Free Made Men by Greg B. Smith Page B

floor and told to walk up. The rival began walking and looked up to see two men—a Colombo soldier named Carmine Sessa and Cutolo—standing there with weapons drawn. Cutolo, according to Sessa, suddenly thought he was in a movie.
“Fucking godfather,” Cutolo muttered, emptying his revolver into the rival gangster at the foot of the stairs. Later, the rival was rolled up inside a rug and dumped in a landfill.
Cutolo was a man who spent much time massaging his public image. He was, for instance, a fund-raising chairman for a local charity that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for research into multiple sclerosis. He posed for photographs and offered toasts at annual dinners. Many of those who paid for tables at these dinners were members of unions the FBI believed were secretly kicking back thousands to Cutolo. But as of January 1998, Cutolo was not in jail, and was not anticipating spending any time in jail. He’d been acquitted of all charges for his alleged role in the Colombo crime family war and now he was out on the streets, behaving like a businessman just trying to make a little here and there. The Siemens partnership on the Russian cell-phone deal with Vinny Ocean, of course, was not exactly public knowledge. They worked behind other investors. Their names appeared on no documents. If Cutolo’s involvement in the deal became known, the Siemens deal would surely evaporate.
For that reason, Vinny Ocean was looking to do business with a big-name entrepreneur. He yearned for the imprimatur of legitimacy. One of those risk takers with a big name was, according to the FBI, Bob Guccione, the founder and president of one of America’s favorite girliemagazine empires— Penthouse.
Guccione was, of course, really a guy from Brooklyn with gold chains, the son of a Sicilian accountant. He grew up in a place where gangsters thrived but chose a legitimate way to make a living. He founded his General Media in 1967 and built it up to a $21 million company by out Playboy ing Playboy. He was willing to do what hundreds of successful businessmen had done before to make a killing—take another step down. Of late, however, circulation of his slick porno magazines had taken a beating. He’d nearly defaulted on bond payments, had to cut forty jobs and shut two magazines. The extraordinary growth of the Internet and the new availability of product far raunchier than anything Guccione could dream up was killing him. Diversification, as they say in business school, was the only option. Thus Bob Guccione was talking about branching out into several new areas. One idea involved a vague plan to build a noncasino hotel with “masculine” amenities in Atlantic City. Guccione was in the process of finding investors.
Another idea was strip clubs. He was thinking about using the Penthouse name to open a string of upscale topless clubs in New York and New Jersey. A lawyer his daughter knew had put him in touch with a very charming businessman who looked a bit like the actor Robert Wagner with silver sideburns. The man’s name was Vincent Palermo and he had much experience with a club in Queens called Wiggles. Palermo said he and Guccione were talking about getting together for a club in Manhattan, or if the mayor of the city didn’t like that, in the Five Towns on Long Island. Vincent Palermo believed that Guccione was impressed with Vincent Palermo. And it was clear from Palermo’s talks with one of the DeCavalcante family’s new associates, Ralphie Guarino, that Vinny Ocean was very much taken by Guccione and his millions.
Ralphie, of course, was trying out the new secret-agent equipment given to him by the FBI, a fact he did not mention to Vinny. Ralphie pretended to be fascinated with Bob Guccione.
“Does he go out much?” Ralphie asked.
“No, not at all,” Palermo said as if he had known Guccione his whole life. “He goes to the summer house for the weekend.”
Vinny made it clear he was on a first-name basis