How Albanian Louie lost almost everything. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HOW ALBANIAN LOUIE LOST ALMOST EVERYTHING
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.- Joseph Heller Catch 22
This is Trump talking to his newfound best friend W. Jeremiah Jones aka Billy in The Greek's diner:
"As time went on Louie would tell me about his life as a professional criminal.
"We used to stop for breakfast, which was a real breakfast - I mean maybe pancakes with bacon or western omelette with toast and of course coffee and orange juice. Plus like big shots we always tipped the waitresses.
"Sometimes we would also have to wait a while in the morning because they had to do something like change the oil or put on new brake pads and sometimes you have to wait even a couple hours. I could have just gone home but I hung out with Louie because I liked talking to him. I think really he was my only friend and maybe I was his only friend, even though he was totally out of his mind. I really liked listening to his stories about being a break and entry man.
"It's just that he was paranoid as hell but you know what they always say. 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't after you.'
"Those were the days when you could make good money driving a cab plus almost all the apartments in the city had rent control. Things started changing and we skipped the breakfast routine. It became us picking up a cup of coffee and a roll or bagel or something like that at the Korean deli because things were getting tighter and him eating it in the car while we were driving to the garage and me eating mine at the garage while I waited for him to settle with the cashier. (In those days of cash only we paid our lease money upfront.)
"Louie told me how he had been in on a fake billing scam that ripped off one of the Fortune 500 companies (a company that was hooked up with the Pentagon the CIA and all of that) used to have their headquarters in Manhattan, and how he and two partners got off with almost a million dollars before they got caught. They had one guy inside who was in charge of paying the bills and cutting the checks. He knew what the limit was on how much a bill could be and for what without sending up red flags.
"So they stayed under the radar for a long time. Then (I got to laugh the way he tells this.) he says one day an auditor got suspicious about a bill or maybe he was just routine checking it but what he did was he took the bill and went to the department that was supposed to have ordered the service, I dunno what services. Maybe a dozen framistans or seven doohickeys that the bill was for. It turned out that there was nothing and that nobody in the department knew anything about it. So then he pulled all the bills from that fake company called Dwayne Lewis Services. Louie says that the lawyer for the company said in court it was like a loose thread of wool in a sweater and the guy kept pulling it and yanking it until there was no more sweater.
"And here's the thing about that. They were found not guilty of the crime. "
Jones says "you gotta be shittin' me" Alicia yells from the kitchen "It's the God's honest truth Billy."
"There wasn't enough evidence, you know beyond a reasonable doubt. Or maybe the D A was a jerk.
"But the company also sued them and won.
"It's harder to convict someone of a crime, especially white collar crime than it is to win a lawsuit.
"The problem for the company was: 'where's the money?'
That gorgeous waitress interjects again: "This is true. Exactly what Louie told me."
"So even if Louie had the money if he started living too good and they caught him he'd be screwed. Now I'm pretty sure he's spent some of it. How else could he pay his landlord a year in advance? And feed all those damned cats.
"From what he told me I think Louie killed one of his partners. He had two partners. One of them, the inside guy, died of a heart attack after they got caught. He keeled over right there in front of the judge in court.
Imagine this: both of these guys are watching Alicia out of the corners of their eyes as she sashays around the tables refilling coffee.
Three cops came into the diner and sat down at the counter.
Alicia greeted them "hi sweeties. What'll it be?" As she was filling their coffee cups one of them got a call on his walkie-talkie : "two officers in danger. 118th and Madison. Southwest corner." The cops jumped up out of their seats. One of them lingered a New York minute as his eyes took their last sip of Alicia. He slapped a $5 bill on the counter and caught up with the other two.
"Louie told me that before they got caught he and the other guys buried the money under the boardwalk in Coney Island right underneath this hot dog stand. It turns out that was a bullshit story. They buried it in Prospect Park. But I didn't know that yet. Boy did I want him to tell me the name of that hot dog stand.
"I think it's kind of crazy but he told me that's what they did. When they got caught they had to stand trial. Like I told you they were found not guilty, which as any lawyer will tell you is not the same thing as innocent. But then they got sued and the company won the case but the only thing is how're they going to collect it?
"Honey gimme a slice of that strawberry cheesecake wouldya babe? Oh and give me another cuppa Joe.
Alicia said, "I'll give you what you want sweetie pie but tell me something baby doll, how do you eat like a horse and never gain weight? Just askin' for a friend."
"Good genes I guess. You know the last time I saw a doctor was 20 years ago?"
