On the Coat Tales of a Gambler
I didn’t intend to share this story, and I am not going to share my reason. Just the same, I have told you all of the Scarpone stories I can remember, or better said perhaps, the ones with excitement. This one is not about Scarpone, and is not very exciting, but it’s one I feel I can tell you about now.
I was born and raised in Alabama. It was not until after I met up with Scarpone that I actually traveled some. I did not go on that many trips, and I was only the driver for him on some of them. All the trips were of course related to gambling. It was either a cockfight in Georgia, poker in Florida, or a craps game at some motel. In 1964, I was twenty-three and Alabama had been the sum total of my worldly experience, excepting my stint with the marines.
Now, I knew of Scarpone in 1965, but I first bumped into him in 1964. It is a stretch to say I met him. He came up to me one night at the juke joint on the 518. Apparently, he had noticed me a few times, but I really did not pay attention to gamblers back then. I was there for music and babes. Anyway, Scarpone approached me one night, he did not introduce himself, he went straight to his business with me. With a cocked head and squinting partially from his right eye, Scarpone says to me, “I been watching you kid, tonight and other nights. You look like an upstanding guy who can keep his mouth shut for a few hundred bucks. I’m I right?” He was right, I was just a kid, and in my shock of being spoken to in that direct manner, I simply said, yes sir, like a schoolboy agreeing to some mischief.
Scarpone just nodded, pushing out his lower lip, then he looked away at someone and gestured with his head, back to where we were standing. A guy walks over and Scarpone says, “This is Bennie De Marco, he’s from New York. He came to Alabama on the lamb.” Then, flipping his hand, pointing to me, he said, “And this guy, he’s, what’s your name kid?” I said my name and Scarpone disappeared.
Bennie had been mixed up in some mob business and was wanted by the cops. The mob did not care to have Bennie hanging around New York. If he got picked up, he could implicate the crooks that he worked for. Everybody was “family” in the mob. But to really understand the Italian Mafia was like understanding a dysfunctional family. It was a brotherhood of a tight nit group of thugs that managed to get along for the common cause of making money. As long as a guy served the cause of the brotherhood, all was good on the surface. However, with crooks, no one really ever trusted anyone, especially someone that had gotten themselves into a jam, and was wanted by the cops.
Bennie was not the sharpest axe in the mob’s tool shed, but he did know which way was up. It did not take him long to figure out that his mob buddies were more of a threat to his well-being than the New York cops. He added two and two and that equaled south. He decided that hiding out in Alabama was a whole lot better than being splashed into the East River while holding a sack of cement.
Although Bennie had to cut ties with New York, he did keep a connection with a mob boss, known as Mr. Ricky. Mr. Ricky liked Bennie. Bennie was the kind of guy that could be assigned to a job, and Mr. Ricky knew that whatever it took, Bennie would complete the job.
Bennie was short in stature, but he had the reputation in New York as the kind of guy you’d never want to piss off. Think of Nicky Santoro, the character played by Joe Pesci in the movie Casino. Bennie had a chip on his shoulder, and it did not take much for him to catch an attitude and the next thing you’d know, he’d be beating some poor slob to a bloody pulp. That’s the real reason Mr. Ricky liked having Bennie around. Bennie didn’t need a gun to be a threat. He was a mad man with a hair trigger.
The 1964 World’s Fair was in Flushing Meadow, Queens, New York. The heat was off Bennie by then, but he could not go back to New York to live. The cops tend to forget old warrants, and move on to their next person of interest, but the “Family” never forgets. Just the same, Bennie received a message from Mr. Ricky that he had a short-term proposition, and he wanted Bennie’s help with an important job at the World’s Fair. Of course, the job had nothing to do with the Fair, but it was a way to keep things vague, yet interesting to Bennie.
Bennie owned a 1963 Corvette Stingray. Bennie was a hothead and not one to be trusted to keep his cool. Scarpone picked me as a levelheaded balance to Bennie. That is how I remember Bennie’s explanation when he was asking me to drive with him to New York. Bennie still had a warrant out for his arrest in New York and was concerned about his driving. Bennie owned a speed machine and recognized that he’d likely be caught speeding. One thing would lead to another and eventually a bench warrant might turn up and Bennie would be in jail, back in New York. Bennie told me the trip would take less than a week. I would make $100 a day driving and Bennie would pick up the expenses.
Mr. Ricky wanted Bennie for an important mob meeting. Mr. Ricky needed a bodyguard he could not only trust but depend on for his protection. He wanted a no non-sense guy that could keep his mouth shut while imposing a definite threat just with his presence. Hiring Bennie, instead of having one of Mr. Ricky’s own guys, had to do with the purpose of the meeting. At that time, Mr. Ricky did not want any of his people to know about the meeting. As it turned out, I got to make an extra two hundred bucks driving Mr. Ricky’s Cadillac on the meeting day for the same reason.
