It is impossible to remember the number of meals Tony Carbonetti and I ate at the Jackson Hole hamburger restaurant on E. 64th st. Dozens and dozens of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. There was nothing memorable about the food that night. Tony had what he always had: cheeseburger, fries/onion rings and a black and white milk shake. Even at breakfast there that's what he ate. I don't remember much about that night but I do remember staring at his food after he gave me his news. I can't recall whether it was summer or winter. Usually I am very good about those sorts of details; dates and times are my specialty. But on this night nothing stuck in my head except the food and the revelation.
Right after we were served Tony had a big smile on his face and said, "Take a look at this." He stretched out his arm and pulled back his cuff. He was wearing a new watch. I never think of Tony Carbonetti as wearing a watch. He is very much one of those people who relied on cell phones and Blackberries to tell the time. But as he extended his arm and pushed his wrist towards me I noticed very quickly that he didn't merely have on a new watch but a very expensive one. It was a Ferrari. Now first, I would never be caught dead in a Ferrari watch. They always struck me as the type of thing that men bought themselves when they were going through a mid-life crisis. I am a Cartier, Baume & Mercier, Patek Philippe kind of guy. Second, Tony Carbonetti, at that time, was one of the least materialistic people I had ever met. He lived a very simple life nearly devoid of significant possessions. He didn't own a home, a car or any jewelery. When I met him he owned three pairs of shoes. Tony was a guy who appreciated cash. Mainly because it enabled him to gamble. But that night he was sporting a very expensive timepiece.
"Where'd you get that?" I asked. His face got very serious suddenly. "Look, I am going to tell you something but you can never repeat this." "OK," I said. "No, I am really serious. You can't tell anyone what I am going to tell you." "I understand," I said.
Of the confidences Tony had shared with me over the years he knew that with the exception of leaking a little here and there to Ray, if it was a serious matter or a RWG only issue, I always kept his confidence. This was in stark contrast to his roommate, Vinny, who could be guaranteed to spread any morsel of information like wildfire within minutes. Tony and I both knew this about Vinny as he had violated our trust on so many occasions. But we both liked Vinny and always overlooked it. He was terribly insecure especially as it related to Tony and viewed info as currency to raise his profile.
"Spitzer gave it to me," Tony told me. "Jesus," I said. We stared at each other for a few moments after I said that. With friends who have been through so much over years sometimes a look can speak paragraphs. What we both knew and said with that stare was that this was a new line that had been crossed.
Joe Spitzer was an orthodox Jew who had befriended Tony. Joe had become so close to Tony that you could usually find him camped out in Tony's office using it as his own. Vinny and I had discussed many times this strange relationship. Why was Tony so fond of Joe and what was in it for him? Vinny had hinted on a few occasions that some money had changed hands from Joe to Tony but I never even entertained that notion seriously prior to that night. Tony was constantly pressuring agencies and friends to be of assistance to Joe and his seemingly endless business ventures. I, myself, was talked into touring a development site in Brooklyn with Joe and Tony that Tony had hoped Joe could, with the help of HDC, develop. It was a difficult site geographically and would have required serious support and foundation work; something I would have been concerned about with the best of our developers. I sure as hell wasn't going to get into bed on a problem site with Joe Spitzer. Tony made me go to Joe's house after the tour and I met his wife, Helen. Tony brought up the project once or twice more but he received no encouragement from me and it soon died.
But it had up until that night remained a mystery why Tony was constantly going out of his way to help Spitzer. Everyone, including the Mayor, knew that Tony was schilling for Spitzer. It was something of a joke around City Hall - Bruce used to kid him about it. But everyone, including myself, was forced to conclude that it was just Tony being a good guy. This watch caused me to question that benign motivation.
Like Mastro before him, Tony kept a close watch on HPD. He frequently tried to steer development projects to friends. Richard Roberts and Jerrilyn Perrine mentioned to me often the pressure they were under from Tony to award this or designate that to help someone out (more about that in another post). Tony was always on the lookout for projects at HPD, HDC or elsewhere to help out Spitzer. To my knowledge, Joe had no housing experience. It didn't have to be housing however, it could be anything.
Tony and I had had our ethical lapses but accepting this watch seemed to go over the line. It wasn't just the amount of the watch. I asked Tony how much he thought it cost. "My guess? Between three and five thousand," he responded. Accepting a gift of that amount from anyone doing business with the City was iffy, accepting a gift of that value from someone that everyone knew you were schilling for - all the time - seemed reckless. And Tony Carbonetti was generally not a reckless guy. I went on-line a few days later and looked up Ferrari watches. I saw a watch that looked similar and it retailed for slightly less than $6,000. Now like me, I have no doubt that Joe Spitzer buys all his jewelry from someone on 47th Street and has never paid retail in his life. So I sincerely doubt the cost to Spitzer was anything near $6,000. But it's the value of the gift not the price paid that made this so questionable and the reason that ethics laws exist. I also doubt very highly that the watch ever made its way onto Tony's annual ethics form that he was required to fill-out.
In the pantheon of improper gifts I don't know whether this watch ranks up there with a vicuna coat and a freezer. And there is a question mark, '?', after the title of this post because bribery has legal connotations. I am not a lawyer and know almost nothing about bribery statutes. But I believe that in order to be bribed there has to be an explicit understanding of a quid pro quo. Now Tony was doing a lot of things very actively for Joe Spitzer. Vinny hinted on several occasions that during Tony's many periods of severe cash crunches he received help from Spitzer. But I cannot say with any certainty that Tony would not have helped him anyway, regardless of the largess. If that was the case, it would have still been improper and foolish, but not a crime. I think.
POSTSCRIPT:
For all of my lapses and criminal behavior I had never accepted anything of value from anyone involved in any City or HDC business. It was a line I believed was not to be crossed. Other than gifts from my father I don't know that I accepted anything of value from anyone city business or not.. There is one possible caveat to that statement. In the interest of full disclosure and Veritas the whole truth means coming clean whether it reflects badly on others or myself. And I would be remiss if in recounting the Joe Spitzer/watch episode I didn't mention my part in another serious lapse.
In 1995 Vinny LaPadula stole $9,000 worth of computer equipment from DOITT, the City agency he helped run as Chief of Staff. Hard to believe nowadays that three computers - average, nothing fancy - could cost $3,000 each. Vinny had stolen these for me, Tony, and himself. Back then none of us had a home computer so Vinny swiped these from DOITT. The problem was that they were configured to work with a LAN and would not function as stand-alones. Vinny had a friend who knew a computer shop on Staten Island that would remove the network cards, install software, and configure them to run as stand-alones. Vinny and I loaded the car and drove out to S.I. one Saturday and dropped off the computers. The cost was $90 per machine. Tony had that DOITT computer in his bedroom for years. Vinny had his in the living room at his desk. I kept mine a fairly short time as I was given a laptop when I went to EDC that was much faster than that DOITT machine. I don't remember what happened to my machine. I either gave it to Vinny or to EDC when I got the laptop. Other than the kid at DOITT who helped Vinny take them and deliver them to his house, I don't think anyone besides the three of us ever knew about that incident or the provenance of those computers.
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