(Alicia thought to herself: "You'll never get a kiss from me. Know why? As cute as you are, and I like you, but it would be like lickin'a damn ashtray.")
"So after all that was over a strange thing happened to Louie's other partner. They found him in the Hudson River all wrapped up in chains, which is another way of saying he was dead. Somebody killed him.
Alicia walked up to Trump, put a finger to her lips and grimaced. "You miss that ugly puss don't you? It's a shame he decided to go out to Las Vegas but maybe he didn't have a choice."
Trump resumes his gossiping to Billy.
"I asked Louie if they caught the guy that killed him or if he knew who it was and Louie just looked at me and if you ever saw an ugly puss without an expression on its face that was it, so I never asked him again.
"Sometimes I think that that guy Ignatowski on television was modeled on Louie.
"Louie looks like Ignatowski but with a broken nose and bad teeth (or is it Ignatowski looks like Louie but with good teeth and a straight nose?)
"You see, Pleasant Avenue Taxi used to be down in The Village. It had a different name and the main family that owned most of the taxi medallions was this Irish family from the Bronx and they had this Jewish partner who only owned about 10 medallions. He used to be kind of like Big Shot In Charge Of Being An Asshole. He was a nasty piece of work. I think his job was to walk around the floor during shift change and give all the drivers dirty looks then walk into the repair shop and run some kind of white glove inspection on the guys servicing cars. You could tell that he thought everyone else in the place was shit.
But the Irish, I don't want to say too much good about that family but they kind of looked at the drivers like we were their little children. So what I mean is we didn't have medical insurance that's for sure, but one of the drivers got cancer and the McGillicuddy family paid for him and his operations and all of that.
"They moved the garage uptown and when they moved uptown I moved with them.
"The fleet owners' organization hired Stuart Feinberg who was a lawyer and who was also the boss of the Brooklyn Democrats. He shook off the union but good.
"Stuart Feinberg also got them to put Kevin in as chief dispatcher. Now this is the story that the Irish guy in charge of the repair shop told me (they got big mouths. Man, this family- they just tell you everything.)
"During the morning shift changes some of the night drivers would finish driving early and come in finish up at two or three in the morning, even one in the morning. Don't ask me how those guys made any money, but that's what they did. So these cars had to be parked. Mamadou and "Kid Gavilan" would park them along Greenwich Street where they had all these "No Parking 7 a.m. to 10 a.m." signs and a couple of taxi stand signs that the lawyer they used to have had arranged.
"The story goes: Stuart says to McGillicuddy (that was the name of the boss) that he heard about this thing that happened to the cars. (It wasn't in the news and he doesn't live down there.) Jack Monaghan, one of the boss' cousins was the Irish guy in charge of Tire Acquisition. He told me that Stuart lives up in that part of Westchester that's past Tarrytown, past the Tappan Zee Bridge.
"In this garage everybody knew everything. So McGillicuddy says "so how do you know about that" and he says "well look I know about a lot of things and that is one of the things I know about like I know how to get rid of unions." So Stuart says there's a guy that needs a job and if you have the job for him nothing is going to happen to your cars anymore. That was Kevin and boy did he make changes. I'll tell you about that later. Just so you know they were not good changes.
"Someone told me cuz this happened before I got there that the people who did that television show hung out at the garage during shift changes and talked to different people and that the characters - some of the characters anyway - are modeled after actual people that worked there.
"So first the Irish bought out the Jew but then they had a big spat inside the family. They are the kind of people that just could not keep secrets. Anyway they moved the cabs uptown to Pleasant Avenue and built an apartment building on top of the garage down in the Village. Well no they didn't actually build it but you know they paid for that and took care of the paperwork. Up here though they couldn't keep it together. They had too many arguments about how to run things so they sold out to Castro.
"So like I told you Louie also told me about his younger days as a break and entry man. He still had his tools. He said they were his Social Security. Once just to prove it to me he hot wired the car. He showed me his tools and they looked real enough. He kept those tools and some clothes like winter clothes and who knows what else in one of those storage places that cost about $30 a month because after the garage moved which wasn't all that far from where he lived. His landlord had him kicked out. Now if this happened when he was still working for McGillicuddy word would get back to him and he would find somebody, a cousin or somebody who had a room or studio or something to rent. They'd even lend him the month deposit and month advance. That's the kind of person McGillicuddy was but forget about a union. Oh no.
"You see Louie's landlord was changing to condominiums and renovating and all that stuff to escape the rent control and by the law you don't have to go along with that.