The meeting was held near the New York World’s fair in Flushing. Mr. Ricky put us up in a nice hotel, nicer than anything I had ever seen. I actually got to spend a couple of days at the World’s Fair before heading back to Robstown. Man, there’s a whole other story here that I can’t tell you about. Anyway, my part was to be the driver on this job, and I took it.
On the day of the meeting, Bennie and I took a cab to Mr. Ricky’s hotel. We waited in the lobby until Mr. Ricky came down. He invited us to join him for breakfast. After breakfast we went out to the driveway where Mr. Ricky directed me to a Cadillac parked there. He said the keys would be in it and to bring it around to pick up him and Bennie. We were standing but fifty feet from where the car was parked and for 200 bucks; I was not going to open my yap about us all walking to the car.
I drove the Cadilac with Mr. Ricky giving me directions. For about thirty minutes we just drove around, so it seemed. Eventually, we arrived at another hotel. It was piss elegant and I cannot recall the name, but you’d recognize it if I did. Mr. Ricky instructed me to stay with the car, and not to leave it except for a smoke. I didn’t smoke. Turing to Bennie, Mr. Ricky asked him if he was carrying a piece. Bennie said, no. Mr. Ricky said, good, and went on to say that they would be searched, so there could be no guns at the meeting. However, if there was trouble of any sort, he expected Bennie to get him out safely. Of course, by then, it was too late for me to do anything except wonder about what the hell I had gotten myself into.
It turned out to be a long day of just sitting in the car and watching well-to-do people coming and going from the hotel. About one o’clock, a waiter came from the hotel with one of those fancy covered silver plates. The waiter came to my side of the car and told me that the lunch was compliments of Mr. Ricky. I had a corn beef sandwich on rye with potato salad and a beer. About four-thirty, Bennie and Mr. Ricky came out of the hotel and we drove back to Mr. Ricky’s hotel. Mr. Ricky thanked me for driving and waiting all day. He told me that Bennie would take care of me. That was the last we saw of Mr. Ricky. We took a cab back to our hotel, and the next morning, we headed back to Robstown.
Bennie paid me the $200 for driving the Caddie and $600 for six days of driving, as promised. Of course, the $600 was part of Bennie’s cut for doing the job. When we got back to Robstown, Bennie tossed me another two hundred as a tip. He said $800 was a bastard number and a thousand just sounded sweeter. A thousand bucks in one week took away all of my wife’s anger. She did not believe me in the least that I had a $100 a day driving job. Hell, back then I made around $250 a month. When I showed her ten one-hundred-dollar bills, it was “hot springs” that night.
On the trip home, Bennie told me if I could keep my f’n mouth shut he’d tell me why he was in New York. I answered, “sure, you know me.” Bennie was the kind of guy that had an ego that needed stroking, like he was a big shot. He wanted to impress me with the New York meeting. The secret mob meeting with Mr. Ricky and whomever he met with had to do with building casinos in Atlantic City. Mr. Ricky’s meeting was the beginning stages of how his mob would restructure their business arrangement and operate legalized, Las Vegas style gambling, on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City. Bennie went on to explain how it was all going to happen, the split, the cops getting greased, the purchase of the land and of course paying off of politicians. He said there was a real estate developer there, from New York, who was going to front for the whole operation. This is the part I wasn’t going to tell you. He went on to say that’s why the meeting was on the qt, because Mr. Ricky was making a move, (changing partners) and that was his reason for needing Bennie. I was sitting there behind the wheel nodding, and thinking to myself, “Yeah, yeah, Bennie, you are full of shit. You must think I’ll believe any crap you make up.” To this day, I do not know for sure if Bennie told me the truth or if he made it all up. Casinos did come to Atlantic City a few years later, after that trip to New York.
Besides the cash I made on that trip, I had a blast driving Bennie’s Corvette. Bennie insisted on driving for a short stint on the way back to Alabama. We were on a stretch of road in South Carolina. Bennie gunned the engine a couple of times, telling me if I pissed my pants in his car that he’d break my F’n neck. He dropped the clutch and lit’em up. He wound the clock to 100 miles an hour before shifting into fourth gear. I was praying that he’d run out of speed before we ran out of road. With your ass a few inches off the ground, the world goes by pretty damn fast at 140.
Sharing these stories with you, as I look back on my life, I think I am lucky to have survived. I was a young and naïve. I was trying to hold a steady job, and stay married, but I was reckless as hell.
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler, continues in
Episode 23 – Goodbye Robstown