lar­ry Sil­ver­man, Greg, Jr., claims to have known first­hand that DeVec­chio was his father’s law-enforce­ment source and that he was the per­son known as The Girl­friend. He may even attempt to sell these alle­ga­tions direct­ly to the jury by tak­ing the stand. Sil­ver­man has told the court that he would like to call DeVec­chio.
     The Bureau con­tin­ues to main­tain its silence, and many ques­tions about the DeVec­chio mat­ter remain unan­swered. Though the F.B.I.’s long rela­tion­ship with Scarpa appears to have shocked jurors, who found it sor­did, it came as less of a sur­prise to peo­ple in oth­er branch­es of law enforce­ment. They have long viewed the F.B.I. as an insti­tu­tion with its own agen­da, obsessed with mak­ing suc­cess­ful cas­es even at the expense of uphold­ing the law. There is noth­ing in the record to dis­pute DeVecchio’s claim, echoed by his attor­ney, that “I didn’t oper­ate in a vac­u­um,” and that key deci­sions con­cern­ing Scarpa, includ­ing the deci­sion to reopen him dur­ing the war, were made with “the full knowl­edge of any num­ber of peo­ple well above me in rank.”

IN Octo­ber, Lin DeVec­chio retired from the F.B.I., after thir­ty-three years of ser­vice. His retire­ment par­ty was held at a seafood restau­rant in low­er Man­hat­tan. About fifty well-wish­ers turned out. It was a crowd made up large­ly of F.B.I. retirees—”an old-timers’ night,” in the words of one guest—and, when speech­es were made, the crowd got bois­ter­ous. The sub­ject of DeVecchio’s O.P.R. was far from taboo, and as one retire­ment gift was hand­ed to him some­body yelled, “Lin—it’s a sub­poe­na!” There was nev­er any ques­tion, how­ev­er, that the crowd was in DeVecchio’s cor­ner, and near the end of the evening the last speak­er, a retired agent, broke down in sobs, and declared, “Lin DeVec­chio is not cor­rupt! Lin DeVec­chio did what he believed was right!”
     How the crowd felt about Christo­pher Favo was no secret, either. One speak­er pre­sent­ed DeVec­chio with an infec­tious-agent cloth­ing kit, in case he should ever come in con­tact again with “the viral, infec­tious agent who start­ed all this.” James Kossler, a retired super­vi­sor to whom DeVec­chio had once report­ed, expressed his views about DeVecchio’s accuser before the par­ty: “The trou­ble with Chris Favo is that Chris Favo has a very high opin­ion of him­self. He works six­teen hours a day, sev­en days a week, and you lose all objec­tiv­i­ty when that hap­pens. You see things you can’t relate to or under­stand. This whole thing was a trav­es­ty, and Lin’s rep­u­ta­tion has been destroyed. Why wasn’t Favo stopped? If I’d been there, I would have cut his nuts off.”
     Favo remains an F.B.I. agent, but recent­ly he was trans­ferred from New York to a region­al office in the Mid­west. The three oth­er agents who report­ed DeVec­chio to the Bureau con­tin­ue to work in New York; one of them recent­ly tes­ti­fied that Favo had “tak­en the brunt of a lot of this.” Valerie Caproni says of Favo, “The fact that he’s no longer work­ing orga­nized-crime cas­es in New York is to me just a hor­ri­ble fall­out of this whole thing,” and adds, “It’s been a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, as it always is for a whis­tle-blow­er.” Reached by phone recent­ly, Favo said he’d be hap­py to com­ment on how he end­ed up in the Mid­west, or answer any oth­er ques­tion, pend­ing per­mis­sion from the F.B.I., which, as he guessed cor­rect­ly, was denied.♦