"Sometimes though the laws are just words on pieces of paper.
"Anyway what happened was the landlord claimed that Louie was a squatter and Louie had to bring his rent receipts to court but Louie is a mess. He can't keep records. He doesn't have any freaking receipts from anything .
"He's lucky the IRS never audited him is all I can say cuz his place was a mess.
"It was a rent controlled apartment in a building next to the precinct on Christopher Street, around the corner from the garage. I visited there a few times.
"Louie had around ten cats, and the place stank. He had piles and stacks of old porno mags that he would buy from the second hand hawkers on Second Avenue near Gem Spa by Saint Marks Place early in the mornings when the garage was down there in The Village.
"He had boxes and cartons of cat food, spaghetti, jars of spaghetti sauce and cartons of powdered skim milk. He had boxes filled with cans of tuna fish and Spam . He said he paid his rent a year in advance. Twice in those years I went with him to the big Pathmark down on Pike Street (actually that's the foot of First Avenue by another name) near the East River and the New York Post plant. He would stock up on his stash items and head back to Christopher Street.
"Louie had buried several hundreds of thousands of dollars which is partly why I used to hang out with him. I was hoping that something would give and somehow I could get a little piece of this thing. Or maybe a big piece.
"Back in those days Louie could not talk to anyone without talking about the Italians of the West Village, their connections with the precinct and his landlord.
"Little Italy used to cover a lot of the neighborhood that you now call Soho and also Greenwich Village.
Louie believed that the Italians of Greenwich Village were all keeping tabs on him and maybe some of them were. Also he believed the Italians put the microphones in his taxis whenever he works. Louie said they were always in the taxi he would get (and it was a different cab every night).
"One of the dispatchers I think was a mafia soldier - Kevin diPascuale. I've mentioned him. Louie thought that Kevin was the one who was putting the microphone and the tracking device in every taxi that they gave him. I think that's crazy don't you?
"And the satellite trackers he said they all had. Kevin would look at a screen and know where all his taxis were at all times. I know that doesn't sound crazy at all these days but what we're talkin' about is 1984 or 1985, something like that. The Navy was just testing GPS.
"Another thing Louie always talked about was the two dollar daily fee to the union, and how he hated it. When the fleet bosses failed in their first try to shake the union off they stopped collecting the two dollars . For about three months they didn't collect the money and they didn't turn anything over to the union. Then the union won their case in court and the garages had to turn the money over including the back money. They were going to collect an extra two dollars every shift on top of the first two dollars until they got caught up with the judgment. Louie wasn't having any of it. McGillicuddy had no choice but to send him away. (He still loitered on Sunday nights and ran his poker game.)
In those days there were Israeli and Russian run garages up Ninth and Tenth Avenues that ran yellow painted old police cars and were not very selective as to their driver staff, as the cars would continually break down, and the owners were reputed to routinely refuse to return deposit money which was five hundred dollars. This was a bunch of drivers with very bad records (some with fake hack licenses), the ones who drove for these garages. These were the wide open days of Mayor Ed Koch, when the streets around Avenue C had become an open air drug bazaar. But I digress.
Louie joined this sad crew rather than ante up the few dollars he owed to the union. You could not honestly say that most McGillicuddy's cars were death traps. Some of them were, and Kevin and Bob the Buddhist made sure there would be some really dangerous and uncomfortable cars. (Not most of them though.) The legit fleets, like McGillicuddy's were in fact the desired places experienced cabbies would want to work out of, even with the brutal hours, long shape up. These fleets could be selective. But again, I digress.
"One evening I was driving down upper Fifth Avenue from a run to Harlem when I saw Louie standing in the second traffic lane next to a broken down yellow painted cop car right by the big art museum all the tourists go. I always mix up The Museum of Modern Art with the other one, The Metropolitan. Louie left the car right there and got into my cab. He had a mission at Pathmark. I told Louie that there was new management and that there was no union, and that they kept their cars pretty decent. So what we did was I brought him back over to his place on Christopher Street. He asked me to wait for him and he came back a few minutes later with all the stuff that he had bought at Pathmark and he was shaking his head saying "what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do." So I said "what happened Louie" and he said "they evicted me but I didn't think they were going to really do it because I always pay my rent a year ahead. But right up there there's another lock and and (he was shaking and crying) 'there's this sign from the Sheriff's Office saying "Notice of Eviction'. It has this telephone number it says I should call tomorrow to find out where my stuff is but my cats- it doesn't say anything about my cats. But what happened to my cats. What am I gonna do what am I gonna do.' Like I told you Louie was an old break and entry guy. Louie said the new lock was a piece of cake, that he was going to go back inside just to see what was left. Maybe it was because his tool kit was too heavy but it was the only thing that was still there in this black zip up satchel, still zipped up. He brought it downstairs.
