The people who’d typed the transcripts had worked very closely with the actual investigative team. Through long association, the detectives who’d done the wiretap surveillance knew each of the voices on the tape intimately and could instantly clear up any confusion the typists may have had when a voice sounded too similar to another one. Anthony Faviola had a deep, sonorous voice, cultivated over the years to disguise a faintly lingering Brooklyn accent; someone named Tony might have used “deses” or “doses,” but not someone named Anthony, if you please. Anthony had once been quoted as saying that he thought the nickname Tony sounded like “some kind of ignorant wop.” Anthony, on the other hand (although he’d never said anything to that effect), must have sounded to him like a British prime minister. Michael couldn’t blame him. He himself hated anyone calling him Mike, which sounded to him like a bartender. Office rumor had it that Faviola had once taken speech lessons from a teacher on Park Avenue, but this was unsubstantiated. Whatever the case, he didn’t sound quite like a mobster, but neither did he sound like Professor Higgins.
His brother was something else again. There was no mistaking Rudy whenever he opened his mouth. His voice was rumbling and gravelly, and he mangled the English language as brutally as he’d once mangled recalcitrant debtors. Even when he was in a room with other gangsters whose disrespect for English rivaled his own, he was completely identifiable, preferring to shout every word he uttered, a habit that had caused the investigating detectives innumerable problems with their gain controls. On the typed transcripts, there was no problem with voices. Anthony was identified by the initials AF. Rudy was RF. PB was Peter Bardo. These were the three key players. At the time of the surveillance AF was still boss. RF was underboss. PB was consigliere, third in command.
Presumably, when AF went out to Kansas, RF became boss, PB became underboss, and the man presumed to have organized the mob’s entire narcotics operation back when they were just beginning to dabble in dope — an elderly thug named Louis “Fat Nickie” Nicoletta — had taken over as consigliere. But back in the spring of 1992, they might have been talking about someone like Dominick Di Nobili, small world.
AF: The way I see this, Rude, it’s not going to be fruitful to lean on this man. We’re discussing a large sum of money, which it’s clear he doesn’t have.
RF: Smack him real good, he’ll find the fuckin’ money in a hurry, take it from me.
AF: And if he doesn’t? How does that make us look?
RF: It makes us look like a guy doesn’t pay one way he pays another fuckin’ way.
AF: But we still won’t have the money, will we? What if we give him a grace period, say a week, to come up with what he owe? No interest for a week. We...
RF: That sets an example for every fuckin’ deadbeat in town.
AF: This is fifty grand we’re talking, Rude, a man can’t just...
RF: This is also a matter of principle we’re talkin’.
AF: Agreed. But if a man is broke, he can’t come up with...
RF: He’s broke ’cause he bets the fuckin’ ponies with money we lent him.
AF: Even so...
RF: Besides, it was only twenty when he borrowed it. It’s ’cause he ain’t payin’ it back, it goes through the fuckin’ roof.
AF: Go talk to him, okay? Tell him your brother’s giving him a week free, out of the goodness of his heart. Tell him once the week’s up, I won’t be able to control the animals who work for me.
RF: (Laughing) Fuckin’ animals, yeah.
On and on. The daily routine of running a vast business empire, coupled with the more mundane matters confronting a busy chief executive officer...
AF: Petey, what do you think?
PB: I think a gift is appropriate. But a modest one.
AF: How modest?
PB: Three bills. No more than that.
AF: Isn’t that kind of cheap for a christening? What’d we spend on Giannino when his kid was christened?
PB: I can check.
AF: Check, would you? And send Danielli the same. He hears we sent Giannino’s kid something more expensive, he’ll take offense.
RF: Fuckin’ hardheaded wop.
AF: What is it, anyway? A boy or a girl?
PB: A girl.
GL: Grows up lookin’ like Terry, she’ll be a winner.
GL. Identified in the transcript’s index as the capo in charge of the Gerald Lacizzare Crew, which at the time of the surveillance operated a loan-sharking business that took in thousands of dollars a week in interest, charging rates of between 156 and 312 percent a year.
Danielli was Felix Danielli, who at the time of the surveillance was running an illegal horse betting parlor that did business in excess of twenty thousand dollars a week. His wife, Teresa, was purported to be an extravagantly beautiful woman.
RF: Love to boff that broad.
Rudy Faviola again, the underboss, undoubtedly licking his lips while professing his desire, this despite strict mob rules against hitting on any family member’s wife or daughter.
On and on. From the mundane to the ridiculous...
RF: I’m dancing, right, when all of the sudden I hear this broad cut a giant fart, it’s the first time I ever heard a broad I wasn’t fucking fart.
AF: (Laughing) This is the girl you’re dancing with?
RF: Yea, right on the dance floor. A fart like an explosion. And, oh Jesus, what a stink!
LN: People probably thought it was you made the fart.
LN. Louis “Fat Nickie” Nicoletta. Presumably the new consigliere, but at the time of the surveillance, the man directing much of the family’s narcotics activities.
RF: That’s what I was afraid of, Nick! They’d think I’m the one stinkin’ up Vinny’s fuckin’ wedding. Big fat cunt stinkin’ like a New Jersey sewer.
LN: I never had a woman fart while I was fuckin’ her.
RF: Maybe you ain’t fuckin’ them right.
LN: Kick her right out of bed, she farts on me.
Conversation upon conversation, from the ridiculous to the sublime...
BT: This is supposed to be a realistic movie, you understand?
Bobby Triani, identified in the index as Rudy Faviola’s son-in-law, and a capo overseeing the family’s vast stolen property operation, including a “theft to order” scheme that utilized the services of corrupt United Parcel Service employees.
LN: I don’t go to the movies no more. I always get in trouble I got to the movies.
AF: What kind of trouble? You want some more of this, Nick?
LN: No, thanks. I’m always tellin’ people shut up. The ones behind me talkin’.
RF: I almost did shoot some cocksucker talkin’ behind me, he was givin’ away the whole fuckin’ movie.
BT: You shoulda shot him.
RF: I mean it, the whole fuckin’ movie. Here’s where he jumps out the window, here’s where she catches him with the blonde, here’s where the fuckin’ tiger gets loose, here’s...
LN: The whole fuckin’ movie.
RF: I turned around and shoved the piece in his fuckin’ face, I told him shut up or I’ll blow off your nose. He tells me he’s gonna go get the usher. I tell him go ahead go get the fuckin’ usher, I’ll blow off his nose, too.