"So it looked like he was out on the street, and actually that's where he was. And pretty broken up about his cats.
"I saw that this night was shot as far as making any money goes. I thought maybe I made enough to cover the lease and the gas anyway. So I gave Louie my pen and my trip card so he could write down the telephone number and call them in the morning. Louie left all the stuff in the car and went back up upstairs to write down the telephone number. At that time I had a room in up in the Bronx with McGillicuddy's cousin. Like I said McGillicuddy looked after us in that way. McGillicuddy's cousin was a McGillicutty, not a McGillicuddy. Two different families but connected by marriage. McGillicutty had this big house up on Sedgwick Avenue. He lived alone on the ground floor with the two top floors rented out to roomers. There was a bathroom on each floor. My room was pretty big. I had the biggest room on the top floor. So I says to him this, " why don't you knock off and get some rest and I'm going to go back to my garage and rent this car for tomorrow's day shift. Then I'll come back a little later, but let me take a nap in the car. You just do what you gotta do in the bathroom now. Just be quiet in the room. Don't make any noise till I get back. Once I get back it'll be okay." And down the stairs I went.
"Oh, I was telling you about Kevin the one I think is a mafia guy dispatcher. Let me tell you how he changed the garage.
"McGillicuddy was a straight shooter. As a straight shooter he ran things pretty much on the up-and-up more or less. I can tell you he had a big sign down in the bay where the drivers waited to get called and the sign said and these are the words 'Not only are drivers not required to tip any of the employees but employees who accept tips from drivers will be fired.'
Kevin DiPasquale took that sign down.
"And when he said that he meant it up until when the windshields got smashed and tires got slashed. When I started driving there Kevin was already in the driver's seat so to speak and you had to pony up and if you didn't pony up you would wait and watch people come in after you, get nice cars and go to work. Before Kevin became the boss downstairs with the drivers it was a white guy named Pete, and they told me a story about Pete. One day Pete went with some of the drivers across the street.
"It was some of the old-timers and it was Pete's birthday and would you believe they wanted to give him a little party. So there's this sit down Pizzeria, wooden tables and tablecloths and all and they even serve beer and wine. So the story goes, everyone is having a good time eating pizza and pasta and having a beer. When it was time to go Greenbaum, he was the union shop steward, said to Pete "oh no we treat" but you know what Pete said? They say he told them he cannot accept it. That he has to pay his tab. Now about the time I got to the garage that sign was a joke. And then Bob the Buddhist came in- another bloodsucker. OK I told you I was going to tell you what Kevin did and I just did.
"So they let me rent the car for the day shift and I sacked out for a little while. Then I went back up to the Bronx. I got back there before the alternate side switch so I had a place to put the car. I went upstairs. I went into my room and I woke up Louie. In those days we did not have cell phones we had landlines. So now Louie would have to work things out on the phone but first I said to him 'look you don't have any place to go, right?' And he said 'yeah that's right. I don't have any place to go.' Well as luck would have it McGillicutty the cousin had an extra room up there on my floor. So we went down and knocked on McGillicutty's door, and he was only too happy to rent a room to Louie. The only hitch was money, but I told him 'look Louie is an experienced taxi driver. He'll have the whole thing month in advance and month deposit if you just give him a little time. If it's okay.' He was okay with this. So anyway I had a whole bunch of change cuz back then everything was cash and so I had change. I had this habit of going to the check cashing place and getting rolls of nickels dimes and quarters when I went in there to buy money orders to pay my child support (which is a story I don't feel like telling you about.)
"So here I'm going to cut to the quick."
Here Jones says half joking "It's About damned time Ronald."
"Louie brought all his pasta and all the other bullshit he got at Pathmark earlier. They told him to come and get his stuff and that the cats were with the ASPCA. I had to tell Louie this: 'man, you can't bring those frick frackin' cats up here.' They told him he would have to pay about $800 to get his stuff. He had an old bed with a mattress that smells pretty bad, a couple of bookshelves that he probably bought at Volunteers of America 25 years ago along with the bed and mattress and a night table. Oh, and old dishes that he probably also got from Volunteers all those years ago with the rest of his junk. So for Louie everything was lost. Well at least now he had a place to go and sleep, wash up and stuff. He only had two changes of clothes anyhow.
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